Chapter Text
"I'll make a fire," Seff said, opening the door and setting the rabbit down on a chair far too large for them. She dropped her bag beside the chair. "Sit." The rabbit dropped their own bag in turn, and Seff saw that it was empty.
She stoked the fireplace, then turned to her cabinets and drawers and found an old first-aid kit for work injuries. As the fire grew, she re-lit the lantern for a better view and rolled up the rabbit's pants leg to see the injury. "What's your name?" she asked, applying a little antiseptic to some bunched-up gauze.
"Rohan," the rabbit said, wincing as Seff applied the antiseptic, then pulled the gauze away, stained with blood. "And I'm a girl. I know it's a boy's name. I don't need to hear it."
"I wasn't going to say that. I think it's a lovely name." Seff pressed another piece of gauze to the wound, then wrapped it a few times over with a thin bandage. "How old are you, Rohan?"
"Twelve," Rohan said. Seff nodded. She had definitely been off the mark. The fire's light crackling had grown into a full roar. Seff gathered in the clearer light how small Rohan was in comparison to all the furniture she owned, and chalked some of her misconception up to relative size. She wasn't sure how long it had been since she had really spoken with a rabbit, after all. Maybe she had just forgotten how small they tended to be. "Who are you, anyways?"
"My name's Seff," she replied. "I'm a woman, even if it's a man's name as far as I recall. I'm twenty-eight. I went to trade school. I built this place. Worked as a carpenter for a while. Inherited a lot of antique clocks. Broke a few." She shrugged. "Not much else to say. I'm afraid I live an exceptionally boring life."
"Yeah."
Seff wasn't sure if she was expecting Rohan to protest. She had gathered by now that dramatic enthusiasm wasn't exactly her modus operandi. She supposed she was okay with that; she guessed, if nothing else, having someone so consistently sardonic with her might keep her from falling into complete solipsism.
"Do you have any food?" Rohan asked.
"Very little for myself. Nothing for you," Seff said. "I'm sorry. What have you been eating?"
"Dried seaweed sheets." She stuck her tongue out. "We had canned vegetables, and hay, and then they both ran out. I'd take anything else at this point. I'm probably going to get some vitamin deficiency or something."
Seff nodded. "Do you have any on you?"
"No. All my stuff fell out when I was running."
"Right." She hesitated. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Rohan shook her head. Seff didn't press the issue.
"When we go back for food, I can see if I can find you something more substantial, too. Preferably with minimal botulism. If nothing else, we can probably steal one of those little bottles of vitamin supplements. They make those for rabbits, right?"
"I don't know. Probably, I guess."
"I wish I knew more about how to help. I really should've been a doctor or something. It would've been useful," Seff said.
"You didn't do too bad a job with my leg," Rohan replied, swinging it once or twice. "It doesn't hurt too much, mostly. Freakin' stung for a minute there, though."
"You know, I don't really care if you swear around me. The sun's disappeared," Seff pointed out. "I don't think anyone's judging."
"Asshole."
"I mean, don't be rude," Seff said. "That wasn't a free pass to be a jerk. I haven't really done anything to you."
"That was to the world," Rohan said.
Seff paused before replying. "The first aid comes from nearly sawing off my own paw. On multiple occasions. It'd be dumb not to know something." She shrugged. "How'd you hurt your leg, anyways?"
"Fell. Turns out there's a lot of ice to slip on. Who would've thought." Rohan took off her hood. The tips of her ears looked like they were starting to develop frostbite, though Seff wasn't certain. "You said you almost sawed off your paw? You have any power tools I can mess with?"
"I mean, theoretically, but I'm trying not to run the generator. I'm also trying not to get you injured. Again." Seff took a seat on her bed, not far from the chair and the fire. "I mostly used hand tools, anyway, except on bigger projects. Hipsters will pay top dollar for something authentic, you know?"
"Hipsters?"
"People who drink IPAs and listen to, like, folk-pop." Seff sighed. "I guess that hasn't been a relevant archetype in a while, huh?" She decided to change the subject, and glanced around the room. The cabin had more rooms, but the others were entirely dedicated to her work. When it came to actually living, the cabin was one central room and a bathroom. "Do you have a place to sleep, Rohan?"
"What do you think?" she asked, and, when Seff didn't reply, she continued. "Of course I don't. I had one, and then I got chased into the goddamn undergrowth. I don't know where my parents are. Hopefully they're back home, but home's probably ten miles away in god-knows-what direction."
Seff nodded. "If you… want to stay here, I will not object, Rohan." She hesitated. "I'm not kidnapping you, I mean. It's your choice. I just don't think it's safe out there. I can promise you safety here as much as you can trust my word, but it's on you if that means anything."
Rohan paused and sank back into the chair. She looked down at her leg again. "It's safer here than it is out there," she said, and then after a moment added, "Don't make me regret saying that."
"You can rest in the chair, or I can lay some blankets out on the floor," Seff said. "Sleep as long as you need."
Rohan didn't move. Seff stood again and walked across the room. She knelt and turned over one of the logs in the fire with a thin metal rod, sending out a cascade of sparks. "Those seaweed sheets," she said. "Do you have any on you?"
"A few," Rohan said.
"And how long can you last without eating?" Seff continued.
"Not long. We're not meant to live for longer than a few days without any food."
Seff paused. She had considered her kind to have received the shorter end of the stick after the change; they had become monsters out of desperation. They had starved and died. She could not survive without meat; meat was harder to find and higher up the food chain. Yet, there were others like Rohan, weren't there? There were rabbits and rodents; there were others who were small, with fast bodies that required them to eat (not much but constantly) and she wondered how many of them had starved after just a week.
It had been months, hadn't it? How many had died?
"Can you go through them slowly?"
"As slowly as possible."
Seff nodded. "I'll go out looking for food again soon. When your leg is better, you can come with me. It shouldn't be long."
The cabin fell silent. Seff tended to it intermittently for a few minutes, before returning to her seat on the bed. Rohan lay on the chair, curled up with her eyes closed, her injured leg outstretched and draped across one arm. Seff wasn't certain if the faint breathing she heard was Rohan's, her own, or some trick of her mind; regardless, it calmed her somewhat to register the presence of someone else in the cabin. When she was certain Rohan had fallen asleep, Seff draped a spare blanket over her body (one painstakingly knit but that had always been too small for her). She curled up on her bed and, only now realizing how tired she was, did not dream.