To The Queen

The dragon's portal opened on the other side to a vast blue sky with fluffy, white clouds. Down below was a bird's eye view of a vast countryside with patches of forest between paddocks and a river meandering through them. It was so far down that looking made Kairi dizzy and she turned away, swallowing down the sick feeling in her throat.

"Hey! Where have you taken me?" she shouted up to the dragon.

"You're still present?" the dragon scoffed, glancing at its tail. "Didn't you say you wanted nothing else to do with me? Be gone!"

It twisted and looped wildly in the air, swinging its tail around for extra measure until Kairi could no longer maintain her grip. She slipped off its tail with a handful of spines and fell through the air screaming.

Kairi turned away from the ground and shut her eyes so she wouldn't have to watch her own ugly fate come to meet her. But instead of hitting the ground with a thud she bounced on something soft. Her eyes flew open and she turned over in mid-air to find a cloud had drifted below her. She landed on it again and but the first bounce had taken a heavy toll and the cloud broke on the second landing. Kairi fell through with a squeak but a larger cloud happened to glide below it to catch her.

She sighed and reclined into a seat as soft as fairy floss yet firm enough to hold her weight. Clouds calmly drifted around her like big, white yachts in a still bay. She looked over the edge of her perch, wondering if all of the clouds were this bouncy. Two had already shown to be so perhaps it was worth a test. Kairi put the spines in her pocket carefully, arranging them so they wouldn't spike her through her pocket, and waited for a cloud to float under her before she carefully rolled off and onto the next ledge. It bounced her gently into the air when she hit it. With this, she might be able to bounce all the way down to a place where she could safely get out of the clouds. Grinning, she began a playful journey through the clouds, jumping from here to there on clouds as springy as trampolines. However, when she reached one of the low flying clouds, something behind her clinked. She turned around sharply.

Behind her, on the fluffy cloud ledges there were pots, vases and jars. She didn't recall having seen them before but when she looked around there were other clouds around her bearing similar items. Many of the jars were full of preserves but there were pots of flour and sugar, jars of pasta and rice, and bottles or sealed jugs of various drinks – it was a veritable pantry in the clouds.

Kairi turned to the jars behind her curiously and picked one up. The label on it said, in fancy cursive: strawberry jam. She twisted off the lid, going a little red in the cheeks with the effort until it came off with a pop. The sweet, strawberry smell wafted it and she breathed it in deeply. It smelled so good she just had to try some. She couldn't find any cutlery but there was also nobody around to see her if she was a little bit naughty by dipping her finger into the jam jar and sucking it straight off her finger. It tasted perfect. It was just the right amount of sweet and the right amount of sticky that jam should always be. Nobody would see her if she took another dip but when she looked at the jar in her hand it had gotten smaller. And it continued to get smaller… or was she getting bigger?

She looked up, glancing at all the clouds around her as they started to look smaller. Her feet got so big that they couldn't stand on the cloud anymore and the jam jar shrank away to nothing in her hand. She slipped off the edge and squealed, throwing her arms out to catch herself but she was already too heavy for the clouds to support her weight. She sent some of the pantry items flying from the clouds and into the forests and paddocks below but by the time her feet hit the ground she was already tall enough that her head was still up among the clouds. She looked around anxiously, unsure of what to do with her new height.

"Oh man, how did this happen?"

"You got into the jam there, didn't you?"

Kairi looked around for the source of that voice. On one of the clouds at just about her eye-level sat a mottled, green frog dressed up in breeches and a casual jacket. It held a fishing rod with a line dangling into the large cloud below it and it blinked at her with its large, round eyes.

"Trying to sneak off with the jam," the frog tutted. "Isn't that a bit naughty of you? For shame."

Kairi blushed all the way to her hairline and looked down shamefacedly. "I didn't think anybody saw…"

"That isn't any reason to eat the jam. The jam can do things to cheeky girls who snack when they think nobody is watching."

"I just wanted a taste, that's all!" Kairi retorted with a huff. "It's not like I could've gotten anybody's permission up here. But since you're here, do you know how I can shrink back to my normal size?"

"When all is said and done, what is a 'normal' size? I'd say you're beautiful just the way you are."

"Ha, ha. I'm being serious here. I need to be back to my normal size and find out how to get back to Ra—my place. Is there anything else around here that I could eat or drink to shrink me?"

