Disclaimer: I do not own Watership Down
Sorry for the long wait but being an avid fan of writing fandoms of every show/game/movie I've seen means I was bound to change what chapter I write for which story. Anyways, hope you all enjoy this newest chapter.
What helped Ebony think there might be a warren nearby was all the nattering coming from a group of rabbits. It didn't take long for Ebony, Blackcurrant, and Tacca to be standing at another warren, hidden behind the thistle between a triangle of trees. They got to see Rabbits and Hares alike hopping around the trees with holes while the faint sound of scrapping was heard inside the holes.
They were the guards and the lookouts of the warren, buck's, while the one's in the holes were helping dig through the dirt to make homes, does. This was a new warren—one that needed lots of hard work. But whether they had to work through the day or the night, Ebony felt this was the perfect place to raise Tacca in.
That warm feeling he had being in a new warren changed when the eyes of all the Buck's looked eye-to-eye with the trio of foreign Hare's.
"What are you doing here?" one Buck with red eyes and spotty white fur with a black ridge asked in a demanding voice.
Neither Ebony nor Blackcurrant got to say a thing when another Buck shouted out:
"This place is no place for you wanderers. Beat it Hlessi's!"
This Rabbit had the same white spots on him but his ridge was more light brown and his eyes were orange.
"This is a warren," Blackcurrant said in a very deep, intimidating voice. "A warren is a place where Rabbits get together to help live, nourish, and mate in a world filled with Elil."
"Blackcurrant." Ebony spoke up, not doing anything to dissipate the authority Blackcurrant thought he had. "Forgive my friends' rudeness. He simply means we just want to live in your warren. We've been travelling for days as Hlessi's."
Ebony spoke with as much sincerity as he could muster, but the other Buck's were just as hostile to him as Blackcurrant acted to them. The Buck with the blackridge stepped up and stared Ebony right in his eyes.
"Even if we did have room here, we don't appreciate the kind of Hraka you move over if you were to live here. I'll say it once: leave now or we will be forced to send you racing to a mouth of an Elil."
Ebony felt the strife this Buck carried to him, and he didn't like how he made him want to slam his front feet in his face for his hostility.
Ebony, however, was not a fighter. Blackcurrant, bigger and more robust than he was, wasn't much of a fighter either. Tacca could grow up to be a strong, vim fighter but for now he was just a miniscule kitten; all three were just weeds under trees and these Buck's outnumbered them seven-to-one.
"Basket. Basket, Fraidy needs you to come down and-"
Ebony went tharn when he saw the doe who wriggled out of one of a multitude of holes, but was in the one straight across from where he was looking: Napkin.
Seeing her now was phenomenal. He remembered seeing her days ago with that naughty wolf's jaws clenched on her fuzzy tail.
Speaking of her tail, it looked completely ravished, torn asunder changing it from a cotton tail to flay that had been nibbled on thrice before being left to die in the seasons.
She didn't look any less beautiful now than she did when he last saw her; everything from her blushed white fur to her teeth, to those shivering eyes of her.
She was coming towards him and the rude buck he now knew as Basket. Knowing his name didn't do anything to calm him at first, but when she went to his side she practically brushed into his ridge like a kitten yearning to be at their mother's underbelly.
Ebony didn't muff a word out about how this sight soiled his eyes. All he could do was sit and look with his whiskers trilling and his eyes grazing the view. Finally, Basket turned around and leaped towards the holes...
The yellow buck sauntered up with much robustness in his wet nose.
"Now that my friend has made himself perfectly clear, you three should scram if you know what's good for you." He threatened.
Ebony was waiting for Napkin to obviate their hostility by speaking up and telling these rude bucks he and her were once from the same warren; if not just two Hare's that ate sow thistle and helped the warren more than their chief Hare ever did.
What she did was what all the other buck's were doing right now, nothing. If she was embarrassed about all this and didn't have the courage to look him in the eye he could understand—some would rather side with abrasive Hare's and live in comfort down in a home then speak up against them and surely lose their lives, but she was looking Ebony right in his watery eyes when this buck challenged him.
"I think we deserve better than to be banished out without a chance to even prove ourselves as useful Hare's," Blackcurrant said standing up where Ebony faltered.
"You speak with pomposity about how we are a hindrance to your warren, but whose to say we do not succeed what even your faster, toughest, and smartest hares can reach?"
"You dare speak to me as if you can compete with all these bucks?" The hare retorted in a deep tone. "So be it, pick any skill with any of those three pipsqueak's you blabber about. Once one of our mighty bucks beats you you will never show yourselves around here ever again."
"Why pick a challenge where only one talent is necessary when we can do three." He goaded the yellow buck.
They all looked at each other as if pondering the same thing he was. Basket was the one who confronted Blackcurrant.
"We can, and we will. Maybe it will teach you not to challenge someone whose warren your trespassing on."
Basket went back to his holes with Napkin while Ebony was flurrying around outside the foliage trying to keep his calm with Blackcurrant.
He was very mad, envious at the sight of the doe he cared for now with another buck and the chance to live peacefully in another warren diminished.