The Prince

Alice opened her mouth to greet him, but all that came out was a squeak of surprise. She was also astonished to find he wasn't wearing armor. In fact, he wasn't even wearing leather plates or chain mail. He was just wearing skinny jeans, a flannel shirt, and red Chuck Taylors. Alice was confused to no end. "Well." She coughed. "You cannot be from the same time period as your mother." She tried to crack a joke. To her immense relief, the knight grinned. "I have a special gift, Alice. I can travel to and from your world. And might I say I adore your time period's fashion. Seems only yesterday you were all wearing stiff collars." He smiled, looking into the white stone walls of the tower as if he were reminiscing. "Oh, I am Ichios." He extended his hand. Alice took it. Leathery. Calloused. Worn. A sword was sheathed in his belt loop, a thin and light rapier. It fit him perfectly, light and stinging. Alice had a hard time believing he could swing a broadsword above his head. He was thin and skeletal, and almost shorter than her. "Alice, apparently." she replied. He laughed a booming laugh, as if it were the funniest thing he'd ever heard. Alice was completely serious. She, however, laughed as well. He looked her up and down, his eyebrows doing strange, small dances upon his forehead as he took in her every feature. Alice felt slightly embarrassed and cleared her throat. "Where can a girl get some tea around here?" She asked, biting her lip. "It must be close to tea time." he replied in a British accent that made Alice want to swoon, taking a square time piece from his pocket. It appeared there were no numbers on the face, just engraved bugs that crawled to a new position every five seconds. "Yes, it appears I was correct." He offered the crook of his arm. "Shall I escort you?" He asked. Alice smiled and nodded, hoping they actually served tea.

The White Castle

Madeleinea awoke in a white room. Of course... She thought. How horribly cliche is that? It was absolutely silent, save the singing and humming of some strange bug outside her window, which evidently did fine living in the snow, as the whole outside was covered in a fine blanket of it. She yawned, stretched, and tried to remember when she had fallen asleep. Then, everything came back to her in little flashes, like knife stabs to a deeper part of her chest. She screamed, clutching her head as a searing pain enclosed around it like a vice. She sobbed and lay back down on the bed, holding her head and trying hard to see past the veil of pain and just remember what had happened to her, squeezing her eyes shut in concentration...
She felt a cold rag on her head. She opened her eyes. A women cloaked in white was holding it to her forehead, shushing her and lulling her. "Hush, hush, Alice... yes, you've come a long way. Shhh, it'll be alright." The pain in Madeleinea's head subsided and her sobs grew to small hiccups. "Where am I? What happened to me?" Madeleinea squeaked. "You were attacked by the dark spectres of the red queen, tortured souls that she's trapped in bottles to fester in anger, hatred, fear, and sadness." The women in white replied. "It's a horrible thing to experience, but my son, the knight Ichios found you just in time." Madeleinea struggled to remember everything, but was only greeted by the pounding in her head. "No, Alice, you musn't try." The woman urged. She picked up a small plate and fed some white cake to Madeleinea. "This will help." She set the plate back on the bed stand and sat on the edge of the bed, stroking Madeleinea's hair. "I am Inea, the white queen." The woman said. "And you are Alice, the savior of my land and people." Madeleinea sat up. "So I've heard." She said slowly, coughing. Inea gently pushed her back to a laying position. "Ichios will be back up to check on you. For now, rest, and I'll brew some tea." Inea stood up and left the room, closing the huge white french doors behind her. Madeleinea threw the covers aside and stood up. Her vision swam and her blood boiled for a bit, and her legs felt as though they had fallen asleep, but soon she was fine. She spotted some folded clothes lying on a chair next to the bed stand, and she unfolded them and lay them out on the bed. A pair of high-wasted pants with military buttons, a little peach and white striped sweater with a black bicycle on it, and a white beanie. She chuckled, amused at how they seemed to have been pulled from her own drawers back home. Suddenly, she realized how far away from home she was. Where was the elevator? How on earth would she tell her parents what was going on? She pushed the nasty thoughts from her head and pulled on the clothes, shedding the white lace tunic. A pair of small peach silk slippers sat by the door, and Madeleinea slipped them on, reaching for the door knob to the white french door, before it swung open in front of her. She nearly cried out in shock as she was suddenly nose to nose with the most beautiful boy she had ever seen.

