We Will Drive You Mad Here!

[Claire Fontaine]

@redletalis


Today had been a strange day for Celia Ward. The young woman's twenty second birthday party bash had been cancelled after she discovered that her reservation to the restaurant she had chosen had not passed through despite the whole thing having been planned weeks in advance. The mess thus left her with nothing to do but to pass some time with her grandmother at the old woman's countryside cottage, playing cards and listening to the old legends of Wonderland. The tales had been wonderful when she had been a little girl, but now they seemed so unlikely and strange... she sometimes wonder what was in Alice's water that day. That strangeness would haunt her that day, however, starting with one idle conversation with her elder.


“Granny, I don't understand how you believe in those tales... I mean, rabbits and cats don't talk, do they?” Saying that, the brunet shot a playfully suspicious glance at the family's cat, Chester.


“Oh, but I have proof, child! Why, the White Rabbit even left our family with his pocket-watch!” Grinning a gummy smile, the old woman reached into the pocket of her flowery apron, extricating an antique looking gold pocket-watch from the stitched sleeve in the garment's front.


Almost reverently, Celia was passed the antique, the faded inscription on the burnished back of the contraption catching her eye; He will arrive when the time is right.


“Strange... and it doesn't seem to work, granny, the hands are stuck at three o'clock.” While the statement was directed at her grandmother, Celia was lost in her own thoughts, unable to truly listen to the answer she got.


An hour later found her in the garden, walking among the rose bushes idly as she tinkered with her new golden watch. As distracted as she was, she did not notice the burrow by her feet, and soon enough all grew black.


The last thing she heard before losing consciousness was:


“Intruder, Intruder! Capture Her, Make sure she doesn't have any followers!”

 

[redletalis]

It had been a long time since there had been humans in Wonderland. A very long time. A large number of the denizens of this place had almost started to think the humans a legend, or extinct or just magically cut off from the Wonderland, but here was the proof that they had been wrong. Because Raven was staring at a human. A girl. Perhaps a woman. He wasn't quite certain exactly what the differences were in the human mind, but she was definitely a female.


A female human.


He frowned and crouched down next to her, and the flowers that she was laying in tried to bend away from him, staring up at him in fright and disgust. That was another thing. She was surrounded by flowers in all colours and shapes and sizes. He hadn't seen this many flowers in years.


This could be either really good or really bad.


Or just really annoying and not go Anywhere. Then again, Here certainly wasn't a good place to stay either. There were enemies all around, and everyone would love to get their hands on a human.


Raven reached out and hesitantly touched her shoulder. "Female. Wake up. This is not the place to take a nap."

 

[Claire Fontaine]

In a strange land where reason did not exist, a young woman was prodded awake by a cold touch to her shoulder. Her dreams had been absent from her sleep, and as a result her subconscious ad been quick to spot the unusual feel of chilled fingers over the thin fabric of her summer dress. As if snapping out of a trance, a pair of wide, grey eyes snapped open, their owner looking around quickly as she clumsily brought herself to a sitting position. Her gaze soon finding the one who had no doubt awoken her, Celia found herself startled by the man before her, his appearance alien yet close enough to an human male for her senses to be confused.


“Who are you? Where am I?” She asked, her voice frail and brittle even to her own ears as she tried to find some semblance of equilibrium in her situation.


Keeping an ear out for the stranger, the brunette was startled to find that, while she distinctly remembered falling down a hole, no such opening could be found anywhere in the ceiling. As a matter of fact, the young woman was startled to find out that while no source of light was visible in this grotto, she could clearly see as if she was in daylight. Moreover, a strange feeling of something moving against her calves had her looking down in horrified surprise as she found that she was sitting on a bed of flowers with decidedly human-looking faces. Yelping, she stoop right up and retreated to a safer-looking corner of the room.


After making sure that nothing strange was near her, Celia turned back her gaze to the strange man who had awakened her in this place. Face indignant and chin lifted in defiance, she felt some of her bravado returning to her now that she was out of immediate danger to her sanity.


“For a matter, what is wrong with this place? Explain, now!”

 

[redletalis]

Raven stared at the human. Did all humans act like this or was she the exception? He had no idea, he had never met a human before. There had been tales of a young human girl child coming to Wonderland a long time ago, before even his birth, but that was about all that he knew of them. It could be normal to be terrified of innocent flowers in the human world.


"You are a weird female human." He finally stated and got to his feet, the flowers arching away from him. "Come, it is not safe to stay here. Bloodhounds are hunting in the woods today. We need to get away to There or to Morrow." He grabbed her wrist and started to drag her along out of the cave and into the pale world beyond. The trees were leafless, their trunks incredibly dark. Amongst them a thick, cold fog was weaving its way. Soon it would form shapes and forms, and soon it was simply a normal fog.


There was a weak coppery scent on the air and what little life there was in the forest was settling down in fear. A snapdragonfly fluttered in up in front of him, squeaked and then sped off towards the safety of the upper branches of a tree. A second later the tree's branches lashed out, grabbed the snapdragonfly and brought it to the single hole in the tree where it was consumed.


Raven wisely turned left and away from the tree.