Seinu stretched, yawning softly as he lifted out of dreams into the warm, dark space. It took him a moment to realise it wasn’t the pack sleeping tent but his room in the bunny village. Sitting up slowly the grey bunny picked up his visor and slipped it back on. The orange crystal screen glowed into life, shedding a quiet glow across the room that was more than enough for his new eyes to see with.
He had three messages from his pack, one from Selenu with a general update asking how he was. There was a second message from Firi and Chantelle, a video of them introducing Ki to traditional Avali foods he had never enjoyed growing up on a fringe colony; his expression when he tried nakati sauce was adorable. Then there was a final message from Taran wanting to check that he was ok and coping with being away from the pack. Seinu smiled and started recording a new video message to send them all.
“Morning everyone, miss you all! But I am learning a lot down here and I am slowly getting a hang of this bodies senses,” he chatted to them as he climbed the ladder and rolled the rock that hid his room aside, “Someone walked up behind me last night and I didn’t utterly freak out, heck I even worked out who it was just based on their scent and the way their foot-falls translated through the vibration senses.”
Moving out into the corridor that led toward the central chamber Seinu rolled his rock door back into place, still chattering away in Avali as he recorded, “It was a pretty significant break-through, before that if someone walked up behind me my prey senses would go ping and I’d run for cover, it was getting embarrassing.”
Pausing just inside the entrance to the main cavern Seinu closed his eyes and inhaled, letting the scents filling the cavern percolate up into his brain. Keeping his eyes closed he let his nose work, “It is still very odd having a sense other than sound be primary, but I am getting the hang of it… of course I spent the past four days in the classes the village run for the children, it was the easiest way for the older bunnies to explain and show me how to use my nose properly.”
He pointed to his left, “Mri is over there,” he stuck his head around the corner of the tunnel so the camera in his visor could capture a video of the red and white bunny making her way toward the main exit tunnel, she had an empty basket under one arm, the kind the bunnies wove out of tree bark to help carry food in “See… I smelt her, and identified her simply by scent and the way she walks. She’s not making enough sound for my current hearing to identify her.”
Shaking his head Seinu laughed, “It is… still a bit overwhelming if lots of bunnies happen at once. I got mobbed by the kids in class yesterday and they stuffed me in the dark again until I calmed down… it’s weird but yeah… well I’ll get into all that later!”
He ordered his visor to record a wide angled shot of the cavern, “Anyway guys, I am being taken on a tour of the caverns properly, I will see you all in a few days, love you all.”
Signing off, Seinu packaged the message and sent it to the Odyssey. He was too far underground for a live link but he’d left a couple of communication relay nodes between the cavern and the surface so he could send videos.
“Hello Cri, Cal,” Seinu said without turning around as the twins approached from behind. He then peeked over his shoulder and smiled at them, “See I didn’t panic, or run away!”
Cal laughed and hugged the grey bunny, “This is an improvement,” he glanced at his twin brother, “Shall we show this nervous not-a-friend but now-a-friend around?”
Cri shook his head and adjusted his hat, “Yes, so first let’s head for the pond,” he started forward, his thick fluffy orange tail swaying from side to side excitedly, “It’s a really good pond, the water is always fresh but we have to make sure to approach it safely.”
“Don’t you have foraging work to do though?” Seinu asked, “Showing me around can’t be more important than that?”
“Not right now,” Cri explained patiently, “With Rayen recovering and Fi and Thiln keeping her company our foraging party is sort of not working right now, so we have time to look after you.”
Seinu was curious and followed the twins across the cavern; the only lights in the cavern were crystals embedded in the ceiling, for Seinu’s new eyes it was comfortable. He could see bunnies moving about starting their days. Parents and their children formed small groups of four to six bunnies but they were in turn part of larger family groups that interacted, parents and children remained connected even if older children had moved out of the family caves to make their own home.
Several of the groups stopped to say hello to the three of them, though at first Seinu thought they were just greeting Cri and Cal. It slowly dawned on him that they were including him as well, so he started singing thanks and hellos back to them. It was so strange they had just… engulfed him, he was a bunny, he was accepted as one of them and that was the end of it. Even though he had no family it seemed they had all decided he belonged to the village as a whole. While there was still some confusion over where he came from and the aliens he was travelling with.
Seinu thought that them being so welcoming was very lovely. Without a question they had opened their village to him and welcomed them into their community. He wasn’t quite sure how to tell them he would not be settling here forever. He figured he’d gently let them know that in a few months he’d have to return to space, it’d be easier once he could introduce the pack to them, a few of the younger bunnies and the elder Tri had met them at base-camp but Seinu wanted more of the village to meet his family.