"Not with your head up in the clouds like that, they'll keep you high," the frog replied. There was a tug on its line and it pulled with all its might until something jumped out of the clouds. It flapped about wildly as the frog tried to keep control of its rod. "Ho! I've caught a flying bird! This species is very elusive, you know."

Kairi squinted confusedly at it and tried to get a good look at the bird on the end of its line. As far as she could tell, it was a normal grey pigeon but it was difficult to discern through all of its squawking and flailing and the feathers it was throwing everywhere. She frowned in sympathy. With all of the distress it seemed to be in, she thought the frog really should let it go by now.

"But…" the frog continued, lowering its voice to a conspiratorial tone. Kairi leaned forward to listen over the noise the bird was making. "If you wait around for the grey clouds they'll give you what you're after."

"The grey clouds?"

The frog nodded its head upwards and she lifted her head. Above her some large storm clouds had gathered, rumbling with thunder. Lightning flashed within them and then, drop by drop, rain began to fall, increasing intensity until it was absolutely pouring. Kairi put her arms up to shield herself from the cold shower but it ran over her curves and creases, soaking her everywhere. Her vision blurred and her head became dizzy. Then she had the sensation that she was falling again. She was falling so fast all of the scenery around her was a blur yet her feet still felt like they were on solid ground. Suddenly the storm clouds dropped a dollop of water so large that it actually hurt to get hit by it. Kairi's woozy head couldn't take it and she passed out, collapsing on the floor.


When she opened her eyes again it was warm and humid and the ground smelled of damp earth and compost. She sat up, looking around at her shady surroundings. Sunlight poured from up above onto her patch of ground but when she looked up she couldn't see it or a sky, just a few patches of bright light in the darkness above. She squinted at it. How did the sky get so dark like that? Was there something covering it?

Kairi got up and stepped out of the sunlight. The column of light obstructed her view of everything else around her. Once she was in the shade and her eyes had adjusted to the changed light she gasped in disbelief. Right in front of her was the most enormous mushroom she had ever seen. It was as big as a house and beside it were many more mushrooms that were even bigger. She turned this way and that. To her left was a really long log but it might have actually been a twig because on her other side the tip of a decaying leaf loomed over her.

"Oh no," she muttered in dismay. "I think I shrunk way too much."

She had to get out of here. Maybe she could try to find some of the items she'd knocked out of the sky; they were bound to be lying around the forest somewhere. She started to make her way around the mushroom cluster but eventually found that being so small she wouldn't really get far. The large cliff that stayed beside her for most of her journey was probably a tree and as she tried to venture away from it she had to clamber over giant leaves. The rills and clumps in the soil were like hills and by the time she made it to the next tree she was already panting and sweating. Great. All this effort and she managed to cover two trees' worth of ground in a forest.

Despite how dismal the situation seemed she swallowed back dismay and lifted her head up. She just had to find something that would enlarge her or make it to someone that could help. Taking a shaky breath, she ventured out into the forest again. As she was running around some leaves, voices singing in unison met her ears and she paused to listen. It sounded like they were coming nearer. With a spark of hope, Kairi made her way towards them and as they got closer to each other she began to hear the lyrics:

"The ants are marching one-by-one
To the buns! To the buns!
When we're marching one-by-one
We have lots of fun."

"Ants?" Kairi wondered, creeping towards the singing a bit more warily. They sang their song repetitively, not once changing the words. Then, as she walked around a lumpy fungus growing over a root she came face to face with an enormous ant as tall as her. She screamed and it screamed in response. And just for that, she screamed again. "A talking ant?!"

The ant just screamed, throwing its head around in shock and confusion. Behind it the voices had stopped singing but there was a long line of confused chatter coming from around the fungus. Kairi shuffled around the ant in front of her. A long line of giant ants stretched into the forest but those near the end of the line were obscured in the leaf litter. They were all bobbing their heads bemusedly and waving their antennae about as if they might sense the situation just by doing that.

"Why have we stopped?"

"All that shouting sounds dreadful."

"Have we found the buns?"

The screaming died down as the ant lost its breath. It regarded her with wide eyes, taking deep breaths and then started to examine her all over with its feelers. Despite her surprise, Kairi couldn't help but let out peals of laughter at the gentle sensation tickling everywhere the feelers ran.

