9th March 2795, Watership Down
Sam made her way downstairs with a slight limp, following a good night's sleep. After spending the last couple of months recuperating from her crash injuries, she'd finally gotten back on her feet a week ago, good as new. Her wounded leg had mended nicely and she was finally able to go off the crutches, free to get a better look at her new home.
She had been given Jamie McEwen's unused bedroom for her own use and Josie had generously offered to share some of her clothes with her, since most of Sam's own clothes had been destroyed in the glider crash. The other colonists had also contributed in any way they could, making her feel as welcome as possible.
Life in this future world, Sam had quickly discovered, meant an enormous adaptation process, with lots to learn and many difficulties to overcome on the way. The first big adjustment she was faced with was learning to live in a house where you had to make do without most of the things a modern person usually took for granted, like electricity, running water and flushing toilets.
Making her way out the back door, she made for the small wooden shack behind the lodge, which housed the latrine. The colonists used an elaborate toilet system Alan and Derek had invented, which involved a latrine built over a large underground septic tank, used to collect the waste; but rather than discard it, this waste, or 'night-soil' as Alan called it, was collected and used as manure for the colonists' crops during farming season.
At first Sam had been utterly revolted at the idea of such toilet facilities, particularly the part about using the waste to grow the food you ate, but eventually relented after Alan reassured her that there was no fear of disease or pathogens, and that farmers had been successfully practicing this process for centuries.
Doing her business, she turned to a large bucket of wood ash collected from the fireplace mixed with lime, which the colonists used to 'flush' their toilets with. Shovelling several scoops of ash down the latrine hole, which helped contain the smell and kill any harmful bacteria, she washed her face and hands in the makeshift basin and hurried to join the others to breakfast.
The lodge's kitchen was a spacious room on the ground floor, set up like an elaborate workplace with a combination of the rustic and the mechanical. They had no plumbing or running water at the lodge; instead, the kitchen tap was fed from a large potable reservoir mounted on stands above the wooden sink, which was refilled daily by means of a water pump. Likewise, there was no electrical oven or refrigerator, not even a toaster; all of the colonists' cooking was done in a wood-fired oven fashioned out of old scrap metal, which required skills long forgotten by 21st century city folk.
The colonists took turns cooking their meals, among their other daily chores, equally dividing the labour between them. However, when it came to cooking, the masterchef of the house was always Josie. Alan and Derek were both average cooks at best, mostly specialising in easily-cooked stuff like steaks and baked potatoes; Hotdog's own cooking wasn't fit even for a dog. In fact, on his last shift, he had made a stew that smelled awfully like old socks and tasted like the innards of dead rats, prompting the colonists to join the rabbits at morning silflay instead.
Alan and Derek, always early risers, were already there, helping Josie out with the cooking. Hotdog and Lucy weren't there yet, sleeping in late as usual. On the table stood Tassel the giant squirrel, helping herself to a bowl of peanuts. A mouth-watering breakfast of badger bacon and moorhen eggs, complete with homemade giant-apple juice, was ready to be served. Derek greeted Sam as she entered.
"Morning, Sam," he said, jumping forward and holding back a chair for her to sit down, very gentleman-like, "Sleep well?"
"Yes, thank you, Derek," said Sam, blushing with embarrassment at all this lovely treatment she was getting. Her new friends were all wonderful but none so much as Derek Shaw. Ever since she'd come, the colony's engineer had had a soft spot for her, always looking out for her while she learned to adapt to life here, and Sam couldn't help but feel somewhat charmed by the dashing Irishman.
Josie passed loaded camping-issue tin dishes around – the only kitchenware the colonists had – and joined the family at the table. As he ate, Alan was busy preparing the list of everyone's chores for the day. Keeping this colony running meant hard work on a daily basis and everyone was expected to do his part. Now that spring was finally here, it was farming season – a critical time of year, when the new crops had to be planted and the stockpiles for the coming winter to be prepared. Noticing Lucy and Hotdog's absence, Alan turned to Derek.
