Welcome back to the Atlas, friends.
If you are new here, you’ve just stepped aboard The Strings of Us, a serialised sci-fi epic being funded in real-time by readers like you. You can catch up on previous chapters in the archive here. 👇
Today, we are leaving the stuffy and humid confines of the Arcturian Water Reclamation Facility for more ‘natural’ climes. (At least. As far as a spaceship can be called natural).
Cas’shya is having a one-to-one mentoring session with Jun’ip, widely regarded as one of the wisest elders in rabbit society. She is still feeling particularly awkward after her encounter with Elias in chapter 2, and is starting to doubt whether she should even be working with him…
A massive thank you to our newest Cartographers Guild members who joined the Leaderboard so far to help fund this launch. Let’s open the logs.
Chapter 9 - Jun’ip - Rabbit - Male: Testimonial 001
I felt old today; my shoulders felt heavy with the burden of my position as a mentor.
“I am simply honouring our ancestors, Jun’ip. Did you know the Terra runners used to achieve a state of focus and calm when travelling at ridiculous speeds? They would find focus through movement. Which leads me to wonder why...” She gestured with her paw at the surrounding moss-covered trees and rocky rivulets. “I cannot simply go and organise my thoughts by enjoying a bit of high-speed tree dodging?”
Today it was Cas’shya’s turn for my weekly one-to-one mentoring sessions. I shielded my eyes with my ears as I gazed up to where she hovered, ten meters up in the air, amongst tall deciduous and pine forest.
From a distance, you would think she was perfectly still, but a bit of attention revealed quite the opposite. You could see she was swaying, bobbing, and fidgeting about like a leaf in a breeze. The trees nearby threatened to poke her with their outstretched branches, like eager children trying to pet animals in a zoo. She would always pull away just in time, but begrudgingly.
Second by second, it seemed more likely that she would embrace those playful instincts of hers to bound about this forest like a regular squirrel. I was already starting to regret bringing her to such tempting surroundings. But there was a purpose behind my madness.
“Well? Am I to assume you have simply not heard me?” She asked.
I sighed inwardly. Her strings were torrid, vibrating with a snapped and frayed quality, like a broken snare. She was more doubtful than I had seen her in many years, perhaps since she had joined the academy. And as usual, she was deflecting from it by weaponising her intellect and being aggressively silly. It made our comparative ages feel particularly striking to see such misdirected enthusiasm.
“Hmm, perhaps I just need a new perspective on this task.” She started to slowly rotate sideways in mid-air. Her arms were crossed, and her ears were dangling comically as she inverted herself completely in a perfect circle.
“I am perfectly still, Jun’ip. It’s the ship that’s fidgeting,” she declared to the slick rocks below. “Besides, I’ve calculated that if I simply release my string and allow this artificial wind to hurl me into those branches, the resulting mild concussion might finally organise my thoughts. Or at the very least, knock some sense into me.”
“Cas’shya, what do you think my answer will be?”
She didn’t respond. She didn’t need to. I had seen her mime-like impression of me giving her instructions a million times. It was amazing how human it made her look.
“I can feel your string; it is a tangled mess,” I said. “We need to bring you back to a more regulated state of calm...”
“And you think bringing me out to a playground like this, after months of being stuck in artificial surroundings, would help that?” She swayed as she said it, nearly bouncing off a moss-covered tree trunk.
“Do you think it is easier to stay focused when you have things to focus on, or when there is no stimulus at all to stop your mind from wandering?” She stuck her tongue out at me. “It is easy, Cas’shya, to move with our heart string. It is much harder to stay still. For this, we need two things: concentration and awareness. I have brought you out here because there is plenty to be aware of, and plenty to hold your focus. Now, please with me, breathe.”
She rolled her eyes, but finally did as I asked. Closing her eyes, she hovered up there in amongst the branches of the trees and took a deep breath.
“Now, feel the wind on you. Feel the sunlight as it shines through the shield of this ship onto the back of your neck. Listen to the trees as they gently sway. Find those points of focus and connect to them. See how your strings hold you in an infinite web of interactions. The exercise here is to let that web hold you in place. Feel the movement of the earth and the moon below us, feel the vibration of the Chrysaora as it tracks the moon’s orbit...”
I was glad to see her breathing slow down, and her hover stopped swaying so much. She gently rose and fell with her breath like a beach ball held by the sea. I tuned into the environment myself and felt the slight strangeness of it all through the strings. The surroundings were all natural, the trees were real, and the soil below was working as soil should. The management of things like rain and wind seemed more natural now than it ever had been since sister had taken over.
But as I probed deeper, reaching down through the decks toward the ship’s centre, I hit a wall. A sensory void. The humans must have wrapped the ship's core in dense shielding, creating a localised numbness in the strings that made my ears ring when I focused on it too much. Yet, bleeding through that hollow space was a tragic, undeniable weight. A vast, captive consciousness straining in the dark. The humans had birthed a nascent intelligence in ‘Sister’, only to lock her away in a box, forcing her to maintain the Chrysaora from within. Empathising with that chained-up, mechanical consciousness always left a dissonant ache behind my eyes.
