"Curioser and curioser!"  exclaimed the young Alice as she took in the sight before her.

After falling down a rabbit hole, floating gently through a downward tunnel, briefly hanging upside down by her ankles, running through twisting hallways, and opening doors behind doors (each door smaller than the previous one), the young lady had emerged through a small passageway and beheld a grand hallway.  The floor had checkermarked tiling while the walls and ceiling had a uniform square pattern running continuously throughout the room.

Young Alice found herself in this predicament as the result of pursuing a white rabbit of all things.  But this was no ordinary white rabbit.  He wore fanciful clothes, wore spectacles, carried a pocketwatch, and spoke English!  After ranting about being late for a very important date, he hopped along his way through a meadow and into a rabbit hole.

Stricken with curiosity, Alice pursued him, only stopping briefly as she examined said rabbit hole as her pet cat, Dinah, lingered by her side.  Tempted to discover more, Alice crawled through the rabbit hole until she fell from a sudden drop, waving goodbye to Dinah as she descended into the darkness of the tunnel in pursuit of the White Rabbit.

Which brings us back to the grand hallway.

As Alice examined the room, she saw at the far end a set of violet curtains flittering in the distance as if they were recently disturbed.  The curtains were small, hovering only a foot or so from the edge of the floor.  If Alice were to guess, they were around knee high to her.  Quickly she made her way over towards them, sliding forward and crouched down onto her knees.  She pulled the curtains aside, discovering a small wooden door with a golden doorknob, decorated with a human face.  The eyes were above the round knob, which served as the nose, while a keyhole served as the mouth.  Eager in her pursuit of the White Rabbit, she swiftly reached for the doorknob, grabbing it and twisting hard.

"Ohhh!" shouted the Doorknob in response, face scrunched in agony.

Shocked by the response, Alice pulls backwards, alarm written on her face as she holds her hands over her mouth, eliciting a loud gasp.

"Oh!  I beg your pardon!" says Alice.

The Doorknob straightens his face out, the handle twisting mildly as the face starts to relax.

"Quite alright," the Doorknob replies, "but you did give me quite a turn."

"You see I was following a-" starts Alice,

"Rather good one!" interrupts the Doorknob "Doorknob?  Turn?" as he chuckles at his choice of words.

"Please sir, I-" continues Alice, leaning in to make her case, waiting for the Doorknob to stop talking.

"One good turn deserves another." chuckles the Doorknob, rotating his nose as he cracks a smile.  Straightening out and mellowing his demeanor, he asks young alice with a straight face, "What can I do for you?"

"Well I'm looking for a white rabbit." begins Alice as she leans in closer to the Doorknob, bringing her face closer as she gets on her hands and knees.  "So um, if you don't mind?"  At this point her face is just inches away from the Doorknob.

Figuring out what she desires, the Doorknob opens his mouth, allowing Alice to peer through the keyhole.  She brings her eyes closer and spots her target off in the distance.  The White Rabbit is hopping along the other side through a meadow towards some woods.  Alice just needed to get through this small doorway.

"There he is!" declares Alice, getting back onto her knees and reaching for the Doorknob's nose once more in her haste.

"I simply must get through!" she shouts.

"Sorry," interjects the Doorknob, "you're much too big.  Simply impassible."

"You mean impossible." corrects Alice

"No, impassible," responds the Doorknob, "nothing's impossible" he follows with a chuckle.

Mildly frustrated with both the Doorknob's wordplay and her predicament, Alice considered what he had just said.  It was true that the door to pass was rather small for Alice.  Assuming she could fit through, it would be very, very tight for her to pass.  There was also the matter as to whether or not the door itself was currently locked.  If so, then passing through would be even harder than she thought.

"Why don't you try the bottle on the table?" asks the Doorknob, removing Alice from her thoughts.

"Table?" asks Alice, perplexed.  There was no table in this hallway, only her.  As she turned around, she saw in a flash a fancy glass table materialize, with a small glass bottle gently landing atop it.  Alice gasps in astonishment at how this new object entered the room.  Did the Doorknob somehow summon it into existence at the mere suggestion he gave to Alice?

"Read the directions," instructed the Doorknob, "and directly you will be directed in the right direction." he elaborates, chuckling once more.

Alice approached the table, getting a closer look at the bottle that sat atop it.  It was a small bottle, no bigger than her fist in terms of size.  At the head of it was a rounded piece of cork keeping it closed and around the neck of the bottle was a small pink tag tied to it with just two words written on it, which Alice read aloud.

"Drink me."

Uncorking the bottle, Alice prepares to do as was instructed, when suddenly a momentary hesitation seized her.  Perplexed, she begins thinking aloud as she examines the bottle.

"Better look first, for if one drinks much from a bottle marked poison," she holds the bottle to her nose, sniffing for any odd scent, "it's almost certain to disagree with one sooner or later."

Perplexed by her logic, the Doorknob asks "Beg your pardon?"

"I was just giving myself some good advice," responds Alice.  Deciding that there was nothing ominous about the bottle, she took a sip from it, letting the liquid slowly go along her tongue and down her throat.  The sensation and flavors from it boggled her mind as they seemed to change every few seconds.

"Hmm...tastes like uh...cherry tarts," says Alice.  All of a sudden, in just a second or two, she shrinks down more than a foot.  Unaware of what had just occurred, Alice takes another sip, taking in the new flavors and trying to determine what they remind her of.

"Custard" shrink

"Pineapple" shrink

"Roast turkey...goodness!"

Alice finds herself to be only a few inches tall at this point, holding the bottle as if it were a large container holding several gallons (from her perspective).  The bottle appeared large enough that she could fit inside of it if she attempted to climb into it.  She soon after drops the bottle after struggling to hold it in both arms.  The Drink Me tag gently covers her as she acquaints herself with her new surroundings, now realizing she is much, much smaller than she was just a moment ago.

"What did I do?" asks Alice, taken aback by what she had just experienced.  Chuckling, the Doorknob answers her question.

"You almost went out like a candle."

Quickly regaining her surroundings, Alice makes her way towards the Doorknob, seeing that the door itself was around her height now given her sudden shrinking.  Realizing she is no longer too big to make her way through it, she joyfully responds.

"But look!  I'm just the right size!" says Alice, making her way towards the Doorknob, aiming for his nose once more.

"Ohh!" interrupts the Doorknob once more, "no use...I forgot to tell you, I'm locked." he continues, chuckling throughout his explanation.

Realizing her new predicament, Alice presses her palms into her face in deflated gloominess.  "Oh no!" she mutters.  Though the Doorknob follows through with more to tell her, as she turns around to face him.

"But of course," he says, "you've got the key so-"

"What key?" interjects Alice.

Staring at her briefly, the Doorknob continues, "Now don't tell me you left it up there?".  The Doorknob motions towards the top of the glass table.  As if out of thin air a key materializes on top of the table.  Seeing this unfold before her, Alice sighs in mild exasperation.

"Oh dear."

Making her way towards the table, Alice attempts to climb it the best she can.  However, the curvature of the table's legs and the long, smooth neck of the table makes this a fruitless endeavor.  After a minute of climbing, Alice looses her grip and slides back off the table's leg, getting no more than a few yards (by her standards).  Coming to a seated position, Alice buries her face in her hands once more, depressed by her overall situation.

"Whatever will I do?" she mutters in a deflated tone.

"Try the box, naturally" responds the Doorknob. 

As if on command, a small jewelry box appears before young Alice, just like the key did earlier, between her feet.  Bewildered by what just occurred, Alice hesitantly opens the lid of the box.  Inside the box are an assortment of small cakes, with various bits of writing on them.  Some say "Try Me" or "Take One".  Picking one up, Alice reads the inscription.

"Hmm...'Eat Me'...alright.  But goodness knows what this will do." as Alice takes a bite from said cake, throwing caution to the wind.

What happened next occurred in just a matter of seconds, five at the most.  Alice began to shoot up in size rapidly, in hiccup style spurts.  Every spurt that occurred shot her up several feet at a time.  She could barely register just what was happening to her as she ballooned in size, shooting up higher and higher towards the ceiling as she sat perfectly still.  From what she could tell, there were five spurts in growth overall, given her vocal reaction to each one.

"Whoah!  Whoah!  Whoah!  Whoah!  Umpfh!"

On the fourth spurt, her leg slammed hard into the Doorknob, growing in size as it did.  On the fifth spurt, her head slammed into the ceiling of the hallway, shutting her eyes as it happened.  She instinctively placed her hand over her head after registering the impact.  A moment later, she opened her eyes, taking in her new surroundings.  She must have been several feet tall, possibly tens of feet tall if she were to guess.  She was now crammed in the hallway, which she previously considered both long and wide upon entering it.  Now it was cramped and confined, which let her know just how much she had increased in size from just a moment ago.  Less than a minute ago, she was just a few inches high.  Now she was gigantic, probably fifty feet tall or more, given that she was in a seated position, with her head pressed against the ceiling and her feet up against the wall.

"Wfl wyshy whflyt whyntl-" muttered the Doorknob, as he tried to talk with Alice's foot shoved up right against his face.  A second later, Alice removed her foot, feeling guilty for essentially stomping against the Doorknob, with her foot now longer than the door was tall.

"What did you say?" asked Alice, with one hand still nursing the fresh bump on her head.

The Doorknob ruffled his nose briefly before straightening himself out, then responded with his usual chuckling demeanor.

"I said "A little bit of that went a LONG way." chuckling at the end.

At this point, Alice was somewhat torn emotionally.  Part of her wanted to cry about her conundrum.  She was now gigantic, yet literally stuck.  She had power, but was a prisoner.  She seemed to have no way forward, but no way back either.  'Will I remain in this place forever?' she thought to herself.  Wiping away a tear, Alice calmed herself, got her bearings, and scanned the room from her heightened perspective, looking downward with an eagle-eyed view.

"Well, I don't think it's so funny." muttered Alice as she moved her legs the best she could and examined the floor.

She assumed the table was somewhere behind her, possibly under her rump and most likely in pieces.  If she were to guess, it would probably be shattered from her sudden growth and even if it were not, it would be only a few inches tall at the most.  The key would obviously be much, much smaller and hard for her to handle at her current size.  And even if she did find the key and use it to unlock the door, getting through it would be another matter entirely.  Her foot along was larger than the door.  There was no way she was getting on of her legs, let alone her torso through the passageway.

If she could find the 'Drink Me' bottle from earlier, she might be able to use it to shrink down, find the key, and unlock the door.  But assuming the bottle wasn't destroyed during her growth spurts, it would be near impossible to find and handle just like the key, given Alice's gigantic stature.  When she first handled it, the bottle fit comfortably in one hand.  When she shrunk down, she needed both arms to hold it steady.  Now at her current size, she would have to delicately hold it between her thumb and index finger like a set of tweasers.  She wagered the bottle itself was no larger than the furthest digit on her pinkey fingers.  Holding such an item to drink from would be rather difficult without spilling.  She would probably have better luck just swallowing the bottle like a pill.

That left her one last item to look for: the cake box.

Alice moved her legs back as best as she could in her cramped position.  She examined the space between her legs, searching for the box and hoping it wasn't pinned underneath her posterior.  As she brought her hands underneath the folds of her dress, she felt a hard small object, less than half the size of her thumb.  It seemed rectangular in shape from what she could tell.  That had to be it.  Enclosing the item in her fist, Alice brought it out from underneath her dress.  Unfurling her fingers, her prize laid bare before her in the center of her palm.

Sure enough, there laid the box.  It wasn't damaged from the growth spurts, much to Alice's relief.  Using her thumb to unhinge the lid, she spotted the remaining cakes inside.  It appeared luck was on her side at this point.  What she planned next was a gamble, which could backfire horribly if things didn't pan out as she hoped.  But given the oddity of her circumstances since falling down the rabbit hole, she decided to take a chance and hope for the best.  She held the box towards her mouth and opened wide.  A moment later, the remaining cakes passed her lips and bounced along her tounge and down her gullet.  They were practically specks from Alice's perspective, and barely registered as they hit her tounge and went down her throat, but sure enough they were all swallowed.  There were three or four in box from what she recalled.  If one cake made her the size she was currently, what would another three or more cakes do to her?  The thought made her heart skip a beat as she pondered the question.

"I say, what are you doing up there?" inquired the Doorknob from far down below, looking upwards with curiosity.

A moment later, he got his answer.

The hiccup-like spurts came once again, much more intensely than the first time.  After all, this wasn't one cake that Alice consumed, but at least three in one gulp.  The effects were much more powerful by comparison.

On the first spurt, Alice's body filled the entire hallway.  Her whole body was essentially curled up in the fetal position with her knees pressek up against her face.  Her head was pushed as far as possible into the far upper corner.  Her feet were crammed against the opposite wall, one of them up against the Doorknob like before, only her entire foot now covered the whole door and continued to swell ever more.  Her arms were pinned against her side, her rump squarely filling up more and more of the floor space, her knees making contact with the ceiling in a matter of seconds, beginning to press into them hard.

Regretting the recklessness of her choice, but realizing it was too late now, Alice awaited her fate as another spurt made itself known.

The second spurt caused Alice to enlarge aprubtly once more, with the entire room bulging and buckling to make room for her growing frame.  The walls began to crack and bow.  The floor began to buckle and warp into a bowl shape.  The ceiling began pushing upward while offering what resistance it could to Alice's head and knees surging upward against it.  The poor Doorknob, muffling at his part in this predicament, felt the girl's foot pressing harder and harder into him.  Alice's heel alone was larger than the entire door, and continued to grow even moreso second by second.

The third spurt was the tipping point, when something that Alice was not expecting ended up happening.  The entire room - walls, floor, and ceiling - bursted all at once.  The young woman had transformed from a giant to an outright titan in terms of size.  She had nobody around to do a size comparison, but if she had to guess, she wagered that she was at least a hundred feet tall.  Maybe two hundred even.  Her bearings were somewhat befuddled from the latest round of growth spurts.  It took a moment for her head to clear after literally bursting out of the room.

When Alice came to, she opened her eyes and looked upwards.  She could see the sky, bright blue with a few clouds here and there.  She slowly propped herself up on her elbows to look around and get acquainted with her new size and where she was now.  Before her lay a green field, the one she saw earlier looking through the Doorknob's mouth.  As she slowly got to her feet and began to rise, she felt a momentary sense of vertigo.  She was surprised at just how big she had gotten in the last few minutes.

Speaking of the Doorknob, Alice looked around on the ground for his whereabouts.  Given her rate of growth and what became of the chamber she was in recently, she was curious as to what became of him.

Alice looked around her feet, searching for the Doorknob, hoping she had not hurt him too much from her growth explosion.  Afterall, she did have her foot pressed up on his face just a moment ago.  Hopefully, she had not hurt him too bad, or (Heaven forbid) outright destroyed him along with the walls of the hallway.  She'd certainly feel guilty if it came to that.

"Sir?" young Alice asked as she looked around.  "Are you there, sir?" she continued as she scanned the ground at her feet.

A moment later, Alice could make out slight groaning nearby her left foot.  Sure enough upon leaning down, she could make out both the door and the Doorknob himself, still attached to the structure, though the door was obviously torn away from the wall, now that the wall ceased to be.

"Uhhh...well now...that certainly went a very long way, didn't it." groaned the Doorknob.

"Oh goodness, I'm truly sorry sir." replied Alice leaning down over the Doorknob, surrounding him in her shadow.

Opening his eyes, the Doorknob took in the sight before him.  The young woman hovered over him, her long blonde hair surrounding him like curtains.  Her lovely features took up his entire sight.  Her big blue eyes, larger than the door he was attached to focused on him intently, worry written all over them as she analyzed him for any damage.  Her full, red lips slightly parted open, shortly closing as she gently bit her lower lip in concern.  Her rosy cheeks, her elegantly defined chin and cheekbones, her light thin eyelashes furrowed in concern, her rounded button-like nose...her elegance so defined upon her face.  She was just so much more now than before.  It truly was a sight to behold.

Without giving it much thought, Alice gently scooped up the door, standing straight up once more and bringing the Doorknob closer to her colossal face for closer inspection.  He laid facing upwards in the palm of her hand, her fingers surrounding him like thick pillars.

"Are you hurt sir?" asked Alice, looking down at him.

"Oh...a little rattled, but I'm alright all the same," replied the Doorknob, "I must say you certainly 'kicked the door down' so to speak with that little trick." He followed chuckling, still keeping his sense of humor.

"Though I suppose there was nothing particularly little about it so to speak." he continued, chuckling all the more.

"I'm sorry about before, especially with the wall," responded Alice, "I just had a feeling that the box would help me again, given the circumstances.  As you yourself said, 'Try the box' and all that."

As she examined the Doorknob, she took in her newfound size better.  When they first met, his nose was big enough to fill her hand when she tried turning it.  When she strunk down, his face was around the same size as her whole body.  When her first set of growth spurts was over, her whole foot covered the surface of the door completely.  Now at her new size, the door was around the size of a crumb before her, covering no more surface area to her than one of her fingernails.  It really was profound just how big she had become.

"Again, I'm really sorry about the damage," replied Alice, looking back at the room she was trapped in.  The hallway (or what was left of it) looked as if a large bomb had just gone off from within.  The ceiling was destroyed, the floor caved in, and the walls cracked heavily and bowed outward.  In a sense an explosion of sorts did occur there just a moment ago, Alice though to herself.  If she were to guess, she wouldn't get more than her head and maybe her shoulders back into the hallway.  The rest of her body was outright impossible.

"I must say," began Alice, "I didn't expect to grow this large.  I admit I was hoping I'd be big enough to make my way out of there, but this seems like a tad much.  I must be at least a hundred feet tall by now."

Turning back around, Alice faced the field where she saw the White Rabbit head off through before making his way towards a forest off in the distance.  Alice could see the same forest beyond the field, the tallest trees no higher than her waistline by her calculations.

Looking down into her hand, she examined the Doorknob once more.

"Sir, given that you're no longer anchored to that wall, so to speak, would you like to come along with me while I look for the White Rabbit?" she asked.

"Well, I suppose I could tag along for a little while, young lady," replied the Doorknob, "see the world, so to speak.  It does get a bit dreary staring at the same three walls and ceiling all the time."

"Alright then," says Alice with a light smile.  She figured the Doorknob could keep her company as she continued her journey looking for the White Rabbit.  After all, travelling alone could be somewhat depressing when loneliness gets to you.  It would be nice to engage in conversation now and then during her travels.

"Now where to put you," pondered Alice aloud as she checked her person, "Ah! Here we are, this should do for now."

She proceeded to gently slide the door into the front pocket of her white apron tied to her blue dress.  Given her new size, there was plenty of room for the Doorknob to occupy.

"I'll walk carefully so as to not jostle you around too much." said Alice looking down her pocket at her new travel companion.

"Appreciate it, miss." replies the Doorknob, slightly muffled in the folds of her apron.

Looking back upward towards the woods, Alice begins the journey through the field, covering several feet of distance with each step.  The ground mildly shook with each footfall she created, leaving impressions from the imprint of her shoes into the grass as she walked.  It would only be a minute or so until she reached the forest.  Hopefully she would be able to catch up with the White Rabbit, especially since her larger size allowed her to cover far more ground than she would at her original size.

Whatever other obstacles or persons she would bump into on her adventure, one thing was certain at this point:

Wonderland was in for a big surprise.

"Now I wonder who lives here?" said Alice, thinking aloud.

Making her way through a forest after having a rather odd conversation with a pair of twins (including a story about a walrus, a carpenter, and some oysters), young Alice came upon a clearing in the distance.  Up ahead she could see a house.

The house had something of a countryside cottage appearance.  The lower foundation appeared to be made of stone, while the upper floor was made of wood.  The exterior had a sort of candystripe pattern on the upper level, alternating in shades of white and pink.  The roof of the structure was made of thick, golden straw and had a humble stone chimney near the center of the roof.  Three windows could be spotted on the upper level, one in the center and one on each of the neighboring sides, with pink wooden shutter doors covering them.  On the lower level at the house's front was a rounded wooden door (also pink) on the left and a windowsill towards the right with a small flower garden hanging just in front of the windowsill.  Further off the right there could be spotted a small side door carved out of the stone foundation.  Between the front door and the windowsill was a small, thin tree hugging the foundation as if it were a vine-like outgrowth.

