Chapter Two: "We're not alone."
Gaston had no luck finding anything and he was beginning to grow agitated. The three began their venture with an upbeat air about them, overturning boughs and leaves with a bouncing rhythm, but as Gaston found nothing more and more frequently, his rhythm was bitter, like the wind biting at his heels. Genji rustled obnoxiously in a bush behind him and that too was working away at Gaston's waning patience.
"Genji, stop making so much noise, you're going to attract other animals," he snapped as he overturned the branch of an ever green tree only to find a drained and fruitless blueberry bush. "If a little stupid squirrel hops along here, tryin' to take the berries we found first… I swear…"
"Yes, sir," Genji obeyed emotionlessly.
"Genji, I am your father, feel free to treat me as one oppose to a drill sergeant."
There was no response. Genji had either not heard him or not understood what he meant. Either way, Gaston rolled his eyes and cynically continued his search, his arms and legs shuffling with begrudge now.
A sudden gust of wind made Gaston cringe; it stung his face and his bare feet, driving the whiskers of his moustache harshly into his skin. He walked out from beneath the looming ever green branch and to the open field. He glanced up at the sky. Overcast reigned; the bearer of misfortune and gloom and completely impervious to sunlight.
He knew they should return soon. Staring down at his feet, he spotted an idle blueberry covered by golden-brown grass and dirt. As he knelt to pick it up, another gust hit him. It blew the grass in his face; driving it into his mouth and eyes. Spitting and swearing, Gaston jumped to his feet while stuffing the berry into his pocket—his one and only find all day.
The entire scene around him began to whir; constant flashes of orange, golden and brown. The wind rustled the naked and near-naked trees, causing their warm colored leaves to twirl to the ground, and the ones already on the ground, to flutter weakly at his feet. The deceased reed plants swayed vigorously as Gaston scurried back to Genji.
The younger rabbit bellowed in bewilderment as the wind rattled every plant around him, and as his paw dove at an acorn but the wind swept it further away.
"We gotta return home soon, son. There is a storm abrewin' and our hoarding is hopeless."
"You may not be having any luck, but I got plenty!" Genji exclaimed somehow remaining monotone. He stuck out both his hips to emphasis his brimming pockets. "What did you find?"
"A blueberry: a single, solitary blueberry. Almost everything is dead!" As Gaston cried over the wind's raising howl, he looked around for his father.
It was at that exact moment when O'Hare galloped from a field of tall grass, his features distressed.
"Pa, what's wrong? Do you feel the storm too?" Gaston said as O'Hare ran toward him and his son in a frantic state.
"I'm afraid the storm is not our immediate concern!" O'Hare spat between heaving gasps, lowering his head and creasing his back. "We're not alone…" he panted and while continuing to do so, O'Hare elaborated as neither his son nor his grandson understood. "I spotted a pack of lynx; a mother and her three newborns! They were perched amongst the bottom of Mt. Morne while I was scavenging for nuts. I am sure the mother saw me, as her eyes darted in the direction of the tree I was under!" O'Hare rarely panicked, but when he did it was a good indication there was grave trouble afoot.
"No, it's too early for lynxes to be out. Are you certain that's what it was, Pa? Or were those ancient eyes playin' tricks on you?" Gaston's eyebrows arched with an arrogant skepticism.
"Am I one to kid? No. I know what I saw and it was a pack of hungry lynx!"
Meanwhile, Genji was staring off into space completely unfazed by it all.
"Well, if you DID see lynx, we're fine! Mt. Morne is forever from here. Plus, we were just going to head back, anyway. Genji and I searched Morne Forest's tree line dry and I don't want the storm to start while I'm out."
O'Hare nodded frantically; his eyes were widened with unforeseeable danger.
"Pa, calm down. Our den is two or three minutes from here. We'll be fine."
Gaston waved his paw in Genji's face.
"C'mon, spacecase, we're headin' ho—" The remainder of Gaston's sentence was cut off by howl, a howl which echoed throughout the open field and in the heads of the three rodents.
All three rabbits froze, their faces tensing up and their movements freezing.
"No… one… moves," O'Hare muttered gravely, his entire face numb with fear, his eyes whipping from side-to-side in their sockets.
Gaston inconspicuously moved his head around O'Hare's. He could now see the one-way trail which led into Morne Forest. The outskirts of the trail was overrun with fern plants, many of them towering feet above even the tallest of rabbit. At the very end of Gaston's vision, the curve of the trail, he saw a spotted, gray animal lunge from the ferns; leaves erupting around it.
The mother lynx.
Higher pitched and more juvenile growls followed the mother lynx as her three kittens staggered out onto the trail as well.
"Gaston… is it the lynxes?" O'Hare asked, his voice trembling, not turning to check for himself.
Not so much his head moving as his eyes, Gaston nodded subtly; his expression seething with sudden dismay.
"Run? Run? Run?" Genji stammered, his question all one big slur.
O'Hare did not respond, he was staring dead ahead down into the forest opening. Like the forest itself sensed the imminent danger, the grass didn't sway and the treetops didn't rustle, their roots in the ground constricted with panic.
Beads of sweat streeleddown O'Hare's face; hitting the grass below them once rolling from his chin.
"Gaston, are they looking?"
No, they weren't. All four mammals were occupied with something across the trail from them—the children frolicked in the ferns while the mother watched, licking her paws clean, grazing in the grass.
Genji squirmed nervously and his feet fidgeted. Gaston watched as an acorn surfaced from his stuffed pocket, as it was pushed to the pocket's brim and as it tumbled from Genji and plopped to the pebbles below, clanking at their feet.
