After a really bad morning, I decided that this was probably a good day to take things a little more slowly. See, the car broke while driving and it was towed, then there was more horrible things involving it being cold and wet as I walked and whatnot, so I decided today was a good day to take off, or at least a little slower. So I’ve been out with friends and written barely anything. But here’s a little of what I’ve done today.

From Chapter 10

“You vanished in the middle of the night!” Adrianna said. “I remembered what you said about Wonderland and thought maybe the cards had come back for you! You said they wanted to get you before, right? And I couldn’t think of anything else that might have happened, so that seemed like the only thing and I thought maybe I should mention it to someone but you said not to tell anyone ever so I just told Miss Horner and my brothers and they said they’d look for you and Evan said Joseph and Travis found you and I was so relieved but then you were asleep when I went to see you and it’s good to see you’re okay! What happened?”

Alice had managed to put the book up on the shelf in the time it had taken Adrianna to get all of that out, Adrianna retreating to sit on her own bed and Alice moving to sit on hers so that they could speak a little more properly. Alice smiled, a little embarrassed and not sure what to say happened. She should tell Adrianna, yes, but she wasn’t sure how to phrase any of it so that she wouldn’t sound insane. Granted, Adrianna hadn’t thought that she was crazy yet, but she was a little more worried this time about it.

“Well…” Alice said, still seeming distinctly uncomfortable.

“Joseph said that you were sleeping under Cat’s tree,” Adrianna offered. “He said you were sleep walking and ended up under there overnight and that was what gave you a fever. He also said you looked kind of worried about something, but he said that like I wasn’t supposed to be paying attention to it.”

“Yeah,” Alice said. “I just woke up outside. It was very strange, but they say my temperature has gone right back down to normal now.”

“Was it the cards?” Adrianna asked, her eyes wide. “Matt said that you might have run off with Cat for the night, but he thinks the worst of things a lot. He said that you two were dating in secret and that’s why you snuck off in the middle of the night and that’s why they found you under his tree.”

Alice stared at her for a long moment, mouth slightly open in disbelief. “No.” she said after a moment.

So. Treacle tart. I didn’t know much about the stuff until yesterday and, well, apparently it’s become a rather important part of my story. To start with, it was what Humpty Dumpty kept inexplicably tripping over and eventually he tripped over it into a wall to smash into a million pieces. And now, it’s going to give Alice Wonderland powers.

Yeah.

The excerpt has nothing to do with this.

Current Word Count: 76004

From Chapter 5

“Busy you say?” Alice said, putting the treacle in her pocket and found it actually all fit despite how small her pocket was. Perhaps her pockets were simply surprisingly roomy. Perhaps her pockets had gotten a hold of the mushrooms she had found the last time she was here. “What is he busy with?”

“Kingly business,” Humpty Dumpty told her. “The only kind of business that a King concerns himself with! Though right now it is mostly dealing with this business of the Queen of Hearts and her stealing the Red King’s heart and taking away the White Queen. He’s quite irritated by that part, you see. And there are all sorts of terrible things that have been happening that he’s been quite busy with handling. It’s why I left my wall, you see. He worries so and I wished to give him less to worry about.”

“How thoughtful of you,” Alice said. “Perhaps it would be good to go see the White King and see if we couldn’t cheer him up.”

“That might be an idea,” Humpty Dumpty conceded, rocking a little on his wall. “Indeed, it might even be a good idea, but that would hardly be a task for one such as I, you see. I am quite busy and I must continue to watch. The White King trusts me with a great deal, you see. Although why he had asked me out here where no one passes to watch, I am unsure, but he is the White King and must know what he’s speaking of. If you were to go, however, I would recommend something of a gift. It is the White King’s unbirthday today and it would be awfully rude to show up without a gift.”

“I think I may have something for him,” Alice said, noting that the treacle tart might make for a decent substitute for the pie she had unwittingly eaten. “I shall only need to know the way now. I have never gone to visit the White King before and do not know where I should find him.”

