Alice had stayed in her room faking a headache for a couple of days, and her parents had been happy enough to accept this. Honestly though, she hated doubting herself, which was what the Queen had unwittingly made her do.

Surely someone aged over time? And yet the Queen hadn't appeared to, which was strange, to say the least. Wonderland had been an age ago, when you weren't given pills by poisonous doctors and when your family didn't try and get you to marry strange men.

For she had been introduced to many over the past year, her mother with a hopeful expression each time, and Alice with a bored one. She didn't wish to marry, she wished to write, but of course that wasn't a respectable profession in the eyes of her parents. It might have been better if her sister wasn't so married.

Her sister was already pregnant with her second child, for crying out loud. Alice had tried adoring her niece, but eventually she had resigned herself to the fact she might have to wait a while before she could like the child. Even her affection for her sister had lessened after she found out that the other was suggesting suitable matches for her and talking about her to all the single men that she knew.

Now if that didn't say 'my sister is a desperate hermit' she didn't know what did.

She glanced towards her hand mirror, and saw a shadowy reflection in the surface and screamed. Dropping the glass, she saw it shatter sending shards across the thick carpet, bringing her back to reality.

Her parents knocked on the door, and she fell back on a chair weakly.

"What's wrong? Alice?" Her mother sounded too worried and Alice closed her eyes in desperation. Her mother might call the doctors once more and Alice didn't feel up to another one of those snakes invading her privacy again.