Disclaimer: I do not own Watership Down
This chapter was inspired by those yearly events that happen in my neighborhood. The next chapter is mainly inspired by action movies.
It came as a bit of a shock, Ebony couldn't lie, that a squirrel would learn to speak Lapine. Mingle explained to him that there used to be more hare's in the backyard before the ravenous dog captured them and mawed his teeth in their necks. That was a horrible story, and it was fortunate the trio of hlessi's were moving out so they didn't have to suffer that same fate.
Their pace was slowed down by Mingle trailing behind them.
"Squirrels and Hare's do not travel together," Blackcurrant said wistfully. "They need to store their food in trees so they can eat for the winter unlike us who can shovel flay or flayrah out of the snow."
"She did save our lives," Ebony interjected, "and for her age she has knowledge of these parts. It wouldn't hurt to let her tag along for a day."
Following the older Hare's was Tacca moving next to Mingle. For some reason he was drawn to her.
"I offer you my condolences on your husband," he said, his whiskers flickering. "I lost my grandfather not even a day ago, but I think he's still out there so don't tell me your sorry just yet."
Mingle seemed distracted with Tacca; preening her face by scratching it with her tiny paws. When she was finished scratching, she scurried in front to stare at him in his beady eyes.
"I prepared for his death my whole life—no one dies any other way than by themselves.
I do feel disheartened it wasn't me, I was always the reckless one. I would stand near that road and stare at the humans as they walk into their timber nest."
Tacca heard a crackle in her throat, she was sad to talk but continue the rest of her story she would, for a little Hare like him was curious.
"Sonic always liked to go near the crevice of water whenever it opened, liked to take a drink of the water. I warned him to just try the puddle water but he wanted fresh water, not the dirty rain water their dog also drinks from. He thought he could risk drinking from the crevice because their sweet boy would pull him out like every frog and mouse that have fallen in before. What he didn't count on was the elie...a hawk grabbing him from the sky."
"That's a terrible way to die," Tacca sympathized. "What are your plans now? Do you have any family to scour to?"
"No, Sonic and I decided we didn't live in a tree big enough to raise children in. I'm not going to lie, at my age I'll be lucky to last one more winter before I just close my eyes and never wake up. With any luck, I'll pass before a elie can catch-"
She quickly ran ahead of Tacca in-between Ebony and Blackcurrant. They jumped seeing the fright on her face.
"You need to move to the center of the road. There's a dog on the left and there's a dog on the right. There's also a dog that wanders away from home in the home ahead of that one but chances of him wandering out now are small considering his owners are home at this..."
She forgot about the pot luck the humans were having. Not only that, she could see his floppy black ears and fuzzy white fur now.
She darted her eyes left and right, trying to disappear out of his line of sight was impossible. She saw the fluffy white coated dog and the brown dog with the black ears. She raised her mouth into Blackcurrant's ear.
"Our only chance of escape is to turn around and flee through the house across from where the house on the warren is. Those humans don't have dogs, just a newborn child."
"I don't like that idea," Blackcurrant said. "We are not safe in this dog festered place and you want us to go back to where the first dog who came after us lives."
"He won't chase us so long as we sneak behind humans."
"And what about the humans who can crush us?"
"Their too busy being jovial to care about us. Do you want to deal with humans or the dog?"
Blackcurrant didn't feel fear over just one dog.
On the other hand, being in a group meant he had to think about their lives. Without giving this another thought, he turned around and scampered up the trail of rocks piled with rocks, stopped.
"Hurry up before that dog gets his teeth in you!" He shouted.
Ebony turned to Tacca and picked him up with his sharp teeth. Tacca at some points kicked his legs but never did anything that stopped Tacca from catching up to Blackcurrant.
As for Mingle, she was too old to try to outrun a dog, so she scurried down a grass hill and went in the cylindrical sewer pipe in that trench.
She was frightened, not for herself but for the hare's. She could hear that ravenous dog running up with a guttural sound repeating through its mouth. There was no way all three could outrun him, but if they could at least make it to the nestling of humans they might be able to slow it down.
Blackcurrant at his fastest could move like a Homba when it was hungry, but when the lives of a new friend and a kitten were in his paws he had to let the steam boil inside as he slowed down to get behind Ebony before hitting him with his face.
"Unless you want to have a date with the Black Rabbit of Inle today, I suggest you move as if your chasing a flayrah with legs!"
Blackcurrant's speech actually motivated Ebony to move faster; and his face ramming into his behind was also a nice incentive to move faster as well. In no time, Ebony swerved left until he was at the corner between a house and a group of humans.
Blackcurrant wasn't so lucky, being nice and slowing down would be the last mistake he ever made, the dog was right behind him.
His breath was like a patch of rotten carrots no Hare could eat, and it only got worse with how many germs were nestled in his mouth. And then—he snapped his jaws!
Blackcurrant nearly tripped down a hill trying to evade those sharp fangs. By some miracle he was now in the flurry of humans—ignorant of what was below their feet until the dog moved in.
"Thor!" One of them exclaimed.
The human was tall and skinny with a black piece of fur that almost covered his arms and what looked like pelts from a blue creature covering his bottom legs. He grabbed the dog and picked him up almost effortlessly. Those sharp fangs the dog was showing was replaced with a sympathetic face and a pink tongue sticking out. He almost looked like a kitten that had to be told when it misbehaved.