"What is this?" the ant said indignantly. "You're not buns."

"N-no, I'm not b-buns," Kairi stuttered through her giggles, trying to push the feelers away. "I'm a person."

"Person?" The ant stopped feeling and looked back at the queue behind it. "What's 'person'?" it called back.

"Person?"

"What are persons?"

"Are persons a kind of bun?"

Kairi snickered lightly behind her knuckles. Even if they were huge relative to her now, they were somewhat adorable now that it was apparent that they were probably harmless. Then the tone in the queue changed. Their voices went from their loud curious babble to a sudden hush and whispers raced up and down the line. Kairi craned her neck to see what was happening.

A large ant, twice the size of the others and with a head three times as large, marched up the side of the line. It snapped its mandibles as it spoke: "What's going on here? Why did our march stop?"

"We ran into a person," the first ant in the queue replied as the soldier ant approached. "I don't think the person is buns, though. It says it isn't buns."

"That's exactly what buns would say, wouldn't they?" the soldier said, peering at Kairi suspiciously.

"What are you talking about?" Kairi asked, folding her arms. "I told these guys that I'm just a person—a human being."

It lashed out with mandibles gnashing. Kairi leaped out of the way and summoned the Keyblade, blocking and batting away the last couple of strikes. The soldier ant took a few steps back, clicking its jaws. "I don't think it's buns."

"I said so, didn't I?" Kairi pouted. "But I'm not at my correct size right now. I need to get bigger somehow. Do you know how I can do that?"

"Does that means it's not food?" the first ant in line asked, completely ignoring Kairi's question.

"Not necessarily," answered the soldier ant. "Fruit isn't buns and its food. So is meat."

Kairi paled but then the first in line said: "But it's not either of those things. It's a person. Is a person food?"

"Hmm…" the soldier murmured, rubbing its chin with one of its front feet. "If you don't know and I don't know, then we must confer to a higher authority."

"To The Queen?" the second in line inquired eagerly.

"Are we going to The Queen?" asked another.

"Who's going to The Queen?"

"Yes, take the person and report to The Queen," the soldier decided.

"I guess that's not too bad," Kairi said with a bit of a sour tone over being ignored earlier. She dismissed the Keyblade. "Would your queen know how to get me back to norm—aahh!"

The first ant in line grabbed her tightly around the waist with its mandibles, pinning her arms to her side. She struggled but it had a vice grip. It lifted her off her feet and carried her off, turning around and following the line back the way they came at the direction of the soldier. The second and third ant followed but the soldier stopped the fourth.

"No, that's enough workers. The rest of you need to get back to finding food. A scout saw those buns fall out of the sky earlier so they can't be far."

"What are you doing!?" Kairi screamed, kicking her legs out but even if she managed to land a hit on its face it barely flinched. "Put me down! Stop this! I would have gone with you willingly anyway, so let me go!"

Her cries fell on deaf ears as the queue beside them began to move again. After getting bunched up and backed up by the delay they struggled to get in a neat order again but once they did they were marching efficiently again. The new lead ants started up a new marching song that travelled down the line until they were all singing in perfect unison again:

"The ants are marching two-by-two
To the food! To the food!
When we're marching two-by-two
We have lots to do."

In the meantime, Kairi screamed in vain as the trio escorting her carried her away to an unknown destination.


From such a small height the forest all looked the same to Kairi. She had no idea how the ants managed to find their way around. They'd passed the end of the line some time ago and the voices of the marchers had faded off into the distance already. With the noise gone the forest descended into awkward silence that was quickly broken by the ants starting up a discussion about their new marching song now that they were a separate delegation. After all, other ants needed to know what they were all about. Kairi kept trying to turn herself to face forwards but the most she could do was look over her shoulder briefly. The ants climbed over a root, marching into a sunnier part of the forest. Kairi looked behind her again.

A beam of sunlight shone down like a spotlight onto a large, bare hill in the middle of the forest floor, although if Kairi was being realistic it wasn't a hill, rather a mound. A mound of dirt. The ants picked up their pace as they approached it and when they started to climb the second in line announced the count to begin their new song:

"The ants are marching three-by-three
To the queen! To the queen!
When we're marching three-by-three
We all want her to see."

