Hello, readers! Thanks for coming! I have to admit that this is not a very original fic idea on my part, but I'm still having fun with it! Also, for those who want to know, I'm taking a short break from Paper Faces…I'm practically slamming words onto paper at this point, and I need to take a breather. So, this, and another story I'll put up shortly, have come up for it. Don't worry…I'll get back to Paper Faces soon enough!
Disclaimer: It has been thoroughly established by now that I do not own Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. The original Alice stories, and any quotes from them, belong to Lewis Carroll. There are a few quotes from the original Disney cartoon, which, obviously, belong to Disney.
Rating: K+ (Just to be safe.)
Summary: The story of Alice's first adventure into Underland, as told by me; based on the Tim Burton film.
Chapter I: Chasing Rabbits
Eight-year old Alice Kingsleigh was bored. That was the bottom line. Bored, bored, bored. Her father, Charles, and her mother, Helen, were discussing business matters with Lord and Lady Ascot, and little Alice and her older sister, Margaret, were left in the garden. Margaret sat under a tree, while Alice sat on a branch above her, the family cat, Dinah, curled up in her lap.
Alice wore a blue dress and white apron with black fringe, and – at her mother's request, and with infinite reluctance – red-&-white striped stockings and black, pointed-toe slippers. She yawned and stroked her hand down Dinah's back, making the sleeping cat purr. Once or twice she'd peeked into her sister's schoolbook, hoping to find something interesting, but it had no pictures, no conversations…and, frankly, she couldn't understand half the things it said. She snorted aloud.
"Margaret?"
"Yes, Alice?" her sister responded without looking up.
"Don't you ever get bored with your studies? I mean, what is the use of a book, anyway, if it doesn't have any pictures or conversations in it?"
Margaret Kingsleigh sighed. She wished she'd taken her fiancée, Lowell's, advice and gone with him to tea at his home. She shut her book, her finger on the page so she would not lose her place, and turned to Alice with a dry expression.
"Alice," she said. "There are a great many good books in this world without pictures, you know, and why would conversation be needed in a history text?"
"Do kings not converse with their queens?"
Margaret blinked and turned away, unable to think of a good comeback. Alice's logic may have been infuriating, and maybe a bit nonsensical, but she and her family agreed on one point about her little sister: her logic was logic, no matter how frustrating. A logic she shared with her father.
Alice grinned triumphantly.
"If I had a world of my own," she said. "every book would have at least six picture on every page, and the words would be nothing but conversation."
"If you had a world…? Pah! What nonsense!"
"Exactly," Alice smiled, closing her eyes as she gave Dinah's belly a soft scratch. The cat rolled in her lap, meowing pleasantly. "If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense! Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And, contrariwise, what it wouldn't be, it would! See?"
"Impossible," scoffed Margaret. "Simply impossible."
"Only if you believe it is," Alice quipped. "Father believes in six impossible things before breakfast. He tells them to me."
"Really?" murmered Margaret, returning to her book, although she neither expected nor desired an answer.
"Yes," Alice said. "Let's see…this morning, number one was that rabbits owned pocket watches, so that they wouldn't be late for their appointments. Number two was that flowers like to gossip with each other about the people they see. Number three was that caterpillars smoke water hookahs as a habit when no one is looking. Number four was that dormice own swords, and that they are made from hatpins, or else they wouldn't be able to lift them. Number five was that queens play croquet with flamingos for mallets, and then use hedgehogs for balls just for fun. And number six…"
"Alice, please!" snapped Margaret, and put a finger to her lips.
Alice sighed.
"Number six was that he had the most wonderful eight-year old daughter in the world…he said that wasn't as impossible as all the others," she whispered to herself. Her father was the only one to understand her; both of them had wild imaginations, both of them were considered a bit "eccentric" by the Ascots, and both of them liked to joke around and explore new ideas and new places. Whenever Alice was with her father, she felt safer and happier than any other time. But when she wasn't, she felt quite alone. It was if no one knew her better.
It was as if she was alone in the world.
Alice dragged herself out of her depressing thoughts, beginning to daydream. She was wondering as best she could – the hot summer sun made her very sleepy and a bit lazy – if making a daisy chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when she spotted something rush by not too far off in the distance.
She gaped.
It was a rabbit. A white rabbit, to be precise, with hot pink eyes, dressed in a sky blue waistcoat with silk lining and a yellow cravat. It hopped along, a red umbrella under one arm and its nose twitching nervously.
In one of its paws, it held a gold watch.
A rabbit with a watch! That was number one!
The rabbit gasped.
"Oh, dear, oh, dear!" it muttered in a highly strung voice, "I shall be late!"
The rabbit hurried on. In an instant, Alice jumped out of the tree. Dinah dropped, a complaining look on her face. Margaret saw nothing, and continued her studies.
Burning with curiosity over this marvel, Alice raced after the white rabbit. It dashed on, and swung into Lady Ascot's hedge maze, lined with red rose bushes, thorns clipped and branches neatly pruned. Each time Alice turned a corner, she feared she'd lose sight of the rabbit, but at the end of each corner, she was just in time to see it vanish behind the next.
"Oh, my ears and whiskers!" she heard the rabbit pant. "How late it's getting!"
As Alice turned the last corner, and left the Ascot Manor property, she saw the rabbit dead ahead. It checked its watch again, gulped, and popped into a rabbit hole at the base of a gnarled, twisted willow tree that, unkempt and wild as it was, couldn't possibly belong to Lady and Lord Ascot or their (annoyingly snooty) son, Hamish. Alice walked up to the rabbit hole and peered in.
Darkness, and nothing more.
"Most curious…"
Suddenly, the ground crumbled in her hands.
First she gasped.
Then, she yelped.
And then she screamed as loud as she could.
DOWN, Down, down…