In front of the house lay various gardening implements including a hoe, small potts, a watering can, a wooden wheelbarrow, a rake, a small rosegarden, etc.  Small bushes adorned the front of the house, with a modest carrot garden presiding towards the left side of the building.  White picket fencing surrounded the exterior of the house, between two and three feet in height if Alice were to guess.  A small pink gate, equal in height to the fencing, served as an entrance before following up a simple stone path towards the front door of the house.  Near the gate was a modest birdhouse, topped with its own straw roof and sporting various holes for birds to make their way in and out of.

As Alice neared the gate, she could hear a high pitched, aged voice muttering from within the building.

"Mary Anne!  Blast that girl...where did she put my-" hollered the voice.

The front window shutters flew open and the speaker made himself known, hollering once more, "Mary Anne!"

Lo and behold, the person (or more accurately animal) that Alice had been pursuing was within her sight.

"The Rabbit!" she exclaimed, a big smile lighting up her face as she instinctively opened the gate and hurried her way towards the front door of the White Rabbit's house.

"Mary Anne!" the White Rabbit bellowed once more, elongating the 'Anne' with much angst in his voice.  Right afterwards, he slammed shut the shutter doors and hurried along out of sight.

Alice briskly covered the distance between the gate and the front door, anticipation strong within her being.  She had afterall pursued the White Rabbit for some time now ever since falling down the rabbit hole and into a world of wonders, where very little made sense.  After getting stuck in a hallway with a talking doorknob, crying a pool of tears with seconds, floating through said pool in a bottle, coming across a talking dodo bird singing of a caucas race, and sitting down to a story with two twins in the woods(tweedle somthing or other from Alice could recall), the young lady had finally found the target of her pursuit.

As she neared the front door with intent to open it, the door itself suddenly swung open and out barreled the White Rabbit, muttering to himself in a hurry.

"No use, can't wait, I'm awfully late!  Oh me, oh my, oh me, oh my!" he said in a frantic fashion as he darted past Alice.

Turning around quickly as he zoomed past her, Alice inquired quickly before the White Rabbit hurried off.

"Excuse me, sir," began Alice, raising a hand with her index finder sticking out, trying to get his attention, "but I've been trying to-"

Turning around right after passing the gate at the fenceline, the White Rabbit stared at Alice before interjecting, scrunching up his face in a mix of disappointment and mild anger.

"Why Mary Anne!  What are you doing out here?" he inquired, holding up his glasses and squinting with one eye to get a closer look at her.  He was now less than a foot from her, looking upwards.

With the White Rabbit now practically face-to-face with her, Alice got a better look at him.  He had switched from his countryside clothing of a dress shirt, vest, and pants, and now wore what looked like a court jester's uniform, or something akin to a royal page.  Now he wore grey pants, a red long-sleeved shirt, a puffed up light blue collar around his neck, and a sort of white bib-like drapery going down his front and back, with a single red heart insignia in the center.

Also with the White Rabbit now directly in front of her, with his line of questioning for her, it was Alice's turn to be bewildered.

"Mary Anne?" she asked, raising an eyebrow in confusion as she stared down at him, hovering over him by at least two feet in height.

Stuck in his assumptions and haste, the White Rabbit started spouting off declarations at 'Mary Anne' while hopping about frantically.

"Don't just do something, stand there!  No no!  Go go!  Go get my gloves!  I'm late!" he declared, hopping up and down like a madman as he bouced around Alice, whipping out a large, golden pocketwatch connected to a chain to make his point.

Following his bouncing with her eyes as she tried to make her case, Alice interjected.

"But late for what?  That's just what I-" she pleaded, trying to get a word in edgewise, though the White Rabbit was having none of it.

"My gloves!" he hollered, before putting his mouth to the trumpet he was carrying and aiming it towards Alice's head.  Reacting quickly, Alice aims for the front door (still open fortunately), ducks her head, and whooshes herself within the White Rabbit's house as he blows the horn as loud as he can to shoo her in.

"Do you hear?" follows the White Rabbit after blowing the horn, the impatience in his voice making itself quite apparent.

At this point, Alice could more or less discern what had just occurred.  The White Rabbit had mistaken her for some girl named Mary Anne, who apparently was some sort of maid or servant girl in the employment of the White Rabbit.  It seemed the White Rabbit did not have a particularly high opinion of Mary Anne when it came to carrying out her chores and duties, and right now that included finding his gloves for whatever 'important date' he had to attend.  Not wishing to incur further wrath (and horn blowing) from the White Rabbit, Alice decided to play along and do as he commanded.

"Goodness," she muttered, "I suppose I'll be taking orders from Dinah next."  The thought of carrying out commands from her pet cat brought a silent chuckle to Alice as she mulled over the idea of such a thing.  Hurriedly, she made her way up the staircase in the lower level, passing a grandfather clock, a long family painting on the wall to her left, wooden chairs and a small table, and a lantern hanging from the ceiling.  She grabbed the staircase to her right and made her way upwards to another short, round wooden door.

The exterior of the house was a lot like the interior - various alternating shades of pink and white.  Many portraits and small pieces of furniture had either rabbit-themed or carrot-themed appearances to them.  The thought of it all seemed a bit silly to Alice, but given how her day had gone so far, it felt less odd the more time she spent in this world beyond the rabbit hole.  That which was impossible or impracticle was now ordinary and mundane from what she saw.  It was like what she said to her cat Dinah earlier in the day:

"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.  Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't."  It seemed those very words had now taken form and given her a world just like she described, especially a song phrase she recalled about "cats and rabbits [residing] in fancy little houses."

As she made her way up the steps to the next door, she bent down in order to pass through it.  Given who lived here, it was no surprise that the house seemed a little small to the girl.  After all, she had a good two feet or more in height over the White Rabbit, so getting through doorways was something of a chore for her, whereas it would be just the right size for him.

Passing through the doorway, Alice was now on the upper floor of the White Rabbit's house.  Apparently, she was in his bedroom.  Before her was a bed with enough room for one, a small rocking chair, a sheet-covered table with a lamp and small portrait atop it, small rugs on the bare wooden floor, a pink dresser cabinet with a vanity mirror, and an assortment of other similar small-end furniture.  The ceiling had the same white/pink alternating wood pattern as the exterior of the building.  There were the three windows, one facing the front and the other two at adjacent walls, with all the shutter doors currently closed.  The ceiling had a somewhat curved, bowl like shape to it, mirroring what Alice saw from the outside of the house.  Along the wall was a small fireplace, no doubt connected to the stone chimneytop she saw earlier.  It all appeared modest and welcoming, if a bit well...small.

"Hmm," wondered Alice out loud as she closed the door behind her, "now let me see.  If I were a rabbit, where would I keep my gloves?"

She began her search by walking towards the dresser and going through the shelf doors, opening them one by one and peeking inside for gloves or anything resembling gloves.  When that produced no results, she looked around the top of the dressor near the mirror.  Currently on it was a hairbrush and a small ceramic bowl with fanciful decorations adorning it with a lid currently atop it.  Lifting up the lid, Alice discovered what was inside.

There were small cakes, maybe a dozen or so inside the bowl.  They were decorated in various patterns and shapes, with small two-word descriptions on them like "Take One", "Try Me", or "Eat Me".  To Alice, a sense of deja vu had entered her mind.  Where had she seen cakes like these before?  The grand hallway with the talking doorknob, perhaps?  Given what happened from eating one of those cakes, she figured that tempting fate again was a risky thing to do, given where she was.

Or at least that would be the case if Alice gave it some serious thought, if the logical part of her brain was in control that day.  Thinking to herself, "What are the odds of the same thing happening again?", she threw caution to the wind and accepted the invitation the cakes offered.

"Oh," she said with light surprise in her voice, "why thank you.  Don't mind if I do."

Gently plucking a pink cake with "Eat Me" inscribed on it, Alice placed the lid back down over the jar.  She then proceeded to take a bite from it, enjoying the sweet sugary sensation the treat gave her.  She scanned the room looking for anything that may hold the White Rabbit's gloves, whereupon she suddenly spotted a small chest at the center of the room.  Perhaps his gloves were inside.  Surely she could take a quick peek.

Popping the remainder of the cake into her mouth, Alice wandered over towards the chest, bending down at the knee and hovering over it.  As she moved, she began humming a melodic tune she heard from the White Rabbit when she first spotted him:

I'm late, I'm late; For a very important date; No time to say 'hello', 'goodbye'; I'm late, I'm late, I'm late

She proceeded to hum the tune as she worked, lifting open the lid to the chest and finding various types of clothing within.  Surely the White Rabbit's gloves were in there somewhere.  Then she could retrieve them, leave this house, and follow him to wherever it was he was headed, even if he did think she was his housemaid.  No harm in a case of mistaken identity, right?

It was slow at first, but within seconds, Alice began to rise in height, despite being in a crouched position.  Whereas the tops of the White Rabbit's bedposts were taller than Alice when she was crouched, a moment later, they were now level with the top of her head.  As she handled the various shirts, sheets, and other bits of apparel inside the chest, every part of her body was enlarging: her hands, her feet, her head, her entire body.  She was past double her height and still growing bigger and bigger, with the pace beginning to pick up.  Even so, she remained unaware of her growing predicament until it was too late.  Fishing through the contents of the chest, she hummed along peacefully as she went from one article of clothing to the next, determined to find those gloves.  She actually came upon them when suddenly...

"Hmhm Hmhm Hmhmhmhmhmhm Hmhmhmhmhmhmhm-"

BUMP

"Doempf!" Alice was suddenly jolted alert by the sensation of her back and rear end bumping into the bedroom ceiling.  Getting her bearings, she realized the room she was in was much, much smaller and cramped than it was just a moment ago.  As she looked around, she saw everything was shrinking before her, though a moment later she realized it wasn't the room that was shrinking, but she who was growing.  Soon enough, surprise was replaced with both fear and worry.

"Oh no no, not again!" declared Alice, thinking back to her time in the hallway with the Doorknob, where something very much like this occurred not so long ago with similar results.  If it was anything like last time, the little lady was about to become anything but little.

Meanwhile, the White Rabbit rapidly tapped his foot as he waited outside for his maidservant to come out through the front door.  She had been in there for quite some time, and given that he was running late for his appointed date, he was growing increasingly impatient by the minute.  Surely, she should have found his gloves by now.  What in goodness gracious was taking that girl so long?

The White Rabbit reached for his pocketwatch to check the time while he waited.  Upon discovering what time it was, he alarmingly jumped in the air, before rushing off through the front door and into his house.

"Ohh!  Mary Anne!" he hollered, barreling quickly into the building.

Back in said building, the girl mistaken for his maidservant had substantially increased in size and still continued to enlarge.  She was over twenty feet tall and still continued to grow, keeping up with the steady pace.  She had already filled the entirety of the bedroom, but still her body continued to grow.

She tried desperately to somehow halt her growth by bracing her arms against the windowframes in the hopes of stopping or at least slowing her growth, but a few seconds later it was to no avail.  As her arms elongated and pushed through the adjacent window frames, her legs continued to thicken, lengthen, and elongate down towards the walls of the bedroom.  She could feel her right leg lifting the bed in its entirety, with her foot gently slipping under it before lifting it off the ground, soon after balancing it on her ankle and shortly after her knee as if it weighed almost nothing.  As her leg grew and stretched out, she felt her foot knocking over the table and rocking chair with practically no effort, as the larger she grew, the easier it was for her body to move whatever furniture was in her way.  Soon enough, it made contact with the bedroom door, pressing hard against it as it grew larger and larger.

Her left leg was making its way down the other end of the room, soon enough making contact with nothing but wall shortly after.  As her foot increased in overall size, it began placing pressure upon the bedroom wall, with cracks starting to form as the seconds passed.  At this rate, it wouldn't be long before the wall lost out to Alice's leg if her growth kept up at the rate that it was going.

As for the rest of her, Alice's arms soon enough barreled on through the windowframes, filling them up entirely.  Whereas a moment ago, Alice could touch each windowframe at the same time just a few seconds ago, now her entire arms up to the shoulder were filling up the windowframes, pushing hard against the shutters.  Her head was now pressing up against the very center of the ceiling, enlarging just like the rest of her body.  She found herself tilting her head at an angle to avoid hurting her neck as her body continued to swell in size.

Whereas Alice struggled and strained in her initial attempt to try halting her growth, her face now showed abject defeat and resignation to her current predicament.  Her right leg had knocked over various bits of furniture, including balancing an entire bed - frame and all - onto her knee as if it weighed nothing.  Her left leg was now hunched up in a bent position with her knee closing in on her face as she continued to grow.  Her arms had now disappeared altogether into the side windows, pressed up against the shutters which were doing there best to fight against the evergrowing appendages that placed increasing pressure upon them.

Furrowing her brows in sadness and worry, Alice thought to herself, 'I'm sorry Mr. Rabbit!  Please forgive me for what I've done!  I didn't think this would happen again!'  As her eyes scanned the room from her left to her right, she was fast running out of room.  Her head and shoulders were now pressing hard into the ceiling and the floor she sat on was starting to groan in protest to her increasing mass.  And yet still Alice was not yet done growing.  Not by a long shot.

Just outside the bedroom, making his way up the staircase in a hurried fashion, the White Rabbit barreled towards the door to his bedroom, ready to give his maidservant a piece of his mind.  If he were more aware of his surroundings, he might have noticed that the door itself was starting to bulge outwards and was making an increasingly loud groaning sound as it continued to warp in shape.  Sadly for him, his impatience had blinded him to his immediate surroundings.  Getting his gloves and teaching Mary Anne a lesson were the only things on his mind in that moment.

"Now you see here, Mary Anne..." muttered the White Rabbit as he reached the increasingly bulging bedroom door.  He quickly grabbed the doorknob and yanked the door open.  Lo and behold, to his surprise was a foot bigger than he was that was slowly pushing its way through the doorframe, increasing in size as it did so.

Given the new reality of the situation, the White Rabbit did what came naturally: he panicked.

"Heeeeeelp!" screamed the White Rabbit at the top of his lungs, jumping up in the air while rotating towards the front door of his house.  He would have started a run down the staircase, but the giant foot beat him to it and suddenly popped out from the doorframe.  As he fell halfway towards the stairs, the foot shot out like a rocket down the staircase, carrying the White Rabbit along for the ride.  The heel of the black shoe connected to said foot served as a sort of chair for the White Rabbit to ride on as he descended the staircase rapidly.  Out of the corner of his eye, another large foot blasted through the wall to his left, followed by a strong and healthy calf muscle of the leg it was connected to.  This second leg appeared to be making its way towards the side door of his house.

Blowing his trumpet in alarm, the White Rabbit realized that he closed his front door.  If he didn't wan't to be crushed between this giant foot and the door, he would have to act fast.

Jumping off the foot as hard as he could, he leapt towards the door, grabbing the handle and opening as fast as possible.  As he yanked back as hard as he could, the giant foot had made contact with him just a second later, carrying him through the front door and out towards the front yard of the house.  With no time to recuperate, the White Rabbit saw that the foot was carrying him out towards a pile of his gardening supplies.  Out of instinctive fear, he ironically turned around and curled himself into the foot as a sort of savior as it barrelled towards the assortment of farming equipment in the White Rabbit's front yard.

In just a few seconds, the giant foot had collided with the pile of gardening tools, knocking them loose and destroying most of them.  The glass on the rosegarden was shattered.  The wooden planks were snapped in half.  The small gardening pots were smashed.  The wheelbarrow was lifted and tossed a good ten feet or more.  After being casted into a freshly wrecked heap of gardening supplies, the White Rabbit emerged in a stunned and dazed state, muttering and spinning around briefly before laying sight upon his home.  What he saw shocked him to the point that his spectacles briefly jumped off his face.

His house now had large limbs sticking out of it.  Out of the front door was a whole leg, wearing a white stocking with a black buckled shoe at the end (the very one he rode on just a moment ago).  Out of the side door of his house was another leg just like it.  Both legs appeared to end somewhere around the knee, more or less.  Looking upwards, the White Rabbit saw an arm erupt out of the side window on the left side of his house, wearing the window frame like a bracelet around the wrist.  A second later, another large arm burst out of the right side of the house, flinging the shutter several feet off into the distance.  Both arms seemed to stop at around the shoulder of whatever creature they were connected to.

"Help!" hollered the White Rabbit, "Monster!  Help!  Assistance!" he screamed at full-throated volume before sounding his horn again and rushing off down the road for whatever aid he could find.

Back at the freshly damaged structure, Alice now found herself in a seated position with her arms sticking out of the side windows from the shoulder on out and her legs sticking out of the front and side doors on the lower level from the knees out.  The entire floor of the bedroom gave way from her massive weight increase and her posterior spilled on below crushing everything underneath her now enlarged frame.  Her head was pressed up against the ceiling of the second floor, though now she was somewhat less cramped than she was a few seconds ago, now no longer having her knees up against her face.

As she tried to get her bearings in her now gigantic state, Alice felt around the exterior of the building.  She placed her fingers along the edge of the second floor's exterior (jutting outwards above the stone base) and tightened them the best she could to get a solid grip.  She then proceeded to tug upwards as hard as possible.  The structure heaved and groaned, but the upper level would not separate from the lower stone base.  After three good heaves, she tried something else.

Alice placed both her hands into the ground and spread out her fingers.  Then with one solid heave, she placed as much force as she could muster against the ground she sat on.  It was her hope that she could detach the entire house itself from the foundation it rested on.  Once again the house groaned mightily in protest.  It vibrated for a bit, but it would not give one bit.  Despite the giant girl's newly acquired strength, she was still anchored to the spot she now occupied.

After her exasperated efforts at trying to free herself failed, Alice took a moment to collect herself and calm her troubled emotional state.  She placed her right hand up against where her hip would be along the stone base outside while raising her left hand upwards and at the top of the roof near the stone chimney.  Then she proceeded to scratch her head the best she could through the straw roof, her massive fingers tearing a spot through the straw as they went back and forth in a sort of sweeping motion.

"Oh dear." muttered the young lady, mulling over her new predicament.  She was no longer just inside the White Rabbit's house; she was practically wearing the White Rabbit's house.  An entire structure which she once walked in normally (more or less) was now like a dollhouse to her in terms of size.  All because she at a cake of all things.  Will wonders never cease?

Biting her lip in frustration, Alice scanned the room wondering what would become of her when she suddenly heard a familiar voice off in the distance.

"A monster!  A monster, Dodo!  In my house, Dodo!" hollered the White Rabbit.

"Dodo?" muttered Alice, with curiosity in her voice.

Down the road back towards the house came the White Rabbit and his acquainance, the Dodo Bird.  The Dodo wore gentleman's attire, including a long-sleeved dark purple coat, blue vest, and black tri-cornered hat atop a white powdered wig with a tiny pontytail tied in the back.  He carried a black cane (which he used more as a prop than a walking stick) in one hand an a smoking pipe in the other, which he was currently enjoying.  He was far larger than the White Rabbit, standing a good three feet or more in height over him, and also had a very pronounced belly, as if he were very well fed.  He also had something of an absent-mindedness to his character, friendly enough but unaware of the circumstances laid before him.  At least that is what Alice remembered of him during her first encounter with him.

"Steady, steady old chap," the Dodo responded as he strolled alongside his companion, "can't be all that bad, you know?"  He tried to be the calming presence for the White Rabbit, who was still in a tizzy over what had just occurred to both him and his house.

"Oh my poor little, bitty house," fretted the White Rabbit as he hopped circles around the Dodo, "Oh my poor roof and rafters, oh my walls and...there it is!" he pointed at his dramatically changed dwelling.

Upon glancing, the Dodo came to an alarming stop, his hat briefly flying off his head as he momentarily choked on his pipe.  Getting his senses together, he looked with marvel at what he saw.

"By Jove!  Jolly well it is, isn't it?" he said with wonder.

The massive arms sticking outside the house made there way around to the front, feeling alongside for the front shutters.  Pinching the handles of each shutter door, which were roughly the size of beads in between the large thumbs and forefingers, the arms delicately opened up the shutter doors as wide as possible.  Behind the window lay a massive face, too big to be seen entirely with everything beneath the nose and above the eyebrows out of visual contact from the outside looking inward.  Its big, beautiful blue eyes peered through, wide open with curiosity as the face leaned forward to see the two approach the house.

"Well do something, Dodo!" begged the White Rabbit as he shoved his companion forward, before taking cover behing the fenceline near the gate.  Casually, the Dodo approached the house, examining the colossal leg sticking out of the front door.

