xxAlicexx

“Alice…” you heard someone saying your name through the haze of dizziness. “Alice…” you heard it over and over again, and felt someone shaking you by your shoulders, gently, but with urgency.

“It’s still dark, mother…” you mumbled, thinking it was your mom and that she was waking you up for your lessons that day so you turned onto your side, and sucked in a deep breath as pain, red hot and throbbing, suddenly pierced your side. You were instantly awake unfortunately, and realized you were no where near home.

Blaine kneeled over you, looking worried as usual, but his grief fled as he saw you open your eyes to him and he pulled you to his chest, hugging you.

You were limp in his arms, conflicted about what to do. He had hurt you… but he was the only one you had in this hellish place. Someone like that you should be holding onto, but you couldn’t bring yourself to even raise your arms. You were still exhausted, even more so since the attack and memories of it made you want to laugh out loud in madness, thinking of how tiny flowers could overcome the both of you. But it made you wonder…

“Blaine…” you said, pushing him back weakly. “How did the flowers get you to shallow a mushroom?”

He looked confused for a second, trying to remember everything that had happened, but then his face cleared and he looked down at the ground, “They didn’t… when they forced you to swallow it I… well I guess it effected me too. Because of the link…”

You wanted to laugh and cry all at once because again you had proven your uselessness to him, and even had gotten the two of you in a bigger mess. Too exhausted to do either, you tried to struggle to your feet, against Blaine’s wishes.

You looked around, and saw that everything was much bigger than it had been before. You were the size of a grasshopper, maybe smaller, and the flowers… “Where did the flowers go?”

Blaine shrugged, and took your arm to keep you steady. “I’m not sure. They all seemed to disappear after forcing you to eat that mushroom.”

Even thinking of that disgusting thing going down your throat made you feel sick, and you turned from him and went ill on the forest floor.

He stood beside you, holding up, and you wiped your mouth clean with the bottom of your skirt as you could stand straight again. Taking in a deep breath, you steadied yourself and resolved not to do that again, for it tasted even worse coming back up.

Blaine looked at you with sympathetic eyes. That was the look you hated most… The look that everyone gave you when they saw you and how you depended on your brother. You pulled away from his comforting arms, and began to walk forward, hoping to get somewhere, anywhere, away from those eyes.

He was behind you, silent, because nothing he could say would stop you from walking away from him. The best he could do was follow, and protect you. He knew how you felt, and how people saw you. And defending you against them only seemed to make you angry towards him, as if again he had to do something you could not. Nothing he did ever pleased you, nothing he said ever made a difference, and every time he tried, your mood would only worsen. He had guessed right when he thought that this was one of those times to keep himself quiet, and follow. If it was one thing, the only thing you had, it was intelligence, beyond anyone of your own age. And that was the one thing no one could ever take from you…

Unfortunately for you, you had no idea what to do in this situation. If things weren’t bad enough at first, now they were ten, no ten thousand times worse by the fact that you were tiny. The danger was even greater, and Blaine’s words of being eaten by flowers returned again and again to your mind. It almost made you wonder if this place could turn your thoughts, dreams, or fears into a reality and use them against you like your nightmares. Like sometimes, when you have a nightmare, and you think of the most terrible thing imaginable to face, and then it appears right in front of you. That was what you were thinking at the moment, and though you tried to clear you mind, it was impossible, you mind betraying you, and before you knew it you were thinking of your worst fear, the one you barely were able to face.

Everything around you went quiet, so quiet that you thought maybe you had went deaf, and you turned, no longer hearing Blaine’s footsteps, or breathing, or the clang of his sword against his back. Turning around you saw that he was gone… And you were completely alone… Your worst fear had come true.

“Alice!” Blaine yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth, in hopes that he might get louder. He was frantic at having lost you so easily. One minute you were stumbling on ahead of him, and the next you had disappeared before his eyes into complete darkness. He didn’t know what kind of tricks this land was playing on him, but it taking you away was going too far. He could handle being in darkness, he could handle being attacked by flowers, and he could even handle being shrunken down to miniature size, but losing you… wondering if you were hurt or scared or needing him… That was almost too much for him to take. He wanted to sink down into nothing, for the first time in his life, feeling so helpless without you. You didn’t know it, but he really depended on you to just be with him. He wasn’t perfect, not by far, and without you he was half of a person, unwhole in this world.

“Blaine!” He heard your voice scream in the distance and he set off, without even thinking about it. The terror in your voice drove him to sprint until his lungs felt like they would burst from the lack of oxygen that he refused to give them because that would require stopping. Finally he stumbled past some branches and found himself staring at you, or what he thought was you, backed into a corner against rocks, with a huge, well huge for someone who’s tiny, spider cautiously taking step, by menacing step towards you.

“Blaine!” You voice screamed again, and he pulled out his sword, and charged the thing without thinking. But before he could even get close enough to strike it had you pinned against the rock, one of it’s legs against your throat, choking the life out of you and then in one horrible movement it’s fangs were in your neck.

Time stopped for Blaine, as he watched you, being drained, slow seconds ticking by, until your scream pierced his ears and he was again moving, rushing to save your life, even though he feared you would have none left. The spider didn’t even notice as his blade cut deep into it’s side, and green/black blood game flowing out.

Again and again he cut into it, until it dropped you onto the ground, and turned to look at Blaine with annoyance, and swiped at him with it’s clawed legs.

