Disclaimer: I neither own nor claim to own Alice in Wonderland or any of its characters. This is just my own adaptation, spurred from my very overactive imagination and a brain that simply refuses to let ideas go once it takes hold of them.
This is the preface to the actual story. Be on the lookout for chapter one, but I'm unsure as to when it will be put up. I have a rather hectic schedule, and my writing time is limited, but I will try to set aside time to get things together for you. Please do let me know what you think; feedback is always appreciated.
Wonderland had changed, and not necessarily for the better.
Everyone had suspected it would happen—after all, it was the nature of things in the Other World, to go on and grow up and all of that other rubbish that they associated with life—but no one had known just how soon it would happen. Time moved much slower in Wonderland—or perhaps it didn't move at all, and the inhabitants were trapped in an endless cycle of days that left them quite the same as they had been, or perhaps that was just how Alice's mind kept them—and things had picked up with a rapidity that no one had foreseen. It would appear time moved much faster in the Other World than it did in the imaginary land. But the fact of the matter was that the state of things that had been when Alice first ventured into her little sanctuary were not nearly the same as they were now.
Things had become darker, almost sinister, changing the inhabitants of Wonderland with it. Alice's mind, no longer the mind of a child, had begun to change, and her little world of her own had changed steadily with it. Whatever the girl's thoughts were, or whatever emotions she had been repressing—all of the bitterness and the hate, all of the heavy feelings she kept inside—seemed to have been transported to the magical world where she had once visited, turning it dark and ugly. It was a horrifying place to be, on the whole, and it was becoming steadily more so with every second that passed.
The Queen of Hearts had taken over, and her reign was supremely terrible. The Tweedles, once such amiable—if not misleading—brothers, had fallen under her spell, turning them into horrible, slinking monsters. They appeared vastly different, more sinister than ever before, and their deeds were horrendous. They had become rapists, murderers, and their tales and anecdotes were not told to amuse anymore so much as they were told to frighten. Others, too, were facing the Queen's wrath, particularly those who had refused to accept her rule. The Caterpillar was in grave danger, and there were new reports of someone disappearing every day. No doubt the Queen had them locked away in her dungeon—unless, of course, she had already rolled their heads across the stone; she had always been fond of beheading.
The imprisoned were treated terribly, and the word passing around was that the torture was most severe, ghastly punishments inflicted with no concern or remorse. There were only a few who had not converted and managed to keep themselves out of the Queen's castle. The Cheshire Cat, for one, had managed this feat, but most attributed that to the simple fact that the Queen could not catch him; he was a slippery feline, slinking just out of reach, and he was impossible to catch if he did not want to be caught. The March Hare and the Mad Hatter were safe, if only because they had claimed a sort of neutrality, although they secretly harbored thoughts of rebellion, wishing desperately that something—anything—could turn their home back to the place it had once been. The Dormouse had been taken away, kicking and screaming, and they wondered if they, for all their claims of neutrality, would be next.
The wood leading to the March Hare's cottage was dismal and dark. The trees pressed in on the traveler, and the Mad Hatter found himself rushing down the path every day as he headed over for tea, frightened of what could be lurking in the wood—the Bandersnatch or perhaps the Jubjub Bird. There had recently been horrific, guttural sounds issuing from the forest as well, leaving the haberdasher to wonder if there was a Jabberwock loose. He would not have put it past the Queen, and he practically ran helter-skelter to the gate of the March Hare every day before plunking himself down at his customary spot at the table to drink his favorite cup of tea and to read the morning paper. The paper, of course, would have one believe that things were all smiles and sunshine, and it disgusted him to the degree that he would put it away unfinished before long. They were a rather subdued party on occasions, which they attributed to the loss of the Dormouse, something they had not quite foreseen. And the changes of Wonderland had taken effect even at the seemingly boisterous residence of the Hare.
While the Hare's cottage remained as it had always—it seemed that only living things were affected by this change—the Hare himself was changed. He was, perhaps, slightly darker in fur color, and there was a depravity in his eyes that no amount of tea could quell. He twitched occasionally for no apparent reason, and his madness seemed to have been intensified, leaving his moods unpredictable—more so even than his companion's, whose moods had always been erratic at best. The Hatter himself looked strange. When Alice had first visited, he had appeared…older, since anything to a child over their own age was old. But now he appeared for all the world to be a young man in his mid- to late-twenties. His hair, however, was still an obstinate shade of white—the Mercury, of course—and his nose was still perhaps rather larger than customary. There was a shrewdness about his face that perhaps had not been there before, but he altogether remained quite the same as he had before. His moods were still rather volatile, and he occasionally needed to be snapped out of fits of anger that came from nowhere, and he still cherished the hat he had perched upon his head as if his very lifeblood ran through it. Still, he could not pretend that nothing had happened, and the very subject of the horrible goings-on was the object of discussion at breakfast when their young lady friend appeared at the gate.
"The Cheshire Cat, he reckons no one can fix this," the Hare said in tones of great anxiety, accidentally buttering his hand instead of his biscuit. "He—he thinks it will all have gone to her before the end."
"There is," began the Hatter behind his paper, twitching it irritably to move on to the next page, "someone who can help us." He sighed heavily, folding up his paper and putting it down out of sheer disgust. "Alas, she has not been seen in these parts for nigh over…"
He stopped, trailing off mid-thought, which was not altogether uncommon. It was for this reason that the Hare did not comment on it, merely plowed on with a response as if the Hatter had finished his thought. When his friend gave no response at all, however, he looked up to see the white-haired fellow staring at something in the general direction of the garden gate, and the Hare swiveled, sloshing tea out of his cup, to see what the Hatter was staring at. Immediately, he jumped, a strangled cry issuing from his throat, but whether it was from the sight of Alice standing beyond the gate or the great quantity of scalding tea he had spilled over himself was difficult to say. The Hatter, for his part, behaved a tad more gracefully.
He leaped up and half ran over, resulting in a rather comical sight as he attempted to decide what to do mid-stride. When he had finally drawn himself level with the girl in question—and he knew immediately who she was, despite the change the years had done to her face (she had seemed to grow older as he had grown younger), he would have recognized her anywhere. For a moment, however, he feared he was witnessing an illusion, and he reached out, looking almost dreamlike, and touched the tip of her nose with his finger. "Ah!" he cried, triumphant. "She is real! You are real!" he added to the "she" herself, beside himself. "Oh, frabjous day!" he crowed, half-leaping into the air and turning to look at the Hare. "T'would seem, my friend, that my precognitive powers are not as lacking as you assumed! I do believe you owe me a shilling!"