"Deke, would you mind going and giving those two sleepyheads upstairs a little wake-up call? We need everyone here for the morning briefing." Derek nodded and, giving Sam a wink, left the room, picking up a jug of ice-cold water on his way out. They heard the sound of splashing water, followed by Hotdog's angry cursing; and then they heard Lucy's shrieks as her godfather drenched her too. Alan managed to keep a straight face but Josie snorted her apple juice.
A few minutes later, a drenched and really pissed-off Hotdog, his long hair pasted all over the place, followed by a similarly wet and irritated Lucy, had joined the others to breakfast. Sam couldn't suppress a giggle at the sight of them. Derek sure knew how to get anyone lazy out of bed without much trouble. Alan outlined their schedule for the day.
"Right, we'll start with the cannery first," he said, "Hotdog and I are on the job; Josie, you and Lucy are designated herb gatherers today. We need to stock up on the medicine cabinet..."
Usually, the division of labour was seen as fair and square, with minimum arguments. However, there were times when some people couldn't resist wanting to get out of their chores, in this case Lucy, who suddenly spoke up.
"Dad, I promised Pipkin I'd be joining him for Junior Owsla exercises today. Can I, please...?"
"Sorry, sweetheart, you know the rules: work comes first, then leisure activities. Josie needs your help identifying the herbs – it's your school assignment for today." Although Alan was by no means a stern father, as de facto leader of this little colony, he took his responsibilities very seriously and expected everyone around him to do the same, one of them being his daughter's education.
Ever since moving to the new world, Alan had made sure to provide proper schooling for Lucy; even on this wild future earth, knowledge was a critical asset for survival. Since the schooling curriculums of the old world no longer applied here, Alan had instead set up his own school system. The classroom was everyday life; Lucy learned by participating in everything the adults did, from gathering herbs, to constructing a new machine, to Dandelion's storytelling, which taught her everything she needed to know. Her family, both humans and rabbits alike, were her teachers, each in his own right, and Lucy was a bright and studious pupil, well ahead of what most children her age back in the 21st century were...at least as long as she didn't negate her studies over having wild adventures with her friends.
"I'll tell you what, honey," Alan continued, seeing her disappointed expression, "If you bring me back all the correct herbs for the medicine chest and identify them for me, then you can take the afternoon off for the Junior Owsla. Fair enough?" Despite her share of chores for the day, reasonable compromising always worked better than firm discipline, and Alan loved his daughter too much to break her heart.
"Thank you, Dad! You're the best!" cried Lucy, giving her father a kiss on the cheek and hurrying out to tell Pipkin she'd be joining them after all. Smiling, Alan turned back to the task at hand.
"It's your first day on the job, Sam," he told Sam, "You and Deke have some maintenance work to do on the windmill. The batteries are still acting up and we need power to charge up our equipment. Well, ladies and gents, let's get to it then. Chop-chop!"
While Alan and Hotdog made for the lab, where the colony's cannery was, Josie and Lucy, bags in hand, set off on their herb-gathering errand, and Sam and Derek made for the windmill. The colony's renewable energy power plant, and Derek's masterpiece to date, was built in a clearing just a few yards away from the lodge, where the winds that blew across the peaks of the Hampshire Downs were strongest.
The structure itself was a needle-shaped tower fashioned out of bits of cut-to-size and welded together H-section cannibalised from their dismantled plane's infrastructure, as Derek had explained to Sam. The windmill itself was fashioned out of light-weight aluminium poles fastened to an old wheel hub, with sails of parachute nylon and cords for rigging. For power production, the windmill turned a dynamo harvested from one of their plane's engines; this in turn charged a bay of daisy-chained aircraft batteries, which powered the colonists' compound. This homemade wind turbine provided just enough juice to power a few low-voltage lights at night and for charging some light battery-powered equipment. No power to spare for heavy-duty electrical appliances, like refrigerators or washing machines.
Derek unlocked the door to the utility shed housed in the base of the tower and the colony's two mechanics entered. Initially, there had been some debate about Sam's new duties here at the colony; she had no science degrees like Alan or Derek, nor any background of country life like Josie, much less any experience of living in this remote wilderness. Finally, her background of apprenticing in a garage as a scooter mechanic when she was a teenager had earned her the position of Derek's assistant.
