Monster Party Novella 1: When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead.
Chapter Three: Scooping up the field mice and boppin' 'em on the head!
"We need to hide, now!" Insisted the Sanguine Queen, sounding quite unlike herself.
"Why?" Alice immediately replied.
"The Silver Rabbit is the Queen of Hearts favorite messenger. He specializes in sending one particular type of 'message' and bears me a great deal of ill will. Like I said, we need to hide!" She explained.
"Where should we hide?" The Chesh-Dire Cat inquired, his brown eyes rapidly scanning the room.
"There's a mouse hole over there, but while we are small, not quite so small that we could fit inside." Alice regretfully informed her companions.
"This sounds like a situation that calls for a good stiff drink!" The Chesh-Dire Cat suggested pointing towards a large bottle sitting on the table that bore a tag with the words "drink me" written upon it.
"Do you really think that will help us hide from the Silver Rabbit?" Alice pondered.
"So long as we do not try to hide in the bottle itself it can hardly make things worse. Quickly you two stand on my shoulders!" The Sanguine Queen insisted.
"Tis no place for a Rook to stand on the shoulders of his Queen." The Chesh-Dire cat proclaimed proudly.
"I am crafted of the finest rubies in all the land, do you think that you can lift me?" The Sanguine Queen pointed out derisively.
At which point the Chesh-Dire Cat grabbed her and hefted her onto his shoulders, in a show of strength equaled only to its chivalry.
Even so positioned, the Sanguine Queen was not quite tall enough to reach the table or the bottle that resided upon it.
Alice took a deep breath and joined her two new friends in their attempt, climbing first up the body of the Chesh-Dire Cat and then much more carefully over the rocky form of the Sanguine Queen. When she was perched on the monarch's shoulders she was just able to get her hands upon the table and pull herself up.
"How shall I bring the two of you with me?" She shouted down, as she'd already failed once to pull the Chesh-Dire Cat up over a precipice and saw no reason to expect her second attempt to go any better.
"We do not need to come up to you, simply send the bottle's contents down to us!" The Sanguine Queen shouted back.
The ticking grew louder still.
Alice did not ask questions, the bottle was quite large, about half the size of her entire body, but she was still able to push it over with ease. It's cork came loose and its clear fluid began to dribble first across the table and then down to the floor.
Alice got down on her knees and drank from the mixture, and the world became a stranger place yet. Everything around her grew and grew and grew! From her position atop the table she was able to see the equally reduced in size Chesh-Dire Cat and Sanguine Queen fleeing for the safety of the mouse hole.
"That is all very well for them, but where shall I...?" Alice began but never quite managed to finish.
"Someone's been drinking from my bottle!" A voice cried out as the door to the house opened and in hopped the Silver Rabbit.
Alice being a child of some means had so far only encountered rabbits in storybooks, yet even with such a limited frame of reference she was certain that there was something wrong with the Silver Rabbit.
Its large floppy ears, small cotton tail, pink whiskered nose were the right enough, but precious little else about it was.
It "hopped" as it moved, but each hop seemed to really be more of a "pounce", especially once she noticed that it had claws.
Its front and back legs were more or less perfectly identical to one another, suggesting that it had clearly been built with something other than short bounces and jumps in mind.
Its left eye was covered by a black eyepatch and its right was a distinctly "not at all rabbit like" golden orange color. It wore a fancy black coat and around its neck was a shinning golden collar from which a timepiece of the same material hung, ticking loudly all the while.
In short the Silver Rabbit would have looked no more at home in a hutch than an oversized seahorse would in a stable.
Its single eye fixed itself pointedly upon Alice almost at once.
"Correction, someone's been drinking from my bottle, she's still here!" It reflected.
Now that Alice was able to see the mouth of the Silver Rabbit up close, she noted that his teeth might best be described as: large, sharp, and numerous.
"If this was your bottle how did you plan to open it? You haven't got hands at all..." Alice asked, as indeed the Silver Rabbit was far more animal like than the Chesh-Dire Cat.
In response, the Silver Rabbit reached out and seized the bottle in its its jaws. There was a great crunching sound, followed by a short pause for it to consume the small portion of the liquid (though his size did not change in the slightest) that had yet remained in the bottle.
Then there was a rapid fire "clink, clink clink clink clink clink!" noise as the Silver Rabbit proceeded to spit out chunks of broken glass with such force that they embedded themselves in the wall.
"Oh my!" Alice couldn't help but utter again.