“Well, I think your manners are a bit more suspect than your sense of direction,” Humpty Dumpty said. “One would do well to greet the White King with good manners instead of a good sense of direction.”

“But how would I greet the White King at all if I cannot find him?” Alice asked, trying very hard not to be cross with him. It wasn’t an easy task, the egg before her making it very difficult not to feel very offended.

[Header image by Shaz]

It was dad’s birthday today. I’ve only just started for the day and I suspect I won’t get much done today at all. That’s fine, though, considering how productive I’ve been so far. I can take one day slow. The passage I’m using as my excerpt, however, is the main reason for the slowness.

The poem is as written in the book. I thought I had it wrong all these years. It still bemuses me.

Current Word Count: 70604

From Chapter5

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall:

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the King’s horses and all the King’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.”

Alice pondered over the end of it a little. “Well, that doesn’t sound right,” she said, feeling quite confused. “I was almost certain that ended some other way.”

One thing about basing a story off of the book rather than the movie, I’m starting to find, is that no one’s actually read Alice in Wonderland. I say Tea Party, they sing the Un-Birthday song. Which wasn’t in the book and Humpty Dumpty was the one who talked about his un-birthday in Looking Glass. Also, I think I’m going to only do that in passing and not make a big deal out of it.

Also, I am quite upset because I have eaten very little today due to the fact that there is no food in the house. None. I am starving. And yes, starving writer is oddly appropriate. Shut up and get me a sandwich.

Current Word Count: 66926

From Chapter 4

“Once upon a time,” the Dormouse began, Alice slumping onto the table and resting her chain against her hand. “There was the Queen of Hearts. She was a strange woman who kept demanding people be beheaded for doing nothing more than possibly one day committing a crime. It helped quite a bit, none of those people ever getting a chance to commit a crime, but it was a terrible thing all together, really.”

Alice looked over at the mouse, her look one of puzzlement and surprise. Was he really going to be telling a story that made some sort of sense? Perhaps the first time was merely a fluke. Or perhaps this change to Wonderland that the Cat talked about meant that it was going to start making some regular sense and the madness would finally start to let her not go mad along with it.

“No one’s head really ever came off, though. Not often, anyway. The King of Hearts quietly pardoned everyone until one day he died. A sad thing, really. The Queen was quite distraught and didn’t know what she was going to do.”

“When did the King die?” Alice asked.

“One day,” the Dormouse repeated. “I said that. You should really listen.”

Nope. The madness was still there.

[Header image by Shaz]

There’s a whole chapter with these flowers. I’m still working on it, so it’s taking for bloody ever because I keep going off on tangents and looking up information and rereading sections of the book, but damit if I’m not having a ton of fun with this! This story, I’m so glad I get to work on it now. So much not serious fun times.

Current Word Count: 62663

From Chapter 3

“Excuse me,” she said as politely as she could. “Do all flowers talk? Or is it just the flowers here?”

“Oh, we all talk, dear,” Rose said. “Well, whenever there’s someone interesting enough to talk to normally, and we can talk as well as you. Much louder too, if need be. It isn’t our manners to begin, though, you see, so we usually stay quite quiet, but you seemed quite sensible. Your petals aren’t quite the way they should be, but you seem to be of a good colour and, well, that’s a good enough start, isn’t it?”

Rose seemed quite pleased with herself, though Alice had the vaguest of feelings that she had just been insulted. She wasn’t entirely certain how or what any of it entailed, but from her tone, she felt like she should be. Still, Tiger Lily was there and seemed to be still quite out of sorts, so she did not wish to do anything more to make her any more upset.

“What happened here?” she asked instead. “Was there something terrible that happened to make you so sad?”

“Oh dear,” Rose said. “You don’t want to bring that up.”

“Miss Horner always tells us that if we are sad, we should talk about it,” Alice said, remembering school once again. Miss Horner had turned out to be quite a nice lady when she wasn’t yelling at Adrianna’s brothers for coming in to check up on her and makes sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. She had been quite good once she quite literally let her hair down and had even been of some help with homework.