The shack's wooden interior housed the dynamo, run by a gear-controlled belt snaking up the tower to the windmill axel above, and the battery bay, mounted on a pedestal of old pallets and controlled a rudimentary circuit-breaker panel. An old gymnasium bicycle rigged up to the dynamo was used to charge up the batteries in an emergency.
Setting down his toolbox, Derek turned to the circuit-breaker panel, once part of the pilot's console of their long-gone Cessna, and threw a few switches. The LED lights and indicators on the panel went dark as he cut the power. Turning to a gearbox on the edge of the dynamo platform, he pulled a lever, putting the brakes on and stopping the windmill. Ohmmeters and jumper-wires in hand, they began examining each battery cell individually.
"Old age is really taking a toll on these babies," muttered Derek to Sam, jumping out several dead cells, "We'll need to get some distilled water and acid to top them up. Let's hope there's enough lead left to take a half-charge. Fat lot of good it'll do us, all these patching-ups – in another year or so, we won't be able to power a flashlight with these batteries, no matter how many times we recycle the cells. Eh, Sam...?"
Sam's mind meanwhile had wondered off elsewhere, thinking about Stonecrop. While she had made a more or less promising start, she wasn't so sure the same could be said about her adoptive son. Following that disastrous first meeting that night over at the Honeycomb, Stonecrop hadn't made much progress in adapting to life among his own kind, the primary reason being his lack of friends.
Looking out the shack window, she could see a group of youngsters, including Stonecrop, sitting in a group close to the bust of El-ahrairah, listening to Dandelion's stories. Those, whatever knowledge of plants and the elil the does passed on to their young, and the skills they acquired as adolescents in the Owsla, formed the lagomorphs' rudimentary school curriculum. From the start, both she and Hazel-rah had insisted Stonecrop attended, so that he might learn the ways of the rabbits proper, so far without much progress. It pained her heart to see Stonecrop sitting glumly, away from the others, friendless and alone...
While his adoptive mother and Derek were busy working, Stonecrop sat listening to Dandelion's tale of El-ahrairah and the Battle with Hemlock, trying to make heads or tails of that bloody incomprehensible Lapine. Although the adults spoke to him in English, like they did with the humans, the youngsters mostly preferred to stick to their native Lapine, of which Stonecrop had so far only picked up a few odd words, making attending classes in this madhouse extremely difficult. Unfortunately, the language barrier was turning out to be the least of his problems.
Over the past few weeks, he had made numerous attempts to befriend some of the other rabbits his age, but found it to be a seemingly impossible task. Between jibes and harassment from the bullying Sandwort and scorning and insults from the proud Primrose, both of which still held a grudge, the former for embarrassing him in front of his father, the latter for insulting her pride, Sandwort was finding it very difficult to adapt here. Even the adults, although treating him with respect, were rather distant, not knowing what to make of this rabbit who behaved like a human. He continued to half-listen to Dandelion.
The warren's legendary storyteller had done a lot of research with the humans over the years, amending his ancestors' previously distorted history, and building himself a distinguished reputation with his tales of the Four Brothers. Unfortunately, this didn't do much good for Stonecrop, whose pre-El-ahrairah birth in the human world had only made him the subject of even more ridicule among the youngsters. Even now, he could see the other rabbits, which included Little Threar, Fiver's usually timid and good-natured son, with whom he shared a burrow, all giving him a pretty wide berth. Although not as mean as their older brothers, they too, influenced – or perhaps threatened – by Sandwort and Primrose, either shied away from him or else followed their elders' example. And currently, things were about to get a lot worse.
"Hey, buckos, check that out!" jeered a familiar voice. Sandwort and his gang, which included several members of the Junior Owsla, had been passing by on their way to training, and couldn't resist a bit of fun at their weirdo guest's expense, "Our new El-ahrairah is listening to stupid stories like a kitten!" The other bucks laughed nastily at poor Stonecrop, who pretended he hadn't heard them, feeling his anger building.
He had already nearly come to blows with Sandwort on more than one occasion, which luckily never came to pass, mostly thanks to the adults' timely intervention. Still, he didn't know how much more of this bloody torment he could take. Following his step-mother's advice and simply ignoring all that bullying couldn't possibly work forever.