"I am chief rabbit for a reason." The Silver Rabbit proclaimed, proudly striking up the loftiest pose any lagomorph could possibly be capable of.
"So I see..." Alice admitted, thinking that she might yet have a chance if only she played to the rabbit's obvious sense of vanity.
"I also see you have a very fine time piece, but do you not have trouble using it?" Alice pointed out to the Silver Rabbit.
Indeed with the creature's body shaped the way it was, it would seem that only those who looked upon the rabbit would be able to see his time piece and never its actual owner.
"It was given to me by the Queen of Hearts so that I might inform others of when they were about to be late." The Silver Rabbit replied.
"Late for what exactly?" Alice pressed.
"Lateness not so much in regards to a what but a who. A general, all encompassing state of lateness as it were." The Silver Rabbit declared, taking a moment to smile and thus showing off its many teeth again.
"It is a very poor sort of gift to give someone that only helps those other than the person it is given to." Alice pondered, for if all her 'gifts' were of such a nature she could understand why the Queen of Hearts was such an unlikable person.
"She also paid for the house and garden." The Silver Rabbit noted gruffly.
"Ah." Alice half gulped, worrying that she had just given fresh offense beyond her initial quite unintentional entering and the follow quite intentional drinking.
"You've still not told me who you are..." The Silver Rabbit chuffed, its breath alone powerful enough to knock the young girl off her feet, though luckily not off the table.
"Alice Liddell..." She abruptly squeaked in reply.
"A fitting enough name, though Little Alice might fit you better still." The Silver Rabbit reflected, its tail twitching slightly, as if wishing to move more than it was truly capable of.
"Have you ever stopped to think that I may not be so terribly little, it just you are so terribly big?" Alice asked, as she slowly stood back up.
"Size alone is utterly uncoupled from morality Miss Liddell. The more fool I though for expecting a burglar to know much of the latter." He expounded taking a moment to cross his paws contemplatively.
"I would not have broken into your house if I had a choice. In fact, I've been feeling rather choice-less for a very long time." She lamented.
"Sit down, stand up!" The Silver Rabbit barked at her at once.
"Which one am I supposed to do? I can't do both at once, or do you mean do one after the other?" She begged the Silver Rabbit to clarify.
"Sit up, stand down then! It doesn't matter to me which you do, I was simply trying to give you a choice." The Silver Rabbit explained.
Alice would have boxed the beast's ears for such comments, if only it were not for the fact that either one of the Silver Rabbit's ears could have mostly likely knocked her flat with one well placed flick.
"I meant a choice that mattered!" She clarified, half wailing.
"Every choice matters. If they didn't, then we wouldn't call them choices in the first place, instead we'd call them laws." The Silver Rabbit insisted.
"Still, tis a very small an limited choice that only affect's one posture. If you were to offer me a proper choice, I'd much rather see your garden than your gullet." Alice told the Silver Rabbit.
The Silver Rabbit took a moment to listen to the ticking sound of his timepiece, then shrugged.
"Sounds as if you still have time enough for both. Jump down and hold tight to the collar about my neck or you'll shortly break your own." He commanded before positioning himself by the table so that she might do exactly that.
Alice decided it was best not to quarrel with such an order, deciding as many before her had that a possible death in the future was still preferable to a certain one right now. Besides, if the Silver Rabbit was very fond of his garden he might get distracted and give Alice chance to find her own mouse hole to hide in.
At her reduced size the jump down felt quite long, and Alice in turn felt quite proud and heroic for having managed to successfully grab onto the golden collar. That done she pulled herself along it to a position more or less directly in the middle of the Silver Rabbit's ears.
"Am I just to keep calling you Silver Rabbit all the time, or have you another more informal name you prefer?" She asked, only at that very moment realizing she'd never bothered to ask the Chesh-Dire Cat if he had a name to call his own.
"My owsla refer to me as U-Elilzornhrairrah." The Silver Rabbit declared, seeming to swell larger still with pride at such a grand (or at least long) name.
Indeed, it was a name that seemed to be every bit as large compared to Alice's as his body was next to her own at the moment.
"You, eey, leel, zorn, hur, air, ah?" Alice timidly tittered, trying to twist the tongue through the tricky title.
"Ooh, el, zorn, ah, rarre, rah." The Silver Rabbit corrected her.
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry to have mispronounced it." Alice apologized, even if it was still all so much nonsense (even compared to much of what she had just been through) to her ears.
