Invasion!

[goneawaymod]

Who: The New Hires
What: Sudden Memory Share
Where: Their Memory Palaces
When: After Intermission
Warnings/Notes: Possible in every memory, warn in subject lines.

Contact.

It's during a pause in their day. A nap. An idle moment looking across the Top Deck. Taking a slow breath between reps in the training room.

The New Hires are connected. Mental pathways locking together, they're forced into one another's innermost beings. Thrust into one another's memory palaces where the mind collects and stores everything that makes them who they are. The core of their beings are only a few steps away and no one can help the violation.

To make matters worse, it comes with no explanation or no ability to pull out and stop. Once they're through the first memory, perhaps they can find a way out, but they're already witnessing some event from their host's past. And, if they left, who knows whether or not they'd end up accidentally invading another memory palace?

And if they were there, who was in theirs?

[[So, how this works: the memories can either be viewed in spectator mode or experiencing everything themselves. The person whose memories are being shown, the host, can watch as their current self or take the form they had of their past self.

They cannot control the first memory shown, the player decides that, but they can control any other memories they'd like to show people. Of course, there's always the option of an extreme emotional reaction bringing up memories unbidden.]]

Comments

tw: for imminent animal death and fantasy genocide

[bringinghopewithme]

[The memory is underground. Not even in a cave - it's a huge, vast cavern with the air of a cathedral, a holiness and beauty that bypasses any expectation of what a cave is supposed to be. Soft green moss covers every stone. Flowers bloom from the floor to the ceiling. Whole forests of evergreens grow in the underground world, through which a river runs with a rainbow of colors. There's a waterfall somewhere in the distance.

There is no darkness here. Instead, the warmest, kindest light shines, like sunlight through the leaves of a great green tree, on the most whimsical little world that was never seen by mortals.

There are rabbits everywhere. None is larger than a hare. Most, in fact, are smaller and daintier, cuter than wild rabbits with their big jewel-toned eyes and ornamentations of flowers and carved gems.

Despite their size, it's undeniable that they're people. Walking and talking in groups and pairs, carving stone and leaning on farming tools, painting with tiny brushes, clustered around flat stones cleared of moss with chalk in paw to share (and argue about) architectural designs, magical sigilry, mathematical formulas, lyrics of half-written songs, and on, and on.

The cavern, winding on into the earth in tunnels all illuminated with the light of dawn, is a society. There's nothing less than a city of prosperous, creative, happy little rabbits flourishing somewhere beneath the surface of the Earth.

The Easter Bunny towers over them all at his full 6 feet of height as he observes the memory from the outside, calm with the detachment of amnesia,.]

Huh. I don't remember this.

[He crouches down as a knee-high brown rabbit hops by, reaching into a messenger bag to pull out a working pocket watch.] 'Course I don't remember anything past 1920. Cute though, innit?

[fromfryingpantofire]

[Sam's standing nearby, managing to tower just a little more than Bunny. But he does have a couple inches on him, too.]

[He looks around, intensely careful of where his feet are. It might be a memory, but he already feels cumbersome in the space. Probably just all the small, cute things around them.] I'm not sure what I expected of one of your memories, but this...isn't it.

[bringinghopewithme]

No? [Bunny is increasingly delighted by all the whimsy, as an albino rabbit with a female sounding voice and pink tourmaline eyes instructs a litter of rabbit children so tiny that three could fit in the palm of one of Sam's hands in painting teardrop and swirl brushstrokes on flat, wide leaves.] Granted, it's all a little neater around the edges than me, but this is all stuff I know how to do -

[. . . So why doesn't he remember seeing any of these faces in the last hundred years?

Why is the Warren he knows, now that he thinks of it, not full of the samed ornately carved standing stones cleaned of moss and vines by industrious little crews, but full of hills and valleys where stones have been overgrown?

Reality has already begun to creep up on him, and wary caution creeps into Bunny's voice.]

Sam. I don't think this is gonna stay cute for very long.

[fromfryingpantofire]

I think I was kinda expecting them to be...taller?

[After all, Bunny is huge for a rabbit. Why wouldn't the others like him be the same?]

[He crouches down, taking a closer look at the bunny school. It's...adorable is the only word he can think of. Which is probably why he distrusts things.]

[Even though he vaguely knows it's a memory, Sam's hand still goes to the small of his back, grasping for a gun that isn't there as he stands, looking around.] But you don't remember what it is?

[bringinghopewithme]

You were expecting a "them?" I wasn't.

[He seems very distanced from the society, even for an amnesiac, but they are as tiny and unintimidating as he only ever is without power. Whatever these rabbit people are, he's different from them.