"What's the matter, chap?" taunted Sandwort, "Are you too afraid to fend for yourself like a real buck? Are you going to hide behind your ithe-marli like some wimpy doe? Then again, you can't tell the difference between a buck and a doe to begin with...!" That was all Stonecrop could take and he rounded on Sandwort, who merely glared back, as if daring him to take a shot at him. Not that it would be wise for Stonecrop to try; he might be big and burly, but Sandwort was stronger and a far more experienced fighter than him. So, rather than make a scene, he turned round and walked away in a huff.
Not looking where he was going, he ran headlong into the second rabbit on Watership Down that hated his guts with a vengeance: Primrose. Although she, unlike Sandwort, didn't bully him, she would still insult and bad-mouth him behind his back to no end. Apparently, she had been made a total fool, the subject of gossip, after Stonecrop had accidentally called her a female in front of her sisters, and that didn't sit well with the proud Primrose at all. Adding the whispers that Stonecrop might actually be her illegitimate half-brother, despite Alan and Hazel's insistence that it was totally untrue, was enough to earn her eternal hatred of Stonecrop.
"Watch where you're going, you clumsy idiot!" snapped the Chief's eldest daughter indignantly, "What, are you blind now, in addition to your other disgraceful shortcomings?" Stonecrop rolled his eyes. Here we go again...
"Look, Primrose, I've told you so many times, I had no idea about that. It wasn't my fault it got out, honest...!" In truth, nobody had any idea how this had leaked out, although some suspected it had been Hawkbit shutting his big mouth off without thinking. Either way, it was bad news for Stonecrop.
"My friends talking behind my back!" cried Primrose angrily, clearly not feeling forgiving, "Do you know what kind of embarrassment your presence here is causing my parli? That he fathered a bastard behind my marli's back?"
"That's rich!" retorted Stonecrop angrily, "You're the one who's insulting me at every turn, you little hypocrite! How do you think I feel about that, huh?"
Primrose seemed to want to say something, perhaps thinking maybe she was being too hard on Stonecrop, but never got a chance to do so, when Sandwort, who had followed Stonecrop, caught up with them. His expression was furious.
"What have I told you about talking to our does without my permission?" he growled, shoving Stonecrop away from Primrose. Aside from the personal attacks, Sandwort was always bullying Stonecrop away from the does, particularly Primrose, as a demonstration of his power over him. Being the most popular buck in the warren probably entitled him to the most beautiful and popular doe around, or so Stonecrop thought with disgust.
"You stay away from her or I'll claw your eyes out, you pathetic outcast! You hear?" Stonecrop narrowed his eyes at the insult. That did it.
"I'll show you who's pathetic, you country hick...!" The two rabbits seemed a second away from coming to blows, when someone finally intervened.
"Sandwort, that's enough!"
It was Silver, who could immediately spot a bullying incident when he saw one, mainly because he had been a frequent victim himself when he was Stonecrop's age, back in his Sandleford days. However, now, being a fully-fledged Owsla officer, he had the full authority to deal with such incidents. Sandwort seemed to want to tell Silver to shove off and mind his own business, but under the threatening gaze of the burly silver-furred rabbit, who had a reputation of punishing bullies by making them do does' work all season, he turned and scurried away along with Primrose.
"Don't mind him, lad," said Silver to Stonecrop, "Sandwort may be a prat at times, but he doesn't really mean it." Personally, Stonecrop felt nothing could be further from the truth.
"He hates me and he's turning everyone else against me too!" he cried, "Can't Hazel put that miserable blighter in his proper place once and for all?"
"That's Hazel-rah to you, if you don't mind," Silver corrected him, "And if the Chief were to start punishing every rabbit for every little thing, we'd soon be turning this warren into a new Efrafa." Stonecrop had heard the story about the late General Woundwort and his militaristic warren Efrafa, which the Watershipers had captured and destroyed years earlier, "You and Sandwort will have to work out your differences somehow."
Frankly, Stonecrop couldn't see how that could possibly happen. As far as he was concerned, Sandwort was nothing more than a mean-tempered bully and Primrose a spoiled, stuck-up snob, both of whom were ruining any chance he had of settling down here. Frankly, he was beginning to wonder whether he actually belonged in this world at all. Nobody wanted him. If only he had the friendship of one rabbit, just one, he'd be content...