Immediately after, Gaston's eyes shot to the lynxes. Still, the three kittens played—batting each other with their paws—but the mother was frozen; her tail erect, her ears alert and her powerfully-yellow eyes watchful.
"Yes… the mother is staring down at us…" Gaston's lips formed the words poorly, stumbling over the simplest of pronunciations as his body quivered with overbearing terror.
Gaston found it hard to remain frozen any longer. His legs wobbled and his jaw began to chatter.
"Run?" Genji repeated again, the word a guttural murmur.
"Yes," Gaston replied, not caring for what his father thought of the matter.
Hurling his body the opposite way of the forest's trail, Gaston broke away from the trio's circle. The sound of crushing grass and the beating of feet pounding in his ears, Gaston ran as fast as he possibly could toward a nook in a maple tree which was nearing dramatically with every passing second. Then, the wind picked up, his speed and its growing energy bawling twisted laments into his ears. It blew against Gaston, driving him the other way and the coldness whipping him across the face, striking his body with a sting.
Genji suddenly thundered past his father, his legs a blur against the ground and his arms flailing everywhere. Then, Genji tripped, faltered, nosedived into the dirt. Gaston watched with horror as it happened. He landed face first, he skidded painfully against rocks and pebbles—which sprayed out around him— mere feet from the maple tree's safety, as if fate spat in his face and was now laughing hysterically at his inevitable doom.
Gaston was devastated, the wind inciting the tears, this sad sight open the valves of his tear ducts. His son had to get up, he had to make it. He wondered if the lynx was pursuing them, or even if she had caught on there were three delicious slabs of vulnerable meat and bone before her nose. Alas, he had no time to check. For if she was chasing them, she would be hot on their trail and a spared second would not lead to a spared life.
Guilt suddenly washed over Gaston, hitting him like a tidal wave. Where was his father, where was O'Hare? Gaston abruptly began to run and did not give his father time. What if he was murdered, his reaction time not up to par, and as he stood blankly in the gravel as his son and grandson bolted away, he was preyed upon, the lynx crushing him alone with her mere weight. What if the only reason the lynx mother was not ripping him and Genji apart was because she was busy grinding O'Hare father between her blood-lusting teeth, no doubt the spoiled lynx kittens squealing behind her, waiting to dive in for a taste of their own.
Gaston snapped out of it, and just in time to realize he was now at the nook and that Genji had already recovered and made it in too. Diving into the narrow hole, Gaston hit the tree's inside with an unwelcoming thud then a face plant into the tree's wall.
At least he was safe. At least he and Genji were safe… No. Where was O'Hare?
"Genji!! Genji?!" Gaston roared at his son. "Where is O'Hare?! What happened to your grandfather?!"
Genji was still panting heavily. Blood ran from his forehead and down the rest of his face. He opened his mouth dumbly, not knowing the answer, his eyes wet and cold like that of a maniac.
There was a crash and then a piercing screech—the entire tree which the two rabbits were using as refuge rattled, the dirt specs at their feet jumping to their knees.
Gaston gravely turned his head to face the nook's hole, and when he saw what was on the other side he wrenched backward and threw himself up against the tree's farthest wall.
The mother lynx.
Only her eyes, nose and mouth visible, she had herself pressed up against the tree. Her golden eyes gleamed sickly yellow, seeping with malice; they penetrated Gaston's soul and made him flinch eternally. Just above her nose was a scar. It was thick and pink, and the patch around the scar had no fur.
Gaston lashed his arm out at his son and yanked him beside himself, so they were both as far from the predator as possible.
The lynx snapped her jaws and viciously pressed her opened snout against the nook's hole. Her mouth was too wide to reach in, but instead her slimy tongue flopped out and threshed almost like a snake against her pointed, yellow fangs—her breath seething from her gritty throat, a vengeful wave of death shrouding them, the odor so potent.
Gaston clenched his eyes shut, turned his face to the side and pressed his body as tightly away as possible. Then, the odor disgraced his nose for too long. An odor so putrid and off-putting it singed Gaston's nose and caused warning vomit to feint up his throat, but then stagger back down. Swallowing back the searing vomit—it sloshing around between his teeth, coating them in grit— Gaston and Genji came face-to-face with it: the stench of blood, flesh and bones.
The relentless mother gnawed on the bark surrounding the nook—revealing the dripping insides of her mouth and the remainders of a feast which slid around her tongue and teeth like maggots about feces.
There was a snap. The lynx had pried a large chunk of the tree off and was now crunching it between her vice-like jaws, her eyes flashing as she wrenched her head to and fro.
Genji's heart ripped from his chests as he succumbed to the feeling of helplessness and broke down. Crumbling against the tree's wall, he sank to the ground and began to bawl. Gaston was overwhelmed. Not only by the lynx's attempts to eat them, but at his son's sudden sadness surge; never before had Gaston seen him cry and he was poor at comforting.
Another snap, another chunk of the tree. More of the lynx could be seen now; there was just enough room for her to slip in her paw. In it came.
Genji's cries steepened, he threw himself up against the wall as she batted her paw numbly against the tree's inside.
Luckily for the two rabbits, she could not get past her wrist and that was enough for them to be saved from her grasp. She growled at her futility and with her paw still jutting through the hole, began again to rip away at the wood.
Another snap, another chunk of the tree and another free inch where her arm slid in further—that inch was just enough. Gaston found himself wrapped up in the paw of the mother lynx, Genji weeping and worthless inches away.