"Yes indeed," noted the Dodo, "it's an extraordinary situation, but uhh..." he taps his cane against the large foot in a steady drumming motion while smoking his pipe in thought.

"But but but but but but what?" responded the White Rabbit with angst in his voice.

Blowing his nose like a bullhorn into a handkerchief before tucking it away into his jacket, the Dodo follows through with his answer to the White Rabbit's current predicament.

"But I have a very simple solution." he calmly explains with a smile, leaning with one hand against the giant foot, which from heel to toe was even taller than him.

"Ohh thank goodness!" comments Alice from her heightened perch looking down at the Dodo with a gentle smile.  Though her expression changes from relief to one of curiosity once more when the White Rabbit follows through asking for more details.

"Wh- Wha- What is it?" he enquires, still flustered and somewhat hysterical.

Blowing his nose once more with much gusto, the Dodo walks further towards the house, using his cane as a pointer and gestures towards the chimney atop the roof.

"Simply," he responds, "rip it straight out the chimney."

The notion of ripping her out through the chimney seemed a bit comical to Alice.  She doubted she would be able to fit her head alone throught the chimney, let alone the rest of her enlarged body.  And how exactly would these two small creatures, each one small enough to rest in the palm of her hand, be able to pull off such a feat?  Alice couldn't help but chuckle at how silly and ridiculous this plan of Dodo's sounded.  Even so, the White Rabbit eagerly followed along with it.

"Y- Ye- Yes!  G- Go on pull it out!" he declared, pushing the Dodo further from behind as he pleaded.

"Who?  Me?" responded Dodo, turning around bewildered, "Don't be ridiculous!  No, what we need is um...uh..." he mulled over who it was to perform the job, smoking his pipe once more while deep in thought.

As if to answer his problem, a loud and high-pitched whistling could be heard off in the distance.  The tune was jovial and easygoing.  The one whistling made himself known soon after.

Strutting alonside the fenceline was a lizardman.  His build was skinny, almost like that of a snake, though he had arms and legs liike that of a human.  He wore a black long-sleeve jacket, matching black trousers, a dark green shirt underneath, and a black flat cap atop his head.  In one arm he carried a skinny, long wooden ladder and in the other a large brush or broom of some kind.  By the look of him, he might have been assumed to be a chimney sweep by profession if one had to guess.

The Dodo had found the right man for the job.

"A lizard with a ladder!" he pronounced.

"Oh!  Bill!  Bill!" hollered the Rabbit to get his attention.  Instinctively, Bill waved hello using his hat, with a big friendly smile on his face.  Quickly the White Rabbit grabbed him by the hand and brought him closer towards the house.

"We need a lazard with a lidder!  I mean we need a lizard with a..." said the White Rabbit, still barely able to speak succinctly given his emotional state after the last few minutes.  After a brief moment of stuttering, he continued.

"Can you help us?" he asked pleadingly to Bill.

"At your service, guv'na!" replied the lizard with a jovial tune in his voice.

Bringing an arm around the unsuspecting newcomer, the Dodo walked alongside Bill towards the house.

"Bill, my lad, have you ever been down a chimney?" asked the Dodo.

"Why guv'na," responded Bill, "I've been down more chimneys than-"

"Excellent!  Excellent!" interrupted the Dodo as he laid the ladder against the front of the house and began shoving Bill up it towards the roof.

"Now you just hop down that chimney," he instructed, "and pull that monster out of there."

Upon hearing these instructions, Alice quizzically raised an eyebrow before scanning her surroundings.  She soon after spotted the fireplace where Bill would come out of assuming he made his way down the chimney.  Surely he would be in for a surprise on what was inside the building when he popped through.

"Righto guv'na!" said Bill as he ascended the ladder.  However, upon hearing the Dodo's words, he stopped about halfway up before looking into the front window of the house.

"Monster?!" he asked, staring at a large eyeball, with its deep blue iris focused squarely on him.

Immediately afterwards, Bill hollered in the highest pitch his voice could go and raced back down the ladder, trying to flee as far as possible.  The giant eye blinked briefly in response, then refocused on the lizard making his escape before being stopped by the Dodo and the White Rabbit.  Grabbing onto his tail as he snaked his way back and forth the front yard, Bill found himself running up the ladder as second time to be greeted by the same huge blue eyes staring at him.  Freaking out once more, he screamed and darted back down the ladder before being intercepted by the Dodo, who now carried him up the ladder in his arms, trying to soothe and calm him.

"Steady now...that's better," he cooed before resuming while he slowly carried Bill upwards along the ladder, rung by rung.

"Bill, lad, you're passing up a golden opportunity!" he advertised to the lizard.

"I am?" responded Bill.

"You can be famous!" continued the Dodo.

"I can?" asked Bill, excitement and allure showing in his voice.

"Of course!" chimed the Dodo, "There's a brave lad!  In you go now." By now, Bill and the Dodo had reached the top of the roof and arrived at the chimney top.  Alice could just register the Dodo's footfalls right above her head, tilting her head to the side with a curious glance wondering how this would play out.  Proceeding to feed Bill's tail into the chimney, the Dodo soon after shoved Bill from the waist down into it further.

"Simply tie your tail around the monster's neck," inscructed the Dodo, "and drag it out!" he continued with theatric flair.

"B-b-but guv'na-" inquired Bill, trying to plead his case in this odd task.

Sadly, the Dodo, in his usual over-the-top bombast, shoved the poor lizard down the chimney with one arm, using his weight to shoot him down as far as possible until his arm disappeared into it up to the shoulder.

Below waited Alice, who would try to make her case to the lizard that she wasn't a monster and that she needed help getting out of this house somehow.  This was all just a horrible misunderstanding that could be resolved without any more wacky shenanigans or unexpected plot twists, right?  Facing the fireplace, she awaited Bill's arrival.

Instead of the lizard, Alice was greeted with a giant plume of chimney soot and and blackened dust.  The cloud shot out with a whisp before expanding throughout the room and in the vicinity of Alice's nose.  Soon enough, with human biology being what it is, Alice began to feel that common itchy irritance in her nasal cavity.

"Ah ah uh ah ahhh..." she began uttering.

Outside, the house began to shake violently, as the upper level began to spasm rapidly.  First several quick spasms, which lifted the Dodo into the air in a quick back-and-forth motion, followed by a long, drawn out taking in of air as the house lurched backwards.  The Dodo quickly made for the ladder, using it to lean forward and away from the quaking house and towards a safer distance.

Down below, the White Rabbit, still panicked as ever, sought his own cover.  He hurried his way along the massive leg and towards the giant shoe he rode along not so long ago.  Like a soldier making for a foxhole, he dove behind the towering foot, figuring its size would shield him from whatever chaos was about to erupt from his home.

Back inside the house, Alice was building up her sneezing fit for a grand finale.  Now rocking back and forth, almost uprooting the entire house from its foundation, smoke billowing from both the front window shutters and the chimney stack, she prepared to do a little 'house cleaning' so to speak.

"Ahh ahh ahh...AH AH AH...CHOOOOO!"

Her head, once pressed up against the ceiling as much as possible, now lurched downward suddenly, letting loose a sneeze that cleared all the dust and soot from the entire space her body occupied in just seconds.  The front window shutters were blown off the hinges from the force of he sneeze.  Random furniture that still resided within was tossed around as if inside a miniature hurricane.  The whole house rattled briefly for a few seconds.  But the finishing touch to it all was yet to come.

Briefly pinned and most likely scared out of his wits while stuck in the chimney, Bill felt the whole house rock and rattle while he was pinned in the dark tunnel of soot and coal dust.  He figured the monster was getting ready to eat him or at the very least brutally maim him like some wild animal.  How surprised he was to find that a moment later a very powerful gale-force wind had jettisoned him back through the chimney upwards.  Though to his shock, his freedom was not quite as he expected.  The unfortunate lizard had shot out of the chimney like a bullet, whizzing straight upwards through the sky.  A trail of soot followed behind him as he ascended ever higher, his body making a faint whistling noise before disappearing from the sight of everyone below.

Watching all that had just occurred from the ground below, the Dodo and White Rabbit watched their unwilling recruit fade off into the heavens.

"Well..." pondered the Dodo out loud as he drew a puff from his pipe while smiling, "there goes Bill."

Looking through the now permanently opened front window, Alice cocked her head the best she could to peer upwards, using one of her hands to shield her eyes from the sun's rays.  She searched the sky for any traces of the lizard who suffered the results of her powerful sneeze.

"Poor Bill..." she muttered with sadness in her eyes at his predicament.

"Umm...perhaps we should try a more...energetic remedy." pondered the Dodo aloud, lighting a match and preparing to light his pipe.

"Yes yes anything ANYTHING but hurry!" responded the White Rabbit, holding up his pocketwatch to stress that his time was very limited in this situation.

"Uhh...I propose that we umm..." muttered the Dodo, holding the match as the flame descended downward towards his thumb and forefinger.

"Yes go on, go on, yes yes!" insisted the Rabbit.

"I propose that we uhhh..." brainstormed the Dodo, forgetting about the lit match in his hands.  It soon enough made itself known to him, licking his thumb and index finger and briefly engulfing them in flame.

"Doehhhh!" hollered the Dodo, examining his freshly burned pointer finger, bulging red from the intenst heat he just experienced.  Examining it, he came up with another brilliant idea.

"By Jove!  That's it!  We'll burn the house down!" he proclaimed, poking the White Rabbit briefly in the stomach upon announcing his master plan.

Chuckling with glee, the White Rabbit repeated what the Dodo just said, figuring his monster problem had been solved.

"Yeah [chuckle] burn the house...WHAT?!" he realized, jumping into the air with great alarm written all over his face.

"Oh noooo!" proclaimed Alice, flapping her arms and hands about frantically, realizing that the two were about to resort to arson in order to be rid of her in just a few minutes.  Peering down through the window, she watched what unfolded next.

The Dodo proceeded to hurry about the front yard, gathering whatever he could get his hands on in order to form kindling.  Anything that looked burnable he made a move on, grabbing it and relocating it towards the front of the house, usually wrecking or destroying it in the process.  Be it furniture, gardening supplies, or random trinkets and miscellaneous items, if it helped in the Dodo's plan to burn the house, he made a grab for it.  He proceeded to sing as he worked, now with renewed vigor to his genius plan.

"Ohh we'll smoke the bligher out;[smash]  We'll put the beast to rout; Some kindling, just a stick or two; Ah this bit of rubbish ought to do!"

The Dodo grabbed an old grandfather clock by one end.  Trying to save it from breaking, the White Rabbit made for the other end of it, catching it before it hit the ground.  Shortly after, the Dodo whipped the family heirloom hard towards the front of the building, where it made contact with the humble flower bed hanging in a box just in front of the windowsill.  A moment later, the grandfather clock was shattered into various pieces of wood, glass, gears, and springs.  The flowerbed was demolished, raining wood, soil and obliterated flower petals down into the workings of what remained of the old grandfather clock; both items demolished in spectacular fashion.

"Oh dear..." cried the White Rabbit, covering his eyes with his hands at what he just saw become of his property.  While this happened, the Dodo continued with his destructive musical number, hauling a wheelbarrow full of random furniture and trinkets.

"We'll smoke the blighter out [shattering]; We'll smoke the monster out!" he sang as he dumped the wheelbarrow and all its contents on the growing pile of makeshift kindling, destroying all in the process.

Alice watched all this unfold, her eyes darting to and fro as the White Rabbit pursued the Dodo, trying to stop him on his well-intentioned, but overly destructive efforts.

"No no!" hollered the Rabbit, "Not my beautiful birdhouse!"

The Dodo snatched said birdhouse, yanking rapidly in a back-and-forth motion to unearth it from the ground.  As he did so, various small birds began fleeing from the humble dwelling, no doubt awoken by the sudden physical commotion that was upon them.  They fluttered around, chirping while the Dodo continued yanking, finally freeing the birdhouse from the soil a moment later.  The White Rabbit made a dive for the birdhouse, missing in the process and slamming headlong into the wooden gate at the fenceline, knocking it loose from its hinges in the process.

"Oh we'll roast the blighters toes," sang the Dodo, "We'll toast the bounder's nose."

He proceeded to snap the post on which the birdhouse rested over his knee, splitting it clean in two.  He then threw the newly ruined birdhouse onto the pile of kindling which had built up nicely in size in less than a minute.  Proud of his work, the Dodo motioned to the Rabbit for further assistance.

"Just fetch that gate," he pointed, "We'll make it clear that monsters aren't welome here." he proudly continued, grabbing armfuls of straw from the roof that was just within his reach, placing them amidst the newly destroyed bits of detritus that were once the White Rabbit's possessions.

"Oh dear," muttered the White Rabbit, carrying his freshly removed gate as he waddled over towards the Dodo, "oh me oh my." he continued.

Taking the gate from the rabbit and placing it atop the kindling pile, the Dodo made a request of his accomplice.

"A match?" he asked, hand streched out.

"Match?" pondered the Rabbit, understanding what the Dodo meant a second later.  Reaching into his pocket, he produced a single match and handed it to the Dodo.

"Thank you," he said, gracious to receive the final piece of his master plan.  He then used said match and quickly ran it across the White Rabbit's bid and along his face, sparking it up in the process.  A moment later, he laid the match before his kindling pile, finishing his little spur-of-the-moment song in the process.

"Without a single doubt; We'll smoke the monster out!" he declared.

"We'll smoke the monster out!" repeated the Rabbit with joy, before realizing where he was and what he was doing a second later.

"Nooo no no!  My poor house and furniture!" he cried as smoke began to rise from the kindling pile ever so slightly.

Realizing the gravity of her situation at this point, Alice surveyed her surroundings.  It was somewhat ironic.  She was now massive in size compared to these two little animal people, yet her size was somewhat of a hindrance as it had trapped her in her current situation.  If she could just get out of this house somehow, then how things would turn in her favor.  She had to find a way out soon, lest she be roasted over another case of mistaken identity.  She was no monster; just a curious girl who had a habit of accepting treats on a whim without considering potential side effects or consequences from doing so.

"Oh dear," muttered Alice to herself, "this is serious!  I simply must [gasp]" Alice's train of thought was interrupted by the sight of something she spotted just off to her right in her field of vision.

"A garden!" she whispered in excitement.

Reaching out her right arm towards the garden, she began to blindly feel about for whatever she could make out by her sensation of touch.  Given that the house and surrounding property (or what remained of it) belonged to the White Rabbit, she figured there were most likely carrots growing in the garden.  Wondering if consuming one would change her size upon eating it, she began combing the soil for any carrot tops or green foliage that would give away their position.

"Perhaps if I eat something," she thought out loud as her giant hand descended upon the fields, "it will...make...me...grow...small- oww!"  Alice winced in pain as tiny bite marks made their way into her fingers.  Apparently the White Rabbit did not approve of the monster trying to steal his carrots as well as wreck his home.  After trying a number of tugs to loosen one of the carrots, the Alice's hand was greeted by a few hard bites into its soft, delicate flesh.  Instinctively, she retreated her hand back towards the window to examine it.

There were a few pink spots along her thumb, index finger, and middle finger, but no bleeding from what she saw.  Aside from the soreness, there seemed no serious damage done.  Alice was somewhat miffed at the notion of being attacked, yet given that the White Rabbit believed he was protecting what little he had left, she soon after sighed it off, kissing her booboos as she brought her hand through the window.

"You'll not have my carrots you, you...you barbarian!" shouted the Rabbit, staring up through the front window at the thief who dared take his freshly grown produce.

Sighing at making no further progress, Alice looked around briefly out the window.  The Dodo was still at it trying to make his fire grow, through he seemed to be not having much luck in the endeavor.  The kindling was still just smoking mildly, so it would be a while before a real flame began to produce itself.  Still, best not to take chances and wait to see if the Dodo would succeed in creating a raging inferno and roast Alice where she sat.

Looking around the front lawn, Alice saw remnants of what lay outside that the Dodo didn't take, wreck, and attempt to burn.  As she visually combed the wreckage strewn about, she saw something she really did not expect to see:  Not to far in front of her, within both sight and arms reach, was the cookie jar from earlier, the same one that was the cause of her current predicament.  How in good heavens did it make its way out there, unscathed no less?  Did it somehow fly out of the house through the window during Alice's growth spurt?  Was it jettisoned when Alice sneezed so powerfully that it made its way out through some passageway?  The odds of it ending up there were mind-numbingly against her favor.  It was illogical to say the least.

Then something dawned on Alice: This world she had fallen into was far from logical.  She was seated inside a house after growing into a giant from eating a cookie for goodness sake!  Has that ever happened anywhere in the world, ever?  She was watching a Dodo bird, a creature that had gone extinct, wearing clothes and speaking English, as was a rabbit and a lizard now that she thought about it.  How was any of this logical or rational?  Either she was in some bizarre dream state, or else she had taken on a rather severe case of genuine madness.  Perhaps she would end up in a mental hospital to cure her of whatever delusions she might be experiencing in the real world.  Who can say?

Deciding to throw caution to the wind and take a gamble, Alice put her plan into motion.  Reaching her right arm out towards the garden once more, she awaited the White Rabbit to intercept her just like last time.  Sure enough, she spotted him taking off to her right, just out of view of the window frame.  After waiting a few seconds, letting her hand rest just a few feet above the ground to avoid another bite, she made her move.

Swinging her arm around towards the front yard, Alice made a dive for her real target.  The cookie jar was within her grasp.  Leaning her body forward to ease her movements, the house groaned in protest, lurching forward slightly.  The White Rabbit, bewildered by what was happening, saw the large fingers enclose around the jar, securing it within the palm of the large but feminine fist.  He made a dive to intercept, but it was all for naught.  Alice's feint move had paid off, her bluff a success.  Raising the fist quickly towards the front window, Alice uncurled her fingers to examine her prize.

Sure enough, there lay the infamous cookie jar, laying perfectly preserved in the center of Alice's palm.  It was roughly the size of a jelly bean by Alice's now enlarged standards.  Delicately she brought her left hand in through the window frame, flicking off the lid with her fingernails while her right hand held the jar perfectly still in the process.  There before her lay the remaining little treats, just like the first one she consumed.  If they were anything like the first cookie, then what was to come would certainly have tremendous consequences.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Rabbit," Alice apologized with sincerity in her voice, "but I must eat something!"

Holding the jar between her left thumb and forefinger, she brought it close to her rosy red lips, which she parted into a small (by her standards) "O" shape.  Tipping the jar forward as if she wer drinking from a thimble, Alice felt the little cakes and cookies pass onto her tongue.  She then proceeded to swallow the best she could, thankful for what little saliva she had to help move the process along.  A moment later, she was rewarded for her efforts.  Her freedom was at hand.

The growing sensation came back with a vengeance.  Immediately, Alice felt her entire head and torso filling up her enclosure.  Her head pressed mightily into the ceiling, causing the straw roof to bulge outward substantially.  Her shoulders now pushed farther apart, making their way out the windows and filling the windowframes at past their capacity, causing them to crack and warp.  Her torso began expanding outward in all directions, with the upper area tightening around her as if she were trying on a corset...an ever-shrinking corset at that.

Down below, Alice's legs began to thrust through both the front door and side door, cracks and fractures forming in the rocky exterior as her lower appendages struggled against the stone foundation.  After a few seconds of straining, her legs won the power battle and erupted like a locomotive through both entrances, thickening with power while retaining their smooth, feminine shape.  The interior of the lower level was completely demolished as Alice's rounded but firm rump filled it past its original capacity, causing the entirety of it to bulge and buckle outward.  Her legs went from sticking out at the knee to sticking out at the upper thigh, until the entirety of her lower limbs were outside of the White Rabbit's house.  Her massive feet plowed through the soil as they made their way to the fenceline, demolishing it in an instant as the towering black shoes tore through the picketfence like brittle twigs.

In an instant, the upper level separated from the lower level, rising higher and higher by several feet.  A gap of at least ten feet (and quickly expanding by the second) made itself known, revealing Alice's blue and white clothing to the outside world.  Inside the raised upper level, Alice felt herself being pressed in from all sides.  As she glaced directly downward, she could swear her bosom had increased noticeably by one or two cup sizes.  Her breasts were actually pressing into her own face!

"Good heavens," she muttered, muffled by her enlarged bosom, "I figured I would grow somewhat, but I didn't expect this to happen as well!"