Were they under his protection? Dread grows in the pit of his stomach. Did he fail them?

Abruptly the memory shifts. They're running - well, Bunny is running, fired off by an instinct, and Sam is carried along in his wake.

It's dark. It's the utter dark of underground. It's the dead dark opposite of the warm light of a moment ago.

It's cold. It's quiet. Not a breath of air moves - except for the breaths Bunny is heaving as he runs.

He pauses as his paws touch solid ice. The dimmest grey light is ahead, marking the end of the tunnel.

The dread in the pit of Bunny's stomach floods him.

Maybe he didn't remember this because he doesn't want to remember this.

He runs along anyway and emerges out of the tunnel to find the little city of rabbit-people frozen.

It is like the cold version of a village immolated in place by a pyroclastic flow. Some are encased in full ice, but others flash-froze from the temperature drop alone. The little rabbit people had just enough time to look alarmed, turn their faces to the crater-scar of some terrible attack on their home, before they were dead.

They had enough time to be afraid.

The ones on the edge even had time, judging by their frozen bodies mid-run, to suffer.

The light that shone from everywhere in the older memory is faded to the dimmest, greyest haze. In the city that was so lively a moment ago, nothing stirs - not even a bug, not even a leaf.

Nothing - except the one little rabbit person that emerged from the tunnel with Sam and Bunny.

He's not much larger than his dead kin. Certainly not to the tune of 6 feet. But he's got closer to the athletic stature of a hare, and by his black-striped grey fur, is whoever Bunny was when he lived this memory.

His hyperventilation from his flat-out run into the warren has left him too winded to scream. But he's trying.

Somehow, that sound is worse than screaming.

Next to him, unseen, Bunny is laboring to keep breathing evenly.]

Oh I . . . have to go through this twice then.

[He sounds distant, untethered as he says it.

As the memories start creeping back in to be his again.

His younger, smaller self has gotten his breath back, and is sobbing as loudly as he can, the disbelief and horror and impossible scale of his grief pouring out of him.]

[fromfryingpantofire]

I was expecting...something. [Sam shrugs as he glances over at Bunny.] You're not a Tulpa, after all. You weren't just created out of the aether, right? So you had to come from somewhere and you probably weren't the only one of your kind. Therefore, a them.

[It makes sense to him. Humans are pack animals, after all. A community of some sort is just the normal way of things.]

[Still, with the warning, it doesn't surprise Sam when everything changes. When they're suddenly running along a tunnel in the full dark and there's a dread in the pit of his stomach that is and isn't his own.]

[Even so, what awaits them at the end of the tunnel is not what he's expecting in the least. The ice, the small frozen bodies. The fact that they knew, even if only for a split second, that something had gone terribly wrong. He closes his eyes, remembering what his brother had told him about the world Zachariah had shown him, the one where Sam had said yes to Lucifer but wasn't strong enough to push him back.]

[Except this is even worse because Bunny is obviously the only one left.]

[He lets all of that wash over and through him, giving himself a chance to breathe again before he moves, placing a hand on Bunny's shoulder. A reminder that he's not seeing this alone, that he's not there again all alone.]

Re: tw: for imminent animal death and fantasy genocide

[scavengineer]

Golly, it's beautuful.. os this where you came from?

[Gadget looks around, studying everything. She takes special care to commit some of those architectural blueprints to memory. Never know when something like that will come in handy.]

It's a little odd that they're all si much smaller than you are, though.

[bringinghopewithme]

It . . . is, but.

[But the standing stones that in his time are overgrown and worn with age are perfectly clean, cleared of moss and vines. One is even being maintained by an artist or a technician or both as they speak, a fawn-furred bunny whose fur is closer to a true golden blonde brushing the carvings with a soft weed-abraising brush.]

I think I came after this.

[He pauses to watch a litter of spotted black and white children running after a toy that is like nothing he's ever seen in the warren - a fully realized flying drone trailing a streamer with a rainbow of pullable tabs, purple at the end of the streamer and red at the top, closest to the drone. One of the children executes a tremendous leap and the drone dodges him, indulgently, playfully slow, and the child comes down with the yellow streamer, cheering triumphantly.]

Way after this.

[He thinks that, but his hypothesis would be negated pretty quickly if he tore his eyes away from the sweetness of the children playing long enough to look to his right and slightly back, where another green-eyed, grey-furred, black-marked rabbit person about the size of a hare is also watching and having a soft chuckle over the kid's antics, painting practice swirls on a leaf, totally oblivious to Bunny or Gadget's presence.]

[scavengineer]

[Gadget on the other hand, invested in examining the entire area as she is, does spot the rabbit. She points him out to Bunny.]

