Metaphysical Observation: The Queen of Black Rabbits

Another funny thing about life; we're rarely the only ones watching our steps. That doesn't necessarily mean the whole world is watching to see what we'll do at any given moment, although it might feel that way for some; however, just because you may be alone doesn't make you the only set of eyes in a room, either. Do you ever feel like you're being watched?

The small, dark being hunkered broodingly on a thick, outstretched limb just beneath the true canopy of the forest, her wide, cold eyes following the creatures on the road beneath her perch. They were tired, and she could see it; stressed, and she could smell it; lost, and she could hear. Their fear she could almost taste. She opened her mouth and felt the air with her teeth, measuring the flow, testing the vibes and the texture of the emotion, the firmness in the timing. Her ears quivered and the breath hissed through her throat; it was ripe. Today was a day to reap.
Wisps of gossamer mist like the thoughts an feelings from a sea of bodies drifted and swirled around her black form as she made a motion, convulsing as though being wracked by a fit of sneezing. Dropping silently to the ground, the black rabbit hopped after the two travelers, pale eyes glinting like diamonds in the shadows of the trees. Although it was only midday and the tree cover was not terribly thick, the air seemed to grow darker, sinister and shaded. More eyes shone in the gloom, and other shapes began to emerge from the underbrush and trees, joining the first and approaching the figures on the road until a countless horde of rabbits hopped before, after and all around them, all black pelts, all pale eyes, all twitching ears and whispering teeth. A fog had fallen, thick, twisting and boiling and obscuring all but a few steps before the ones walking; the travelers didn't seem to notice.

Micky stumbled on the road. She was barely a mare, only just having grown from being a foal, and her footing wasn't always as sure as ponies' are expected to be; even so, it was embarrassing how clumsy she felt, especially beside David, who always seemed to know where to put his feet and always looked so sure of himself. She anxiously glanced over at the little dog, hoping he hadn't seen.
"It's okay," he told her without breaking step or turning from the road. "Everybody trips sometimes. It's not like we have anywhere to be that falling over will keep us from."
"Yeah," she sighed, trotting slightly to keep up with the quick-footed terrier. "I just feel like I fall all the time. I'm so clumsy."
David shrugged. "It happens. You could always blame it on the light, too." He halted and looked around at the dim forest. "It always seems to be night here."
"I've noticed that, too," Micky agreed, grateful for a breather. "It wasn't like that when we came in to the woods, but now it's like the sun doesn't even rise."
The dog nodded, still peering off into the gloom. "You getting tired?" he added after the silent gesture.
"I'm always tired," the young pony murmured. David sighed heavily and hung his head. He reflected the sentiment. They hadn't been traveling long, but this stumbling around the countryside without direction was starting to feel like a great burden to him. When once he had felt lighthearted, cracking jokes and walking with a spring in his step, now he only felt aged and weary; he was basically still a pup, but for the way he had been feeling, he wouldn't have been surprised to look into a pool and see the reflection of an old hound staring back at him.
"Let's stop, then," he said, sitting down on the road. "There's not much point to keep going anyway."
Micky followed suit. "Do you mean right now?" she asked him, "Or like, forever?" He looked at the young mare, unsure if she was serious or not. She stared back at him, feeling just as uncertain. The small dog shook his head and turned away as though to lay down. That was a question he just didn't know how to answer at the moment.
Something caught his eye then, an inconsistency of the light or coloration with a spot on the ground just ahead. The terrier squinted and was just able to make it out: branching off the road, only a couple of yards from where they had halted their journey, was another path.
"Hey, Micky," he pointed to the spot, "Do you see that path?" The pony scooted forward and stared.
"Yeah, I think so," she confirmed.
"That wasn't there before, was it?"
"I don't know, it's hard to tell anything about this woods for sure." By this time, they had both stood and walked over to the divergence and now waited in place where the two walkways met. They peered down the new path. Micky couldn't explain it, but just standing beside the path filled her with dread, and yet, it was almost welcome; after days of walking without direction, doubting whether or not a destination actually existed, at least this terrifying, weird path seemed to lead somewhere.
"Should we...?" David asked the question they were both entertaining in their minds.
"Okay," Micky said, and they stepped off of the main road.

