Prompt: Meeting the White Rabbit for the first time.
But at first, Alice thought she was imagining things. She had seen many rabbits frolicking in the fields that surrounded her familial home, of all shapes and colours. But she'd never seen one wearing a slightly tattered blue waistcoat. Or holding a pocket watch in one clumsy paw.
And she'd certainly never heard a rabbit talking to itself. But this one certainly was, mumbling "I'm late, I'm late!" with a distinctly lapine accent.
"Mr. Rabbit?" she asked, cautiously approaching the peculiarly fluffy creature. This close, she could see his whiskers vibrating in the slight breeze, and the twitch of his dusky pink nose. "Mr. Rabbit?"
But without even noticing her, he took off, his powerful hind legs spurting dirt back at her, and making her cough as dust smacked into her face.
"Wait!" Alice cried in dismay, running after the wretched thing. At first, she thought she'd never catch up but slowly, ever so slowly, she drew almost level with the stampeding creature, nearly close enough to snatch at his ears streaming in the wind.
She was so caught up in watching him, in fact, that she never even noticed when she fell down the rabbit hole until the sky closed up above her and she folded rather painfully over an immense tree root.
"Ow!" Alice gasped in pain, eyes watering. The fact that she was falling and falling, and had been falling for quite a while now, suddenly registered and she shrieked, the sound vanishing into the dim walls almost as soon as it had escaped her throat.
"Do be quiet, would you?" an upside-down man wearing a very fancy burgundy frock coat admonished sternly from a sideways painting. "It's terribly rude to yell at tea time."
"Sorry, sir," a dazed Alice managed to whisper. The man nodded, a disconcerting movement to watch upside down, and soon enough, the painting had vanished into the ether up above.
The rabbit was falling down ahead of her, nearly close enough for her shoe to brush. The ticking of his pocket watch was very loud in her ears.
Finally, they both collapsed on the ground in a rumpled heap, and her fingers closed around one small, white paw, giving the rabbit quite a start.
"Who are you?!" he demanded, his nose twitching more frantically than ever. "Let go of me! I've got to go, you see, I've got to meet the Queen!"
"The what?" Alice said in bewilderment, her skirts crumpled about her and her hair askew. "I'm Alice. Alice Liddell. Who are you?"
"Mr. White Rabbit at your service," he replied, making a semi-elegant bow. "And the Queen is the Queen! Terribly important, and I'm late, so would you mind letting go, yes, like that, thank you."
And he shot off into the darkness once more, leaving a very confused Alice behind.