TheTechnicolourPhase:Chapter 1

Night time in a foreign country. The city of London, the smog enclosing the buildings, huddling together like children lying close to each other against a terrifying creature that gives off purple electricity-like death from its dead eyes.
At King's Cross Station, a train pulled in slowly, breathing smoke like a large, scarlet dragon. The wooden doors banged open, and people streamed out in a stream of dull black ink on the white platform. All were clutching bags, hatboxes and satchels. Only one, in a long blue overcoat, which billowed in the London evening breeze, clutched a carpet bag of indeterminate origin. It was covered in ribbons, exotic looking fabrics and, strangely, hat pins. She wore the crazy mass of yellow hair loose down her back, making it swirl, curl and riot.
Her eyes were inquisitively looking around the great structure of the station, whilst everyone scuttled away, eyes downcast. Her eyes swirled with intelligence and interest, in the perfect shade of blue. Not canary, not the blue of a summer sky, somewhere in between. But, the learned traveller would know that the young girl had a part of her missing. Her eyes were the only signs of this. They silently wept of not belonging in this strange world of mechanical dragons and women living encased inside metal shells, restricting their breathing. No one came to meet her from the station, making her enclose inside her overcoat and long blue and white lace dress. She hailed down a horse and cab, and gave her address, before sinking back into her seat and placing her carpet bag and her leather luggage cases.
They passed a ball gathering at the Hotel Royal, where she had to bite her rose lips to stop her giggling at the ladies standing outside. The ludicrously thin waists, matched with the largely oversized bottoms, not to mention the atrocities that they wore on their heads... What society had deemed as proper... What if it was deemed proper to wear a codfish on your head...
Alice Kingsley thought back to the day that she had first said that. The day that changed her life. She had been a girl who had almost accepted Hamish Ascot, of all people! She was surprised to this day how his digestion had allowed him to get down on one knee and propose to her, without keeling over backward from a cucumber sandwich going down the wrong way. And then she had ran away from it all... the expectant stares from her sister, Margaret, the anxious looks from her mother, the arrogant gaze of Lady Ascot... but was she running from Hamish's proposal or chasing McTwisp? She would probably never know.
Before she knew it, she had fallen down a rabbit hole, shrunk, stretched, bandersnatched, stuffed into a teapot, travelled by hat, wielded a vorpal sword, defeated a demon and reluctantly left. And she left something back in that otherworldly world... with a strange man with the skill needed to make her original carpet bag...
Thinking of the man, Alice felt both exhilarated and miserable. He had that quality. How could she be so far away from him? How had she got through these five years? She felt like running and flinging herself into that infernal rabbit hole every time she thought of him... and she had tried. But that entrance had been blocked by something. She had just come back from the Ascot's house, and no matter how she had tried to get down the hole, it was completely sealed with earth. And Alice was fast running out of alternative places to get back home.
Home. Not here in London, where people sneered at her unconventional way of life, which had been to travel to China to set up the business link with her father's company. It had been a success, and Lord Ascot had frequently told her how proud he was of her progress... but she couldn't deny that she wanted this anymore. Down the rabbit hole, she had been treated as an equal, not as an 'angel in the home'...
A drop in the ocean...
A change in the weather...
I was praying that you and me might end up together...
"Miss Kingsley, we're here."
The voice of the cabdriver brought Alice back to life with an unpleasant bump, and soon after she was making her way through the clinging, corrupt smog to the West End building, with a fantastic facade, disguising the fact that she only rented a couple of attic rooms. An unconventional woman she may be, but she refused to waste her wages on becoming a conventional person of society, with all the trappings and luxuries that she had condemned.
Banging her way unceremoniously through to her rooms, she dumped her luggage on her small bed, walked quickly to the bow, attic windows and threw them open. People may call her crazy to open her windows wide in the month of December, where the frost bit at people's extremities and the wind danced around them and through their flowing coats and clothes, like an evaporating cat with an insane grin. But the thought of that man with crazy, carrot-like hair made her feel hot under her collar.
It's like wishing for rain as I stand in the desert...
She spun round, bewildered, but at the same time knowing exactly what was going on.
Ever since she had promised to return to that other world, she had been followed by a guardian angel... well, more like a guardian voice, since she never saw who was speaking, although she knew who was encouraging her and making her feel whole, even for just a moment... She could see him now, with his impish, ivy eyes twinkling at her, his pale lips forming the words and giving a new meaning to words that Alice was too familiar with. She looked around the room slowly, drinking in every detail, willing him to appear to her, just for an instant, something to give her hope...
"Tarrant?"
But I'm holding you closer than most...
Alice had to sit down before she fainted. His voice was enough to take her way and make her giddy with regret. Underland seemed the only place she wanted to be now. And now she wanted to go back, she was finding it impossible to get back. Ironic, that whenever she had been unaware she was going to plummet down a rabbit hole to this wonderful world and when she wanted to get home, there was practically no logical way to get out. Now she was on the other side of the glass, and she couldn't find a way back, now that it was what she desired above everything else.