"It flows much more evenly in my native tongue." U-Elilzornhrairrah insisted.
"If such is the case, then perhaps there is a less literal translation I might use?" Alice suggested, thinking that if she should have to call her oversized mount "U-Elilzornhrairrah" all the time then her own time would run out quite swiftly indeed.
"In the Hedgerow you speak so poorly, simply calling me The Big Bad Bunny will do." The unorthodox rabbit explained as he began the trek out toward his garden.
Alice abruptly found herself very grateful for the golden collar, for The Big Bad Bunny seemed to feel that one should never take a simple step if a jump would suffice, and so her journey was a bumpy one indeed.
It got bumpier still once they left the house and Alice found herself in a large garden, one part of which did not seem very well kept.
"EMBLEER FRITH!" Spat U-Elilzornhrairrah in a tone of horrified shock.
One more grand jump took them to the portion of the garden that was desolated.
"What... what could have done this?" He gasped in a horrified voice.
"A deer?" Alice suggested knowing that such creatures had ruined many a garden back in Mordent.
"No chance of that, my stock of flayrah is untouched." The Big Bad Bunny insisted gesturing with a paw towards a section of the garden when a great many large vegetables grew.
"No, this was not a crude attack on the stomach of my garden but a stab at its very soul.
My lovely Lilly, my resplendent Rose, my delightful Daisy, my vivacious Violet, stems smashed, petals plucked, peduncles pulverized, and filaments flattened! My Queen, where is my Queen?" The Silver Rabbit cried out in a voice that mingled horror and pain like few Alice had ever heard.
He used his paws to rapidly sort through the fallen flowers but evidently did not find what he either sought (or feared) to discover.
"No sign of her... then she might yet live... WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF THIS?" U-Elilzornhrairrah demanded in a voice so loud he almost shouted Alice's hands loose of his collar.
"Nothing!" She pleaded.
"PROVE IT!" The Silver Rabbit demanded at once.
"I'm much too small to have harmed flowers as large as those, besides, if I had come out here, surely I'd have left foot prints in the ground." Alice pointed out, hoping to buy herself a little more time with this explanation.
Shockingly, it worked.
The Silver Rabbit did another quick examination of the ruined flower garden and found no sign at all of tiny foot prints disturbing the ground.
"A valid point." He eventually replied in the tone of one who is not angry, but devoutly wished they could be furious.
"I do not even know which Queen you're speaking of. This place seems to have more Queens than all of the Core put together!" Alice lamented.
"The queen of my garden, my most favored foliage, the Queen of Poisons." The Big Bad Bunny growled in answer.
There was yet another bone jarring jump as the Silver Rabbit leaped amid his foodstuffs, and plucked a few leaves with his jaws, before twisting his head around to deposit them on his back.
"So long as you're going to ride there like a slightly oversized flea, make yourself useful and hold onto these spinach leaves for me in case I am hungry later. Now, I will go into the Tugley Wood and hunt down the one responsible for this travesty!" U-Elilzornhrairrah vowed in a most decidedly unrabbit like manner.
For a few moments Alice used one hand to hold onto the pieces of greenery and the other to hold the collar.
Finding this an uncomfortable (and unbalancing) position she pressed the leaves tight against the collar and proceeded to hold onto both with both hands as the Silver Rabbit headed into the Tugley Wood.
His legs no longer all left the ground at the same time in great hops, no, now came the sure strides that Alice had expected him to be capable of from the start, his movements becoming as swift and smoothly flowing as quicksilver itself.
XXX XXX XXX
"HAVE YOU BEEN IN MY GARDEN? HAVE YOU JUBJUB?" The Silver Rabbit demanded of a large fat red bird that he had pinned beneath his mighty paws.
"I know far better than to do such a foolish thing! Maybe it was the Bandersnatch!" The bird tweeted back forlornly.
XXX XXX XXX
"NOT SO FRUMIOUS NOW, ARE YOU?" The Silver Rabbit demanded of an even larger black feathered bird it had caught with no more difficulty than its previous prey.
"All of us birds are too smart for such a thing!" The Bandersnatch insisted.
"Too frightened of me you mean! Still, there were no paw prints in my garden, whatever did it could fly!" Insisted U-Elilzornhrairrah.
"The Jabberwock has wings also!" The captured pleaded pitifully.
"He does at that." The Big Bad Bunny agreed and slowly released his latest prisoner.
