Chapter 2
Mika the Cheshire Cat
Looking up, Yuu froze at the sight of a boy, about the same age as him, wearing a white long-sleeve shirt with the sleeves black, white pants that hug his frame, black thigh high boots, and a few other things of his appearance surprised Yuichiro a lot; the other boy had beautiful light blond hair with the roots at the top of his head white, his eyes a beautiful cerulean blue color, but what really surprised Yuu was that the boy had a pair of blond cat ears set on top of his head and noticed a matching tail with a white tip swaying behind him and instead of normal human nails he had claws.
Seeing the expression on Yuu's face, the boy gave him a gentle smile as he bend down on his knees in front of him. "No need to appear so startled. You startled me when you crashed through the ceiling."
Being able to regain his composure, Yuu felt the need to ask him something. "Sorry if I was staring. Just who are you?"
Before answering, the boy's smile simply grew a little. "My name is Mikaela, or Mika for short. I'm a Cheshire Cat." Mika said and ended with a bow. He was being a little bit shy with him being formal towards him when he barely missed Mika's own question as the boy got a bottle full of some sort of liquid with a label that read "Drink me", "What is your name?"
When he realized what he had asked, Yuu snapped out of his trance to gather his thoughts calmly and noticed the bottle for the first time. "My name is Yuichiro Amane, but everyone calls me Yuu."
Hearing that name, Mika just stood there, almost dropping the bottle. "You mean, you're 'The' Yuichiro Amane?"
Confused, Yuu asks, hopefully to be able to clear his confusion, "What do you mean?"
But before Mika could answer he froze when he heard a voice. "Oh Mika! Where are you, my little Cheshire kitty?"
It was a young, feminine voice that Mika knows all too well. Sighing in annoyance, Mika said with a groan, "I better go see what she wants."
"Who's 'she'?" Yuu asks as Mika took a quick sip from the bottle as he took a key out of his pocket.
"Krul, my 'mistress'. I'm going to explain a few things while we get out of here." Mika said as he hand Yuu the bottle before the effects of the potion activated, taking Yuu by surprise; Mika had started to shrink until he was as small as a mouse.
Watching his feet carefully, hoping not to step on him, Yuu went down to his knees and asked, "Why did you do that?"
Before answering, Mika points over to a door that was no bigger than a full-grown hand. "That door is the entrance to Wonderland. We need to be this small in order to go through there."
Understanding that is what he needs to do, Yuu takes a sip from the bottle, finding the liquid to be a mix of mango, coffee, custard, pineapple, roasted turkey and a few other random things, and soon enough he was as small as a mouse. As Yuu glances around the now huge room, Mika couldn't help but smile at the child's curiosity.
Once he had enough of looking around, Mika took Yuu's hand, lead him over to the door where he used the key to unlock it. Once the door was open, Yuu is surprised to see that on the other side of the door was a path that lead right up to the shore of a river. Taking out another potion, Mika said to Yuu, "This is the Vale of Tears. We're going to need to sail through the river to get to the mainland." and took a big swig of the potion before handing it to Yuu.
Just like with the shrinking potion, the effects activated immediately and Mika was back to his normal size and soon enough Yuu also took a swig of the potion and he too was back to his normal size. Seeing a huge boat-like leaf, Mika helps Yuu in first before he pushed the leaf into the fast flowing currants of the Vale of Tears and leaped into the leaf. When they felt the waves get really rough, Mika held a Yuu close to him to keep the both of them from moving around so hard by the rough waves or going overboard, the blond boy secretly happy to be holding Yuu close to him.
As they sailed, Yuu couldn't help but notice a few other leaf boats sailing through the fast currants of the Vale of Tears. An odd looking woman with long black hair with gold eyes and a dodo bird beak for a mouth and dodo wings for arms, wearing a red short dress with white leggings and brown boots with a huge black raven perched on her shoulder were in a leaf that was a bit ahead of Yuu and Mika's leaf. There were other leaves all around them with the passengers appearing so strange to Yuu with one girl having the ears and tail like a mouse, a few boys had antennas and claws of lobsters and a few others had beaks and wings like any bird you could think of.
One hour passes when all of the leaves finally made it to the mainland. Once everyone had made it out of the leaves, the woman with the dodo beak and wings then changed into the extinct bird and everyone except Mika turned into their animal forms. Seeing everyone start a strange dance around a bonfire that had been somehow quickly set up around a boulder in which the dodo woman stood upon, Yuu asked as the two watch, "What is everyone doing, Mika?"
"They're doing a caucus-race." Knowing that Yuu doesn't know what a caucus-race is, Mika answered his unasked question. "It's a race where everyone dances around the fire to dry off from being in the Vale of Tears."
"Why did they change into their animal forms?"
"Being in those forms help them to dry off faster." Mika put simply as the two stood a good few feet from the group.