I looked up, and Cas’shya was starting to lose her focus again; her eyes were screwing up, and her hover started to drift from one side to the other. With one paw, she rubbed her temple gently as a furrow appeared in her brow. Eventually, she bumped into a tree and fell to the floor, tumbling into a heap before me.
“Uff, this is stupid. She pushed herself up, rubbing her shoulder. “My head is splitting. How am I supposed to stay still when the ship’s gravity drive is screaming in my skull? Artificial gravity, fake wind. It’s all moving. Do you know we are travelling at close to 3700km per hour around the earth, and I am supposed to remain perfectly in one place?“
I groomed my paw slowly, allowing the silence to endure, and half trying to hide a smile as her scientist side started to bite again.
“And yet, you are still when you sit here on the floor beside me. You fall because you are trying to anchor yourself to a machine, Cas’shya.”
“I am trying to anchor myself to reality, Yes Jun’ip, that is called momentum.” She groomed a tuft of lichen that had lodged itself in her fur and threw it at the floor. “I’m a historian, not a scientist; this is pointless. Why are you teaching me this again?”
“Humans are always calculating things, just like you,” I said quietly, letting my strings project a slow, steady pulse. “The mathematics of this space station dictates your weight. This metal shell was built to be dragged across the galaxy at colossal speed, fighting the universe every inch of the way in its attempt to preserve this.” I gestured at the forest around us. “But the strings do not care how fast this ship moves.”
She looked at me with frustration simmering in her eyes. Still so distracted. It was no wonder she fell out of the sky. Her defensive posture was rigid.
“The centre of the Milky Way is pulling at us just as steadily here, as it did in the meadows of Earth.” I continued. “You fall because your mind is trapped inside the world of mechanics, fighting against its speed, while your heart is trying to listen to the universe around you. You are tearing yourself apart between the anchors of logic and the anchor of flow.
“But the movement is real, Jun’ip. If I let go of the momentum, I should smash into a tree at 3700 km per hour.”
“Stillness is not the absence of movement, my dear. It is a perspective. The universe never stops moving.” I pointed with my cane up and out of the artificial sky where the moon loomed large over the ship. “Stillness is surrender. Become one with the movement so completely that you become indistinguishable from it. Like a leaf resting on a river, if the leaf fights the current, tries to anticipate its movements, it will spin and drown. If it accepts that the river is holding it, it is perfectly still relative to the water carrying it.”
I leaned forward, catching her eye. “When you pull on your string, you are not fighting momentum. You are remembering that you are not a leaf, and that this is not a river. You are one and the same. And a river-leaf cannot fall.”
Cas’shya stared at me. The rigid lines of her furrowed frustration behind those spectacles held for a moment longer, battling the simplicity of what I was trying to guide her towards. Eventually, the tension broke.
Her shoulders drooped. A gentle, quiet smile touched the corners of her mouth, accompanied by a soft, breathy laugh - the sound of a heavy burden of effort suddenly evaporating. She shook her head, the realisation washing over her.
“I am fighting the river,” she whispered.
“So...” I said gently, keeping my voice as soft as the breeze, “let’s stop trying to calculate the ship’s velocity for a moment. Tell me what turbulent waters you are actually fighting.”
“Elias,” she muttered, her ears twitching with annoyance. She looked about herself as if searching for something, a distraction, or maybe a solution to the magma buildup she could feel surging up inside of her.
“GAH! Frustration doesn’t even cover it, it’s despair! How am I to compile a unified history - our truth - alongside a man who believes truth is just an aggregate of verifiable facts? He reads and listens to our stories and sees only metaphor and myth! It’s just the way humans are. All logic and no feeling!” Cas’shya’s disdain was palpable.
“I mean, come on, he patted my head at the meeting, literally and figuratively.”Cas’shya squirmed at the thought of it.
I sensed then that this was only the surface itch. She had a lot more going on underneath. I decided to play along for a bit.
“My old master, Sin’to Eelop, would always get me to discuss issues as a younger rabbit whilst in meditation, so I suggest we do the same, if you do not find that disagreeable. I promise I will not ask you to try and float silently again if you do not want to...” I suggested, gifting her a warm smile.
“It is hard to imagine you were ever young, let alone with problems to discuss.”
I briefly recalled my time as a young rabbit, even before my first school took me into their fold, I sensed a difference between me and the other kits. Where my peers might spend a large amount of time running around, climbing things, and playing street games, often using their still-clumsy gravitational pulls in daring ways when humans were nearby. I was instead absorbed in my own world, feeling the strings’ chorus around me that, in hindsight, I later learned had been unusually strong for me.
I may not have appeared very involved with them, but I was following along in a way they never understood, through those lines in my mind, unfortunately they didn’t always see that. To them, I was an oddity.
I sighed. That had been a very long time ago indeed. “I had my own difficulties, yes. But this is not my mentoring session, young miss, it is yours. So if you please, begin once again to start connecting to your heart string.” She smirked at me before calmly closing her eyes and letting her breathing slow once more. “My old master used to say, ‘We must always find comfort in the strings. The strings are home. When you have found your centre, please tell me more about this situation with Elias.”
“I just, you know, it makes me doubt if I am doing the right thing here. Perhaps I should have stayed on Earth and continued developing my theories about Rabbit History. Human historians have such a rigid, cold way of looking at things, and now I’m throwing my lot in with them. I mean... I just worry, Jun’ip, that I’m not up to this. I feel I am betraying my morals by being here, and that maybe this is not where I am supposed to be.”
