Chapter Text
Rabbits are not to be trusted, so says the superstitious and God fearing people. They are loyal to none but themselves. Pretty and soft but with sharp claws to burrow deep into the ground. Their long ears made to listen to the whispers of the root of evil in their burrows. Some say that is why rabbits dig so deep below, and when they emerge from their little holes in the ground. They spread their wickedness wherever they go.
His feet would be turning blue soon if he didn't find some shelter for the night. The rabbit thief shuddered and braced himself as the icy wind threatened to knock him off the steep mountain path.
He hadn't meant to scale the mountain in a snow storm, but he didn't fancy another night sleeping high up in the trees. Hardly getting any rest as he didn't like heights, with his ears perked all night listening for the sound of scouts and bounty hunters on his tail.
He couldn't risk another night in the woodlands, he had to get to the mountains and make it to the pass. There he had heard of a small village, who unlike the cities he’d been in thus far were full of free folk who did not adhere to the laws of lowlands.
There was a slim chance he would make it that same evening, with the clouds only getting heavier as the snow continued to build up around him.
Yet he still persisted. If he could find a nice burrow in one of the cliff sides, he could hope for a little block against the wind and he would be fine for the night.
He gritted his teeth with a bitter smile. All this pain was a heavy price to pay for being the most notorious lone thief in these lands.
An inked portrait of him was plastered everywhere for miles, asking a hefty Ransome and promising his most certain hanging if he was caught.
Not that his picture was hardly needed, the story of a thieving and traitorous purple rabbit with yellow eyes had started to become a folk tale parents told their children. He would be flattered to become such a legend if it hadn't meant his way of life getting upended!
Nowhere in the cities was he safe, no matter how large or sprawling. He had to escape to the mountains for a while. Until the people of these dreadful, hateful towns grew comfortable in his absence, that they forgot his name and face.
And so the rabbit, with his long legs, wrapped in meager dressings and layers braced himself against the biting winds and continued his pilgrimage up the mountain.
All this grey and white surrounding him, his eyes burned as he leered ahead, and recognized the bright orange and gold of a fire light up ahead.
He seized up, had the bounty hunters caught up to him? Was this where he would be caught?
When so close to escape!
He willed his legs to move, but after hours of walking in the harsh conditions, on top of days of running nonstop with no rest. His limbs ignored him, going stiff and heavy like wood.
“You're quite a bit a way off the path Rabbit!” an older feminine voice called out to him from behind a heavy black cloak. In their grasps was a swinging lantern. “If it hadn't been for so much of that brilliant violet fur being exposed I wouldn't have seen you!”.
The woman grows nearer, and the shadows of her cloak become illuminated, and he can make out a sharp reptilian face. A crocodile? This far north?...
“A-am I close to the pass? To the village” he cursed the tremors in his voice, relieved it was not a bounty hunter but no less comforted as he felt the beginnings of frost bite in his extremities.
“Not nearly close enough for you to make it without losing those long legs of yours!”, The woman haggles closer.
“My my…aren't you a handsome one”, and he thinks he hears her chuckle in a way that only old women who know something you don't do. His ears were quite frozen in place, ice growing on the tips as he shivered.
“Come with me rabbit, my travel cart is not far, I will give you a ride to the village if you tell me why your little foolish self thought it wise to come all this way in this storm!”
With his choices being risking frostbite and death or possibly being indebted to the old woman, he begrudgingly followed. He had a little gold on him that he could toss her way if she implied so…
The crocodile offered a heavy strong arm for him to lean on, helping his balance as he stumbled in the deep snow towards her cart, which was pulled by the strangest looking beasts he’d ever seen. She helped him climb aboard, and they took off through the storm, and back up the mountain climb.
“You’re one lucky hare you know. A lot of folks much more unfortunate but no less stupid than you have died on that path”, he gives a tight grin at the old woman before taking the offered mug she’s handing him.
The instant warmth it brings his aching paws is enough to make him sigh out loud. He breaths in the smells of spices and something earthy he can't quite place. He isn't familiar with whatever kind of brew this is, but he drinks deeply and a little trickles from the corners of his mouth.
Wiping his face with the warm wooly cloak he’s been given, he then speaks, “Well I didn't expect a snowstorm so early in the fall”
The old crocodile hums, "The mountains are not like the lowlands. The snows start in mid fall and last till late spring, you should know that as a winter hare”, the woman wags a clawed finger at him with an amused toothy grin.