Are you absolutely sure about that? Because he looks an awful lot like you.

[Of course, that raises even more questions. If that is Bunny, then why doesn't he remember any of this?]

[bringinghopewithme]

[The glance Bunny throws at his younger self is cursory at best. He doesn't look like that when he's powerless. That mortal still has a little bit of dignity in smallness.]

Pull the other one, he looks nothing like me.

[Of course he's quickly provided with evidence otherwise when the smaller, identically marked rabbit puts his paints aside, creeps up on the litter of kids like a stalking lion, and waits in a bush fake-growling for one to notice him. When two of the kids do stop, ears flipping about, to zero in on the bush, he leaps out and grabs one that wasn't as attentive, holding the kid overhead with a triumphant laugh.

Far from being upset by this interruption, the kids scream with the fake-fear delight of children about to get played with by a beloved elder relative. Cries of "Watch out!" "It got Poppy!" "It's a lion!" and unintelligible shrieks issue from the litter.]

Oh no, looks like we've got a hostage situation!

[Bunny can't very well deny his own identical markings, and his own identical voice.

"Uncle Aster, put me down!" chirps Poppy, between giggles, wiggling in his paws. "Put her down!" echo a great many other small shrieks.]

I'm not your uncle, Uncle Asters don't take hostages. I'm a kitnapper! What do we do in a hostage situation?

[Poppy takes the cue and screams at the absolute top of her tiny little lungs, so loud that several of the adult rabbits jump in alarm, then in mild irritation as they recognize the shenanigans going down. She wiggles so much that Aster fake-fumbles her, tucking her under one arm and looking around as if for an exit.]

Oh dear, this kitnapping isn't going very well for me. Look at all the attention this is drawing! I better get to a secondary loca - woah!

[Poppy flails again, and with an exaggerated trip her uncle puts her down. She and her litter scatter shrieking into the bushes.

Aster chases each of them as they dart in and out of range to be snatched up, tussled, and gently put back down again to zoom off once more, shrieking and giggling.

It's a warm, sweet playful memory. There's nothing in it but adorable family shenanigans, and yet, watching all this sweetness, Bunny looks more and more awfully confused - and scared.]

Gadget I don't know what comes after this but it can't be good.

[scavengineer]

[Bunnyxs confused and fearful expression is met with Gadget's extremely determined one.]

I appreciate the warning, Bunny. But if it's as bad as you think it's going to be, then I shouldn't leave you to handle it alone.

[Not even if she could. That's what friends were for.]

Re: tw: for imminent animal death and fantasy genocide

[credit_not_blame]

It's beautiful.

[Stacia's words are breathless and she plops down to the ground to starfish her arms and legs out against the moss and plants, face tilted up toward the sun.]

[It's like being on a caern, but better.]

[She only lets herself bliss out for a short while though, before she rolls onto her stomach and props herself up on her elbows.]

It's definitely not one of my memories. But it is very cute.

[bringinghopewithme]

You get it. [Bunny chuckles over Stacia's starfishing. That is the appropriate reaction to the beauty of the Warren.]

It's got to be one of mine. [But admitting that is putting Bunny on edge, because -] This is my home, but - my home's a lot more -

[He's interrupted by the sound of his own voice from behind him, agitated but deliberately held back from yelling. Down in a hollow behind them, under a roof of wisteria, in a relative space of privacy, someone else responds, just clear enough to be heard once Bunny slides down into the hollow -

"Well of course you'll still be allowed to come and go as you please." A brown rabbit with a touch of elderly gray in his fur, safety goggles pulled up on his forehead and an impeccably clean white lab coat is carefully inventorying a full apothecary's cabinet, voice stiff with formality and disapproval. "I know I can't stop you from putting your life on the line every chance you get -"

"That is not fair." A smaller version of Bunny, scruffy compared to the rest of the impeccably groomed rabbits, grey fur red with desert dust, jumps up into the brown rabbit's personal space, causing him to lean back from estimating the quantity of dried lavender in his selected drawer. "I never throw myself at danger. I know exactly what I'm capable of doing and I would be dead if I did more than that, but do I look dead to you?"

"Oh certainly, you know what you're doing." The brown rabbit appears to believe it as he says it. "But they don't," he adds, gesturing to the rest of the Warren beyond the hollow. "And you can't be with every single one of them at all times on the surface, and I shouldn't have to remind you -"

"That's not fair either," the smaller version of Bunny cuts in, getting increasingly mad the calmer his fellow rabbit stays. "Calla's fine -"

"Is she, Aster?" the other rabbit interrupts, his clipped diction sterner very suddenly. "Is she fine? Do you know how much of a dose of valerian it took just to get her to stop crying?"

