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powder, powder, powder...you're going about this all WRONG. here you find yourself in this completely unexpected situation - the wild woodland (er, ok, suburbanized) creatures have unexpected intelligence! you should be asking them questions, you should be marveling, you should be talking like a scientist: "why this is lovely! heretofore unthought of! the implications...the things going on right under our noses!" but you can't seem to care, can you, powder?
POWDER: (dully) no.
difficult, aren't you?
POWDER: (petulantly) yes.
well then. i've tried to be helpful...i'll just wash my hands of you now, shall i?
POWDER: look, inner narrator person/rabbit/thing, i've got a lot on my mind. and i certainly don't need you on my case about how i'm presenting - or NOT presenting - my case.
but, my dear rabbit, you're not even making any attempt to question! or to alter your situation! this is hardly what i would call the will to live.
POWDER: i'm just resting my brain. i think i've sprained it. don't worry. it won't go unexplored. there's just nothing i can do about it at the moment. i'm sure it will come right in the end.
sheesh.
the council was way too full of self-importance (my guess) to be able to deal with me right away. so the rabbit with the evil nose put me in a holding cell where i could contemplate and repent of my (many) crimes.
well...being the optimistic sort of glass is half full of apple juice bunny that i am, i decided i could easily do my moping in the bunny slammer. so i resumed my despondent pose with nary a hitch in my getalong.
i wasn't hallucinating.
a few minutes after i assumed i was seeing things (and hearing them, as well), the first rabbit came back with yet ANOTHER rabbit who marched aggressively, head on, toward me.
"name! rank! number!" he barked. i kid you not.
my brilliant reply: "huh?"
he sighed and looked me over more closely. "you're not from around here, are you...in fact, you look pretty soft. and your coloring...it certainly isn't regulation. tell me, son, are you a domesticated rabbit?"
once again i came back with a quick rejoinder: "wha?"
he scratched his ear with his hindleg. "hmm...well, you're certainly slow. i'll ask you one more time, rabbit. who are you?"
something woke up in my head enough to retort, "who am i?? who the hell are you?"
his eyes gleamed. "aha! someone's in there after all." he bopped me rather soundly on the nose with his forepaw.
"OUCH!"
"look kid, number 211 is just here to do his job, ok? and you're in the way. you know the rules...only one rabbit per yard. it's a city ordinance, and we keep to it. were you misassigned? do you need directions to your post? let me see your orders."
i suddenly felt in over my depth. i said the first thing that came into my head (which, in retrospect, i should have kept to myself...), "what is this? some kind of watership down? did i step into a novel?"
"smart aleck, eh? ok, mr. funny bunny, come on. i'm taking you down to the council." and with that he muscled me across the lawn with his nose.
"hey!" i protested. but it was no use. this rabbit's nose was as effective as an electric cattle prod. soon i was halfway down the block.
the other rabbit averted his eyes from this unpleasant business and settled into his yard.
ever seen a rabbit sit disconsolately on a lawn? i bet almost anything that you haven't. rabbits are fidgety creatures. they don't generally sulk - nor do they mope - and if they mourn at all, they do it fast because the next one to meet their end could be YOU. but if you walked down illinois street in urbana and you made it to race street, you would have seen a rabbit sitting in the grass looking just utterly wretched. only one rabbit, you ask? why yes. just me. pyong went off to see the world...or at least to try and make sense of our neighborhood. i was so lost in my despondence and despair that i didn't even notice the wild rabbit until he was right next to me.
he said, "psst, buddy, you're on my lawn."
when i didn't respond to that he shuffled back and forth on his 4 feet and finally asked, "er. what are you doing here anyway?"
"feeling very low," i replied. who was this rabbit anyway? he didn't know what to make of my answer, which was fine because i didn't know what to make of his question. we both suffered through a few more uncomfortable moments before he stammered something i didn't quite catch and hopped away.
long minutes passed before it gradually dawned on me that SOME OTHER RABBIT had spoken to me. that's when my brain shut down completely because in my personal copy of the little handbook of rabbit was firmly etched the fact that bunnies don't talk - in general they are dumb - and they certainly don't carry on conversations that make other rabbits nervous. i shook myself. maybe i was hallucinating.
murdered by pirates is good...
we've just watched "the princess bride" for the 6th time. the not-our-person doesn't seem to own any other movies...and we're sick of talk shows and court shows, and game shows, and reality shows, and the news. we've been back on earth for scarcely a week and we're turning into couch potatoes.
been feeling rather in a stupor about our missing person problem. maybe we should put her picture on a milk carton? pyong vetoed that idea... i still don't see what's so wrong with it. she tsked at me and said we have to exhaust other methods of finding her before we go to extremes. i didn't realize milk cartons were an extreme sort of advertising...i guess we could file a missing person report. pyong actually bit me for suggesting that. i will admit it's a bit of a stretch to think the police would take the concerns of a "wittle bunny wabbit" seriously. but we've got BIG problems. it's just that no one is going to understand.
hours of television later...
pyong suggested that maybe it would be best for us to leave our former domicile. we are only staying because of its relative familiarity...and even that has begun to seem very surreal... it has none of the ambience or the essence that had made it our home. and these missing elements make it very sad indeed.
