Chapter Three: Glorified Huntsmen

His vision blurred and his breathing eradicated. The lynx's paw tensing around his body, each time he would breathe—choke—his body would shudder shallowly and break out in crushing agony with blanketed every each of his skeleton. Gaston felt like he was going to die. The rancid breath of the lynx stung his face and her squeeze around Gaston's body was practically oozing with deep, hungry desire.

Gaston tried to squirm from her grip but found himself useless—his entire torso entrapped by her paw he could do nothing but holler, and that was twisted, its echoes, strained with futility, ricocheted around the tree's inside. So, he did. At first at his son, who was escalating into a hysterical knot quicker than before, his limbs like mindless, aimless worms and his head a bobble toy shedding plastic tears. Useless. Cruel pain sat in his ribs as he tried to scream. His chest being constricted, it dragged his screams out into rough gasps and wheezes.

The lynx moved her arm back and forth within the tree, struggling trying to get it out. She grew frustrated, and the simple moving turned to wrenching and Gaston's body bobbed viciously and painfully as she would not let go.

"GENJI!! GENJI!!" Gaston bawled at his son, the strength to muster the screams writhing and panging from the depths of his lungs, all the way up the trachea, and out the mouth. He did not know why he was calling out to his him. What could Genji do, throw himself at the paw and then get the two of them snagged in her clutches? No. The best thing for Genji to do was stoop there and watch as his father was tossed and clamped left to right and then inevitably feasted upon, soon after the happy and hungry yelps of the baby lynx ripping his father apart creeping to his ears. Genji would then know he was next and sit in festering dread.

So, he cried out for anyone else's help. Thinking of the grieving and desperate family he would leave behind, Gaston wailed out for the help of anything that was willing to spare his life, to spare him from Morne's wickedness. And quickly after that his prayer was answered.

First, the lynx's thrashing and longing gurgles stopped. She froze completely. Then, there was the sound of sputtering gravel and frantic footsteps. After that, a metallic click. Then an earth-shattering bang which disturbed Gaston to the point where he wet himself—hot urine trickling down his leg.

Blood speckled his face from the hole—the sour blood of the lynx. Her grip spasmed; first clenching Gaston until he thought his ribs would snap right then and there, then after a shrill squeal, her paw crumbled and Gaston dropped to the tree's inside, the urine splashing around him.

The lynx's paw whipped out of the hole with sudden ease.

There were more sounds of sputtering rocks followed by howls and then more hastened strides which faded in Gaston's ears as moments drifted into seconds. Scrambling to his feet, Gaston took his sniveling son by the ear and the two dove into the corner furthest from the hole. Filled with intrigue, both rabbits huddled together with their ears perked and alert; interested with what ever was happening but too petrified to look outside the tree, what ever had happened to frighten away the mother lynx was terrifying, and there was only one thing more powerful than a mother lynx with hungry kittens: humans.

Another clanging click. Gaston and his son gulped, they knew whatever caused this click resulted in the lynx spilling her blood.

Alien voices and sounds erupted from the outside.

"Christ almighty, Dean, that there lynx c'n run like the winds!"

"Yes, b'y, Riley, almost got 'er, though! I wonder what in the blazes she and 'er babies were tryin' to get!"

Gaston recognized them as the voices of humans—hunters. Genji was baffled. Crying now from sheer confusion and shock, Gaston clamped his paw around Genji's in an attempt at getting him to quiet down, never had he seen his son so unsettled.

"I know you're scared… but you need you to be silent, just until the hunters leave."

Genji blinked and nodded vaguely, his eyes distant as if in another world, his pupils causing the color in his eyes to fleet, filling them with darkness.

The sound of crushing leaves approached their refuge; it rang throughout the hollowed out nook replaying their impending doom continuously. Genji cringed; he buried his head in his father's lap.

As the sound approached, as did ill wheezes; Gaston guessed the hunter was either sick or overweight.

The hunter brought his hands to the grass and lay with his stomach flat against the ground, the strands of golden grass which his breath rustled waving in and out through the nook's opening.

"Lard sufferin'! Dean, wadda ya doin' down there?" called the other human, his voice much further away.

"Seein' what them lynx was after, it could be good fer a stew!" This hunter's voice rattled the insides of the tree, making Gaston's hair stand on end and the tree wince.

If the humans were to find them, there would be no where to run as they were blocking the only way in or out. Gaston's family again flashed before his eyes as sweat pooled on his forehead.

"I'm sure it was only a bloody ol' squirrel, leave the creature be and let's head back to your place! These two deer are enough fer now, b'y!"

"Meat is meat! Margaret needs some small game for some stew, I told ya!" grunted the nearer human.

A faint pitter-patter enshrouded the cowering pair of rabbits—it began to rain.

"DEAN!!" boomed a voice amongst the rain. "It's gettin' starmy 'n I don't wanna be out 'n it! Now, c'mon! We'll head back out tamorrow fer Margaret!"

The nearest hunter—Dean—rest on his knees while muttering sailor swears beneath his breath. Snatching up his gun from the crusted pile of leaves—their brittle moans sounding—he strolled over to his buddy.

Only when the two humans' voices were out of range did Gaston and Genji lose their tenseness, even them, the air in the nook was teeming with its undertone. Genji's ears swiveling in their sockets, he divulged to his father he could hear nothing at all. Gaston nodded in wary agreement.

"Do we leave?" the smaller rabbit asked, his eyes still devoid of color, the expression on his face as helpless as one Bunnie would display.

Gaston bit his lip, his eyes darting toward the hole. "It seems safe outside, but I am wondering about your grandfather…"

Genji shrugged in indifference.

"I suppose, the hunters said they had two deer and nothing else. If your grandfather is not back at the den when we return, I will seek him until the wee hours of the morning."

Just a nod from Genji.

"Hmm," Gaston said looking at the ground around him. "Re-gather your berries and nuts, and then we'll go back to the den…"

As Genji sprawled himself about, foolishly gathering what he had dropped in fear of the predator, his mind could not bend around what the boom was.

"Hey… Pa"—Gaston smiled, Genji had called him pa—"What was that boom that made the lynx mother flee? It sounded like the mighty clap of thunder!"

Gaston was wondering the same thing. He had not the faintest idea of what had scared away their attacker. All he knew was that the humans controlled the power, and that indeed they were prowling Morne and its outskirts already. He thought back to the blood which sprayed his face and the terrified yelps of the mother and her lynx kittens.

"I am not sure, son…"

By the time the two anxious rabbits stepped out of the tree, the rain had escalated and the winds were fierce. As they both pounded their legs faster than ever before back to their den, the rain washed the lynx's blood from Gaston's face as well as his concern for O'Hare—he knew his father well and his father was too smart to be caught by a mere lynx or human. He was definitely resting back at the den with a mug of green tea in his hand telling nighttime stories to Bunnie. But, something more foreboding panged in the back of Gaston's skull, something that wasn't so assuring.