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You’re so far from your warren, little rabbit. Home had been dark and warm and gentle; it had wrapped so snug around your little body. You never lacked for kind faces and the softness of fur. They brought you into the brightness of the sun, to places where the breeze was cool and the sky stretched forever. Every day you browsed the meadow, you glutted yourself on clover and jasmine. You would laugh and joke with the other kits as you crawled sleepily back into your warren, before the foxes got your scent.
It was a good place. The only place. Why did you leave? Why did you abandon love and safety? It had been so warm. So gentle. Furtive glances in the dark. The half-heard mutters of your father. Too many days, you’d been last to snuffle in the grass, all the prettiest shoots and flowers left thoroughly gnawed on by the time you ate? Too many days, the very thought of leaf and root seemed abominable to you, and you choked it down only with miserable effort. What sickness is in you, little rabbit?
They’ve seen, haven’t they? How gaunt you’ve become, how matted your fur is. The desperate terror in your eyes. They’re passing you by. You’ve become too loathsome to groom anymore, too sharp and bony to be nuzzled against, save reluctantly. All they have left for you is pity. No. Worse. They’re keeping you away from the green shoots, you decide one night, lying awake among the huddled bodies. They’ve all decided to ignore you for a purpose that your dumb little rabbit brain cannot comprehend.
No. No. You’re just imagining it. Silly bunny. Even among soft nervous things like you, you always got much too far into your own head. But you’re not imagining the foxes. Nobody has the luxury of ignoring the foxes.
Red fur, bloody teeth. Another life disappears from your world. Your mother. Your littermates. The friends you’d chase at the edges of the cool streams. It never gets easier, does it? There’s nothing you can do to prepare or soften the blow. Red fur, bloody teeth. Each time, another part of you, torn out. Another life you cherished left to stink and rot.
( You aren’t imagining the shrieks in the sky. You aren’t imagining the killing thunder that echoes in the distance, nor the stilt-legged behemoth that came to scoop up your brother’s corpse. )
You haven’t decided if the ones you don’t see are less horrible than the ones you do. But it is different, even if they die all the same. The not-knowing lets the imagination run wild. Gruesome stories lurch in staccato images through your mind. Burning a shadow into your vision. Echoing forever. Why do the others go back to normal so quickly? You’re not imagining that, right?
One day in autumn, you asked your father what mother’s favorite flowers had been. For a long moment, he was just silent, looking at you with his mild brown eyes. A frown crept across his face. With a short laugh, he told you that he’d forgotten. As he ambled off to forage, a shiver ran through you. Had he forgotten your brother, too? Did he remember the name he’d given him? He would forget you too, wouldn’t he?
It’s not just him. You see everybody in the warren getting eaten from the inside out like myxomatosis. Nobody cares. Their mates and their friends get devoured, they weep for a few days and then they just forget their names, the sound of their purr, their favorite flowers. It’s all burnt away by the bright nervous energy of NOW, as if the foxes were eating memory and sympathy, maybe even the past itself. Everybody looks out for themselves and lives in terror of tomorrows that come too quickly, but when death comes for somebody else, the grief quickly fades into apathy.
One day, you start to burn. The rotting, apathetic faces have become intolerable, and the press of their fur is suffocating. Comforting words sting and burrow like fleas. It’s too hard to breathe, your chest is too hot. It’s too hard to think, your brain is too hot. One cool autumn morning, before the sun rises, you pack a bundle of seeds and dried dandelions, you graze half-heartedly under a drooping willow, and you bolt.
On the first day, you run blindly, heedless of direction, not stopping to eat or drink. You hardly remember a thing. Your mind is an indistinct collage of impulse and sensation, rudely hurtling from one moment to the next. Your feet hurt. Your eyes sting. Your lungs heave. It’s a wonder that the foxes haven’t gotten your scent, especially after that clumsy scramble through bramble and briar in the early afternoon tore off patches of fur. Maybe you’re just too sick to be appetizing? That’s an encouraging thought! Some positive thinking would have done you a world of good.
You stop in the evening, the helter-skelter spell fading. It’s growing dark and your body seems to be composed entirely of aches. And hunger. God, how long has it been since you’ve eaten so much? Half your bundle is already gone, stupid bunny! You crawl into the hollow of a sycamore and rest your weary haunches. Warm and dark.
There are no dreams. Just more echoes. Your mother’s face. Your brother’s voice. The sourness of rot.
On the second day, you’re more careful. You move slowly, eating and drinking when you can, gathering seeds and withered grass to store. You still don’t know where you’re going, or what you plan to do when you get there. You feel stupid as regret finally barges its way into your brain, first in a trickle, then all at once. But it’s so far from your warren, little rabbit, and it’s too late to turn back. You know that with cold certainty.
The third day, the fourth day. Numb resolve. You’ll find a new warren maybe, one warmer and kinder, or just a dead one empty to crawl into and live out the rest of your days. Or perhaps you’ll just live like the hares do, wild-eyed and forever wandering, loping through open plains. You don’t think for a moment that it could happen, but it’s funny to think about.
It isn’t until the fifth day that you finally look back in the direction of home. An awful loneliness swallows you up.
But there’s no need to be so lonely, little rabbit. Because even if you can’t see your far away home, you finally see me. Your home rejected you, but I will always love you-- I will be with you for all eternity. Isn’t that nice? Aren’t you glad?
I bare my teeth. You laugh. I embrace you, and we live happily ever after.