Tabby Cats and Toadstools

It took several minutes for Raziel to realize what had happened, for in truth the boy was a bit dull when mildly drugged. He was rather stunned by the whole ordeal as well, the ordeal being that he was lost and he'd risen too quickly. His head finally managed to gather itself as Kitter approached, but that made things all that much more confusing. How so? The cat was as tall as he was, his eyes were higher than Raziels in all honesty. How had this happened? "You didn't come through." The cat muttered in a disapproving matter-of-fact manner. It then dawned on Raziel as to why he had felt so strangely, his head (from the chin up you see, which should be quite obvious if one considered the fact that it was in fact a head) was the only part of him exposed. The rest of him seemed to be... Underground. He could move quite freely however, so this could simply not be. So many things had already seemed impossible though...

"How can I get free?" Raziel asked, suddenly becoming frightened that he would fall. (Newton's laws and such resurfacing).

"I do not know." Responded the cat flatly. "I shall go for help." It seemed like a good idea to Raz at the time, but that was because he had forgotten that he was the only one that could see Kitter. Oh well, that was a minor detail, and he was far too concerned with his well being to worry with details. One detail Raz did manage to divulge from this twisted reality was that there were a few large toadstools around him in a ring. Around both he and Kitter. They towered high above him, which should truly not be all that difficult since he had only his head for them to tower over. A fairy circle... That was what they had been called, was it not? That was another detail, so Raziel decided to ignore it. Kitter seemed to have left at some point, while Raziel was marveling at the toadstools no doubt. His eyes, which were now searching wildly for any sign of the rest of him, or anyone that could help, caught sight of a toadstool that was on fire. At least, it seemed to be on fire. It nearly was it seemed, for there were great billows of smoke rising up from it. Raziel could not, unfortunately, see the source of the smoke. He could only speculate, hoping that the fire would not spread to his area of the soil, for he had no way to escape if it did.

"Why?" Asked a voice that leered at him from high above. It was a voice that Raziel did not recognize, and the word on its own did not seem to make sense. Then again, what about this day had made sense thus far?

"Why what?" Raziel questioned the voice indignantly.

"Why do you sit there talking to yourself?"

"I'm not sitting first of all, and secondly I have yet to speak to myself." Stated Raziel in a rather callous manner. "I merely asked Kitter how I was to get free."

"Who is Kitter?" Asked the voice, its manner of speaking still as slow as it had been.

"My cat friend... He just left."

"I saw no cat." Muttered the voice defiantly in his same slow drawl. "I say there is no Kitter."

"He must be mad." Came another voice, one that was far different than the first. "He has come here, and now he speaks to phantom cats. He must certainly be mad." Raziel, who was growing increasingly anxious as the time went one, was now both scared that he would fall and because he was hearing voices that he could not see. (Not to say that he could see voices, but he liked being able to see what was speaking.) His eyes had been looking about wildly since he'd first heard the first voice, and as a soft pop was heard he looked around with even more intended detail. Finally, just above the smoking toadstool, he spotted a wide grin floating high in the air.

"I am not mad." Raziel retorted, though the pause between the grin's words and his own made him seem certainly so. "Perhaps you are the mad ones, for not being able to see the cat."

"We are both certainly mad." Agreed the grin in a coy manner. "But at least we have bodies are not seeing or hearing things." Raziel laughed, which jarred (and as a result) frightened him.

"We most certainly do!" Exclaimed the first voice, though due to its drawl it could scarcely be called an exclamation.

"Yes yes, he is a caterpillar as sure as I am a Cheshire cat." This was more than Raz could handle however, so he decided that for once he would tell the grin and the voice so.

"I say you are both neither."

"Well, why should we care what you say? You are, after-all, only a mad, talking head." Came the grin's voice, though a set of whiskers and a nose found themselves perched atop the grin, and soon two bright eyes appeared as well.

"Because I am not just a head, I am a man!" Exclaimed Raziel, which caused the floating face to break into amused fits of laughter.

"You are not a man, even if you do have a body. You are no more a man than Alice, you are the head of a little boy." Retorted the Cheshire, still giggling as the rest of his head appeared.

"A little boy?" Questioned the first voice, that of the alleged cater pillar. A large head then rose from the smoking toadstool, small antenna sorts of things protruding from the top. His eyes were hiding behind a pair of spectacles at the moment, and in his mouth there was a mouthpiece of some sort. "So it is." He responded, his head retreating.

"I am not a little boy, but I see that his is a caterpillar." Muttered Raziel glumly, he did wish that Kitter would return.

"So you are mad." Stated the feline defiantly. Raziel did not see how the Cheshire had returned to this subject, which caused him to question his own sanity for a few moments.