He ducked and slashed upward into it’s stomach, sending the contents out onto him. The spider shuttered, making no noise, and Blaine barely managed to tumble out of it’s way before it collapsed dead, it’s legs curling up to it’s sides.

Blaine breathed heavily as he tried to keep himself calm, and he stood up, dripping the spiders insides down to the ground. He looked over to you, and ran to your side, dropping to his knees beside you. He took you in his arms, and looked crazed down at you. Your chest wasn’t rising and falling… you weren’t breathing. And the wound on your neck wasn’t bleeding. He touched your face, letting his fingers linger on your soft skin, willing you to be alive, but you laid frozen in death, your eyes closed. That was the only thing he could be thankful for. He couldn’t see the last expression you had when the spider was draining the life from you…

He held on to you, crying, and so deep in grief was he that he didn’t notice that the link between the two of you wasn’t broken, which is what would happen if you were really dead. But if you weren’t dead… then where were you?

Only a few feet away actually, were you looking around the forest floor, trying to figure out some kind of plan for finding Blaine and getting out of this. Whatever it was that Blaine was now holding was not you, just an illusion of yourself, but to him you felt and looked so real that he had no idea it might be something else. And you were just lost… you would almost have preferred to be attacked by a giant spider, rather than just walking around, in silence. Blaine was the only one who was there when you got in your bad moods. He was the only one who ever stood by your side throughout anything, and all you ever seemed to think about was how much he burdened your life, when in reality you were the burden.

You sighed and sat down against the blade of a fallen piece of brown grass, resolving that if you went no where eventually something might find you and eat you. *Not that I’d even make a fitting meal for the smallest of bugs…* you thought, gloomily and hugged your knees to your chest.

The silence, the darkness, the thoughts were all maddening. You pushed your hands against your ears, and began to hum just to fill your mind with something. You closed your eyes and imagined being at home, in your house, with Blaine and your mother and father, before everything had went so wrong.

And then you were flying through the air, the wind cutting into you as something squeezed you tight around the waist. You looked around, finding yourself in the grip of a rather large looking flower. It looked ahead, instead of at you, and you looked on ahead too, the only word coming to your lips to scream… “Blaine…”

Blaine felt it then. The pang of fear that he got when you were truly terrified. He looked down at the illusion of you, and then opened his eyes wide, realizing that he felt nothing for what he held in his arms. The link he felt with you was far away, and only getting further by the second and he stood and dropped the corpse, and watched it fall into its self and then scatter into dust. With renewed hope, he again took off in the direction he felt you were moving. What had happened with the fake you was made him stronger, run faster. He had seen you die once… And even if it wasn’t really you, it had looked like you, felt like you, and he had been completely convinced that it was you. There was no way he was going to go through that again… So he pushed himself to his very limits in search of you, until he could hear you screaming his name.

*Well this is a fine mess…* you thought as the flower put you down into a clear patch of grass, not too gently either, and you tumbled head over heals a few times before landing on your back. You stared up into the sky, seeing that it was now a strange color of pink and orange. The stomps of the flowers feet shook around you, and you sat up, and scrambled backward from fear of being trampled into mush, but the flower was retreating away from you. Maybe to go look for Blaine… maybe to get the others.

You backed away from being in the center of the clearing and felt yourself falling back, tripping over a rock. You fell hard onto your back, and didn’t bother to even try to get up. “This place just keeps getting more ridiculous…” you mumbled to yourself crossing your arms over you chest.

“Made so ridiculous by the ones who dwell here,” a soft, almost purring voice said from out of no where, and staring straight ahead you looked upon what seemed to be a crescent moon glowing back at you. But then slowly the face of a cat, a pink cat of all things, appeared around the grinning shape to form the mouth of the thing.

*Pink cats…* you wondered at the notion. *Of all things, this should surprise me?* But then you noticed that it was the same cat you had seen before, lean and hungry looking, with bright eyes, and a ghostly grin plastered on it’s face. He didn’t even seem to be real, as parts of him faded in and out of your visions, but still he stood there, grinning, taunting.

“Have you nothing else to say?” You asked, annoyed as you stood up and again crossed your arms over your chest.

His eyes flashed, with something beyond teasing, and he stared at you, unblinking as he responded, “All thing said require a question. What’s yours?”

You were getting very irritated with this cat… it was obvious he wasn’t going to help you, not easily anyway so you sighed and played his game, “Where am I?”

He didn’t laugh, nor did he blink, but simply said, ‘You are where you wanted to be, or you would not have come here.”

“But I didn’t mean to come here…” you growled softly, under your breath.

He only grinned wider and replied, “Then why did you come to a place you did not want to be?”

“I was dragged here by those wretched living flowers,” you spat at him.

But still, unblinking, uncaring, he grinned all the wider and began to fade from view completely, his voice echoing like a soft, purring lullaby from the grin that remained as the rest of him was gone. “Brave little Alice, trapped by the flowers, will she find her way out, or live here forever. The choice is always yours as to where you go… And going without knowing is sometimes the best way to travel.”

You felt something soft against the back of your neck as he disappeared and turned long enough to see the face of a boy with pink cat ears and a wicked grin on his face, but it seemed only a shadow as you blinked and he was gone.

“That cat is completely mad,” you muttered to yourself, shivering, remembering the touch of fur against you. “And I’m afraid I’m not too far behind…” Talking to yourself definitely wasn’t helping the thought.