Fic: AiW: Someland in Between
Fandom: Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Title: Someland in Between
Rating: G
Words: 978
Summary: There's a long distance to sail, and Alice slips out of Time, and dreams of Wonderland.
A/N: Post-movie. I actually wrote this the day after seeing the film in the cinema, way back in mid-March, but it's just sat on my harddrive waiting and waiting and waiting. (It was, fyi, handwritten with a cat on my lap and a mug of tea in hand. The best kind of writing.) I just want to post it now, before I go away.
The journey across the sea is long and somehow more trepidatious than anything she’s ever done before. That’s just ridiculous. Or, as Alice prefers to think of it, curious. It’s just a spot of sailing across a strip of water, shouldn’t be anything compared to slaying and shrinking and stretching.
But still, somehow, it is true. She is not a waterbaby; she holds no sway over the sea, grey and blue and green. She tries to count the white horses but they are too fast, dashing beneath the steel-sea armour. She tries to talk to them, but they do not listen.
Sea becomes ocean becomes sea again and tosses Alice and Wonder like a teacup in an angry, vengeful storm. (Did she somehow offend the Sea? she thinks, but she has no answer, and neither does anyone else in this self-contained pocket-watch world of theirs. Absolem may have known but he is long flown - he had not lingered.)
There is nothing she can do; there are no roads here. She tried to learn the ways of the sailors but it made them uneasy, and her hands were too delicate to last long. (Strong enough to wield a sword but soft enough to be shredded by shrouds? Her very skin contradicts her. Curiouser and curiouser.) Even her stomach refuses to obey nature: she does not retreat to the bucket and shame of so many others but sits, mostly unaffected by the tumultuous trial Wonder’s maiden voyage receives.
She begins to think she is sailing to the very end of all the worlds.
Time drags. Time slips out of sync, the teeth of the cogs grinning wide and missing each other as they judder ever onwards. The sea is blue, or grey, or green but it is always there. It is always topped in sprightly, vicious horses: they ignore her every attempt to be friendly. Disquiet breeds onboard the lagging ship.
Always six o’clock, Alice thinks, and begins to believe they never move, that they are stuck perpetually in the same spot of endless sea, because somehow she upset the wrong person. (A seagull swoops low overhead and Alice ducks instinctively, thinking it a half-broken piece of china-wear aimed at her head.)
She misses solid ground. Earth beneath her feet, dirt between her fingers and under her fingernails, trees blossoming and leafing around her head, roots tripping her toes, rosebush thorns scratching her arms…
There are still three long scratches curled around her arm, not quite healed, never quite healed enough. Three scratches: a reminder, a grounder, in this land without earth.
She dreams of that place beneath the earth - wonderland, underland, otherland - and it’s only then that time passes. It passes too fast then. Like the heavy silk-glide beat of a raven’s wing, it’s over in an eye-blinkingly-missable flap. The time to lid a teapot.
It’s easy to fall into there now, and she no longer runs or frets or pinches herself. It’s good, it’s fabulous. The ship slips away from her; borders blur like the hazy fusing of sea and sky on the far-distant horizon. She dreams, and she loves it.
She dreams of Cheshire, pumpkin-grinning at her and offering her advice she does not ask for in his soft, oh-so-particularly precise voice. He fades and returns and rolls lazily on his back, and once he is toying with a strand of white ribbon and looks preoccupyingly thoughtful.
She dreams of eating jam tarts with McTwisp on a gingham picnic cloth (pale blue, to match the new toadstools springing up for the summer) and he chatters in his nervous, agitated, excitable fashion and she giggles and pulls out a backgammon board and they make up the rules as they go along, and he only checks his pocketwatch thirty-seven times.
She dreams of Minara, resplendent and glowing and still that little touch awkward, and they take horses from the stables and ride under a starry-purple sky. The dragonflies are out, even at this hour, and her Majesty flusters as they buzz and thrill around her until Alice takes pity and lures them away with honeyseeds and burdock.
She dreams of them all - of Mallymkun, of the March Hare, of Bayard, of Tweedledee and Tweedledum, of the Bandersnatch and the little hedgehog and the walrus and the roses and the red card soldiers - once she even dreams of visiting the chessboard battleground, a ruin and a memory and a jabberwocky’s grave.
She dreams of them all - except him. The Hatter is never there. He’s not in Marmoreal, he’s not at the timeless tea table, he’s not visiting Thackery or McTwisp or even the Mock Turtle. She looks for him whenever she can, but she never finds him.
She begins to think she’s lost him.
She begins to think he’s left Underland.
She thinks that’s impossible.
Only if you believe it is, she remembers, so she clings tightly, with tremendous muchness, to this one certain impossibility even as steel-grey sea tosses her up and promises to devour her in ways the Jabberwocky never could.
She’ll keep looking.
There is singing beneath the ocean; a breeze bucks up off the white horses and plumps out Wonder's white sails. Alice thinks, perhaps beneath all that armour of waves and winds and storms, the sea has a soft heart. A fondness, perhaps, for tea and cake, for light music and hearty stories, for pretty ribbons and smart hats. For bumblebees.
Perhaps Hatter is simply too busy deliberating the answers to his own questions, hunting out the why in the raven and the writing-desk. (She refuses to acknowledge the finality in his very final fairfarren and what might have been - no, surely, couldn't have been - sadness in his eyes.)
Perhaps.
She'll keep hunting muchly, for roads to veer from, and his hands to craft from, and a way to spur Wonder on.
