• Alice waved her hand out of the window and felt the warm air press against her palm and move between her fingers. She poked her head out of the window and felt the air hit her cheeks, making their wan color rosy and her curly light brown hair tangled up in the wind, usually her mother would scold her. Alice to put her head in and fix her hair for it was so windblown but Alice felt the abandon of freedom lift over her heart. She did not mean to, it was not evil to feel the freedom of putting her head out of the window. Alice took a sniff of the smell outside, the aroma of fresh grass was so enticing and the sight of the bright sky, there were slight wisp of clouds that were so white in the sky they looked as if a painter had slightly embellished the horizon with them. There were dots of white on the wide lawns that looked like sheep. Alice saw a girl petting a little sheep; the little girl looked at the gleaming limo and stuck out her tongue. Alice was surprised and stacked out her tongue while giving a smile before sticking her head back in the car.
    Alice leaned against the smooth leather interior and stared outside. The scenery seemed to calm the little girl down and soon her odd colored eyes seemed to become heavy and droop with sleep. The little girl felt the warm leather against her cheek and slowly she felt herself transported to an odd dream world. The night before she had too excited to feel the soft slip of slumber lay across her mind. Her mind wandered as soft little snores emitted from the little girl.
    Alice remembered the afternoon tea she and her mother had once when she was much younger. The day felt so sunny and warm that Alice’s mother insisted that they not have lunch inside the gloomy home but rather outside. The little girl remembered the delicate plates that held delicate sandwiches, small pastries and custards. Alice’s mother drank a brisk ice tea with a little bit of lemon and honey while she allowed her daughter to drink a tart lemonade. Laureate wore a frilly lace dress, smelled like French powder, and wore a red rose in her lovely hair. She allowed Alice to dress in her finest dress just for an occasion. During their little tea party, the little girl felt so important and well mannered as she sat on a big encyclopedia to reach the tabletop. Laureate laughed contentedly as her daughter pretended to pat her lips with a linen napkin. “Oh, you are going to be a fine lady, Alice. You are already very pretty!”
    “Not as much as you, Mother.”
    “Oh no, dear you will have a better life then I. You have lovely light brown hair, it could almost be blonde but its not. Your eyes are heaven eyes, did you know that?” Without letting the little girl answer back, Laureate continued, “Your eyes are like celestial beacons. A light bluish green with little specks of amber, gray and violet. It is so hard to recognize your eye color sometimes! Oh, but my little girl, you will be a beauty with slight rosy cheeks and lips. However, you will not be like me! Oh no.” Laureate’s joyous little face slowly turned grave and her eyes turned angry and dark. Alice felt her heart quicken a bit as her mother’s cherry face turned dark.
    Laureate began again in a much more somber tone “No, you won’t be like me at all. I will make sure you know what you are worth in life. Not like me, my mother insisted that I be judged by my face and you know what it has given me in life. Nothing! Only a marriage with a man who hates me as much as I hate him. Every time he looks at me, I see his hatred and I know he sees mine. He gallivants around with these other women! He does it to spite me, he thinks I am jealous but I do not care! I married him for his money; he married me for my looks. Oh, my mother knew this and she wanted our marriage to last. I had a future! I was going to be a writer, I was going to travel the world and see everything but now look at me” Laureate moved her hands like a dying butterfly “Useless! Stuck in a jail, a beautiful jail nonetheless, but still a cage to me! You are the only treasure I have, the little bit of freedom because you are going to be what I could never achieve to be despite your father’s insistence you will marry well. No. You are going to be a woman whose value will equal her intelligence and her willful nature. Alice, you are going to be different because I will make sure of it. I am trapped here but you, Alice, you have my beauty but you will have something I never had, and that is courage. Alice, you will have the courage to get out of this prison because I will make sure you will go to school, college, and attain an intelligence I never bothered to use.”
    Alice looked at her lovely mother and saw the fierce tears in her eyes. The little girl took her hand out and softly grabbed her mother’s. Laureate jumped up from her dark reverie to give a cheerful smile on her face and she said in a soft tone that was familiar to her daughter. “But we won’t worry about that until years later. Let’s continue to eat.”
    Alice felt her eyes open as the car lurched suddenly. She tried to steady herself on the seat as the driver exclaimed from the front “It’s just a bump, Miss.” Alice warily called out “Are we there yet, it must have been hours since you picked me up from the station.”
    “Miss, we are one hour until we are there.” said the driver. Alice rubbed her eyes, looked around, and felt forlorn. The beautiful warm weather had left, the sky had turned a dour color, dark gray and the soft wisps of clouds turned to large, dark storm clouds that threatened rain. The air had turned humid and heavy, and the wan little girl hand has felt slightly clammy and some of the light strands of her hair begin to frizzle. There was an odd appearance outside though, more then the downcast sky; there were large banks of fog on the emerald grass. This fog looked so heavy and thick that Alice could not see the emerald of the grass anymore. The trees that were so lush nearby, had began to look even large as the branches could engulf the sky.
    Alice looked at the sober landscape and felt a little down from it all. She looked at her delicate wristwatch on her wrist, and noticed that the time was off. The hands seemed too moved quickly, as if time was being moved forward at an unearthly speed. Alice grew troubled and tapped the clock slightly until it stopped, its hand stopping suddenly. Alice shook her wristwatch again and held it to her ear, hearing the soft click of her clock begin again. She looked at the clock again and the time had been correct and started again.
    “Miss, we are here!” said the driver. Alice looked out of the car and saw a large stone staircase in front of her. The trees and plants around her were so lush that they seemed to suck in her breath. The staircase was so large in front of her that she could not see the top of it. Alice looked back at the driver who said “ Up the stairs Miss. The home is right there.” Alice gave a slight nod as she began her foray up the steps.


    What she did not know was that the time on her wristwatch had stopped.