Alice blinked, tasting this funnel cake. It was actually quite good, so good that Alice almost recoiled from that taste. There was certainly nothing that gave her taste buds a challenge, remembering with distaste the filth they called food at the asylum. A bleak place, with nothing but despair, people with notes, and those loathsome twins who took great delight in torturing her. No, there was nothing in THAT particular part of her time line she would tell Chizuru about. She would spare the cheerful girl such gruesome stories.

"It has been a long time," Alice said slowly, "that someone ever asked me that question. Before the fire...I remember long walks in the glen with my sister, daydreaming for hours. And the, Wonderland was such a curious place! There was confusion, of course, but so many sights and races and croquet with the Queen and Cheshire-puss and the chessboard! Oh! I even remember the day I became queen myself when I went through the Looking Glass! Such marvelous times!"

At this, Alice felt something happened that was quite unexpected: a tear slowly fell from her face as she thought of those times. If only they had stayed, and there hadn't been a need for the rest: the fire that consumed her parents and her old being so that all that remained was a memory of the girl she had been. The fire, the asylum, and the visit back to Wonderland: the mines, the subjugation, the beheading of the White Queen...

Such a wonderful world, one she felt responsible to fix.

"But that was a very long time ago. I suppose the time for those thoughts are over. Now then, there seems to be something on your mind Chizuru. Penny for your thoughts?"

That still seemed like a strange expression. What WAS a penny anyway?