Starbasin

“Who did you eat?” The words stung a lot more than Eitan expected. They were not an accusation. No, that would have been easy to bear. Maybe he should have told the rabbit to leave. No. He was no more capable of that than he was of killing Rhizome. The rabbit clearly felt responsible. He had said as much. Any life Eitan claimed would be blood on Rhizo’s claws.

Eitan looked at the ground of the forest. It was time for this trick to end. “Long-ear, R— Rhizome… Rhizo. I found a group of mice. They were fast, but I managed to catch two of them.” He sighed, unable to bear the wide-eyed gaze that faced him. “I held them and they begged. My mother warned me not to talk to prey. That if I learned your language, I must never let you beg for your lives. If you started, I must kill you, because if I heard you beg, I might listen.”

Rhizome did not beg. He still didn’t accuse. Eitan closed his eyes in shame.

“I asked them why they needed to live. I didn’t hear their responses, it didn’t actually matter.” The weasel batted his own head to try to dislodge the thought. Why did he have to tell this terrible rabbit what happened? “I let them go. No tricks. On my word, I let them go.”

“You have to eat.” The rabbit shifted from thinking of him as a vicious predator to a starving friend so quickly. Eitan was almost humbled by the sincerity of the statement. Rhizo put a paw on his shoulder, and for a moment, that scent brought him back with his family. When they were all alive.

Eitan pulled away; he was crying. “You’re a seer. You needed a weasel to protect you on this journey and you did this to me.”

“No. I’m no seer. You must know that.”

“You talked to Death.” Eitan wasn’t angry; the rabbit felt too familiar, smelt too much like…. “Did you ask him to stop me?”

The rabbit winced. “I don’t know. I don’t think I did. He said something about helping, but he can’t stop someone from dying. He’s not allowed. But, I didn’t actually ask him either way. I can’t promise how he took things, but I didn’t ask.”

“I want to believe you. I’m ashamed that I don’t.” Eitan whimpered, and tried to face the look of concern from the rabbit. “I did eat. I scavenged for grubs. you made me eat insects when I didn’t have to. I couldn’t eat the mice. I kept thinking about the look you gave me when I left. It was in their eyes.”

Rhizome tried saying something, but couldn’t get the words out. He nudged the weasel again, head against the weasel’s side.

“I grew up in a rabbit warren.”

“You mentioned that.”

“I didn’t— we didn’t kill them. I don’t think my parents drove anyone away,” Eitan said. “There were so many smells of rabbits. Older smells, and no blood within the warren. If they had taken it forcibly, there would have been blood.”

Rhizome blinked. “So, I smell like…”

“Home. You smell like home. Or where I grew up. It’s not home anymore.” Eitan frowned. “I was still young when rabbits returned, or new rabbits arrived. They were organized and militant, and killed my father and my siblings.”

“I didn’t know.” Rhizome tried to object. “I didn’t know a warren could do something like that. Brambledeep doesn’t. I can’t imagine Stargazer or Notch being so cruel.”

“My mother was beaten as she tried to protect me. I watched her get kicked and clawed, but she refused to fall while I was behind her. At least, she hadn’t been fully broken before someone intervened. A rabbit said something I didn’t understand, and the guards or watch-rabbits backed off. She hopped up and whispered that she’d get us out of there, but she needed to make a show of it.” Eitan sighed. “She was a seer, and she could sort of control other’s bodies, but we had to let her do it. Kind of silly, actually, it was easy to resist, except that we would have been killed had we tried. It was a terrifying seer-trick.”

Eitan was crying now. Definitely from shame. “Thistle marched the two of us away. She got the rabbit healer to look at my mother. And explained a little about how the warren wanted to use us against other warrens. Thistle said she wouldn’t allow that to happen, but this was the best way to get us some help.”

“The seer did… what?”

“She was trying to help us. We faked it for a few days. My mother was regaining strength, and I was still too young to demonstrate any fighting. Apparently, Thistle’s abilities didn’t work on us any more than on other rabbits. Anyone could resist with a little effort, and they were suspicious of her lie that it worked better on weasels. There was a leader, Bia. She was particularly insistent it was trickery, but we only stayed long enough for my mother to stop bleeding.

“Thistle snuck us out one night. Once we were away from the warren, she let us go. I don’t think she could have stopped us from leaving, but she told us it’d be safe to run and we did.”

“That must’ve been horrible,” Rhizome said.

“No. We were horrible. I was horrible.” Eitan hung his head in shame. “Late in the fall, I started spying on nearby warrens. Listening. Learning the words. Until I cornered a lone warren rabbit and demanded he teach me.”

“You’ve lived with a rabbit before?”

“For a short while. He taught me what he knew. He then begged me to let him live.” Eitan winced. This was it, the end of his lies. “My mother ripped out his throat before he finished. That was when she warned me never to listen to you beg. She knew I’d be unable to kill.”

“No,” Rhizome insisted. “You knew he was innocent. I think if he was one of the rabbits who killed your father, you’d have put him down. If he had threatened your mother, you would have defended her.”

“Do you think I’ll defend you, Rhizo?”

“You called me by my name.”

“No, I said…” Eitan sighed, he had been using the rabbit’s name.. “Do you really think there are rabbits I could kill? Do you think I’m still a predator on the inside?”

“Of course,” Rhizo said, but his voice didn’t seem so certain. Maybe it was what he was trying to say rather than that he didn’t believe it.

“My mother never fully recovered, and she died over the winter.” Eitan whimpered. “I swore to kill you all, and I guess Fate thought dying after killing a kit would be amusing.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m feeling glad I saved you.”

Eitan glared at the rabbit, then grunted and hissed in frustration. “Curse this prey language, I can’t clear my head.”

“Teach me yours.” It was about halfway between a request and an order. Eitan decided not to pick the words apart. It would let him speak as a predator again. That’s what mattered.