At the top of the anthill there was a large hole that dropped down vertically. Kairi shivered in fear as the ant holding her came over the crest and marched straight down into the darkness but the dramatic change in angle didn't faze them. They kept walking and singing through a maze of tunnels. Other ants passed them, chanting their own verses and occasionally walking over them or stopping to run their feelers over what they were bringing. Kairi tried to kick them away, finding that the tickling felt creepy now rather than fun.

She couldn't make heads of tails of the colony's layout but eventually they entered a tunnel that was a bit wider and much longer than all of the rest. Worker ants came and went busily and every now and then a soldier patrolled the path. Kairi was sure the queen lived down this way – with this much service and security it was bound to be somewhere important.

The ants stopped in front of a thick curtain hanging over the tunnel's exit. Kairi looked it over confusedly, thinking it odd that ants would have the means (or the need) to make a curtain. Light shone from under it, indicating the chamber beyond was well lit. The second in line came up beside the first and sang to the curtain:

"We ants came marching three-by-three
With a gift for the queen.
We came marching three-by-three
So that she could see."

The curtain was pulled aside and the ants filed in, the first in line with Kairi keeping his position, followed by the other two. They repeated this new refrain as they entered the large chamber. Kairi could almost ignore how annoying their singing was as her jaw dropped in awe of the grand throne room. There were no windows – in light of the fact that they were underground – yet the walls and ceiling were ribbed with elegant arches lit by sconces and hanging lamps fashioned out of blown glass. She raised a confused eyebrow at the opulent decoration, the marble floors and plush, red carpet that the ants marched down. This level of construction seemed beyond mere insects.

At the end of the carpet was the most enormous ant of all, easily five times the size of the worker ants, lounging on a strange piece of furniture like a cross between a throne and a chaise longue. She wore a very thick and frilly, white ruff along with a royal red cape draped over her back and a matching sash that crossed her thorax diagonally. The ribbon ends met at a large, golden medallion inlaid with several precious stones that was currently being polished by a worker ant. And of course, to augment her status, on her head sat a gleaming gold and red velvet crown.

The ants dropped Kairi off in front of her. She turned around massaging the sore spots on her arms where she had been pinched, glad to be able to face forward to look at something and relieve that crick in her neck. The queen leaned forwards slightly, feelers twitching in interest as she stared down at Kairi with unblinking bug eyes.

"What is this?" she said, in a normal tone for her but her large size produced a large voice that boomed throughout the large chamber. "Why did you bring it here? Is it food?"

Kairi's face fell and she groaned quietly. Their queen surely couldn't be just as stupid as the rest of them. Otherwise this was looking to be quite the frustrating exchange.

"It's a person," the first in line answered.

"We brought it to show you," the second in line added.

"We're not sure if it's food," the last in line said. "We were hoping you would know."

The queen pulled her chin back as if in offense. "Stupid fools! Do I look like I know what a person is?"

"As if they'd know," Kairi thought exasperatedly.

"We humbly apologise!" squeaked the first in line.

"We don't mean to presume anything about our Queen!" the second in line yelped.

"We thought that our wise Queen would be able to figure it out," the third in line explained, "for, alas, we could not."

The queen hummed thoughtfully and lowered her head even more so that her face came right up to Kairi's. Kairi leaned back nervously but tried not to take a step lest the queen be offended by that somehow. The queen's antennae stroked and prodded her, much less ticklish than the worker ants had been but also much more methodically, like she was actually testing something.

"Hmmm… how peculiar, this 'person'. How did you know it was a person?"

"I told them," Kairi replied before the ants could begin their long-winded chain of answers.

"It told us—wait! It spoke out of turn!" the first in line exclaimed, feelers jerking in anxious spasms.

"You were supposed to tell The Queen," the second in line said in a panicky voice.

"Now I can't! What was I supposed to tell The Queen?"

"I've forgotten!"

"But if you both don't know what you're supposed to tell The Queen how am I supposed to know what I'm supposed to tell The Queen?" the third ant wondered.

"Silence! Stupid fools!" the queen ant shouted, making the walls tremble with her voice. "Technically, the person was in front of all of you, so it will speak first in turn."

"Oooh!" the first in line sighed with relief.

