For MusingSkeleton.

Happy ununbirthday!

Hope you enjoy :P

Sakura in Wonderland

Sakura steps away from the white cot, navigating through the endless web of wires. They are hooked up to a set of machines, and now that their incessant beeping has stopped Sakura's job here is done.

The patient has been stabilized with quick but precise work at her end, and now he is to be left to the nurses crowded around him.

At the sink in the small room adjacent, Sakura slips off her gloves and washes her powdery skin. After drying off, she reaches for her ring, only to grab at air as her fingers pressed against the cold marble countertop.

She immediately checks her pockets, but finds them empty.

In a sudden moment of clarity Sakura remembers her office, and then how she had been typing at her desk. The metal of her ring had pressed uncomfortably into her skin as her fingers dashed across the keyboard, and so she had taken it off and kept it on a cotton in her drawer, to keep it safe within the softness.

As she makes to exit the room, a blur of white catches her eye. Sakura turns to the window and sees nothing but the glistening sun and swaying leaves.

A passing bird, that's all.

She rolls her eyes and enters the corridor.

Now, there seems to be a flock of white birds passing by the hospital. Everytime Sakura passes by a window, she registers the white blur at the corners of her eyes.

Once she reaches her office, she's convinced she is just seeing things.

But then her drawer is empty, no ring nor cotton where she is absolutely sure she put them just before the surgery. And at the edge of her line of vision there's that white blur again, and she whirls around to chase it. She is absolutely sure that thing, whatever it is, is the thief. When she has lost sight of the speeding mass once more, she huffs with an angry tick in her brow.

And then she sees white cotton laying on the floor at the corner of her desk, and she sighs, because she must have dropped her ring and cotton in her mad dash to the emergency ward.

But then she grabs the cotton ball and it's so fluffy and it wiggles so she drops it in shock.

A white rabbit glares at her, swinging a pocket watch in its paw. A golden chain dangles from its clutch, and lo and behold, her ring sways with it, the ruby red sparkling amidst the shining gold. The chain had been threaded through its hoop.

"HEY! Give that back right this instant, mister hare!" Sakura fumes.

The rabbit hops away as her hand swipes at air.

"I'm a RABBIT, and a MISS, thank you very much! But no time for that, no time at all! I'm very very late, and I must get going right away!" she jumps to the windowsill.

"Oh no you don't! That's my ring you've got there, and it's very precious to me, so I don't care how late you are you are giving it back now !" Sakura chases her to the window.

"I'm late I'm late I'm late! My Lady is going to kill me, and I've left Tonton all by herself down there!" The white rabbit jumps to a tree branch, and then dashes through the forest.

Sakura grits her teeth and follows close behind.

Even while pushing the muscle in her legs to their limits, the rabbit remains bounding ahead of her.

Eventually the dense forest opens up into a clearing, and Sakura follows the bouncing rabbit into the meadow, to the very center where a cherry tree stands atop a small hill.

The white ball of fluff slips in between the tree's roots.

"Oh no no no, I'm overdue. I'm really in a stew!" the rabbit's squeals echo, and Sakura bends down and sees an opening in the earth. The rabbit has gone down there, and really if she just squeezes herself she can make the fit— and so down the rabbithole Sakura goes.

Screaming as she plummets down, down, and down.

She falls with a thud on the damp soil of a dark forest floor. The landing is surprisingly soft.

Sakura jumps and whirls around, scanning her surroundings for any sign of her white rabbit, but she is nowhere to be found. No paw prints, no tell-tale sound of anything having passed through.

Nothing but the silence, fog, and looming black trees.

And so Sakura makes her way in a random direction of her random choosing, and delves deeper into the forest.

At some point she acknowledges the fact that she's being watched, somehow. She can't see anything, but there's an invisible something following her.

The prickling at the back of her neck is a sure warning, and if she had learned anything as a kunoichi it's that trusting your instincts is always the right way to go.

And so she makes her awareness known.

"Whoever you are, I know you're there! It's best you just come out and show yourself!" she calls into the treetops.

Right up above her on a long branch, a mouth smiles itself into existence. Beneath grinning lips is a mark, and then a nose appears above the floating ensemble. Lazy, hooded eyes open and peek down at her, dark and shining with delight.

"Why, hello there! Didn't quite notice you before, sorry for that—although how I didn't notice such a vibrant pink running amok within this gloomy forest, I'm not quite sure…" a deep, disembodied voice accompanies the glowing smirk.

Sakura narrows her eyes. "Ya right, pretend you weren't tailing me these last few kilometers; I dare you."

A chuckle reverberates across the tree trunks, and a body finally appears around the suspended face.

A silver cat is lounging across the branch, paws beneath his head and tail curled around an orange book. Sakura notices a scar striking straight down his left eye.

"Who are you?! And what do you want with me?"

The cat's features take on a look of disbelief. "Why, you should know. I'm the cheshire cat, and not to worry, I have no business with you at all." His lips stretch once more into a smile, and Sakura feels unsettled at the sight, as if she sho