The Spirits of Past Pains

No crickets chirped, no familiar nocturnal bird calls echoed through Madeleinea's conscious. Instead, strange clicks and croaks crept along the forest floor and up her spine, making the hair on the back of her neck stand right up. Her eyes felt numb and dead, and she half wondered if she had gone blind. Suddenly, she heard a strange sound: singing. Now, Madeleinea loved music, and usually it would make her as happy as a bird with a worm. But this music was completely different, like dark eulogies being thrown from the lungs of a person in deep emotional pain. She covered her ears as it crept into her very soul and shook the ropes of security loose. She felt every wound and every bit of hatred creep from her past and begin to eat her sanity. She screamed, squeezing her eyes shut, not even aware she was still in the forest and trying to keep unknown to the monstrosities that could be slinking under the cloak of the nightmarish dark. This horror, this torrent of long buried hatred and fear, where had it come from? Who had dug it all up? She opened her closed eyes, seeing no difference between the black behind her eyelids and the night threatening to swallow her up. Then, her tortured consciousness picked up on specks of eerie blue lights, coming ever closer. The singing grew louder, the pain greater, and the lights gained the shapes of human figures. Just when she felt her head would explode, the creatures were upon her and the singing they emitted stopped. Now, the whole forest was horribly quiet, as if every creature knew the beings were not something one wished to make their presence known to. It was then that Madeleinea knew she had made a mistake. She realized the creatures were spirits, but nightmarish ones. Skeletons, hung in tattered clothes with gaping, smiling jaws and endless holes for eyes. Now she was screaming for help, though she doubted it would come. Pinpricks began to poke inside her head as one spirit reached down and placed a palm on her forehead. The pinpricks became spears, and the spears became boulders. She felt as if she were sinking into nothing. As she sunk into the open, welcoming arms of the unknown black she fell into, she heard galloping hooves and screaming, but she was just to tired to wonder what was going on. All she wanted to do was sleep, sleep, sleep...

Encountering The Caterpillar

The forest was, indeed, a place of dreams and nightmares. Though Madeleinea hadn't quite figured it out yet, she would soon find the forest to be a place of unfriendly faces and lost souls.
The moss was soft and cushioned, and felt cooling on Madeleinea's worn feet. The air smelled of damp foliage and cocoa, wafting from someplace in the distance. The blue sky dappled the ground below. Madeleinea felt calmed, and at home. Then, she spotted something. There, sitting on a toad stool, was a small bottle of liquid. "Madeleinea..." Came the whisper from its uncorked mouth. She shook her head. She must've been hearing things! Bottles didn't talk, of course. She knelt on the soft earth, and was startled by a wave of frilly white insects that billowed from the ground. She batted a stray one away, and plucked the bottle from its mushroom seat. There, on a small tag, in faint black ink, were two words: "DRINK ME." She lifted it to her lips, then hesitated. What could possibly be worse than drinking poison and dying, forgotten in this strange world? She sniffed the fumes wafting from the top, and her mouth watered. Vanilla icing, spiced chai tea, sugared strawberries, and night-flowering jasmine. She couldn't quite resist the pull of the smells from the liquid inside. Besides, it said drink me. What could possibly be so horrid about drinking something that said to drink it? So she lifted the bottle again to her lips, and was overridden by a barrage of lovely tastes. Suddenly, after she felt the last drop slide silkily down her throat, she noticed the trees were getting decidedly bigger. Even the mushroom that used to be no bigger than her foot could've easily been a lovely vanity for her room. But no, it wasn't the forest that was GROWING. She was shrinking. Which was certainly not optimal. No indeed, it was rather bad news. She was about to cry for help, when she caught a wiff of smoke. A strong smoke, like the plume of a cigarette. Laced with the smell of a musky flower. It made Madeleinea feel strangely sleepy. The smoke was settling on the ground, curling and billowing like sluggish snakes. Madeleinea noticed quickly that it wasn't a regular ugly gray, but blue, and it almost seemed to glitter in the orange light of the sunset.... Madeleinea gasped. "SUNSET?!" She cried aloud to no one. Class was over, school was over, her family was home, and she was missing. She had to get out, had to find her way back, but where, how.... "Yesss. SSunset." Said a slow, pondering voice. Madeleinea whirled around to meet the insect eyes of a caterpillar. A fat blue caterpillar. At least as tall as she, possibly taller. "Which means you, Miss Madeleinea, are very, very late for tea." Madeleinea took a small step back. "Who are you? Do I know you?" She asked, her voice stumbling with nervousness and drowsiness from the curling smoke. "No, you don't know me. Though your mother, and your grandmother, and your great-grandmother knew me.. Alice the fourth." Madeleinea frowned. "My name's not Alice." "No, it certainly isn't." Madeleinea cleared her throat. The great caterpillar took a great breath from his hookah and breathed a ring of the blue smoke in Madeleinea's face. "It is what we call you here, you see?" Madeleinea nodded, not truly understanding. "Whose we?" She asked. "You will find out." Madeleinea nodded again. "Well, how do I leave? I need to go home." She inquired. The blue caterpillar chuckled, smoke puffing from his nostrils. "You can't." He said simply. "But.. but I... I need to.." Madeleinea began to insist, feeling so sleepy she could feel sleep curling its arms around her. The caterpillar chuckled again. "You should find shelter. It's nearly night, and you don't want to be in the forest when the--" Madeleinea fell asleep.