Meanwhile, in the lab, Alan and Hotdog were busy cleaning out the many jars, bottles and cans they'd brought in from the larder, where they stored their winter supplies. During spring, summer and autumn, the colonists could live comfortably off the rich land; but during the long winter months, like the rabbits, they had to either stockpile or starve. And as they had no refrigerator to store perishables long-term, they had to make do with a larder of non-perishables. Using old, long-forgotten recipes for food processing dating back to the pre-industrial age, Alan had been able to 'recreate' the means of preserving sufficient food without electricity or other modern conveniences.
The worktable stood cluttered with sparkling-clean glass jars of all shapes and sizes, mostly trash scavenged from the HAB's garbage disposal bins, waiting to be filled. Once cheap commodities only meant to be used once and then discarded, this glass junk was now being recovered centuries later and reused. Waste production at the colony was strictly limited, everything being given a second and third use over, as part of Alan's eco-friendly plan he had perfected over the years.
While Hotdog rinsed out the jars with boiling water, sterilising them, Alan prepared some pots of corn syrup, brandy, vinegar, saltwater, molasses and brine, which were their key food preservatives. Beside the table, several baskets of different fruit, herbs and vegetables, some collected from the surrounding environment, others grown in their greenhouse, were waiting to be chopped up, blanched and canned.
Alan consulted his calculations on the blackboard. The average human required 2,500 calories of food a day to stay fed and healthy; for contingencies, the colonists always made sure to increase that limit to 3,000 calories a day, for a period of 120 winter days. For a colony of six, including Sam, they needed to stockpile a total of 2,160,000 calories worth of preserved food over the next six months. This might not seem like a large feat, but Alan, who had spent the last four years examining every detail of the future environment under the microscope, knew that, between different growing periods of wild produce, planting and harvesting of crops, as well as any unforeseen delays along the way, they'd have to work hard to make the deadline by the next frost. Such was life at the colony.
"...I swear this job gets duller every year," Hotdog was grumbling, missing the sunshine outside, "Maybe we should ask Derek to build us an automated canning machine for our next Easter present." Alan, who was busy mashing blackberries into jam, chuckled but didn't answer him, his mind elsewhere. Hotdog noticed it.
"Say, you all right there, Al?"
"Just thinking about Sam," he told Hotdog, who whistled aloud, thinking Alan might be falling in love, "Ho, ho, going to send her a Valentine, then? Mind you, Josie will have your nuts if she hears you're ditching her..."
"There's something oddly familiar about that woman," said Alan, clearly not being funny, "I've spent the last couple of months going up and down my memory lane, and I still can't quite place her. I wonder why she won't at least tell us her surname?"
"Beats me, perhaps she's got some weird name that she's too embarrassed to use. You remember that poor devil you knew in the Marines who went by the name of Sissy...?" But Alan still wasn't sure what to make of Sam's strange behaviour. His gut instinct told him there was something awfully familiar about her face, even without knowing her surname. Did he know her from somewhere back? Surely not...
Work continued through the day. The jars were filled by one quarter with preservative juice and then filled with blanched fruit and vegetables. By lunchtime, they had about twenty full jars of blackberry jam, mushrooms and apple compote, sealed and ready to be moved to the larder for storage. Lucy and Josie had returned, bringing back several bags of medicinal herbs for the colony's infirmary, enough to supply an entire Victorian pharmacy. A number of recycled medicine bottles, jars and packages stood clean and ready to be refilled. It was time for Lucy's lesson today in botany.
"Name three remedies for treating fever, in order of effectiveness."
"Tea of willow bark, tincture of yarrow, and syrup of elderberry," answered Lucy flawlessly, as she presented the plants in question to her father.
"Very good. What about three treatments for disinfecting cuts and sores?"
"Decoction of burdock for boils, ointment of calendula for grazes, or rubbing oil of comfrey for bruises."
"Three poisonous plants or fungi, easily confused with edible stuff, which we should avoid?"
"The Death Cap, which resembles the edible False Death Cap, poison hemlock, which resembles a wild carrot, and deadly nightshade, which resembles elderberries."