This hits home. But Aster clamps down on his wave of insecurity. "She's still alive. I made sure of it."

"And now, I will ensure they all stay that way," finishes the elder rabbit. "It will be helpful if you can find some way to live without telling all the kittens what a great hero you are every time you escape a lion's jaws, but even if you keep telling stories, they will all grow to wisdom one day and realize that they are blessed to stay here, where we are always safe -"

"Oh sure, safe and fed and - what about the kids aboveground, huh? The ones that go hungry every winter? Are you just gonna ask Eos to make sure they get their gifts for us? She made us for a reason!"

"She made us to live our lives, and be grateful to her for the many blessings the Mothers permit us to flourish from, and of course I have not forgotten the unfortunates aboveground." The brown rabbit beckons Aster to a table, upon which something sits covered by a brightly painted silken cloth. "And I have already accounted for our duty to the Goddess."

He pulls the cover off a stand of the most delicate, dragonfly-elegant little drones that have ever been made. Each golden craft's iridescent wings buzz as they pick up their burdens - of eggs, newly sprouted flowers, seed bombs, and painted leaf-packets from which the rich smell of chocolate emanates.

"They're all designed to disintegrate post-delivery. They can range farther and faster than even the walking egg strain. No supervision required," the brown rabbit says, proud of himself as the drones spiral with their gifts in a tight pattern.

Aster just looks increasingly, furiously frustrated. "You're gonna automate Spring?"

"No one ever has to leave the Warren and risk their life in the name of duty ever again."

"They still will."

"You still will." The brown rabbit and Aster glare at each other, having their argument as only family can, neither giving the other any quarter, even as the brown rabbit's frustration and anger begins to match Aster's. "And if you could learn not to talk yourself up so much for being so brave and daring as to constantly be putting yourself at risk of us losing you forever -"

"You can't tell me that! You went to the moon and you want to deny every kitten alive even a chance to see it?"

"There will be -"

"They will never accept this! Even if I never told another story as long as I live, they would still wonder what's on the other side! What's at the end of the tunnels! And they'll sit down here in plenty, getting bored, and never even have the chance to see what it's like for the kids who aren't born here, they'll never understand what it means to give gifts that can mean the difference between death and another year -"

"We will tell those stories."

"We'll do -"

"That's enough! Aster, you're lucky, but one day your luck will run out! I'm tired of mourning kits I didn't have to see die -! And by the Dawn, Aster, when your luck runs out, you will be the last person I ever have to mourn."

Aster finally reels back in horrified anger.

"You force them all to stay here forever, and none of them will live," he finally lands on. "They'll forget what living means, because all they'll ever do is survive."

"If living, to you, requires death, then we're simply at an etymological impasse. And we can stay at it." The elder rabbit turns away from Aster. "I issue the proclamation in an hour."

"Don't do it."

"Or what," the elder says, without looking up from his drones. "You'll go and get yourself in the sort of life threatening danger that only you can get yourself out of, then come back to tell me all about it, until one day I don't get to hear about your last daring adventure?"

"You're a coward and a selfish old fool," Aster snaps, gone beyond all restraint. "You lived a full life for yourself and now you're so busy looking back on the frightening bits that you've forgotten why you lived that way at all, so you're gonna deny everyone else the chance at their own lives. Well you're going to have to tell a lot of horror stories to make them forget mine! You're going to have to scare them until scaring them is all you have to give them, while I'll still be bringing back stories about how clever and swift and helpful we can be when we're brave, and how much the world needs us, every season! See how many people want to huddle in the dark with you in a few years, you sour old sadsack, but I'm never going down there with you."

The vision of the brown rabbit fades, as the Aster of memory bolts for a vast tunnel with the Australian continent carved over it. The Warren and its glow fade into blackness, as Bunny and Stacia are left in the dark.]

". . . I still don't remember any of that," Bunny announces, bewildered, into the darkness.

Just before the smell of dampness and rot reaches both their noses.

[credit_not_blame]

Hey, I know holy ground when I'm on it.

[Part of her wants to shift to Lupus and roll around until all of her fur is fortified with plant matter, but even though the tiny adorable rabbits here can't sense her, she refrains. This isn't a place that belongs to wolves. It doesn't belong to humans either, but Homid seems the better of her only two (well, five) options.]

