A/N: Hello, I've been rather busy with school, especially since we recently had midterms and all, and then I had three projects to do in one week, I was nearly failing a class(I'm passing now, don't know what with, but I'm passing), and we got 44th place out of fifty two bands in our final marching band competition, but on the bright side, no more Saturdays wasted for marching band competitions, and I have written two additional chapters and lengthened many of the others that were really quite short for this story, so not all was in vain. I decided to publish these two chapters in honor of Halloween :D I'm gonna go trick or treating with my mom pretty soon; wow, I'm really pathetic, I'm fifteen years old, I have my Jack Skellington costume for Halloween that I put together little over a week, and I'm gonna go trick or treating, not with friends, but with my mom .... ah well, at least I can accept myself for myself. Anyway, I hope you all have a nice time yourselves tonight, whether going to a party, trick or treating, or staying home to watch scary movies, be safe, don't eat already open candy or homemade candy, go to only the houses with the lights on, stick with the people you know, and don't summon forth spirits/demons from an alternate dimension, or hell, that will either kill/possess you, take over the world, or destory the human race. Happy Halloween! XD

Alice's sleep was disturbed by the bright light of the sun shining down on her face, she blinked blearily, yawning softly and letting her arms stretch a good bit, feeling quite refreshed, after having cried for so long, indeed the motherly voice was right, a nice sleep was absolutely delightful after such a good cry.

"Oh, that's good, you're awake now dear."

Alice looked about in search of the motherly voice, but found no one in sight near any of the strange, tall, green trees in what appeared to be something of an orchard of these strange trees.

"Up here dear." the motherly voice said, coming from somewhere up the green tree, and so Alice looked up to find a flower with a human, slightly elderly, female face; she recognized the flower as one she often saw growing in moss patches, but unlike those flowers, the flower itself was alone rather than in a whole group.

Alice was really very confused, and quite curious, over how it was possible for a flower to grow so tall or for it to have such human characteristics, and better yet, how it could be so very kind to her, like how a mother should be; of course her ideal of how a mother should be was only brought to Alice's head through all the books she had read, since Mother rarely acknowledged her presence.

"Now, I know you must be quite hungry, so here's some honey, had the bees bring some in, since they owed us anyway." the motherly flower said, handing Alice a comb of honey, which Alice took into her hand, it was wrapped in a leaf, so that she wouldn't get her hands sticky, but she gazed up at the flower confusedly.

"I-I'm terribly sorry if I seem rude, what with you being so nice to me and all, I really am thankful for your kindness, but you're a flower, aren't you?" Alice asked, rather than eat the honey that had been given to her.

"Yes, I am, now stop asking questions and eat, you're thin as a bone you are." the flower instead told her in a stern voice, and deciding it best not to anger a flower who acted so motherly, Alice ate as much of the honey as her stomach would allow before it felt sick and told her if she ate any more of the sweet stuff that she would soon be seeing it again.

"Thank you very much for the honey." Alice said, wrapping the rest of the honey comb tightly into the leaf, making sure it wouldn't open by accident, and then placed it in a pocket in the white apron over her blue dress.

"You had best be grateful, I was the one who had to negotiate with those bees for that honey." a new female voice interjected rudely, Alice looked over at the voice to find that it was a yellow narcissus flower that had spoken this time.

"Um, well, thank you very much then." Alice replied, standing properly to curtsy towards the flower, who seemed rather pleased with the young blond now.

Numerous childish, and very girlish, giggles were heard and Alice turned to look over at a patch of daisies, barely taller than her, who were all giggling at the sight of her and whispering to one another which led to more eruptions of giggles and laughter. The motherly flower shushed them and scolded the daisies for being rude to their guest.

"Well, would any of you happen to know the way to the castle from here?" Alice asked the flowers, who all then began to speak loudly amongst themselves about which way was the best, soon enough they all completely forgot Alice was there to begin with and were just arguing amongst themselves.

Alice was tapped on the shoulder by the motherly moss flower who bent low and whispered, "Just go that way, that caterpillar might know something." and so Alice ran off in the direction she had been pointed to, hoping to run into this 'caterpillar' quite soon because she was getting scared by the again quickly darkening forest.