When she awoke, the forest was black. Not black as in comfortably night, the black in which you can't see your hand in front of your face. Madeleinea tried it, no luck. She suddenly tensed, listening. What had the caterpillar been trying to tell her? She sniffed the air for the telltale smoke, seeing her eyes would be useless. Nothing. The caterpillar had left her alone, leaving her to whatever awaited her in the forest.

A Blooming Landscape

She stepped slowly, ever so slowly, into the great new wonder before her. This couldn't be real, this couldn't be such a true dream. She pinched herself. Once, twice, three times. No response. No jolt awake under the warm layer of cradling frosting that was her feather comforter. She breathed slowly. The air tasted like honey and rain on asphalt. Mushrooms of many colors sprouted where she stepped, tickling her exposed ankles. Some roses opened to the rising sunrise, and began shouting things to her so high pitched she couldn't make it out. She hears another snap of a mushroom stem. She winced. Maybe they're angry about me stepping on the mushrooms..? She trod on tiptoes, being especially careful to avoid the rainbow of caps beneath her clumsy feet. The roses didn't quiet down. As the sun rose higher in the sky, the soft baby blue spread throughout the globe above her, and the colors of the sunrise shattered and became little fluffy balls of color, like paint splatters on a blue canvas. Finally, the horrible shrieking of the roses became unbearable. She broke into a run, but the roses sprouted from everywhere in the ground, in front of her, to both sides. She continued to step on mushrooms. She suddenly tried to screech to a halt on the slippery grass and gasped at what she saw before her, sprouting straight from the ground. She slipped on a slimy green toadstool cap and fell on her bottom. She groaned loudly.
Right before her eyes, in this empty expanse of flowery fields, sprouted a giant forest of all an array of trees. Pine trees, tropical trees, and other trees that looked like oversize shrubs or not even a tree at all. Though, she thought, at least the majority of them seem green. Though even the pine trees and overlarge shrubs had begun to sprout flowers of all shapes, sizes, and hues. Madeleinea sniffled loudly, cursing her allergies under her breath, and continued on, rubbing her bruising bottom.

