I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.
~ Alice
Alice sat peacefully on the branch of a tree. Her nimble fingers weaved the dandelions through her makeshift crown. In and out as she wrapped each flower around another. These flowers were so lucky. They had no cares. They had nothing to worry about! But of course, it's not like they had lives to live or anything.
"Oh Alice, would you please not dilly dally with the flowers and listen to me!" complained her older sister, Loraine.
"But Loraine, how could I listen to an awfully boring story about two men that wandered around in the middle of nowhere?" Alice countered back.
"Louis and Clark were not just two men, Alice! They made history!"
"Obviously," Alice muttered, catching a little flower that nearly fell down to the ground. "Why do I have to listen to these anyway? They're all just stories from the Mainland." There were things that Alice never understood about Loraine, and this was one of them.
Of course, Alice didn't understand a lot of things. One, why did she only live with her sister? There were no parents in the household and this bothered Alice constantly.
Two, does she even have parents? If she does, she has never met them before, or at least doesn't remember anything about them.
Three, why is the Mainland so important? It's not like she's been there before, or anywhere for that matter. She's always locked up here, with her irritating sister and an adoring cat.
"One day you will understand, my dear Alice," Loraine finally answered. She continued reading aloud from the giant book laid in her lap.
This made Alice furious. Why can she not understand? She wasn't little, anymore. She seemed like it, but where she lived, you didn't age. Alice could interpret things much faster than most. However, the worst thing of all that most just couldn't get through their thick skulls was that there was a war going on right under their noses. And here they were, having a history lesson.
Therefore, why was there one little thing that she couldn't know? She knows everything else, but why can't she know why the Mainland is so crucial to everything. The anger in Alice boiled up inside her, making her face red, almost as if she was about to explode.
"Why not today, my dear Loraine?" Alice asked, her voice silky and smooth. She wanted to know. She needed to know.
"Alice. I know you believe you are fit for this, and you are for most things, but this is just not the time, nor the place." Loraine was now more stern, making her even more obnoxious to Alice.
Alice was barely gripping onto sanity. She knew that Loraine would be firm and not budge, so she needed a new approach to figure this out.
Alice climbed down from the tree she was in, making sure each movement was obvious. She completely ignored Loraine's comments of needing to finish the lesson and that she didn't have time for this. She passed Loraine, keeping her nose up high, and just walked away. That's all. It was merely an act of rebellion, but nothing would get in her way of figuring out what was going on.
She was insane after all.
Just at that moment, a rainbow of lights sprouted from a nearby well. At first, Alice just thought she was imagining things, but if she was, why was Loraine staring at the same well with her mouth gaping open?
Hence, she was not just seeing things. This was real, and that meant he was coming back. Finally.