"Why?" Raz asked, taking a lesson from the Caterpillar.

"Because you are a head that has arrived here that disbelieves that he belongs to a little boy."

"Prove it." he said to the cat, or at least, to the head, face and torso of a cat.

"Prove that you are mad?"

"How?" Asked the Caterpillar.

"Pull me free and we will see if I am a little boy, and also thereby see if I am mad." Neither the Cheshire nor the odd Caterpillar could find flaw in this plan so they agreed.

The caterpillar had to dismount his perch upon the toadstool which was a feat in itself truly. When he came down he made an effort to bring with him his hookah, but the Cheshire forbade it. The two had both appeared fully and were prepared to free Raziel, but they could not decide how to go about it.

"Tug him by the hair!" Said the caterpillar in his same 'exclaiming' way.

"By the ears." Said the Cheshire, grabbing hold of Raz's ears with his newly-appeared paws. "You grab and tug me!" Announced the cat, for it was more of an order than a request. So the caterpillar did. They tugged and tugged, pulled and pulled, and after some time Raziel was freed from the soil. Miraculously it seemed to not be that disrupted by the 15 year old that had been pulled from it. It seemed very normal, as if nothing had happened. "You see!" Exclaimed the cat. "He is a man. I told you!" He yelled defiantly, his voice triumphant.

"You did not!" Retorted Raziel. "Let go of my ears!"

"I see that you are mad though, for you say that I did not say what I said."

"Only because you did not." Growled Raz. "Now let go of my ears."

"Yes, most definitely mad." Said the cat with a sigh. "For I do not have your ears." Frighteningly enough, the cat did not seem to. Raziel seemed to realize this at this moment as well, for he quickly said.

"I was only joking, I knew that you did not have my ears. I am not mad dearest Cheshire, it was only a joke."

"Not a funny one." Said the caterpillar in a bland tone.

"I suppose not..." Raziel heaved a sigh of relief, for he did not fancy the idea of being thought mad.

"Though you still are mad." Stated the Cheshire, his timing almost caused Raziel to believe that the cat had read his thoughts, but he knew that to be impossible. "For you are now more here than you were before, thereby you are just as, if not more so, mad." Raziel thought that this was decent logic, and so he did not argue. He simply began walking around a bit. "Where are you going mad one, we do not even know your name." Called the cat after him.

"Raziel." Raziel stated simply, continuing to examine the large toadstools. "Why are these so large?" He asked the Cheshire, ignoring the question.

"They are not large, it is you that is small Razzle." Raziel was beginning to think that cats were incapable of pronouncing his name.

"I was never small before."

"Ah, yes, but you were never here before, now were you?" The cat did make a very good point...

"I suppose you are quite clever Cheshire cat." Raziel said softly, feeling rather foolish. There really was no reason for him to expect to be able to tower over everything everywhere he went.

"Of course." Said the Caterpillar, his drawl even slower than it had been before. "He is a Cheshire." Raz assumed that this explained everything and did not stop to ask further.

"How do you bare being this small?" He asked instead.

"We don't." Said the caterpillar. "Take a piece of a mushroom and you will see." Raziel was tempted to be amused by this, but he refrained, but he refrained for the sake of being thought mad. Why was he amused? Because he had been told to try a mushroom so very many times in the past few days.

"You should tell him which." Added the Cheshire.

"Take a piece of that one..." Began the caterpillar as he blew a smoke ring in the direction of a mushroom. A very curious thing happened as it neared the toadstool however, it turned into an upwards pointing arrow. "And of this one..." He blew another smoke ring to a different mushroom which transformed from a ring to a downwards pointing arrow. "Be careful." Warned the caterpillar before he turned back around, focusing once more on his hookah. Raziel had no real idea what the fellow had meant, but asking for help would be a sign of weakness... Would it not? So he took blindly a piece of each. He took a small bite of the second and found that he had sunk back through the ground.

"See! He is a head!" Exclaimed the Cheshire before he disappeared completely. Raziel, completely befuddled, somehow managed to get a bite of the other mushroom. He felt himself growing, he ventured to look down after a few moments and discovered that he was quite giant.

"I see you got free." Muttered a familiar feline voice.

"I take it you didn't get help, eh Kitter?"

"No one could see me." Responded the cat, seating himself just as before, at Raz's feet. "I suggest you get more of those mushrooms. You'll need them later." So Raziel did as he was told and pocketed both bits he had left over, as well as the two entire mushrooms that he plucked from the ground.

"How did you get larger?" He asked the cat, deciding that it would be better if he simply asked.

"I grew." The cat responded shortly as he turned and began walking in the opposite (away from Raz) direction.

"Where are we going?"

"Where we've been going, to see the Queen." The cat stated shortly. "Now are you coming or not?"