genessia | My friends don't walk, they run

Who: Alice Liddell and YOU
What: Alice is running a high fever, and gets the bright idea that playing out in the cold will help cool her down. This is clearly a terrible idea
When: Throughout the week
Where: Fayren
Warnings: None at the moment

A: My brain is scattered [Fayren]

It was quite cold outside, but Alice felt like she was on figurative fire. Even holding snow in her hands didn't do much to cool her down. She was currently just walking down the street, not intending to go far from home and just letting herself get some fresh air. Fresh air was supposed to be good when you had a fever, right? She couldn't remember where she heard such a thing, maybe she had made it up. But it sounded like good advice, at the very least.

She was a bit more wobbly than usual from the fever and the slippery nature of the snow and ice on the pavement. Snow boots or not, Alice and balance tended to not get along.

Which is why, for a moment, she was wondering why she was looking up at a wall of gray... only to realize it was the sky and she had slipped flat onto her back and stayed there. Oh... She should most certainly move, she was likely being quite a bother to any passerby. Yes, she should definitely move... Just... not yet. Maybe once everything stopped hurting.

She was in pain, really everything ached, including her head. No. Especially her head. She was quite dizzy at the moment. Was that from the fall or the fever, she wondered?

Or perhaps it could be both.

When the wall of gray was suddenly broken up by a face and then two other identical faces, she offered a curtsy while laying down, more or less just moving her dress underneath her winter coat.

"Hello," she offered. "Could the three of you please stop moving? It's making me terribly dizzy," well... dizzier.

B: You can be Alice, I'll be the mad hatter [Closed to close CR]

She was restricted to bed rest and more importantly, to bed.

When the medicine didn't put her to sleep, she was bored. And a bored Alice meant a fidgety one.

Maybe, if only for a moment, she could just go downstairs for a change of scenary. At the very least, she could move her legs. Maybe she'd make some tea. For once, she actually felt hungry, which considering she pretty much couldn't stomach more than tea and soup before feeling full, was a small sign of improvement. She looked all around and made a "shush" noise to her moonflowers in their windowsill box and grabbed Basil before making to tiptoe to her door.

She opened it and looked up into a familiar face. Drat! She had been caught!

"Oh um... we..." honestly with her mind a bit fuzzy she actually couldn't think of an excuse. So she went for the truth. "We're hungry." She held up Basil whose head flopped forward as if upset about the state of his stomach.

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"Are you?" Regina studied her daughter and then reached down reflexively to test Alice's temperature.

After a moment, she sighed and bent down to scoop Alice up. "Still too warm, but we can't have you being hungry. That'll make you sicker. If I make you some scrambled eggs with cheese, will you go back to bed after you eat?"

She pouted, now promptly caught and captured. But Regina was also just so soft and warm. She hugged onto her, even thwarted in her plans as she was.

"Could we watch a movie and then go back to bed?.... Please?" she just didn't want to be in bed anymore.

"Hmm." After making this thoughtful sound, Regina tapped Alice on the nose. "What if we eat, and then watch a movie on my laptop in my bed," she offered, reasoning that a change of scenery might be sufficient to take the edge off being cooped up.

"I know it's terrible being kept in when you want to be free." She stroked the girl's bed-mussed hair smooth, and then settled her more firmly to carry her downstairs. "I always hated it. Try to remember that if you do as your told, you'll be free again sooner."

Well... it wasn't HER bed or her room, she supposed. And Regina had a very nice comfortable bed. If she couldn't leave the house, at least she could leave her room?

"But the waiting makes me curious," she mumbled. It would explain the trouble she's always in. She leaned into Regina and closed her eyes, listening to the woman's soothing heartbeat.

"What movie?"

"That depends," Regina answered, and moved to carry her newest child down to the kitchen. "Would you prefer animation or real people?" A few of her own favorites might serve and if not, there were others on the network.

When they reached the kitchen, Regina set Alice down at the table. She'd have put her on the counter, but she feared the little girl might sway and topple. "Tea or juice?"

"The drawings! The animation!" Since having seen animated movies, Alice adored them, in love with how drawings could be made to move as they did. She saw people move all the time, what was a real person movie except a play of sorts? But an animated movie was much more exciting in her eyes.

"Juice, please," she was much too hot for tea even though she loved tea and was so terribly fond of it. But something sweet sounded very nice right now.

Regina stifled a soft laugh for Alice's excitement. She could well imagine how the girl felt about animation and moving pictures. In fact she didn't need to imagine it, since she had experienced it herself when she came to the Land Without Magic.

From the icebox, Regina withdrew a pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice, made from the oranges they grew on the property. She poured Alice a glass and set it before her, bending over to kiss the top of her head.

"Animation it is, my love. Have you seen Lilo and Stitch yet?" Regina loved it unabashedly.

"Is it a story about sewing?" well, that answered that question on whether or not she had seen it. She coughed lightly, which was then followed by a sneeze. Basil flopped forward on the table.

Alice took the glass and sipped it, the orange juice delicious and soothing on a tight, sore throat but also a shock to her tastebuds which had little more than tea and soup the past week.

"No, love. It's a story about..." How to explain it? Stick to the basics. "A little girl whose parents have died, her big sister, and special friend she meets. It's a story about family."

She broke the eggs and began to beat them, all the while keeping an eye on her youngest. Alice looked both pale and flushed still, but Regina knew not to panic--now. The first time Henry had gotten a fever, she'd rushed him to the hospital.

"That sounds so-so- ACHOO!" she sneezed. "Sad," she finished. "It does have a happy ending though, doesn't it?" she didn't want to watch a movie that had a sad one. Not while she was sick, in any case.

"It's not sad," Regina began but stopped when Alice sneezed, focusing her will to produce a small pack of tissues by Alice's hand. "Bless you, sweetheart."

When the sneezing stopped for the moment, Regina went back to egg scrambling and continued, "And it has a very happy ending. You'll like Lilo and Stitch both."

Her stomach rumbled as she lightly blew her nose, only to sneeze again into the tissue.

"Well, alright. I like the names already, to be sure. And you like this movie?"

With a whisper of magic, Regina swept the used tissue from Alice's hand and deposited it into the trash. Another small gesture and a clean tissue hovered by her hand. Ordinarily she wouldn't use magic for such a task, but it spared her having to stop cooking and wash her hands before starting again. As poor a cook as she was, the fewer opportunities to burn the eggs the better.

"I do. I bought it for Henry, but I ended up watching it myself more often than not."

My friends don't walk, they run

B) so sorry for the delay

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