"Excellent, sweetie," said Alan, smiling proudly at his daughter, "You're really becoming a leading botanist. That will do for today. Tomorrow's lesson, survival skills!" That brightened Lucy up; survival training, taught personally by her expert father, was her favourite subject by far, with all the real fun and action. Beaming with joy, she hurried out to join Pipkin and the rest of the Junior Owsla in their training exercises, supervised today by Silver.
Besides her education, Lucy was just as active in the Watership Down youngsters' greatest ambition: to be a distinguished future member of the Owsla. The Junior Owsla, with all potential future cadets, was currently due to have their first solo patrol any day now and Lucy especially was really looking forward to it – to prove to her elders that she could take care of herself.
Hazel and her father, concerned for the children's safety, were not particularly looking forward to this day and had been putting it off for months now. Finally, Alan had agreed to give his consent after Lucy's 13th birthday, just a week away. Tomorrow's survival skill test he had prepared for her would be her test run.
On her way to the Junior Owsla training grounds, she ran into Stonecrop, who was wandering around aimlessly, looking terribly downcast. Lucy had heard how the new arrival wasn't getting on well with Sandwort and that was putting her in a rather difficult situation; she liked Stonecrop and didn't know how to patch up the growing animosity between him and Sandwort without compromising her relationship with her friends.
On Watership Down, the unspoken golden rule between friends was the firm loyalty for one another. Here, you and your friends were thick as thieves and their judgement was your own; clashing with one another could easily make someone an outcast, even break the whole group apart if everyone started taking sides. Mutual trust was a virtue and betraying it was not permitted. Lucy knew that of course, but on the other hand, she also knew they were being very unfair to Stonecrop.
"Hallo, Stonecrop," she greeted him, reaching over to pat him between the ears. The glum Stonecrop smiled mildly; in contrast to the others, at least he was getting some affection from Lucy, who whom he shared a common bond: being born of the same world. "Was it Sandwort again?" Stonecrop nodded.
"Yes, he and Primrose both," he said, "Those two have really got it in for me, Lucy, and I don't know what to do. One of these days, I'm going to forget about controlling my temper and break both their blasted necks!" Lucy didn't even bother chastising Stonecrop for speaking like that about her friends; indeed, she couldn't help but feel a tad bit ashamed by the fact that she and Sandwort were close like brother and sister, and the rabbit in front of her was her best friend's bullying victim whom she was practically powerless to help.
She was just thinking of inviting Stonecrop to join her in Junior Owsla exercises, maybe give her a chance to patch things up, when Sandwort appeared once again at the perfect moment to spoil everything.
"There you are, Lucy. Come on, we're running late already." He noticed Stonecrop, "And what are you still doing here, you fat, useless waste of space?" he sneered, "Why don't you just crawl back to your hole and rid us of your ugly face?"
"Sandwort, really, maybe we should at least give him a chance...?" Lucy protested, rather than shouted, at her friend, deep down feeling deeply repulsed by Sandwort's attitude. But as she turned back to Stonecrop, to apologise and ask whether he wanted to join them, the rabbit had already gone, knowing where he wasn't wanted...
It was late afternoon. While mornings were dedicated to work, Lucy's schooling and, in the rabbits' case, Owsla patrols, afternoons were a time of relaxation and leisure activities. Most of the rabbits lay snoozing in their favourite spot outside the Honeycomb, others playing Bobstones down in the warren. Over at the lodge, the colonists had stopped for lunch and were now enjoying a peaceful afternoon. Alan was in the lodge's small study, studying Drake's journal again; Derek was in his workshop, adding the last touches to a schematic for an experimental airship he had been working on over the past year and hoped to finish by next winter.
Josie was in her infirmary, which was almost fully restocked, cleaned and ready to serve again. This was her own little kingdom. From a country veterinarian, she had made great progress over the years, studying every medical journal she'd brought with her, learning to work only with herbal remedies and apply her medical knowledge to humans, as well as animals. Hotdog was lazing about in his room as usual, enjoying 21st century TV series on his rapidly aging laptop, which he had recharged on the restored windmill Derek had repaired that morning. In the room next door, Lucy, all worked out from Owsla exercises, sat reading.