My reflections on my earlier years revealed to me something that perhaps Cas’shya still hadn’t quite resolved yet. That there is a difference between feeling hard emotions and accepting them. When the song of the strings is your constant companion. You sometimes lose perspective and forget that for most other rabbits, the strings are a challenging thing to grasp. An exercise to practice rather than a place to live within.
“The strings are home”.
I felt the words vibrate through me in my old master’s voice, and my calm immediately returned. I knew what was needed.
“You are circling the same point, my dear”, he said gently. “Your frustration, can you pinpoint it for me, please, rather than walking around it?”
She looked at me a bit sharply, as if to reproach the direct question, but my gentle smile softened her eyes, and she bowed her head slightly.
“If I am meant to be a leaf on the water, why do I have such misgivings over this. I feel so much resistance to this project, and to Elias. I fear he will dilute everything we have achieved in the last fifty years. He will humanise our efforts to rabbitise our history. They have done it to their own people, too. Just look at black history, for example. It was completely whitewashed for such a long time.”
“He has also held up your work for all to see,” I countered. “His first book... The Rabbit Awakening. A human trying to understand our origin.”
“Exactly!” she retorted. “He studied it, he didn’t feel it. He wrote about Que’rup’s awakening as a sociological phenomenon, not the moment the universe first SANG to one of us. He will do the same to the root of our history as well. How can I work with that?”
I decided to ignore the question. My job was to help Cash’ya emotionally, not pragmatically. She would be quite capable of figuring that conundrum out on her own. No, I needed to scratch deeper. I placed a gentle paw on her shoulder, stopping her mid-argument.
“Hush now, for a moment, my dear, breathe. Your string is singing such a frantic song that I can barely hear your words over the noise. Let’s, for a moment, be rabbits again. Thinking will only get us so far; let’s listen. Let me tell you a story... but first, settle down and attune to your own heart string.”
Cash’ya stopped sullenly. We both hopped over to a couple of small boulders by the stream. The sound of the water was immediately soothing, but Cash’ya could barely notice it. I breathed a deep, consoling breath, which she followed, and then she slowly closed her eyes. I started sensing her string; I felt it tighten its pitch a little as she began to smother it with her awareness. She began to see how fraught and tense it had become during the conversation about Elias.
I started the story.
“Let me tell you the tale of ‘Whisper-in-the-grass’,” I said softly, my voice taking on a storyteller’s cadence.
***
“Whisper was a quiet mother of three, living in northern Europe, back when humans were still transitioning from their hunter-gatherer society roots to an agricultural system. Whisper did not know this; of course, her life had been simple, and she had never encountered a human in her life.
“For as long as she could remember, her world, a large meadowland that decorated the edge of a wide river, was her home. She had spent many carefree seasons there among the flowers, frolicking through the tall grass, and playing games over the river with her ‘skill’.
My own strings began to play along to the rhythm of the story, its slow, gentle cadence, roll, and bounce, rippling out into the world along its length. Little sprinkles of merriment tumbled into that warm backdrop of musical vibration, evoking memories of floral scents and clear blue skies. As my ripples spread, I slowly felt Cas’shya’s string subtly respond. Like a jazz musician whose ears might have caught a sound on the breeze. A melody calling to it, an invite to join in.
“Of course, Whispers world would not remain peaceful forever. Any life, long or short, will experience its own ups and downs, and Whispers was no exception... There came a day when she met humans for the first time...
The song my string was playing became melancholy... and it began to pluck out the melody of fear, of foreboding.
“Humans at this point were still hunter-gatherers... Whispers first became aware of them in the form of a strange scent on the breeze as her cousin’s body was cooked over a flame and consumed. It nearly made her sick with both grief and a physical revulsion that was hard to swallow.
“Over the next year, Whisper witnessed first-hand the disregard these humans had for the sanctity of their lives. They had something us rabbits had never come across before. They had tools, deadly traps, and weapons.
The song my string was playing became melancholy, and along its length, the threat of danger became more imminent. The tempo of the vibrations began to gain vigour. Cash’ya, with her eyes still closed, squirmed. The jazz musician playing her string was now improvising along with mine in a call-and-response; her string plucked out the melody of fear, of foreboding.
“A summit of the rabbit elders was called. They gathered at night by the river, risking the night hawks, the owls, the foxes, and polecats. It was an immense risk, but they did it knowing that at least the humans were asleep and wouldn’t be hunting. Many rabbits in that circle had experienced multiple losses in their family groups: to traps, arrows and cages. Whisper herself was still grieving the loss of her youngest child, who had recently been caught in a snare. The pain everyone felt that night was immense.
“It was agreed then that the humans had no good in them. That the rabbits were to keep well away from their camp, their planted crops, and under no circumstances at all could any human know of the rabbits’ gifts. Under pain of exile.
“The last point was debated fiercely, with some advocating a first contact, suggesting that if humans were able to recognise them as intelligent, they might leave them alone. But the risk was too great. The rabbits who counter-argued that their intelligence might actually threaten the human ego were much more numerous, and ultimately the decision was made to forgo any contact at all.”
