Twilight was elated to find she was becoming quite small. Rather, as she ran, everything around her grew in size. At least, she hoped that was the case. The change was gradual at first, entirely unnoticeable, but the longer her hooves propelled her into the ever-darkening woodland, the larger the difference between one tree or stone and the next. She stopped every dozen yards, backed toward a tree and bucked the bark, leaving clear twin craters that exposed sappy, reddish wood beneath the deep furrows covering each trunk. These marks would serve as guides when she needed to return to the path through the unfamiliar terrain. Soon, she could no longer reach the trunks and found herself leaving her marks upon the massive roots that were now taller than she stood.

She stopped to rest for a moment, her breath heaving. Her back legs throbbed from the double duty of carrying her and the constant impacts against the unyielding wood. Looking around hurriedly, she studied the environment. Twilight searched for something familiar and was rewarded. Farther along, in a direction only a few degrees off from the line she had made to get here, she spotted a familiar figure. Had the world around her remained at the scale it was before, the stout tree would have still reminded her of the greedy foal grasping for treats, but her theory of the forest was confirmed by a towering version of that previous sight. Its branches now seemed more like the thick arms of a colossal beast, outstretched toward the skies, preparing to thrust them down upon the earth and crush anyone below it.

Suddenly, Twilight was very conscious of herself. She had galloped, headlong, into strange territory in a land she knew nothing about. What was more, she had left Blake exposed and quite vulnerable. Any predator that happened upon the injured and unconscious rabbit would find an easy meal. Twilight shuddered at the thought of waking to find one’s innards spilled on the ground beside them with some bleary-eyed creature hungrily grinding the soft flesh between its teeth. She cursed herself for being so foolhardy and rose to her sore legs, ignoring the burning fatigue. All she could do was push forward and make the best of her mistake.

Twilight charged onward to the stout colossus. As she rounded another massive arch of root, she caught sight of something behind it that nearly stole her balance and cause her to trip as she stumbled to a halt. At this, she looked once more at the tree now towering above. Her memory of the other tree was clear and as precisely detailed as she had allowed herself to see while avoiding the hypnotic draw of the fractals. The picture in her mind’s eye was the twin of the specimen before her, yet there was one distinct difference. From the center of a yawning, black puncture in the earth, a thin, desiccated tendril of something that looked both fleshy and fibrous curved into the air, ending in a ragged, counterclockwise spiral. The dirt around the hole it rose from was crumbling and irregular as if eroded by many seasons of rain and snow, but it was not quite an ancient feature. Twilight looked back at the greying, worm-like arm and immediately pictured a grotesque segment of something pulsating and blood-colored thrusting up from the earth as it clung to the tree’s roots. Something within her told Twilight she had satisfied her own curiosity about the thing and she gladly tore her eyes from the sight.

She continued around the tree, now keeping her eyes wide open for any potential predators as she marked her progress from what she remembered. Doing this, she noticed more of the holes with meaty roots protruding from them throughout the forest floor. The things looked unnatural and malign, as if they did not belong, as if they had once sprouted from some nightmarish teratoma long since excised from the heart of the world. She could not imagine what awful environment to which things like these must have been native, for they stood out among the lush environs much the same way gnarled scar tissue leaped from a beautiful face.

Soon, the fallen branch she had been looking for came into view through the grass now brushing her ears where it had elsewhere only tickled her knees. Even having come to the conclusion on her own that the branch would be there, Twilight could not help feeling some hint of incredulity at what lay before her. The thicker, crooked length of wood lay next to a thinner, fresh segment. The larger was more akin to a log here, but the smaller was exactly what she had hoped to find. This one was not a stick, but a sturdy-looking rod thicker and twice as long as one of her forelegs. Wasting no more time, Twilight galloped to it and took a small segment jutting from the rod between her teeth and pulled. The makeshift lever was weighty, but not too heavy, though she would need to find a more comfortable way to transport it, lest she lacerate her gums to bloody mush dragging the unwieldy thing along the bumpy forest floor. The grass, while longer and considerably thicker would not hold well, nor did it lend itself to knotting, as Twilight found upon tearing a lengthy blade from the earth with her teeth and attempting to fashion a simple harness from it. The fibers simply frayed and split like confetti as she bent and twisted them into otherwise secure tangles.

