She knows not to stretch out her legs like this. It is a vulnerability indulged by the equine part of her. Her powerful hind legs are the key to her flight. She feels another zap on her nose, a scolding touch. She figures it to be a token of her mother’s ceaseless worrying, an intrusive thought meant to parry her adventurous nature. She snorts and would smile, indeed, if her lips weren’t so permanently set in displeasure in this little self!
One big ear raises from its rest and tips a bit forwards and to the side – she can hear leaves rustle against one another and far away (past the gurgle of water and into the dimly lit hold of the forest), the sharp snap of a twig. Her nose is constantly shifting. Up and down, up and down. With her buggy eyes, she can see all around her.
She needs all of these things when she does not have size. She lives in a dangerous place, after all. A place made by the Mother for strange and gnarly critters (not for cottontails, so much). To Longear, it is really more of a wonderland: psychedelic birds in a big, bright canopy; apes howling overhead and shaking vines. Everywhere, there are fantastical, small places, like big fallen trees hollowed out, to be explored – these are usually filled with bugs, attracted to the damp inside. Gross but neat.
Her right ear cocks. Her eyes dart and hold and her nose shifts. Up and down. They are terribly quiet and small. But they are made for a different place. They are buff against green, when they are used to being buff against warm sand.
She freezes.
‘Run.’
Her nose stops twitching for a second, her breath holding. No. She tenses her skin. But that’s not how it works. It is a thought thing. A mental evocation more than a physical will.
‘We need to run.’
Not now… She curls her back legs under her, slow, getting to her four paws.
‘Always the back feet! They’re all you have when it’s go time.’
I know. She looks at them, they are bright and big-eared, tense like held back springs. Odd things. She looks, too, at the tangled knot of bushes on all sides. Where she can slip through, they can too. This is no good. She begins to see white panic, clouding her vision and rushing hard pumps of blood through her body.
‘You aren’t even going to try?! Not. Fair. I’m not ready.’
The words flow through her like strange other-thoughts, but this one rings! It screams and rattles around and she jumps. A powerful shock races down her spine and the rabbit screams, shrill and alarming. She clamps her eyes shut and in that second she shifts into her filly body. The screams die down and she breathes heavy, wrestling against the snare of stalks and leaves. “I’m much bigger that you two, you know!” she warns, her voice shaky, fighting out from under the bush and scrambling to her hooves. She hasn’t noticed the wild man yet, she is staring at the strange foxes with a sullen frown.
LONGEAR
Fiero and Vineine's little bunny.
One big ear raises from its rest and tips a bit forwards and to the side – she can hear leaves rustle against one another and far away (past the gurgle of water and into the dimly lit hold of the forest), the sharp snap of a twig. Her nose is constantly shifting. Up and down, up and down. With her buggy eyes, she can see all around her.
She needs all of these things when she does not have size. She lives in a dangerous place, after all. A place made by the Mother for strange and gnarly critters (not for cottontails, so much). To Longear, it is really more of a wonderland: psychedelic birds in a big, bright canopy; apes howling overhead and shaking vines. Everywhere, there are fantastical, small places, like big fallen trees hollowed out, to be explored – these are usually filled with bugs, attracted to the damp inside. Gross but neat.
Her right ear cocks. Her eyes dart and hold and her nose shifts. Up and down. They are terribly quiet and small. But they are made for a different place. They are buff against green, when they are used to being buff against warm sand.
She freezes.
‘Run.’
Her nose stops twitching for a second, her breath holding. No. She tenses her skin. But that’s not how it works. It is a thought thing. A mental evocation more than a physical will.
‘We need to run.’
Not now… She curls her back legs under her, slow, getting to her four paws.
‘Always the back feet! They’re all you have when it’s go time.’
I know. She looks at them, they are bright and big-eared, tense like held back springs. Odd things. She looks, too, at the tangled knot of bushes on all sides. Where she can slip through, they can too. This is no good. She begins to see white panic, clouding her vision and rushing hard pumps of blood through her body.
‘You aren’t even going to try?! Not. Fair. I’m not ready.’
The words flow through her like strange other-thoughts, but this one rings! It screams and rattles around and she jumps. A powerful shock races down her spine and the rabbit screams, shrill and alarming. She clamps her eyes shut and in that second she shifts into her filly body. The screams die down and she breathes heavy, wrestling against the snare of stalks and leaves. “I’m much bigger that you two, you know!” she warns, her voice shaky, fighting out from under the bush and scrambling to her hooves. She hasn’t noticed the wild man yet, she is staring at the strange foxes with a sullen frown.
Fiero and Vineine's little bunny.
“My heart has joined the Thousand,
for my friend stopped running today.”