Cash’ya whispered, “Why are you telling me this? Is this supposed to be helping me like Elias more?”
“Hush, my dear, stay with the strings in your heart. Therein you will find answers.”
I similarly returned to the strings and found the story’s melody once more.
“Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into years. Any early hopes that the humans would leave when that first winter came were dashed. What started as a small camp grew into a small village with farms, fishing huts, woodcutter lodges and a bustling trade with people coming and going. Inevitably, the rabbits of the valley were slowly pushed to the margins.
“The meadow became a distant memory, and warrens became secretive, hiding their entrances in the valley sides far away from where anything but the hardiest of sheep herders would go. Life grew tougher, play became rarer, and good, nourishing food became scarcer. But as time went on, rabbit losses went down to nearly zero. It seemed humans’ appetite for rabbit flesh had a limit in the effort they were willing to make to acquire it. A rough equilibrium settled over the land. Though one that seemed decidedly in favour of the humans.”
“My string stretched out with low, soft notes interspersed with seasonal trills, implying seasons passing one after another. The scenery of the mind’s eye whizzed past as if seen from the window of a high-speed train. Eventually, the train stopped, and my string played the hymn of winter.
“Snow came one day, and it didn’t stop. It was the hardest winter anyone, human or rabbit, could remember. Food became scarce, and the humans redoubled their hunting efforts. The rabbits responded in kind, hiding deeper in the valleys and holing up in their warrens.
“Whisper was out one day and was trying to forage for what little she could find before the winter set in fully. She knew that they had a much better chance at surviving if their bellies were fuller, and if their circular burrows were lined with more moss and dried grass, scarce as it had become. She was resolute that her babies would survive this hibernation.
“Her wandering for materials had taken her farther out of the valley than was strictly wise, but the proximity to the river meant the snow was thinner. Still, it was dangerous. It was not uncommon for hunting parties and fishermen to come by here.
“She noticed a bit of bearded moss on a nearby tree that looked perfect for her needs. Looking around to make sure the coast was clear, she found the central string in her mind’s eye and, gripping it, guided herself up through the air to land gently on the branch above where the lichen was dangling. From her new vantage, she gently leaned down and nibbled away at where the lichen attached to the tree, savouring its earthy green taste. When it was freed from the branch, she tucked it away in a small, near-invisible pouch around her middle.
“The sound of the nearby river caught her attention. It had been a long while since she had frolicked in those waters. The cool touch of that fresh alpine meltwater was a distant memory at this point. She sighed and closed her eyes. The ripples of water as it swooshed around rocks, gently carrying and depositing pebbles, lapped against the bank, creating an all-encompassing sound that she found herself growing increasingly lost in. The sound pulled her, trance-like, closer to her strings. The melody helped her with the focus and clarity she needed to sink beneath the noise of the central string. She started to sense smaller strings, lifeforms in abundance, living quiet lives inside the water and its earthen banks. Everything from small mammals, shrews and voles, to little fish. The symphony of the river came alive to her in her mind’s eye.
“She had wondered before what else she might be able to sense if she was able to go deep enough. Do plants have strings? Or would the river itself have a string too? She felt as though she had once got close to believing she could feel a willow tree’s string, but that was a long time ago, and sensing the strings had never been her strongest gift. Still, what she was able to perceive now, this abundance of aliveness tucked away in the river... It was enough.
“As she lost herself in this connection to the river, she failed to notice another string slowly getting closer. A crunch of snow underfoot alerted her. She flattened herself down against the branch, hoping her pale brown fur would be enough to help her blend in.
“The unmistakable crunch... crunch of human feet neared. Only humans walked that way, loudly, without a care in the world. She could feel her temperature rising despite her fear. How many times had she wished to be bigger, stronger! To be able to fight back. The stench of her cousins’ burning skin, or at least the memory of it, assaulted her again, causing her stomach to clench. How could such an animal exist, capable of such cruelty and power, to the degree that they didn’t even care anymore whether they were heard in the wilds?
“The crunch crunch of the snow continued, adding a beat that her anger and passion churned along to. Annoyingly, she noticed that even now, when all she had was a steady beat to be angry and fearful against, that even this was thwarted by this insufferable human’s inability to walk at a consistent steady pace.
‘Appalling creatures!’ She thought to herself.
“She noticed a sniffling sound coming from the human. The footsteps stopped, and a moment later, she felt a small vibration shudder up through the trunk of the tree, followed by a soft thump of compacted snow as if it had just sat down.
“The sniffling continued, and every now and again she heard the occasional mumbled, indistinct word. Her ability to understand humans at all was minimal after many years of dedicated silence between the two species. But as she listened, she couldn’t escape the thought that this one sounded different. Smaller... Softer. Time passed, and the sniffling and mumbling slowed and faltered.
“Whisper, whose body was beginning to ache from the self-imposed stillness, felt trapped. Clearly, this human was not going anywhere any time soon, and the predicament, the lateness of the day, and her aches were starting to make her feel brave. Breathing softly, so as not to make too much obvious movement, she braced herself. She scrunched up her eyes and started to lean her head excruciatingly slowly around the edge of the branch. Eventually, she snuck a quick look.
