Oh noes another Chapter! O: Anyway uhm. Hope you like it. Hehehe. o_O; I'm estimating anywhere between ten - twelve chapters, but I could be wrong. R/R? O:

Chapter Two: Gabbiwog

The Grubb found that hunting for two brought him back to familial days and made him almost long for it again. He missed his wife, his sons, his daughter. He missed fishing in the lake with them, teaching his grandchildren how to fish, telling them stories. He had a new charge now, and he aspired to raise the thing. When it was old enough, he decided, he would take it downstream with him - as the Gabbit was going to have to anyway. The journey downstream for a Gabbit is very difficult, although not nearly as difficult as the way up again. The miraculous journey of the Gabbit was perilous and he wanted to ensure it survived until it reached the sea.

Carefully, the Gabbit poised, watching the water with an experienced eye. The surface was smooth but underneath he saw the fish wriggling about. The light on the surface of the water bent, hiding the real location of the fish - a reason many young fisherman failed to catch their first time. He knew how it was bent, where the real fish was, and once one had entered his line of vision, he struck - the fish was completely speared onto his pole, and he pulled it out of the water. Around it, the fish scattered, but they'd return again. He placed the fish in his upturned straw hat. In his old village, he would've used a basket, but he had none.

After several minutes, the fish calmed down and he struck again, and again, and again, hitting the fish most of the time. His occasional misses were nothing compared to the amout of fish he had caught. There were ten total - but they were on the small side and he wasn't about to take any more. He knew of the natural balance of the world, and so took the fish and brought them back upstream to Ma'Spa. He had been lucky - he found a place very close by where the ponds were within sight - to cook the fish.

He would've liked to smoke the fish, but he didn't have the wood, the energy, or the time necessary to do so. The Gabbiwog in the pool had seen him return with fish and waited almost anxiously at the edge of the pond for him to bring some to it.

He cut a fish up and distracted the gabbiwog by tearing off pieces of the fish slices before going off to get some wood for a fire. It didn't take him long to find - there was old wood everywhere and he didn't want to take wood from Ma'Spa itself. It took him a few trips but he managed, dripping with sweat, to get the fire going and still have some extra wood left to give him a break. The Gabbiwog had almost completely finished off the fish he'd given it, and he didn't want to give it any more for awhile. It would give him time to cook the fish.

He set up two sticks parallel to one another and away from the fire, then skewered a fish on a third and set it in between the two sticks. One end was a little short, so he had to bring his hands uncomfortably close to the fire just so he could turn it. By the time the fish was cooked to the point of being crispy on the outside, his hands were smarting and he blew on them as he removed the fish. The gabbiwog was watching him, and while he worked on the other fish he took some time to really study it.

Gabbits were apparently very social, based on his research, and if left alone for too long could lose their minds. He understood well. Grubbs were also very social and he understood the pain and loss of no family. He certainly wanted to spare the little Gabbit of this fate. He wasn't sure how old the creature was, but something told him it probably hadn't even grown lungs yet. Its body was just beginning to lose the transparency of an egg, so he mused it was probably still in the first stages of life. How it had survived so long was nothing short of a miracle.

"Ah, well," he said at length to it, "I guess I'll call ya Gabby, since I really don't have a better name."

Gabby was cliched and almost ridiculous, but he passed it off. It needed a name and he couldn't just call it 'Gabbit' for the rest of its life. However long that was. What had really made him uncomfortable was the reason there were no more Gabbits. Could it be the hunters had found Ma'Spa and looted it of the Gabbit eggs that remained? He put the cooked fish out of the sun temporarily and tended to the fire while he thought.

If that was indeed the case, he needed to know if they would ever return. The first half of the afternoon he spent searching every square inch of the area around the pools. Any evidence of the hunters was gone but his instincts told him everything. The last Spawning had been successful, but the Gabbits had never survived long enough to hatch. If they were almost extinct, then this little Gabbit alone was probably worth millions.

He could've fed his family and the entire village for the rest of their lives. As he looked at the creature, the thought weighed heavily in his mind. If he turned this creature in he could save his entire village. The Gabbit was sacred to him, butthe survival of his village was just as important. For a long, pregnant moment, he stood, weighing out the consequences of either one.

There was a cheeping noise. He turned to see the little gabbiwog raise the top of her head above the water and make the same noise again. It surprised him. Gabbits didn't have lungs at that stage, so how on Odd could they make that sound?

Whatever the case, the little Gabbit had somehow won him over. His heart melted and he knew there was no way he could've turned the little Gabbit in. That decided, he turned and looked back beyond the valley. He had a new responsibility, one that spelled the fate of that entire race.

"We're gonna have to get you out of here," he said slowly. "Neither one of us will survive out here for long..."

What he was getting at, of course, was the hunters. If there was a chance of them returning, he didn't want to risk being seen. As he knelt down to let the little Gabbit rub up against one of his fingers, he began to devise in his head a container of sorts to hold it in.

