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She fell through the snow to find her world turned upside-down, or rather, outside-in.

~

On an expedition with her father, Alice, being the child that she is, wandered from the campsite after a young snow hare. The snow fall was quickening, the hare’s tracks were disappearing before her eyes. The chase only seemed to have lasted a few minutes, but already she had lost sight of where she had come from, and no prints were left to lead her back. Cold and alone, she wandered the blanketed earth. Everything looked the same. For the first time in her life she feared she would perish, and wished she had listened to her father and stayed put. Falling to the ground to huddle herself for warmth she caught a glimpse of what could only be the hare bounding through the snow. Off again she went, hoping to find a cave of some sort where the hare lived. She was gaining on it but in another second it disappeared. Perhaps it stopped. Alice rushed to the spot, hoping to finally catch the hare. It had not stopped. It fell. And with it Alice did as well.

She came to a comfortable stop on a rather fluffy bush. Or what she took for a bush. It was in fact what we like to call the camo-crab. A carnivorous crab that disguises itself by growing plant life on its back. When an herbivorous animal comes to feed on it, the camo-crab attacks. Alice startled it when she fell atop it and it scurried off, leaving Alice to tumble onto ground.

It was rather warm here, too warm for a parka. Stripping down her outer layer she found her clothes to be ripped. They were too small. Walking over to a pond she looked at her reflection. She had aged. No longer was she a preteen girl. She was an adult. Overcome by horror, she passed out.

“Funny one isn’t she.” The cat walked on two legs. Wore human’s clothes. And spoke a human language. He stepped lightly across the pond, never actually touching the water itself. As he walked he faded, from the feet upwards, until he was completely gone.

A face appeared next to the Hatter. Grinning from ear to ear, staring wildly off into the distance. A swipe of an invisible paw and that hat was his.

"I've always been envious of your hats." He tried to place it on his head, but his ears kept getting in the way. He frowned, yet he didn't frown. His face showed that of sadness, yet the grin never once left his blue and purple streaked face. "Care to make me a fitting hat one day, buddy?" He tossed the hat back and disappeared completely. Next to the Hatter's ear he whispered rather loudly in his devilish feline voice, "How kind of you to make a place for me at your table."

In a blink of an eye the Cheshire Cat sat in the cleared area. "It IS for me isn't it?" He stroked the table with his finger, lifting the dust to his face, grinning in disgust. He stood up and began to disappear once more. "I'm kidding. Of course it's for her." He looked back for a second before disappearing completely. "She is rather old though, don't you think?"

Questions. It's what he's good at. But never does he expect an answer, never does he really want one. He himself is a mystery. Life for him is also best kept a mystery.

OC: Yay! Another convert!
IC:
Hatter glanced at the cat, before glancing at his own teacup.

The tea was cold, sadly, and perhaps days old.

Or months. Or was it just minute. He'd take out his pocketwatch, only it was lost in his pockets and told time correctly at least half the time. Which was more time than he needed.

"Perhaps,"--and at this point he wasn't sure if he was answering Chesire, Doormouse, himself, or the tea.

And, he glanced at the cat, he'd like to have a pair of ears like that. It'd make an excellant addition to the party, wouldn't it, and maybe the tea would be warm by then.

Oh, that's right, the tea was cold. He'd--

The Chesire spoke once more--he was hogging the conversation again.

"Alice, old?" That suprised him, because Alice really ought to be...Alice-like, and that wasn't old-like. No, that was Red-Queen-like, and Alice couldn't be the Red Queen.

If she was, it would make fitting a hat even harder. Two heads to fit or one?

The tea was cold, Hatter noticed as he tried to drink again. He'd have to fix that.

So he did. He moved two to the right, where another cup of tea was waiting.

It was cold too.

Now, this was Wonderland, girls and boys, and in this world, you could see for yourself what you just can’t see anywhere else. That being said, the Dormouse was seeing things in his sleep – things you can only dream about in Wonderland! And indeed, so unlike anywhere else that they ended up quite inconceivable to the writer herself, so in the end, they cannot be mentioned by mere narration. But rest assured the Dormouse was seeing his own version of Wonderland, shaping the landscape as his subconscious willed it to be, as much as a dormouse could dream.

Quite abruptly, though, his rest came to a halt, and the moving images of the dream faced a wipe out as the Dormouse awoke from slumber once more.

His nose and whiskers tingled at the smell of steamy raspberry chamomile tea. It calmed his senses as the aroma wafted over from a few teapots away.

But he still remembered the last image from his dream that woke him up, and scurried across the maroon velvet, hidden underneath all the china, to wherever March Hare or Mad Hatter was sitting. He got to Mad Hatter first.

On two feet. Short breaths. High pitches. “Hatter! Someone -- Alice-like --- approached -- me. But she looked -- hideously different. Maybe --- she’s already -- here?” After all the scurrying, his eyelids started to droop again. He went back down on all fours.

And indeed, Alice was also aware that she was here. But… where was here?

“Oh please! Please tell me if I can go back home. Where am I? Cat, where are you?”

All she heard was silence echoing at her in response.

OC: If you want me to change details (i.e. the maroon tablecloth to some other colour) you’re more than welcome to tell me. Oh, and… this is not really related, but I’m trying to remember the word for some material that’s velvet-like but not velvet. I looked it up before and now I forgot the word…

OC: I guess I'll be the Caterpillar? Well, here goes nothing!

IC:

If it hadn't been for the fact that the thing,(for you see he hadn't contemplated long enough to discern what it could be, never mind it being Alice) right in front of him was not blocking the scenery from his beloved mushroom, he would have gone on with his hookah ridden life. Unfortunately, he had planned to enjoy the time from his favourite mushroom. The Caterpillar sat there in contemplation while calmly smoking away on what th meaning of this all was. Eventually he decided that he had smoked enough and his curiosity reached a point that he felt the need to ask a very important question. And so the Caterpillar, briefly stopped adding more smoke into the misty air he created and opened his mouth to ask the body in front of him:

"Who are you?"The execution was very slow as if he himself was finding a feasible answer to the question.

There was no answer and he felt that he was not going to get his answer. However, someone else evidently did have one as he heard metronomic footsteps approaching from a distance. The Caterpillar, true to his nature, was neither alarmed nor overjoyed as he continued to smoke his hookah away.

"It seems there will be company," he calmly commented.