XXX XXX XXX
"Jabberwock, did you despoil my garden?" The Silver Rabbit asked.
He had not gone straight on the attack in this case, but Alice could hardly blame him.
The Jabberwock was a tremendous beast, it resembled a green dragon from the neck down, though its face seemed almost rat like given its large buck teeth. Unlike every other occupant of the Tugley Wood they had come across, the Jabberwock was larger than the Silver Rabbit, something like twice his size at least!
Yet despite all of this, the Silver Rabbit had sought him out without hesitation and even at this very moment Alice could feel anger boiling off of him to such a degree that it was a wonder she didn't catch fire.
"What will you do if I refuse to tell?" The Jabberwock replied, its voice thick and oily, the kind of voice that even Alice was wise enough to shy away from.
"Then I'll huff, and I'll puff..." The Silver Rabbit, paused for a moment to do exactly that.
Then from its lips came a great horizontal typhoon (something that struck Alice as quite strange, even though she had never seen the more traditional vertical version) which crossed the distance between them and knocked the Jabberwock head over heels despite its size.
"And I'll bash your skull in." U-Elilzornhrairrah concluded.
The Jabberwock clambered back to its feet, its once mockingly smug expression now replaced with one of open anger.
"You wish to know who despoiled your garden? Very well, let me put your mind at ease, it was I..." The beast cackled evilly.
"WHY?!" Snarled the Big Bad Bunny.
The Jabberwock raised up one of its claws and uncurled it, revealing a mostly deflowered daffodil.
"It was me..." He sneered, seeming to take an almost visceral pleasure in the revelation.
"THE QUEEN OF HEARTS WILL HAVE YOUR MISBEGHOTTEN HEAD!" Promised the Silver Rabbit.
"Foolish oversized rodent, who do you think ordered me to do it? The Queen of Hearts had decided that the time has come to sweep her land free of all other possible pretenders to the throne. That includes your dear Queen of Poisons." The Jabberwock explained, taking a moment to drop the already dead flower and purposefully trod upon it.
"If you so much as laid one perfidious talon upon her pistils..." The Silver Rabbit began.
"She's still alive... for now. She's languishing in the Queen of Hearts Dungeons, far away from the sun she loves so very much, and you will do nothing about it or else..." The Jabberwock began but never got a chance to finish.
"What I will do is turn a great big mound of hraka like you into fertilizer for my garden!" The Big Bad Bunny insisted.
He began to draw in breath again, but before he could release it the Bandersnatch spat forth a great ball of flame.
The Silver Rabbit jumped aside, and the tree he'd been in front of moments ago was burnt to ash in an instant.
Alice was highly tempted to point out at this point that the fight had nothing at all to do with her in the slightest. Sadly, she doubted the Silver Rabbit would be kind enough to bound off and leave her someplace safe before returning to the battle.
As for the Jabberwock, well he seemed so villainous that he might find Alice's death a pleasant bonus. So instead, she had little choice but to cheer on her champion, such as he was.
"Pummel his flank Ooh, el, zorn, ah, rarre, rah!" Alice cried out.
Now that she bothered to actually say it aloud properly with some passion, Alice noted that the name itself almost sounded like a cheer!
"Oh believe me, I will endeavor to do a great deal more than that." The Silver Rabbit vowed before jumping out of the way of yet another fireball.
"Bounce for me little bunny, bounce for me!" The Jabberwock cackled producing one blast of flame after another.
"I'll bounce on your head, I'll bounce on your grave!" Replied the Big Bad Bunny.
Then he suited word to dead and jumped right for his foe.
The Jabberwock stood ready for him, though and the pair soon found themselves grappling, the Silver Rabbit's large paws against The Jabberwock's mighty claws.
Despite his smaller (for a given definition of "small") size anger clearly lent strength to the Silver Rabbit and he managed to keep The Jabberwock locked in battle.
"Burn like your flowers..." Cackled the Jabberwock and then let loose with another ball of flame at point blank range.
The Silver Rabbit raised up its head as best it could, and to her shock Alice recognized that he was trying to protect her.
The ball of flame struck with a physical force that knocked them clear of the grapple, while its heat blackened the Silver Rabbit's fur, and assaulted her as an almost oppressive heat, trying to scorch every hair from her body!
The Silver Rabbit ended up slamming against a tree, purely by luck it was a small tree, and so Alice was not squashed like a bug. None the less the impact came as such a shock she was only just barely able to hold onto the golden collar.