The dark shapes still swarmed, whispering, surrounding, and always following. The first was excited; her nose twitched frantically and her ears were nearly shaking. She sneezed another signal, and the pack grouped tighter around the couple as they walked down the rabbit trail.

The trees seemed to part very quickly for the pony and the dog, and soon they found themselves stepping out of the forest and onto a flat, lifeless stretch of rock. Mountains stretched high before them, framing one side of the overcast and grey sky. A twilight glow was over everything, toning the air and stone a melodramatic sepia. There wasn't much to look at, so Micky and David kept their eyes on the road; neither truly wanted to keep going, and yet it felt like they had already come far enough that turning around would be pointless. Shortly they stopped, for they could not walk any further.
The path ended abruptly at the edge of a massive chasm. Its sheer sides dropped straight down into abysmal, empty darkness, and the far side, right up against the mountains, seemed like a mile away. There was complete silence in the place, profound, suffocating quiet. Both David and Micky knew without a doubt that this was The End; such a weight of finality hovered in the air that it could be described as nothing else.
"What do you think is down there?" asked David, breaking the silence and peering carefully over the precipice and into the depths of the gorge.
"I don't know," whispered Micky, so overcome with fear that speaking at a normal volume was impossible.
"Maybe there isn't anything," the terrier mused. "There isn't any noise coming out from it. Of course, there's no telling how deep it is."
"David," the pony said horsely. The little dog had edged closer to the drop. He didn't seem to hear her. "David," she said again, this time managing to raise her voice a little. David looked up, appearing almost surprised to find that she was still standing with him.
"I really want to see what's down there," he told her.
"No, David," Micky shook her head. "We have to go back. We have to keep traveling."
"Why?" Her friend seemed almost disconnected, like we wasn't fully present. "Travel where? We could go all over the whole valley and just end up back here. This is the end, the last place to go; can't you feel it?"
"But maybe it doesn't have to be the end yet," the pony suggested, tears beginning to form in her eyes. "I don't think we were supposed to come here yet. We have to go back and then when we're supposed to come back, we will, and then we can explore." David ignored her, or at least he couldn't hear her. He was lost in thought, staring down into the pit once again.
"We came here now, so maybe our journey in the valley is over, and whatever's down there is the next step," he mumbled. "Unless there's nothing down there."
"Please, no," the young mare pleaded. She became aware of a sound: soft, fading in and out, jumping like the sound of a stream, but less solid; it was like the sound of a multitude of creatures whispering all at once. She opened her mouth to say something of it to David, but stopped when he turned fully around to look at her.
"I'm going to see," he said. His voice was flat, and his eyes seemed pale, almost misty. "You can come with me, but I'm going."
She was too overcome to say anything, but she mouthed the word "No," eyes wide, heart pumping in her throat. He turned back to the cliff, and she turned as well, running as fast as her legs would take her back to the trees. The distance seemed so much further than when they had left the canopy. She glanced behind her just before he jumped, and for a split second she thought she caught a glimpse of a small black shape on his shoulder, round, with long ears. She couldn't bring herself to watch, so she squeezed her eyes shut and ran harder through her sobs.

The first rabbit was alone again as she watched the other traveler run away from the edge. She was satisfied; even for one, it was a successful reaping. Besides, the dark creature knew, the pony could run for now, but she would be back. She had seen the pit before her time, and now it was in her eyes, her head; she would be back soon enough.
The mist swirled around the black one's ears, and a sunbeam broke through the clouds just long enough to strike and illuminate the wisps, igniting for a brief moment an ethereal crown of light. Her eyes sparked with an unnatural fire. She was the Queen of Black Rabbits; she hadn't dug the Gulch, but she could always try to fill it again. There were always more travelers on the road, always weary wanderers. There would always be those willing to hear the whispering. It only took one rabbit at a time to watch another's steps, because after all, no one should walk alone.

