• She could still remember the day when they had The Conversation, the mad hatter and her, and two cups of steaming hot tea that tasted as strong as it smelled. After all, the mad hatter insisted on only serving tea of the best quality that he could offer, despite the man being a little loopy himself, or so Alice herself would term it.

    She couldn’t quite remember what had led to The Conversation, and what happened prior, during and after, but she didn’t suppose that it mattered now that she could never return to the world where she came from. It had been another ordinary day, or an unordinary day, but she wouldn’t be sure of that, days passing and events flying by as madly and as unreliable as the mad hatter’s watch, and always, always late. But she did wonder if that was what had led to her exile from Wonderland, to ask a question and to seek a sideways truth.

    “They say that some people, when they dream, they are wide awake at the same time. Do you think that I am dreaming, or wide awake?”

    The mad hatter had blinked at her over his tea, words lost to her ears and mind emerging from his lips, soundless.

    “Maybe not even then. Maybe not even both, or somewhere in between. Wouldn’t that be strange, if I was one of those, and I ‘woke up’?”

    And woke up she did one terrible morning, to bright blue skies beyond a dusty window, to grey buildings grim and proper and stark, in the room of a stranger and a bed she did not ever remember crawling in to rest for the night. For a terrible moment, she wondered if she was dreaming, or if someone had played an unfunny joke on her, like the moment when a feather was still floating up in the air free from gravity for a moment, before everything caught up and reality intruded like a clumsy elephant upon her, and the dream was broken.

    “Lila, you’re awake!”

    Those were the first words into her dream reality.

    “We have been so worried about you ever since you have been in that accident, Lila. I’m so glad that you have woken up now, so, so glad. The Lord must have heard my prayers.” Alice watched as a strange lady clasped her hands together, closing her eyes briefly in. “Terrible, terrible accident. But all is good now that you are awake, isn’t it, Lila? How are you feeling now?”

    Alice had been silent, up to this point in time as women bustled in and out of her room ever since her waking, or dreaming, the women too focused on their tasks, or the simple fact that she had opened her eyes this very morning to actually pay attention to what she has to say, the situation stranger than strange. Now, they hovered next to her bed, concerned faces after concerned faces, and it made her feel slightly uneasy. “Am I awake, or am I dreaming, or in between?” Alice asked.

    The women broke out into murmurs. “What a silly thing to ask, child, of course you are awake. What else could you be? The months of being asleep must have addled your minds, we will have to let the doctor take a look at you later, you poor dear,” the strange lady who talked about the Lord, whoever that would be, perhaps similar to the Queen of Hearts, shook her head, a small smile playing about her lips. She looked rather kind, perhaps motherly, her hair done in a bun which Alice suspected should be giving her headaches of some sort, the woman a little on the plump side, like a freshly baked bun just out of the oven.

    Alice tilted her head at them. “But this isn’t Wonderland. Where’s the mad hatter, and the grin without the cat, and the caterpillar?” She asked, blinking at them as if it would make all the sense in the world if they were present. “This isn’t my home.”

    A hushed, almost reproachful silence fell over the women and the bedside, the women breaking out into hushed whispers, their faces more closely guarded now, shadows in their eyes. Alice frowned at them.

    “Poor, poor Lila. You’ve woken up now, Wonderland is just a dream,” the woman shook her head, taking up Alice’s hand, lips pressed tightly together. “The doctor will set you right again.”

    “I’m not Lila. That is someone else’s name. My name is Alice,” she frowned again, sounding shriller now. Perhaps they had mistaken her for someone else, and that was why she was here. If she could convince them that they had the wrong girl, perhaps she could go back.

    The woman merely looked at her with pity in her eyes. “Of course you’re Lila. Who else could you be? You’re not Alice.”

    And that was that.

    Things in what they call Reality was very different from what Alice knew about the World from Wonderland. Here, everything was upside down and inside out, and Alice was forced to look at everything twice over.

    It took Alice a long time to get used to the way things worked in reality. For one, she did not have the freedom that she had in Wonderland. There were no sudden visits to the Mad Hatter or the Chesire cat, everywhere she went, people followed, and fussed over her as though she was a newborn fawn on its first steps, weak and in dire need of guidance even though she had reassured them now and then that she was fine. Cats in reality did not grin, and there were no grins without cats either, and when mentioned, all Alice received from the adults were pitying smiles hidden behind understanding and concerned expressions, as though she wouldn’t notice the shadows flitting behind their faces that dimmed the brightness of honesty and sincerity and their smile.

    Tea was always on time, and being late was frowned upon. Clocks were always on time, and people didn’t wear hats to tea. In fact, when she did suggest it, they had laughed as though it was a joke, and she had to laugh along, not understanding why not. In fact, tea was an awfully boring business, and she sorely missed the tea parties that they often held in wonderland with the Mad Hatter. Tea was a cheerful and messy affair in wonderland when it was held by the Mad Hatter. Tea spilled, laughter was in abundance, and they would both talk about things common and uncommon, of nonsensical things that did make sense. When people gathered for tea in reality, they were prim and proper and absolutely no nonsense, all manner and grace and politeness, skirting around each other behind those smiles that weren’t bright and honest and sincere.They talked, but not of what she and the Mad Hatter would talk about, and it made her uncomfortable. They barely touched their tea and the food set out before them in an elaborate display, sipping merely for display than to taste the tea, its smell strong, but weak in taste, as bland as water, instead choosing to engage each other in a play of words of make believe kindness and concern. Alice missed the Mad Hatter and his messy array of the tea table very much, and often wondered when it was possible to go back, and to find a way back on her own if no one would offer her help.