“...Not a winter hare, I was born in the summer” He grumbled lightly and continued to sip his tea. Figures a woman from this isolated town would have such outdated beliefs. Such as that rabbits are servants of evil, or that the color of their pelts was a marker on what time of the year they were born.
The woman goes quiet before whispering, “....A purple rabbit born in the summer…imagine that”, she rested her long face on her hand as she watched the rabbit nurse his cup of tea.
She had brought him back to her own home that night. After they had made it to the village there were no inns that would take him so late in the evening and given his condition. The crocodile woman had practically forced him out of his rags and into heavy winter fabrics, wrapping him up in a cocoon of blankets near her lit fire.
Despite it all, he still felt a chill from the tips of his ears down to his toes.
“Well I can't imagine a crocodile living in the mountains…aren't you folk fond of warmer hot climates”, he pointed out.
“Oh yes, but we don't always end up where we ought to be, don't you agree Mr. Rabbit”, she fondly taps her shiny black claws on the table.
He had kept his story brief, practiced. He had learned since he was small that all the best lies had some truths sprinkled in.
He was the lone survivor of a tragedy that took his whole family, he was poor with nothing but a little gold from the things he sold after his family's death and he was looking for a new place to settle that was far away from the lordships and tyranny that rotted the cities from the inside out.
“Well, after all that tragedy. I hope you find what you're looking for in our little village” the crocodile hummed and went to pour him more tea.
“Oh I couldn't" he waved his hands, his belly already feeling full from how much he’d already drank.
“I insist, your insides are just as prone to freezing as your fingers and toes. Drink Mr. Rabbit and then I’ll tell you a little about myself”, the reptile sets the kettle back down on the table after refilling his mug nearly to the brim.
Obligated (because he knows if he were forced back into the cold from insulting her, he’d meet a fate worse than just drinking a little too much tea) he continues to drink, though with much smaller sips and a gritted smile at the reptile woman. He only had to entertain her for the night; she'd been kind and otherwise oblivious so far and was the only thing standing between him and cold at the present.
“I had three sons, my husband died a few years ago…a heart attack took him right in my arms...”, She spoke wistfully, looking away towards her fireplace. Where there hung a heavy wreath with shiny scales and onyx claws similar to her own woven in.
“I'm sorry for your loss…are your sons…?”, he asked, a little uncomfortable to witness someone else's grief.
“All gone as well…captured by those city folk you spoke of. The rotten ones who don't understand the things free folk like us do to get by…they hung them all right in front of me you know. I cut their bodies down, and made sure they were buried…”.
He swallowed uncomfortably, “that is…unimaginably cruel miss”.
“Mm…I’ve grieved enough for ten lifetimes” she messed with her cup, and they fell into an uncomfortable silence, as the fire crackled behind them.
“Well, you know all about me…I'm no stranger to grief either” except he had lost more than his family, and not by tragedy or misfortune. He had left for dead the people he was supposed to cherish and now he didn't dare think of them, let alone grieve they deserved.
“Yes…yes…but still, we go on despite it all. Don't we Mr. Rabbit? I find things that make me happy. I still have hope after all this time, and it reminds me of how grateful I am to be watched over by the gods”.
He isn't familiar with the gods of the mountain folk, only raised to acknowledge the old gods of the wildwoods.
Regardless he answered, "Yes…”, staring down into his mug, not wanting to meet the woman's milky gaze, for fear she might perceive the lies and guilt behind his own.
“They brought me hope this evening…seeing you practically wilting in the snow”, he looks up immediately to meet her gaze and ask what she meant by that.
However, when he lifted his head, he had started to feel funny. Not in a ticklish way but in a way where time seemed to slow and his head became much less aware than he was comfortable with. A tiredness that extended beyond his aching limbs was dragging him down.
“I-I'm sorry?” he asked, suddenly feeling weak under her heavy eyes. “I-I think I'm growing tired” he tries to set the mug down, and in his clumsy hold it spills all over the table, he goes to leap back out of his seat. However the crocodile has grabbed ahold of his wrist, and her strong grip keeps him right there at the table.
