Suspension. The gentle, soothing rocks – back and forth, back and forth. Her hum, like a lullaby, reverberated through her rib cage and uterine walls. There was nothing. But it was a kind nothing. A nothing she will never remember, but for months had been her whole world, the only thing she knew. And so they all come from a soup of nothing, amniotic fluid and nutrients; but not all of them are left in absolute peace there.
One day maybe, on the knees of their parents and guardians, they might be told the tales of their interfered-with beginnings.
She had worked to turn herself all day, shifting in her membrane home to make herself accommodating. Not, she would say if she could remember, because she wanted to – instinct. The drive to survive, and her survival could depend on her front feet and head being exactly where they must. Her mother had been restless; she could not have known then, but in part because of her shifting. Her body was readying them both for something difficult and ordinary. Forced, sweaty and accompanied by the familiar throes of contractions, to wander the folds of land around their hot and heavy home. Now and then, her mother laid down for a moment or two. They worked together, her mother and her.
And then she bumped! Heaved up with such haste, and it was violent in that nothing. This place had been a slow and steady home, and her mother’s jolt and panic had unsettled the quiet. She’ll never remember it, but if she could, she would say she had been scared and confused. For what seemed like forever, she tumbled and thumped. Then her mother stopped, though the beat of her heart – that constant and compelling song – was still loud and fast in her ears. The spook may have helped, in its own way, to quicken the process of parturition. Calm again. The enduring rock of her mother’s hips, the faint purr of her voice from outside. She would only been disturbed one more time before the greatest disruption of all: delivery, that roiling and trying journey.
A strange sensation, that for the days and short weeks after, she has been sure she can recall in the nerves of her nose and neck and belly. A voltaic crack; it was not something done softly, or serenely. The transferal of a soul cannot be accomplished with coddling hands. The sting of that shock touched her nose and knobbly knees. She couldn’t cry out, but she would have, if she could. That sensation slipped down her legs and neck, pricking every hair and cell on its way down – all the way to the tip of her tail hairs. And then she felt a burn, as her tailbone was sundered from her and replaced with a scut.
Mother had only felt the tiniest of shocks, but then, she was not the one being merged. The Mother is merciful, now and again. When she was brought into the wider world on the floor of a great rainforest, impossibly tiny and hairless, she could remember none of it at all.
“Be careful!” She knew what her mother meant when she called to the backside of her always so eager daughter. Not to slip into the body of that other self, so unwieldy and vulnerable. “I will, mum! Or... I won’t mum, promise! Bye!” Her response was eaten up by the incredible din of the jungle, and so will give Vineine no comfort. She has worn her mother thin, usually a wellspring of jolliness and delight. Her new child is as test. A mysterious test from the Mother. Their tropical home is not a place for a rabbit. So her mother hovers over her and shows her orchids and jewel beetles, and when she shifts into that tiny body, she is there to corral her into the crook of her legs and stand over her. It is fortunate that the other-form grows fast. She was born pink, sightless and deaf. As a foal she has been as hardy as any of Vineine’s others, but for weeks, when she became her other, she was defenseless entirely.
Against her mother’s wishes, she is shoulder-high in grass. She tiptoes, unsure on her paws, around the edge of a thicket. Now and then, she stands up tall to look around, her nose tirelessly wriggling. She lopes a step, nibbling selectively at the grass and forbs.
Her nose blinks. She thumps her foot hand on the bare earth, once. Twice. Her eyes can see all around her. Nearly a full panorama of the playground! So when that pup peaks a hill to her right, she lowers herself, creeping forward towards the safety of a raspberry bush. Maybe it is because she is sure he has seen her, but in a flash she abandons the idea of hiding, and rips across the edge of the thicket and then plunges in, her tail a flash of white. ’No, no, no…’ she thinks, ’come on, come on…’ She knows he must be on her trail, though in her wild panic she cannot quite tell. She is advantaged by her size, and she can navigate paths that he cannot quite as easily. She has found, sometimes, that panic foments the shift to her filly-self.
Maybe it is because she is so vulnerable like this, that the fusing of their souls has been a hurried process – she has a cursory grasp of this strange duality. Without sound, and with barely a perceptible shift in flesh, she no longer weighs a measly pound. Longear pants, stumbling a bit with the new ungainly length of her legs, unsure of whether or not to keep running or to turn and face the canine. With his teeth and her size, they are at a stalemate. She stops, ever the bold girl, and whips around, “I'm big!”
