Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2014 15:32:15 GMT -5
Full Name: Alice Katherine Cahill (Kitty or Alice)
Gender: female
Age: 15
Power(s): Alice has the power to enter the dreams of people around her and allow them into her dream worlds, giving her a very different understanding of the world around her. She is also adept at creating dream landscapes and can perform incredibly convincing illusions while she is awake. The waking-time illusions mandate that she be in a very small radius from them, and are almost always very small things. Usually, she can’t create illusions for people she’s not spoken to before and illusions for people she knows well can be a little bigger, but not much. From the time she was very young, she has had the ability to dream lucidly. While she always claims that sleeping is her favourite activity, aside from eating, she is sometimes troubled by very real night terrors and occasionally wakes up with cuts or marks. For this reason, she prefers sleeping in the same room as other people or animals, so as to be able to escape into their dreams in the event of an emergency. This has proven traumatizing for her all-black, yellow-eyed kitten, Jack, who is something of a scaredy-cat.
Appearance: Alice is about 5’3”-5’4”, but she has a subconscious habit of looking down on people as though she were taller. Her round eyes are a pretty blue-black colour that reflect silver, and really stand out against her ashen skin. Her skin, for that matter, is an oddity of itself. She bears the look of the subcontinent, yet maintains a pale colour through which all of the veins in her arms and neck are visible, a pretty blue-green. She thinks they’re cute. All her features suggest different parts of the world. She’s got long, glossy black hair and some front bangs, making her look younger. She’s also skinny, contributing to her youthful air, and is admittedly a bit of a Lolita-character. Her lips move a lot when she speaks, like a singer’s or like someone who’s learned more than one language.
Alice’s favourite things about herself are her eyes and her voice, which is apparent when you see her. Her walk isn’t quite graceful—more timid and withdrawn, a big contrast to her personality. In a bit of a cliché, she doesn’t think she’s pretty, but she doesn’t talk about it much as she isn’t very interested in looks—as far as she can tell, all that really matters is fun. However, in another random contrast, she is very concerned about things being “cute”. She needs to dress up almost all the time, with ribbons and frills and lace. It’s interesting to note that there’s a deep blue sweater with a bow of the same colour that she matches with a tan pleated skirt whenever she’s too tired to really think of an outfit, which happens quite frequently. She also dresses up everything around her—her phone is covered in stickers and charms and her backpack is a mess (a pleasing mess, but a mess) of pastel glitter.
Personality: Alice is incredibly juvenile, but also somehow markedly mature. Almost everything about her communication is antiquated and her mannerisms are outdated, but she communicates in a very childlike manner. It would seem she belongs to another time. Due to her lack of placement on the timeline, she is very easy-going and ready to accept things her peers say as normal, if not internalise them. This has led to some practical jokes in the past involving large groups of people trying to convince her of some fictional convention. They are usually to no avail—if Alice thinks something is weird enough, she won’t do it no matter how “normal” it is. She is a prankster, despite her old-fashioned sense of humour, and is always ready for anything.
The way Alice conducts herself in waking life is not unlike dreaming—that is, she sees a door, she decides to open it, she sees what is beyond the door, she responds to it, so on. It sometimes looks as though she believes she will never die. This is untrue—Alice knows she will die, and while she’s not quite afraid, she does worry over it quite a bit. However, she’ll frequently say that her dreams are only like life because her life is like a dream: “It looks like I’m making decisions, but really I’ve got no say”. When asked who it is that does have say, Alice gets quiet. She believes in a higher power, but she doesn’t claim to be “doing god’s will” or anything. That conversation makes her quiet and confused.
Some people insist that there is “no such thing” as normal. This bothers Alice immensely. She knows it shouldn’t, and maybe there really is “no such thing” as normal, but she feels this is giving up, in a way. Due to being raised by absentee parents and a number of relatives that came and went, she feels that she has been deprived of certain societal standards that most people took for granted. However, as she is incredibly open-minded by nature and allows herself to be convinced of things, she doesn’t like the idea that she should hold on to these things without any justification. She also tries very hard to please everyone, which comes from trying to keep her parents from worrying as a child. Consequently, she has a something of a dissociative personality complex. Many characteristics of her personality contrast greatly, depending on her mood swings, and even in a normal setting she will say things that baffle those around her, who cannot reconcile the words with the person they’ve come to know. She tries very hard to isolate herself on a negative swing—at these times, she says things that she knows she won’t be able to take back, but she usually stops believing those things by the next morning. People brand this as “annoying” and “brooding” behaviour, which Alice tries to avoid by overcompensating at other times.