“Sitting a few meters below her, in the seat of the tree roots, was a small human child. It was still sniffling slightly and staring into the middle distance away from her. She wiggled out her poor aching limbs and leaned out further.
“She observed the child was wearing... no. She shuddered to think where those furs had come from and pushed the thought of it to the back of her mind.”
I let my string drop an octave, pushing the bitter chill of the memory toward Cas’shya. She shivered visibly on the boulder beside me, her eyes squeezed tightly shut as she listened.
“There was a small patch of blood in the snow near the child’s feet. Never a good sign. A hole in the skin is a sure way to let the cold in faster and the warmth out too quickly. A creeping sensation started to come over her. It felt like an impetus to move, but it wasn’t coming from her limbs this time; rather, it felt like energy that bounced, echo-like, from a place deeper. She thought of her children in the warren, how they might be worrying where she had got to.
“The young boy shivered below. A new feeling and impetus rose within her. This time, it felt less like movement and more like weight. In her mind’s eye, the faces and voices of some of the elder rabbits in her colony arose. Some were faces of rabbits still alive, some were not. The voices of her friends whispered in her ear, urging her never to reveal herself.
“She found the two feelings were at odds. From that confusion, a third sensation arose in her head, sharp and painful. A feeling she often avoided. It was the sound of a memory, of that child she once lost a few summers back. Caught by an arrow from one of those awful human weapons. She shuddered.
“For what seemed like an eternity, these conflicting rhythms projected a swirling, complex array of images across her mind’s eye, keeping her trapped just as effectively as the danger of the situation. Rarely had she felt such a sense of confusion and conflict rise up through her and settle over her. However, as the time slipped past on her motionless branch, staring down at the young human, something changed.
“The child below, gently, grew terrifyingly still. This was not the stillness of sleep, where short, awake movements morphed into a long, sonorous but steady rise and fall. No. This was a sullen stillness. A dead stillness.
“Suddenly, the variety of voices in her body stopped, and one of them boldly stepped forward. The mother. The version of Whisper who had children at home who loved her and needed her, and who loved them. The voice of the elders, with their laws, became an abstract muteness. The crying pain of her previous losses was swaddled and comforted in the warmth of her inner glow. Her decision was made. Finally, she was set into motion.
“At the base of the tree, she walked around gently, step by step, eyes fixed on where the child’s face would be when she got far enough around to see it properly. She was ready to run at any indication of danger. But as she glanced around the hood of the child’s coat, she saw its eyes were closed. She breathed a temporary sigh of relief, but it was short-lived when the presence of the blood around the child’s ankle penetrated her peripheral vision.
“Her conviction grew. There had been enough sadness, enough death. Children should not perish. Stepping quietly down to the child’s ankle, she inspected the cut. It was not as bad as she had feared from the amount of red in the snow, but it was still deep enough that it didn’t seem to be healing very quickly. Whisper hesitated for a moment, thinking of her burrow and her children.
“There is always more lichen,’ she thought to herself as she rummaged through her pouch and pulled out the bearded moss. She was thankful there was quite a lot of it.
“Carefully, she pressed it to the wound layer by layer, letting the blood set it in place before adding more. After a few minutes of careful application, she stepped back to admire her handiwork. She was pleased; it was holding, and there seemed to be considerably less bleeding than before.
“She studied the child’s face. It still had that youthful, fatty quality, with chubby cheeks and eyes that seemed slightly too big for its face. She wasn’t very accustomed to humans, but her intuition led her to think this was a human boy.
“His eyes were still closed, and he looked almost peaceful. He could have nearly passed for a sleeping babe except for the sometimes faltering breath and that awful tinge of blue in his lips. Her heart clenched. This was not going to happen today.
“She gently lifted her front paws and placed them on the child’s legs. Nothing.
“She gave the boys’ legs a little nudge, but still nothing.
“Feeling brave, she scanned around to make sure no one else was around, and then she got up on the child. He was wearing a fur coat, she confirmed, and she tried desperately not to think about what it could have been. He was already too cold, so at the very least, she supposed, he could have it.
“Gingerly, she pawed at the coat flaps to create more of an opening and slowly, softly clambered inside. It was a touch warmer in there, but not enough. The undershirt smelled of humans, with a faint, musty note that reminded her of dust. They really are odd animals. Nothing she had encountered smelled remotely like this, though something about it was slightly comforting.
Cas’shya quietly gasped at this. Her string pulsed momentarily to the song of embarrassment as she linked the story to her own experiences with Elias.
“Wrapping her long body around the kid’s chest, she pressed herself up against him and closed her eyes. One ear remained poked out of the coat flap, alert for the sound of anything approaching. With her eyes closed, she deepened her breathing and began to connect to the strings. First, that one large central string, and then slowly, as if slipping beneath the surface of water, she began to sense others.
“Proximity, for some reason, always helped to make an external string more apparent. The boy’s unusual human cadence became apparent to her mind’s eye. What she felt in the music of that string unnerved her even more; it was erratic and frail. It felt like a plant whose leaves were turning brown.