There was no television or mass media coverage at the colony, other than a crude two-way network for the colonists' radios. Instead, each of the colonists had their own personal laptops, containing practically inexhaustible stashes of e-books, films, TV series and even video games from forever ago. Entertainment and information was an important part of recreation, and a little touch of the long gone 21st century made all the difference.
Bigwig and his Owsla had returned from their routine morning patrol, reporting no sightings of the alleged invaders Drake had warned Sam about. So far, there was no sign of any trouble on the horizon whatsoever, putting everyone's mind at ease, at least for the time being.
Sam was out walking, enjoying the view of the pristine future world from the peak of the Down. Even now, she still couldn't get used to this paradise-like wilderness, completely free of any signs of human impact. Knowing that this little colony was the last vestige of human civilisation in the entire country, and probably the entire planet, completely blew her mind away.
She had only just made a fresh start here and, despite the hardships of life in this world, so far, things were turning out better than she expected. If only Stonecrop could fit in too, then everything would be perfect... The one thing she couldn't quite figure out however were her feelings towards Derek Shaw. Although they were technically only friends, she could tell he was smitten with her and vice-versa. And Sam didn't know what to make of this.
Sam had never known true love; her first and only relationship to date had been with an abusive, domineering boyfriend, who had kicked her out of the house after nearly killing her in a drunken brawl. But ever since meeting Derek, she couldn't help but feel...well, like she might be falling in love.
Lost in her thoughts, she was just about to head back to the lodge, when she suddenly found herself standing face to face with an unfamiliar rabbit, who had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. This stranger was no one she knew; whoever he was, he was slender and well-built, with dark brown fur and stern green eyes that expressed great courage, if not suspicion, as he stared back at Sam.
"Oh...Hallo, who are you?"
"Depends who's asking," replied the strange rabbit suspiciously, "I don't believe I've seen you around here before. Are you one of Hazel-rah's people?"
"Well, yes," stammered Sam, still not sure of how to treat this stranger. Although he didn't seem hostile, his cautious tone was a bit unnerving. "My name's Sam. And you are?" The strange was spared from answering however when at that minute, Hyzenthlay and Violet, who had noticed the new arrival from afar, came running.
"Campion! This is a surprise!" cried Hyzenthlay, nuzzling him in greeting. So this is the legendary Captain Campion, thought Sam, remembering the stories of the brave Efrafan Captain of Owsla who had helped the Watershipers win the war against General Woundwort. Once the right-hand rabbit of the enemy, he had led his oppressed people to freedom, becoming a hero among Hazel's people, as well as his own. Hyzenthlay in particular, who was a former Efrafan slave, Sam had heard, shared a close bond with him for protecting her during her many years of slavery. Campion graciously returned Hyzenthlay's greeting.
"You're looking good yourself, Hyzenthlay."
"We've missed you around here, Campion," said Violet, also nuzzling their visitor in greeting. This Campion sure is the does' buck, thought Sam. Meanwhile, Hazel, Alan, and several others had also appeared on the scene, greeting Campion like an old friend.
"It's jolly good to see you again, old chap," said Alan, giving the rabbit a friendly clap on the shoulder. Having first met as enemies, with Campion held prisoner in an attempted hostage-taking, but later redeeming himself by seeing the truth about his former Chief for the first time and joining the right side, he and Alan had become very close friends over the years. Beside her father, Lucy greeted Campion in Lapine, hugging him.
"Frithaes, Campion." The battle-hardened former Efrafan smiled, lovingly holding the human girl close. Like the rest of the rabbits, he liked Lucy very much, even more so because she was the only human who could speak his language.
"You're a bit early this spring," said Hazel, "Our ambassadors aren't supposed to take up their posts until the first spring rains. I take it this isn't a social visit?"
"Actually, no, Hazel-rah," said Campion. Although he too was another close friend of the Chief Rabbit of Watership Down, being an Owsla rabbit with a strict code of honour, he always addressed Hazel by his formal title, "There's been some trouble over at Vleflain..."
Author's note: Sorry about the delay, but I've been snowed in with summer courses. Finally, I'm back on track and updating. Hopefully, they'll be another chapter up by the end of the month. The other stories are also due to be updated shortly. Enjoy and PLEASE REVIEW!