Alice spent too much of her time crying over spilt milk. She didn't want to cry, but the tears always came, even if she held her breath and dug her body into a sea of milk white silk, a plump bedspread holding her deep in darkness. Perhaps if she did not look, she mused, her sadness would not be able to find her and she could smile and laugh with closed eyes; she would rather that then sob with eyes wide open. But no matter how well she hid (and she knew she hid very well), her tears always found her. Oh, those accursed things were much too good at hide and seek, even if she was the one with the years of practice. One can never hide from themselves, Alice assumed, even if yourself is annoying, obnoxious, and generally unpleasant to be around, as she very well knew she could be at many times of the day, or perhaps most of the day at that.
"Ms. Kingsly? Are you alright?" Alice paused, pondering this question herself. Swatting her tears away she kicked off the covers and looked at the golden knob stuck on a wall of wood. The door did not have any obvious knotholes and that bothered her- how was she going to count them if they were not there? Preposterous. She would have to get that fixed sometime.
"Yes, Emma, thank you for your concern." She listened, feeling nothing or hearing no familiar clomps of aged heels on the marble ground, perhaps one of the more obnoxious sounds in the world, but she could not call it the most obnoxious sound as all the sounds have yet to be heard by her ears. But it listed high on her uncompleted list (Number 25), so by the fact she could not hear it meant Emma was still there, expecting with wet lips for some kind of explanation for the soft whimpers she more than likely heard, "I saw a spider."
"Ms. Kingsly, you adore spiders." Oh, curse that girl and knowing her better than Alice knew herself. How long has she had her with her? 10 years? 15? She knew she was hired on the day construction began…
"…It was a large spider." Alice murmured while brushing a hand through her tangled forest stuck on her head, "No need to come in. I wished it away, and now it is gone."
"In any case, it's time you best get up. You need to get ready for today's meeting." Alice's voice rumbled as she fell back onto a pillow, burrowing her head as deep as god would allow into the soft bolster, mourning the moment she had even decided to get into such a business as this. She really should have taken her mother's advice when she told her it was no place for a women, but being the foolhardy 19-year-old she was, the temptation of it all was sweeter then chocolate covered strawberries topped with sugar and a dab of whipped cream.
"That was today?" Alice shouted, the sound silenced by the many layers of feathers, wrapped in milk white. Strangling her last bit of sorrow with a deep exhale her arms found themselves pushing her legs into action, chugging her body from her decrepit bed to the wood frame where a door stood, blocking the way of any unwanted creatures of the night. Slamming the old thing open, a frail woman with whiter than snow skin stood there, dawning a gown of pure night and ashen lace. Such a gentle thing that Emma was with wrinkles fawning with unique precision over any spot available on her skin. "So…"
"I knew it." With a blink, Alice felt aged fingers cling to her wrist and fling her into cushioned leather. Before the second blink, there was a slam and cream palms were holding her cheeks in place. "You were never a good liar, Alice."
"Excuse me?" Her tongue slipped as she spoke, sliding back further into the seating area she would most usually use for reading, but this was not at all a very usual situation, so it seemed only usual in a not usual situation for her to sit in the most unusual places. Like a teacup of sorts, but this was a teacup birthed from leather, wood, and many kinds of metal and many hours of labor, and Alice doubted that this seat could hold tea very well, but it no doubt held her better than a teacup would, as she was much too large for that at the moment. "I don't find it in your place to be forcing me to sit and then accuse me of lies!"
"Oh, come off it Alice, in all the years I've known you you've not once cared if we treated you like common folk- I highly doubt you'd be having a change of heart now," Emma's fingers dropped to grab hold of her friends, pulling them close to the warmth of the dark haired maidens chest, "Now could you very kindly tell me why you were crying?" Alice stared into those gardens of green and gold that gazed upon her with the upmost worry, clenching at her heart as memories of much greener greens could be seen in the eyes of a mere human not like herself. She had always loved Emma's eyes, even if they were not his, as they were the eyes of someone who would remain eternally youthful, even on the very death bed Alice swore to be standing by.
"Emma…" Alice sighed, clenching her hands around the kneeled woman as her eyes broke away to the shut tight door, "I… I have a meeting to go to, don't I?" She whispered, stare flickering like a wicker candle on a stormy night from the wooden exit, and her current conversationalist.
"Oh. Well, to be honest, I must confess to you… I only said that so that I could force my way inside." The 30-year-old woman laughed, pulling her hands away and brushing a strand of night from her dear friends face, calming herself as her lips cracked upwards in a tired smile.
"Oh, Emma, what am I going to do with you…?" The housekeeper smiled, following where Alice's hand had once been, settling on the side of her own head where her own hair once was.
"Well… you could let me keep my job after this." Another round of laughter was to be had on Alice's part for quite a while, but the ticking of the clock soon choked all sound coming from her mouth. It did not take much time for it to be the only noise in the room beside the soft rhythm of human breath. Brown eyes could not find themselves torn away from the entrance to her room as they could before, as the breath in the air became sharper and shallower with every tick of the clock, until nothing was heard from every corner of her very own room.
"Emma, what I am about to tell you must never leave this room, as you are the only person a woman as mad as me knows she can trust," Alice never broke her gaze from the subtle carvings of the oak frame, even as she felt a leg or two shuffle beside her in a way not too subtle, "You must promise me you will not speak a word until I am done speaking, not matter how impossible the things I say seem and no matter how much you wish to question them."