    People followed the clock and their schedules like the hare, stiffly and religiously, and regarded each other with a certain guardedness behind their eyes, suspicious and doubtful, although what there was to be suspicious about, Alice had no clue. They insisted on calling her Lila, and that she belonged there, with them, and bid her forget about Wonderland, a place that could never be home and ‘never existed except for in her mind’. Wishing turned into longing, and longing into thirst, her thoughts turning to the time she had spent in wonderland, in her dream with her dear friends, even as the memories dissipated and fell apart like a sand castle in the hands of the clumsy child, breaking apart and dissolving and escaping from between her fingers even as time passed by. Would she forget Wonderland, then? A fear seized her then. Would she forget Alice, would she forget herself? And then Wonderland would cease to exist, if Alice did not exist, and she would not be herself anymore, and become the ‘Lila’ that everyone around her thought her to be, forcing her to be in a stranger’s shoes, to learn her mannerisms, to not be Alice. Her ‘mother’ had forbade her to call herself Alice anymore, and she only did it in private when she was alone, to remind herself firmly who she was and where she is. Would they cry for her, if Wonderland knew that Alice was dying? Would they miss her, remember her when she did not?

    She had to return, before she started to believe in a dream called reality.

    Days turned into weeks turned into months and yet she still could not seem to find the road to wonderland, or even a place that remotely resembles wonderland no matter who she asked or where she looked except for in books with pictures for children that adults said did not exist. Did she not dream enough, wish enough, search hard enough? All of the unlikely places, all of the stories, and they thought her delusional. Perhaps she did not sleep for long enough, dream for long enough? Perhaps she had to return to Wonderland the same way that she went the first time? She had heard of it, of the time when she had been sleeping and ‘dreaming’ and of the accident that had led to it. They told her that she had been in a coma for a long time, and had a close brush with death, also known as eternal sleep from which no one wakes. Would that help her gain entrance back into home? Days passed and she was more and more convinced that this was not where she was supposed to be, not who she was supposed to be, and everyone telling her otherwise and opposites and seldom honest truth.

    Now, while death was as foreign to her as society rules and binding laws, she understood that with death came pain, and was very much a one way road where by one did not come back from or walk a second time. It was a finality and a full stop and a means to an end and yet not an end and she was almost certain that she would be able to go home, and stay there for good. She hated this new reality-dream that is and yet not, unable to comprehend how people could stand living this way, even though she had tried, hard as she could, to convince them and to teach them of what she knew, ignored and pushed aside each and every time and dismissed as the ramblings of a mentally ill child. She had learned to dislike that word as much as she had learned to dislike tea with reality as much as the un-smiles and the people who watched her as though she was being strange and not strange and could not make up their minds. Would she want to stay, to become one of them, she pondered during nights when she tossed and turned and could not simply sleep.

    Mother had told her of her accident, when she had climbed onto the window ledge and had fallen out of it for reasons no one knew of and was finally found by the servants lying cold and unmoving and still amongst the dead leaves and dirt in Autumn. Perhaps if the same thing happened she would return to Wonderland once more, return to where her home was, where her name was Alice and no one would tell her otherwise, to her friends, to where her heart was, and far away from the cold and strange reality that was yet stranger in its mechanical logic. She would have to leave, so that Lila could return home, and so could Alice, to put proper things back in their proper places or so the adults of reality have taught her.

    That very night, when the house was quiet and asleep, she crept out of bed, pushing the windows open, shivering at the sudden gust of the cold night wind. The adults have kept her away from the window as much as possible, and kept on reminding her until they were convinced that she would not try to go near it. She peered down the side of the building, shivering, clinging onto the window ledge. It was a far drop, close and yet far, but of all things it would be fast. All it would take is a second of a breath and she would be home, she told herself, standing still in the wind.

    Would they welcome her home? Would they be glad to hear of her stories, she wondered, as she watched reality in its night time glory, dark and silent and beautiful and strange and all that wonderland isn’t, of strange structures and people and roads and maps and words that didn’t quite make sense. The Mad Hatter would love to hear that, she decided. She would tell the Chesire about the cats of reality and how they did not smile or disappear but stare instead, unblinkingly and unwaveringly. She would tell them of tea, of the un-smiles, and she was sure the Mad Hatter would be proud of his own brew. They might laugh, they would laugh together when she tells them that reality did not believe in them. Perhaps they didn’t, too. Perhaps no one did.

    On and on, she drew the wispy images and memories and thoughts of Wonderland together, as the moon travelled slowly across the night skies in its serenity and amongst the dark clouds and dreams of the people, between stardust and tiled roofs and still she dreamed, until the sun crept up unsuspectingly upon them, chasing away the skirts of the night. Reality was beautiful, in a way, but not enough that she would want to stay as a part of it. She climbed onto the window ledge when the first rays of the sun touched the sky, the edges of the skies turning blue, like the crest of a sea wave or so she had read in a book somewhere. Birds chirped, and the sun crept a little higher, encouraged by birdsong and light and the way darkness shied from it. She would try to remember it, though reality might not remember her as she did not remember wonderland when she was on the other side, but she would try her best to tell the others when the memory was fresh and clean in her mind and untainted by time ( which was punctual, by the way ). She had seen enough, she smiled to herself then. Enough to remember, enough to retell, and enough to make a story of.

    It was time for Alice and Lila to go home.

    She closed her eyes, spread her arms wide.

    And the sun, quietly, silently, chased away the shadows of the night till it was day and not-night, as it would continue to be so for next day, the one after that, and the ones following after.