Frustrated and increasingly anxious to return to the path, Twilight swept her gaze over the surroundings finding little more than a single spear thistle poking jauntily upward from a patch of crabgrass a short gallop away. Even in the deepening shadows of the forest canopy, the blossom at the top of the thistle was a violent shade of purple, rich and saturated. It nearly glowed in its vividness. The shock of its thin, curved petals rising from the stalk in a miniature explosion of color were all Twilight could see before she knew what was happening.

In her mad rush to help Blake, Twilight had been thoroughly exhausting herself and was functioning on little more than adrenaline. As her empty stomach made its need apparent, her eyes had fallen on the petals of the thistle and lingered longer than she had intended to look. For a protracted moment, she considered the flower hungrily. Each purple blade drew her gaze over it and on to the next new petal, then the next, until they were too small to see from where she stood. She drew closer, unaware of her own movements while thoughts of nourishment faded. Soon, she was clambering over the broad shoots of crabgrass and staring fixedly at the weedy flower, all thoughts of rescuing Blake swept away as the fractals sprouted into being within her mind. Twilight’s world became a series of tiny journeys into other worlds of dusky purple blades rising over a mottled horizon. When the petals held no further frontiers, she would move on the jagged leaves and be lost among the rivers and canyons that played across their surfaces. The wind rose behind her from the direction of the wild forest, carrying with it the faint chirping of the earliest rising nocturnal insects.

Something landed on a branch high above Twilight with a soft flutter. A bone white feather shook loose and gently glided down through the crisp air, passing across her vision, unnoticed. Had she not remained mesmerized, she might have looked up to see a handsome, chestnut colored hawk owl perched regally within a slanted golden ray of late afternoon light. The owl cocked her head, listening intently for prey with ears sharpened by eye sockets emptied of their organs long ago and far away. The duel she had fought with the mewling, repulsive things that had once been her own hatchlings had left her with two puckered craters set among a raised, crisscross of scars. Far below, she could hear the beating of a heart. She gave a high, echoing hoo and listened. The returning sound waves summoned a stark image of the forest to her mind’s eye with senses her stubborn will to live had forced into development. Locating a new perch nearer the ground, she silently swooped down and settled on a thin, drooping branch. From here, the heartbeat was louder, giving shape to the owner in the form of an equine sitting unnaturally still among a tangle of grass and thorny thistle leaves. The equine was far larger than her usual prey, but there was a subtle rustling among the grass and fallen leaves that was auspicious of the presence of nocturnal rodents and blind snakes. She heard the soft hiss of hard scales sliding over stones and arboreal debris as the critter drew nearer to the equine. Her dark, glossy talons flexed and she tensed her body in preparation for the dive that would end the snake’s life. She leaned forward and dove, her wings slicing through the air as she brought the scythes of bone on the ends of her legs forward. The attack ended in a flash of maroon and a bright ribbon of blood arced through the air, spilling from both ragged ends of the owl’s torn neck. Each piece tumbled in opposite directions, landing several yards apart. The snake continued along the floor, tittering eerily with each flick of the blindingly white tongue that danced in and out of its mouth.

Twilight remained unaware of anything but the fractals as the creature that had so casually snuffed the life of the owl slid over a back hoof and up the mound of her thigh. Still tittering, it slithered along the valley of her lower back, between her shoulders, finally winding its way around her stiff neck and resting its own head atop the neatly cut mane. It waited, tasting the air and watching with eyes a rotted yellow that cast a dim, greasy glow in the fading light.

The snake would not have blinked, even if it could, as glowing cat’s eyes materialized in the outstretched palm of a branch that looked remarkably like an arm. It met the lofty gaze bearing down on it from between the curled, gnarly fingers, matching every bit of the feline disdain with the mischievous humor twinkling within the bright gems of its eyes. Several moments of pregnant silence later, a white crescent split the air under the eyes, forming the beginnings of a crudely grinning face. A smooth, baritone voice emanated from the grin.

