A/N Disclaimer: I don't own Alice in Wonderland and I do not own Pride and Prejudice but i thought it reminiscent of Tarrant and Alice (squint really hard). This is mostly just more set up until the plot comes along. I must say Alice is a bit harder to write about. Anyway enjoy!
Alice stood on the deck of the ship smiling to herself. She closed her eyes and breathed in the salt air, the smell of freedom. She knew her mother and Lord Ascot were on the dock to see her off, she wished them a silent farewell, if it was up to her she would not see them again for a very long time.
Of course she was not taking this voyage just to get away, she had work to do so she wasn't free in that aspect but she was in every other sense of the word.
There was no mother telling her how to dress, no sister saying she should get married before she lost her looks, no man asking for her hand under the pressure of his mother. If she ever did get married she would do it for love.
She had almost felt that feeling once but she couldn't remember where or when. She had the strange feeling that she was supposed to be somewhere, somewhere other than where she was headed now. The feeling that there was someone out there who needed and loved her, but that was silly since all the men she knew did not need her and they did not love her.
At the precise moment she thought that, a blue butterfly alighted on her shoulder and a name popped into her head, one she said out loud, "Absolem?"
The butterfly seemed to say yes by fluttering its wings. It stayed situated on her shoulder for a moment more, a moment when she could have sworn she heard the butterfly whisper, "He needs you."
The butterfly fluttered away, Alice watching as it flew further and further away on the wind. She wondered what he had meant. Who needed her? She could almost see a face in her mind but as soon as it was there, it was gone.
She shook her head and couldn't believe she was actually considering the thought that a blue butterfly not only had a name but that he had said something of importance. Butterflies couldn't talk. Could they? She seemed to remember something about a talking caterpillar but that had been a dream.
She put the thought from her mind and concentrated on the task at hand. She would have to set up trade routes with China, something everyone insisted was unfeasible, but she always liked trying the impossible.
She heard men yelling to one another and knew the ship would soon be under way. She had a long journey ahead of her, one she was looking forward to immensely.
With an indistinguishable shout the ship shuddered as the anchor was lifted, the sails dropped with a whoosh of fabric and the ropes creaked as the sails put them to the test. The breeze filled the sails and the ship slowly began to pull away.
The other passengers had crowded to the railing to have one last look at their loved ones, to blow kisses, shout last minute goodbyes and wave.
Alice stayed where she was since she had already said her goodbyes and she had a feeling her mother would mistake one of the other passengers as her. Someone else was saying a final goodbye for her.
"You have no one to say goodbye to?"
She whipped around at the voice and was confronted with a young man about her age who looked so very familiar and yet she knew that they had not met before.
She smiled shyly at him and replied, "I have said my goodbyes."
"You are happy to be leaving?"
She stared at him as if his question hid some other meaning, his voice had hinted at something but she shook it off and once again replied to his question, "I am. I did not like it at home. It was not enough. I need a good challenge."
He seemed to think about her answer and then he asked yet another question, "How were you not content? You had love did you not?"
She did not know why she felt compelled to answer him but she found herself doing just that, "Yes I had love…the smothering love of a mother but I want to see the world and I like that I am doing what my father himself tried to do."
He thought about her words and asked quietly, "Is that the only love you had?"
She looked at him in shock, her mouth hanging open like a fish out of water. How dare this stranger ask such a thing of her? Who was he to ask whether she had more then the love of a mother?
Yet there again was that feeling that she needed to answer and before she could stop herself she said, "I believe I might have been in love once…I just can't remember if it was real or a dream…"
He looked at her with intense eyes and whatever he had been scrutinizing her for he must have found it because he smiled smugly at himself and quickly nodded his head as if a suspicion had been confirmed.
She looked confused but he was not about to tell her anything, she had to figure this out on her own.
"It is good to hear you say such things. There were those of us who worried. You will see him again someday and you will realize once again that it was so much more than a dream. Maybe the next time you will stay where you belong. But as I said you have to discover such things for yourself. Until next time."
He bowed to her almost mockingly and she could only gape at him, lost for words, something that she was not used to. She always had something to say, but this man had thrown her off guard for some reason.
Before she could figure out the reason, he had come up out of the bow and nodded at her. She could have sworn his eyes had become more feline, but it must have been the way the light was reflecting off the water.
He walked past her, brushing his shoulder against hers. Before she could say a stern word to him about it he had become lost in the crowd of passengers still waving goodbye. She noticed that they were much further from the dock now but the people on the dock could still be made out.
She tried to push her way through the throng of people and was more often then not pushed back. She desperately tried to find the man but he was nowhere to be seen.
He could not have gotten off the ship of that she was sure. She was also sure she would see him on the ship again since there were only so many places he could be on a ship no matter how big it was. He had to come on deck again at some point during the trip, no one could stay below for the entirety of the trip.
She still felt an odd sensation at the way he had looked at her, the way he seemed to be sizing her up. He had been cryptic about something, somewhere she had been before but apparently had not stayed. Without a second thought about the strange occurrence, she went below deck to her room.
Even though it was one of the upper class rooms, something Lord Ascot had insisted on, it was still a tight fit. The room was about ten feet wide and ten feet long with a massive bed pushed into the far corner. She wondered how they had gotten it through the tiny door since she could barely squeeze through it herself.
She felt like she was too tall, the ceiling of the room grazing her head when she stood at her fullest, and she found herself daydreaming about a liquid that when one drank it they would shrink.
She laughed at the thought of such a thing, something that would be quite handy at this moment. Then the thought occurred to her, What if you drank too much of it? Would you shrink until there was nothing left? If you don't shrink into nothingness how do you get back to your real size?
She shook her head to clear it. She was always thinking such things and everyone had told her to keep such thoughts to herself, to not even think them in the first place. When they told her that, another thought would come to mind, one she wished she had the courage to say aloud, What if no one had interesting thoughts? Then nothing new would be created and the world would be even more boring then it is right now.
Who would want to live in a world that was stagnant and no one thought anything new or different?
She actually shuddered to think of such a world and she had promised herself that she would never stop her strange thoughts. They made her who she was and her father did not seem to have a problem with his daughter thinking about strange things. He had encouraged her to think of such things and if he saw no problem with it then no one else should either.
There was a knock on her door that startled her out of her thoughts. She felt her heart beating wildly against her chest and she mentally scolded herself for allowing a simple knock to startle her so.
She opened the door and saw one of the crewmembers before her.
He touched the edge of his cap with two fingers as he said, "Just wanted to tell you dinner will be served shortly miss."
"Thank you."
He nodded and walked down to the next room where he repeated the statement. Alice closed the door and retreated into her room to wait.
She went to the bed and took out one of the many books she had brought for entertainment. She picked up a worn out copy of one her favorites. The title was hardly legible anymore and some of the pages were worn from her rereading and rereading them. She had read it at least ten times and showed no signs that she would ever stop reading it.
She slowly opened it and began to read,
Occupied in observing Mr. Bingley's attentions to her sister, Elizabeth was far from suspecting that she was herself becoming an object of some interest in the eyes of his friend. Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty; he had looked at her without admiration at the ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to criticize. But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she hardly had a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness. Of this she was perfectly unaware; to her he was only the man who made himself agreeable nowhere, and who had not thought her handsome enough to dance with.
Another knock alerted her that it was time for dinner and she sighed as she put the book down and left her room.