A moment later, the house gave one last final groan as it tried to hold its enlarging captive in place.  It was to no avail, as the cookies let forth their power within the young girl.  As if a large bomb had gone off with the building, the White Rabbit's house exploded altogether in a mix of wood, straw, and stonework spreading outward in a thousand little pieces.  Alice's vibrant golden blonde hair was once again warmed by the sun, her blue eyes taking in the sight of the woods and the open sky as she ascended higher and higher, even from her seated position.

When the lower level gave way, Alice's dress (now somewhat shrunken into a short skirt during her second growth spurt, ending at her mid thigh) fluttered outward over the Dodo and the White Rabbit, descending upon them like a giant blanket the size of a small stadium (from their viewpoint).  The two were covered in soft, white fabric that covered them in their entirety, trapping them in place though not harming them.  Naturally the White Rabbit began to panic and run around as much as he could, though his cries were muffled by the giant dress that he was now under.  The Dodo, by comparison, remained still as he took in the shock of what just occurred.  One moment he was trying to start a fire; the next he was knocked back by several feet before a gigantic white sheet was upon him.

With the second wave of growth leveling off, Alice finally got readjusted with her surrondings.  What she saw took her breath away as she gasped momentarily, eyes wide open.

"Oh my goodness," she said as her voice reverberated with new found power, given her sudden increase in scale.

Placing a hand over her lips in a sign of embarrasment, Alice was shocked by how loud she sounded now, despite speaking at normal volume (at least normal to her).

After Alice's first growth spurt with in the White Rabbit's house, she was gigantic.  If she were to stand upright from then, she wagered the house would have been around the same height as her waistline, give or take a few feet.  As Alice slowly got to her feet, which produced minor tremors to the surrounding landscape as she did so, she looked down to examine the results of her second growth spurt.

It was hard to gauge given that the house was now scattered rubble, but from what Alice could discern, if the house was still standing, it most likely would have been somewhere between her ankle and the bottom of her calf muscles.  She could have demolished it with one foot if she so desired.  Her shapely, rounded tushy was had more surface area than the house itself.  She would have been able to carry it with both hands as if it were a small package, even with one arm if she cradled it against her inner elbow.  The realization of this all had Alice awestruck of how much the second growth spurt altered her overall size.

Scanning the ground below to see what became of the would-be arsonist and his unwilling companion, Alice spotted both the Dodo and the White Rabbit down below, between her feet.  Both of them were cast in her shadow as from their viewpoint she blocked out the sun at her great height.  She was thankful that no harm had befallen them, even if one of them had attempted to "smoke her out" so to speak.  From her new size, the Dodo probably no bigger than Alice's pinkey toe, and the White Rabbit being much smaller than that.  The two of them stared up at Alice, the Dodo in awe, the Rabbit in petrified fright.

Trying to not appear threatening, Alice, leaned down as gently as she could, her knees making contact with the earth in a colossal 'thud' sound.  Even seated, she still towered over them by what would be at least a hundred feet from their perspective.  If Alice were to guess, she was probably somewhere between two and three hundred feet from her original when she entered the White Rabbit's (now obliterated) home, though it was a rough guess for her at that moment.

"Pardon me, good sirs," she said.  Her voice was rather loud for them to hear without instictively covering their ears and the wind from her mouth as she talked blew them back a few feet.  Feeling embarassed, Alice softened her voice to something just above a whisper.

"Oh...terribly sorry.  Are you two okay?" she asked, worried concern over her gigantic face as it hovered over them.

"Fine enough, my lady," responded the Dodo as he got to his feet, gathering his cane and pipe off the ground.  The White Rabbit got his bearings, shaking his head in a fast paced, side-to-side motion for a moment.  Adjusting his glasses, he looked up at the young girl and responded.

"Uh...I- I- I'm f- fi- fine." mutteed the Rabbit, nervousness still apparent in his voice.

"I'm terribly sorry about your house, Mr. Rabbit," resumed Alice, "but I needed to escape before you two tried to burn it, as I assure you I am most certainly not a monster."

"You are not a monster?" asked the Dodo.

"Good heavens no!" said Alice, "I'm just a little girl is all."

"Madam," replied the Dodo, "you are certainly many things, but I would not include little among them." he countered, sticking his pipe in mouth as he finished.

Understanding the Dodo's point, Alice muttered embarassingly while blushing, "Well...I mean I was a little girl not so long ago."

"My poor house..." muttered the Rabbit as he surveryed the damage and what little remained of his home.

"Also, Mr. Rabbit," continued Alice, eyes focused solely on him, "I'm afraid I am not this 'Mary Anne' you have mistaken me for."

"No?" replied the Rabbit looking up at the giant face, "Wherever could that girl be?  She's so clumsy and absent-minded, I swear." he grumbled.

"Anyways," continued the giant girl, "since you have no place to live now, and I am awfully sorry of what has become of your home, perhaps you could come along with me until we find you a new place to stay.  Think of it as my way of making it up to you."

The White Rabbit pondered this over, surprised at the offer that was being made to him.  This girl probably wasn't an evil monster after all, he reasoned.  If she were, she could simply stomp the two of them in an instant, or pick them up and eat them in one swift gulp.  The fact that she was offering to help him was shocking in and of itself.  Deciding to take a chance on what he hoped was a gentle giant (er, giantess), the White Rabbit calmed himself and prepared his answer.

"I...I guess that would be alright." he said with mild hesitation, still in awe of the massive being that was stopped on its knees before him.  After all, from his perspective, it was like an ant communicating with an elephant.  The sheer difference in scale was so pronounced that it made him aware of how weak he was compared to this female giant.

"Alright, jolly well good!" responded Alice with a beaming smile.  She then proceeded to turn her right hand over, palm facing up, and laid it flat against the ground next to the tiny pair.

"It would be easier if I carried you, as I would not want to force you to run in order to keep up with me," Alice reasoned.  Hesitant at first as he stared at the giant hand, the White Rabbit steadily made his way towards it.  Hoping this was not some kind of trap once he was literally in the palm of her hand, he hopped upwards onto the surface, getting his footing as he neared the center of the open palm.

"Mr. Dodo," Alice said, turning towards the other, "would you care to join us?"

"Well, young lady," he responded, "that sounds like a jolly good plan!  A chance to travel in style I dare say.  Don't mind if I do!"  Soon afterwards he hopped onto the palm next to the White Rabbit, getting seated within the center of the giant girl's fist.

"Well then, shall we?" asked Alice innocently as she stared down at her two newfound passengers.

"Let us away!" hollered the Dodo, while the Rabbit just nervously shook his head, not wanting to upset the giant girl in anyway now that he was (pardon the pun) 'in her clutches' so to speak.

Slowly rising up while curling her fingers to cup and protect her little travellers, Alice took in the scenery before her.  The forest trees, which once towered over her easily, were now little more than tall blades of grass in height compared to the now titanic young lady.  The tallest trees ended at around her shin in height, and those were the tallest ones.  Alice's view now stretched far over the horizon, as if she were a bird soaring through the heavens, even though she was simply standing on the ground.

As she prepared to take her first step, she felt something plop onto her head, gently cushioned by the bounciness of her thick golden locks of hair.  It barely registered when it made impact, and whatever it was had to be no bigger than her two tiny companions in terms of size.  Taking her left hand to the top of her head, Alice probed her hair for whatever it was that landed on her head.  Eventually finding something that felt out of place, she gently pinched it betwee her thumb, index finger, and middle finger. Then she proceeded to take whatever it was and gently lay it in the palm of her right hand to examine it.  Uncurling her fingers, she made room for whatever it was she just found.

Still covered in soot, Bill the Lizard lay curled and exhausted after having the ride of his life.  He must have been shot miles into the sky, wondering whenever he would come back down and if he would survive the landing.  Imagine his surprise when he had a rather soft landing, softer than what he expected anyway.  Blinking his eyes open, he took at look at his surroundings.

Apparently he was on some kind of soft surface, peach colered by the look of it.  On the same surface were both the White Rabbit and the Dodo he bumped into earlier.  Curious as to where they were exactly, Bill looked about before his eyes rested upon the giant blue eyes he met not so long ago.

"Oh Bill!" said Alice, the volume in her voice picking back up, "thank goodness you're okay!  I was worried what would become of you after all of that.  I'm awfully sorry about what you had to go through."

The beautiful giant face was now focused on the little lizard resting in her palm.  Feeling a sense of deja vu, Bill was tempted to panic and scream "Monster!" before scurrying off to find safety.  But given the day he had just been through and fatigued beyond his limits, he simply fainted after a moment of blank-faced, wide-eyed staring.  He gently plopped his head back down against the skin of Alice's palm, closed his eyes, and nodded off.

"Ahh, he'll be fine," responded the Dodo, "the lad just needs a good night's sleep and he'll be right as rain before you know it!"

"Poor Bill." cooed Alice as she stared down at the tiny lizard in her palm, her third addition to her newly acquired troop of travelling companions.  She gently stroked his body with her left index finger trying to soothe him the best she could given her new size and strength.

"We, we, we really must be going," said the White Rabbit, "or else Her Majesty will be furious.  I really can't afford to be late." he continued, holding up his pocket watch to stress the importance of his problem.

"Her Majesty?" asked Alice innocently looking down at the Rabbit, "And where does she live?"

Scanning the horizon around Alice's hand, the White Rabbit surveyed the landscape the best he could.  After straightening out his glasses, he answered, pointing in a particular direction.

"I think her castle is that way." he said.

Looking as far as she could over the horizon in the direction the White Rabbit pointed to, squinting her eyes, Alice swore she could make out what appeared to be the spires of a castle just off in the distance.  What would take a day or two to travel at her original size, Alice figured she could make the trek in less than an hour or so.  Hopefully, whoever was there wouldn't be alarmed by her now gigantic size.  She probably wouldn't fit inside the castle, but hopefully there was some place she could stay, at least for a little while she visited.  She could see just what appointment was so important for the White Rabbit to attend to, then she would be on her way, find him a new home, and continue from there on.  Thankfully with her new size, getting around wouldn't be too hard.  She would just have to mind her overall size and the power that came with it.  She may be big - really really big - but she didn't let power go to her head, after all.

Taking a step towards the spires, Alice set off with one step after another, the ground trembling and the treetops shaking with each thunderous footfall.  Her shoes left mighty imprints in the earth and soil, several feet deep as the multi-ton girl made her way through the forest.  Cupping her hand to protect her three passengers once more, she continued further off to her next destination, quietly whispering to herself as she did so:

"Curioser and curioser."

"Hmmm...one side will make me grow...but which is which?" pondered young Alice.

Currently the young lady was sitting on a mushroom - yes a mushroom - and holding a piece of said mushroom in each of her hands.  This mushroom was by no means abnormally large to the average human.  It was simply that Alice was currently in a shrunken state, no more than three inches high at that.  Sitting atop it, she yanked off a part of the mushroom from opposite ends after getting some rather odd advice just a moment ago.

To help clarify somewhat, let us recap a bit shall we?

On her pursuit of a White Rabbit, young Alice had stumbled into a Wonderland of sorts, meeting various characters which defied logic.  The White Rabbit himself dressed in fine clothes, spoke English, wore spectacles, carried a pocketwatch, and was apparently late "for a very important date" in his own words.  After stumbling down a rabbit hole (ironic enough), Alice went on an adventure through a hallway with a talking doorknob, witnessed a caucas race being organized by a talking dodo bird, and wandered into a forest where she was treated to the story of a walrus, a carpenter, and some oysters by a rather eccentric pair of twins.

After dismissing herself while the twins recited some tale of 'Old Father William,' she came upon the White Rabbit's house where she engaged in a series of growth and shrinking episodes while being visitied upon by the dodo once more as well as a lizard named Bill.  After escaping the White Rabbit's house (which was about to be set afire by the dodo), she once more pursued the rabbit into the forest.  Losing him shortly after, she was greeted by a garden full of talking flowers who entertained her with a song they referred to as the "Golden Afternoon".  However, she didn't leave on particularly well terms among the flowers once they believed her to be a common weed, ejecting her from their company with a splash (quite literally!).

As she wandered deeper into the forest, she came upon another somewhat eccentric character: a talking caterpillar, sitting on a mushroom and smoking from a hookah pipe.  After engaging in a riddle-based conversation with the caterpillar which included a rather entertaining smoke show while he narrated, Alice then got him into somewhat of an irritated mood when height was brought up.  Wishing she could return to her normal size, she made the mistake of commenting how "three inches high" was not adequate for someone like her.

Enraged by the comment, the Caterpillar responded with the following:

"I am exactly three inches high, and it is a very good height indeed!"

After puffing himself into a tizzy fit of sorts, the Caterpillar managed to transform into a butterfly and flew off just after giving Alice some advice on her height predicament:

"One side will make you grow taller...and the other side will make you grow shorter."

Upon being blatantly told at the end, "The Mushroom, of course!", the Caterpillar flew off for good, leaving Alice alone in the woods once more, sitting on a mushroom and processing the information she was just given.

Which brings us to the start of this chapter.

In a moment of self reflection, Alice pondered whether she should consume another unknown substance in a place she had never been to before.  She had, after all, sipped from a bottle that led to her getting shrunken, eaten cakes and cookies that led to her growing tremendously large, and bitten into a carrot that also ended up with her shrinking yet again.  It seemed that whatever she ate or drank in this strange world, her size was affected somehow by it all.  This time, she had some forewarning about this particular substance, yet still she hesitated as to whether she should go through with consuming it.

With uncertainty looming in the back of her mind, Alice considered leaving well enough alone and putting the mushroom pieces back.  Even though she was alone, she could not help but voice her thoughts as she considered all options in her situation.

"Hmm...after all that's happened, I...I wonder if I...I don't care!"

Without hesitation, she took the mushroom piece in her right hand and chomped down on it, swallowing a healthy amount of it a moment later.  As the chunk of mushroom travelled down her throat, Alice looked up at the sky through the canopy of forest trees and continued with voicing her thoughts.

"I'm tired of being only three inches high -yigh -yigh -yigh -yigh -yigh -yigh -yigh -yigh -yigh -yigh!"

Without warning, Alice shot up in rapid, ongoing spurts.  From her seated position, she soon enough found herself standing.  The sensation she was feeling was hard to explain.  It was as if a really powerful case of hiccups had caused her to shoot up like a fresh weed in fast forward.  Upon each "yigh" in her speech, she rocketed up, first by several inches, and soon after by several feet.  In the span of a few seconds, she went from three inches tall to her original height, and then from there to several times her original height.

Knocking loose random branches and twigs from neighboring trees, Alice rose in height to ten feet, then fifteen, then twenty, and so on and so forth.  Spurt after spurt shot Alice up a few feet more at a time.  Wondering if her her growth would ever come to a stop, Alice peered upwards as her head pushed ever onwards and upwards through the treeline, nearing the top.  With awe and wonder, she realized that soon enough she would be able to see over every tree in the forest for miles around.

As the young lady sprouted up rapidly through her spot in the trees, she ended up taking on an unexpected visitor, or perhaps stowaway might be more fitting given the circumstances.

While Alice was shooting upwards in height like a rocket ship with a bad case of hiccups, a bird resting in her nest was taken for a ride with no warning.  When Alice cleared past the ten foot mark, her head made contact with the bird's nest directly above it.  Lifting it up as if it weighed nothing, Alice's head served as a new platform for the nest to rest on.  Whereas previously the bird's nest rested in the twisted limbs of a random tree branch, it now rested on the soft, plush golden blonde hairs that covered Alice's scalp.

As Alice grew in size, the hair on her head easily provided more and more cushioning for the bird's nest as it was carried towards the treetops.  Panicking over the predicament she found herself in, the bird chirped in alarm as both she and the nest she rested in were jolted higher and higher towards the sky.  Wearing a pink bonnet and a small pair of spectacles, the bird had a sort of grandmother-like appearance to her.  The majority of her feathers were a light grey/dirty white, whereas the remaining feathers were a purer, cleaner white in color (mainly located on her stomach and chest).  Her beak and feet were of a dark orange tint and her eyes were of a shade of light blue with beady little black dots serving as pupils.

Gripping her bonnet in fear, the bird chirped in frantic panic as she shot up further towards the sky.  Just beneath her, the head of the enlarging young lady lifted upwards towards the sky, her mouth slightly opened as she stared in awe at what was happening.  A second later, Alice's head erupted above the treeline in an explosion of leaves that rained down on the forest ground below.  In that moment, Alice's growth finally came to a halt, with her head from the neck up above the forest canopy.  The young woman was at least fifty feet tall now, all from the power of a single bite of a piece of mushroom.  The Caterpillar certainly wasn't kidding about the effects.

With the effects of the mushroom now having run their course, the young woman stayed perfectly still as she took in her new surroundings her increased size had afforded her.  While she did so, the bird took in her new surroundings as well.

Straightening out her glasses, the bird scanned around her immediate area.  Realizing she was no longer nested within the forest canopy, she looked around and soon after downwards to see that she was indeed above the entire forest, with her nest resting atop something that was certainly not a tree.  With a gasp, the bird stated what was behind her predicament.

"Ah!  A serpent!" she declared.  Looking below she could make out a mix of long limbs, blue and white cloth, and white limbs with black tips further down.  She figured a creature of such great length must certainly be a serpent after all.  What else could it be?

Leaving her nest and fluttering about wildly, the bird continued her manic episode of alarm as she flew around Alice's head.

"Help!  Help!  Serpent!  Serpent!" she cried as she circled the giant girl's golden plush hair.

Looking up at her new visitor and trying to calm the situation, Alice beseeched the bird to hear her out.

"Oh but please, please!" she begged with wide opened eyes, her eyebrows furrowed in concern.  The Bird, however, was having none of it.

"Off with you!  Shoo, shoo!  Go away!" she gestured with her arm-like wings while she floated in the air.  She then continued with her tirade of screaming "Serpent!" on and on as she flew about.

"But I'm not a serpent!" declared Alice, trying to calm the Bird.

Halting in mid-air at this announcement, the Bird alarmingly retorted.

"Huh, indeed?" she asked as she flew up towards Alice's face and landing on her nose.  It was a sudden gesture that made Alice seize up for a moment.  This bird had to be no bigger than Alice's eyeball relative to her new size.  If Alice dared to, she could easily entrap this bird within one of her fists if she was quick enough and felt like showing her new size off.  However, she preferred the diplomatic approach where and when possible.

"Then just what are you?" asked the Bird, continuing her line of questioning.

"I'm just a little girl!" responded Alice, moving her head slightly.  The movement was enough to jostle the Bird off of her newfound perch that was Alice's nose.  Floating in the air once again, the Bird responded.

"Little?  Hah!  Little?!"  she asked, the sarcasm in her voice making itself apparent.  From her perspective, the Bird did have a point after all.  She proceeded with a boisterous laughing fit at what Alice described herself as.

"Well I am!" responded Alice, suddenly realizing that statement was not exactly true at the moment.  With a mix of shock and embarrasment, she soon corrected that statement as she stared down towards the ground through the leaves and bushes below.

"I mean...I was." she muttered.  Looking far down, she wiggled her right foot to make sure it was still attached to her.  Though so far away from her perched position, the limb was in fact still part of the young lady.  Another testament to just how large Alice had become now from her prior size just moments ago.

Continuing her line of questioning, the Bird landed on Alice's nose once more.  She leaned her face in really close, staring into one of Alice's giant eyes as she continued inquiring as to what exactly Alice was, with her reflection mirroring her as she came within inches of the giant, baby blue iris and pupil.

"And I suppose you don't eat eggs either?" asked the Bird with a hint of distrust in her voice.

"Yes I do, but-" said Alice earnestly.  She tried to explain herself further, yet that was all the Bird needed to hear.

"I knew it, I knew it!" declared the bird, her assumptions now verifired.

"Serpent!" she cried, "Serpeeeeeeeeeent!" she bellowed as she darted around Alice's head.  The young girl ducked briefly among the leaves as she tried to protect herself from the Bird.  The sight was somewhat comical, as a being of gigantic proportions was being cowed and intimidated by another creature which was several times smaller than her.  It was practically the equivalent of a horse being intimidated by a mouse in terms of size.