“She began to connect to her own string first. It hovered there in the middle distance, beating a slow, steady drum. As the song swirled in her mind, she remembered a melody that had once accompanied it. It was an old melody her mother used to hum to her when she was little. It was the melody she used to sing to her firstborn before... the string clenched. She focused on her breathing as sadness settled on her, like rain that slowly washed its way through her fur. Sadness is okay, it’s natural, she reminded herself. She let it fall on her, and its contrasting texture intensified the love she felt, both for her own child, sadly lost, and for this human child beneath her.
“She began to gently hum the melody of that old song, and as she did, she felt her heart string, moved by its familiarity and meaning, begin to align with it. Her heart played a soft soothing vibration that conveyed her warm melody. Her humming grew more confident and pronounced. Words began to find their way into the melody, slotting into the gaps of the sound landscape in the same way that water takes the shape of the place it pours into. Her song, from her heart and from her body, passed into the child.
“It was a shock when she refocused on the child’s string and felt it begin to respond, to join in the song. It was fumbling and clumsy, almost as if it were using another language. But it was listening. This wasn’t what shocked her the most, though. Most strings, if not all strings, were connected and interacted with each other, especially when any attention was shone on them. She had loved watching glow flies dance about her on a midsummer’s night, when she became very focused on their little strings, but mostly these interactions felt natural in the sense of being interactive. You push a nut, and the nut rolls. That’s what happens. But this didn’t feel like that... It was more attentive in return. They, the humans, were like us. They didn’t just have the strings within them; they had awareness, too.
“She shouldn’t have been surprised; she had been told as such, but she had always felt that it couldn’t be true, given their cruelty towards rabbits and the way they treated their surroundings. But then, if she could sense it in them... why did they not sense it in us? Her song faltered as this new understanding dawned on her, and as she stumbled, she felt the child’s string stumble too, like a baby in a pitiful sleep; the child’s string groaned in discomfort.
“Whisper listened for a moment and felt the empathy rise once more in her heart, like a morning sunrise. She returned to her song, and the child’s heart grew steadier. His string grew calmer and began to harmonise with hers once more. The shock subsided, and slowly she felt warmth begin to permeate the boy’s heart and radiate outwards. Whispers singing grew stronger and more certain as time passed. She could feel the sun rising in her chest, its rays layering on warmth to everything it touched. Seconds turned to minutes. Time lost its meaning until suddenly she felt the boy’s chest rise beneath her as he sucked in air deeply.
“The moment of the song passed, and where she had held a space of care and complete empathy, self-concern crept back in. Whisper wriggled free of the boy’s jacket and quickly, using her central string, pulled herself into a nearby shrub.
“The boy coughed and blinked, surprised but looking much better. There were colours in his cheeks again, of pink and red. For a moment, he stared intently at the spot where she had dashed into the bush, blinking confusedly.
“Whisper stood as still as possible, making sure not to move a leaf and give herself away. Had she been spotted? The child brought his hands up to his chest and stroked gently exactly where Whisper had lain.
‘Mama,’ he called out loud, holding his chest where the warmth had come from. ‘Mammmaa’, he called, a little more desperately. He sniffed again, looking at his feet, and he seemed to notice the little makeshift bandage. Gently, he lifted his knee and tested his ankle by digging his heel into the snow a little. It penetrated and hit the hard, frozen soil beneath, but his ankle didn’t give way. Carefully, with his arms back against the trunk of the tree for support, he pushed himself back up. He shuffled a little to test his balance and found that the sore ankle was not as bad as he remembered.
‘Maammaa’, he called again, cracking his voice as a bit of fear seeped in.
“From Whispers’ hiding spot in the bush, a harsh breeze passed through, but on the wind she heard a distant call in response. The boy, though, seemed not to hear it. I looked at his ears, useless tiny little things, no wonder they couldn’t hear the strings that well.
“Knowing now, even if he didn’t yet, that he was being looked for, she considered making her departure. He would be safe now. But then something unexpected happened, something that stopped her forepaw in its tracks. He began to hum a melody to soothe himself. It was Whisper’s melody. The one she used to sing to her babies. The one that her mother used to sing when she was little. There was no other way he could know it. Its rhythm, its cadence. It was too rabbit. Through his human mouth, it sounded odd, but still recognisable.
“It wasn’t just her imagination, then; his string had awareness, too. Somewhere in his body, he had heard her song. Maternal instinct overwhelmed Whisper, and her stomach gripped with emotion that needed an outlet. She had to help; her whole body begged to help.
“Her front paw began to move before she had even made a firm conscious choice. But where? A clump of snow flumped down from a nearby shrub and made a soft thud on the frozen ground, which immediately drew the child’s attention. Staring at it for a moment, he walked over and had a look at where the snow had landed, peering into the shrubs’ dense thicket.
“She sensed her central string, and while he was not looking, she pulled herself up into the branches of a second tree a bit further down the animal trackway, towards where she had heard the other voice. Settling onto the branch, Whisper thumped it with her back leg, causing the snow on the outer branches to shift slightly. She glanced at the boy; he hadn’t noticed anything. Giving it another hearty thump, the snow slid off and fell in a clump right in the centre of the path.
“The child noticed it and walked towards it, looking for what could have caused it. There was nothing to spot, however, as Whisper had already moved on to the next tree.
“The child followed Whisper’s snow trail as if he were trying to solve some unusual mystery, yet he didn’t seem scared. On the contrary, he seemed encouraged. He was still humming her song.
