Summary: Alice Liddell would never again take advice from Wendy.
Disclaimer: Well, I don't own Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland. Or anything else, for that matter.
A/N: Hope you like it and all that jazz. Beta'd by my sister, but that may be too generous. All she said was 'yeah, okay. Great.' And went back to what she was doing. ):
A LESSON LEARNED
Alice sighed deeply and set her books at the gnarled roots of a large oak to retie her shoes. She pursed her lips and eyed the shoes. Her mother had bought them so she could look nice on the first day of school, but they clashed with her drab navy blazer, pleated skirt, red tie, and long socks.
She looked up briefly from under her fair lashes and suddenly caught the sight of a white rabbit. This would have been dismissed by the normal eye, except it was dressed in a fine gentleman's shirt and trousers, and clutching a large gold watch. It exclaimed (and rather loudly), "I'm late! Oh, I'm late..." He motioned to his watch, which he paused to pocket before hurrying away. Alice followed too, and was led off the path through the park and to a shrub hiding a rabbit's den.
Without further ado, or a glance at Alice, he disappeared into a rabbit hole.
"Peculiar," Alice muttered, examining the hole. Kneeling at the entrance, she whispered, "Mr. Rabbit?" A voice that was not her own returned an echo, in a mocking tone.
"Who's that?"
"Who's this?" yelled back the voice with an air of indignity.
About to answer, she frowned to think. "That's hardly fair, I asked first!"
The echo was silenced.
She blinked in the darkness, crawling backwards out of the hole. She didn't see who it was that pushed her, or even the force that tugged at her white oxford shirt and brought her tumbling down.
She saw things she'd never seen. Floating end-tables, lamps and stools.
An umbrella flitted up from beneath her, opening and closing on its way up, a cabinet of china's glass doors flapped open noisily, but her favorite sight was a stationary, latticed window with kitschy curtains that had a view of a hill with accelerated days and nights that lasted only seconds.
At first, she heard her screams as she fell, but soon they were silenced, by an invisible hand. Being that it was a very long and awfully dull fall, she was almost glad at the 'scenery' and the constant fear of colliding with an item that was falling up at great speeds.
Alice's preferred pose for falling, she found, was her chin propped on her hand and her feet down.
A delicious (and angry) tart found its way into her mouth and she was truly famished, so it was very welcome. Though she thought she might have felt it trying to claw back out.
At length, she felt the tips of her shoes touch ground and reached a soft landing. She groaned and tried very hard to regain her balance once on land. It was very difficult, she thought to herself, to stand after having been in the air such a long while. The end of her fall found her at a short cavern with a dark ceiling. Alice hunched over at the exit and was very much puzzled at how she had fallen from above only to be in a room with a ceiling.
"Hello?" She whispered, turning the rusted brass knob of a miniscule door. It immediately formed into a semblance of a face: a large rounded nose, narrow lips and heavy eyelids closed in sleep. It awoke, and scowled at Alice.
"It's very rude to interrupt someone's nap," The doorknob warned sharply.
Alice looked apologetic and wrung her hands nervously. "I'm dreadfully sorry."
The doorknob raised a brow and went back to sleep and the girl sighed in despair. She winced and slowly reached out for the doorknob... Slowly, she began to turn it, examining the knob's face.
"Pardon?" It asked.
"I'm very sorry, sir, but I need to know in what direction a white rabbit went."
"I wouldn't know," He said. "After all, I was asleep." The doorknob yawned.
"That, children, is how I came to find myself in Wonderland," Alice finished dramatically, pausing for questions and eager requests that she continue through the night, protests at bed-time being so early, and maybe a few crocodile-tears to reward the reluctant story teller.
"Mum, you are such a liar," the child huffed, taking with her stuffed rabbit with her.
Her eldest, resigned, looked grimly out the window of the nursery and said nothing.
Alice hated Wendy Darling.
A/N: Oh god, you actually read it. 8D Thankssss, and it would be pretty cool if you'd review it, huh?