[She sits up straighter when she hears Bunny's voice, and follows the version she recognizes down the hollow under the wisteria (it smells amazing, but she refrains from burying her face in it because something important is happening). Present-day Bunny doesn't shoo her away, and so she listens in on the argument between his past (extra adorable) self and the rabbit in the lab coat, filing away important bits of information: that Bunny's given name is 'Aster', that these adorable bunnies have a duty to a goddess known as Eos and to spring, that there are 'Mothers' (may or may not include Eos; might Gaia be one?), that the littler version of Bunny is correct that forbidding the other bunnies from leaving this place isn't going to lead anywhere good.]

Past-you is right though, forbidding the other bunnies to leave is only going to make it more dangerous when they decide to sneak out anyway. They won't know how to do it safely if they're not allowed to do it at all. Whatever happened to Calla was scary and upsetting I'm sure, but he can't just sedate her and call it a day, she needs--

[The smell of dampness and rot rises and if she recoils from it, moving to stand back-to-back with Bunny until they can pinpoint the source.]

[bringinghopewithme]

To be fair, the rest were all a lot more compliant than your average human. I was the excep -

[He pauses as his own words catch up to him.]

I . . . guess I remember something.

[The memories, coming back slowly, suddenly speed up in the worst way as the smell hits him.

He's smelled this before.

He doesn't want to have smelled it before.

There's so much rot in the smell that after an initial gust too awful to bear his nose goes almost immediately blind to the H2S. If this were more than a memory he would need to get Stacia out of the toxic atmosphere for her own safety. As it is, he turns, grabbing Stacia by the shoulders, and tries to march her away from the smell - but turning only makes the grey light behind him flip in front of him, so that it's clear there's no escaping this vision. There's only staying completely still, at the edge of the horror, or walking into it.]

Stacia. Close your eyes. Hang onto my fur and follow me. I don't want you to see this.

[He doesn't remember yet. He doesn't want to remember yet. He can only tell that the smell means -

He walks slowly, upright, between Stacia and the memory, back into his desecrated home.

The holy light that one shone from everything emanates in slivers, from cracks spiderwebbing the thick grey ice covering the walls, the ceiling, melting, making a morass of mud and rot on the floor. The river is flowing again, but its colors are drowned by runoff from -

- from the bodies laid out in an organizational way, at the north end of the cavern where the river flows out through its own tunnel, to make room for the gravedigging.

The dead that froze midair will . . . not be recognizable for much longer. The ones encased in ice are still only half-thawed, a paw or an ear-tip protruding from the ice blocks hewn apart from each other here and there. Every blade of grass is brown and dead, lying limp in the rotting wet, every bush and tree leafless. Even the evergreens are brown and damp -

- except at the very south of the Warren, where pale beams of light have broken through the ice, growing flowers again around the waterfall, flowing clean before it's too quickly befouled by the death that surrounds it. Hope is very much alive - but this place of light and holiness has become a mortuary. A mortuary staffed by one, and the work is too much for one to do it in time to maintain dignity.

The Aster of the past is now as tall as his present self. Everywhere he steps, flowers and vines curl up under his feet, and cracks open up in the ice over him, pouring new light down. Yet he is so dead-eyed with grief that he can only be said to be alive in the technical sense.

He is digging graves. He has already dug so many.

A massive craterlike scar at the center of the Warren is still completely frozen over. The graves ring the east and west edges, working inward as the pale cracks of light from the ceiling slowly melt the ground again. Occasionally, an icicle or a slab falls from somewhere, crashing tinkling as it shatters but it's the only sound, aside from Aster's digging, as behind him, from a tunnel marked with an engraving of the African continent, several long, chitinous black legs, emerge from the tunnel, followed by the body of a spider as large as a small dog.

Aster, gone nose-blind to the smell of rot, flares his nostrils and sniffs the air. "You're a little late to help with the gravedigging," he says, without looking at the spider.

Bunny, doing his best to control his breathing, turns around, still doing his best to shield Stacia's view as he puts his arms around her, to cover her ears if he has to.]

I don't know what decided you had to be there for this, but I'm going to make them sorry they decided it.

[Worrying about Stacia gives him the tether he needs not to fall in to the horror he's reliving twice.]

[credit_not_blame]

[Under almost all other circumstances, Stacia would protest being told to close her eyes and follow someone into something without shifting into Crinos or Lupus so that she could be better prepared to defend herself in case of an attack. But she can't be harmed here, and these are Bunny's memories, he's allowed to ask for privacy. So she shuts her eyes and holds onto his fur as instructed.]

[She doesn't see the wreckage of Bunny's home and holy place, the mud and the dead plants and the frozen rotting rabbits. But in the dark behind her eyelids, she smells the rot and mud and the peculiar non-scent of cold, and she hears the silence punctuated by the occasional fall of something heavy though her human ears aren't powerful enough to pick up the sounds of a single digger alone in the distance.]