"i think we should go outside, powder."
"but it's dangerous out there!"
"but we're not getting anywhere in here."
"you do realize, powder, that we can go anywhere and be anywhere with our powers? we don't have to say in this miserable apartment and feel as though we can never leave."
"but this was our HOME! pyong, we can't just leave it...that would be like cutting all ties to our person. i can't do it. i won't do it. just give me some time..."
she gave me some time, but she insisted that we go outside and sit in the yard. a change of scenery would do me good. and god forbid i should watch any more jennie jones.
the not-our-person did, indeed, have a computer on his desk. he also had an internet connection. he also had no reason to believe that rabbits recently returned from the far reaches of space (and possibly time) would break into his apartment and make use of these things. but that is what happened.
we discovered the current date almost immediately.
"sheesh, pyong. we've been gone for months."
googling our person wasn't particularly helpful...various sites showed that she was working or had worked at various places, and it was hard to tell from websites alone whether she was still in town or somewhere else. pyong suggested trying a directory or two...which we did, but our person was not listed or was listed as living in this very apartment, which was obviously not the case.
i twitched an ear thoughtfully. "you know, these get updated pretty regularly...so it's likely that our person hasn't been gone all that long."
pyong agreed that that could definitely be the case. "but i don't see how that's going to help us find her NOW, powder."
"well, true enough...but we could keep checking. stay around here and wait to see if we can learn more."
"i'm willing to do that, but i think we should put a cap on how long we spend on this project, and how much energy we put into it."
"pyong pyong, don't you want to find our person?"
"well, sure i do. i just don't think that we should make the rest of our lives about finding our person."
i had a cold feeling in my stomach. "then you don't believe that we'll ever really find her."
pyong sighed. "i'm not saying that at all, powder. i...look, i'm just as disappointed as you are that she's not here. and i do feel as though she's abandoned us in some way. this is the worst thing that could have happened to us when we were pets...but now, now we're something more than just pets. and i think that we should fulfill that destiny and embrace our new...roles.
pyong is probably right. but i can't help missing our person. being so close to finding her (on the same planet is good)...i certainly don't want to give up right away.
technically it's been MORE than a day...but sometimes it takes just that long for the little lightbulb over a rabbit's head to appear. how many rabbits does it take to change a lightbulb? you'll have to let me know, as i've never attempted it before.
desk.
our person had a desk once. i mean, maybe she still does...she kept all sorts of interesting things on her desk...things with long trailing cords that it was fun to leap through and then bite. and she'd get upset...mad because those cords were pretty important. and we didn't understand for the longest time. then the orchard grass happened to us, and then we were all smart, and suddenly the desk and its accoutrements were a lot more interesting and useful. i wonder if the person noticed when we stopped chewing on those cords. and if she did notice, i wonder if she was merely relieved that the bunnies were behaving themselves for once. because the thing about desks, and her desk in particular was the computer on top of it. i looked around. cords hung every which way. dust bunnies (not our kind, and not the sort we normally associate with) lurked just beyond the light. not as organized or as clean as our person had kept things...but all of those cords could only mean one thing...COMPUTER DESK.
"pyong?"
"hmm?"
"this desk we're under..."
"yeah, what about it?"
"computer desk. there's a computer on top of it."
"hmm...that is a good thing to know, powder-b."
"i was just thinking so myself."
she's gone. really, truly gone. vanished without a trace.
we were the picture of dejection, heads and ears low, feet pulled in under us. we watched the darkness become light and the minutes tick by on the large illuminated face of the alarm clock that was positioned near the not-our-person's bed. at 7:00am it went off. the person turned and smacked it into silence. it went off again at 8:00am, then again at 9:00am. finally he (boy person!) dragged himself out of bed and began his day...not noticing the two miserable rabbits crouching just under his desk.
eventually he left. and two rabbits remained crouched under his desk. the word "desk" drifted through my mind seeking something to connect with.