“Oh, it was a terrible thing!” Tiger Lily cried, seeming like she was just waiting for the chance to tell the tale again.

“Here we go,” Rose said, sounding very not pleased with how this was shaping up. She swayed away from them, trying to pretend that she was occupied with something else, but it was quite difficult for her to do so as she was a flower and her stem prevented her from doing anything that would bring her too far away.

[Header image by Shaz]

I am having so much fun with this new story! I’m so happy I restructured this book to spend more time in school, oddly enough, and less in Wonderland. Why? Because I have discovered Adrianna’s brothers. They are, apparently, absolutely fabulous. Oh, sure, Cat’s a lot of fun to write, but I met Adrianna’s oldest brother, Evan today. He is fabulous and fun.

Current Word Count: 60007

From Chapter 1

“Oh dear,” Adrianna said, but stopped, as did Alice. From outside, there was a bit of a commotion as several voices of different whispered and two louder ones, a male and a female, spoke even louder than the rest.

“I’m not here long, I just need to-” started the boy, but he was promptly interrupted by a woman.

“There are to be no boys in the girls dorm, Mister Case! No exceptions!”

Adrianna and Alice were already at the door by the time she had finished this to see two people standing there arguing. One was a woman in her mid thirties, hair tied back into a tight knot and looking very strict like that, features sharp in the light and clothing kept in perfect order, if a little military in fashion.

The boy, however, was dressed in the uniform of the high school section of the school and rolling his brown eyes, black hair falling in a bit of a mess around his face and looking like he needed more than a trim. He was taller than she was and looked completely unnerved by the woman yelling at him.

“Look, I just need to give my sister her bag,” he said loudly, trying to silence her. “She left them behind and-”

“You may return them to her by handing them to me if you must be here at all!” she snapped back at him, holding out her hand. He had in his own a small suitcase with a pink flower embroidered onto it, much like the rest of Arianna’s things. Adrianna rushed forward with a smile on her face, eager to come to her big brother’s rescue, or so Alice came to assume from the exchange.

“Evan!” she said, rushing forward.

“Addie,” he said, stepping past the woman and leaning down to his sister’s height. “You forgot something.”

“Excuse me!” the woman snapped again.

“Miss Horner,” Evan said with an exasperated tone. “I am trying to have a word with my sister. Could you please give us a moment?”

There were titters of laughter from the people looking on, though when Miss Horner snapped around to look at them, they went quiet and backed away into their rooms. Alice lingered there still, watching as Evan grinned back at his sister.

“You have to be more careful, Addie,” he said, handing over her bag. “Father’s not going to be here to make sure you get everything done anymore. You’re going to have to keep an eye out for yourself.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said with an embarrassed blush. “But you’ll be here and so will everyone else.”

“We aren’t allowed in the girl’s dorms, Addie,” he said with a bit of a flat look at her, still amused. “And whoever you have as a roommate will want to do more than just make sure you have all your books every day. Have you met your roommate yet?”

“Mister Case!”

Evan bowed his head and held up a finger, signalling that he needed a moment. He rose up to his full height, looking down at Miss Horner, who was a full head shorter than him now and shrunk a little back from him. “I am speaking with my sister, Miss Evelyn Horner,” he said, his voice calm but with a dark edge to it. “We are family and I am permitted to make sure direct family is properly settling in. I have done it with every other one of my siblings and you will not deny me the right to do so with my youngest sister.”

She looked on with a mix of fear and indignation, not certain how to react for a moment. After a moment, she turned and walked away, mostly fuming and Alice was a little worried that Adrianna may have made a bit of an enemy out of her. She stopped and turned back for a moment before disappearing around the corner. “If you are planning on making your visitations here regular, know that while you visit, the door stays open. You understand?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, Evan turning back around, gentle smile back on his face and eyes settling back on his sister. “Now, what was I asking about?”

[Header image by Shaz]