---
Feedback is love. ♥
Title: Someland in Between
Rating: G
Words: 978
Summary: There's a long distance to sail, and Alice slips out of Time, and dreams of Wonderland.
A/N: Post-movie. I actually wrote this the day after seeing the film in the cinema, way back in mid-March, but it's just sat on my harddrive waiting and waiting and waiting. (It was, fyi, handwritten with a cat on my lap and a mug of tea in hand. The best kind of writing.) I just want to post it now, before I go away.
The journey across the sea is long and somehow more trepidatious than anything she’s ever done before. That’s just ridiculous. Or, as Alice prefers to think of it, curious. It’s just a spot of sailing across a strip of water, shouldn’t be anything compared to slaying and shrinking and stretching.
But still, somehow, it is true. She is not a waterbaby; she holds no sway over the sea, grey and blue and green. She tries to count the white horses but they are too fast, dashing beneath the steel-sea armour. She tries to talk to them, but they do not listen.
Sea becomes ocean becomes sea again and tosses Alice and Wonder like a teacup in an angry, vengeful storm. (Did she somehow offend the Sea? she thinks, but she has no answer, and neither does anyone else in this self-contained pocket-watch world of theirs. Absolem may have known but he is long flown - he had not lingered.)
There is nothing she can do; there are no roads here. She tried to learn the ways of the sailors but it made them uneasy, and her hands were too delicate to last long. (Strong enough to wield a sword but soft enough to be shredded by shrouds? Her very skin contradicts her. Curiouser and curiouser.) Even her stomach refuses to obey nature: she does not retreat to the bucket and shame of so many others but sits, mostly unaffected by the tumultuous trial Wonder’s maiden voyage receives.
She begins to think she is sailing to the very end of all the worlds.
Time drags. Time slips out of sync, the teeth of the cogs grinning wide and missing each other as they judder ever onwards. The sea is blue, or grey, or green but it is always there. It is always topped in sprightly, vicious horses: they ignore her every attempt to be friendly. Disquiet breeds onboard the lagging ship.
Always six o’clock, Alice thinks, and begins to believe they never move, that they are stuck perpetually in the same spot of endless sea, because somehow she upset the wrong person. (A seagull swoops low overhead and Alice ducks instinctively, thinking it a half-broken piece of china-wear aimed at her head.)
She misses solid ground. Earth beneath her feet, dirt between her fingers and under her fingernails, trees blossoming and leafing around her head, roots tripping her toes, rosebush thorns scratching her arms…
There are still three long scratches curled around her arm, not quite healed, never quite healed enough. Three scratches: a reminder, a grounder, in this land without earth.
She dreams of that place beneath the earth - wonderland, underland, otherland - and it’s only then that time passes. It passes too fast then. Like the heavy silk-glide beat of a raven’s wing, it’s over in an eye-blinkingly-missable flap. The time to lid a teapot.
It’s easy to fall into there now, and she no longer runs or frets or pinches herself. It’s good, it’s fabulous. The ship slips away from her; borders blur like the hazy fusing of sea and sky on the far-distant horizon. She dreams, and she loves it.
She dreams of Cheshire, pumpkin-grinning at her and offering her advice she does not ask for in his soft, oh-so-particularly precise voice. He fades and returns and rolls lazily on his back, and once he is toying with a strand of white ribbon and looks preoccupyingly thoughtful.
She dreams of eating jam tarts with McTwisp on a gingham picnic cloth (pale blue, to match the new toadstools springing up for the summer) and he chatters in his nervous, agitated, excitable fashion and she giggles and pulls out a backgammon board and they make up the rules as they go along, and he only checks his pocketwatch thirty-seven times.
She dreams of Minara, resplendent and glowing and still that little touch awkward, and they take horses from the stables and ride under a starry-purple sky. The dragonflies are out, even at this hour, and her Majesty flusters as they buzz and thrill around her until Alice takes pity and lures them away with honeyseeds and burdock.
She dreams of them all - of Mallymkun, of the March Hare, of Bayard, of Tweedledee and Tweedledum, of the Bandersnatch and the little hedgehog and the walrus and the roses and the red card soldiers - once she even dreams of visiting the chessboard battleground, a ruin and a memory and a jabberwocky’s grave.
She dreams of them all - except him. The Hatter is never there. He’s not in Marmoreal, he’s not at the timeless tea table, he’s not visiting Thackery or McTwisp or even the Mock Turtle. She looks for him whenever she can, but she never finds him.
She begins to think she’s lost him.
She begins to think he’s left Underland.
She thinks that’s impossible.
Only if you believe it is, she remembers, so she clings tightly, with tremendous muchness, to this one certain impossibility even as steel-grey sea tosses her up and promises to devour her in ways the Jabberwocky never could.
She’ll keep looking.
There is singing beneath the ocean; a breeze bucks up off the white horses and plumps out Wonder's white sails. Alice thinks, perhaps beneath all that armour of waves and winds and storms, the sea has a soft heart. A fondness, perhaps, for tea and cake, for light music and hearty stories, for pretty ribbons and smart hats. For bumblebees.
Perhaps Hatter is simply too busy deliberating the answers to his own questions, hunting out the why in the raven and the writing-desk. (She refuses to acknowledge the finality in his very final fairfarren and what might have been - no, surely, couldn't have been - sadness in his eyes.)
Perhaps.
She'll keep hunting muchly, for roads to veer from, and his hands to craft from, and a way to spur Wonder on.
---
Feedback is love. ♥