‘Who are you?’ said the Caterpillar.
An entry in Microcosm’s writing prompt project.
The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.
“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.
Well, as she didn’t know it would do no harm to take a toke of the hookah the caterpillar was offering her, so she climbed up on the mushroom and sat next to the rather grotesque creature. For a caterpillar is nothing much to remark upon when you are sitting in the grass by the riverbank having a watercress sandwich and a thermos of ice tea but it is quite another thing entirely, as Alice would explain later to her cat, when it is quite as large as yourself or no, even larger.
Alice took another toke and from then on couldn’t help staring at the amazing sections of his body and the way he undulated as he spoke. In any case, the caterpillar had confronted her with a fundamental question of identity and it required an answer of some sort.
“I’m Alice,” was all she could muster but the Caterpillar was certainly not going to let her off that easily.
“One side of the mushroom will make you taller and one smaller,” he said. “Or so it may seem to you. Whoever you are.”
“I’m not sure if I am anyone different than anyone else,” she considered but the Caterpillar was busy changing colors and his green coloration had transformed into a dangerous purple. “I certainly hope I am not merged with some of the people I have met here. I wouldn’t like to be indistinguishable from a fish-footman.”
“Fish are in you,” the Caterpillar said and commenced to spinning a cocoon as he handed her the hookah again. “So are birds and worms and viruses and ticks and …”
He went on like that for quite a while but Alice stopped paying attention as she had bitten off a piece of the mushroom and found her legs stretching most uncomfortably as he body extended out of the garden and past the trees and well into the clouds.
“Oh, dear,” Alice said, as her head banged against the foundations of Heaven. “I’ll never get into that precious little garden at this rate.”
She kept growing until her organs started to split and break open and poison her very insides. Her body became petrified and solid and she stood tall among the other trees and realized she was one of them and that they all had names, that they were all young boys and girls from across the eons, all of whom eaten of the tall side of the mushroom.
“Welcome, Alice,” she seemed to hear one of them say but it was not in the normal, although increasingly abnormal way, of her human years. She felt it in her body, her bones, her bark. Finally, she knew who she was and if she could only tell the Caterpillar but of course she could not speak in the normal way one speaks to caterpillars.
Just then a rather pretty bird flew past and lighted upon Alice’s branches and she could see it was carrying a bit of the mushroom in its beak. The bird pecked at Alice’s bark and wood, which was not altogether an unpleasant experience, until the bird deposited the mushroom piece into her tree-body and she began to shrink.