More or Less Up and Down So Far

"I don't know what I'm doing!!" Jerry screamed at a small yellow shrub unfortunate enough to be near at hand when he finally snapped. "I hate this place! I don't know where I am! I don't know where I'm going and I don't know how to get there! I don't know anything!!" the frustrated and distressed young bull stomped in a small circle while making distressed and frustrated sounds and waving his arms in aggravation.
Seed rot, the shrub sighed mournfully to itself. This always happens to me. I wish I were somewhere else.
Jerry had been traveling for roughly three days and had made virtually no progress. He was in an extremely hilly area; he had passed the first rolling slopes two and a half days ago, several hours after leaving the waterfall. Before too long, he was surrounded by hillocks and knolls, and the road he traveled sometimes climbed and spanned them, other times meander around with little apparent reason or preference to either method. On some of the higher hills, Jerry could spot a forest in the distance, and there were times when it seemed he was getting quite near to it, but on the very next hill it appeared that he had turned completely around and was moving back toward the waterfall. Mostly though, upon cresting a ridge, all he could see was an ocean of grassy mounds. For a day, this is expected and normal, except of course for the oddly confusing way the road would about-face without changing direction. Even after a couple days of walking, although unusual, it might make sense to perceive consistent topography. But after three whole days of journey on foot, surely there had to be some sign of a change, and without it one might become severely discouraged and burdened with thoughts of returning home.
"I wish I could go home," grumbled the bull, "If I only knew which way it was." With a profound sense of defeat, Jerry crumpled to the ground, his legs sprawled out and his back slumped against a steeper rise just off the road. "I didn't even want to leave the waterfall in the first place," he said, letting his head fall heavily onto the grass. "And I don't even have anything to eat. The only thing around here I've seen is bushes." Hearing this, the shrub fervently began to pray for itself and its family. Jerry sighed and let his eyes wander around. Clouds lazily crawled along the bright blue sky. A light breeze sent a ripple through the grass and Jerry's floppy ears. A small but brightly colored butterfly danced past. It was a nice day.
"Yeah, but I'm still lost," Jerry said, continuing that annoying habit of talking to nobody and being negative instead of just appreciating the wonderful weather. He snorted and slouched deeper into the grass, looking grumpy. The butterfly floated by again, and Jerry watched it go. It was a petite thing; the insides of its wings were a soft pink color, while the performance sides were bright blue and glossy emerald green that glittered in the sunlight; Jerry felt inexplicably content while he was observing it. The little insect twirled and fluttered on the breeze, alighting on the road or some blade of grass or the shrub.
Please go away, thought the shrub desperately. Don't draw more attention to me. I'm just a shrub, I'm not doing anything.
After a while, the butterfly decided it was time to move on from that place and flitted off down the road, disappearing over a hill. Jerry watched it go, slightly more peaceful than he had been minutes before. His eyes lingered on the ridge while his mind wandered, and he began to feel lethargic from the warm sun. He decided that he would take a quick nap. No sooner had his eyelids begun to droop, however, than a movement on the road snapped him back to the present.
It was a greyish-white something that was moving down the hill, smaller than the bovine but similar in shape; as it came closer, he saw that it was a young female sheep, not quite old enough to be a ewe, but mature enough that she would no longer qualify as a lamb. She was skipping rather than walking, staring up at the clouds and singing in time with her skips as she moved down the path. Jerry listened to her song as she approached, which she appeared to be making up as she went along:

"From the top of this hill,
From the dirt on the road,
I look up,
And the sky is the same.

It won't move like the grass,
It stands still behind trees;
It is calm like the sea without rain.

It won't care if I'm smart,
It won't care if I'm cute,
And it won't even ask for my name.

If I walk for an hour,
If I frolic all day,
I'll look up,
And the sky is the same!"