Alice grew rather confused as she continued walking, there were no more of the strange tall trees with their pink trunks and purple leaves, but instead there were only tall, thick, leafless, green trees, like the stems of the flowers she had just met. Alice wondered over this, when she finally noticed a large clearing ahead of her, from where much smoke was being emitted and what looked either like some green hump or a man in a lumpy green jacket was seated on a strangely shaped seat that vaguely reminded Alice of the mushrooms she would occasionally find in her backyard.

"Um excuse me?" the man must have not heard Alice for he did not acknowledge her, "Um, sir, I was wondering if you would help me, please, sir?" now Alice was beginning to get upset because now she was in front of the man, who she could now say for sure was a man, and instead he continued smoking from some strange tube like device, which if she were perhaps more knowledgeable about darker parts of the world, she would know the item to be a hookah, but since she was not, she only thought of the item as a strange tube like device. After going another ten minutes without being acknowledged by the man Alice had had enough, "Sir, I should quite like that you pay attention to me, please!"

The man looked lazily at Alice with glazed over, black eyes, he took a deep breath from his hookah and then in a slow, breathy voice with smoke spilling out of his mouth, he asked, "Whooo ... are ... you?"

"I am Alice, and you are?" she replied, staring at the man, who was quite a bit taller than her, with black eyes that stood out on a pale, pale face and black hair, and while he wore a green lumpy jacket, underneath was a nice, but crumpled white shirt, a pair of wrinkled black pants and, strangely enough, he had no shoes.

The man took another deep breath off his hookah, "I ... am ... the Caterpillar."

Alice was quiet a while before asking, "Is that a title too?"

"Yes ... Lawrence Vanchre ... the Caterpillar." Lawrence lay back on the strange mushroom shaped chair, disregarding Alice and just taking breaths off his hookah.

"Um, Lawrence?" Lawrence glared at her with glazed eyes, "Mr. Vanchre?" his glare lightened slightly, but it was still a fierce glare, "Caterpillar?" the glare was gone and replaced with the lazy glazed look, "Caterpillar, might you tell me how to get to the castle from here?"

Lawrence glanced at her lazily and took another deep breath, then he forced his body from the waist up, to raise itself so he could look at Alice, "Grow ... another ... five feet." was his reply.

"What do you mean?" was Alice's question.

"I ... am ... three inches ... quite tall ... if I ... say so ... myself." Laurence answered, taking breaths off his hookah.

"No, I am five feet, precisely; I should hate to be three inches." Alice replied.

The glazy look in his eyes was quickly diminishing and his glare was growing deeper as he set his hookah to the side, "I quite like being three inches, thank you."

"Well then, that's good for you, but I should like to not be less than three inches for any longer and to find my way to the castle."

Lawrence continued to glare at Alice for a while, but he picked up his hookah again and continued breathing from it, "Right is growing ... left is shrinking." and he lay down again.

"What?"

"The mushroom ... eat the right and grow ... eat the left and shrink." and Alice saw smoke rise off of the top of the mushroom and into the air.

Lawrence then remained quiet and Alice felt that she should not speak again, so she tore off a piece of the mushroom from the right and from the left, and while Lawrence breathed off of his hookah Alice, walked quite a ways away from him before she removed the pieces of mushroom and ate a good sized piece off of the one on the right. She grew to be too tall, taller than the purple leaved trees about her and so tall that she almost knocked over a bird's nest, quite upsetting the bird that had been seated there. Well, Alice supposed it was a bird, it had wings and a nest, like most birds do, but instead of a regular beak it had a trumpet and trumpeted at Alice in annoyance.

So Alice quickly took a slightly smaller sized bite of the left piece of the mushroom, which she noticed had a slightly minty tang sort of flavor in opposition to the sweet cherry flavor of the right side of the mushroom. She shrunk down to a much more agreeable height and after judging with a nearby tree, Alice decided that she had indeed shrunk to a proper height for herself and so she continued walking in search of the castle that she had been searching for quite some time now.

It was proving to be a very stubborn castle that decided it did not wish to be found.