[She straightens a bit when she hears past-Bunny speak in that dead-sounding voice, and when Bunny turns to put his arms around her, she presses in close, wrapping her arms around him in return to offer what comfort she can in his time of...whatever badness this is. At least she can bury her face in his fur to try and get a break from the stench.]

Bunny, I know this is private, so I'm still keeping my eyes closed, but...did some of the other rabbits go exploring? Is that why you were digging graves? It's not that guy with the goggles coming to say I-told-you-so, is it?

[It simply doesn't occur to her that he's trying to protect her, just that he doesn't want her to see it with her own eyes.]

Re: tw: for imminent animal death and fantasy genocide

[wheyoftheadept]

Saturday isn't sure what to think. This place is beautiful - beautiful enough to hurt. It refuses to fade into the background. Everywhere she looks, some lovely, alien detail catches her eye, makes her want to stop and lose herself and frankly it's setting her teeth on edge. There's magic here, magic and warmth and peace, and it makes her feel...

Kind of grubby, and worried she might she leave smudges. Like she doesn't belong here. Probably she doesn't; this place is clearly magic and probably has rules.

"Yeah," she responds to Bunny absently. " - wait, you what?"

[bringinghopewithme]

[As if the memories are conveniently responding to Saturday's feelings, one rabbit walks by with obvious safety equipment - thick working gloves on its tiny, opposable-thumbed paws, safety goggles up on its forehead, a padded apron, and patches of fur slicked down with a grease that probably isn't petroleum-based.

Behind that rabbit a litter of paint covered kittens, all covered in big splotches of paint, are chasing each other around a meadow and shrieking in kid-delight loud enough to disturb some of the passing cleaner adult rabbits.

Everything here is lovely, but it's an organic, working loveliness, and beautiful gardens are still full of dirt.]

Yeah, I haven't remembered anything earlier than around the time North America had that last big famine. I think that was the 1920's.

[It's hard to remember what years things happened in, when the seasons are what matters to him, but it's good sometimes to have a count of how many years go by, and . . . and . . .

And none of that is important, really, when this is such an achingly lovely vision of what is absolutely his home, but full of people who absolutely aren't there.

Bunny looks increasingly worried as he puzzles through that.]

If these are my memories, then I don't . . . know what happened to these people.

[But something clearly happened.]

They're not here in 1920.

[wheyoftheadept]

Beautiful gardens are full of dirt, sure - but they don't usually have bodies in 'em. Saturday puts her hands in her pockets, hurting at what she doesn't have anymore, maybe never did. It's a precious thing nonetheless, worth defending.

" - huh. I lost a chunk of memories too, few years ago. Only got a few of 'em back so far. 1920 woulda been the uh, Dirt Bowl? I remember Maggie talkin' about it once."

She looks around, searching for anything that might indicate when they are. Though she doesn't have the clearest idea what that might be... maybe a newspaper or an old-timey clock?

"When do you think this is?"

[bringinghopewithme]

Give it time.

"Sounds like the name they picked, yeah." But Bunny is distracted, looking at a standing stone, carved near the base with swirling, organic runes, but blank and smooth-sanded above.

"Long enough for this to be carved top to bottom," he says, indicating the stone. He looks around at the many standing stones, with their many carved bases - "long enough for all of them to have been carved since. And covered with moss."

He remembers the very minimal downtime he spends in the Warren, time often spent . . . spent maintaining these very stones.

"Then worn down so much I've had to restore the ones you can already see. So - centuries ago."

And he remembers, digging into that downtime now, that most of the carvings higher than two feet above the ground are easiest to restore, because they're all in his style. As if he carved everything taller than a regular rabbit himself.

"These people have been gone for centuries by the time I . . ." what, got there? Was born, was created? He lamely settles on "Remember."

Dread builds as he puts the pieces together.

"Saturday." His voice is low. "I don't think this memory has a happy ending."

[wheyoftheadept]

"...you mighta lost it for a reason, then," Saturday says quietly, looking at the carvings. They don't jump out as being of any particular type to her, though they look kinda like some of the designs painted on the Center back home. The maori ones, probably?

"Do you know why or how you lost your memories to begin with?"

[hallelujahjunction]

[Dan wants to pet the magic rabbits.

Dan knows, just from the most basic common sense of looking at a living people going about their lives carving and farming and otherwise behaving as people instead of domesticated pets, that he shouldn't pet the rabbits, so he doesn't. But it's there, that bone-deep, fundamentally human urge to touch the soft things and try to comfort them while really comforting yourself, that desire to put your hand on something and get that sweet tactile sensation of happiness and then ascribe it to the petted as if you're doing them a favor, stroking their soft fur. It's instinct. Plush things need contact to be appreciated. And doesn't everyone want to be appreciated?