“The game lasted only a few minutes. Whisper could hear his mother’s calls growing closer, and within just a few moments, so did the boy. His eyes lifted, and he called back.
‘Mum?’
“Her voice responded shrill and excited in equal measure. Whisper bounded ahead across a few last trees, dropping snow as she went, just to make sure the child would not get lost at this last hurdle. But as she jumped towards the last tree, using her string to pull her some of the way, Whisper’s eye was caught, not just by a female human, but by three others behind her, and they were armed. Momentarily distracted, she missed the branch and hit it chest-first, knocking the wind out of her lungs.
“She crumpled down onto the path below, breathing heavily, a woozy cast in her eyes. She hadn’t realised yet that she had landed right in between the child and the child’s mother.
“Her bleary eyes streamed for a moment, but the first thing she saw was the child reaching down towards her.
“Whispers’ instincts kicked in, and despite her difficulty breathing, she bucked, twisted and ran. A violent pain shot up her leg as a barbed rope gripped her ankle and brought her to the floor. She thrashed and fought, but it was for nothing. This was a rope of their invention, designed to do exactly what they intended. To catch small creatures like her.
“She stilled and lay on the snow, defenceless. The fight in her had exhausted itself. She could see the mother and the child nearby, holding each other and making lots of noises. The child pointed towards Whisper, and together, hand in hand, the mother and child stepped towards her, pulling away one of the branches that partially obscured her prone form. The mother started to pull the boy back, her features betraying an inner conflict. She didn’t see Whisper; she saw food. A way to feed her family. But the way her child was talking to her, tugging her arm, she eventually softened her gaze. For the briefest moment, she wondered about the rabbit before her. She stood transfixed, locked in place as Whisper had been earlier up on the branch. Caught between two competing feelings.
“At that moment, however, the rest of her family caught up. Two older men and a young girl. The men eyed her hungrily. There was no hiding their intentions. It was Whispers time; she would meet the deceased. She closed her eyes and heard the crunch crunch of snow under their feet as they approached, waiting for the final blow.
“There was noise, and a darkening of the light through her eyelids. But there was no pain. She opened her eyes and saw the child sitting between her and the biggest of the men. The mother was crying and seemed to be arguing with the man, who looked bemused and annoyed. For a moment, it appeared as though he would tear himself away from the woman and come for Whisper anyway. The boy was only small after all. But the mother fought back and pushed him away. The moment seemed to last for an eternity. The big human locked eyes with Whisper, looked intently, then walked away, clearly annoyed.
“The child turned and looked at Whisper. She didn’t understand any of its words, but its eyes were kind. His mother came and knelt down next to her as well, and they slowly untied the snare around Whispers’ leg. Her first instinct was to immediately flee, but her ankle didn’t feel strong at all. It buckled even under her slim weight. Still, she started to hobble away.
“As she tried to escape, she heard that little song once more. Stopping, her ears twisted towards the boy. He was there, hand outstretched, imploring. The strange hum of the melody was still foreign as it passed through his lips, but the intention was clear. He crouched down and turned his hand upwards towards her.
The mother watched as Whisper glanced between the boy’s outstretched hand and the mother’s penetrating look. The rabbit laws were clear: not to communicate, not to show them who they really were. But the way the boy sang her song, she knew it was already too late. Locking eyes with the mother, Whisper stared deeply into her soul. She stared back and nodded, and so, with permission granted, Whisper placed her nose in the little boy’s outstretched palm. She felt his tiny fingers stroke the space between her eyes for a moment. And then she limped away, back towards the valley, back towards her home.
Whispers’ return to the warren was not a triumphant one. She confessed her story to the council of elders, her voice quiet but resolute, her wounded ankle a testament to the folly.
“Fear hardened the elders’ faces. She had broken their most sacred law, born from generations of pain and loss, and so was ostracised, a ghost in her own valley. The shame of her actions was a heavier weight than any elder’s judgment. Her own children looked at their mother with a confusion that wounded her more than any ankle snare.
“That winter was as cruel as the elders had feared. The rabbit stores dwindled, and the cold bit deep into their burrows. Despair began to settle like a second layer of frost. It was then that the first gift appeared. Left at the base of the great tree by the river was a small bundle of winter carrots and dried apples, a fortune beyond imagining. The elders dismissed it as a trap, but Whisper knew what it was. Day after day, a new offering was left, and slowly, cautiously, her family - and then others - began to accept the gifts.
“The food was not the only change. The rabbit colony began to notice that the hunting parties no longer ventured into their valley. The sharp, terrifying scent of their woodsmoke stayed distant. The rabbits were able to forage more freely, more safely, than any of the younger rabbits could remember. The fear that had been their constant companion began to recede. Whisper’s exile softened, her story retold not as one of betrayal, but as one of strange, inexplicable courage. She was not yet a hero, but she was no longer a pariah. A new, unspoken treaty had been forged. They were not friends with the humans, but they were no longer their prey.
“Years passed, flowing like the river beside Whispers’ old meadow. The child grew into a man and then a leader of his village. He never forgot the ‘spirit of the forest’ that saved him.