Despite these mental ticks, Alice is a smart, sensitive girl. She only opens her mouth when she feels she can gain or contribute something, intellectually or spiritually, from a conversation. The best thing about arguing with Alice is how comparatively easy it is to change her mind. While she is easily impassioned of noble causes or silly causes, or just things in general, she is capable of really listening. She is not incredibly straightforward in her speech, and sometimes comes off as abrasive. However, her juvenile looks usually lead to quick reconciliations, and she regularly charms her way out of situations. This is both a good thing and a bad thing—her sense of responsibility is wishy-washy due to rarely having to deal with the consequences.
Overall, Alice is sweet and fairly easy to get along with.
Picture:Just a temporary picture! I want to draw something myself, but in the mean time… (Alice’s nickname is “Kitty” from her middle name Katherine, so it’s a neko-chan…
)
Weaknesses: Alice is juvenile, clingy, and easily hurt—both physically and emotionally. She is also bad at recognising her faults, until she does recognise them… at which point she is a bit of a mess. A good example of the situation is her knees. One of them is almost always bandaged, scarred, or actively bloody, but she just thinks they’re cute. Sometimes she will wear knee-pads as a fashion accessory, but she refuses to take care of it properly.
Sleeping is a huge vulnerability for her. She always sleeps with her bunny, and at night she prefers her room be completely dark. However, she can and does sleep in any situation, and has been known to sleep with headphones on, listening to grunge rock. If left to her own devices, she sleeps over twelve hours a day. However, she is capable of going many days without sleep, much longer than a normal person.
She is reluctant to do anything herself. She’s a bit of a princess, and is always polite and charming enough that people will volunteer themselves. She has a somewhat reliant personality, in this regard. However, she will always blame herself when something goes wrong and she is something of her worst enemy.
Strengths: Alice is charming as hell. She’s a little naïve and trusting, which, while technically a bad thing, leads to her being able to always see the best in other people, and voice it. Because people don’t like (or believe) being complimented nonstop, she is always looking for moments to say what she believes. She is also extraordinarily intelligent, probably directly leading to her charm. She isn’t always book-smart, and is always quick to admit what she doesn’t know, but she knows when to say what and is good at thinking about things.
Her greatest strength is probably her ability to read people and signs. The time she’s spent lost in her dreams has led to an uncanny ability to see things for what they are, which most people can’t in dreams. While she is generally forgiving, she knows when a snake is a snake and never allows herself to be bitten twice.
History & Family: Alice’s parents are incredibly good-looking, successful people. The both of them coddled their child and took care of her to the best of their ability, but they were also absentee parents. Her mother travelled extensively due to her great-aunt’s illness when Alice was young, and her father’s work as a lawyer required him to be away long hours. However, her home was a family house and both sets of grandparents were always with her, along with various relations that would come and go. She was always incredibly forgiving of her parents’ shortcomings, but many of the specificities of her manner reflect her upbringing, something which has always bothered them and lead them to overcompensate. They were always worried about her, but never around enough to fix the “problems” they saw.
So she just decided to fix them herself. From an early age, Alice started telling herself that everything was perfect. Anything that wasn’t perfect, she forgot about. This has always been difficult for the people who worry about her, but perhaps what was more disturbing was the fact that this caused her to retain things that most people grew out of. After telling herself so long that everything was perfect, Alice still believes in perfection and can’t see flaws that someone as bright as her should spot immediately. These flaws are usually found in her friends or plans of action. As she is unusually intelligent, this usually does not pose a problem, but it is explains a lot about her.
