Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2016 2:53:03 GMT 1
Alice Liddell
Edith Hargreaves
PERSONALITY Alice is a study in opposites. On the one hand, she is a very curious creature. She seeks to know the unknowable, to understand the world around her and always questions why. She doesn't seem to know when to stop, however. It's always a little bit more, a little bit more. At the same time she'll be telling herself to stop but she rarely listens to that little voice in her head that gives her very good advice. It's something that she regrets but is unsure of how to change. It's gotten her into more trouble than she can possible count. From getting threatened by mad queens, turned (briefly) into a giantess, she just cannot seem to stay out of trouble. The problem is, she doesn't want trouble. Although the Alice of her childhood was a bright and explorative thing, that's not exactly her reality any longer. She's very insular and tries to keep to herself as much as possible. She fears that everyone is trying to take advantage of her, that people want something. She's afraid of mirrors and dislikes the color red and she dislikes utter nonsense. Her anxiety can be quite debilitating at times, causing her not to sleep very well and other health problems. She always looks tired. Sometimes she doesn't recognize her own reflection, but that might be due to her not having any mirrors in her house. But in there, Alice wants to change herself. She wants to be more open and friendly with people. She wants to remember what she was like before rabbit holes and mirrors and chessboards. HISTORY All good stories have a beginning and Alice’s is no different. She was once a resident of the Enchanted Forest like most everyone else. It was a rather ‘average’ childhood all things considered until her parents died. Her aunt took her and her sisters in but couldn’t really take care of them so she started selling the children into indentured servitude. Alice ended up with someone who wasn’t entirely kind. This person treated her well enough until everything was in the ready – then she became the subject of magical experiments involving portals. She never knew what Dodgson was looking for and she never thought to ask. The first formed in a rabbit hole and took her to a place called Wonderland and the name was entirely misleading. Being only seven and one half years old in that place of utter madness was dangerous. For the most part, she managed to explore without incident until she accidentally damaged a garden piece belonging to the Queen of Hearts. She found herself being hunted down until she found the rabbit hole once more, disappearing into the portal as it faded and returning to the Enchanted Forest. Upon her return, she found that she was six inches taller than when she'd left. Being hunted as a young child left her with the inability to sleep peacefully and she found she rather hated pepper. The second and final experiment took her, aged nine, through a mirror into the Looking Glass realm. There she learned magic of her own, mostly having to do with the care of magical gardens – growing flowers that can speak. Nothing overly powerful, really. Quite honestly, the Looking Glass realm wasn’t nearly as terrifying as Wonderland had been and she even became a queen for a little while but things changed when she came back through the mirror as they had before. In this case it was a condition we know as situs inversus with dextrocardia – a complicated term that simply meant all her major organs had flipped and were mirrored inside of her. From there, Dodgson would send her through the mirror to get things for him. Using her ability as queen to travel at rapid speeds, she did his menial tasks and learned to operate backwards as one did in the Looking Glass realm. You ate a slice of cake before cutting and serving it, for example. It was nonsense and she disliked it a great deal. Dodgson died when one of his experiments literally exploded in his face, leaving Alice alone in his cottage. She became a traveler for those who needed things in the Looking Glass realm. It wasn't a place easily accessed and if one was just a pawn, as most entrants into the world were, it was nearly impossible to navigate being only able to go diagonal to capture, two spaces at the start if you so chose, and from then on only in a straight line. It was easier for a Queen. But the more she went, the worse the realm seemed to be until it was a dark reflection of what it had once been. Alice couldn't do it anymore. After her last trip, she covered the mirror with a cloth and retired. It wasn't long after that, that the curse hit and she was now Edith Hargreaves. Edith grew flowers for Game of Thorns, painted nature and Victorian scenes and made gourmet tea mixes. She lived alone with her cat Dinah and never seemed to be much of a large part of the town. When the first curse was broken and Alice regained her senses, she did the first thing she could think of. She uncovered the mirror in her attic and smashed it with a hammer. The broken shards are now in a trunk and the frame is empty. Never again. Especially once the magic came back. Although now she is the only grower of talking flowers - they all reside in a small green house in her backyard and lament her never having guests. She clung to her simple life, refusing to be Alice. She had to be Edith. No one needed to know who she was. She certainly didn't want to be Alice when Cora was around. It was far more difficult to hold onto that when they were forced back into the Enchanted Forest, even after all the chaos and destruction in Storybrooke. She chose to stay close to a small group of other townsfolk, afraid of trying to get home again. And then they were back and she was starting to feel like she'd never smashed the mirror. It was just back and forth, back and forth. But once again, she was just Edith until the memories came back again. Now there were people who knew her, who wanted to look after her and be in her life. She placated them the best she could, just going about her life as usual. Did she even notice the magical goings on around her? Well, yes. But staying out of it was the one and only time that she ever listened to that tiny voice in her head, despite her natural curiosity wanting to know how things had gotten jumbled again... RP SAMPLE Mornings were confusing anymore. Alice had to check her reflection in a window and make sure she was still who she was. Unfortunately, that did nothing for her as her face wasn’t necessarily recognizable – not from being in a pane of glass but her hair hadn’t been that short before and the clothes were different and the room was different. There were so few consistencies that she clung to them like snow to wool. Dinah was one of them. The cat hopped onto the windowsill and butted Alice with her head. She scratched the cat then kissed a soft ear, “I reckon you want breakfast don’t you? After I put the kettle on, I’ll feed you.” Wandering through her small home, she went into the blue and white checkered kitchen. Her kettle was old, painted with faded flowers and slightly rusted on the outside. Filling it with water, she set it to heating. As she went to the cabinet where she kept Dinah’s food, she found that it was cracked open and there was a spill of dry cat food. The bag had been chewed open and there was a trail going across the floor. Getting down on her hands and knees, she started following the trail piece by piece surprised that Dinah hadn’t eaten them. She came to crack in the wall and lowered to press her face against it but she couldn’t see anything. “Curiouser and curiouser,” she muttered as she tried to force her hand into the hole. Her hand bumped something metal and something round and dry which she assumed to be the cat food. But what was the metal thing? She started to grab it when something sharp stabbed into her finger. Yanking her hand back, she found her finger was bleeding – she’d been bitten by a mouse. “Damn it, Dinah! You let the mouse in!” she got up and went to the sink to rinse the blood away. She’d have to call her doctor to see if she had to get a shot or something... Until then she wasn’t speaking to Dinah. For now, the metal object was forgotten. |
created by Lilith of Adoxography