She's awake. She's very awake, in a world she doesn't recognize and remember even traveling to. At least its beautiful. Heavily decorated with lush greenery and flora, she is in a garden and she is not alone.
The path is narrow with nothing but walls of vines on both sides and no choice but go forward. She is huddled unwillingly with the other group of maidens, whose dresses are particularly more fancy than her plain navy blue skirt. However with their frocks, there was no space for them to turn back in that narrow space if they wanted to. So forward it is. There were flowers of many kinds and colors though she didn't know any of their names. While idly browsing with the others, she then heard a voice out of nowhere announce the reason of them being here: “Its a game, you see. And if you win, you may proceed out of here into the other game.” She didn't know whether the other girls were just uninterested or just plain miserable upon hearing it.
She didn't remember hearing the rules but she noticed herself these flowers hanging from the vine-covered ceiling above them. They looked like yellow bells, but they were flowers indeed. By herself, she jumped as high as she could to touch them. She didn't care if others looked. She jumped and jumped again till finally her hand grazed past the flower and it rang like an ordinary bell. It was a small, sharp tingle but it had everyone's attention. Slowly they learned that if a girl could touch five bells, she would win and get out of the narrow garden. Only she succeeded.
She doesn't remember going through a door or even exiting the narrow garden path but the next thing she knew, she was in a rather dull, old yellow room with more maidens. Different from the ones before but all still wearing pretty frocks and miserable faces of make up. The room was quite small, not very comfortable when in a room filled with too many people and ornaments. Speaking of which, must have been props for another game.
The room itself was not a perfect square and it had no windows or doors. Just the girls against one wall and the mechanisms on the ceiling. There were still flowers, even though they were out of the garden. These flowers looked like tall cups and hung from the ceiling like a chandelier, only they were in a straight line, one beside the other. There was a dispenser for the same type of flower and each girl had to take one for herself. Again, it was a game.
She thought of jumping again, to see if her hunch was correct. She jumped, with the flower cup in her hand high above her head, to reach the ones that hung down. She was trying to catch the chandelier ones in the one she had. Eventually she got the first one as it fitted into the identical cup and popped off. But there were four others to go and the other was higher than the next. She didn't give up. She jumped with all her might, her cups growing higher to the next. Her last one was a bit tricky but after jumping to a wall and pouncing off it, she managed to get her ticket out of the game.
She doesn't know where she is now. It looks like a building, but it isn't perhaps. The only thing she was sure off was that this whole thing had been very disorientating. There were no flowers where she looked anymore but there was a table in front of her. No cookies or liquid that asked you to consume them but there was a little bug on the wooden surface. A red spider, no less. She bent over smiling at the adorable creature, as she was fond of spiders rather than butterflies. The spider looked at her with its many black, beady eyes (she counted there were more than the usual eight). She spoke to the spider kindly, asking if it knew answers to her questions though it could not reply. In the end she gave up asking but showed it her hand, wondering if it would like to accompany her.
The tips of her fingers right in front of its face and she could feel its eyes scanning the pink nubs and the look on her face at the same time. Slowly, it did almost the same thing. It raised the four legs on its left, allowing her to place her hand under them so that it would walk into her palm. She smiled at her new friend and decided to call him Bitsy (from the Itsy Bitsy Spider). She held it in her hands for a while before reaching a tea party. Bitsy decided to get off and crawl onto a wall, entertaining itself while she walked over inspecting the guests.
She remembered no introductions nor names, but she found herself sitting with the faceless guests and ordering their finest cakes. There must have been three or four of them, excluding her, eating together. The one on her right had a voice of a gentleman, even though he had no mouth. He asked what cake she would like, so she asked for the cheese cake. “Very well,” she heard him reply happily. Bitsy was there with her too, next to her plate. She smiled and stroked its back part which was not covered by eyes. She recalled hearing unfamiliar talk and irreplaceable voices; unaccountable smells and aroma; the only other thing she could not recall from all of this was her name.
I drew her! Together with this little prose, I call her Black Alice<3
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