"pyong, where do you suppose our person has gone?"
she just shook her head. too weary and disappointed to speak.
desk desk desk...
"hmm...don't you suppose she left some kind of forwarding address?"
"maybe, powder. but who knows how long she has been gone...in fact, who knows how long WE have been gone."
desk.
for the answers to these and many other questions...tune in tomorrow when powder is finally able to connect the word "desk" with something useful! until then...
huddling in a corner of our former domicile, we felt betrayed. how COULD she have left us behind? this was quickly followed by the realization, "oh, right..." because technically, she hadn't.
the time passed pleasantly aboard the venusian ship, but much too quickly. that's the problem with travel between places. inevitably you feel a bit out of touch, out of sorts, out of place, and you're always uprooting yourself from a known and thrusting yourself into the unknown. not that that can't be fun. but for us, it had been rather exhausting. i was hoping that i could just relax for awhile, and not have to be on guard. i was comfortable with the venusians, but knew that our time with them was bound to be short...and so little thoughts disturbed my slumber. pyong slept hardly a wink, so busy was she with her new venusian friends. (we have different ways of dealing with stress. pyong throws herself into other activities so that she doesn't have to think about it, and i, well, you know what i do. BROOD.) i think as first contacts from earth, and ambassadors as well, we're rather first class. now, if only earth was comfortable being represented by super-intelligent rabbits...but that remains to be seen. regardless of our social skills, i think earth's inhabitants, specifically the humans, would rather see us safely secured in a lab, attached to machines that go BING, and eventually dissected to satisfy some sadistic scientist's morbid curiosity. why DO they destroy everything they touch? do they think it's going to come back? they dream of DNA encased in amber, but their own lives are too short to really appreciate extinction.
and then one misty, dewy, chilly autumn morning we arrived. the venusians set their ship to orbit earth, undetected by the humans monitoring or hoping to monitor things like that. and we set off in a little skimmer with a couple of venusians for crew. they set us down softly in an alleyway behind our house and we shivered in a clump of weeds by the trash cans as we considered our home. "when i left my home and my family, i was no more than a boy...in the company of strangers..." pyong and i looked back at the venusians, who were watching us. and we stood on our hind legs as they closed up the hatch and prepared to return to their ship. our goodbyes perfumed the morning air, which suddenly smelled of sadness and loss, but also faintly of hope and good luck. a person trudging down the alley fairly stumbled as she passed through it. who knows what she had been feeling before...but now, this odd mixed feeling was singing in her brain, and she went off tears streaming down her face, but smiling. and so were we - like sunshine peeking through a rainstorm. goodbye, venusians...
and when they were gone, pyong and i looked at each other. so that's that, then...there was nothing left to do but go inside.
"i feel a tigger-like excitement coming over me, pyong."
"ooh, and what is that like, pray tell, powder-b?"
"well, pyong, 'the wunnerful thing about tiggers is tiggers are wunnerful things. their tops are made out of rubber, their bottoms are made out of springs. they're bouncy troucy, flouncy, pouncy, fun fun fun fun fun...'"
"yes, i see what you mean." and she did see, for we raced into the house together, i hit the door slightly before pyong and nudged the molecules to the side, and we both raced for our person, who we knew was probably still sleeping in her bed. we jumped onto the bed and bounced along the jumble of bedclothes and sleeping person limbs and there was some movement, some mumbled groaning as the person was rather rudely awakened by our exuberant entrance. but when we got to the head and were preparing to lick our person into full awareness...pyong stopped and suddenly went still.
"POWDER..." she whispered, "THIS IS NOT OUR PERSON."
we carefully investigated the person lying there, and it was soon very obvious to both of us that it was indeed, NOT OUR PERSON. we left off our investigation of the person and moved on to the rest of the apartment, where we noted other differences...the most shocking after our person's disappearance, was of course the absence of our cages. we were gone, she was gone, and there was not a trace left of any of us.
the venusians are going to swing by earth and drop us off first thing...but first thing is going to take a few days, so meanwhile we are to make ourselves as comfortable as possible. that would mean no more hanging out in hallways and pretending to be invisible, which we have learned only works visually. pyong says she thinks she can come up with ways to mask our scent presence, but she's been having too much fun to really give it any serious thought/concentration. and besides, with the venusians being as friendly as they are, we don't really have any need to hide from them. maybe when we're home...
i went to the observatory room today to see what was on the screen. space...and a whole lot of it. it's dark, it's black, and there's not a whole lot to see. it's kind of creepy like that. we could be stuck in a closet for all i know, and when we come out, maybe we'll be in exactly the same place. what a horrible thought. i left pretty quickly after that, because i've had enough dark thoughts to last me quite some time.
