"First I get a bath." Rabbit was all energy. "You don't know where I've been."

Rabbit's bath was a hillside stream that looked horribly cold to Fox, but the prey-to-be rolled and kicked with delight in the fast water. Afterward Rabbit stood on a rock and stretched in the sun. She's having a good time, Fox thought, and she's making crazy sense. But... right now I like her better outside me, all bounce and pushy joy. She'll be a good meal, but I'd rather have her as a friend. Rabbit had been right, though: Fox couldn't spare her. Predators in that land had rules, and the rules had hard ecological reasons. There was no vegetarian option for Fox.

Rabbit wanted to be vored, gulped down alive. Fox hoped she could pull the trick off. Her most odious brother had boasted of doing it to unwilling victims, but he'd thankfully never done a demonstration. At least her prey would co-operate.

"I have the right spot for us, if you're okay with climbing." Rabbit was dry and fluffy. "A grand setting, and it's a place I'd like to see once more with these eyes. The hawks will stay off with you around."

It was a scramble up a hillside that was as much bare rock as grass. Fox was a decent climber, but Rabbit bounded upwards from stone to tussock to stone as if she had an arrangement with gravity. The top was one bare knob of rock with a little greenery in crevaces; not much eating for a rabbit, Fox thought, and a great place for a rabbit to get eaten by hawks. If she comes here she must really love the view.

It was a grand view indeed. They were looking over the wide wooded lowlands beyond the hills, and a small lake gleamed eastwards to their right. "I was born thataway," said Rabbit waving a paw at the lake. "A big sodden swamp. We lived above ground all day-night, you can't make burrows in waterlogged soil. Though we might have been underground for all the daylight we had under those evergreens. Merry little quicksands everywhere; we were as likely to to be eaten by the mud as... mm... by anybody else. I moved to these parts for the sake of dry feet and some sky."

"I've never been out of the hills in my life." Fox sniffed the air; she thought she made out a faint boggy-muddy smell that might be Rabbit's swamp. "Not that fond of water either."

"Which is why I'm sitting upwind."

"Do you want me to chew?"

Start
Part 3