With a hop, Yuki left the burrow’s safety. She counted the milliseconds in her mind, ready to bolt inside at the first smell of danger. Nothing jumped at her. “A small hop for a rabbit, but a giant leap for rabbitkind.” She appropriated those famous words from her world. It indeed felt like a giant leap.

She took another, further away from the entrance, then another when no monstrosity or worse, humans appeared. She lowered her head to grab a bite. Given her almost all-around vision and inability to use her paws to hold food, she wondered if she would be in the first or second Judge’s group? Yuki shook her head. It wasn’t time to ponder passages from the before’s holy book.

Other rabbits, emboldened by Yuki’s daring display of courage, also hopped outside— first just a few, then more and more.

Yuki ate, tension releasing from her body as time passed. While she ate, she remembered her favorite, and now only sister slept inside. Yuki took the biggest leaf she could find and, grabbing it with her mouth, ran inside the burrow. She ducked and weaved between rabbits. At some point, she stopped and snarled at an oversized rabbit who tried to steal her food away. She nipped his paws when he didn’t heed her warnings.

It took two more aggressive negotiations with other rabbits until she finally arrived at their nest. Sir Hopsalot was still here, still digging at the walls. So was Whisker. Yuki cut a portion of the leaf and put it near Hopsalot, who immediately stopped digging and dug in. Satisfied, she took the other part of the leaf and teased the sleeping Whisker.

It started with the twitching nose. Yuki moved the leaf closer, and for a moment, the sister opened her eyes, but no one was home. Whisker’s eyes closed again, and her teeth ground against each other. Soon after, Whisker bolted awake and dove toward the leaf.

Yuki held back her laughter.

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Just one. That was Yuki’s promise. She looked at the orange ‘shooms piled in front of her.

A few days had passed since the monster incident. Things were calm again— and boring. Yuki had re-explored the whole clearing and burrow. No other monsters showed up, but there was nothing else to do aside from eat and sleep. With Bunbun gone, not even the fur temptation remained. Flopsy’s fluff just wasn’t up to snuff.

Yuki glanced at the mushrooms again. Just two, she promised herself, then never again. Although eating them wasn’t a problem. Yuki was an independent rabbit who wasn’t compelled by society’s preconceptions about the recreational eating of strange flora. What was the harm?

She glomped down the mushroom. It dissolved almost instantly when it touched her tongue. The taste was earthy and sweet. The tingles started from her mouth, moved up her nose and eyes, and finally sparkled in her head. A shiver of pleasure ran down her spine and to her legs. She leaned down and ate another. The tingling spread from her head to her whole body.

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The world looked vibrant and alive. The dark purple night sky was inviting and happy. The stars played an endless song. She hopped and whirled and danced. She ate another ‘shoom and watched the clearing lit with music and life. She looked at the other mushrooms she’d gathered. It would be a shame to let them go to waste, right?

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Yuki woke up with warm, pleasant sunlight bathing her fur. She stretched, paws and spine popping in the best of ways. The gentle breeze caressing her whiskers added a new layer of goodness on top of it all. It had been so long since she last took a nap… in… the sun? Nah, it wasn’t possible. No sane rabbit would sleep in the open, outside the deep safety of their home. She opened a single eye and looked around.

Tall, gnarled trees loomed over her, the sunlight peeking through the foliage. The ground was covered in leaves and shrubs. Fallen logs here and there, covered in bracket fungi. Tree ferns, king ferns. A vast network of vines extended over the canopy, between the tree leaves. The air was damp, humid, and smelling of fungi.

Yuki closed her eyes. This was a dream or a hallucination. There was no clearing or familiar gentle grass and leaves surrounded by trap-shrubs and trees. No elevated mound dotted with entrances to the burrow.

The leaves rustled in an unfamiliar way. Not the same gentle sound when the winds moved them.

Yuki’s ears perked up, her eyes opened wide, and her heart beating a mile a minute. Then she forced a deep, slow exhalation. She was the master of her body, not the other way around.

The wind carried a pungent, musky odor that set off alarm bells in Yuki’s mind. Her eyes focused, and her legs tensed, ready to jump away. She didn’t know what scent that was, but instincts told her to stay still, hidden from the predator.

It walked from behind a log, an elongated body with four legs and a short tail. The brown fur on the upper body, the white belly, and the narrow head and small ears were enough to identify the creature. They locked eyes. Yuki’s panicky and frantic, the weasel keen and gleaming.

The would-be ambusher opened its mouth, displaying sharp, pointy teeth that promised pain and death. It chattered, the sound like a trilling laughter. Yuki squealed and lost control of her body. Instincts took over. She bolted, all rational thought forgotten. The weasel gave chase.

Yuki scurried under a shrub, past a tree’s roots on the other side. She didn’t know where to go, but the leap carried her past a fallen log and across vines and rocks. Behind, the weasel tittered, weaving through the forest like it was his yard. A few things jumped to the forefront of Yuki’s thoughts. The stalker’s tail was brown, the same color as the fur. It confirmed then the creature wasn’t a stoat. Other tidbits came amid the blind run. Weasels are relentless hunters. Agile and flexible. Most important of all, avoid their bite at all costs.

Other rational parts of Yuki’s mind supplied more details. She wasn’t faster than the weasel. She could maneuver better around obstacles, but she wasn’t gaining distance, and she’d learned over the weeks that rabbits were not endurance runners. She’d need to stop and recover.

Yuki dove past a bush, then around a tree, and stopped. Her heart still beat faster, and her legs wanted to keep running. But no matter how much she thought about it, she didn’t believe she could escape the weasel.

The tittering announced the arrival of the predator.

Yuki turned, whiskers trembling in anxiety. She took a deep breath.

“You can do it.” She could kick and nip like the best of them. She didn’t need to kill the weasel; she just needed to show that she was far more trouble than it was worth.

The weasel stopped, then stood on its hind legs, staring at Yuki. She stared back, body lowered and ready to move. The weasel tittered again. Yuki growled. It jumped at her, and she hoped fighting wasn’t a bigger mistake.