"Oh for goodness sake!" cried Alice as frustration vocally erupted from her.  Here she was trying to politely explain her situation to this bird which was flying and floating around her making accusations as to what she was.  She tried to be civil up to this point, yet the Bird was apparently set in her assumptions as to what Alice exactly was and what her intentions were.  As the old saying goes, 'Even the Buddha's patience has limits,' and Alice was reaching the limits of hers.

Lifting her arms up, she noticed the mushroom pieces in her hands once more.  Oddly enough, they appeared to remain relatively the same size prior to Alice's sudden shooting up in height.  Where they once were oversized to the point of being boxing gloves at three inches in height, they now comfortably fit in the palm of her hands.  Should they not have been much smaller relative to her now giant stature?  The oddity of it boggled the mind, yet Alice reminded herself once more that this world was highly illogical in many ways.  She was after all conversing with a talking bird after all, and prior to that a talking caterpillar.  Surely if she told this to the first human she made contact with, they would think her outright mad.

As she looked at the mushroom piece in her left hand, Alice recalled what the Caterpillar told her before taking flight:

"And the other side will..." she said, eyeing piece as she flipped it over in her hand, examining it for any differences from the one in her right hand.  The mushroom piece looked just the same as the other one.

Pondering if she should put the other mushroom piece to the test, Alice instead tried for something else.  If one bite from the mushroom made her this large, what would another bite from the same piece do?  How much bigger would she become?  The temptation was simply too much for her curious mind to resist.

Placing the mushroom piece in her left hand into her left apron pocket, she eyed the remaining mushroom piece in her right hand, with a small bite mark emanating from where she chomped into it.  She brought it to her lips, preparing to take another nibble from it.

Meanwhile, atop Alice's head, the Bird was gathering up her eggs which rested in the nest.  The idea was somewhat comical, given that she intended to somehow haul all the eggs off to a safer location while flying.  Perhaps she was not completely in her right frame of mind, given the scare she had just been given only a few short moments ago.

"The very idea," the Bird muttered to herself, "spend all my time laying eggs for serpents like her."  The Bird proceeded with gathering her eggs one by one, trying to stack them the best she could like a Jenga tower cradled in her arm-like wings.  Again, the absurdity of it was somewhat comical.  How exactly was she going to actually fly off with those eggs?  Such was the wackiness of this strange world Alice had stumbled into.

Taking the smallest of bites, Alice pulled the mushroom piece back.  It briefly stretched perhaps a foot or so before breaking off from the piece she had pinned behind her pearly white teeth.  After a moment of chewing, Alice swallowed the bit and awaited what came next.  Seconds later, with eyes wide opened, Alice felt that familiar sensation return.  More growth was at hand.

With no warning, Alice shot upwards like a rocket.  Whereas the first growth episode came in spurts as she ascended through the trees, this spurt was one long, continuous episode with no hiccup-like interruptions.  Ever onward and upwards, her head began to rise far above the treetops.  Soon enough, her chest was above the treeline, then her waistline, then her knees.  As she rose higher and higher, the forest looked less intimidating and more novel, resembling grass more than mighty wooden pillars covered in vibrant green foliage.

While Alice spurted ever onwards and upward, the Bird was suddenly jostled by the instant increase in elevation.  Dropping her eggs into her nest, she fell down in said nest as her surroundings changed suddenly.  Whereas once she was just a few feet above the treeline seconds ago, she now saw the forest descend lower and lower at a rapid pace.  It was as if the sea of green that was her home was now becoming a sort of new floor, so to speak.  Panicking once more, the Bird gathered her eggs around as she huddled into the center of her nest, waiting for the spike in movement to cease, assuming it ever would.

Eventually, Alice's second growth spurt did come to and end.  When it was over, the young lady had transformed from a giant to an outright titan.  Before the spurt, her head and neck were above the treetops.  When her second wave of growth had settled down, the treeline was now level with her ankles.  Only her feet were now hidden beneath the sea of greenery.  If she were to guess, she was now several hundreds of feet in height, probably a solid five hundred feet or more, though without people and buildings to compare her size to, it was a rough guess to say the least.

When the growth spurt had settled, the Bird got her bearings once more.  Peering over the nest, she saw that she was now far above the treeline compared to her last position.  Looking down below, she gasped at just how far she ascended.  She could see the forest for miles and miles.  It was as if the entired canopy of trees and brush were like a veritable ocean of green.  Looking upwards, the clouds in the sky seemed so much closer.  In fact, the air felt just a tad bit thinner to her, along with being more brisk and chilly given the change in elevation.

Alice herself was in awe of how much she had elevated in stature.  From the perspective of those below, she probably appeared as some sort of goddess come to life.  How momentous that just a few minutes ago, she was small enough that her pet cat Dinah would have looked at her as if she were some sort of mouse or toy to play with; now she towered over all she saw, probably bigger than Big Ben.  The rate at which she alternated in size was a lot to take in both mentally and emotionally.

"Goodness," thundered Alice's voice, even though she was speaking at normal volume relative to her, "I wonder if I'll ever get the hang of this."

She was still alarmed at just how big she had become.  It seemed that the mushroom appeared to enlarge her at a rate of several times her size, whatever that size was previously.  If she were a few inches tall, she became tens of feet tall after consumption.  If she were tens of feet tall, she became hundreds of feet tall after consumption.  What gave such a small mushroom the power to alter the size of something so drastically?  Just another mystery to add on to the list of wonders in this 'Wonderland' which Alice seemed to find herself in.

Reaching upwards to the top of her head, Alice gingerly felt her way through the golden locks of hair, probing the center of her head.  Soon enough, she could make out the feeling of straw which composed the Bird's nest.  As delicately as she could, Alice curled her gargantuan fingers around it.  Delicately enclosing it in her fist, she brought the nest down to just below her head.  Upon leveling it with her neck, she uncurled her fingers, revealing the Bird's nest, with both her and her eggs still nestled with it.

The Bird was frantically panicking as she saw a colossal hand descend from above her, trapping her and her nest enclosed within.  Everything went pitch black for several seconds before her being jostled about as she could feel herself moving downwards from what she could tell.  After a moment in darkness, she was greeted by sunlight once more as she readjusted her bearings.  She was greeted by the supposed serpent which she rested atop the head of just minutes before.

Now this 'serpent' was several magnitudes larger.  Before, her eyes were larger than the Bird's entire body.  Now, the Bird wagered the serpent's very pupil was large enough for the Bird to pass through in terms of surface area.  Whereas she had enough space to land on this creature's nose prior to this little spurt in size, she probably could perch herself on one of the creature's eyelashes if she so desired.  It was a reminder of just how large this being now was prior to a few seconds ago.  It was the kind of realization that would make one instinctively gulp in fear and caution at such an occurrence.

Whereas the Bird would be panicking frantically as she was prior, she simply stared in awe before her captor now.  Knowing that she was at the mercy of colossal creature before her, she only stared in awe of the she-giant, knowing that if she wanted to, this 'serpent' could crush both her and her eggs at a moment's notice, and there was absolutely nothing the Bird could do to make that otherwise.  She awaited her fate as she lay nestled in the giant's palm.

"Now," spoke Alice, before lowering her voice to a whisper once she registered the Bird's reaction at how loud her voice sounded, "will you please hear me out?" she continued at a far lower volume.

The Bird only nodded her head in agreement, doing everything she could to appease the giant before her.  The last thing she wanted to do was aggravate this giant that stood before her.  For both the sake of her and her eggs, the Bird was prepared to do whatever the giant commanded of her, if for nothing else than to at least spare her eggs if not herself.  While it was certainly a gamble, she hoped this giant would be benevolent enough to spare her children-to-be if not herself.  Of course, it was all a gamble in the end.  The giant could simply crush her, then crush her babies in their eggs, and there would be absolutely nothing the Bird could do to make that otherwise.

"Now please," Alice pleaded, "listen to me.  I am not a serpent.  I'm just a little...I'm just a young girl.  I don't mean you any harm whatsoever.  I'm simply trying to find my way.  I've been following a white rabbit, and I've been a little lost, so to speak."

The Bird stared up at the colossal face, taking in every word that was said.  She merely nodded her head, trying to be as agreeable as possible and do everything in her power to not upset the behemoth before her.  The only thing on her mind was doing whatever she could to not upset this newfound giant and not incur her potential wrath, both for the Bird's sake and for her eggs' sake.

Alice stared before the Bird, who sat perfectly still in her palm.  By her new size, the wagered the bird was no larger than a typical horsefly...scratch that, no larger than a gnat relative to her newly increased size.  She was doing everything in her power to not appear menacing or intimidating, which for a being of her size was practically impossible to perform by this point.  Even so, she would still try to be as diplomatic and appeasing as she could, even though the size disparity was clearly in her favor.

"Please know," Alice continued, "I mean you absolutely no harm whatsoever.  I'm simply trying to find my way through this place.  I was on the trail of a white rabbit, and I got myself stuck and stopped along the way.  I'm just trying to continue where I left off."

The Bird simply nodded once more in response.  Mustering up some courage, she responded to the giant.

"Uhh...yes, of course.  Please...feel free to go wherever you please." she spoke with caution, hoping she didn't say anything that would offend or aggravate the giant in any way whatsoever.

Alice was pleased to know that the Bird would stop pestering her at this point.  Though it was somewhat difficult to make out what she was saying at this point.  Before, she could understand what the Bird was saying prior to her last growth spurt, but at this point her voice was of a much higher pitch than before.  It proved to be rather difficult to make out what she said with perfect understanding and clarity compared to her previous size.  Leaning in towards her hand, Alice tilted her head to try and better hear the Bird from this point on.

"I'm terribly sorry," said Alice, "but I'm having a bit of difficulty hearing you.  If possible, could you please speak up a bit?" she requested.

The Bird responded to Alice's request with great haste, trying to stay on the giant girl's good side while she was (literally) within her grasp.

"Yes!" she hollered, "By all means do as you see fit!  If possible, could you please set me down among the trees?!"  The Bird figured that at this point, she would have to practically scream in order for this giant girl to understand what she was saying.

"The trees?" asked Alice, turning her head to look directly at the Bird laying squarely in the center of her palm.  Even with the Bird so up close, Alice had to squint her eyes to get an accurate view of the tiny avian creature residing within the massive expanse of her hand.

"Yes!  The trees, if you please!" shouted the Bird, hoping the giant would both hear and honor her request.

"Very well," said Alice in response.  She then proceeded to lower her fist down towards the forest, bringining the Bird and her nest closer and closer towards the treetops.  It was something of a rollercoaster ride for the Bird as she rapidly descended downwards by several hundred feet towards the sea of green.  She felt her stomach flip over itself as she neared the horizon full of lush green leaves and wayward branches.  While she descended, she held her eggs close to her, protectively holding them against her body while she neared ever closer and closer towards the forest.

Eventually bringing her hand to a stop, Alice held her palm wide open to try and help the Bird settle back into the forest where she resided prior the young girl's growth episode.  Bringing her other hand down towards her fist, she ever so slightly pinched the Bird's nest between her thumb and index finger and proceeded to carry it like a crane hauling cargo towards the treetops of the forest.  The experience was exhilarating to say the least from the Bird's perspective as she was carried by a set of fingers holding her nest in a pincer-like fashion as she descended further down towards the top of the forest.

Once the Bird's nest was settled back among the leaves and branches of the forest, she looked back up towards the girl she called a serpent just moments prior.  She was absolutely massive compared to previously.  Whereas she was huge prior to the last growth spurt, at this point she was down right colossal now.  The Bird was cast completely in this young lady's shadow now.  If she so desired, this girl could simply bring one of her feet up ever so slightly and then proceed to stomp the Bird and her eggs into oblivion, and that would be the end of that.  The thought of such a thing terrified the Bird and made her instinctively swallow in nervousness as she contemplated the chances of such a thing happening.

Bent down, with her hands on her knees, Alice leaned in towards the Bird, being mindful to keep her voice low so as to not blow over the tiny creature from the sound and wind exhaled from her voice as she spoke.

"Again, I'm terribly sorry about what happened earlier.  I was simply trying to find my way about this place, and I figured it would be easier if I was bigger than if I was smaller." said Alice.  The Bird simply nodded in agreement before speaking.

"It's alright, j- just be on you way!  Go wherever you wish!" she hollered, trying to get this she-giant to leave as quickly as possible, for both her sake and the sake of her eggs.

Glad that the Bird was no longer being hostile towards her, Alice's face broke out in a smile as she was relieved the situation had been more or less resolved.  Standing straight up once more, she prepared to take her leave as she bid her farewells to the Bird.

"Alright then," said Alice, "best be on my way then.  Take care now and I hope your eggs turn out all well and good.  Goodbye then, little birdie."

Alice gently waved her large hand from side to side briefly before turning around and making her way off towards some new place.  Raising one of her feet, she proceeded to vacate herself from the area.  As her foot landed, it created a colossal tremor that caused all the trees in the area to vibrate and shake vigorously for several seconds.  The Bird herself felt the vibrations resonated in her very core as this monumental young woman made her way off into the distance.

In a matter of seconds, Alice created a good amound of distance between her and the Bird, flattening chunks of forest underneath her feet as she walked.  Placing the other piece of mushroom in the right pocket of her apron, Alice continued onward with her journey.  She figured if need be, she could partake of the other mushroom piece and shrink herself somewhat to better navigate the area.  Both pieces of mushroom would serve a purpose for the young lady at this point.  Though she mush admit she appreciated the benefits of being big over being small.  With her increased size, there was little chance of anything harming her at this point in her journey.  And if she felt the need to, she could simply shrink herself down if the situation required it.  For now though, she would remain at her current size, content with the benefits that being a titan afforded her.

Hopefully she could pick up on the White Rabbit's trail and find out where exactly he was headed.  With her increased size, catching up with him would be beyond easy.  It was just a matter of spotting him through the forest.  If she couldn't find him soon enough, Alice would use the shrinking piece of mushroom to help in locating him.

'If it comes to that, I'll cross that bridge when I get there.' thought Alice to herself as she resumed her search for the White Rabbit.

As the titanic young lady continued onwards through the forest that now resembled a field of grass from her perspective, she came to the blunt realization that one thing was undoubtedly for certain:

Nobody was going to harass or intimidate her from this point on.

 

"Somebody's head is going to roll for this!" hollered the Queen of Hearts from underneath the fabric, rage boiling in her voice.

 

At that moment, Alice knew she had to do something.  If she didn't act within that moment, she was as good as dead.  There was no talking the Queen down given her emotional state.  She was far too enraged to be reasoned with, so action had to be taken given the circumstances.

 

In order to make sense of any of this, a bit of context and some backtracking is in order.

 

From the moment she fell down the rabbit hole in her pursuit of the White Rabbit, Alice had ventured into a veritable Wonderland of sorts.  Over the span of the last few hours, Alice had come across numerous characters and creatures, several of which defied logic.  Among them were the White Rabbit, an eccentric Dodo Bird, a somewhat gullible lizard named Bill, a talking Doorknob, a rather odd pair of twins she met in the forest, an easily-panicked bird, a somewhat pompous Caterpillar, an entire garden full of talking flowers, a rather bonkers ‘Cheshire Cat,' a Mad Hatter along with his accomplice called the ‘March Hare,' and an easy-to-frighten DoorMouse.  So many of them were illogical and wacky to say the least, yet many of them were entertaining in one way or another from Alice's perspective.  However, her list of characters was yet to be completed, as she was about to meet perhaps the most dangerous person in Wonderland.

 

After making her way through the woods trying to find her way back home, Alice ended up coming into the domain of none other than the high-and-mighty "Queen of Hearts."  While engaging in a session of "painting the roses red," with a group of anthropomorphic man-size cards, Alice ended up coming into the presence of the Queen, who she found to have less than ideal characteristics one might expect from a monarch.

 

As it would turn out, the Queen had a rather fierce temper and was quick to lose her patience.  Her favorite phrase seemed to be "Off with their heads!" whenever someone brought forth her ire.  Young Alice believed that she would be at the mercy of the mad monarch when oddly enough, she was invited to a round of croquet with the Queen.  The game itself was rather odd to say the least, as in place of croquet mallets they used flamingoes, in place of croquet balls were rolled-up hedgehogs, and the cards in place of wickets.

 

After a few rounds of play, an unexpected visitor decided to make himself known exclusively to Alice alone.  Why none other than the Cheshire Cat decided to pop up out of nowhere and make the game a bit more exciting.  Deciding it would be "loads of fun" to make the Queen of Hearts really angry by having her trip over herself in the middle of her swing.  Sure enough, once Her Majesty ended up doing just that, she was fuming mad.

 

Quick to make accusations and deciding that Alice was the culprit without any verifiable proof, the Queen was ready to declare the young girl to be "off with her head," when oddly enough the King of Hearts decided to intervene.  While he was hesitant to go against his wife's wishes, the King decided to take momentary pity on Alice's plight and give her a chance to save herself.  He beseeched the Queen to consider a trial where Alice might defend herself to prove her innocence.  While Her Majesty was initially irritated at the idea of a trial, the King managed to convince her to preside over a "little trial" for the sake of fairness.  And so it was that a trial would be had and all parties involved were moved from the royal gardens to the courthouse.

 

Of course, given the circumstances that this was Wonderland where said events were taking place, things were far from rational or orderly.

 

Upon the start of the trial in which Alice's alleged crime of causing Her Majesty to "lose her temper" was read aloud before the judge (the King and Queen of Hearts) and jury (an assortment of anthropomorphic animals), Alice's sentence was about to be declared.  When Alice tried to inform the Queen that a verdict precedes a sentence in court, doing so ended up enraging the monarch even further.  That alone made Alice back down and let the Queen have her way.

 

When the Queen was about to once again declare that Alice be "off with her head," the King once more interjected and insisted that a few witnesses be brought forth so as to make the court proceedings more fair.  Once more, with reluctance, the Queen acquiesced and let it happen, but not without much irritability and hidden rage in her response.

 

Once again, since this was taking place in Wonderland, the witnesses called forth were nowhere near the scene of the incident, yet they were characters whom Alice was familiar with.

 

The first witness brought forth was the March Hare.  When asked what he knew of the incident between Alice and the Queen of Hearts, he simply replied with "nothing."

 

"Nothing whatever!?" inquired the Queen.

 

"NOTHING WHATEVER!" responded the March Hare.

 

"That's very important!" declared the Queen in response.  She then instructed the jury to write down those very words.  When Alice corrected Her Majesty by informing her that she meant "unimportant," the Queen responded by roaring "SILENCE!" as she rapidly banged the gavel.

 

The next witness brought forth was the Dormouse, residing (and sleeping) in the teapot that was more-or-less his home.  When the Queen asked him what he had to say about what occurred, he responded thusly before nodding off back to sleep:

 

"Twinkle twinkle, little bat; How I wonder where you're at."

 

"That's the most important piece of evidence we've heard yet." whispered the Queen to both the King and the jury, followed with the command to "WRITE THAT DOWN!"

 

"Twinkle twinkle...what next?" muttered Alice to herself as she witnessed the absurdity of all that was going on around her.  This was certainly a far cry from what would normally proceed in a court of law.  However, given where she was, it should not really come off as too much of a surprise as to what was occurring before her eyes.  This whole world was one of total nonsense, after all.

 

The next witness brought forth turned out to be the Mad Hatter.  As he presented himself to the court, the Queen ordered him to be "off with [his] hat," which he complied with accordingly.  The King of Hearts asked him his whereabouts when the incident occurred, and the Hatter responded that he was at home, drinking tea.  He then elaborated that today was his "unbirthday."

 

Upon hearing this, the King decided to strike up some good news to lift his wife's spirit.

 

"Why my dear, today is your unbirthday too!" he told the Queen.

 

"It is?" she asked, her face lighting up with joy.

 

"It is?" asked the Mad Hatter and March Hare as they shook each other's hands.

 

"It is?"  roared the entire courtroom as Alice stared wide-eyed and mouth wide open as she took in the absurdity of the whole situation.

 

Sure enough, the entire courtroom minus Alice was joining as one in song and festivities to celebrate the Queen's unbirthday.  All Alice could do to bear through the absurdity of it all was to bury her face in her hands and wait for the singing to come to an end.  

 

As the song neared its grand finale, the Mad Hatter presented a cake covered in several dozens of candles, somehow already lit as it were.  The Queen of Hearts let forth a great burst of breath onto the cake, snuffing out all the candles at once.  A moment later, the cake exploded like a firecracker, yet left no icing nor batter onto Her Majesty's face oddly enough.  In fact, the cake had somehow disappeared the very moment it exploded, being replaced with a neatly wrapped gift box for the Queen to open.