The three Hares were lucky enough to have roamed past the humans and continued lopping their way to the path they wanted to go.
Ebony eventually let Tacca down.
"I appreciate the ride," Tacca said, "but do you have to be so sharp with your teeth?"
"The last thing I want to do is lose you," Ebony told him. "It wouldn't just be me and Blackcurrant who would be sad if you were no more—you still have your grandfather to get home to."
Tacca was adamant.
"Enough with your yammering," Blackcurrant shouted. "We've got a lot of hopping to do."
His authority was the reason Ebony felt confused to why he called him Rah.
The traversing was going off without any problems.
The key to travelling was moving with a half-empty stomach. The Hares were all famished because none of the yards in the human homes had flay even good enough to eat; just small hlao with that foul stench to them.
They passed by a home with a large body of water behind their home and a home with a gate.
Tacca kept his eyes fixed to the sky. After hearing Mingle's story about what happened to her husband, he knew there was always a looming threat even when this blue sky had such pretty clouds and looked so close he could almost stand up and swat it.
Then came the regrettable scene of one of the humans large metal birds diving down with smoke exhaling out the back.
Tacca didn't know much about what flying in the sky did to the wilderness, what he did know is the bird could take away the lives of more than just one squirrel or hares in the wrong hands.
The three hares took another left turn through another street with two houses; one on the left where the black eared brown dog was just up ahead and the other on the right with a dog they couldn't see but could hear barking from inside.
The bunnies proceeded with caution down the road.
"Do you think Mingle managed to escape the dog?" Tacca asked.
"She might, always think she might because El-Ahrairah also might someday return from the dead and give rabbits a bunch of new tricks, or Frith might reverse us all into animals that can live as equals." Blackcurrant said with satire.
"That's not very nice to say to a young kitten," Ebony huffed to him. "Mingle is fine. She may not be as fast as us but she sure knows the terrain of this land long enough to outlast us."
Tacca wanted to believe too that she could find a way to outsmart a dog and she was just waiting for the rest of them to make it to the intersection so she could pop out and surprise them...
They reached the intersection when a furry black blur rushed past them going at the speed a rabbit escaping an elie would bolt at.
For the first time since losing his grandfather, Tacca mustered a smile on his furry face.
"She made it! She escaped the dogs!"
Ebony veered his head in her direction, confused by her running.
"But where is she going?"
Ebony's question lingered for awhile until Mingle was out of sight. Whenever an animal flees the wise choice would be to chase after him unless what their running from was in sight. Since there was no elie still in sight, Blackcurrant picked up Tacca with his strong teeth and together with Ebony they moved.
They chased the old squirrel up a hill but also a road for two hundred steps of their little rabbit feet. For an animal born smaller than them she could really move. By the time they made it to the top, she was gone.
The three bunnies were next to a house with no windows in a path with roads west and east and a long downward road to their north. If they were does they could decide an easy way of picking which path to go, but Blackcurrant had to be decisive.
"Whatever we do we need to not go down that road. I see train tracks down there."
"I think we should sniff the air to follow Mingle's scent." Tacca said. He was on and off lifting up his legs to look at both sides just to see which road she must have trudged down.
"Have you forgotten the most important thing, both of you?" Ebony spoke up. "We are hare's. We don't need to keep moving endlessly, we can just burrow our way through here."
Ebony began the scraping digging his paws in the trench near the road. The dirt just went flying in the road. But he didn't get to finish the job; Blackcurrant hopping into the hole with Ebony.
"Ebony, you are not thinking sanely!" Ebony didn't stop, he had to smack him in the face. "We can't make a hole near that silver hole, it's not good for Tacca's brain development. We need somewhere else to go."
Ebony stopped digging the hole, sighed.
"W-We may be able to move through the train track. We can carry Tacca to the rails but he'll have to run across the track."
Tacca got into his crouch position before Ebony lifted him up with his big teeth and lugged him on Blackcurrant's back. Elevated this way, he got a better panarama of the mountains past the trail rails. Tacca thought maybe if they were lucky he could run through them.
Before proceeding to the tracks a hruduru passed by going to the west followed by another going to the east.
Just the very sight of them could make any hare quake, but the two bucks charged across the road the moment a hruduru zoomed past a house.
Tacca, gazing at the underside of these big soulless creatures, saw the creatures it vehemently squashed with those circular feet.
And then—Tacca hopped off them to join them. They sat in a straight line looking at the Bull-headed rails in front of them. Something in their noses trilled at the very sight of it.
"Humans just kill animals in their hruduru's, but there's no blood in these tracks." Ebony said.
"Hruduru's are fast and everywhere," Blackcurrant explained. "This human transport seems to be slower and louder making it easier for us to...kestrel."
Ebony and Tacca were in a mix of awe and shock hearing that eifa's name at a critical piece of information. Their attention went from half-listening to watching Blackcurrant and his face drained of blood and his twitching mouth as his eyes fixated on the sky.
Ebony looked up first—the same reaction flared on his face when he saw it flying over them, a looming kestrel.
"Kestrel!" He shrieked.