As they ventured towards the huge clouds of colorful smoke, Remi muttered through gritted teeth. "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum? Cheshire Cat? Why are they all acting like this? Why do they look like that?"
Remi held on to the collar of their dress and took a deep breath, feeling exasperated. "Why am I here? What is here? Where am I?" They couldn't stop questioning everything, but especially, Remi wondered why they felt the need to follow that damned rabbit.
The coughing began as Remi walked into a cloud of blue smoke. "Holy shit!" Remi exclaimed in between coughs.
A mushroom the size of a truck came into view. Resting on top of it, there was a familiar silhouette. Remi squinted through the smoke, then finally, the person's identity was revealed. "Grey!?" Remi's eyes widened as they observed Grey's appearance.
His whole body — face, skin, and hair — was blue. Grey was wearing a yellow vest with no shirt underneath and some yellow pants. Barefoot and smoking out of a hookah, he frowned as he turned to look at Remi.
"You..." Grey leaned over the edge of the mushroom he was sitting on. "Who are you?" With each word he spoke, different colors of smoke came from his mouth, striking Remi's face.
They waved the fog away and tried taking breaths. "I- I don't know anymore," Remi answered, and it was true. All of these people that seemed like their friends turned out to be otherwise, so why should that mean that Remi was the Remi they thought they were.
Grey turned away and took a drag from the hookah. "What do you mean?" he questioned in a bored manner, not even making eye contact with Remi.
"Well, if people aren't who they seem to be and who I thought they were, then maybe I'm not who I seem to be and think I am," Remi replied, fixing their dress, shaking off dust from it. "Who are you?"
Grey slowly eyed Remi, one of his eyebrows raised. He behaved as if he believed was better than them. "They call me the Blue Caterpillar," Grey informed them, again exhaling out onto their face, causing Remi to breathe in the pink smoke.
Again, they coughed. "You're not a caterpillar though," Remi observed, becoming annoyed with Grey.
He turned to them angrily, a frown upon his face. "You!" he raised his voice. "Who are you?" he yelled in Remi's face, leaning closer, almost falling off the edge of the mushroom.
Remi fell on their behind straight onto a smaller mushroom. They remained sitting there, crossing their arms. "I already told you! I don't know!" Remi shouted back. "And stop blowing smoke in my face!"
"What is your issue!? What do you need!?" Grey finally stood up on the mushroom, arms crossed, the hookah resting in his mouth.
"I need to grow a bit! I drank a potion that made me shrink, and I want to go back to my normal size before I go back home!" Remi was stressed out, pinching the bridge of their nose. "And I mean, being ten inches tall isn't enough like—"
"What!?" Grey exclaimed. "I'm ten inches tall! My height is a perfectly reasonable height!" he angrily stated, his blue skin and hair now turning red in anger.
Remi's eyebrows scrunched in worry. "No, that's not what I meant! I just—"
Grey turned away with arms crossed, huffing and puffing with the hookah uncontrollably. Red smoke surrounded his body completely. Remi couldn't see him anymore. "I need your help!" Remi yelled.
The red smoke cleared and Grey had disappeared. The hookah was laying on the mushroom. Remi gasped. "What the fu—"
"Hey! Up here!" Grey called out to them from the sky. He was blue again but had blue butterfly wings on his back. He was flying and waving. His mood had seemed to change in a second. "One side will make you grow!"
