The Fourth Wall Breaks

3 - Kisha in Aliceland

"Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!"

Kisha turned quickly looking for the source of the voice only to see a white rabbit pulling a watch out of its waistcoat. She tilted her head curious for a moment before looking around herself. 

She found she was standing on the bank of a river. Not far from her were two girls sitting beneath a tree. The younger of the two seemed quite tired but suddenly arose with bright eyes. Her entire demeanor changed; at one point she seemed quite sleepy and tired but now she looked as if her entire body had come to life. Even her dark brown hair seemed to volumize as she looked with delight in the direction of where the white rabbit had been. She ran headlong after the rabbit and the world around Kisha seemed to become hazy. It was hard to discern objects from one another but Kisha could still see the rough outline of the other girl on the bank who looked to be around the same age as her. She ran towards the girl intending to ask for help but it became harder and harder to see her.

"Please help! Whoever you are! I can't see!" Kisha called out to the girl on the bank.

The girl made no move. The world grew darker. Just before all light was gone Kisha called out one more time, "Please! At least tell me your name!"

"My name is Lorna."

The world grew brighter once again. "Lorna? It's nice to meet you I'm Kisha."

"Kisha? What a strange name... What a strange appearance." She said with a tone of puzzlement, "Are you a girl? Why then do you wear man's clothing? Or if you are a man then why wear your hair at such a long length? Who are your parents? They should not allow you to be so unkempt!" As Lorna spoke things came more and more into focus. "Well? Are you lame? Speak!" 

Kisha at last noticed she was holding a book - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. "Of course! So that must have been Alice! I was reading this just before opening the book, that must be it!" She looked around herself awkwardly before admitting she had no idea how to get back. 

"How do you know Alice?" Lorna panicked, "What book? What nonsense do you speak? I demand to know!"

Kisha looked up into the eyes of the girl in front of her and replied, "Don't worry. I'm a friend." However, at that moment the only thing running through Kisha's mind was, isn't Alice supposed to have blonde hair, blue eyes and a blue dress? For you see Kisha had seen the movies just like you. And even Lorna's name was not Lorna in the movies, that is of course assuming Lorna is Alice's sister. "Are you Alice's sister?" It couldn't hurt to find out.

"I am. Who then do I speak with?"

"As I said I'm a friend."

"Of Alice's?" 

Kisha was tempted to say yes, but what she knew of Alice from the stories seemed to describe her as someone who had no real friends outside of her dreams. "No and yes."

Lorna frowned and the creases on her forehead only proved the immense amount of concentration it took for her to understand.

"Aren't you the least bit worried about your sister? She did just run off after a rabbit. From what I know she's probably fallen down the rabbit hole now, and soon she'll meet all kinds of horrors before she..." wakes up! This is a dream! That's why everything went hazy after she left! She didn't need to keep this part of her dream alive when she was no longer a part of it. Then why was it alive now?

"I need not worry. She is safe." Safe?  "She lies still in my arms soundly asleep on the bank of this very river."

"Wait. So you know she's asleep?"  Things just got weirder and weirder.

"Of a surety!" Lorna said affirmatively

"But how?"

"As Alice herself knows she is dreaming, so also do I know." Kisha was so intrigued by the idea of a dream knowing it's a dream but not trying to tell the dreamer that it is what it is. "You are here as well. You too must be part of her dream." Lorna thought for a second before continuing. "Now I understand what you mean by being her friend but not."

Kisha again looked around her. It seemed she would not be dragged into Alice's dream of Wonderland. This meant also though that all she would be able to do while here was speak to Alice's sister. "Tell me about Alice." Kisha asked Lorna.

"She is loving and wildly curious. She trusts much too easily and has an imagination to rival even those who think one day they will fly. It may be that rival was not the right word, she is far more imaginative than that."

"Does she have any friends?" This question honestly plagued Kisha.

"There is the cat - Dinah. It is up to interpretation whether you would or would not consider the nurse her friend."

So Kisha was right when she assumed she doesn't have many friends. "What about how she spends her days?"

At this question Lorna smiled and looked into the distance as if her mind was far away. "She would love to spend every day imagining wonderful things but alas she has much too many a thing to learn. Her governess has her start lessons at 9 sharp each morning." Lorna paused for a moment, "There was a time where she had gone to day school though no longer." Lorna came back to the present looked at Kisha then exclaimed, "My, what a beautiful bracelet you have! It must have cost you a fortune!"

Kisha's gaze fell to rest on her left wrist. Upon it was a beautiful gold bracelet  about one and a half inches wide perfectly shaped to her arm even her pisiform bone that joins her wrist to her arm. The Gold Bracelet seemed to change shape each time Kisha moved to fit each curve perfectly. "You are right. It is very beautiful."

"Is it solid gold?" Lorna asked.

Kisha looked at it again and remembered how it had burst into light when she returned from her first adventure in a book. It had just occurred to her that it may be the key to getting home. She placed the book on the floor and immediately begun hitting the bracelet with her right hand. This may have been because she remembered the impact of the book against her wrist as she was falling through the sky. "Come on!"

Lorna slowly backed away towards the tree she had sat beneath.

"Come on!" Kisha shouted even louder, "Just work you dumb bracelet!" She slammed her hand against repetitively. "Why!" she slammed her hand down, "Won't!" She hit once again, "You!" By this point both her arms were aching, "Work!" She picked the book up from the floor and slammed it into her left wrist.

At first she only registered pain, then the brilliance of the bracelet as it exploded. "Why, I must say, that was truly magical!" She exclaimed. Maybe just a little bit of the way Lorna spoke had rubbed off on her, but it couldn't really be that bad. "This is brilliant!" Now all she needed to do was test her theory.