Where is Alice?

Who knows? She's probably off shopping: cheerfully passing through each store, picking out the most colorful dresses and shoes. Perhaps she is out with Bella, having lunch and chatting. No, no. She is here. She is sitting on a rock by a pond, waiting for the ripples that will appear...now. There they are, the pebble has been tossed. They spread, and she no longer sees a chalky-faced girl staring back at her, but something else entirely which she can't really give a name...it is like a broken mirror, but less dramatic. No sharp edges, it is cool and collected, and if she smiled...there. It's perfect, not something sad at all.

She wonders if her thoughts sound bitter.

And damn, this just isn't her. Is it?

She thinks very hard of a young dark-haired girl curled in a hospital bed. There's no sound from the girl...but she isn't dead. She wishes. Because she has been put in a place where it smells funny and people do things do her that hurt like hell; touch her in places she doesn't want them too; rip her apart, literally and figuratively. She has been put in this place by her parents. Words run through her head, and worries. Worries for her little sister. The last thing she heard her father say was directed at her sister.

"Don't you dare start coming to me about visions! I won't have this family shamed again. You won't be so lucky as your sister."

It is the last thing she heard him say. (The last thing she heard her mother say was too much of a pitiful torn cry to be quoted.) So she was lucky? She wishes harder. Death, death, death.

These are the few fuzzy memories that have resurfaced. Not much else. Alice looks down at her bare toes, and shifts her position a bit. If only she could remember more, and know this dark-haired girl better. She stands up and stretches, looking back at the pond one last time.

A yellow leaf floats on the water. The trees are all bare...this little fella is the last one. He looks so happy. But he's all alone. And here is Alice.

Who?