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 Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 2:32 pm
 My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.
Thistledown felt empty. Fear, anger, and sadness had burned through her and hollowed her out. Her body was heavy with kits, but she didn't feel like a marli. She felt like a stone. A heavy, sinking stone.
Falcon was dead. She missed him, she mourned him - that was normal. Rabbits dying was normal. It happened all the time. She had missed and mourned her father too. But when her father died, she had not felt the crushing guilt or blinding rage that followed the news of Falcon's death. A farm raid! As a test! What good did it do the warren to lose good rabbits? For the first time in her life, she found herself questioning the warren and those who ran it. The thoughts frightened her. The warren was all there was and all her life she had trained to be a runner so that she might serve it.
She finally had that status... but for what purpose? She couldn't serve the warren when she was so heavy with kits. She was painfully aware of her own mortality and how her unborn kits depended on her. Falcon's kits.
Thistledown had kept to herself ever since she heard about Falcon's death, eating and sleeping in a mind-numbed fog. But she couldn't take it any longer and she had to talk to someone, anyone. Another runner. Another marli. She made her way through the burrows, seeking Hlal'Loir.
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Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 11:50 pm
 "Hlal'Loir" translated into "catchless" in the lapine language, yet the runner veteran now felt anything but. Usually, she was a spry and quick thing, being one who earned her name easily and who served in the warren with the entirety of her being. She felt anything but catchless at the moment, given her girth and her almost perpetual ravenous hunger.
She had wanted dearly to participate in the races in some way, shape or form and was a bit hurt when turned down to assist, but it made sense, given just how heavy she was with kittens. Just because she couldn't participate didn't mean she didn't spectate, at least for the first few races. She had been eager to see which rabbits would run with her and the ever quick, ever eager, and almost perpetually cheery doe wanted to congratulate each one personally. The kittens would be coming soon, however, and Lichen insisted that she stay in the burrow the young lovers shared. Typically boring of Lichen, who she often viewed as a bump on a log, yet he kept her grounded in reality and she knew he was only thinking of she and the kittens. What a good buck. Still, she had been miffed when he insisted she remained behind and perhaps it was a good thing, as there had been some incidents. Two rabbits were almost taken by a hawk and two more did not return from the farm raid. Really? Who sent inexperienced rabbits to raid a farm? Sure, the ones that made it brought back flay-rah, but those who didn't... She'd watched Falcon run and had high hopes for him, just as she was happy to see Thistledown rise in rank early in the event. That doe had promise.
But at this particular moment, the doe's thoughts were not only on the race and the lives that were lost, but the kicking, squirming beings writhing inside of her. Any day, now, they would be greeted into the world. She was excited and tired, but mostly ravenous. She'd sent Lichen away to fetch flay to bring back to her, after he had fed himself, and was alone in their spacious, homely burrow.
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Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 12:03 pm
Thistledown remembered the races with a strange sense of detachment. Hlal'Loir had already been showing her pregnancy and Thistledown had felt a strange mix of awe and envy. Awe of the warren's only runner, envy of the marli... She had tried to get pregnant a few times before the races were announced, but at the time she assumed it hadn't worked. She had been glad, somehow, because it meant she could serve the warren as a runner. She told herself that it was better to wait for spring, that she wasn't ready to be a mother.
But after the fifth race, after Falcon had died... she realized she was pregnant after all. She was a marli. And in that moment all of the anger ran out of her and left her empty. So very, very empty.
"Hlal'Loir?" she called softly as she poked her head into the doe's burrow. "Can I talk to you?"
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Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 10:29 pm
Her burrow was nice, warm, homely, and well lined with fur, feathers, dried grasses, and sweet smelling petals. They were things she had found while scavenging out on the down, when her want to nest increased. There was plenty of room for herself and the now absent buck to nestle in and keep warm. Her kittens would be born soon and she was excited. Her first litter! Oh, her marli would have been proud if she were still alive. The doe groomed her forepaws quietly, but her rounded ears swiveled at the sounds of a rabbit approaching through the network of tunnels.
"Thistledown, is that you?" Her face brightened slightly at the sight of the gray and white doe - one of the newest runners in the down. The doe was plump and smelled of unborn kittens. She was a soon to be marli, much like herself.
"Of course! Please, come in and make yourself comfortable. There is plenty of room for both of us."
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Posted: Tue Mar 05, 2013 4:35 pm
Thistledown crawled into the den and settled beside Hlal'loir. It was such a warm, welcoming place, and Hlal'Loir was being so kind, inviting her in like that... if she hadn't felt so empty, she might have cried.
"Falcon," she began, but that was such a small part of what was wrong with the world. She let the word hang between them like a small, hard stone. The painful truth of Falcon's death didn't belong in such a nice place. But she needed to talk to someone, anyone. A fellow runner. A marli. Someone who would understand. All she'd ever wanted was to serve the warren. But this...
She tried again. "Falcon's the father."
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Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2013 5:01 pm
Falcon.
Thistledown seemed, well, down. When she uttered the name, Hlal'loir figured she now knew the reason. Falcon had been one of the rabbits that had been lost in the runner auditions - lost in a raid that really, honestly never should have happened. She still cursed the fact that she was heavy with kittens and couldn't have at least been there to help protect the prospective runners.
Oh.
OH.
The brown furred marli pressed against Thistledown in an effort to bring her some sort of comfort, resting her muzzle near the gray and white rabbit's ear.
"I'm sorry, Thistledown... He is a good rabbit - your kittens will be strong." She wasn't quite sure what else to say. Death was a large part of life for rabbits, they were prey creatures, but it still hurt and many deaths were sudden, much like Falcon's.
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