Yes, the business in China was a success. But that was established, so there was really little need for her. Her mother had died two years ago, from a growth in her chest, still lovingly telling Alice off about the state of her stockings and corset; her sister had returned to her domestic bliss, a mere facade of vice and blindness, complete with four, maddening children and an adulterer for a husband; her father remained silent to her from beyond the grave. Alice's faith in the world had been completely shattered by the way that society had built these expectations and situations, and she felt like crying, since the only place she could feel a part of was forever barred to her.
Or was it?
Yes, the rabbit hole had been barred, but surely there was more than one way to get back. Alice scoured her room, willing a miracle to happen, anything. Her desperation made her thin fingers work quickly and her heart pound with expectation as she pulled a basket from under the shadowy depths of her bed.
The wicker basket was a treasure trove, a physical timeline of her travels. A lot of it was from her father's adventures: fabrics with white and red roses embroidered into it from France; a stitched ragdoll made from impossibly soft wool from Germany; a wooden fan with black ink pattern of butterflies and spinning curls on the thin slats from Italy. The ivory fingers moved slowly and tenderly over each object, each one a flickering memory, like a kaleidoscope. Each item found its way into her carpetbag, each fitting in, with masses of room still left over. The maker must have had magic at his fingertips... Alice smiled. How could she possibly doubt that?
Further down she dug. Her fingerless gloves and dress with beautiful hem detail. Rumpled and lightly stained with grass, these had been her Otherworld rags as she had tumbled down the rabbit hole. Forever a memory.
Alice leaned back on her heels. Is this what I am condemned to? Trapped by memories? Her father tucking her in, assuring her that all the best people were mad. The one dream turned memory, full of opium-addicted caterpillars, grinning, evaporating cats, waist coated rabbits always running out of work. Two queens, locked in a War of the Roses and a sisterly rivalry. A terrifying Red champion, vanquished only by a silver vorpal sword. And one man, with crazy ginger hair, snow white skin and a enigmatic smile, who made everything sense in his bewildering madness. Would all this be merely memories, things she packed away in a wicker basket under her bed? Her father had said once it was ill to dwell on dreams... but this wasn't a dream.
Under the dress were things that had mysteriously appeared after her return up the rabbit hole, making her look for a way back. The glass phial labelled 'Drink Me'. The miniature dress that he had quickly made, whilst she had been stuffed in a teapot. A rough notebook, every single page full of scribbling and drawings akin to that of the Oraculum.
What was it that he had said? "You won't remember me." Was all this so that Alice wouldn't forget? To bring her back? Or simply as a way to finally say goodbye? To make it truly a memory?
Tears clouded her vision as she clutched at the small items to her chest, these items that increased in curiosity every time she touched them. She couldn't stay stuck on this side... No, she wouldn't let them keep her here. How's that for muchness?
The wicket basket was empty, the carpet bag almost full. Surely this must means there's not much else to take... wherever I'm going. To Underland... or where? Everywhere else made Alice seem like a foreigner, like she wasn't really there. A lone traveller, who would leave and vanish in a whirl of leaves and a sound that rang through the universe...
Her sister would tell her she was mad. But didn't a wise, misunderstood woman once say that madness liberated you from convention? But this convention couldn't be ran away from easily, if at all. Underland understood her, was her liberation.
Her tears splashed on the cold, gnawed floorboards and painted them on her cheeks. The window latch rattled softly as a blue butterfly came swooping elegantly in, perching on the bed frame and regarding Alice intelligently. It swam across the room, swimming in the melancholy of this young woman, almost broken by this strange world.
As it perched on the edge of the wicker basket, Alice saw it for the first time through her tears and a voice came to her conscious mind.
"Nothing was ever accomplished with tears."
"Absolem?"
The winged creature fluttered down into the depths of the wicker basket, making Alice lean back onto her knees, peering into the basket. In the corner was a small glass bottle, stoppered with a silver swirl-inscribed lid, containing an amount of purple liquid, that seemed to sworl and riot in the feeble candlelight.
Jabberwock blood?
Could the same substance that got her back to convention and false obligations and rhetorical questions get her back home?
Alice's muchness started to warm her inside, from her toes all the way up to her ears. She grabbed her carpet bag and hugged it close to her, as she contemplated the liquid in her hand.
What if it be poison?
What if it was? It would be a way out of the vice-ridden world, possibly to see her parents once more. Did she even believe in that kind of thing anymore?
No, one way or another, this would take her out of this world, away from great expectations and stereotypes that haunted her like dreams from her childhood of painting roses and luminous grins seen in the swirling darkness.
The butterfly settled on her hand, somehow spurring her on. At the thought, Alice smiled, a rare thing in these past five years.
She opened the lid and, taking one last breath of Otherworld air, drank the liquid in one gulp.
The room started to swirl like in a dream as her throat burned in contact with the liquid, and Alice was falling, with images and objects flying by in dizzying colours. Books, bird cages, candlesticks... It was like the rabbit hole, only completely unlike that experience all together. This time Alice was not afraid. Absolem's throaty, opium-influenced laughter danced in her ears. Images of Chessure, Mirana, the Tweedles, McTwisp, Mallymkun, all her friends flashed by her eyes, filling her with warmth. And one name was on her lips and one face was forever present in her mind as she hurtled between the two worlds.
Tarrant.