But he doesn't reach out to touch them, because he has impulse control. Raising five siblings, even with an older sister helping you out, gives you a strong grip on your ability to chill and not do the first thing that comes to mind, no matter how satisfying it would probably be to pick up one of these construction-worker bunnies and put his face in their fuzzy stomachs and zurble, denying them their sentience and replacing it with infantilization. He looks instead at the larger rabbit, the person he suspects is the locus of this particular dream. And he feels a weird sense of loss in doing so - why would this be someone's memory if not because kit's a memory of grief?]

Very cute. I'm barely keeping myself from smushing them all against me face. [He raises an eyebrow at Bunny.] 1920 is what...a little past World War One?

[bringinghopewithme]

[Bunny side-eyes the new human, curious as to why whatever's trapped them in each other's memories has decided to shove someone he doesn't know into what he doesn't remember as his. Not that letting known persons into his memories when he doesn't remember them himself is great, but it's another flavor of invasive.

Still, this guy didn't ask for this, any more than any of them did. So Bunny stands up, crossing his arms, keeping his tone warm - not hard to do, surrounded by all this sweetness.]

You'd have to tell me. Didn't spend a lot of time reading history books in the last century.

[As if reacting to Dan's impulses, suddenly a rabbit so small she must be a young child is racing across the green at them, shrieking a child's welcome. Next to them, an adult rabbit hastily drops a travelling pack and opens his arms to the little one. He's no larger than an ordinary hare, but he has the same black patterns in his fur as the 6-foot rabbit beside Dan, red-dirt streaking his fur and his pack. He catches the leaping child and, as if the memory was reading Dan's impulses, buries his face in her belly and raspberries. The kid shrieks delightedly at the tickling.

"Uncle, uncle," the kid babbles, as the grown rabbit stops tickling but keeps holding her, "Uncle Aster, I have to show you something."

"Ah? Show me what?" asks Aster, with the same voice as Bunny.

"I did my Hundred Hundred."

"What! A whole Hundred Hundred? Drops or daggers?"

"Daggers!"

"What, all at once?"

"All at once!"

"Way to focus, Peony! That's my girl!"

"Spin, spin!"

The Bunny of the past spins his niece like a very small, very wiggly bo-staff, calmly holding her up mid-spin as she shrieks in delight. "What, a whole hundred times?"

"No!"

"Whew, that's a relief. You got bigger while I was in Ghana."

"Did you bring me a present?"

"I brought you me. Isn't that the best present?"

"No! Plums are!"

"Ah, my mistake." Peony continues giggling while Aster tucks her under one arm. "Where's Elder Eggbert?"

"In his lab. He said no kittens allowed in."

"Hmm, well, I guess I'll have to hang you on the coat rack," Aster says, beginning a slow two-legged stroll down the hill with his niece still tucked underarm. "He told me to come home early."

"I want to show you my Hundred Hundred!"

It's a tremendously sweet scene - but Bunny only looks more and more disturbed as it transpires, shaken by his inability to remember any of it, shaken to have relearned his own name with a stranger, shaken not to have even had his little niece's name in his head before his own past spoke it.]

I'm the Easter Bunny, by the way, [He adds to the stranger, since they haven't met yet, holding out his paw in greeting. Something about only just relearning his own name makes him want to avoid hearing it in a strange human's voice.] 'Bunny''ll do.

[hallelujahjunction]

Neither did I, but I listen to a lot of radio.

[Dan says that to the air more than to Bunny, in his monotonal grunt of a voice, watching the scene play out before him. It's the kind of pure, honest affection between Peony and "Uncle Aster" - Dan glances over at Bunny but says nothing, just quietly taking in the similar markings and filing that information away - the kind of earnestly loving moment that makes Dan's heart feel florid with warmth. Dan's always been good at basking in the glow of someone else's happiness.

Even when it stings a little. Like a sunny day, when you've been cooped inside, or like a hot bath, the kind of thing that's good and lovely but also makes you wince a bit. Dan never swung Eliora around like a helicopter but he did occasionally catch her in his arms, and he'll never do that again, because Eliora never got the message that little girls shouldn't die to save their caretakers.

But Dan can't help himself but smile, a little sadly, up until he glances over at Bunny again and sees the expression of unease, and he decides, well, it's bad enough that he's in this poor guy's head without either of them consenting to it. He'll tread careful. He'll take Bunny's lead on how they should navigate this all.]