The sheep hadn't yet seen Jerry when she was nearly to the spot where he lounged in the grass due to her focus on the words of her song and the sky. Not wanting to interrupt her musical bleats with his much lower and less pleasant voice, Jerry stood as she passed; to the sheep, her vision of the sky was suddenly invaded by a large, rusty head with a fat nose and big ears. "Oh!" she exclaimed, halting both song and skip, and turned to stare fully at the Bovinae bystander.
"Hello!" she said.
"Hi," said Jerry warily, having not yet encountered another speaking creature besides himself. Not that he was uneasy about the sheep; honestly, even the notion is ridiculous, as anyone who has seen a sheep stand near a bull would know. What he was feeling was a general sort of anxiety at a brand new situation.
"Are you a cow?" asked the sheep, looking Jerry up and down.
"Uh," said the bull, caught off guard by the question and, actually, pretty much everything else about life. "No, I'm a bull." He pointlessly shot a spiteful glance at the sky. "My name is Jerry, what's yours?
"I'm Dolores," said the sheep. "We don't have bulls where I come from. We don't have cows either, but I know what those are anyway, and you kind of look like one." Jerry wasn't sure whether or not to be offended by the notion that he looked like a girl, but he decided it wasn't important. And anyway, sometimes it really is hard to tell when looking at cows which gender they are.
"Where is it that you come from?" asked Jerry, shifting his footing and looking the slightest bit miffed all of a sudden. Dolores, who hadn't yet noticed that Jerry was crazy, looked back down the road from whence she came and shrugged.
"I don't know, really." Jerry noticed something in her eyes then; was it longing? A bit of loneliness, perhaps, and a hint of sadness? But only for a moment; the sheep looked back up at the bull and smiled, and all traces of negativity disappeared from her face. "I just know about cows for some reason. And how we don't have them. I'm a sheep, by the way!" She flapped her arms against her neat, wooly sides as if to emphasize the fact that she was fluffy and not like other things that weren't so.
"Yes, I see that," agreed Jerry, although he realized that he wasn't quite sure why he knew that, either.
"Do you have sheep where you come from?" Dolores asked, a touch of hope leaking into her question. Jerry shook his head, and for another second the sheep looked vaguely disappointed, but that, too, disappeared after a beat.
"I've never seen a sheep before," the larger animal explained. "And I don't know where I come from, too. I came from the waterfall three days ago," Dolores's face brightened up, "And I've been in this hilly place ever since."
"Oh, the waterfall!" Dolores bleated happily. "I came from there. I don't know when, but it was before now. It was wet, but then I came into the sun and I got all dry! And then it was kind of lonely but I made up songs and it wasn't so bad anymore."
"I heard you singing as you came down the road," said Jerry. "I thought it was really nice. It was about the sky?"
"Yes," the sheep smiled again, more shyly than before. "I like the sky. It's like, even when I move and the ground around me moves, the sky is always the same. It just sits there like a reminder that even when things change, some bigger things don't. That's what my song was about."
Jerry was about to respond when he was interrupted by a thought that maybe he ought to suggest talking while they walked, because stationary dialogue can get a little monotonous after awhile.
"Hey, since we're both traveling, why don't we keep walking while we're still getting to know one another?" suggested the bull, openly glaring at the sky.
"Okay!" agreed the sheep, who still didn't seem to notice the bulls apparent madness. "Which way are we going?" Jerry looked up and down the road. Thinking back on his journey so far, he figured it probably didn't matter in what direction they walked.
"Lets go this way," he gestured back the way he had come and the direction Dolores had been traveling. She nodded happily, and together they stepped off. After they had gone, the shrub heaved a sigh of relief.
"Do you ever hear... voices?" asked the bull after a bit, continuing to stare ahead at the road. "Like, from the sky or anything?"
"No," answered the sheep, looking up at him inquisitively. "Why do you ask?"
"Oh, no reason." said Jerry uncomfortably. "Sometimes, I just think I can hear someone talking about stuff that's happening."
"Like a narrator or something?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"Hm," Dolores put her head to the side, thinking. "Nope! I've never heard anything like that!"
"Okay," Jerry sighed to himself and put the matter aside. The two moved on without a word for another minute or so, and then it was Dolores's turn to break the silence.
"Jerry, are we friends?" she asked, stopping to looking up at the bull. She would be okay if he said no; after all, they had just met, and when you are one who wanders, others may stumble in and out of your life without thought to any real connection. She didn't know how long she might wander with Jerry, but she hoped he would say yes anyway. It was always very nice to have a friend, even for a brief season. Jerry looked down at the little sheep. He saw something in her eyes, something he could feel and appreciate, because it was a sentiment he shared, although he didn't truly understand it yet. He smiled, possibly for the first time since entering the valley.
"Of course we're friends," he told her. She smiled back up at him.
"Good," she said, contentedly turning back to the road with a little bit more of a spring in her step. "You're a nice cow." Jerry didn't correct her. It didn't really mean much whether or not she knew the difference between a cow and a bull, after all. Jerry was happy, and it was always nice to have a friend.

