The ice crunched under the soles of her calfskin boots as she listened to the snow-muted sounds of wildlife in the glistening forest. She very nearly relaxed into the moment until, with a soft curse, she nearly slipped again despite the fact she carried a heavy walking stave to help steady herself. Terra was still unused to having so little traction when she walked through icy snow. She'd paid a fortune for her winter boots back home. In fact, she'd gone into the city to the store that sold all manner of hiking gear because she'd had to buy that particular brand. For some reason, Terra even remembered flirting with the young employee who'd helped her pick out her boots. Had eventually asked him out only to discover that he was already dating someone.

Terra's already wind-burned cheeks turned a deeper shade of red while she remembered grabbing the bag from his hand at checkout as she'd flushed with embarrassment following the man's rejection. Yet, in spite of their provenance, those waterproof shoes had been absolutely perfect. They'd been warm and well-fitted and had excellent traction to help their wearer trek through all sorts of weather.

But those shoes were at home. Home was gone. Lost to the years and existing only in Terra's memories. Even still, Terra would often think about her home, the world from which she'd been unceremoniously ripped. How had the people she'd loved and cared about fared without her? How much time passed before they'd stopped missing her? Terra knew that the police had probably investigated her disappearance, but there was no way anyone would have ever uncovered any clues about what had really happened to her. The sad truth was that Terra's loved ones had died believing her to be a runaway or a human trafficking victim or murder victim.

However, Terra wasn't any of those things. She was alive and well. Well, Terra was as 'well' as she could be considering her circumstances.

Absorbed in her daydreaming as she was, she stopped paying attention to the path. Terra's heavy tread managed to snap an icy branch laying across the trail, sending the cracking sound echoing ominously throughout the eerily muffled woods. In response to the noise, her companion shot her a withering look that was terrifying enough to cause Terra to shrink into the hood of her fur-lined cloak.

"Sorry, Alice." Terra apologized in a voice barely above a whisper.

The woman ahead of her sniffed before returning her attention to the dangerous footpath that lay before them. "Do you want the whole wood to know we're here?"

"No." Terra shook her head and took a deep breath of air so cold that it made her lungs momentarily burn before her exhale surrounded her head in a plume of crystalized water vapor.

"Then watch your footing." Alice snapped before readjusting her white cloak and shifting her heavy leather pack from one shoulder to the other. "There are things out there that would put the Jabberwocky to shame."

Following the mention of the creatures of this world, Terra's free hand went involuntarily to the golden hilt of the sword she was still inept at using. Alice had insisted she learn, despite Terra's glaringly obvious lack of fighting instinct. On some level, her mentor understood Terra's predicament.

Alice had been like her once. The woman had come from the same world as Terra but had arrived here long before even Terra's great grandparents had been born. Like Terra, Alice had been a young woman when this world had called out to her then torn her from her home. Also like Terra, Alice had been forced to make life for herself in this realm. Someone had helped her then just as Alice was helping Terra now. Alice didn't like speaking about those days, the memories of which would always cause a haunted look to enter the other woman's startling green eyes.

Terra felt her mind drifting yet again toward wondering what had happened to the older woman until the singing of a particularly noisome bird drew Terra's attention back to reality. With a huff, Terra suddenly sped up to catch Alice who had somehow made it far ahead of her. She felt safer when she was close to the fearsome middle aged woman who preferred to be called the Queen of Hearts by most of her subjects.

Yes, Alice had certainly been here a long time. Terra should know. She'd been studying to earn her PhD in Literature with a specialization in Germanic fairy tales and traditional folklore when this world had stolen her. Granted, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland was neither a fairy tale in the traditional mythological sense nor was it German. Yet Terra had read the story with tremendous reverence and loved it as much as any of the others she'd read as a youth. Loved them, that is, until Terra had learned the truth.

Happy endings don't exist. They never existed. There are just some endings that are less shitty than others.