As her powers are, on the outside, fairly commonplace, no-one knew what to make of them until she made the illusions. The household help would find teddy bears on the floor that they clearly remembered putting away, backwards curtains that would suddenly move while they were trying to fix them, and ribbons in strange places that they couldn’t touch. At first, it was generally agreed upon that there was a household ghost. Eventually the illusions got grander, to the point where there was once grass and mushrooms growing from the kitchen table. When her father eventually decided to fire some of the staff that, from his perspective, were “spreading silly rumours and not focusing on their duties”, Alice finally admitted that the spectacles were her creation. Relieved, everyone lived happily ever after.
The unfortunate thing about living as she did was that she was never very far from tragedy, although everyone expected her to be fine. If her maiden aunt who lived with for a couple years suddenly took ill, why should she be worried? After all, it was someone else’s mother. Her parents were perfectly fine. In fact, everything in her life was perfect, so why should she fret at all? As a result, she was extroverted when she was happy, to the point of being clingy, but isolated herself and blamed herself when she was happy. She always claims her life is perfect, and dissociates bad memories so they don’t affect her, which is very annoying for people who are close to her or trying to help her.
Alice has dreams; it’s what she does. Consequently, one night when her aunt was very sick, she wasn’t surprised to find herself dreaming. But this one was different. She didn’t know she was dreaming, she only knew what to do.
She was in an expansive parking lot around a tiny gas station, with some friends—Thomas, some other cousins she cared about. They were running from something, and running like hell; it was important that they got away. Though she was worried about the others, who were younger than her, she didn’t glance behind her—that’s against the rules of running, and if she fell she was sure someone would trip over her.
Somehow, impossibly, they made it to the gas station. She rejoiced with the children around her, and they piled into a silver SUV that she somehow knew was theirs. Just as she was getting into the drivers’ seat, however, she saw another car in the distance. It was a decorated van, like they have in India, the kind her aunt had ridden when she’d gotten her from the airport. Quite self-assured, she gave directions to one of the other children to drive away, she’d catch up later. She jumped out of the car and resumed her running, her running through the black expanse where anything could get her. And somehow, impossibly, she made it to this van.
The doors opened and she jumped inside, taking a seat that seemed to be reserved for her. Looking around, she was the happiest she’d ever been—here was her aunt, looking perfectly well, and here was her great-uncle and her great-aunt, and some of her grandmother’s cousins. They were happy to see her, too. Her aunt looked at her and smiled. She wasn’t the check-pinching type, the refined old lady had her hair up and was ready to go to a party, just like the rest of them. They all expressed their love for each other. This was so much better than outside, she thought to herself. So much better than that dark place I was in, and so much better than the darkness in the SUV my friends are driving away in. Driving. Away. She felt no need to rush to them, as she had previously. Eventually, unsure of her own reasoning, she inquired in to the identity of the driver.
Her aunt smiled again, and took her hand. It was time for her to go, and despite the fact that it was comfortable in here, she was all right with it. She said goodbye, forgetting her question, and vaulted out through the darkness. She caught up to the moving SUV and jumped inside, taking the wheel…
When she woke up, her aunt was dead. Coming to think of it, so were the rest of the people in that van, but it didn’t make sense—she’d been the image of health that night, not the tired, confused, sick woman that they had been dealing with recently. Equally difficult, her cousins gone. They left later that day, moving all the way to America.
It wasn’t a calm that settled over Alice that day. Perhaps it was denial, but she had no name for it: she only thanked god she wasn’t a crying mess, because we can only thank god for what we have.
Six months later, her life was perfect, and Alice couldn’t come out of her bedroom for a week, for lack of enthusiasm and her puffy red face. It’s got to hit you eventually, she decided. Everyone deals with grief.
+In Character sample: Ten-year-old Alice glanced twice lazily around the room, which, compared to a normal lazy glance, was quick and purposeful. Despite how long it took her to notice Maria’s entrance, she saw the maid before Maria saw her. She grinned as she strolled over to the other side of the room and took a seat next to Thomas, her little blonde cousin, who was crouched on the far side of the bed, observing the situation with great intensity. His eyes were wide as he mouthed “How did you even…!” in Alice’s direction. She put a finger on her lips, quieting her captivated audience, and looked back to Maria.