He feels his heart begin to race, and he realizes that during their whole conversation, the crocodile woman had not taken a single sip of her own mug, “W-what was in that tea” he snaps, anger rising.
He’s been tricked! but for what!? Did she know he’d been lying and knew who he was?? Was she going to turn him in for the reward??
He thrashed against her tight grip, her eyes had a sad mist about them as she watched him struggle. His attempts were futile, as his body grew heavier and heavier and his limbs harder to control.
“I'm very sorry my dear…but you are such a pretty thing, a winter-colored rabbit born in the summertime. You are our hope for this winter, so that we may thrive to see our own glorious summer.” she croaks out, giving him a painful smile. He wants to curse her, to strike her in the face or give her a good powerful kick in the gut with his legs, but he is weak, falling in her arms.
Right as he goes completely under, succumbing to darkness, he hears her begin to whisper what sounds like a prayer.
He comes to with a heavy groan, his body feeling no less heavy then when he was stuck in the cold. What he was laid upon felt hard and unpleasant beneath him, he lolled his head to the side and found it to be a large stone table.
He was no longer in the crocodile lady's quaint little home, but some type of cellar with windowless walls made of stone and mud.
The same crocodile lady that had saved him from the snows was kneeling before him, reciting something in an old language he could only make a few words of. Something winter…old gods…pleasing… his head felt stuffed with cotton as he tried to understand it.
He slurred out a few words in protest, tongue feeling thick in his mouth, “W-what did you do to me?”
The crocodile says nothing and he goes to lift himself from the stone table and finds that he cannot. Ropes have been woven around each of his limbs and his arms and legs have all been pulled taught at the four corners of the table.
Along the walls are ancient looking tapestries, with winter flower arrangements decorating the space. He wheezes as he realizes that he himself is wearing a crown made of holly leaves and snowdrops.
He isn't bound to just a table, it's an altar.
“W-what's happen’in!?” he feels his heart begin to race, panic setting in once more as his vision clears up to actually make out more of his surroundings.
The crocodile is not alone, amongst her are others, a various assortment of creatures. All dressed in heavy winter cloaks, their faces barely shown through the shadows of their hoods.
“We offer this creature, gifted to us by the fates of the wind and his divine plan to our goddess-” he blanks out the old woman's words. Unable to concentrate on anything more than his own panic as the reptile and the others behind her begin to chant in the common tongue. Creating a haunting, and animalistic echo in the space they all occupy.
“W-wait stop!-” before he can beg or let out a scream, his mouth is silenced by a thick cloth being crammed into it by another cloaked figure.
“My Lady, I thought you gave him plenty of the white willow bark tea to keep him calm?” a much younger, feminine voice called, and he looked frantically and furiously between them.
“I gave him as much as he would willingly drink” the crocodile approached him, as he thrashed in his binds. Chest heaving as he glared up at her and began hissing and spitting all the fury his weak limbs could muster.
“Lila … hold his head steady for me” she commanded softly to the other cloaked figure that had gagged him.
The girl nodded and he furiously shook his head as she grabbed his face and forced his head back to the altar and extended his neck. Now he was completely restrained, he screamed muffled protests as the old crocodile woman approached the table.
She brought forth her hand, and revealed her very long, sharp black claws that made him seize up in fear.
“I did tell you I was sorry dear…I tried to make this as painless as possible for you”, and the crocodile does seem saddened by this, whispering to him gently even as she approached him with the promise of most certain pain and death.
This is it, this was his death. He trembled hard atop of the cold of the stone table and watched helplessly as that deadly claw grew closer
This was not how he was supposed to die! He struggled against the binds, shaking his head. He was meant to go on, to live longer than this, to keep running as long as he could!
He was not supposed to be getting sacrificed by these superstitiously ignorant lunatics!
He can hardly breathe as he's pulled tighter against the stone, “Just let it happen sweet bunny, it’ll all be over, and our goddess will be most pleased” that claw reaches for his neck and in despair he clenches his eyes shut right as it rakes itself over the smooth column of his neck.
It cuts like white fire, and he chokes on his own screams with the worst pain that he's ever felt.
The worshippers surrounding him have fallen to their knees and begun to pray, murmuring that old tongue he couldn't understand the half of.
Darkness bleeds into his vision, and he feels the warmth of his own blood dribbling down his chest against the cold of the stone.