One thing was for sure, Rabbit was never falling asleep in Other Ashdown again. It wasn't like he hadn't known it was a bad idea when he'd rested his head on his forearms and deliberately set out to nap at Evil Darlene's, but at the time he had been exasperated enough to risk his safety just to see what would happen. Tired too. He'd been very tired. But mostly, Rabbit had been stuck. Making himself vulnerable had seemed like the surest way to get the attention of someone who might help him find a way out of there.

Had the place thrown someone like Heliodora at him, he probably would have been way more professional about the whole thing. But Sleepyhead was just a bird, a bird who'd talked and sat on his shoulder and made him feel like he was a ******** pirate, and Rabbit didn't have the self-discipline to refuse the allure of a scenario like that, even if it was all happening in Weirdsville. He'd taken up the egg hunt because the bird had asked and because Rabbit had wanted to help, to be helpful in the way he'd always aspired to be but was starting to realize he had never truly managed.

It was the first time in a long while that he had felt like he had made life better for someone, even if those someones were still in their eggs and might not even turn out to be someones at all. At least he'd helped the crow in a roundabout way, if nothing else. The eggs were safe from the tendrils, safe from the man on fire, and even though Rabbit didn't think keeping them away from the woman and her office had been entirely necessary, by that point he'd been on a roll.

He'd done everything right, in his humble opinion, but now as he sat on his bed rubbing his eyes and staring at the eggs, creeping trepidation was definitely more present than any feeling of pride. After stumbling through the portrait and finding himself safe in his apartment, Rabbit had barely managed to remove his shoes before he had fallen asleep again, the eggs hastily wrapped in his faded comforter and positioned across the mattress where he couldn't accidentally roll onto them.

Now he was exhausted but awake, and maybe he was starting to regret defending the eggs so fervently, just a little. He was definitely regretting bringing them here, to this house, without knowing more about what they contained. There was a scratching at his door, followed by a low meow. Not only was his sister just a room away, but p***k would not stand being shut out for long.

A thought. Why shut him out at all? He didn't want to hurt his cat, but an animal's reaction might be the surest way to tell if any acquisitions from that place posed a threat.

Rabbit detangled his legs from their jagged pretzel and answered p***k's request, opening the door a sliver to accommodate the cat. He padded in like he owned the place, closed the small distance between the door and Rabbit's bed, and hopped onto it as was customary. But as soon as he saw the eggs, p***k executed a twisting leap that wouldn't have been out of place in some dimly-lit viral video, scrambling back out of the room in a brown blur.

Well.

That answered that.