**Note :
Sorry it's so short! It's 11:30 and I'm exhausted. I'll continue on soon!

Welcome To Wonderland

Madeleinea was bored, very bored indeed. Another day at school, and THIS was destined to be a seven hour study hall. Madeleinea wanted nothing more than an adventure, full of trial and close brushes with death. But of course, nothing of the sort would happen in Iowa. She sat in a rickety old wooden chair, the only chairs her penny-hungry school could afford. To her left, she heard the cutting of paper and the disinterested conversing of her peers. To her right, the clicking of a mouse as Netalia, a good friend of hers, surfed the web and followed the French voyage online. That does it. Madeleinea thought. I need an adventure, and I need one now. She stood up, flashed a mischievous smile at Netalia, who smiled back, then rolled her eyes when Madeleinea's back was turned. She knew that look all too well, and it meant Madeleinea was getting into trouble.
The halls were silent, and the only movement was the occasional paper, caught in the draft of an open window and floating from room to room like a tumbleweed, and the eternal flickering of one fluorescent light, destined never to be changed. Madeleinea's boots clicked eerily on the floor, their laces slapping the tile like dead snakes. Madeleinea began a sneaky tiptoe down the hall, sliding into the space in the wall occupied by the elevator doors. She clicked the button, and stood through the agonizing wait for the slow old thing on tiptoes. Finally, the clunky doors slid cynically open, groaning from the pain-staking effort of climbing a whole three floors. Madeleinea looked both ways, squeaking in terror when she spotted Mr. Vanhallen trotting briskly down the hall. Probably looking for her. To Madeleinea's dismay, she had forgotten to sign out. As the doors slid shut, Madeleinea slid through the sliver of an opening and considered the panel. To the Basement? Or the Second Floor? Decisions, decisions.
Then, she saw a fourth button added to the row of three. It looked shiny and new, as if it had just been installed. A symbol was carved on it:



Madeleinea had only the most basic knowledge about Japanese symbols, but enough to know the symbol wasn't Japanese. Either Chinese or Korean, but whichever it was, Madeleinea didn't know, and even if she did, she couldn't make out what it meant. Madeleinea's keen ears picked up on Mr.Vanhallen's shoes clicking a little more briskly than usual down the hall. Choose. And quick. Madeleinea took a deep breath and clicked the new, shiny button.
The elevator shot down, faster than she knew that elevator to go. It seemed as if levels were buzzing and buzzing by. Madeleinea clung to the wall and panicked. We must have passed the basement by now. How far does this thing go? Oh, shit, what have I done? Thoughts like this stung Madeleinea's consciousness. When was the elevator to stop? Suddenly, from behind the button, sprouted little flowers. They bloomed in many colors, pink, red, green, colors that Madeleinea couldn't identify, because they didn't exist, as far as Madeleinea knew. From each flower, came a huge butterfly, as big as a bird, with a wing span that stretched it to as wide as Madeleinea's head. She screamed, but the butterflies didn't seem to notice. Their wings were like stained glass, refracting abstract shapes of colored light all over the drab false wood-patterned wall paper of the elevator. They made sounds like different pitches of bells, from light silver ones to the deep gongs of ship's bells. Madeleinea's scream mingled with the sounds, swirling and swirling in her ears until she thought her head would explode.
Then silence. The elevator stopped. It didn't even grind to a halt, or lurch back, it just stopped moving downward. The butterflies had perched all along the handrail, some has perched on Madeleinea's shoulders and hand and head. Madeleinea breathed. The air smelled.... different. Like vanilla and flowers (probably the ones sprouted from the button panel) and berries and candy and wet grass and pine... so many smells. Madeleinea continued to inhale, each breath making her sleepier and sleepier. Finally, the doors to the elevator slid open. The butterflies took off from the rail and from Madeleinea's body, flocking together like birds in a cloud of color. Madeleinea stepped from the threshold to the soft blue grass outside. Dew made her bare feet feel cold. Since when is grass blue? And where are my shoes? And what is up with the dew...? The dew sent light spinning into different rays of light, like millions of miniature disco balls, up to the green-orange-blue mottled sky. Two suns poked from either horizon. Then Madeleinea understood: it was a sunrise. The butterflies swirled around her, making her brand new toga of soft blue silk swirl up like a flower. Wow. Madeleinea gasped. I think I found Wonderland.