Befuddlement and The Beginning of Things

Jerry sat beside the pool into which the tower of cascading water fell and watched its perpetual flow. The bull absently rubbed his arm, damp from his tumble into the valley; though the sun was nearing its zenith and it had been a while since Jerry arrived, the mountainous ridge from whence the water issued still cast a long shadow over the pool and several yards past, and Jerry still wasn't quite dry.
"Well," said Jerry aloud to nobody, "I didn't want to go out into the sun right away. It would probably be really hot after my being in the cool water. And anyway, it's nice to take a minute to relax and just think about life, you know?" Nobody answered him. Silence reigned, but for the sound of the gushing water. Sighing after a moment, he swiped his nose with the back of a cloven hoof and then pushed himself to his feet. Taking one more look at the waterfall, Jerry turned away from the ridge and towards the open valley. "I guess I might as well leave, then," he mumbled, presumably to himself. "Maybe the sun won't be too hot after all. I could always just come back here later."
A small ways past the shadow of the mountains, Jerry found the beginnings of a packed-earth road. Planted in the yellow grass beside was a small wooden sign, reading, "Welcome to Pretzel Valley! Walk here," with an arrow pointing to the road itself. Jerry snorted and looked up at the sky.
"Really? That seems kind of obvious, doesn't it?" Whether he meant that roads are meant to be walked on or that the name of the land on which he traveled was Pretzel Valley, I'm not sure; nevertheless, he still received no answer, because he's not actually talking to anyone. He was alone. "No I'm not!" he shouted, "I'm talking to you! How can I be alone when I hear you talking all the time?" I guess he's trying to assert that the sky is sentient. He's also hearing things. Evidently, I picked a defective protagonist. Snorting again, Jerry shook his head and stepped onto the road. He hadn't taken more than five strides when another sign, identical in shape and size to the first, sprang from the ground like a stop-motion, time-lapse video of the growth of a corn stalk, which greatly startled the bull. "Where you are headed may not be where you arrive," it read. Jerry blinked in confusion from his place in the dirt where he had stumbled and fallen in surprise at the sign's appearance.
"What does that mean?" Jerry asked the sign. "Where am I headed?" The sign gave no response. After all, signs cannot speak.

But what if they could? Now, that would be something. What if, when in need of directions, all we had to do was walk up to any street sign? "Where's the nearest bookstore?" we might ask, and the sign would reply, "Oh, there's a Half-price Books just a few blocks over from here!" That would be pretty neat. Jerry certainly wouldn't be so bewildered.
On second thought, that would also kind of be just like the Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface, and that's on smart phones so you could keep it in your pocket, and it's actually way more convenient than asking a sign would be. But I digress.

By this time, Jerry had once again taken to his feet and continued on his journey. No new signage had appeared, although Jerry would tense and look to the side of the road whenever he passed a suspicious clump of grass. He still had no idea where he was going, but at least he was getting closer.
"A little direction would still be nice," he grumbled with a significant glance at his friend, the sky. What our Bovinae hero didn't realize, and what could not truly be explained to him or any new journeyman, was that he had entered Pretzel Valley. Pretzel Valley is a directionless land. Neither left nor right mattered. As any seasoned traveler could tell you, just as the sign had tried: just because you have a destination does not mean that is where you will end up, at least not right away. Life on the road is unpredictable and strange and confusing, sometimes incredibly worth it, often disappointing, and generally flat-out difficult. It's the rest of your life, and I think we can all agree that it would be far easier to spend it all inside, where safety is guaranteed and comfort almost goes without saying; and yet, with such a remarkable volume of adventure and magic in the land just itching to be experienced, can one truly justify living without ever leaving the house?