“Pray tell, serpent, what do you plan on doing with that Stranger?” the face spoke, primly clipping consonants and drawing out vowels in a manner of speech that alleged to give its owner an irreproachable air of knowing, command, and dangerous cunning.

The snake replied in a croaking voice that seemed constantly on the edge of laughter, “Come out from that no-where and we’ll talk, cat.”

“Or what, morsel?” the cat replied, sternly, still smiling.

“Or I’ll kill her right this second.” The snake tittered. “The unicorn interests you, I know.”

With a grating sound like harshly chiming glass, ringing metal and a rush of air, the eyes and smile were suddenly framed by a wicked mockery of a widely grinning cat’s face. The crescent dimmed and was filled with large, blood-spattered blunt teeth. The canines, however, were fangs ending in deeply stained red points. His dark grey fur was marked in all quarters by swirling tendrils and bands of black. The eyes were accented in simple patterns reminiscent of flames licking up from the corners. Another slash of black pointed down from the bottom of each eye and a spiked curve followed the lower lip of the cat’s smile, completing the appearance of a grim, feline jester.

“The unicorn means nothing to me. It's what she might know, that I'm after. I will ask her how she came to Wonderland, but what becomes of her after is not my concern.”

The snake laughed its high, tittering laugh though this time there was real humor in it.

“I’m afraid that’s not going to happen, just yet.”

“Do you say so?” the cat purred.

“I do. You see, this one has come here broken.” The snake reared the tail that had been trailing down Twilight’s back and patted her head, despite its inadequate length to do so earlier. “Her memory is not quite what it used to be. At least, she remembers her name, but she will need time to gather the pieces of herself together again. She's had such a great fall.”

“Time does not wait on the plights of lost fools and he is getting away from Wonderland once again.” The cat remarked.

“Lost she is, indeed, but this Stranger is far from foolish. Although,” the snake paused, lifting the dark strands that fell over her forehead with its tail and lightly flicking the tip of her horn, “she’s not herself, at the moment.”

“Whoever she was is not who she will be again. For her own sake, she had better find a useful person to become.” The cat’s head faded with another discordant chime, the wide grin disappearing last. He reappeared in his entirety before the oversized thistle, grin first. The head sat upon a boney neck attached to a body that could have belonged to the starved remains of a dead stray. The right shoulder possessed a blade-like protrusion thrusting upward into the air and each limb ended in hefty paws with four cruelly molded claws, perpetually extended. The cat leaned forward, studying Twilight’s blank expression. Her eyes moved, ever so slightly, and she turned her neck the barest fraction as he watched. He hummed thoughtfully as he took note of the six-pointed magenta starburst on her flanks and the pointed spiral horn. “This Stranger is most definitely not from Alice’s world, but she may be of some use in the coming days, after all.” The cat turned his eyes to the snake again. They glowed with their own yellow light, but his shone like the incandescence of a searing forge. “Guide her to the Vorpal Blade, serpent.” He said as the chime sounded and he became translucent, then nearly invisible. “And pray she has the will to wield it or she may be wielded by it.”

The snake watched as the last of the cat’s deathly visage dissipated in a vaporous swirl. When it was sure the he would not return, it slithered from Twilight’s shoulders and encircled the thistle plant. In a blur of maroon scales, the cleanly severed violet bloom rose a short way into the air as the leaves and stalk of the plant were brutally torn from the earth. The stalk was cut and shorn of its leaves, the thorny greens tossed into the breeze. The snake’s tail darted forward to catch the flower by the short stem still attached, leaving the rest of the stalk to fall dully to the ground. All of this happened in a few small fractions of a second, before Twilight snapped out of her hypnosis.

She gagged as vertigo batted her sense of direction around in a cyclone of nausea and confusion. Morphing geometries swam before her eyes, clouding the world in a turmoil of writhing, swirling colors. As her vision soon began to clear and she managed to maintain her unsteady posture, she squinted at two points of light before her. A scream of terror caught in her throat as the form came into sudden focus.

“For you, Twilight.” The snake cooed as it extended the thistle blossom to her.

The scream came anyway.

Author's Note

I always loved the dialogue written for the Cheshire Cat in the American Mcgee's Alice games. Everything he said was so eloquent and poetically worded. I hope I captured just a little of that.