"Are you all right?" She asked her companion.
"That's all I can stands, I can't stands no more..." The stricken Silver Rabbit wheezed.
Alice was glad to hear that he was still alive, but it sounded as if the sense had been knocked out of him even if the wind hadn't been.
"Little Alice I'm starting to feel hungry..." He suddenly pleaded.
The Jabberwock puffed out a small ring of flame, this time more with the air of a gentleman enjoying his pipe rather than any sort of weapon. Then he began to advance upon them, clearly intending to rip the Silver Rabbit apart rather than simply scorch him to cinders.
Alice was not certain what good a few leaves would be able to do, but by the same token, there seemed nothing else to do...
No, she did have a choice, The Jabberwock had still not noticed her, she might flee from the Silver Rabbit, and surely would be too small to be noticed by such a great beast.
That was her choice... and for Alice was no choice at all.
She grabbed the leaves and climbed across his head feeling as if she was being forced to work her way up a small silver hill. Then she had to gently work her way down his face, carefully sliding down past his nose, and then gently (and cautiously) slid the leaves into the Silver Rabbit's mouth.
Then certain, that whatever was going to happen next she was going to need a good handhold, she kept climbing until she was able to grab hold of the other side of the golden collar next to the still ticking time piece.
The Silver Rabbit greedily chewed the green leaves, and it seemed to have much the same effect upon him as drinking the liquid from the bottle did upon Alice, except in reverse.
He grew, and he grew, and he, and he grew! Even his fur was growing, for fresh brand new patches of silver now covered every spot The Jabberwock's flames had burnt black.
For a wonder his golden collar grew also or surely it should have snapped in half.
The Silver Rabbit rose to his feet, and now that he stood up Alice realized that she was looking down at The Jabberwock, for the Big Bad Bunny had become so big as to be half again his foe's size!
"Oh my!" Was all the green scaled monster could gasp confronted with this most unpleasant surprise.
For another brief moment the pair continued to size one another up in an ominous silence. A silence, devoid of a sound that Alice had grown so accustomed to by this point that its lack was louder than its presence ever could have been.
"My watch has stopped ticking. Your time is up Jabberwock." U-Elilzornhrairrah growled.
The Jabberwock quickly coughed up another ball of flame, this one seeming even larger than any that had come before.
"Look, out!" Alice shouted, though given where she now hung, she was uncertain that her words would carry to the Silver Rabbit's ears, however big they might be.
For a certainty he made no attempt to dodge.
Instead the Big Bad Bunny huffed and he puffed, and he spat out another horizontal blast of air.
It struck the fireball with such force that it might have been an extremely bright balloon for all it resisted, as it was promptly blown back into the body of the one who had created it in the first place!
The Jabberwock's green scales were charred black by the impact and he was slammed against a tree.
"You will never see her again!" It croaked, either too proud or too steeped in evil to beg for mercy.
"One of us certainly never will..." The Silver Rabbit promised.
Then he crossed the distance between them with a single leap.
The Jabberwock's claws came up, but this time there would be no great contest between near equals, the Silver Rabbit soon smashed The Jabberwock's claws into the ground breaking scale and bone alike.
"One, two! One, two! And through and through!" Cried out U-Elilzornhrairrah as he spun around (how such a great beast could turn so swiftly was a mystery to Alice, almost as great a mystery as how he could do it without her ending up being thrown clear) and began to pummel The Jabberwock's head with kicks from his back legs.
One of those kicks knocked the beast's head clear from his neck and the Jabberwock was no more.
"He certainly deserved it..." Alice reflected, for she was hard pressed to imagine a more unpleasant creature of any type in all her life.
"It and more." Replied the Big Bad Bunny who suddenly seemed to shrink back down to the same size as he'd been when Alice had first met him.
Now that the battle was over and done with, the Silver Rabbit took a moment to mournfully rest his head against a tree in morning.
"Twas vengeance not justice though. He'll never harm another precious flower, but I am little closer to rescuing my own Queen. To do that, I'd have to break into the dungeons of the Queen of Hearts herself..." The Silver Rabbit lamented.
Alice had heard of opportunity knocking. This, by comparison was opportunity picking the lock to your door, and making itself at home in your living room, waiting for you to come down for breakfast.
"I have already acquired a friend or two who already have grievances against the Queen of Hearts, perhaps we could help each other?" Alice suggested.
The Silver Rabbit took a moment to think this over before he came to a conclusion.