pyong was playing hide and seek with some venusians. they were pretty equally matched. they found her by smell, and she found them by the little noises they couldn't help but make. they're coming up with some rules now to prevent this sort of *cheating*. and i think it sounds just my sort of thing...ta ta, then.
tried, but was unable to reach any of the g-pigs with whom i'd been telepathically intimate on cavvy. i would have liked to tell them that pyong and i were in the clear - and that the venusians were quite a bit more accomodating than we'd been led to believe. pyong and i spent about 5 minutes trying to puzzle that mystery out - why we couldn't reach them - before losing interest. at some point it would bug us more, but we were too giddy at the prospect of HOME to let it dampen our spirits much. it was just good to feel so...er, GOOD about everything. a welcome change from our experiences over the past months. we were free as well as carefree. it was heady.
but in my defense...everyone needs closure. so even if home is NOT where the bunny is or should be, even if i find that i belong somewhere else, or no longer belong THERE, i need to go back and discover that for myself. and i'll be honest with you, i don't like loose ends. so closure it is, and closure it will BE.
my tummy was full to bursting after the feast. and i settled in with a venusian or two for some good conversation. the first thing they asked was something i hadn't given a lot of thought to: why do you want to go back?
i sort of stopped right there in my bunny tracks and did a good impression of a deer caught in someone's headlights. why do i WANT to go back? er...because it's my home? but my mind started posing its own questions, and it was too late to just rely on that old standby. what am i going to do when i get back? what are WE going to do? i guess crawl back home to urbana and see how things are going...sack out in our cages every once in awhile, let our person bring us some rabbit kibble. bitch about how good the grass was on cavvy. i mean, it sounded lame even to me! i couldn't tell the venusians that.
i think that they sort of understood the can of worms they'd opened by asking that question. which doesn't mean that it went away and stopped bothering me. if anything, my brain held it close to its bosom (if a brain can have a bosom - would that be between hemispheres?) and stroked it in a calming, if somewhat obsessive, manner. my heart beat rapidly, and our conversation turned to other things. i can't say that i held up my end of it very well. i was somewhat preoccupied.
circulated a bit and felt somewhat better until the next venusian asked the very SAME question. this time i said, "oh this and that. we'll see what happens when we get back."
as it turned out, i was counting my chickens before they'd hatched. making assumptions about my world as i'd left it. never thinking for a moment that it could change while i'd been gone. i mean, *I* was the one who had changed. the world was supposed to be the same, so that i could have some kind of chance to make sense of it with my newfound perspective. what no one tells you is that the world waits for no bunny.
so. having nothing better to do with ourselves, since we'd been outed by our odour, we trundled off to the lounge to kick it with the venusians.
now, rabbit noses are pretty good, but venusians have dog nose...or better. i guess i could call it "venusian nose," but it's sort of like definining a word by using the same word. here, it's a concept being defined by something we don't know much about...but anyway, i digress. the venusians have some swank olfactory apparati. as ferris bueller would say (and i know you've heard of him), "if you have the means, i highly recommend picking one up."
what struck me most about the venusians was how very different they were from how i'd imagined them. i thought they'd be completely paranoid and suspicious...that's what the g-pigs had led us to believe. it turns out that the g-pigs are the overly paranoid and suspicious ones (which is not to say that they aren't justified in being that way...a bit. i mean, i'm pretty paranoid myself...so, i can't deny others the pleasure), and the g-pigs had misread, or rather, missmelled them. the big to do over what the g-pigs had been up to on earth was a complete misunderstanding. the venusians were making conversation to the effect of, "oh, it looked like your guys got stranded for awhile, is everything ok?" and the g-pigs interpreted their curiosity as hostility...blah blah blah, thus do minor miscommunications beget conflict. the venusians were remarkably laid back, in my opinion (although they DID run a tight ship - efficient really). they just hated liars.
after hearing the real story behind the g-pigs snafu with the venusians, pyong and i felt much more comfortable about sharing our tale. we told them how the g-pigs had had some problems, as the venusians had suspected, on earth, and that we were a side effect of those problems, and had been taken back to cavvy to be hidden away. they responded with a smell that can only be translated as, "far out, dudes." and i think they'd have said the same thing to the g-pigs, if only they'd given them the opportunity.
the good news? they were happy to take us back to earth.
the good, good news? they had lots of food we could eat. apparently, venusian constitutions are not so different from either g-pig or rabbit ones, so we were definitely in luck there. the great news? a party, in our honor. with dancing! pyong and i bunny hopped.
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