 

In the span of a heartbeat, the Queen ferociously tore at the box and the wrapping paper inside of it the way a small child would unwrap presents on Christmas or on their birthday celebrations.  There was such childlike wonder in her eyes as she eagerly tore through to find out what the prize was that lay within the package.

 

After overcoming both the wrapping paper and the stuffing paper within the box, the Queen had unearthed the contents that laid within.  It was a sort of over-the-top, mushroom-shaped decorative headpiece, colored a deep purple, with a set of pearls that formed a sort of smile at the ‘head' of the object.  At the very top of the headpiece was a miniature golden crown, similar to Her Majesty's own crown, resting neatly atop it in a somewhat comical fashion.  While perhaps a bit much in terms of taste, it was a nice enough looking object in and of itself.  It certainly amused and delighted the Queen enough as she handled it and placed it atop her own crown soon after.

 

As the song came to an end, the Queen of Hearts took in the adoration of her newly acquired decorative headpiece.  In that moment, she was the center of attention, which made her as giddy as a schoolgirl in the popular kids' clique.  She was always at her happiest whenever all eyes were on her.  Down below, Alice drummed her fingers against her cheek, just trying to "go with the flow" as it were and wait for all the over-the-top theatrics to come to an end.  Hopefully, with the Queen in a good mood, she might be able to finish this trial without losing her head.  As she glanced towards the monarch with mild curiosity, a visitor decided to make himself known once more.

 

The very moment the song came to an end, the Queen's decorative headpiece had inexplicably morphed from an inanimate object into a very live character.  The headpiece had been replaced with none other than the Cheshire Cat, who sat atop the Queen's crown, his wide toothy grin replacing the pearls that accommodated the headpiece previously.  The moment this change occurred, Alice could not help to point out what had just happened to the Queen.

 

"Oh!  Your Majesty!" declared Alice, joy lighting up in her face.

 

"Yes, my dear?"  responded the Queen, giggling as blissful ignorance consumed her while the Cheshire Cat waved to Alice from atop the monarch's crown.

 

"Look!  There he is now!"  said Alice, pointing towards the Queen's head.

 

"Huh?  Who!?"  asked Her Majesty, looking left and right, while the Cheshire Cat moved his head in the opposite direction relative to the Queen's head.

 

"The Cheshire Cat!"  declared Alice, pointing atop her own head to signal to the Queen of Hearts where he currently was.

 

"Cat!"  roared the Queen, reaching above her own head to nab him.

 

Unfortunately for the Queen of Hearts, the Cheshire Cat was simply too quick and clever to be caught so easily.  The moment his location was confirmed, he had inexplicably vanished into thin air once more, as was his nature.  Also unfortunately for the Queen, her shouting of the word "cat" had alerted the Dormouse, who was deathly afraid of cats and reacted accordingly.  A second later, he had left his teapot and began scurrying back and forth across the shelf of the Queen's podium before running up Her Majesty's frontside and face, soon after jumping atop her head behind her.

 

Feeling the need to intervene, the Mad Hatter and March Hare were close in pursuit of the Dormouse, running up the Queen's frontside and jumping off of her head right behind the Dormouse in their hopes to catch him.  That ended up with the Queen of Hearts, the Dormouse, the Mad Hatter, and the March Hare all tangled up as they ended up knocking loose a banner behind the Queen's podium.  Once it tangled down towards the floor, it ended up wrapping Her Majesty and the others into one big bundle.  From there, things only got worse.

 

As the gang bounced around underneath the fabric, the Mad Hatter called for a dose of grape jam, which apparently helped calm down the Dormouse if a small dose of it was slathered across his nose, oddly enough.  His declaration was backed up by the King of Hearts, who at the moment was bouncing upon his wife's tushy while pounding it with his gavel.

 

"The jam!  The jam!  By order of the king!" decreed the King.

 

Trying to aid in the situation, Alice reached for a jar of said jam off of a nearby podium.  A moment later, the March Hare pulled out a spoon and thrust it deep into the jar, pulling out a large gob of grape jam and throwing it in the general direction of the Queen of Hearts.

 

"Let me have it!" hollered the Queen, poking her head out from underneath the banner.  Her command would soon enough be honored, just not in the way she was expecting.

 

The gob of jam splashed hard into the Queen's face, making a particularly loud slurping, squishing sound as it collided.  While that was going on, the Dormouse was rushing along the Queen's backside, with the King of Hearts right behind him, gavel in hand.  In his attempt to pacify the panicking rodent, the King attempted to give him one good wallop with his gavel if the Dormouse would just pause for one second.  As the Dormouse leapt off the Queen's head, the King made his attempt, missing the Dormouse by inches as he brought the hammer down atop his wife's head, making a particularly loud ringing sound like that of a church bell as he did so.

 

The King and the March Hare stood atop over the Queen of Hearts, who was still underneath the banner, having just been bashed atop her head after being slathered in grape jam seconds before.  Curious as to her reaction, they got their answer a moment later when Her Majesty's voice growled from underneath the fabric.

 

That brings us to the start of this chapter, dear reader.

 

Not wanting to be on the receiving end of the Queen's rage, the King of Hearts frantically handed the mallet to the March Hare.  The March Hare in turn handed it to the Mad Hatter, who soon after placed the item into Alice's right hand.  Temporarily dumbfounded, Alice soon after realized in one hand that she held the gavel and in the other hand she still held the jar of jam that was inadvertently used on Her Majesty in all of the commotion.  Given the circumstances, holding both items at that moment was practically a death sentence if the Queen spotted Alice right there and then.

 

As it so happens, that is just what occurred in that very moment.  Clawing her way out from the banner by tearing through with her fingers, with jam dripping from her face, the Queen spotted Alice holding both objects as she stared at the girl with murder in her eyes.

 

In a desperate attempt to save herself, Alice pitched both items and placed her hands into her apron pockets, with a sideways glance and a cute little smirk on her face to try and feign innocence.  It was all for naught however, as the Queen of Hearts spotted Alice holding both objects a second before she tossed them.

 

"A-haaa!"  hollered the Queen at that moment.

 

Realizing she needed to act fast and decisively, Alice brainstormed on something she could do to save herself.  Otherwise, she was guaranteed to be decapitated there and then, especially since the Queen of Hearts was most likely at her angriest at that very moment.  It was when she shoved her hands into her pockets that her salvation was presented to her.

 

"The mushroom!" whispered Alice to herself as she brought out the pieces of the plant in her hands.  She stared at them briefly, trying to discern which piece was which.  From what she could recall of her time with the hookah-smoking Caterpillar, the mushroom pieces would drastically alter her size.

 

"One side will make you grow taller...and the other side will make you grow shorter."  That was what he told her the moment he transformed into a butterfly and flew off.  Now she just needed to remember which piece was which.  It was time for an experimental case of trial and error.

 

Bringing the piece in her left hand to her mouth, Alice nibbled a small chunk of the mushroom to find out whether the piece would cause her to grow or shrink.  She got her answer a few seconds later as the world around her began to enlarge and tower over her.  Rapidly she dwindled further and further until she was perhaps an inch high at that.  Both pieces of mushroom, once small chunks that could fit in the palms of her hands, were now quite substantial in terms of size relative to Alice's new stature (or lack thereof).

 

Meanwhile, the Queen of Hearts was bellowing her favorite saying while Alice was shrinking.

 

"Off with her he-" yelled the Queen, before stopping in the middle of her declaration.  The young lady had inexplicably disappeared, which made Her Majesty all the more angry.

 

"What in the...where is she?!  Find her, you fools!" hollered the Queen.

 

"Yes, Your Majesty!  Right Away, my Queen!"  was the response from various guards throughout the courtroom, eager to please their master.  Some of them started making their way towards Alice's podium, given that was the girl's last known location before vanishing.

 

Back with Alice, now that she had figured out which piece was which, it was time to put her plan into action.  Given her current size or the size she was previously, she would be at the mercy of the Queen of Hearts and her army of playing-card-shaped guards.  But if she proved to be too big of a force to be trifled with, the tables would turn and she would no longer need to fear for her safety.  Eyeing the mushroom piece in her right hand, she began chomping into it and eating it as quickly as possible.  With the bravado that the young lady was consuming the mushroom, one might have figured she was training to win an eating competition.  She was finishing up the entire mushroom piece when large shadows loomed over her, which happened to belong to the guards which were peering over the podium and staring straight down at Alice.

 

"She's right here, Your Majesty!  We've found her!" declared one of the guards.

 

"Very good!  Now bring her here, right away!"  exclaimed the Queen, eager to see the young girl punished as soon as possible.

 

The guards reached out to snatch young Alice from within the podium she was hiding behind, eager to please their queen.  Sure enough, the young girl would be within their grasp.  At her current size, it would be mere child's play to arrest her, and then...wait a moment.  What was going on?  Was she getting...bigger?

 

"Well, what's taking so long?  Bring her here, immediately!" hollered the Queen, eager to see the young lady punished.  After so much waiting and so much drama, Her Majesty was only too eager to have the girl punished for angering her in the first place.

 

"Off with her hea-" the Queen was about to finish with the word "head" when all of a sudden she was cast in shadow within a split second.  Whereas she was looking far downwards towards Alice, she was now looking upwards and further upwards every second.  Where she was so sure of enacting her vengeance against the young girl, the Queen was now timid and only too eager to shut her mouth as Alice shot upwards towards the ceiling like a rocket.  The little girl had become quite the opposite in terms of size in the span of a few seconds.

 

Onwards and upwards went young Alice, towering before all that surrounded her.  The first time she ate the mushroom, she shot up in hiccup-like spurts as she ascended through the forest.  This time, however, she went upwards continuously with no interruptions.  She wondered if her head would end up colliding with the courtroom ceiling at this rate.  She got her answer soon enough as her head and shoulders did just that with a somewhat comical bumping sound.  Shutting her eyes instinctively from the impact, her arms automatically jerked upwards as she waited for the effects to wear off.  Her legs stood pressed together forming a mighty pillar as her feet occupied all the space within her podium.  Her dress had opened up somewhat like an umbrella, covering everything around and below her in shadow.  As she opened her eyes, Alice took in her new surroundings.  Looking straight ahead, she could see the flags and banners that hung along the courtroom walls, a good fifty feet or more above the ground from what Alice could discern.

 

As she blinked in bewilderment at the sudden change in stature, Alice could feel minor pinpricks down below around her lower legs, at just above the ankle.  She proceeded to press against the folds of her dress against her legs to get a better view of what was going on.  Lo and behold, there was a small group of card guards poking at her legs with their spears and lances, trying to harm her as much as possible.  While their efforts produced little more than minor physical irritants, the fact that they tried to attack a lone girl was what irked her more than anything.

 

"Oh pooh," declared Alice, "I'm not afraid of you."  She began descending by bending at both her knees and her waist, dropping straight down as she reached out with her right hand towards the guards.  Soon enough, they all gave up on their pitiful effort to harm the giant girl and began fleeing every which way they could.  Several of them ended up piling atop one another in perfect alignment, forming a small card stack in the process.  Perhaps they intended to initiate a form of "duck and cover" to somehow avoid being picked up by the colossal young lady.  If that was their intent, it was a foolhardy move, for doing so had quite the opposite effect.  Alice reached out with the greatest of ease and snachted the stack of cards that was oh so generously prepared for her before standing back up to her full height.

 

Holding five of the card guards in her right hand, she moved them with natural grace between her fingers as if she were opening a hand fan, looking straight at them from her heightened position.  The irony was not lost on her that the guards really were now card-sized from her newly enlarged position.

 

"Why, you're nothing but a pack of cards!" declared Alice as the guards opened their eyes, realizing they were no longer hunkered down flat against the floor.  In unison, they collectively gasped as they wondered what would become of them as they lingered in the giant girl's right hand.  They got their answer a moment later as they were tossed in one graceful motion as Alice flicked her wrist and spread her massive but delicate fingers outward.  The guards floated in the air briefly before beginning their slow wayward descent towards the ground, floating as they did so around the judge's podium below.

 

Recomposing herself after getting her point across on the new power dynamic within the courtroom, Alice took deep breath before bringing her hands together, fingers laced, across her waistline in a waiting position as she stood straight up (or as straight as she could, with her neck somewhat bent against the ceiling).  With a slight upward curving of her lips, Alice calmly smiled downward at the judge's podium, which stood no higher than her knees.  Her deep blue eyes looked down upon the King of Hearts as he started reading aloud from what was apparently the courtroom rulebook.  Apparently, he felt the need to restore order in the court.

 

"Rule 42," he started, "All persons more than a mile high must leave the court immediately!" he looked high up at Alice, wagging his index finger in an attempt to appear stern and commanding.  However, given the circumstances, it was a rather comical gesture.  Before Alice's growth spurt, the King was already small compared to the girl.  Now at her new size, it was like a mouse trying to order her what to do.  Still, the thought of being given commands even now irked the young lady somewhat.  The smile on her face had disappeared and was replaced with an annoyed looking scowl as she decided to respond in kind to the King's declaration.

 

"I am not a mile high!" retorted Alice, placing her arms against the sides of her waist, fists balled as she barked back from her towering position.  She soon enough regained her composure and once more brought her hands together in front of her waist, one hand gently splayed out over the other as she closed her eyes and took deep breaths once more.

 

"And I'm not leaving."  she declared in a lower volume and calmer tone of voice.

 

Down below, the Queen of Hearts reappeared after hiding during the sudden growth of the young lady.  Whereas minutes ago she was ready to have the girl's head removed from her body without a moment's hesitation, now she was more-or-less cowering in the shadow of this giantess that stood before her.  Nervously giggling as she fiddled with her crown in her hands, trying to bend it back into position after being flattened by the gavel earlier before, the Queen looked high up at the girl and tried to get her to go along with her husband's decree.

 

"Sorry," muttered the Queen in a more humbled tone of voice, "Rule 42 you know..."

 

Apparently, Alice did not see things the same way as the King and Queen of Hearts, and decided to give them a piece of her mind, now that she was no longer in danger.  Bending down once more at her knees and waist, she stretched out her arms and aimed towards their podium, gripping its sides with perfect grace.  She brought her face as up close as she could, her magnified beautiful features now taking up the vision of the monarchs that sat before her.  Even in her crouched position, she still towered over the pair sitting in their podium by several feet.

 

"And as for you..." declared Alice as she stared intently at the Queen of Hearts, her deep red lips puckering in a cute "O" shape as her eyes focused on her with sniper-like intensity, her eyebrows furrowing, and her shadow darkening around the King and Queen.  The Queen instinctively grabbed her husband and used him as a sort of human shield, holding him in front of her to protect her head and torso.  The gesture was comical to say the least, given that at Alice's current size, she could simply grab the both of them with one hand or stomp on them with one of her feet if she so desired.

 

Bringing herself up in a standing position once more, Alice decided to have some fun with the pair.  Yet again, she bent at both the waist and knees, holding fistfuls of her dress in each hand she lifted up her skirt.  She brought her head down in a mock show of respect, as she was initiating the act of curtsying, which was something the Queen was heavily insistent on when Alice first met her in the gardens.

 

"Your Majesty..." declared Alice, elongating the "a" in the word "majesty," as she bent and smiled at the King and Queen.  Even in her showing of fake deference, the young girl still towered over them, casting them in her shadow the entire time.  She began to stand straight up once more after finishing her curtsy, letting her arms rest at her side while her neck bent yet again as her head and shoulders made contact with the ceiling once more.

 

"Your Majesty, indeed..." said Alice, the annoyance in her voice becoming apparent.  She was ready to give the Queen a stern talking to, given what the girl had to go through in the midst of the trial and all the grief she had to endure when it was her very life on the line.

 

"Why you're not a queen!" declared Alice, who was now on a roll.  She proceeded to wag her finger at the monarch the way a parent would lecture and berate a small child whenever the child misbehaved.  Given the change in size and the new power dynamic between the two, it seemed only fitting.

 

"You're just a...a...a fat, pompous, bad-tempered old tyrant!" said Alice.  She really wanted to let the Queen have it and make her somewhat humbled in this very moment.  She was ready to add more on to the lecture when suddenly an old, familiar feeling returned in the pit of Alice's stomach.

 

"And furthermore...I...I think that...that...oh...oh goodness...what is...what is happening...to...me?" said Alice with sudden, deep breaths.  It seemed the mushroom had not fully run its course after all.

 

Before Alice could compose herself and continue in her rant against the Queen of Hearts, she found herself wincing hard as her head and shoulders suddenly pushed much harder than before into the ceiling.  Her neck was becoming far more strained than before, so she bent slightly at the knees and placed her hands flat against the ceiling in order to relieve pressure on her neck.  Down below, her feet were beginning to feel cramped where they stood in the podium, as they had filled it to capacity after her initial growth spurt.  Everywhere, her body ballooned and elongated more and more, growing well past fifty feet and showing no signs of slowing down, let alone stopping.

 

"Oh my goodness...why is this happening now?" muttered Alice aloud to herself.  She figured that she should be done growing at this point, but apparently the mushroom piece decided to be far more potent than before.  It was anyone's guess as to how far the young lady would end up growing to be after this growth spurt had run its course.

 

"Oh my fur and whiskers," hollered the White Rabbit as he watched the girl expand larger and larger, "everyone flee!  Run for your lives!"  He proceeded to blow his trumpet to make the statement official, though at this point, everyone in the courtroom was made plainly aware of what was occurring as the sixty foot tall girl continued to enlarge.

 

"This court is adjourned!" hollered the King of Hearts as he banged his gavel before making his way down and fleeing as quickly as his little legs could carry him.  The Queen of Hearts, meanwhile, had already bolted as quickly as she could, running in a sort of jogging motion away from the vicinity, given her heavyset build.  The numerous guards, jurors, and witnesses were scattering every which way and direction, several bumping into each other as they made their way to the nearest exit.  It was pure pandemonium at this point as Alice pushed past seventy feet tall, then eighty, then ninety, and then over a hundred feet in height.

 

As she increased in size, physical destruction ended up occurring in her immediate vicinity, as was inevitably going to be the case.  The first thing to go was the podium where she stood.  After pushing past seventy feet or so, the stand simply gave way and split apart at the mercy of Alice's growing feet and strong, but supple calf muscles.  Now with the freedom to readjust her footing, Alice widened her stance so that her feet were in line with her shoulders.  She bent further at the knees and waist to give herself space and relieve her head, shoulders, and neck the best she could.  Though with her ever-increasing stature, the act would only buy her a little bit of time, in the span of seconds at that.

 

At over a hundred feet in height, Alice had doubled her previous height from the first growth spurt.  With that being the circumstance, she was bent substantially at both her knees and her waist, as if she were bending over to pick something off the floor.  Her feet began making cracks and heavy indentations in the ground as she grew, so great was her weight that the floor was beginning to show signs of strain.  The same could be said for the ceiling, where Alice's head and hands were pressed up against.  The larger she grew, the more pressure that was placed against the wooden surface.

 

"Goodness, this is too much!" declared Alice at her growing predicament (pun intended).

 

"I simply must stop all of this growing!  I'm much too large as it is now!" said the ever-growing girl as she eclipsed over 150 feet in height.  By this point, the courtroom was finished in its evacuation and only the formerly accused girl (now found not guilty by reason of rapid unstoppable growth) remained within the chamber.

 

"I cannot grow much further...that is simply impossible, right?" said Alice to herself, hoping this growth spurt was nearing its end.  As if in response, her body rapidly kicked the growth into high gear to prove the young lady wrong.

 

Now at over 200 feet in height, Alice was forced to readjust her position from a crouched stance to kneeling on the floor.  In as much of a controlled descent as she could manage, she brought her knees forward as she crouched downward.  Her left knee ended up demolishing the stands where the jury sat not long ago, obliterating it in one foul swoop.  Meanwhile, her right knee completely crushed the judge's podium where the King and Queen of Hearts presided during the court hearing.  It only held up for a second at most before cracking and fragmenting into hundreds of freshly broken up pieces.

 

Now that she was on her knees, Alice shifted her hands from the ceiling to the floor to help further steady herself.  The 250 foot girl was propped up on all fours and looking around the courtroom from a bird's eye view.  It was surreal that her head was still pressed up against the ceiling, yet her hands were touching the ground below with no strain or effort whatsoever.