LONGEAR
Fiero and Vineine's little bunny.
One day maybe, on the knees of their parents and guardians, they might be told the tales of their interfered-with beginnings.
She had worked to turn herself all day, shifting in her membrane home to make herself accommodating. Not, she would say if she could remember, because she wanted to – instinct. The drive to survive, and her survival could depend on her front feet and head being exactly where they must. Her mother had been restless; she could not have known then, but in part because of her shifting. Her body was readying them both for something difficult and ordinary. Forced, sweaty and accompanied by the familiar throes of contractions, to wander the folds of land around their hot and heavy home. Now and then, her mother laid down for a moment or two. They worked together, her mother and her.
And then she bumped! Heaved up with such haste, and it was violent in that nothing. This place had been a slow and steady home, and her mother’s jolt and panic had unsettled the quiet. She’ll never remember it, but if she could, she would say she had been scared and confused. For what seemed like forever, she tumbled and thumped. Then her mother stopped, though the beat of her heart – that constant and compelling song – was still loud and fast in her ears. The spook may have helped, in its own way, to quicken the process of parturition. Calm again. The enduring rock of her mother’s hips, the faint purr of her voice from outside. She would only been disturbed one more time before the greatest disruption of all: delivery, that roiling and trying journey.
A strange sensation, that for the days and short weeks after, she has been sure she can recall in the nerves of her nose and neck and belly. A voltaic crack; it was not something done softly, or serenely. The transferal of a soul cannot be accomplished with coddling hands. The sting of that shock touched her nose and knobbly knees. She couldn’t cry out, but she would have, if she could. That sensation slipped down her legs and neck, pricking every hair and cell on its way down – all the way to the tip of her tail hairs. And then she felt a burn, as her tailbone was sundered from her and replaced with a scut.
Mother had only felt the tiniest of shocks, but then, she was not the one being merged. The Mother is merciful, now and again. When she was brought into the wider world on the floor of a great rainforest, impossibly tiny and hairless, she could remember none of it at all.
“Be careful!” She knew what her mother meant when she called to the backside of her always so eager daughter. Not to slip into the body of that other self, so unwieldy and vulnerable. “I will, mum! Or... I won’t mum, promise! Bye!” Her response was eaten up by the incredible din of the jungle, and so will give Vineine no comfort. She has worn her mother thin, usually a wellspring of jolliness and delight. Her new child is as test. A mysterious test from the Mother. Their tropical home is not a place for a rabbit. So her mother hovers over her and shows her orchids and jewel beetles, and when she shifts into that tiny body, she is there to corral her into the crook of her legs and stand over her. It is fortunate that the other-form grows fast. She was born pink, sightless and deaf. As a foal she has been as hardy as any of Vineine’s others, but for weeks, when she became her other, she was defenseless entirely.
Against her mother’s wishes, she is shoulder-high in grass. She tiptoes, unsure on her paws, around the edge of a thicket. Now and then, she stands up tall to look around, her nose tirelessly wriggling. She lopes a step, nibbling selectively at the grass and forbs.
Her nose blinks. She thumps her foot hand on the bare earth, once. Twice. Her eyes can see all around her. Nearly a full panorama of the playground! So when that pup peaks a hill to her right, she lowers herself, creeping forward towards the safety of a raspberry bush. Maybe it is because she is sure he has seen her, but in a flash she abandons the idea of hiding, and rips across the edge of the thicket and then plunges in, her tail a flash of white. ’No, no, no…’ she thinks, ’come on, come on…’ She knows he must be on her trail, though in her wild panic she cannot quite tell. She is advantaged by her size, and she can navigate paths that he cannot quite as easily. She has found, sometimes, that panic foments the shift to her filly-self.
Maybe it is because she is so vulnerable like this, that the fusing of their souls has been a hurried process – she has a cursory grasp of this strange duality. Without sound, and with barely a perceptible shift in flesh, she no longer weighs a measly pound. Longear pants, stumbling a bit with the new ungainly length of her legs, unsure of whether or not to keep running or to turn and face the canine. With his teeth and her size, they are at a stalemate. She stops, ever the bold girl, and whips around, “I'm big!”
Fiero and Vineine's little bunny.
“My heart has joined the Thousand,
for my friend stopped running today.”