"I've heard worse ideas."
XXX XXX XXX
"Sanguine." The Silver Rabbit growled down at the rather tiny queen.
"Silver." The Sanguine Queen spat up at the rather large rabbit.
"Friends?" Suggested the Chesh-Dire Cat rather forlornly.
"I have no great love for traitors." The Sanguine Queen harrumphed with her arms crossed.
"I did not betray the Queen of Hearts, she betrayed me. Besides, I have no great love for pfeffil regardless of how many legs they go upon." The Silver Rabbit insisted.
Clearly this alliance might require a bit more work than Alice had initially expected.
"You said that you could use rooks. He is as rook like as anyone I've ever met..." Alice suggested, not quite surely what she meant, but certain that she meant it with great conviction.
That half spoken, she turned to face the Silver Rabbit.
"I gave you the leaves, which was quite a nice thing to do given you previous promise to eat me! If that favor does not spur you to action, will you turn up a nose at a chance to rescue the Queen of Poisons and skulk about alone in this home?" She chastised the Big Bad Bunny.
"To dispose of one Queen only to rescue another seems no true net gain for me." The Sanguine Queen ruminated.
"My love has many names, and rules no land. If her title truly bothers you that much, I can use another." The Silver Rabbit offered, still a touch warily.
"I suppose I could find some use for him. Welcome to my army." The Sanguine Queen eventually admitted.
"Welcome to my owsla." The Silver Rabbit replied.
Then suddenly the world around them seemed to twist and turn.
There was another soft "whump" as the Chesh-Dire Cat went flying.
There was a loud "WHUMP" as the Sanguine Queen landed atop him.
Then another surprisingly soft "whump" as the Silver Rabbit collided with something, and a few moments later Alice herself landed atop him.
Their sizes were much more even now, as Alice was once more roughly as large as herself (say better as large she liked to think of herself being) while the Silver Rabbit was now only as big as a very (very) large dog, or perhaps a rather (not so) small pony.
"Where are we this time?" Alice cried out, wondering what new sort of danger might await the four of them now.
"Perhaps you should try reading the sign?" The Chesh-Dire Cat suggested before there was a sudden flash of thunder.
Looking up Alice noted that there was indeed a sign, and a quite large one.
"The Sane Watchmaker." It said, and stretching out a short distance away from it was the path to a very large castle.
There was another flash of lighting.
"Splendid, I think I need to get my own time piece rewound with the Queen of Hearts in mind." The Silver Rabbit declared cheerfully enough.
Alice, the Chesh-Dire, and the Sanguine Queen were all of a noticeably less sanguine opinion.
AN: U-Elilzornhrairrah is probably reminding you folks of someone by this point.
I'm also not sorry for that joke regarding how eating things increases the Silver Rabbit's size. You might think this doesn't make sense given that he was able to drink something without shrinking and thus like most residents of... his homeland, is immune to having his size shifted by eating or drinking, but stop and consider exactly what he ate, and feel free to groan in understanding.
By the way, the reason I'm currently loving writing this side story is that it gives me an excuse to go revisit a few very fond childhood memories/resources.
The entire genesis of this scene had its start an episode of the New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which does indeed feature the phrase "The Big Bad Bunny".
From there however, it grew out a bit and I promptly found myself turning my attention to another if not quite as beloved, at least every bit as good source of information.
This Novella in trying to properly reflect the works it is based on, involves a lot of word play as you may have already noticed. Chapter two had a great many chess jokes ("I Rook thee Sir Cat" probably stands out as my favorite since it was one I came up myself) and this chapter has at least some clever word play as well.
The name/title "U-Elilzornhrairrah" is to the best I can figure entirely valid (and his pronunciation of it is as correct as I can make it) in the language it derives from. It very much does not translate to "The Big Bad Bunny" but it does translate to something that pretty perfectly describes the Silver Rabbit.
I'll explain what it translates to in my author comments for the Novella because I don't want to spoil the surprise/joke but I'll be most impressed/amused if anyone reading this can actually put the pieces together.
By the way, if you still need a proper mental image to hang on the "Silver Rabbit", imagine a large wolf with the ears, nose, and tail of a rabbit, wearing an eyepatch, with silver fur. This would not be nearly as funny if the Silver Rabbit was not completely unaware of the fact that he's clearly the wrong species, much like how Carrot Ironfoundersson is completely dedicated to being a dwarf, even though he's six and a half feet tall.