"I promise." The adult's voice was above a shaken whisper, a sound that stabbed at her slow beating heart. Alice's eyes slid closed as a steady inhale was taken, the rustic smell of the antique room wrapping around every pore and every tear of her body, intoxicating her soul in ways she needed more than anything. She released with a soft hiss, slipping her eyes back open as her mouth parted.
"I once went to a world, not like our own mind you, when I was six. Or was it seven? It barely seems important now. As strange as it might seem, I found that you can only go to this world by the direction of a white rabbit dressed in what you would think a man's waist coat, something out of the ordinary for any person of any age," There was a light drumming with her fingers against the warm, hard leather as the words poured out like hot tea into a fragile porcelain cup, flowing without any sort guarantee of not spilling and wasting it all away, "Perhaps that was just my lack of direction that caused it to be that way. But the strangest thing was not the rabbit, or the waistcoat, or the fact that it seemed to him you were either always early or late- but it was the people there and how every person was madder than the next, and how I was the only sane person out of all of them. Or so I thought at the beginning. It seems a great deal of us are mad to a certain extent, I just somehow was mad enough to follow a white rabbit down a hole when most any normal child would have run screaming to their parents.
"But even so, I fell in love with that world and the madness it relished in. But I left. I cannot remember why, nor do I really care to, as the only important thing is what happened after that," Alice felt her face droop as she looked down to Emma, her eyes overflowing with inquiries and curious jabs. Without a word Alice felt her hand slipped up to the three clawed scar on her arm and the courage she lacked to speak without letting Emma talk up pounded into her as if the very Bandersnatch was attacking her thoughts at that very moment, "I came back, many, many years later- when I was 19, to be precise. I was going to visit the dear late Lord Ascot at his manor to attend my own engagement party to his son, Sir Hamish, but I had no idea of what the occasion was or you very well know I never would have gone. Not that Hamish was an awful man, I was just a young child, and there were things far more fascinating than marriage for me. I suppose I was just not ready yet for such frivolities. When he asked the question in front of hundreds, I saw the same rabbit from when I was a child in the same waistcoat, and I chased him all the way down the rabbit hole, just as I had done as a child, many years ago.
"It was not like the first trip, I can tell you that much. The fall was much quicker and much harsher, and the world was much… deader, than before. It was because of the Red Queen, the forced ruler and older sister of the rightful leader, the White Queen. With the help of a Hatter who was quite mad, a Dormouse who enjoyed a fight much too much, a March Hare with a tendency to throw any and every object he grabbed hold of, and the Cheshire Cat, with a smile as wide as a river, we stopped the Red Queen and her reign of terror. It was quite frightening for me, as I had to fight a great beast called the Jaberwocky, or something to that name. I might have died, too, if the Hatter had not come in and helped me, allowing me to fight and win. Then when the rightful queen once again bore her crown, everyone could live in peace, which they did. And it was then that I left them all behind, to pursue these foolish dreams of mine." There was a moment of recollection for her. Alice hadn't thought about this in such detail in years, especially not when she said farewell to all her friends and even the people who were soon to be friends, as she knew all strangers were.
It was silent except for the pounding in Alice's mind as the hand that held her scar fluttered to her face, shrouding her eyes in dark regret, her mind flashing like this all had only happened yesterday- all the faces, all the expressions, and even the sobbing, desperate voices, calling out for her to stay with a gaze she never wanted to remember, "Emma… Emma… oh, Emma, if you had just been there… if you had seen… seen the way they looked at me, seen the way he looked at me, all just because I said goodbye… god, those eyes… I'd never seen eyes so sad before, and it hurt me, to know I was just leaving him, like some animal. And it wasn't as if I wanted to, but I had to, and, I just… I want to go back and explain, but I can't, because I'm here, and I can't go back, not now… but… oh, I just don't know anymore, Emma, I just really don't know..."
"Who's 'he'?" Alice frowned, her hand twitching on her eye. She sat up and looked Emma straight in the eye, her arm flopping to the side. "Did he love you? That man, I mean."
"The Hatter? I don't…" Alice caught breath, her eyes still with cold realization, "I don't know. I never asked." Emma frowned and let out a low hum, pressing her index finger and thumb to her lower chin as her eyes trailed up and down the thin frame of Alice's body, her eyes narrowing thinner and thinner the longer time passed. She stopped and stared with morbid curiosity into bark eyes, sending frozen lightening down Alice's spine, tiny hills forming all across her skin.
"Well… here's an easier question that you don't have to ask anyone but yourself- did you love him?" Alice paused, cracking a smile, brightening Emma's curious pursuit of knowledge. But the more she smiled, the more warmth filled her eyes, and the more the room becoming blurry and distorted as she felt an invisible rain rolling onto her cheek and dripping in constant rhythm on her lap, sudden memories of those moments in Wonderland, memories of the things he said and the things she wished for. Her heart stung like it had been sewn shut and something was desperately trying to pull it apart, as she was at the same desperately trying to keep it shut, fearing all this work would be for naught.
"No, my dear Emma…" Alice whispered, grasping hold of a torn frill on her nightgown, a quivering smile held back with string as she looked down to her personal friends rippled and stained frown, her hands finding sudden warmth as her fingers were held tight by five tiny frayed ropes, "You cannot love a dream."