And she let herself dream. It was easy to make the eager young boy see what she wanted, but the tired, rushed maid was another matter entirely. Bugger, she thought, she’s usually so energetic… Maria was one of Alice’s favourite people, on account of the fact that she was still young and interested enough to easily confuse. However, a little challenge wasn’t going to make her stop. She focused until Maria’s actions became more habit than deliberation, something Alice had seen a million times. This was how people conducted their daily lives, no different from their dreams: Allowing themselves to fall prey to their habits and their tendencies, not deliberately choosing every moment, they became slaves to themselves, something Alice worked very hard to avoid in her waking life. It was different in dreams. </p>
Slowly but surely, the nightdress Maria had folded and placed on the shelf lifted its shoulders and stood up. Maria’s startled scream rose to a curse of frightened inability to comprehend, as the dress rose from its spot and started dancing around the room. Another left its place and joined it: the two of them did a little waltz around the bedroom. Alice held in her laughter as Maria crossed herself and fled from the room. As soon as she was out of earshot, she released a guffaw and plopped on the bed.
Thomas stood anxiously and hurried to the place on the floor the clothes ought to be, but there was only the nightshirt Maria had dropped in her terror. “Kitty,” he called to Alice with the perversion of her middle name, “Where have the clothes gone?!”
She rose and turned around, looking at him quizzically, and then glanced into the cupboard. She gestured with her arms. “Just where she put them, Thomas,” she retorted, confused.
“Well how’d they get back there, without my seeing?”
She lifted her eyebrows and inclined her head, shrugging her shoulders and grinning. She could see the appeal of the situation to the five-year-old, someone other than herself who thought she knew everything. “They never left the closet in the first place, silly boy, it was all in your head. Like a dream,” she rolled her eyes, as though it should be the most obvious thing in the world. While she was forgiving of the fact there was no way he could know, she loved to put on a show—especially when it didn’t hurt anyone. Seeing his sheer amazement, she tilted her head to the left and smiled cutely, to avoid grinning. “Oh, Thomas, that was nothing.” Pause, bigger smile. “Why don’t you sleep in my room tonight?”
Gender: female
Age: 15
Power(s): Alice has the power to enter the dreams of people around her and allow them into her dream worlds, giving her a very different understanding of the world around her. She is also adept at creating dream landscapes and can perform incredibly convincing illusions while she is awake. The waking-time illusions mandate that she be in a very small radius from them, and are almost always very small things. Usually, she can’t create illusions for people she’s not spoken to before and illusions for people she knows well can be a little bigger, but not much. From the time she was very young, she has had the ability to dream lucidly. While she always claims that sleeping is her favourite activity, aside from eating, she is sometimes troubled by very real night terrors and occasionally wakes up with cuts or marks. For this reason, she prefers sleeping in the same room as other people or animals, so as to be able to escape into their dreams in the event of an emergency. This has proven traumatizing for her all-black, yellow-eyed kitten, Jack, who is something of a scaredy-cat.
Appearance: Alice is about 5’3”-5’4”, but she has a subconscious habit of looking down on people as though she were taller. Her round eyes are a pretty blue-black colour that reflect silver, and really stand out against her ashen skin. Her skin, for that matter, is an oddity of itself. She bears the look of the subcontinent, yet maintains a pale colour through which all of the veins in her arms and neck are visible, a pretty blue-green. She thinks they’re cute. All her features suggest different parts of the world. She’s got long, glossy black hair and some front bangs, making her look younger. She’s also skinny, contributing to her youthful air, and is admittedly a bit of a Lolita-character. Her lips move a lot when she speaks, like a singer’s or like someone who’s learned more than one language.
Alice’s favourite things about herself are her eyes and her voice, which is apparent when you see her. Her walk isn’t quite graceful—more timid and withdrawn, a big contrast to her personality. In a bit of a cliché, she doesn’t think she’s pretty, but she doesn’t talk about it much as she isn’t very interested in looks—as far as she can tell, all that really matters is fun. However, in another random contrast, she is very concerned about things being “cute”. She needs to dress up almost all the time, with ribbons and frills and lace. It’s interesting to note that there’s a deep blue sweater with a bow of the same colour that she matches with a tan pleated skirt whenever she’s too tired to really think of an outfit, which happens quite frequently. She also dresses up everything around her—her phone is covered in stickers and charms and her backpack is a mess (a pleasing mess, but a mess) of pastel glitter.