"Yes, that makes sense," the second in line nodded.

"The Queen always knows," the third in line added.

The queen set her antennae to the side and looked Kairi over with her eyes again before leaning back to relax on her throne. "Well then if the person can speak, then the person should tell us: what is a person?"

"Um…" Kairi muttered, pursing her lips nervously. How was she going to answer that? Some years ago she might have just said that a person was a human and that was all there was to it but then she'd met Mickey, Donald, Goofy and of course Monica and Max. They weren't human but were they people? And the Nobodies were human but they weren't people. She stammered unsurely for a minute until the queen loudly demanded:

"Speak, person!"

"Ah! W-well, a person is a… person…" Kairi stuttered, still drawing blanks. Why did Zexion ever think she was smart? What would he do? He'd probably just know the answer, she thought, he always seemed to know the answers right off the bat.

"Yes, a person is a person," the queen snapped. "Like an ant is an ant, and buns are buns, and food is food. Stupid fool! What is a person, other than a person?"

Kairi grimaced. She didn't have to be so rude. But Kairi still didn't have an answer for her and wracked her brain so hard her temples began to sweat from the effort. Humans were people, Monnie and Max were people but not humans, Nobodies were human but not people – one of those things wasn't like the others and the question was how.

The answer suddenly came to her like a brilliant flash of light. Her eyes widened in realisation and she stood up straighter, holding her finger up. "I know! A person is a creature that has a heart."

The queen sat up in surprise. "A heart? What is a heart?"

"Ah… well…" Kairi sucked in a breath. That would be much harder to answer; she probably couldn't just guess it by induction. If only she had Zexion here. "A heart is what gives someone feeling and sensitivity and a lot of other things."

And even if she was wrong, it's not like the queen would know.

The queen hummed thoughtfully again, leaning forwards in interest. "A heart, hm? What other things have hearts?"

"Lots of things. I probably couldn't name them all."

"Then… does food have hearts?"

Kairi's stomach dropped. "Um, I don't… know?"

After all, worlds had hearts too, didn't they? But they weren't people, right? This was too confusing. Kairi held her head in dismay, trying to think her way out of this. If Zexion was here he would just know and he'd probably be smart enough to steer the conversation away from this uncomfortable tail of it.

"You don't know," the queen drawled. "That's a shame because that doesn't answer my concern. Are persons food?"

"Nope! Absolutely not!" Kairi squeaked, grinning and trying to sound congenial despite her panic. "People are definitely not food."

"Are you sure? It's strange that you're so sure now when you weren't so sure before. What are persons made of? Is it food? You feel soft but firm and you smell like flesh, just like meat. Are you made of meat?"

"I am not made of meat at all!" Kairi said, crossing her arms in front of her defensively. "I'm definitely not food!"

"That's something that food would say!" the first in line piped up.

"If food could talk it would say it wasn't food," said the second in line.

"Food wouldn't want to be eaten," the third in line added.

"Stop saying that!" Kairi snapped at them. "That doesn't prove anything!"

"Then what would prove anything?" the queen interjected. "Tell us exactly what you're made of."

Kairi turned back to the queen, throwing her hands up again while she tried to quickly think of an explanation that would appease these stupid ants. "Er, well, since I'm a girl, I'm made of sugar and spice and everything nice." A split second after saying that she realised that was the wrong answer here.

"Mmm," the queen said, clicking her mandibles hungrily. "I like sugar and spice."

"Buns are made of sugar and spice," the first in line said.

"And buns are food," said the second in line.

"Then that means that girls are food!" the third in line concluded proudly. "But what are girls?"

"Stupid fools! Girls are persons, clearly, since it said it was a person," the queen said, finally standing up to take lumbering steps towards Kairi. This time Kairi did back away. "Bring it closer to me, I want that sugar and spice."

"N-n-no, I-I'm not really full of sugar," Kairi said, turning side on to look at both the workers and the queen. They both closed in on her with their mandibles open to snap. "I'm sorry but you can't eat me!"

In a flash she summoned her Keyblade, Lightwick, and struck out to parry the advancing vices. She hit the closest worker ant first, snapping its head back quick enough for whiplash. Then she turned and thumped the queen under the chin, deflecting her gaping jaws.

