Prompt: You stepped into your favorite story as a villain. Time to fight with your fate; after all, we all know how villains usually end.

**

I found myself on yet another mission that Luther, my messenger companion, had refused. This has become my habit. I was walking towards the southern regions, apparently with a routine message, nothing special, and I wondered why he hadn't liked this job. Then I remembered the forest I had to cross and the oddities people discussed.

I wasn't superstitious, but I always wore an amulet around my neck as if it could protect me from everything. In fact, I no longer even remembered exactly what I was protecting myself from.

At first, the forest was ordinary, but it became darker and gloomier, as if the plants were no longer so full of life, and the usual rustling sounds were absent. It felt like I was utterly deserted where evil spirits lurked. I can scare myself, too, because the forest wasn't that desolate. Only a little light filtered through the dense foliage.

The vegetation was also drooping at the base of the trees, with small bushes and mushrooms. All sorts of them.

After a while, I had to be careful not to step on any of them. Then, when I couldn't avoid stepping on some oddly shaped and colored mushrooms, I got a bit scared because they emitted a dense powder. Something milky that scratched my throat.

But I didn't know exactly what was happening to me because it felt like I was asleep, on some kind of journey, passing people whose voices I could hear from afar, but I couldn't see them:

"Could you please tell me which way to go?" asked a little girl's voice.

"It depends on where you want to get to," replied a deeper voice.

"Oh, it doesn't really matter," repeated the little girl's voice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go, Alice," the deeper voice encouraged. "Just go, go until..."

"Until I get somewhere," Alice finished.

I thought about what a strangely familiar conversation it was, and the name Alice was also quite familiar. The conversation moved further away from me as if I were going somewhere, but I should open my eyes, yet I couldn't.

"It's tea time?" I heard another voice. Now, I was very curious about what was happening around me, so I sat up, forcing myself to open my eyes.

At first, I could only see vaguely, and then, as the shadows became sharper, I felt I was really traveling, as if I were in a carriage. A golden ornate carriage, carried by people, I saw their heads beside me, struggling. But they didn't look like people; they looked more like playing cards. Their bodies were like playing cards, and only their limbs and heads seemed human.

I looked around, and we were heading towards a garden. I also looked back. Behind us were many such cards walking after me, and behind us, the towers of a bright palace were visible.

In the garden, there were beautiful rose bushes, mainly red, in the distance, some white ones, and bushes with roses that were half red and half white. That was quite peculiar, and since we stopped and I could examine them more closely, I saw that three cards, with a paint bucket and brush, were busy painting the white roses red.

When they saw me watching them, they dropped what they had and threw themselves to the ground.

Now everyone was standing and staring at them, the crowd of cards, but there was also something else, an extraordinary white rabbit, nervously looking at his pocket watch and a completely flesh-and-blood little girl.

Everything was bizarre, and I exited the carriage to examine those roses. The girl couldn't decide whether to stay standing or throw herself to the ground.

It was clear that the roses were hastily painted over, and I saw the three cards trembling with fear. A man stood next to me, dressed more elaborately like me, with a crown. I turned to him: "What on earth happened to these? Why did they paint the roses?"

"You heard the Queen! Why did you paint over the flowers?" he shouted at the ones lying on the ground. They mumbled something, but it was impossible to understand what they were saying since they didn't raise their heads.

"Get up," I said, and somehow I felt everyone was staring at me. The three miserable ones were trembling like aspen leaves and bowing. "Why did you paint over the roses?" I asked again.

They all poked each other to answer, and finally, the middle one couldn't bear the pressure from both sides. He hesitantly stepped forward and, in a trembling voice, replied: "Because we accidentally planted white roses instead of red ones. We just want to make it right." He threw himself to the ground, holding his head with both hands, and the other two followed his move.

The king leaned closer to me and whispered in my ear: "Shall we cut off their heads?"

I looked at him in confusion, but he just nodded as if waiting for me to say it.

"Because they painted the flowers? I like the whites too," I replied.

"Are you sure, Your Majesty, that you don't want to cut off their heads? Just a little bit? Maybe one of them?" asked the king.

"No, I don't want to; that's. That's nonsense; it's. It's not such a big crime!" I saw the faces of those around me. They were shocked and shaking their heads disapprovingly.

"Then maybe we should move on to croquet," said the rabbit, still checking his pocket watch.

The whole group moved through the rose bushes towards a more extensive clearing, where, to my surprise, the ground was full of holes and furrows. But that wasn't the strangest thing; the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets were live flamingos, and the soldiers were standing on each other's hands and feet, forming gates.

As they tried to straighten the flamingos and hit the hedgehog balls, I suddenly realized why the name Alice was familiar. I approached the little girl and said, "You are Alice, right?"

The girl eyed me suspiciously. "Yes, I am, and then what, will you cut off my head?"

Yes, I remember this story. I am trying to understand how I ended up here or why I am the Queen.

"I don't want to have anyone's head cut off; calm down!" I replied. I heard several people gasp around me. A soldier came closer, and I was surprised by his familiarity:

"But Your Majesty! This is your job! Every day, you sentence about 10-20 halfwits to death!"

I was taken aback because they expected me to do this. Yes, in this story, I am the evil Queen who constantly orders people to be beheaded. But why aren't they glad that I no longer want to do this horrible thing?

A grinning cat's head appeared in the sky without a body. I should also order its head to be cut off, though there's nobody to behead it from.

The croquet field was in complete chaos because the living gates were running around wherever they pleased, and the balls started rolling in random directions, then suddenly changing course. There were no rules at all.

"This whole place is complete madness, and I have no idea why I'm here!" I shouted.

I looked at Alice, the grinning cat head, and the rabbit in despair. But they, too, were standing confused and uncertain, as if I had thrown them off balance.

Indeed, that's what I did; I disrupted the usual order. What do all these characters do if I don't shout every minute for heads to be cut off?

"I'm introducing new rules. I don't like the flamingo mallets or the hedgehogs, and I don't like that the gates move around. I want a real game with rules."

My words were followed by a silence I had never heard before. The previous soldier, slightly bowing, smiled expectantly: "Otherwise what, Your Majesty?" and I could see they were waiting for that sentence from me.

"Idiots!" I replied, and I started running across the garden towards a hedged maze. Anywhere, just to get away from here. As I ran, lifting my heavy royal hoop skirt to avoid tripping, I did fall a few times. Maybe they were following me, but I didn't care; I just focused on getting as far away as possible.

I didn't like this bizarre world. And I especially didn't like how the other characters related to me, almost wanting me to be evil. But why?

As I ran, I saw the green hedge thinning out. It was as if I had reached the forest. The heavy dress disappeared, and I found myself back in my goblin skin.

What was this strange dream, or was it a hallucination?

I kept running without looking back until I was out of the forest. Let's note that it's no coincidence that Luther didn't take on this mission.

I had completely forgotten about the message, but I'm definitely not returning to that forest again.