Dan. [He gives Bunny's paw a firm, warm shake.] Pleasure's mine, Bunny. I, ah, I don't mean to be intruding but I'm not sure which way the exit is.

[bringinghopewithme]

This has been going on a while. I'd ask you to leave but I haven't been able to leave anyone else's memories, so why waste time?

["Hey, before we go see Elder Egghead, wanna go see Stella and the kits?"

"Yeah!"

While his smaller, younger - probably far younger - self carts his happy niece across the green to - to wherever, Bunny shifts uncomfortably, trying to call up memories before they can play out before him. This would all be easier to tolerate if he at least knew to tell the human onlooker what to expect was coming. This would be easier to tolerate if he could remember partaking in any of this happiness, but the Warren he knows is so terribly quiet in contrast.

Aster and Peony dart up on a fawn-colored rabbit curled up tight in a patch of yellow dandelions. She lets the other two rabbits come to her, uncurling just enough to reveal a litter of barely-more-than-newborn baby bunnies huddled up by her side. The two that aren't as blonde as their mother are gray-and-black tabbies, like Peony and her uncle.

"Peony, love, aren't you sweet to come visit? You look terrible," Stella says, in a warm and welcoming tone, lifting her nose to greet Aster and Peony with equally affectionate nuzzles.

"Sure I do." Aster returns the warm tone and nuzzle. "How's Mum life?"

"Oh, cute as anything, but it'll be a lot more interesting when they can talk." Stella nuzzles her babies as Peony snuggles her way in among the litter, cooing with adoration.

"Tonight the Goddess comes to open their eyes, right?" Peony asks.

"Wish it were sooner," Stella confirms.

"Wanna take a run? We'll watch 'em while you stretch your legs," Aster volunteers.

"Look at you, taking responsibility," says Stella, as she gets up to swap places with him. "Mum life's full of surprises."

"Has to happen sometime," Aster agrees, gathering up the babies and his niece for a good snuggle.

Stella stretches in a rabbit approximation of Downward Dog and shakes her ears. "I'll be back before Eos shows up. Probably."

"Hey I've got to go see the Elder sometime this week," Aster calls, as Stella races off.

"She was kidding," Peony says, with the sage tone of a self-appointed Wise Child, cuddling a voiceless baby in her tiny paws.

"Oh, well, if you say so, I trust ya." Aster nuzzles her forehead before settling in for a snuggle.

Bunny's not sure if his impulse to cry is because he can't remember this scene, or because he doesn't want to remember what happens after it, but he crouches down a little as he runs through a calming round of breaths.

The loneliness of his life doesn't bother him. Or if it does, it's so perpetual that it's become background noise he simply doesn't register anymore, with the lack of alternatives to highlight how quiet the Warren is in his time.]

Look, mate, I can't tell where this is going, but it's not anywhere good.

[He doesn't manage to keep a tremble out of his voice as the memory gets very quiet, Peony curling up with the babies and drifting off into a nap. There are a few minutes of just quiet, loving enjoyment of the moment, until Aster also drifts off into a nap and the memory winks out.

The memory magic drops them back in to Aster at the tail end of a huge argument with a different adult rabbit, this one wearing a lab coat and safety goggles and looking increasingly disapproving and insulted and hurt as Aster rips out all the stops -

" - coward and a selfish old fool. You lived a full life for yourself and now you're so busy looking back on the frightening bits that you've forgotten why you lived that way at all, so you're gonna deny everyone else the chance at their own lives. Well you're going to have to tell a lot of horror stories to make them forget mine! You're going to have to scare them until scaring them is all you have to give them, while I'll still be bringing back stories about how clever and swift and helpful we can be when we're brave, and how much the world needs us, every season! See how many people want to huddle in the dark with you in a few years, you sour old sadsack, but I'm never going down there with you."

He turns and bolts out of the wisteria-covered hollow, racing past familiar faces for a vast tunnel engraved overhead with the Australian continent, pausing only as he passes another grey rabbit.

"Hey, where are you going?" she asks, dropping her pawful of daffodils to match Aster's pace.

"Out," he snaps.

"Eos is gonna be here for Stella's litter any minute!"

"I just need to cool off!"

"Ugh! Fine, run off again, see if She waits for you this time." the other rabbit peels back to her work as Aster bolts into the dark tunnel, emerging into the cold, vast desert, underneath utterly unfiltered stars.

Aster kicks some dust, frustrated, and resumes his run, closer to a jog pace this time as he burns off steam under the stars.]

Get to the point. [Bunny mutters it at his own memories. This is building up to something bad. It can only be.]