"OW!" the queen howled. All other ants in the room suddenly stopped whatever they were doing, antennae standing straight and quivering in alarm.

"The Queen is hurt!"

"The person struck The Queen!"

"Defend The Queen!"

Their feelers all swivelled and then lowered, pointing straight at Kairi like dowsing rods. She had to think fast as they surged towards her and the three closest were already within snapping range. Thinking fast, she turned to the ant she'd already hit and rolled towards it, narrowly slipping under the mandibles of the other two. She stood up right in front of it and gave it an axe-chop to the top of the head before it had time to react. It fell to the floor, legs spread, stunned. Kairi jumped over its body and sighed with relief now that she was in open space and not boxed in between three ants and the queen.

The other two ants turned around and kept scuttling towards her mindlessly. The medallion polisher stalked towards her too, bolstering the group. Kairi went for the attack, smashing the Keyblade against the side of the second in line's head and then taking a step back to make a powerful lunge that stabbed it between the eyes. It went down with just those two big hits, just like the first. The third in line advanced in a zombie-like march, paying no heed to how its comrade had just fallen. Its weak jaws barely fazed Kairi when she parried them with her first strike but it left itself wide open for her to quickly make a second one. She made a side swipe at the medallion polisher when it got too close and then bashed the third in line with a two-handed swing. It went down and she took care of the medallion polisher the same way.

Just as she took a deep breath a shadow loomed over her and she looked up. The queen squatted down to take a chomp at her. Kairi jumped out of the way. Despite the queen's jaws being so small relative to her size, Kairi didn't want to reckon with a creature that size, not after fighting the dragon. She was still low on supplies after that fight. Even if she could defeat the queen there was a whole colony to contend with. As far as she was concerned, there was no other choice at this stage. She had to make a run for it.

Kairi turned and followed the red carpet back to the curtain. Despite having six legs the ants weren't that fast and the workers that were convening from around the room struggled to keep up but then a bigger problem presented itself. A soldier ant marched towards her right down the red carpet, one of two that guarded the entrance. The other was probably right behind it. Banking on being able to outrun it, Kairi veered to the side to simply run around it. Its reflexes were faster than she expected. Its head swivelled around and when it snapped Kairi only had time to try to parry.

The soldier's larger mandibles bit so powerfully that they crossed tightly and the force of it knocked Kairi off her feet and sent her flying back a fair way. She landed on her backside and got up quickly. Her heart had skipped a beat just then – that attack could have cut her in half. The ants merely changed direction to surge towards wherever her current location was. Only the soldier had paused while it tried to uncross its jaws. The other marched towards her, directly in front of her again while the workers swarmed around her. It would do no good if she got surrounded again but the quickest way to the door was straight through that second soldier. So Kairi dared to do just that.

She bravely ran straight up to it, anticipating its guillotine attack and ready to block it. The strain of standing her ground against it could be felt in her very bones but her determination to stand sturdy had some of the force recoiling back to the soldier, forcing its head back. Being as large as it was, Kairi could roll under its head, narrowly avoiding a second attempt at crushing her and crawled away under its body. On the other side she jumped to her feet and had a clear path to the exit.

She sprinted straight towards it, so intensely focused on it that the queen's bellowing for the ants to tear her apart so that she could be eaten piece by piece sounded muted as if she had cotton in her ears. Occasionally she glanced over her shoulder. The army of ants wasn't far behind and gaining on her even though they'd been so slow before. When she got to the curtain she threw it back and ducked behind it.

After being in such a bright throne room entering the tunnel was like hurtling into oblivion. Kairi kept running in spite of it, hoping she didn't run into anymore ants. But she ran into something more surprising: another curtain. It billowed at the sudden impact and snagged her. She struggled to unwrap herself and toss it to the side, wondering where that had come from since there hadn't been a second curtain on the way in. Behind her the ants were chanting another song, this one with more of a rhythm and orchestrated by the beat of their marching feet. When she looked back this time she could barely see them in the gloom, writhing and crawling over the walls and ceiling but they were bottlenecked since it was only big enough for four ants at once.

"The ants are marching four-by-four
Off to war! Off to war!
When we're marching four-by-four
We're doing so much more."

Kairi shivered but as she ran she tripped on another piece of cloth that tangled around her feet. She crawled along in desperation to get away while kicking it off. She scrambled back to a proper run once she was free but this time kept her arms out in front of her to feel for any more obstacles.