Personality: Alice is incredibly juvenile, but also somehow markedly mature. Almost everything about her communication is antiquated and her mannerisms are outdated, but she communicates in a very childlike manner. It would seem she belongs to another time. Due to her lack of placement on the timeline, she is very easy-going and ready to accept things her peers say as normal, if not internalise them. This has led to some practical jokes in the past involving large groups of people trying to convince her of some fictional convention. They are usually to no avail—if Alice thinks something is weird enough, she won’t do it no matter how “normal” it is. She is a prankster, despite her old-fashioned sense of humour, and is always ready for anything.
The way Alice conducts herself in waking life is not unlike dreaming—that is, she sees a door, she decides to open it, she sees what is beyond the door, she responds to it, so on. It sometimes looks as though she believes she will never die. This is untrue—Alice knows she will die, and while she’s not quite afraid, she does worry over it quite a bit. However, she’ll frequently say that her dreams are only like life because her life is like a dream: “It looks like I’m making decisions, but really I’ve got no say”. When asked who it is that does have say, Alice gets quiet. She believes in a higher power, but she doesn’t claim to be “doing god’s will” or anything. That conversation makes her quiet and confused.
Some people insist that there is “no such thing” as normal. This bothers Alice immensely. She knows it shouldn’t, and maybe there really is “no such thing” as normal, but she feels this is giving up, in a way. Due to being raised by absentee parents and a number of relatives that came and went, she feels that she has been deprived of certain societal standards that most people took for granted. However, as she is incredibly open-minded by nature and allows herself to be convinced of things, she doesn’t like the idea that she should hold on to these things without any justification. She also tries very hard to please everyone, which comes from trying to keep her parents from worrying as a child. Consequently, she has a something of a dissociative personality complex. Many characteristics of her personality contrast greatly, depending on her mood swings, and even in a normal setting she will say things that baffle those around her, who cannot reconcile the words with the person they’ve come to know. She tries very hard to isolate herself on a negative swing—at these times, she says things that she knows she won’t be able to take back, but she usually stops believing those things by the next morning. People brand this as “annoying” and “brooding” behaviour, which Alice tries to avoid by overcompensating at other times.
Despite these mental ticks, Alice is a smart, sensitive girl. She only opens her mouth when she feels she can gain or contribute something, intellectually or spiritually, from a conversation. The best thing about arguing with Alice is how comparatively easy it is to change her mind. While she is easily impassioned of noble causes or silly causes, or just things in general, she is capable of really listening. She is not incredibly straightforward in her speech, and sometimes comes off as abrasive. However, her juvenile looks usually lead to quick reconciliations, and she regularly charms her way out of situations. This is both a good thing and a bad thing—her sense of responsibility is wishy-washy due to rarely having to deal with the consequences.
Overall, Alice is sweet and fairly easy to get along with.
Picture:Just a temporary picture! I want to draw something myself, but in the mean time… (Alice’s nickname is “Kitty” from her middle name Katherine, so it’s a neko-chan…
)Weaknesses: Alice is juvenile, clingy, and easily hurt—both physically and emotionally. She is also bad at recognising her faults, until she does recognise them… at which point she is a bit of a mess. A good example of the situation is her knees. One of them is almost always bandaged, scarred, or actively bloody, but she just thinks they’re cute. Sometimes she will wear knee-pads as a fashion accessory, but she refuses to take care of it properly.
Sleeping is a huge vulnerability for her. She always sleeps with her bunny, and at night she prefers her room be completely dark. However, she can and does sleep in any situation, and has been known to sleep with headphones on, listening to grunge rock. If left to her own devices, she sleeps over twelve hours a day. However, she is capable of going many days without sleep, much longer than a normal person.
