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riskybusiness

Member

Registered: 2018-05-27

Posts: 19

story - finding the burrow

sorry for the dramatic way this is written - i love to write stories

I was born to a woman named My Rabbit. She was kind to me and loved me a lot and gave me her white woolly hat, so I obeyed and followed her around as she gathered string and rope. She put it all in a basket, and then asked me if I was ready to go home. Since I was grown, I said yes happily, and we set off south – the home marker said to go east, but I assumed it was a mistake and followed my mother. Shortly after we had set off, she gave birth to my brother. I picked up the basket helpfully and followed her south again.

We travelled for a while before I asked her if we were lost, and she said yes sheepishly. My younger brother told us to go west, but I was sure my mother couldn’t be that stupid. She insisted it was south, then changed and said it was actually east. I was confused. Then she gave birth to my other brother, and me and my first brother followed her as she travelled tentatively east. My oldest brother got annoyed and wandered off somewhere. I never saw him again. After that, we decided to go west, and I had followed for a short while before my mother gave birth to yet another brother.

She went off to search for my first brother, leaving me and my second brother, Caspian, to wait patiently for her. I fed him for the remaining years of his infancy, and then he grew older and began to make things. I think he thought we were settling there. I hung around the banana trees my mother left us by hesitantly, wanting to see my mother again. Many years passed, but still I waited hopefully, as she had told me to. My woolly hat kept me warmer than Caspian, and I was going to give it to him since he was younger, but on doing so I found him dead. I mourned him for a while, and then I realised I was all alone.

Not wanting to leave my mother alone with a child, or possible two children, I hung around for a little longer. Then I decided to leave it up to fate. I went and sat by a flowering cactus, saying to the trees that I would wait till the cactus fruited. A year passed before the fruit grew and I had to accept that my mother was gone. Sadly, I ate the cactus fruit and emptied my mother’s basket. I filled it with two burdocks and a sharp stone. Then I set off west, where the marker said I was 3k away from civilization of some sort.

I travelled for so long. Years and years passed. My young body grew into a man’s body, my hair grew thick and full, but I never took off the white woolly hat my mother gave me. The one thing I possessed beside her basket. It took so long to get there, and I was always cautious of wolves, mosquitoes, hogs and other dangers along the way. For so long I travelled relentlessly, living off the land. I had gotten close, and I was excited. Too excited. I ran into some mosquitoes and contracted yellow fever, dropped my basket and was unable to pick it up. I continued to run in the direction of the arrow, screaming some last words in case this was the end; “I’m sorry mother, I lost you!”

Still I clung on to the hope that someone from the civilization I was sure existed would save me, and ran as fast as I could. My stomach rumbled in rapidly increasing hunger. It looked like this was the end of my tale. Then my eyes faded back to white, my skin lost its yellow tinge. But I had just one hunger square left. Filled with sudden hope, I searched around frantically and found a fruiting cactus, like the one I had waited for my mother by. A strange kind of fate. I gulped it down, relishing the juicy nourishment. Then I continued to run, aware that my hunger would continue to go down and my basket was left far behind.

I saw tree stumps. Chopped wood. Marks of a town or city of some kind. A carrot farm, a berry farm. A person. A person! I was filled with joy, forgetting for a moment all the people I’d lost along the way and focusing on my victory.

“Hello!” I cried. “Civilization at last!”

To my dismay, nobody understood me, but it didn’t disappoint me for long. I rattled off my tale to them all anyway, ignoring their questions that seemed nonsense to me. I was so excited to have made it so far. I ate berries and read paper that made no sense. Finally I was part of somewhere, not a wanderer without a family. Little did I know, it was about to get so much better. I met a man whose skin was as dark as mine, and his name was Tom Rabbit. We figured out he was my fourth cousin, and he asked me how I had arrived here. I told him how my mother had gotten lost, about my journey and my close brush with death. He listened intently.

“Home is 3k east.” he said absently, getting on a horse and going through his backpack. He picked up a piece of paper that he had written “We come in peace” on, but evidently the townspeople had not understood.

“Home?” I asked. Was this not home?

“Well, the Rabbits home.” he shrugged. I was taken aback. We had a home?

“I had to travel 3k to get here.” I told him tiredly. “Will I ever understand these people?”

“The children, maybe.” he replied. Indeed, some of the children had begun to babble in my own language.

“God.” I said, shaking my head. There was no point staying here, so it looked like I was travelling again.

“God.” one of the children repeated. Immediately people around it started asking questions, and now I was worried. These people might get the wrong idea, if two strangers turn up speaking a strange language and mentioning gods. But I was too excited at the prospect of a home with real family to worry for long.

Just as I was about to try to speak to the children, maybe get them to translate, I turned around and saw the glint of a blade, far too close for comfort. I tried to step back but it hit me first. Blood poured out of me, and I looked at Tom in panic. He too had been stabbed, by an old lady wielding a war sword. A nearby girl yelled “Grandma!”

I tried to focus. I had escaped death once, couldn’t I do it again? I looked around to see if any of the people in the town were going to help me. Nobody dared. It really seemed to be the end this time. Then I realised something. 3K east. Tom had said the Rabbit home was 3k east. I had travelled west. Had I travelled further east with mother – had my first brother not convinced us to turn west – I could have travelled a tiny distance and found family. People who could understand me, who allowed me to eat and looked like me. Maybe that was where my mother had gone. Maybe she had found home, and not bothered to turn back for her juvenile sons.

My heart sank and I wept. I wept because I had been tricked, I had been abandoned, fate had been so cruel. What if I had waited a little longer by the cactus? What if my first brother was not born? But these what ifs, I knew, were fruitless, and my time was running out. I held onto my white woolly hat, the only piece of my mother I had left, and said my last words.

“I’m sorry mother.”

family tree - http://lineage.onehouronelife.com/serve … id=4953731

my mum's last words are so sad

(first brother is Omar Rabbit - forgot his name while writing and cba to change it)