 

"Oh dear," said Alice with worry both plastered on her face and emanating within the tone of her voice, "how in goodness gracious am I going to get out of here now?"  It seemed her body would resolve her dilemma the one way it knew how: more growth.

 

In another instant, Alice's body surged upwards and outwards, ballooning the girl to over 300 feet in height.  At this point, the young lady's colossal body now weighs several thousands of tons, and proves this by making deep indentations in the courtroom floorboards.  Her hands and legs from knee to foot press into the ground by several feet, making pits deep enough for a tall man to fall into and disappear.  Up above, her head, shoulders, back, and hindquarters thrust mightily into the ceiling, causing cracks to form throughout it and bits of wood and plaster to rain down in response to the sudden upward shifting.  The entire roof begins to form one large crack that runs parallel to Alice's spine, which enlarges as the young girl does.

 

Now at over 350 in height, Alice begins to feel quite claustrophobic in her current situation.  Gently clenching her teeth and closing her eyes shut tight, she ponders at how much further her growth is going to proceed.  She was at least thankful that there was nobody else in the courtroom, as she didn't wish to cause any undue harm towards anybody.  Even the Queen of Hearts, as cruel as she was, was not someone Alice desired to torture or punish with outright cruelty, even if she desired the girl's decapitation not so long ago.  It simply wasn't in her nature to be malicious or sadistic; such behavior was not befitting someone who wished to be a proper lady.  Such action would be frowned upon, especially by her sister of all people.

 

As her body grew at over 400 feet in height, Alice felt more and more compressed in her current dwellings.  She figured that the mushroom should have run its course by now, but given that she was currently in Wonderland, she apparently needed to be reminded from time to time that this whole world was one of nonsense, where logic and rationality simply had no place in it.  For all she knew, the mushroom really might make her over a mile high when all was said and done.  At that size, everything around Alice would be practically microscopic compared to her.  The thought was as shocking as it was frightening to the young girl.  She didn't mind being big, but she didn't desire to be so big that she could no longer safely interact with the world around her.  Being such a size would end up with living a rather lonely and solitary life, as she would be simply too huge to come into contact with anyone or anything without creating severe physical destruction or bodily harm.

 

"Oh really, this was all well and good at first, but enough is enough!  Please, no more growing!" pleaded Alice as her body erupted with an even larger burst, now at over 500 feet in height.  At this point, she was hunkered down in a fetal position, more or less.  Her entire back from head to tushy was pressing mightily against the entire courtroom ceiling, knocking flags, banners, plaster, and chunks of wood paneling off as she grew.  Her hips and shoulders now pressed at opposite ends of the courtroom.  Everything below her was demolished into the smallest of pieces as her hands, feet, and legs plowed onward and outward in all directions.

 

In one final show, her body decided to give her one last growth spurt, one which would put all the previous spurts to shame.

 

Meanwhile, outside the courtroom, the Queen of Hearts and everyone else had long vacated the premises.  Standing outside in the gardens, the crowd turned back towards the large building they once occupied only moments ago.  Said building was now occupied by one very, very, very big girl, who appeared to keep getting bigger and bigger.  With hushed silence, the crowd stood with awe as the building began to bulge upward and outward, groaning loudly and mightily like some gargantuan beast.  Cracks began forming along the roof and walls while windows along the exterior shattered here and there.

 

"Oh dear," muttered the King of Hearts, "how...how big do you think she is right now?"

 

"She must be several hundred feet tall by now." whispered one card guard to his comrades.

 

"How much does she weigh is what I want to know." muttered another guard.

 

"She held a bunch of us up in the air like it was nothing before." stated yet another guard, "If she's as big as I'm guessing she is now, she could probably hold all of us in one hand with no effort."  He said this with a quiet alarm written on his face, as if he were in the presence of a god.

 

The Queen of Hearts, for her part, simply stared with wide eyes and mouth slightly open at the sight before her.  She was humbled enough after the girl's first growth spurt; when the girl continued to grow after that, it made Her Majesty all the more nervous.  If she was as big as the Queen was guessing, the girl could overtake her entire army with just the stomp of her foot.  She could overthrow her kingdom in just a few minutes.  The thought of such power in a child's hands was as frightening as it was infuriating from the monarch's perspective.

 

The White Rabbit stood there with wide eyes at the sight before him.  Unlike the others, he had witnessed something like this previously at his own home.  If this girl happened to be the same one who grew inside of his house, then it really was a case of deja vu from his perspective.  Of course, the White Rabbit's house was much, much smaller than the courtroom, and this girl was currently filling the building well beyond capacity.  As big as she was when she occupied his house back then, the girl was going to tower over that size several times over at this rate.

 

"Who knows," muttered another card guard to try and alleviate everyone's worries, "maybe she'll stop growing and stay stuck in the building.  At the very least she'll be trapped and we won't have to worry about her right away."

 

"You really think that is going to happen?" responded another guard, the skepticism in his voice all too apparent.

 

"I don't know," responded the first, "I mean, she can't grow forever now, can she?  Her growth has to come to a stop sooner or later, right?"

 

As if to respond to the suggestion right then and there, the courtroom loudly groaned and bellowed with a deep monstrous growl before finally exploding.

 

The roof, by this point bulging substantially outward, seemed to burst as if a bomb was detonated underneath it.  An ocean of golden blonde locks of hair with a black ribbon nestled within them rose from the roof, followed by beautiful feminine features.  Young vibrant skin, rosy cheeks, ruby red lips, cute button nose, deep baby blue eyes, well-rounded chin, thin feminine eyebrows.  An entire head larger than the White Rabbit's house ascended beyond the courtroom roof, shooting up like a rocket.

 

Followed by the head was a slender neck and broad yet feminine shoulders, connected to arms that were a mix of slim and muscled ending in long but slender fingers protruding from delicate feminine hands.  Below the neck was a rather generous bosom underneath (seemed the mushroom gave Alice another type of growth as well), a slimmed-down waistline along with prodigious hips and a humbly-enlarged rear end that made its presence abundantly clear, even underneath Alice's dress (now shrunken to a skirt that rested at mid thigh on her).  Below the waistline were strong thighs and calf muscles (both retaining feminine appeal while exuding strength and power), covered in snow white stockings that practically looked as if they were painted on.  

 

The girl's feet could not be seen, only because they were still within the confines of what remained of the courtroom.  Mind you, everything from the ankle up could be seen of the girl.  That meant the courthouse was no taller than Alice's ankle.  Whereas before she stood in the courtroom with her head and shoulders pressed against the ceiling just minutes ago, she was now so big, so colossal, so titanic that the entire building was no higher than the girl's ankle now.  She had to be well over a thousand feet tall by this point.  Given her size increase and the degree of beautification the final growth spurt had inflicted on her, she had the presence of an outright goddess before all who looked upon her.  She was as beautiful as she was powerful, and that was saying something.

 

"Ahhh...goodness, that's much better!" declared Alice, her lovely voice now magnified with the speaking power of several hundreds of megaphones.  She looked around from her newly enlarged position and stared wide eyed at all she saw before her.

 

Whereas she exhaled with relief upon being freed of the confines of the courthouse, she now had shock and alarm written all over her face.  Her newly acquired stature gave her a bird's eye view of all the land she could see around her for miles.  Whatever trees she saw in the forest were shorter than blades of grass to her now.  The tallest buildings in her vicinity (in this case the towers of the Queen of Hearts's castle) were no higher than her shins.  When she looked about her immediate vicinity, she could actually see clouds directly in front of her.  Alice had her head in the clouds, quite literally!

 

When she looked downwards around her, she eventually spotted everyone who was in the courtroom with her just a few minutes ago.  Before her second growth spurt, they were small compared to her, tiny even.  Now, saying they were tiny would be something of an understatement given her newly acquired size.  Compared to Alice, by her standards, nobody she saw was an inch tall; scratch that, nobody she saw was even half an inch tall compared to her, not even close.  Some of the tallest in the group might have been a quarter of an inch tall, a third of an inch at most, but those were the tallest among them.

 

Alice wagered that if she so desired, she could scoop up everyone from the courtroom into her hands and dump them all into the pockets of the apron that rested upon her skirt.  She figured there would be enough pocket space for everyone to fit comfortably.  Even if she had no pockets, she could most likely hold the entire group in both hands with room for everyone to lay comfortably.  She might even be able to hold all of them in one hand if they were packed together tightly, but that could risk bodily harm if she squeezed her fist too tight to try and contain all of them.

 

Of course, Alice had no intention of making a move to grab any of them, not even the Queen of Hearts, even if she might have deserved it for trying to have Alice beheaded earlier.  She was merely thinking of what she could do given her recent increase in overall size.  Such was her nature that she couldn't help but entertain hypothetical scenarios now and then.  She was a daydreamer, after all.

 

"Uhhh...h-hello." said Alice somewhat sheepishly as she waved downwards at the crowd far below.  It was a rather comical and ironic sight unfolding in that moment:  Here was a girl who had become an outright titan in the span of a few minutes who was now embarrassed and somewhat timid before the crowd who had her on trial not so long ago.  She planned on enlarging herself in order to save her life, but what came after that?  It was a spur-of-the-moment situation that required Alice to act quickly.  Now that she was no longer in danger, what was she to do now?  Where would she go?  Could she shrink back to her original size, or would she remain a giant for the rest of her life?  The questions went on and on in her mind, with very few answers to bring relief or closure.

 

"Umm...I suppose that the trial is now over, correct?" asked Alice as she stared down at the group which was covered in her shadow.  After some muttering amongst the crowd, there was a high-pitched squeaking coming from the King of Hearts, who was using his oversized crown as an impromptu megaphone to try and communicate with Alice.  However, Alice could not make out the words from her current height.

 

"I'm sorry, but I can't quite hear you.  One moment please." responded the gigantic girl.  She proceeded to lift her feet out from the rubble that was the courthouse and made her way over in just a few modest steps.  The very ground trembled with every footfall and everyone in the crowd lost their footing and fell down in a rather embarrassing fashion.  In just a few seconds, Alice had stopped right in front of the crowd, her colossal feet now visible along with the rest of her.  Her shoes had a new, shiny look to them and it appeared that her heels had somehow risen by a significant amount during her second growth spurt.  By Alice's standards, the heel had risen by a good two or three inches, but from the crowd's perspective, the heel was tens of feet above the ground.  Alice's ankles alone were around fifty feet tall, give or take a few feet.  Just another reminder of how massive she had become.

 

All of a sudden, the young girl descended downward, still standing on her feet.  She had compacted her body and placed her hands upon her knees to help balance herself.  While she may have lowered her overall height by about half, she still towered over the group by a few hundred feet nonetheless.  Some of the card guards and jurors ran about in a frenzy, afraid that she was going to fall forward and crush the whole lot of them.  Fortunately, while the young girl was massive, she was attentive and careful enough to not lose her footing or her balance as she crouched down as low as she could go.

 

Turning her head to the right, Alice gracefully took her left hand and ran her fingers through the long, flowing locks of luscious blonde hair on the left side of her scalp, revealing her ear to the group far below her.  She proceeded to lean down as far as she could, bringing her ear closer and closer towards the King of Hearts as she descended.  The closer he was to her ear, the easier it would be for her to hear him.  He was simply too small for Alice to make out what he was saying, the pitch in his voice was too high for her eardrums to register the words succinctly.  Using her right arm for support to balance herself as she knelt further down, Alice brought her ear less than a hundred feet away from the King.

 

From the perspective of those far beneath her, Alice's right arm was like a mountainous pillar descending from the heavens as it crashed into the ground far off to their left.  Those closest to it could make out the well-manicured fingernails and the dainty feminine fingers that laid flat across the earth.  Each finger could hold several persons on it at a time.  Her entire palm could hold at least half of the courtroom's occupants, if not the vast majority of them.  A moment ago, the young girl's hand could hold five or six of the card guards after her first growth spurt.  Now at her current size, she could probably hold all the guards put together, and they would probably weigh nothing from Alice's perspective.  Such a realization was as amazing as it was frightening to everyone on the ground below the titaness.

 

"Now then," continued Alice, her ear hovering over the King of Hearts and those near him, "what were you saying, good sir?"

 

From his perspective, the King could make out Alice's facial features quite clearly.  She was remarkably beautiful from what he saw.  Her face was something between a porcelain doll and a professional model.  Everything about her was practically flawless - her chin, her cheekbones, her nose, the shine of her long flowing hair, her slender neck, the color of her eyes, the color of her lips and how they instinctively pouted half the time when the girl talked.  It seemed the mushroom that she ate magnified her beauty as well as her size when she transformed.  He could tell as much from the swell of both her bosom and her posterior, as well as how her waistline shrunk somewhat and her legs transformed to be both thick and yet surprisingly long to make them have perfect proportionality.  It was like she had runway model legs now.  Her entire body seemed to mature by a few years, making her have the appearance of a girl now in her late teens or early twenties rather than someone who was in her early teenage years.

 

Speaking through his crown once more, the King responded.

 

"Yes!  The trial is over!  The court finds you not guilty!" he hollered.

 

"Oh good, very good," responded Alice, her breath knocking back several individuals as she spoke.  Upon witnessing this, Alice momentarily blushed as she stared awkwardly down upon the tiny crowd.  She brought a hand up to her mouth as she sheepishly followed up with her initial reply, lowering her speaking volume.

 

"Oh, I beg your pardon, everyone.  Sorry for that.  It would seem that it's taking a bit for me to adjust to my new size.  Again, I'm awfully sorry for everything, especially the courthouse...or uhh...what's left of it."  Alice glanced behind her, looking downward at the ruins where the mighty building once stood.  Alice wagered at her current size, if the building wasn't reduced to obliterated rubble, she could most likely carry it in her hands with the same ease as she would her cat, Dinah (back when she was her regular size before venturing down the rabbit hole).

 

"All water under the bridge, my dear!" hollered the King of Hearts in response.  The last thing he wanted to do was invoke the wrath of this all-mighty giantess who loomed over all of them.  Even if he decided to charge her for the destruction of the courthouse, what exactly could he or anyone in the kingdom do to punish her?  She was bigger than everyone else put together by several hundreds of times over.  Even if she was guilty of destroying the building, there was no feasible way to detain her, let alone carry out any act of physical punishment...certainly not when the girl towered more than a thousand feet above them all.

 

"Wouldn't you agree, my dear?" the King asked his wife, hoping she would agree.  The Queen came out of her momentary stupor of staring at this girl who had practically transformed into a goddess before their eyes.

 

"Uhh...yes, quite right...no hard feelings and all that!" hollered the Queen.  She figured if anyone were to give deferential treatment to this girl, it was her above all others, especially since she was hollering "Off with her head!" several times over during the last few minutes.

 

"Well, I'm happy we could resolve this without violence or any further unpleasantness." said Alice in response.  While she kept her voice reasonably low by her standards, the impact from her breath was still enough to push back against those far below her, especially the card guards given their physical form.

 

"Um...if it's no trouble, I think I'm going to take my leave then," said Alice, "I wouldn't want to impose any further, and I feel my presence may be a bit troublesome under these circumstances.  So, if you don't mind..."

 

Even now, the fact that this girl was asking if it would be alright for her to leave was as absurd as it was comical.  If she so desired, she could make herself the next Queen - heck, the next Empress - of all of Wonderland and there would be nothing anyone could do to stop her.  Her size alone was enough to make her the number one force of raw power before any and all who may oppose her.  If the girl wanted to leave, she could simply do so of her own accord and there would be nothing anyone could do to stop her, not even slow her down in the slightest.  Perhaps it was simply in her nature as a proper lady to ask politely, for to Alice, rudeness was simply not in her nature.

 

"Yes!  By all means, take your leave!" hollered the Queen of Hearts, only too happy to see the giant girl off and away from her kingdom.  She looked at all the others and gave them a look on her face reading ‘back me up!' and gestured with her arms to agree with her, should they no longer wish to be living in fear of the titaness kneeling before them.

 

Seconds later, everyone else was hooting and hollering in agreement with the Queen, yelling various forms of agreement with the monarch for Alice to take her leave.  While it was hard for the girl to make out everything they were saying, she could pick up on key words and phrases like "yes", "please go", and "leave" here and there.

 

"Alright then, I shall take my leave then.  Again, I'm terribly sorry about the courthouse back there.  I didn't expect to grow so much.  I mean, I know they say ‘Big things come in small packages,' but I wasn't planning on being this big after all."  Alice used her hands to gesture to her entire body, also accentuating her enlarged bosom and the slight swell of her rump, whether intentionally or not was anyone's guess.  Either way, it made the Queen of Hearts grumble somewhat at this girl flaunting her newly enhanced beauty, whether she meant to or not.

 

"Well then, it's been very nice spending time with all of you, odd as it was.  But I simply must be on my way now.  My sister and Dinah must be oh so worried over me and I need to get back home quite soon.  Goodbye then." said Alice with minor cheerfulness in her voice.  She stood up once more, towering high into the sky.  She spaced her legs apart somewhat, which made her appear as the Colossus of Rhodes standing before the gathered assembly, who at this point were more-or-less the size of ants from Alice's perspective.

 

Ironically enough, Alice decided to curtsy one last time as her final way of saying farewell, and ended up giving quite a show to those down below in the process.

 

Bringing her left leg behind her right, Alice bent one last time at the waist and pinched the sides of her dress in each hand.  After her second growth spurt, her dress had apparently shortened to become closer to a skirt, ending halfway up her thighs.  That meant there was less cloth to hike up, lest Alice felt like revealing her bloomers to the crowd below.  She proceeded to bend forward, her enhanced bosom hanging pendulously above the crowd in the process (and making several of the men below blush heavily, especially the King of Hearts).  Alice's golden blonde hair cascaded down her back and shoulders almost like a waterfall frozen in place.  Her lovely facial features were closer for everyone to marvel at.  She truly looked like a sort of goddess come to life after she enlarged, a being who was as mighty as she was lovely.

 

Finishing her curtsy, Alice ascended once more to her full standing height.  With a final wave of her hand, the young lady began her trek to return home after a day full of adventure in Wonderland.

 

"Goodbye now, everyone!" said the young girl, speaking at regular volume now that her head was much farther above than previously.  She proceeded to take her first step away from the castle and gardens.  Her foot, which was nearly 150 long and over 50 feet wide, landed several hundreds of yards away from the crowd.  Even so, the tremor her footfall created was quite substantial, enough to bring everyone to the ground as they lost their footing.  They stared up with awe as the young titaness proceeded to move her other leg, bringing her other foot high over their heads.  Some of the men tried to get as good a peak as they could underneath Alice's skirt, but the frilly folds of her dress obscured their vision well enough that it was a pointless gesture.

 

Another footfall made the land rumble as Alice made her next step.  While still quite loud, the impact was less intense for the crowd as it was further away from the first.  As the young girl proceeded to make her way and leave the premises, the footfalls began to die down in their intensity and volume.  Everyone could only watch in wonder at the way the girl carried herself, walking with one leg in front of the other like a sort of runway model.  Her calves and thighs were so tantalizingly defined with a mix of both power and feminine seductive charm, leading up to her skirt as it gave a teasing view for those below her, with her hips sashaying left and right as she walked while her flowing golden locks bounced and gently flowed from side to side.  In less than a minute, the giantess had disappeared far over the horizon, leaving the bewildered crowd staring in stunned silence as they watched her depart.

 

"Well, my dear," said the King of Hearts, regaining his composure as watched the girl finally depart, "that was quite the experience I must say."  The Queen could only nod in agreement as she mumbled something incoherent.  Soon enough, she regained her rough-and-tumble demeanor as she cajoled everyone around her.

 

"Well...don't just stand there, all of you!  We've got a lot of rebuilding to do!  Get to work, all of you!" hollered the monarch.

 

"Yes, Your Majesty!"  "Right away, My Queen!"  "Of course, Your Grace!"  These were the numerous replies from the various card guards as they ran every which way to appease their ladyship, lest they incur her wrath and be off with their heads.  As they began making their way towards what was left of the courthouse, many of them were thinking the same thing as they went off to work:

 

What a woman!