She is reluctant to do anything herself. She’s a bit of a princess, and is always polite and charming enough that people will volunteer themselves. She has a somewhat reliant personality, in this regard. However, she will always blame herself when something goes wrong and she is something of her worst enemy.
Strengths: Alice is charming as hell. She’s a little naïve and trusting, which, while technically a bad thing, leads to her being able to always see the best in other people, and voice it. Because people don’t like (or believe) being complimented nonstop, she is always looking for moments to say what she believes. She is also extraordinarily intelligent, probably directly leading to her charm. She isn’t always book-smart, and is always quick to admit what she doesn’t know, but she knows when to say what and is good at thinking about things.
Her greatest strength is probably her ability to read people and signs. The time she’s spent lost in her dreams has led to an uncanny ability to see things for what they are, which most people can’t in dreams. While she is generally forgiving, she knows when a snake is a snake and never allows herself to be bitten twice.
History & Family: Alice’s parents are incredibly good-looking, successful people. The both of them coddled their child and took care of her to the best of their ability, but they were also absentee parents. Her mother travelled extensively due to her great-aunt’s illness when Alice was young, and her father’s work as a lawyer required him to be away long hours. However, her home was a family house and both sets of grandparents were always with her, along with various relations that would come and go. She was always incredibly forgiving of her parents’ shortcomings, but many of the specificities of her manner reflect her upbringing, something which has always bothered them and lead them to overcompensate. They were always worried about her, but never around enough to fix the “problems” they saw.
So she just decided to fix them herself. From an early age, Alice started telling herself that everything was perfect. Anything that wasn’t perfect, she forgot about. This has always been difficult for the people who worry about her, but perhaps what was more disturbing was the fact that this caused her to retain things that most people grew out of. After telling herself so long that everything was perfect, Alice still believes in perfection and can’t see flaws that someone as bright as her should spot immediately. These flaws are usually found in her friends or plans of action. As she is unusually intelligent, this usually does not pose a problem, but it is explains a lot about her.
As her powers are, on the outside, fairly commonplace, no-one knew what to make of them until she made the illusions. The household help would find teddy bears on the floor that they clearly remembered putting away, backwards curtains that would suddenly move while they were trying to fix them, and ribbons in strange places that they couldn’t touch. At first, it was generally agreed upon that there was a household ghost. Eventually the illusions got grander, to the point where there was once grass and mushrooms growing from the kitchen table. When her father eventually decided to fire some of the staff that, from his perspective, were “spreading silly rumours and not focusing on their duties”, Alice finally admitted that the spectacles were her creation. Relieved, everyone lived happily ever after.
The unfortunate thing about living as she did was that she was never very far from tragedy, although everyone expected her to be fine. If her maiden aunt who lived with for a couple years suddenly took ill, why should she be worried? After all, it was someone else’s mother. Her parents were perfectly fine. In fact, everything in her life was perfect, so why should she fret at all? As a result, she was extroverted when she was happy, to the point of being clingy, but isolated herself and blamed herself when she was happy. She always claims her life is perfect, and dissociates bad memories so they don’t affect her, which is very annoying for people who are close to her or trying to help her.
Alice has dreams; it’s what she does. Consequently, one night when her aunt was very sick, she wasn’t surprised to find herself dreaming. But this one was different. She didn’t know she was dreaming, she only knew what to do.
She was in an expansive parking lot around a tiny gas station, with some friends—Thomas, some other cousins she cared about. They were running from something, and running like hell; it was important that they got away. Though she was worried about the others, who were younger than her, she didn’t glance behind her—that’s against the rules of running, and if she fell she was sure someone would trip over her.
Somehow, impossibly, they made it to the gas station. She rejoiced with the children around her, and they piled into a silver SUV that she somehow knew was theirs. Just as she was getting into the drivers’ seat, however, she saw another car in the distance. It was a decorated van, like they have in India, the kind her aunt had ridden when she’d gotten her from the airport. Quite self-assured, she gave directions to one of the other children to drive away, she’d catch up later. She jumped out of the car and resumed her running, her running through the black expanse where anything could get her. And somehow, impossibly, she made it to this van.