Her hands touched another curtain in her way that she threw aside and then another. There were suddenly so many of them, like she'd walked into a maze of curtains. The more she ran around and through the drapes a warm light in front of her grew larger and larger, revealing the curtains to be a tasteful peach colour. To Kairi what was more pertinent was that it could be indicative of a way out. Yet, as if to spite her, the walls and ceiling were also closing in the closer she got to the light. She had to walk her hands along the ceiling as she crouched to avoid hitting her head but it eventually got so narrow that she had to crawl.

Finally she reached the last curtain with the light shining through all of it like a screen of hope. But there was no seam or gap in it for Kairi to pull it apart. The drumming vibrating through the walls let her know the ants weren't far behind so she just lifted the curtain up over her head and crawled out into a rather pleasant summer's day.

She was so confused by the sudden change to blue skies above her and grass (normal-sized grass) under her hands and knees that she didn't really register the scandalised gasps of horror behind her. She stood up shakily and stumbled, looking at the scene in front of her and trying to grasp what had happened.

A large lawn stretched towards a stately manor several metres away. On the patio before its grand staircase were numerous pairs – each a man and a woman – making the steps through a formal dance while around it were some small tables all laid out with tea and snacks for the guests who weren't currently engaged on the dancefloor. Kairi turned around. The table behind her had a peach-coloured tablecloth like all of the others around the lawn but the table itself was a mess, covered in spilled tea and dropped biscuits. Two women and two small girls dressed impeccably in fine, colourful dresses with frills and layers sat around the little round table. Three of them gaped at Kairi, frozen in shock but one of the little girls, while surprised, wasn't nearly so horror-struck. She hadn't even dropped her tea. The little blonde girl in a blue dress with a layered skirt that fanned out like the petals of a carnation simply put her teacup down and slid off her seat as if standing up would help her scrutinise Kairi better.

"My goodness," she said, looking Kairi up and down. "How on earth did you end up under the table?"

"Good gracious!" exclaimed the portly woman in a pink dress with its matching gloves and bonnet set. It was as if breaking the silence had suddenly reanimated her. She picked up her fan from her lap to rapidly cool her face for fear she was about to faint. "Could you ever have imagined such a thing?!"

"Outrageous!" said the slim brunette woman who was sitting beside the blonde girl, looking frumpy in her dark purple dress with sleeves puffed to the elbows. She put a hand over her collar and tucked her skirt between her legs. Kairi couldn't work out why until she added: "How long have you been under there? Are you some kind of lesbian, you pervert?!"

Kairi reeled back at the stinging tone of the accusation.

"I can see all of her legs," the other girl gasped. She turned to the woman in pink beside her. "Do all lesbians dress themselves so indecently?"

Kairi's jaw dropped at the blatant insult. She was about to retort but in her periphery saw the blonde girl take a step towards her.

"Alice! Don't go anywhere near her!" the woman in purple snapped, pulling the girl back by the bow on the back of her dress. "Lest that damned girl corrupt you." She glared sharply at Kairi. "I suggest you leave immediately."

"Aren't you even going to ask why she came?" Alice asked.

"Who would be so concerned about that?"

Kairi glanced in bewilderment at the four faces in front of her and then down at the edge of the tablecloth as if Alice's question had only just reminded her how she got here. The cloth brushed the ground and crawling up from the hem were a few little black dots winding haphazardly over the fabric.

"I just came…" Kairi began, startling the women and girls into looking directly at her again, "because I thought I ought to let you know that you're about to have ants."

With that she turned on her heel, dizziness overtaking her with the shock and bewilderment as her mind resumed thinking it over. She was in the ant tunnel and then suddenly she was at a garden party and judging by the size of everything she was back to her normal height. At least she thought she was normal now. Alice seemed appropriately scaled for a seven or eight-year-old girl and ants were back to being tiny. But Kairi had no idea what had just happened. She staggered in the direction of the manor, feeling sick and ignoring all of the sounds around her as she parted the dancefloor on her way to the stairs, even the call of a little girl trying to catch up with her.


A/N: this chapter's a bit longer than usual, also a bit later than it's supposed to be. Sorry bout that. Other things just got on top of me.