He was the youngest of a litter of does, so naturally they called him Little Brother. His family resided in Bramblefell, a strict and joyless warren that valued function over all else. In a family where everyone seemed to understand the importance of keeping their heads down and respecting the rule of law, Little Brother stood out in all the worst possible ways.
From a young age, he made it obvious that rules were made to be broken. The more he was told to behave, the more he misbehaved. Throughout his adolescence, Little Brother was punished for his small acts of defiance – purposely leaving obstacles in the brambleberry patch, sneaking past the warren guards, disrupting the days of Bramblefell’s dutiful workers with incessant pranks and petty thievery. He was on a first name basis with most of the guards, who came to regard him with an air of resigned weariness.
So it was that Little Brother found himself refusing to swear allegiance to the all-powerful King Joxer – quite the opposite, in fact. He spat on the King’s name and tore out of Bramblefell faster than they could say the word “Banished,” then spent the next two days running out of the Tanglewood, avoiding the mysterious predators that had lurked outside the warren’s perimeters all his life. He came tumbling out into Sunset Acres not long after that, amazed by the wide openness he saw stretched out before him.
Not a day after that, he was prowling in the early morning when he heard quite the stern, “Stop! Who goes there?!” Little Brother peeked his head around the corner and found himself face to face with a steely-eyed buck who stared at him quite warily. All of a sudden, our protagonist found himself wondering about all the pranks he could possibly play on this terribly careful stranger. So lost was he in his thoughts that he almost missed the arrival of the other three, who turned out to be much friendlier than the first bun and wasted no time asking him where he was from.
“I’m from the Tanglewood!” he replied quite proudly, seeing the first buck’s brow twitch with curiosity. “I was banished from my warren because they didn’t appreciate my pranks.” It was basically true. Little Brother didn’t believe for a second they would have let him stay, even if he had sworn his allegiance to King Joxer. And it was quite a rush to be a rebel.
His new acquaintances seemed quite happy with his explanation, and they promptly traded their stories for his, explaining to him that they were looking for a place to start their own warren – one where there were no tyrannical kings and buns were quite free to do as they wished. Would he like to join? Little Brother only had to consider it for a moment before nodding enthusiastically. “I know how to tend to brambleberry patches,” he said, although his experience lay mostly in getting them as tangled as possible. “I’ll bet I could tend to some other kinds of plants too.”
And so they all joined ways, with Little Brother shooting Caper surreptitious glances every few paces, wondering exactly how the stern buck would react to all his little tricks.
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