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Building the container in which the young gabbiwog was going to stay in would take awhile - perhaps long enough for it to grow a little older. It was still much too young to survive going downstream. Its tail wasn't more than an inch long and nowhere near powerful enough to battle the rapids yet. He drew out his plans for the rest of the day in his mind, setting up for tomorrow what would probably take weeks.

The next morning he woke up early, fed Gabby, and fed himself. Once finished, he had to make his tools. The first tool he would need was an axe. He made this by finding an old, tough branch - something that took a good portion of the morning, and whittling it with his knife until it was soft and smooth. After that, he selected a stone from near the river and used the same knife to shape it in the form of an axe blade. The process was very slow - it took him nearly two days to build due to having to restock with fish and take care of Gabby.

Once the axe was complete, he tested it on a thin tree. It worked fine, up until he tried it on a thicker one. When the blade snapped off, he sighed doggedly and set about building a second. This one took three days longer than his previous one, but it was very sturdy and made his first axe look like a toothpick. He grinned as he felt the weight in his hands. This axe, he knew, was a good one. When he chopped down the tree that had previously given him trouble, he was ecstatic as the axe held. He took the log and brought it by the riverside, chopped it in half lengthwise, and left it to go check on Gabby. It was imperitive that the wood dry out.

The tree he had chopped down was very thick and the piece he would be using was long enough to hold Gabby without injuring her. Once he'd made his plans, he set about building something to carry the tank in. He couldn't very well carry it on his back. If he could get her away from Ma'Spa and into a nice, shallow part of the river for her to evolve in, she would be safe from any outlaws. He was well-used to living off the river.

During the next week he dried out the wood and began shaping it. The other thing he set about building was a second boat. But he had an idea about how to get it to travel over land as well as water. That way he wouldn't lose it. He didn't make it very wide, but his boat was a series of thick woven branches. When he ran out of twine he had to fetch vines from the bottom of the water, something that he was well used to. Once he completed the top of the boat, he added some framework at the bottom so it would adapt to the land better.

Meanwhile, the gabbiwog changed. Through his socialization and feeding the little gabbit grew attached to him. It grew a little larger and he could plainly see two holes at the top of its head. Someday, when Gabby grew larger they would become nostrils for breathing. Its eyes grew larger and he could make out the individual irises and the pupils. They were massive, taking up most of hte bottom half of its face. He could see its mouth plainly, and two little nubs there its arms would eventually grow.

Gabby followed him most everywhere, swimming about in her pool and watching him with its large, expressive eyes. Even when he fed it, it was always watching him, waiting for something. Every time he watched her, his heart would pound with a mix of admiration and terror, for the day he had to move her was edging closer and closer. He could feel it and it made him rather uncomfortable.

It happened one evening about a week later. The boat was completed and he was drinking from the river when he halted. A strange, peculiar feeling came over him. He rose to his feet and listened, shivering in the brisk air. There was something nearby - something bad. The Grubb moved past the source of the river, past Ma'Spa, over the next hill, where he smelled what he thought was smoke. It sent a spine-tingling bolt of fear through his body as he peered over the edge.

Sure enough, a thin line of smoke poured upwards from a glowing, changing shape at the bottom of the hill. Strange, thick, lizard-esque creatures with heavy jaws surrounded the fire. There were three of them.

"So why we gotta go back again?" asked one of them, voice disgruntled.

"'Cause," said the other. "Gotta do an inspection for th' boss. 'Said if we don't find anythin', we's can go back and there won't be no more trouble." He laughed to himself.

The Grubb gasped and hissed, "Outlaws!"

The first creature laughed as well.

"I thought we got all them Gabbit eggs th' first time?"

"Yeah.." the second said. "But y'know, gotta humor the bastard. We'll head up ther' t'morrow."

The Grubb had heard all he needed. He leaped away from the edge and sprinted down the mountain as fast as he could. When he reached Ma'Spa, he grabbed the container he'd been building and carried it over to Gabby. He hadn't the time to adjust her to it like he wanted, so all he could do was hope she would understand.

"Listen," he said as quietly as possible to the gabbiwog. "You have to get in bad men are gonna come and take you away if you don't! Please!"

He slowly, slowly, slowly eased the container into the water. The insides had been long-since smoothed so the gabbiwog could slip inside if it wanted and not hurt itself. To his relief, the baby Gabbit observed it and then slid right inside. He eased it up out of the water, careful not to spill any, and the gabbiwog made another cheeping noise as he carried it as best he could away from the pond. The entire container was about three feet long, close to a foot deep, and almost a foot wide. It was rather like a trough. He reached his boat and carefully rested the trough on it, tying it down and tying part of his blanket over it.

"I want you to stay in here okay? I promise you won't fall out," he whispered to the gabbiwog, then returned to grab his things. Before he left, he brushed as much ash into the earth as he could. He tried to keep it out of the water. He sprinted back to the boat, tied his stuff down, and set off down the river.