In truth, that was actually what she and Alice were trying to achieve. Make their endings less shitty. Others had made it out, some recognizable names like the Grimm brothers or Hans Christian Anderson or even Aesop. Alice and Terra would make it out, too. Now if only this world would stop trying to keep them here.

In front of her, Alice stopped and held up her hand in signal for Terra to stop as well. With mounting fear, Terra switched her stave to her left hand and allowed her right to drop to the hilt of her sword. Despite the bone chilling cold of the forest, adrenaline soon made Terra's forehead bead with perspiration as her heartbeat pounded in her ears and Alice stood stock still, listening to something that Terra was far too inept to hear. Terra's breath came out in small, panicked puffs of air as she waited in near total silence.

When the other woman's eyes widened in surprise, Terra knew they were in real trouble. With a deceptively fragile-looking finger held to her lips in a gesture to keep Terra silent, Alice nodded toward the tree line and began moving hurriedly in that direction. Terra followed her swiftly into the woods just off from the path.

Walking was more difficult away from the cleared path, and the woods seemed to close around the two of them. Trees reached out at odd and frightening angles and the branches occasionally tugged at Terra's cape as she moved, feeling for all the world like clawed hands trying to tug her back to the main road and whatever it was that Alice was escaping. Terra knew it wasn't real. These woods could play tricks on the mind, and she shook her head to clear it as she focused on keeping up with Alice's lithe movement.

With a whisper-silent swish, Alice unsheathed her sword as they walked. Quicker than Terra's eyes could follow, the woman used the weapon to slice a branch from a pine tree and began using that to wipe away their footprints as they strode deeper into the forest.

Terra was oddly comforted by the sticky scent of pine as Alice worked, the smell reminding her of camping trips with her family when she was a child. She didn't know why they were running or what they were running from. When Alice said flee, it was best to flee. Terra had no idea how long they ran like that, plodding painfully through the ice encrusted landscape. It felt like an eternity before they finally came to the edge of an ice covered stream.

Alice looked about curiously until she noticed an imperfection in the snow along a hillside abutting the stream. The woman walked over to the dip in the otherwise smooth and blinding white surface and poked her sword into it. The sword disappeared deep into the hill, well below the level of snow covering it. Alice then used the sword to clear a small space and reveal an entrance to a cave of some sort. As Terra warily looked into the small and darkened hole, framed by snow and leaves and twigs, she had the sudden realization that maybe whatever they were running from was better than a dark cave. However, Alice seemed worried.

Alice hardly ever seemed worried.

Adding to the overall sense of foreboding, the wind picked up and caused snow and ice to cascade from the trees with noises so loud that Terra jumped in fear. The other woman gestured for Terra to crawl into the seemingly miniscule space. Terra forced herself to push her claustrophobia from her mind as she complied with Alice's demands. Once Terra was in, Alice followed suit before turning and holding out her flattened palm and whispering some sort of incantation.

The words caused a tiny stream of brilliant, undulating light to flow like a tendril of smoke from Alice's hand and dance around the entrance to the cave. The action led the hole to the outside to suddenly be filled once more with snow, blocking off their view of the trees and the forest and whatever it was that might have been chasing them. Terra noticed, though, that the exertion of using a magic spell when Alice was not adept at using magic had the other woman wobbling and shaking with such intensity that Terra was worried she'd topple over.

Before Alice could fall, Terra caught her and pulled her deeper into the darkness and further away from the entrance. Despite the tiny size of the mouth, the cave was actually quite large, and the two women could comfortably stand in the darkness. They stood there, staring at the hazy blue light filtering in through the ice and snow for several long minutes before Alice chanced speaking in a hushed and tense voice.

"We'll stay here for the night. I believe we evaded them, and I need to rest."

Terra hoped like hell that they had evaded their hunters. With Alice looking so exhausted, Terra was certain that there would be no way she could defend the both of them from whoever it was that had been pursuing them.