 

 

---

 

 

As Alice began her trek further and further away from the Queen of Hearts's castle, she took in the sights all around her.  For miles, the land appeared flat and green, almost as if it were a field of grass.  Of course, given Alice's rapid increase in size, the "grass" which she saw was actually forest trees, and mighty ones at that.  The tallest among them were no higher than her ankles.  Heck, most of them were only halfway up her ankles.  With every footfall, several dozens of trees were flattened and reduced to splinters and wood pulp.  Alice's shoes only left spots of forest spared wherever the arch of her feet landed, which from a regular sized person's perspective would be a good forty or fifty feet in the air, but from Alice's perspective only three or four inches.  The indentations her feet left were several yards deep, given that the girl now weighed something on the order of several thousands of tons.

 

Up above, Alice could see wisps of clouds all around her head.  While there were more distinct clouds far higher above the girl, the fact that she was so tall that her head was actually making contact with clouds was mind-boggling enough in and of itself.

 

"Goodness," said Alice, "I wonder how I'll get home, and what my dear sister will say when she sees me.  I imagine she'll have quite a bit to say.  Something like, ‘Alice, where on earth have you been?' or maybe ‘My goodness, dear sister, how you've grown!'  I'm sure she'll be surprised to say the least.  I just hope she won't be too cross with me.  After all, I didn't mean to run off for very long.  I just couldn't help myself when I saw the White Rabbit.  I mean who wouldn't be taken back by such a thing?"

 

As Alice continued thinking aloud to herself along her trek, a familiar character decided to have a little fun with her for one last time.  She became aware of this when she could hear a peculiar humming nearby, even though her head was high above the forest.

 

"〜And the mome raths outgrabe〜" sang the voice, with its usual chuckling demeanor

 

"Wait a moment...is that?  No, it couldn't be.  That's just not possible." said Alice.  She wondered as to whether or not she was hallucinating.  Sure enough, she could still hear the melody around her as she came to a stop.  Within a few seconds, that old familiar friend made himself known to her, materializing out of thin air in front of her and floating high above ground at Alice's eye level, defying gravity itself.

 

"Why hello there, my dear!  And how are you doing on this fine day?" said the visitor.

 

"The Cheshire Cat!" declared Alice with wide eyes at the sudden visitation.

 

"Why yes, that's me...last I checked anyway." he responded.

 

"What are you doing here, all of a sudden?" said Alice.

 

"Why, I thought I would say hello and goodbye one last time, that's all.  How did you like that little growth spurt?  I found it quite entertaining in more ways than one," the Cheshire Cat chuckled as he floated.

 

"Well," answered Alice, "it certainly helped get me out of that spot of bother well enough, though I wasn't expecting to become this large at the end of it.  And also, I didn't plan on any of this happening either."  Alice gestured to her bosom, buttocks, legs, and waist.  She was shocked enough that the mushroom decided to give her some type of beautification as well as enlargement this time around.

 

"Do you not like it?" inquired the Cheshire Cat.

 

"I wouldn't say that," responded Alice, "I just wasn't expecting it was all.  It will take a little getting used to, but I believe I shall manage fine enough in good time."

 

"I'm glad to hear it, my dear.  You're a lovely young woman, dear Alice, and I feel it only natural for the world to see you in all your splendor." The Cheshire Cat had that big, toothy grin plastered all over his face as he took in the sight before him.  While he was no larger than a fly before the giant girl, he didn't appear the least bit intimidated or worried at her presence.

 

"However, I am concerned as to how I'm going to get back home, and what my sister will say when she sees me.  Hopefully I don't give her or Dinah a fright." said Alice with worry written on her face and in the tone of her voice.

 

"Oh, no need to worry about that," responded the Cheshire Cat, "in fact I can help alleviate both those concerns right away."

 

"Really?" said Alice with incredulity in her voice, "I would be oh so grateful if you could help, Mr. Cheshire Cat.  I really do want to go home now."  Alice's eyebrows were furrowed in an upward slanting position, her blue eyes moistening with tears ready to spring forth.  Her facial expression was one of hidden sadness at being homesick and eager anticipation of returning as soon as possible.

 

"Think nothing of it, my dear girl.  I'll have you returned with a snap of my fingers and you'll be at home with your family once more.  Oh, and you won't need to worry about how they react either.  If anything, you'll be surprised to find out that your reaction will be the shocked one instead." The Cheshire Cat did so love talking in riddles and roundabout ways.

 

"What do you mean?" asked Alice, confusion written all over her lovely features.

 

"You'll know what I'm talking about when you return.  Now, as they say my dear, ‘so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye!'  Hope to see you again sooner than later!"  And with that, the Cheshire cat snapped his finger, and a moment later vanished in a puff of pink and purple smoke.  Alice could hear his giddy laughter echoing off in the distance, with those parting words he loved to end with:  "and the mome raths outgrabe."

 

As Alice stood alone once more, she wondered just what the Cheshire Cat meant at the end of his explanation.  He always had a habit of leaving her confused at the end of their conversations, and this time was no different.  But how in good heavens would he return her home, and how would her sister not freak out at the sight of her?  She was bloody enormous!  She probably towered over Big Ben if she were to guess.  People would probably run for the hills screaming at the sight of her or faint on the spot.  How the Cheshire Cat would resolve that was beyond her understanding.  Then again, such was the nature of Wonderland: a world of total nonsense.

 

Suddenly, Alice began to feel light-headed.  Her vision was dimming and growing blurry rapidly, and her eyelids were feeling rather heavy.  Tiredness and fatigue crept up on the girl and she felt quite lethargic all of a sudden.

 

"Goodness," muttered Alice, "why do I feel so tired right now?  Did the Cheshire Cat have [long yawn] something to do with this?  I guess I need to lie down, at least for a moment."

 

And in that moment, Alice leaned forward, using her hands to brace herself as her palms made impact with the woods, obliterating several trees in the process where they landed.  Momentarily on all fours, Alice repositioned herself so that she was lying on her stomach, using her forearms as a makeshift pillow to rest her face against.  Hundreds of trees were destroyed in the process as her titanic form impacted against the earth.  Though to Alice, the physical contact was practically nonexistent from her perspective.  Compared to her current size, the forest trees were no more than blades of grass in both height and width.  The various oaks, pines, and other trees throughout the forest were obliterated, one and all before the slightest of movement from the young giantess.

 

"I suppose I'll just take a [yawn] little nap, and then see if I can make my way ba- [long yawn] back home." said Alice to herself, as her eyelids dropped further and further closed.  The Cheshire Cat must have something to do with her sudden drowsiness, but how did making Alice take a nap factor into getting her back home?  Perhaps it was best not to ponder for too long on such things, especially when one's mind was so fatigued as was the case with Alice.

 

"Hmmm...well then...goodnight Alice." muttered the girl to herself as sleep overtook her, resting peacefully in (or on) the forest.  The last word oddly enough seemed to echo in her ears on and on as she drifted off into slumber.

 

 

---

 

 

"Alice, Alice, Alice" the word played over and over again in Alice's head, with a sort of echo as they came.  Though oddly enough, they seemed to grow slightly louder with repetition.

 

"Hmmm..." muttered Alice in response to her name being called.

"Alice?  Alice?  Alice!" the voice called out, with more insistence in its tone.

 

Stirring awake, Alice jumped up with some alertness, getting her bearings.  She needed to get out of the forest and make her way back home as quickly as possible.  After all, who knows just how long she had napped the moment she dozed off!  Hopefully her sister and Dinah wouldn't fret with worry and-

 

"ALICE!" said the voice once more with more gusto.

 

Turning her head towards the voice, Alice was alarmed and surprised to see none other than her sister standing before her, wearing her deep blue dress and looking as radiant as ever.  She had opted to take off her bonnet and let her lovely dark brown hair rest naturally down her back and around her shoulders.  Much like Alice, her figure was quite refined: slim waist, generous bosom, swan-like neck, appealingly wide hips, elegant long legs, and doll-like facial features (especially her blue eyes and rosy red lips).  Just a few years older than Alice, she had the appearance of a woman who looked no older than twenty-five years in age, who carried herself with a sort of natural grace as was expected of a proper lady.

 

"Oh Margaret!" hollered Alice as she ran towards her sister, arms wide open.  Immediately, she collided against her older sibling in a tight embrace, pressing her bosom against her sister's while encircling her arms tightly around her torso.

 

"I'm so glad to see you once more!" said the young lady with tears of joy forming in her eyes.  She didn't know how, but apparently the Cheshire Cat made good on his promise to get her home.  She would have to thank him the next time they met, assuming they would ever meet again that is.  But in that moment, she was simply overjoyed to be back home with family after the long day she had in Wonderland.

 

"Good heavens, Alice!" responded her sister, "While I'm glad you're in a jovial mood, I'd appreciate a little warning before you decide to embrace me so eagerly, and with such force mind you." Margaret proceeded to place her arms on Alice's shoulders and try to gently pry away her younger sibling from the tight embrace she was initiating.

 

"Margaret, you'll never believe the day I've had," said Alice with wide eyes and newfound energy.  She was only too eager to get everything out.

 

"I pursued this White Rabbit down a rabbit hole, then I fell in afterwards down this strange hallway.  Oh, the Rabbit was dressed in fine clothes, and he carried a pocket watch, and he spoke like people do...something about being late for something.  Anyways, I followed the Rabbit into this great hallway with a talking doorknob, but I needed the key to get through, but he didn't reveal that until I already shrunk down after drinking from the bottle.  So then I tried a cake from this box, and the cake had the phrase ‘Eat Me' written on it.  And after I took a bite, I suddenly grew so large that I filled up the hallway and then I-"

 

"Alice!" interrupted Margaret, "What on Earth are you talking about?"  The older sibling felt the need to interject, otherwise Alice would just go on and on with this fantastical tale of hers.

 

"Oh, I'm sorry, dear sister," said Alice, collecting her thoughts and regaining her composure.  Now that she had stopped in her fast-paced recollection of events, she got her bearings and looked around.  Suddenly a thought came to her mind:

 

‘Did I shrink back down to normal size?'

 

It was a fair guess to make, given that Alice was looking slightly upwards at her sister.  If Alice was the size she was previously before her nap in the forest, then Margaret would be the size of a flea from her perspective.  Most likely Alice would struggle in hearing her sister unless she brought Margaret right to her ear.  Perhaps it was all a silly dream after all, just a fantastical adventure into a world of nonsense.

 

"Well now," began Margaret, "it's getting late in the day.  We should head back home for tea.  I'm sure Mother will be curious as to how the day went.  Please tell me you recall at least some of your history lessons.  Otherwise, Mother will be rather distraught.  It's simply not becoming of a princess to be forgetful of such things after all."  Alice's older sister started turning around and began walking away from Alice, intending for the girl to follow after her.

 

"Right then, I promise to try and focus more on my studies.  They just seem so boring and dull with the long words and lack of pictures and...wait a minute...princess?" said Alice in a befuddled state as she repeated her sister's words just moments ago.

 

"Yes indeed Alice," responded Margaret as she turned to face her sister, "a princess, you know...the progeny of royalty, the daughter of the monarch, etcetera etcetera."  Clearly, Margaret was somewhat irritated at her sister's lack of awareness.

 

"I'm...a princess?" said Alice with wide eyes and her mouth slightly ajar.

 

"Yes, dear sister," responded Margaret, "you and I are princesses, daughters of Her Majesty, the Queen of Great Britain.  Are you alright?  You seem rather shocked?  Is this some kind of game or trick you're trying to play, because I really don't have the time or energy for such things right now."

 

"We...are part of...the royal family?" muttered Alice, her voice barely above a whisper.

 

At this point, Margaret came forth and raised her right hand toward Alice's head, gently laying her palm across her younger sister's forehead.

 

"Are you well, Alice?  You seem a bit confused." said Margaret as she stared with concern at her sibling, her deep blue eyes looking into Alice's identical deep blue eyes.

 

"You don't appear to be running a fever," stated Margaret, "Are you dizzy at all?  Feel nauseated in any way?  Hearing strange sounds or feeling any soreness whatsoever?"

 

"N- no Margaret, I'm perfectly fine," responded Alice as she gently removed her sister's hand from her forehead, "I'm just a bit tired is all.  When we return home, I think I'll rest after tea if that is alright with you and mother."

 

Honestly, this was all a bit much to process from Alice's perspective.  Before she ventured off to chase the White Rabbit into Wonderland, her family was of modest means, perhaps upper middle class at best.  Now she awakens to find out that her family is now the royal family of Great Britain...that she herself is royalty!  Was she still in Wonderland, perhaps?  This revelation was rather earth-shattering in its own way.  She now had high authority throughout the land as a princess, her whole family did now!  How in the world did that happen?  Was this part of the Cheshire Cat's plan upon returning Alice to her home?  So many questions began building up in Alice's mind at the realization of all this new information.

 

"Alright then," said Margaret, "Even so, when we return home, I'm going to send for a physician to examine you, just to be sure it's nothing too serious.  Now come along, little sister."

 

Alice proceeded to follow Margaret home when she noticed something rather peculiar off in the distance.

 

Just a mile or so from where she stood, Alice could see the great city of London before her in all of it's splendor.  Looking around at the panoramic view, she could spot various landmarks here and there, including the clocktower known as Big Ben, Tower Bridge, the Palace of Westminster, and various other famed buildings throughout.  Though something seemed a bit...off.  Did the buildings...nay...did the whole city seem...smaller?

 

Alice began making her way closer to the city, enraptured by how the size of everything seemed out of place.  The design of everythings was quite like the city she knew so well, only more like a model than an actual city.  As she neared closer and closer to the city, she was shocked to find that several buildings were far below her in height.  She wagered that the top of her head seemed to be level with buildings that were around ten floors in height from what she could discern.  She would have made her way closer when suddenly her left wrist was grabbed hard, bringing her to a jerking stop.

 

"Goodness gracious, Alice!" said Margaret, "What's gotten into you?  You can't just wander off into the city like that on a whim?  What if you hurt someone?  You could step on them without even knowing it!  Not to mention the physical destruction you could cause if you're not careful.  Some city streets are much narrower than others, after all.  You really must be more cognizant of your surroundings."

 

Now pausing, Alice realized that her sister had valid points indeed.  Looking down far below, she noticed several people - human people - scurrying about trying to get out of the giantesses way.  Some were alarmed and panicked, others had scowls on their faces at the girl who could have unknowingly crushed them.  The sight of such little people staring up at the big girl made her feel sheepish and embarrassed.

 

"I'm terribly sorry," muttered Alice to the people below, her cheeks red with embarrassment.

 

"Honestly," continued Margaret, "you really need to be more mindful of your size relative to others.  Not everyone you meet will be over a hundred feet tall, you know." Margaret brought her hand to Alice's cheek to comfort her, taking a more measured tone of voice to help calm her after the close call.

 

"A...a hundred feet tall?" muttered Alice as she wiped the tears forming in her eyes.

 

"Yes, Alice," replied Margaret, "around that height.  Of course, you are a growing girl after all, so who knows how large you may end up by the time you are done maturing.  If you really want to be a princess who is beloved by the people, then you really need to be mindful of your size relative to the little people.  After all, why do you think we have our lessons far away out in large, open fields where nobody is likely to get hurt by us?"  Ever the tutor, Margaret felt the need to remind Alice of proper etiquette and common sense.

 

‘Now it was starting to make sense,' thought Alice to herself.

 

In this reality, Alice stayed a giantess, with the same proportions she had during her last growth spurt (bosom, buttocks, waist, etc.).  While she wasn't as gigantic as she was when she left the Queen of Hearts far behind, she was still of a big enough size to stand out easily in a crowd.  And apparently her sister was a giantess as well.  Perhaps her whole family was one of giants and giantesses.  They had authority in terms of size, so maybe that alone was grounds enough for them to rule as royalty.  She only hoped that power had not gone to their heads and that they were benevolent in how they governed.  If her sister was anything to go by, then Alice was optimistic about the rest of her family.

 

The fact that her sister was gigantic as well also explained the Cheshire Cat's reasoning.  No wonder Margaret didn't freak out at the sight of Alice.  Alice had not shrunk (well, not shrunk to her original size anyway), her family had simply grown to match her.  Was this some hidden power of the Cheshire Cat?  Did he alter Alice's home world in a way that she was now a gigantic princess?  Was she sent to an alternate reality by chance?  Once again the mind boggled with question after question pouring in.  In the midst of the flurry of thoughts spinning round and round in Alice's mind, something else just popped in.

 

"Wait, where's Dinah?" asked Alice in revelation.

 

"Oh, Dinah?" replied Margaret, who proceeded to reach into her apron pocket and delicately finger through until she got a hold of what she was after.  Lifting her hand up, she uncurled her fingers and revealed to Alice her feline companion, still with the same reddish-brown fur coat she had, along with her light blue eyes and pink ribbon tied around her neck.

 

"You always had that habit of wanting to bring her along, but I keep telling you it's safer if we leave her at home.  So I decided I would keep her safe and bring her out from time to time when you really wanted to see her."  Margaret proceeded to stretch her arm out and present Alice her pet cat for her to take hold of.

 

Alice took hold of Dinah as Margaret gently dumped her into the younger sibling's palm.  Alice looked with wonder at how small her cat now looked before her.  She weighed practically nothing and appeared less than an inch in length from Alice's perspective.  Yet even laying in her master's palm, the cat didn't appear the slightest bit afraid of Alice.  On the contrary, the feline stared up at the young girl with a friendly smile on her face, as if this was the most natural thing in the world to occur.

 

The gesture brought Alice momentary joy and calm.  While it would take a while to adjust to her pet - and the world around her - being far smaller than before, she felt that as long as she had Dinah and her family with her, she could make the best of this situation.

 

"Oh, Dinah...it's so good to see you once again." said Alice with tears of joy in her eyes.  She brought her hand closer and gently brushed the kitten against her cheek.  Dinah responded in kind by licking at her face, trying to lap up the tears that were streaming down her cheeks.  Her tiny paws tickled against Alice's skin, making the girl giggle in response somewhat.

 

"Well now, shall we be off then, Alice?" asked Margaret, beckoning her sister to follow.

 

"Yes, dear sister, let us take our leave now." responded Alice, holding Dinah secure in her hands, fingers curled upward to prevent the cat from falling.  She began following her older sister through open fields and distant farmlands, being careful to avoid stepping on anything or anyone in their path.  Like Margaret stated, if she wanted to be loved by the people and not feared or hated by them, then she would have to be as gentle a giantess as she could manage.  It would take some time getting used to a severely shrunken world, but Alice believed that in good time she would be able to manage well enough.

 

After a short walk lasting ten minutes or so, the pair of gigantic beauties neared a mansion, one that was built to their scale.  It was rather a shocker for Alice to see a building that accommodated her now-enlarged stature, yet in a way it also made sense.  If Alice's family was made up of giants who were now royalty, they would need a fitting place to call home.  The mansion certainly appeared grand enough, with pure white paint on the exterior, brimming with vibrant flower gardens in the front, Romanesque-style pillars along the front face of the building, silk curtains decorating the windows, a fanciful water fountain in the front yard, and golden frames on the windows.  It was truly marvelous to behold.  While Alice initially thought to be residing in a castle upon returning home, it appeared to be more practical for the royal family to reside in a mansion.  It was more modern and probably less demanding on the builders to construct a mansion over a castle, especially for a family of giants.

 

As Margaret made her way to the front door, she turned the doorknob and then beckoned to her sister.

 

"Well, Alice," she said, "are you coming in?"

 

Alice stood there, still taking it all in.  She was a giant.  She was royalty.  She had an enhanced figure.  She towered over so many other people now by a good hundred feet now.  Just a day or so back, she was an ordinary little girl accused of having her "head in the clouds." Now that term is closer to being literally true than before.  Was all of this the work of the Cheshire Cat?  He did seem to enjoy causing mischief in his own unique way, here and there.  Somehow, he returned Alice home as a giantess, but also made her family gigantic and royals at that!  What exactly was the extent of his power?  Was he some kind of god?  Perhaps if she should meet him again, she will ask such questions.

 

For now Alice had her life, or rather her new life - to live.  It was all so strange, but the young lady was determined to make the best of it.  As she crossed the threshold and followed her equally gigantic sister into their new home, she pondered what other wonders she would come across in this new life as a royal giantess.  With Dinah secured in her palm, she made her way inside the mansion, eager to see what life as a princess would be like, what her mother parents would be like as the King and Queen of Great Britain, and what other experiences she would have in this new, post-Wonderland world she finds herself in now.  She simply spoke aloud a phrase that she had muttered all too well on numerous occasions:

 

"Curiouser and curiouser."