The doors opened and she jumped inside, taking a seat that seemed to be reserved for her. Looking around, she was the happiest she’d ever been—here was her aunt, looking perfectly well, and here was her great-uncle and her great-aunt, and some of her grandmother’s cousins. They were happy to see her, too. Her aunt looked at her and smiled. She wasn’t the check-pinching type, the refined old lady had her hair up and was ready to go to a party, just like the rest of them. They all expressed their love for each other. This was so much better than outside, she thought to herself. So much better than that dark place I was in, and so much better than the darkness in the SUV my friends are driving away in. Driving. Away. She felt no need to rush to them, as she had previously. Eventually, unsure of her own reasoning, she inquired in to the identity of the driver.
Her aunt smiled again, and took her hand. It was time for her to go, and despite the fact that it was comfortable in here, she was all right with it. She said goodbye, forgetting her question, and vaulted out through the darkness. She caught up to the moving SUV and jumped inside, taking the wheel…
When she woke up, her aunt was dead. Coming to think of it, so were the rest of the people in that van, but it didn’t make sense—she’d been the image of health that night, not the tired, confused, sick woman that they had been dealing with recently. Equally difficult, her cousins gone. They left later that day, moving all the way to America.
It wasn’t a calm that settled over Alice that day. Perhaps it was denial, but she had no name for it: she only thanked god she wasn’t a crying mess, because we can only thank god for what we have.
Six months later, her life was perfect, and Alice couldn’t come out of her bedroom for a week, for lack of enthusiasm and her puffy red face. It’s got to hit you eventually, she decided. Everyone deals with grief.
+In Character sample: Ten-year-old Alice glanced twice lazily around the room, which, compared to a normal lazy glance, was quick and purposeful. Despite how long it took her to notice Maria’s entrance, she saw the maid before Maria saw her. She grinned as she strolled over to the other side of the room and took a seat next to Thomas, her little blonde cousin, who was crouched on the far side of the bed, observing the situation with great intensity. His eyes were wide as he mouthed “How did you even…!” in Alice’s direction. She put a finger on her lips, quieting her captivated audience, and looked back to Maria.
And she let herself dream. It was easy to make the eager young boy see what she wanted, but the tired, rushed maid was another matter entirely. Bugger, she thought, she’s usually so energetic… Maria was one of Alice’s favourite people, on account of the fact that she was still young and interested enough to easily confuse. However, a little challenge wasn’t going to make her stop. She focused until Maria’s actions became more habit than deliberation, something Alice had seen a million times. This was how people conducted their daily lives, no different from their dreams: Allowing themselves to fall prey to their habits and their tendencies, not deliberately choosing every moment, they became slaves to themselves, something Alice worked very hard to avoid in her waking life. It was different in dreams. </p>
Slowly but surely, the nightdress Maria had folded and placed on the shelf lifted its shoulders and stood up. Maria’s startled scream rose to a curse of frightened inability to comprehend, as the dress rose from its spot and started dancing around the room. Another left its place and joined it: the two of them did a little waltz around the bedroom. Alice held in her laughter as Maria crossed herself and fled from the room. As soon as she was out of earshot, she released a guffaw and plopped on the bed.
Thomas stood anxiously and hurried to the place on the floor the clothes ought to be, but there was only the nightshirt Maria had dropped in her terror. “Kitty,” he called to Alice with the perversion of her middle name, “Where have the clothes gone?!”
She rose and turned around, looking at him quizzically, and then glanced into the cupboard. She gestured with her arms. “Just where she put them, Thomas,” she retorted, confused.
“Well how’d they get back there, without my seeing?”
She lifted her eyebrows and inclined her head, shrugging her shoulders and grinning. She could see the appeal of the situation to the five-year-old, someone other than herself who thought she knew everything. “They never left the closet in the first place, silly boy, it was all in your head. Like a dream,” she rolled her eyes, as though it should be the most obvious thing in the world. While she was forgiving of the fact there was no way he could know, she loved to put on a show—especially when it didn’t hurt anyone. Seeing his sheer amazement, she tilted her head to the left and smiled cutely, to avoid grinning. “Oh, Thomas, that was nothing.” Pause, bigger smile. “Why don’t you sleep in my room tonight?”
