Chapter 2: The Pool of Tears🌊💦

"Curiouser and curiouser!” cried F (he was so much surprised, that for the moment he quite forgot how to speak good English); “now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!” (for when he looked down at his feet, they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off). “Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who will take care of you, dears? I’m sure I shan’t be able! I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble myself about you: you must manage the best way you can;—but I must be kind to them,” thought F, “or perhaps they won’t walk the way I want to go! Let me see: I’ll take care of them by making them calm”.

And he went on planning to himself how he would manage it. “They must go by the carrier,” he thought; “and how funny it’ll seem, taking care of one’s own feet! And how odd the directions will look!

"Oh dear, what nonsense I’m talking!”

Just then his head struck against the roof of the hall: in fact he was now more than nine feet high, and he at once took up the little golden key and hurried off to the garden door.

Poor F, it was as much as he could do, lying down on one side, to look through into the garden with one eye; but to get through was more hopeless than ever: he sat down and began to cry again.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said F, “a great letter like you,” (he might well say this), “to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!” But he went on all the same, shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round him, about four inches deep and reaching half down the hall.

After a time he heard a little pattering of feet in the distance, and he hastily dried his eyes to see what was coming. It was his best friend, N returning, with a his semicolon ";" in his hand: he came trotting along in a great hurry, muttering to himself as he came, “Oh! the Duchess, the Duchess! Oh! won’t she be savage if I’ve kept her waiting!” F felt so desperate that he was ready to ask help of any one; so, when N came near him, he began, in a low, timid voice, “If you please, N—” N started violently, dropped his semicolon ";" gem, and skurried away into the darkness as hard as he could go.

F took up the semicolon ";' gem and, as the hall was very hot, he put the semicolon gem in his chest all the time he went on talking: “Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!” And he began thinking over all his friends he knew that were kind and generous, to see if he could have been changed for any of them.

"I kidnapped them so far, but they all hate me", said F, and his eyes filled with tears again as he went on, “I must be kind and having fun with them. No, I’ve made up my mind about it; if I’m not a villain, I’ll stay down here! It’ll be no use their putting their heads down and saying ‘Come up again, F!’ I shall only look up and say ‘Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that letter, I’ll come up: if not, I’ll stay down here till I’m somebody else’—but, oh dear!” cried F, with a sudden burst of tears, “I do wish they would put their heads down! I am so very tired of being all alone here!”

As he said this he looked down at his chest, and was surprised to see that he had put on the semicolon ";" gem while he was talking. “How can I have done that?” he thought. “I must be growing small again.” He got up and went to the table to measure himself by it, and found that, as nearly as he could guess, se was now about two feet high, and was going on shrinking rapidly: he soon found out that the cause of this was the semicolon ";" gem it was lightning on his chest, and he dropped it hastily, just in time to avoid shrinking away altogether.

"That was a narrow escape!” said F, a good deal frightened at the sudden change, but very glad to find himself still in existence; “and now for the garden!” and he ran with all speed back to the little door: but, alas! the door was shut again, and the little golden key was lying on the glass table as before, “and things are worse than ever,” thought F, “for I never was so small as this before, never! And I declare it’s too bad, that it is!”

As he said these words his foot slipped, and in another moment, splash! He was up to his chin in salt water. His first idea was that he had somehow fallen into the sea, “and in that case I can go back by railway,” he said to himelf. (F had been to the seaside once in his life, and had come to the general conclusion, that wherever you go to on the coast you find a number of bathing machines in the sea, others digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.) However, he soon made out that he was in the pool of tears which he had wept when he was nine feet high.

"I wish hadn’t cried so much!” said F, as he swam about, trying to find his way out. “I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.”

Just then he heard something splashing about in the pool a little way off, and he swam nearer to make out what it was: at first he thought it must be his target to Wonderland, but then he remembered how small he was now, and he soon made out that it was only N that keeps running deep in the forest.

Sorry for not updating this fanfic, cauz I was too busy haha

Stay tuned for Chapter 3.................

                                                                                                      °~Kholeen~°