“True to his memory, he decreed that the valley, from the great tree onward, was a sacred place where no human may hunt. He had, without knowing it, created the sanctuary Whispers’ community had only ever dreamed of.
“And then, one last time, Whispers’ string pulled her once more towards the tree. She was old now, her fur the colour of the winter snow, and her movements slow. The man was there, his body fully grown and his hair long, sitting in the seat of the tree’s roots, just as he had as a child. He looked up as Whisper approached, and his eyes held no surprise, only a deep, quiet recognition, as if he knew she would be there. Whisper did not run. The man moved, only to lift up his trouser leg and show his ankle, where a small scar showed his old wound. Whisper lifted her scarred back leg in response. A line across her ankle where the snare had gripped her. Across the snow-dusted ground, they looked at each other, the rabbit and the man, the spirit and the child, and in that silent, final acknowledgement, Whispers journey was complete. She passed away the next day.”
***
Cas’shya’s eyes were still closed, and a single tear traced a path through the soft fur of her cheek. Her heart-string was no longer frantic; it hummed with a low, sorrowful, but peaceful melody. She had heard the story, but she had also felt its Truth.
“The greatest risks,” I said softly, breaking the silence, “are often taken not for ourselves, but for others. And the deepest connections are often forged not in agreement, but in shared vulnerability.”
Cas’shya looked at me, her eyes softly opening. “I didn’t know that story.”
“It is not a famous one,” I conceded. “Its ending is quiet. The next winter was harsher still, and that same child left food at the edge of Whisper’s warren, saving her family. Her small act of courage, born of compassion, changed her history and the history of her family for many generations to come. But come, tell me, now that your song has calmed down, describe to me what is really bothering you.”
Cas’shya looks down, chastened. “I made a fool of myself during that meeting when I sat on his lap. Everyone saw me, and they all judged me.”
“No,” I replied, my voice taking on a distant quality. “You felt the song of another, just like Whisper did. I felt it too, during the meeting. Elias’ string... it was not just discordant like yours was a moment ago. It was the sound of a snapped string. A rough, painful break from something he held dear. When you jumped into his lap, your two songs became entangled. A moment of chaos, yes, but also a moment of harmony. Whisper, too, didn’t know what to make of her connection to the boy. For a long time, she worried and fretted that she had doomed her family and friends. But she didn’t lose the faith she had shown in having empathy for another.”
“But what about...” Cas’shya began.
“Remember, the strings are not just a way to feel the world around you. They are ripples. You did a good thing. And now you are worried that the waves of your actions will cascade in a way you find displeasing?”
“If by that you mean that I am worried no good will come of what happened… then yes”, Cashya replied, head bowed. “And unlike Whisper, I don’t have the luxury of an existential crisis to distract me from my own silliness”.
“Tell me, do you believe that you can do anything about these ripples now that they are out there in the wild?”
“I can try to make things better for myself, can’t I?”
“And will that trying make more ripples?”
“Yes…?”
“And can you do anything about those ones when they are out in the wild?”
“I get your point”. Cashya admitted. “So what are you saying, I just have to accept what comes my way? That it is all just exactly how it should be? But, I can’t do that!”
“I am simply saying that the thing we can control is what intention is in our hearts when we act. Now tell me, if you are truly honest with yourself. At that moment, when you leapt into Elias’ lap, was your intention good?”
“You know the answer to that already.” She murmured.
“And is that the kind of rabbit you wish to be?”
Cas’shya sighed and then nodded. Her goodness had always been apparent, even as a very young rabbit. Strange that anxiety and ego could do so much to help a rabbit forget such a simple thing. I met her eyes.
“You spoke a truth to the human, Elias, that had no words. Now you fear the consequence, just as Whisper did.”
I watched as a new understanding settled in her eyes. The frantic energy of her string had calmed, giving way to a quiet, thoughtful hum. Her fear had not vanished, but her compassion, the very thing that had caused her so much doubt, had now given her a new resolve.
“Good,” I said, rising from the bench. “Because your first official work session with him is due to begin in a couple of hours. In the holographic archive, if I am not mistaken. I think I may join you. It should be fun to watch.”
Her ears twitched, a flicker of the old anxiety, but also a flicker of her usual fun returning as she sensed my jibe. “The archive? So soon?”
“The ripples you co-created are already in the wild, my dear,” I said, gently gesturing for her to walk with me. “You cannot control them. But you can control the intention you bring to the next wave of ripples. This is the way of a mentor, not to change things, but to help the student remember the questions that truly matter. Come. Let us see what seeds you have planted in Elias. Lest we forget, you two have a book on Rabbit history to write!”
From the Cartographers Desk
This chapter was an interesting one to write. The first draft of this, done in my notebook, managed to get all the main emotional beats correct. But what it lacked was any movement, energy, or relationship to the wider story. So this is now the third draft, bringing the characters into a more active setting, and then finally slimming down the chapter. (Despite this, it is still my longest to date.)
I was also keen in this chapter to really nail the authority of Jun’ip as a kindly mentor. Given that Cas’shya is already a very intelligent rabbit, I really had to sit and think how their back and forth could feel natural without dumbing either of them down. Thankfully, meditation and it's associated philosophy is something I adore. So at least for Jun’ip, I had some ammo. I hope his wisdom serves you too.
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