Jess went deep into the mines, her fingers trailing along the wall of the moist tunnel until she reached a door. 'How curious,' she thought. She ran her hands over the intricate designs of the hand carved door. The door was a story about a girl who had fallen down a hole and fallowed a rabbit through a magical land that turned out to be a dream in the end. Why did that sound so familiar? She wondered. Grabbing the handle, she opened the door. Inside, was nothing like she'd expect. 'An office,' she told herself. But unlike any office she had ever seen. The carpet was grass, the chairs were mushrooms and the desk was an even bigger mushroom. On top of the desk, lay a large caterpillar man. From his waist down he was a caterpillar, but from the waste up, he was a man with a nice shirt, tie and several arms. In one of his many arms, he held a pipe, in another hand, he had a cup of tea.

He was currently finishing up with a patient and to Jess's surprise, it was the white rabbit or a least she was pretty sure it was the rabbit. The girl rose from her mushroom seat, straightened her red running coat and checked her watch. "I'm sorry, but I really must go, I'm late, for a very important date." Her rabbit ears moved around as she spoke.

"Very well," the caterpillar said as he shooed her away. "Alice, you're next," he waved her in.

As the rabbit left, Jess went to follow her, "Wait!" she called out to her.

"I can't, I'm late, nice to meet you, farewell, hello, goodbye, greetings, I really must go," she said as she crawled through a small door that exited the office.

"Alice please, we don't have a lot of time in these sessions and you're already chipping away at them," the caterpillar said as he gestured to the chair.

Jess glanced over her shoulder once more, then looked to the caterpillar. On his desk he had a name plate, which read: Dr. Hill. Jess tilted her head, 'what a curious name for a caterpillar.'

Dr. Hill only stared back at her, waiting for her to speak. When she said nothing, he decided to start, "What are you looking for, Alice?"

"The white rabbit," Jess replied, "and my name isn't Alice."

"Then what is it?" Dr. Hill asked.

Jess looked at her knees, pondering, wonder, searching, for her name, "I…I can't remember," she sighed.

"Then perhaps we should reschedule," Dr. Hill suggested, "I can't do work with an Alice that doesn't recognize her own name, NEXT!" he called before he shooed Jess from the chair. Then took a puff from his pipe. The door opened and Twiddle Hannah and Twiddle Beth walked in, hand in hand. Another mushroom popped up to the one Jess had just been sitting in and the girls took their seats.

"Ah, and what is it today?" Dr. Hill asked before he shooed Jess again.

"We'd like to talk about our death," Hannah began.

Jess got down on her hands and knees and crawled through the small door, finding it lead out to a snow covered path. Frowning, she wrapped her hands around herself and fallowed the footsteps in the snow.

The further she walked, the less cold she felt. As she entered the forest, she felt like she wasn't alone, almost like she could feel a pair of eyes on her. The deeper she went into the woods, the closer the trees felt as they began to twist and curve this way and that. It was then that she stopped in her tracks and began looking around, "Hello?" she called, "is someone there?"

"Very good, Alice," came a detached voice that echoed all around her.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"Why, I'm everywhere," she heard the voice come from right behind her, but the moment she looked, there was no one there, "and nowhere," the voice continued, this time coming from her left. She looked and still no one was there. "Or maybe I'm just in this tree," the voice suggested.

Jess slowly turned to face the tree and sure enough, there was cat sitting in the tree, or was it a man? He looked mostly like a man, but he had grey and blue ears and a tail. Why did she assume he was more of a cat at first? That wasn't important, "Who are you?" she asked.

The man cat adjusted his glasses as he watched her. Stretching out on the branch he lay his head on his arm and rest in on the branch, his legs stretching out lazily while his tail just waved and danced slowly in the air, "The better question is, who are 'you'?" he pointed out, "because, you're not Alice."

"Thank you," she sighed. "Everyone has been calling me Alice all day," she said.

"Well, maybe that's your problem," he said, but his voice came from behind her. When she turned to look, he was standing right behind her.

She quickly glanced at the tree and he was no longer there. Slowly she looked back at him, "What's my problem?"

The cat prowled around her a few times as he seemed to consider her question, pondering it deeply, "You say your name isn't Alice, yet everyone has been calling you Alice, you answer to Alice, though you know it's not your name. You're having an identity crisis," he suggested.

"No, everyone else is, I know I'm not Alice," Jess protested.

"Then who are you?" the cat man asked.

"I…I'm not sure. Who are you?" Jess asked.

"I'm not sure how knowing who I am will help, but I'm Chris, the Cheshire Cat. He smiled wide, making Jess and bit uneasy. Slowly he began to fade away until Jess stopped him.

"Wait," she held her hand up.

Chris returned to his visible self, "What?"

"Do you know where the white rabbit went?"

Chris paused for a moment, then pointed in two different directions,

"TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

Jess just tilted her head as she tried to comprehend the sudden poem. She pondered and ponder, but when she looked up, Chris was gone. "The one less traveled by?" she asked as she glanced down the two paths. She sucked in a deep breath before turning down the path less traveled.

A/N: Poem: The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost