The Rabbit Dies Pt. 03

"Bless me with the leaf off of the tree

On it I see the freedom reign

We are falling. The light is calling,

Tears inside me calm me down," Annette sings.

The words and the notes warble and fly through the leaves and I can't help but admit she is good. She is incredibly good, and I shouldn't be surprised. Annette's work with the endless path does the soul good and I do not feel tired. There is nothing in the way of the next step, no wall, no hill, no gripping, sucking mud to bog down the movement from one moment to the next. It's all just so easy.

I don't know if I like it.

Certainly, easier than alone. And the body is in good shape, if a little stiff and tight. But slowly, the knitted bone and whole muscle find themselves back to where they were, where they were supposed to be. The mind though, the mind cannot stay still. It has the path in front of it and it needs to know where it leads. The body does not. It just keeps walking, keeps pushing forward, and keeps glancing over to Annette's chest and finding some dark satisfaction in the urge to rip off her clothes and take her to the earth. That can at least wait until we stop for the night. Maybe get a fire going beforehand.

Not that it is quite cold enough for a real fire. And we have each other to keep warm. It's odd, really. The lasting presence of someone by my side. A morning that was the same as the night before, the same body that will sleep next to me when night falls. My foot snags on a ditch and I almost stumble. The song stops and the forest goes silent.

"You okay, Cottontail," Annette snickers, "Hate for you to break something again."

"Well now we know how to make me better," I say, "And I think you like making me better."

"You're tempting me to actively start hurting you."

I smile and smother my own chuckle as she trips in the same damn spot.

"Shame we have no real way to make you better if you get hurt," I say. She smiles and I am amazed at how white her teeth can be. The black skin, blacker than pitch, make them look blinding and I can't look away. Even when the smile is tinged with playful anger at the fact that the world decided to slight her too.

"Same way as anyone else. Bed rest and being waited on hand and foot. And since you're the closest living thing to me, I guess that makes you de facto nurse maid."

I roll my eyes and she sings again, strumming that lyre, or lute, or I'm not even sure. It's not quite any of those things, neck a little too long, and I think it has too many strings. But it's good. That and her voice just slowly eke out the minutes to hours to days on the trail.

Simple, all so simple really. Sleep when tired. Eat when hungry. Lay together when the urge gets too strong, and she refuses to stop shaking her hips in that terrible way when she walks.

Third day, or maybe fourth, and we finally come to a river. Annette grins at me, wide and playful and immediately starts stripping down. I don't stop her. I have no intention of ever stopping that particular dance, but I do find myself joining her before I realize what I am doing, shedding leather and cotton, and almost running full tilt into the water. I beat her there, wading up to my waist before sinking to my back and just drifting under the sun. The water is cold and brisk and the wind whipping across the surface sends an exhilarating thrill over my skin. And I love it. I love the cold kiss of water, fanning my hair and letting me drift.

I'm happy. I'm oddly happy. The tense and the stress and the dull tight ache all take the current down river and I do not care to go fishing for them. Let them drift down to the ocean, let it all drift down the ocean, where some great leviathan of gaping maw and glinting teeth swallow everything terrible and evil and drag it down to the darkest depths the world can offer. I let an ugly sigh come from my chest and Annette snickers again.

"Feeling good Cottontail," she asks. The current shifts and swirls around me as she approaches and the heat from her skin breaks through the cold water.

"Amazing. Been forever since I've been swimming," I sigh.

Her hand crosses my stomach and I shiver, not quite just from the cold.

"You're playing a dangerous game."

"I am aware. Do you want me to stop?"

My hand wanders from the water and moves to her cheek. Her eyes are so green, so bright, just like the lips. I go to the back of her neck and she brings her lips to mine. She tastes like river. She tastes like rock and grass and soft breeze and hummed songs carried on wind and wave and I do not want to let her go. But I do and find her blushing, her body making heat to boil the water.

"Tonight," I say, and an odd pride comes with her disappointment that I cannot drag the sun down and smother it in slumber. She tentatively drives a hand lower, and the knot makes a very, very, very good case for me that I should retract that word immediately. I am enjoying the river too much, the soft kiss of ice water on soreness so engrained into my body that I almost forgotten they even existed.

"Still tonight."

She splashes me and I yelp as the cold water tries to go up my nose. I splash her back, kicking the full might of the river against her. She snickers and yelps and splashes me again.

We play. I have not used that word in years. Play. Carefree. Innocent. Although, I watch her chest jiggle and the curve of her torso as she bends and dives in every way but the innocent one. Devour, I want to devour her. She laughs and I laugh and come up sputtering after an unforeseen dive sends water into my lungs. My scars and my aches and all of the terrible things in my body don't seem so bad.

---

We haven't moved from the riverbank for the night. After scaring all the fish away, we lured them back with the unfortunate end fate of being skewered over a fire. It dries our hair too, imparts some of the lost heat to the grand river that takes and takes and takes from us all. And it gives some to the fish that just flakes away. Clear river water and clean stones and the air smells so good, fresh grass and coming dew.

We finish the meal and Annette comes to sit next to me, the heat from her core filtering through her skin and suffusing the air with her scent. She still smells like river and stone. Something sour though, lemons or limes, trickles through the air. She leans her head on my shoulder and the instinct takes over. I put my arm around her shoulder and hold her tight.

I almost don't want where this will end. I like this. This moment, the flickering dance of fire, the stars overhead and a body that is calmly sharing the moment with me, that's more than enough. The knot says otherwise, its tightening grip threatening to choke me if I do not loosen it, but I don't want to listen to it.

She hums into me, sweet nothing harmony of her body. Channeling something in the stars, something in the moon, resonating within me. It unravels the earth into twine, snaking up my arms, snaking up my thighs and joining the braided knot in my core.

"You smell like grass," she hums into my shoulder. And she kisses me, right on the bone. The lingering touch of her lips is a lightning bolt frozen in my pores. Every little twitch, every little movement she doesn't even realize she takes, I know it. I know all of them.

"I do. Wonder why. It's not like I've been traveling outside for the better part of a week now," I say. The fire cracks and the logs settle into some new configuration, more suited to their collapse.

"No. Well, yeah, you do smell traily, but you smell like grass. New grass. Spring grass. What do I smell like?"

"Hellion. You smell like a hellion."

"Do hellion's smell good?"

"Some of them probably don't. You smell good though. Kind of like a river."

"Yeah. No idea where that's coming from."

She nuzzles into the nape of my neck and the cord finds another notch to break inside of me. My hand dips to the swell of her hips and she hums again. The noise, the wonderful song, resonates in my and she pulls my lips to her and I breathe her in.

I can't get her clothes off fast enough. I tear and rip and shred the cloth and she yelps and squirms in playful fright tinged with snickering laughter. She does the same to me, using my seams to expose me again to the night air. Not quite as cold as the water, not quite as biting and nipping, just a general cold that slowly fades and relents to the heat of our bodies.

She is soft, so soft on my lips, and the hungry knot lets me savor the soft. No rushed need to make her squeal, just tender moans of my name to the stars. Tender touches against her chest, against her stomach against her thighs. She does not twitch and spasm like she wants to. She arches and folds and bends, letting my hands, my lips turn with her body, finding new places to caress. And Annette does the same to me, tracing the lines of hard muscle on my back, my stomach, my shoulders, and I delight at the touch. Electricity and flame and all things exciting enter my body through her fingers and I find the rhythm she sets. It's the one thing she gets to control for the night, the one thing she gets to set and make within me.

It's always a good song she makes. I'm not surprised. I can't be surprised, really. It's what she does. It's what she channels and makes with the world, the force, and the ripple behind her body that the stars and the trees and the slightest facets given to her.

I do not take her. I do not dive and devour and feast on her wet dripping need. It's slow, the burn and the hunger I take from her. I break from her lips and start trailing down, lingering at her chest. And it's still amusing the way the green breaks through her skin wherever it pleases. Her nipples are that same green as her lips, her fingers, leaf green and almost blending into black. But they respond the same, the same as they always do to a lingering tongue and a soft kiss. And I get to see the flutter of her breath and her heartbeat shake her flesh. Her stomach gets the same attention the same soft ministrations for her body and she whines with need. She whines to the heavens that the tempo she set was too slow for her and her body. I chuckle into her skin as her hands find the top of my head and desperately try to push me down.

I allow it. But I skip right over where she wants to go and end up on her thighs.

"You absolute bitch," she moans. I laugh again as her legs try to work me up. And I let them carry me right to her stomach again. She squeezes my back with her thighs, and I am finally forced to do the terrible thing that no one really wants.

She is hot, so hot, the heat from her core spilling out and she tremors from my tongue. I watch her eyes. I watch them widen and sharpen and flutter and squeeze shut so tight I am afraid something might tighter and burst and pop from within.

"What the hell are you doing down there," she screams to the sky. He back arches again as I twirl my tongue and lick and suck at her, and she breaks into me. The earth takes her form, and she simply breaks as the first massive tight knot breaks within her. I trace the outline in her core, rock hard, and watch it shatter against her quakes. Tight squeaks that almost refuse to leave her throat, deep groans that shake the leaves and all the while the song she plays with her body sends maddening swirls of color through my vision.

Red and blue and green and yellow and rainbows without names dance and filter into my mind from the song of ecstasy. It dances and plays with my thoughts, taking control of my tongue and my lips, guiding them to her. And I fight it. I fight the song and it just keeps getting louder. The notes are baked into the taste, the scent of her and I want to thrash the instrument to pieces. Dash them to pieces and broken wires. Shatter the metal and bend the tune to a hymn of drum beat carnality. My hands find their way to her hips and dig into her flesh like a bear trap.

Her climax starts rumbling through her, deep in her stomach. The knot has broken and the failing strands whip at her insides like a ball and chain. It tears into her. The muscles clench and tighten and pull apart with the strands as the quaking tremors travel through her body and I tease them out into a weaving loom tapestry. The color takes shape, and it is green and pale and golden in the milk light moon shine. The release flows down my chin and stains my chest and I admire the absolute flushed wreck Annette has become as she spasms and gasps in the grass by the fireside.

And then she starts snickering. Her entire body keeps shaking and trembling as her fit rolls over to her side. Clutching her stomach, tears in her eyes, she does not stop. She cannot stop. Even in the complete lack of control she has, there is still music.

"You know," she gasps, "I think this is really, really, really unfair."

I lay back and gaze up at the stars. Crescent moon tonight, waning if I remember correctly. Just a sliver, but still bright and shining.

"You're supposed to ask how it's unfair."

"You're going to tell me regardless."

"I mean, yeah. But you could play along. It's unfair because I can't do that to you. No way in hell can I ever just do that. And you touch me and it's like my mind is sent to the moon. You'll never know. And now you're smiling. Why are you smiling?"

"Because you're the first goddamn person to say something like that. It's always praise."

"I can do that too. Your tits are phenomenal. And your abs. I like those. I like those a lot. And the arms that could probably fell a tree if you just pushed it a little. I like them when they hug me."

I pull myself up alongside her and do as she like. The knot is odd in my stomach, so odd. Tight but not tight. Welcoming the release from another as a surrogate for its own frayed undoing. Not quite the same, sure, but allowed. And I still get the warm body pressed into my own, the slot of her spine against my stomach. All of that is dampened, though, because I know one of my arms will fall asleep before midnight.

---

I am right. My arm is numb and tingly and terrible pins and needles racing through the skin and I can't move it because that would make up Annette. That is a terrible thing to do. I would not want to be woken up in the middle of the night. So, Annette shall keep sleeping, keep dreaming as the fire's embers slowly fade and turn to dust. I just have to manage with a terrible feeling in my arm that doesn't quite feel right, and I want it to stop. I sigh and shift and my hackles stiffen and bristle when the scent of smoke hits me.

"I know a little trick," says Warren, "Dig a hole for your arm under her head. Takes the pressure off and it won't fall asleep like that."

He sits on the other side of the dying fire, lingering in the deep shadow of the night, sprawled over the roots. He still looks disheveled, right out of the brothel and still drunk on cheap wine and the scent of perfume cloying the nostrils. But he always smells like smoke and the whisp in his hand trails to the leaves. I brush a golden leaf from my hair.

"Before you say anything," he says, "Can't leave even if I wanted to. And I do want to. Well kind of. Not really. For once I'm okay with being here. You've picked a good spot, Claire. Ready access to fresh water. Good plant coverage. Earth's nice and soft. Maybe a little too far from any berries but no place is perfect. If you're interested, other side of the river, and follow the bank up for about half a league. Black berries, but not quite ripe yet.

I say nothing but hold her tighter. She sighs and shifts into me, murmuring some sweet song that has no meaning.

"I'm not here to take her from you. Not what I do. And why would I stop one of my favorites from finally finding someone?"

"What do you want?"

He brings his pipe to his lips and takes a deep

"Another warning. Wait. Wrong word. Premonition? Portent? Omen? No, still not quite right. Something that's going to happen. Not a bad thing, really. You're just going to Goldenrod. Thought you would want to know."

"I'm not going to Goldenrod."

"I mean, you are. Not much that you can do to change that. Just the way it is. And don't worry. It'll be fine. And besides, there's something I want you do to for me."

"Is it something that I can refuse?"

"You can always refuse. I have exactly as much power as you give me. There are consequences for refusing, but that's fine. There are consequences for everything. But it's simple really. All I want is a key. And I want you to have it. You just have to pick it up."

"I don't want to."

"And I don't want to ask you to."

He sighs again and lets out a puff of smoke into the air. No tricks, no shapes, just a cloud that drifts into the stars and stays there for a good long while. He shifts a little, on his hollow, taking one leg long and taking it over the other, leaning back into the tree, moving down a little so his neck isn't at the worst possible angle.

"I have less control than you think, Claire. But this is something I'm actually pulling the strings on. I just need you to go to Goldenrod and get a key. I'm even giving you and your friend some help along the way."

"But there's something after that."

"There's always an after. Always another step. And you are clear to refuse that one too."

"I'll do it. I'll do it if it means I can go back to sleep."

He doesn't smile. He just takes another long take from the pipe, so long and deep he might burst. The ears hidden under his terrible hat flutter and he lets the breath go.

"Thank you," he says in a voice it could slip through the eye of a needle. I almost don't catch it.

"I'm happy for you," he says to the night air, "I really am. Kept trying with Amaru, mainly because I always had more pull with him. And he wouldn't push you. I like him too. One of the better ones really."

"He's alright." My arm is still numb and tingling and terribly sore. Going to spend most of tomorrow rolling it to get all of the kinks out.

"He's good and you know it. But she's good too. And I'll talk to Treblex, see if she can't nudge some things in her, just for you."

"I'd prefer if you didn't."

He chuckles again and I have to admit that he does have a nice laugh. Deep and bass, almost like the wind before a thunderstorm.

"And that's why. That's why I actually take my time to talk with you. For the record, Amaru doesn't know what's coming his way. He'll like it, I'm sure. But he doesn't get the heads up."

Annette shifts and turns and rolls away from me, freeing my arm. I take my chance at terrible freedom and sit up. Smoke, I smell of smoke and I smell smoke and I am in a fire in front of him. Warren doesn't look at me. He just looks to the sky, the crescent moon, the stars, and the lingering gaps.

"Are you holding up alright," I ask. An odd thing to ask a god, but he doesn't seem to mind.

"Eh, more or less. Hanging in there. Doing my thing. Tired, though. Always tired. But it's fine. It's the gig. How about you?"

"Shoulder's a little hurt, but that's just the job. My body's tired. My arms are tired. The rest of me is tired, and you're not quite helping."

"I guarantee that you'll have a good rest. Least I can do, Claire. I'll be in touch. Goldenrod. Key. And dig that hole for your arm."

The thin whisps of smoke from the embers thicken and coil together. Warren breathes deep again from the pipe in his hand. My eyes sting and my throat chokes and it all goes beautifully black once again.

---

Warren is a man of his world, at least. The hole works and my arm is not on pins and needles despite the full weight of Annette cuddling in it and I feel simply amazing with the warmth of her body. She is close, so close, pressing every inch of her skin into mine. I make a good pillow and a good blanket apparently.

Unfortunately, I have to shake her awake and it takes her several moments to remember where she is, who she is, what she is. Her horn once again comes dangerously close to taking an eye out. I think I should broach the topic of having it blunted, at least for my safety. After her brief existential confusion, she has to grapple with the complete lack of desire to get up. If anything, there is a much better world waiting for her in my arms. She's not wrong. It's a nice existence, I must admit.