Blue Skies Prompt #19; Solace in the Dark (Alice in Wonderland Fandom)
Title: Solace in the Dark
Author: thelovelylydia
Prompt: Blue Skies #19;
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
(Albert Camus)
Fandom: Alice in Wonderland
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Alice
Rating/Warning(s): K+ for themes
Word Count: 511
Summary: Alice is growing out of childish adventures.
Alice was growing up; she couldn’t deny it any longer. It wasn’t so much that she had grown taller, her hips had grown outward, or that she developed round little mounds upon her chest. It was the continual reminder that she was to give up her title as the Queen of Childish Behavior.
She was severely punished for jumping the nanny now. She was no longer allowed to run outside in the fields behind their manor in order to merely feel the wind in her hair. She was kept inside to learn piano, to learn how to dance.
The day she earned her first corset was the one she cursed. She had all her girly ones stripped from her and she was tied tightly into the new binding her mother had ordered from France just for her thirteenth birthday. Alice didn’t feel like she was growing up- she merely felt as if she was being caged in.
Even her father who encouraged her bright eyed daydreams when she was younger could not deny that the time was coming to behave more like a proper lady. The time for childish dreams and the time for thoughts of a hopeful future were dawning on Alice’s day.
She cursed the idea strongly and sometimes when her mother and father were to the doctor (for he had gotten very sick) she would skip her needlepoint lessons and sneak out into the hedge maze; losing herself among the twists and turns.
Her father’s illness was causing her to grow up; when he died she knew that the chapter of childhood had finally closed. She had witnessed the thing which was being taken from her- Time. It was only a matter of time before she was married, before she was pregnant, before she had a family, and then they buried her in the ground. It was a very sobering and lonely thought.
And in all that Time, Alice knew that she would never fit in.
But sometimes, when she was lying in bed thinking about her father and tears were in her green eyes, she returned to her wonderland. A place where death seemed so eminent but it never came near enough. Its lips brushed her but she still felt an odd sort of protection.
She concentrated on the warm, sunny skies of her dreamland. The tangy smell of the flowers that surrounded her as she walked down the path. She would have tea with a Mad Hatter and his friends; blushing at how she pictured a wild romance now that she had grown and fancied the idea of love. She took the pig baby from the Duchess and finally set him free. She conversed with the Queen of White, snickering about the fool headed nature of her sister, the Queen of Red. She would lament with the Mock Turtle, quadrille with the Lobsters, and contemplate with the Unicorn over what was real.
She was about to find solace in the middle of hardship. It was what kept her going even when the night seemed its darkest.
Author: thelovelylydia
Prompt: Blue Skies #19;
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
(Albert Camus)
Fandom: Alice in Wonderland
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Alice
Rating/Warning(s): K+ for themes
Word Count: 511
Summary: Alice is growing out of childish adventures.
Alice was growing up; she couldn’t deny it any longer. It wasn’t so much that she had grown taller, her hips had grown outward, or that she developed round little mounds upon her chest. It was the continual reminder that she was to give up her title as the Queen of Childish Behavior.
She was severely punished for jumping the nanny now. She was no longer allowed to run outside in the fields behind their manor in order to merely feel the wind in her hair. She was kept inside to learn piano, to learn how to dance.
The day she earned her first corset was the one she cursed. She had all her girly ones stripped from her and she was tied tightly into the new binding her mother had ordered from France just for her thirteenth birthday. Alice didn’t feel like she was growing up- she merely felt as if she was being caged in.
Even her father who encouraged her bright eyed daydreams when she was younger could not deny that the time was coming to behave more like a proper lady. The time for childish dreams and the time for thoughts of a hopeful future were dawning on Alice’s day.
She cursed the idea strongly and sometimes when her mother and father were to the doctor (for he had gotten very sick) she would skip her needlepoint lessons and sneak out into the hedge maze; losing herself among the twists and turns.
Her father’s illness was causing her to grow up; when he died she knew that the chapter of childhood had finally closed. She had witnessed the thing which was being taken from her- Time. It was only a matter of time before she was married, before she was pregnant, before she had a family, and then they buried her in the ground. It was a very sobering and lonely thought.
And in all that Time, Alice knew that she would never fit in.
But sometimes, when she was lying in bed thinking about her father and tears were in her green eyes, she returned to her wonderland. A place where death seemed so eminent but it never came near enough. Its lips brushed her but she still felt an odd sort of protection.
She concentrated on the warm, sunny skies of her dreamland. The tangy smell of the flowers that surrounded her as she walked down the path. She would have tea with a Mad Hatter and his friends; blushing at how she pictured a wild romance now that she had grown and fancied the idea of love. She took the pig baby from the Duchess and finally set him free. She conversed with the Queen of White, snickering about the fool headed nature of her sister, the Queen of Red. She would lament with the Mock Turtle, quadrille with the Lobsters, and contemplate with the Unicorn over what was real.
She was about to find solace in the middle of hardship. It was what kept her going even when the night seemed its darkest.