“Wait, where are we going?” Seinu asked as Cri headed left away from the pond. “Aren’t we going to see the pond first?”
“Food first,” Cri said and dropped to all fours and slowly moved toward a large shrub, it was a wiry thing with long purple leaves, hardy and adapted to the dim light that filled the cavern. Seinu followed Cri, moving on all fours around the plant and something caught his eye and he lunged forward without thinking and grabbed it.
“Hah, you got one,” Cal sang in approval, the other red bunny was around the other side of the bush still hunting, “You really are a bunny.”
Seinu however was looking at the large, chitinous bug he had just grabbed. It had a dark purple shell, a wide, juicy looking body and thick antenna that wiggled back and forth. The bug was also struggling against his grip, held as it was by his thick paw-pads it was trying to sink its mandibles into him but was unable to penetrate the extra thick fluff that covered his paw. He was sure that if he had been an Avali at the time, that would’ve hurt…
“I… it’s big,” Seinu said, looking at the other two, “Do we gather them and cook them?”
“Cook?” Cri asked, the word did not quite translate into their language, it was more several words strung together; fire-food-before-eating, the bunny looked at his brother then back at Seinu, “We do not know what this is.”
Seinu stared down at the bug with a little bit of mounting horror as it dawned on him: everything he’d eaten since he got here had been raw, uncooked vegetables all the way. The bunnies didn’t farm bugs, just caught them when they could whilst foraging, they certainly didn’t cook them. Cri and Cal had already crunched their way through theirs and were hunting for more. Seinu just stared at the bug he held in hesitant despair. Sure he’d eaten bug meat before… It was a menu item on stations and colonies across the galaxies. But to just eat one raw… he wasn’t sure he could. He leant forward and sniffed; using his nose properly on it. Something in the back of his brain triggered his saliva glands and without much in the way of conscious thought Seinu chomped down, once, twice and then he swallowed, the flavours setting off a fire over his tongue that just left him wanting more.
“That…” he wiped his muzzle and turned back to the bush, watching, waiting and then his hand darted forward and grabbed another, “These are really good.”
“Mmhmm,” Cri licked his fingers, “Yeah they are, but we gotta mark this bush as off limits now three of us have eaten from it.”
Seinu crunched down on his third bug and shivered in delight, closing his eyes and murmuring something in response before finishing it off. It was so damn juicy and the flavour, it was like nothing he’d ever experienced before. A sort of dusty flavour, like the dust left behind in the bottom of a pack of snacks with hints of gooey caramel and a flavour he couldn’t put a name to, just that his tongue liked it.
Three bugs was also enough to leave him pretty satisfied and feeling full, not that his synthetic body needed food. The biological scans they’d done however had set his usual expectation for material intake. Not that Seinu could see any of those indicators, his visor was limited as to how much data it could display from his body-systems. So he had to do without that info and rely on “feeling full” which was certainly a novel experience.
“How do we…” he paused to lick his claws clean, “Mark this bush as off limits?”
“Easy,” Cri hopped up and set down some small rocks in a pattern around the bush, “There, now everyone who sees it knows we need to give the bugs a few moons to hatch more.”
“Huh,” Seinu looked at the pattern, memorising it then glanced across the cavern, “That’s pretty smart.”
“We are smart, these underground bugs are rarer then the ones on the surface, if we eat them all then we get no more bugs and the bushes get sick,” Cal laughed and grabbed Seinu’s hand, “Now come on time to get a drink of water!”
Seinu let them drag him through the cavern, the Avali turned bunny just admiring the cave. It was spacious, being a good half a mile wide and the ground was mostly covered in a light springy moss. There were more of the low purple shrubs that they had just had breakfast around. Tilting his head back Seinu tried to make out the crystals in the ceiling but they were too high up for his visor to scan them, he’d have to remember to borrow some of Chantelle’s geological equipment at some point to investigate them properly.
“And here we are,” Cri said and drew Seinu’s attention down to the pond. It was about thirty metres across, fed by a fall of water that flowed down the rocky left wall of the cavern. A tangled matt of thick Cinati tree roots spilled down the wall as well, the thick, bark-covered tubers undulating into the pond to feed the mighty trees far above. The water itself glimmered slightly with a rather bright phosphorescent bronze glow. The water was also moving oddly, rising and falling slowly with small waves as it lapped against the shore. Seinu was confused. Babupekakkerok had two small moons, but this wasn’t a “surface sea”; he would’ve expected no tide or waves from an underground pond that was located several kilometres deep into the planet’s crust; yet Seinu could see evidence of a tide line as the waves of gently glowing water washed against the shore.
"This is beautiful," Seinu whispered and tried to move down to the shore but Cri held his hand and chirped.
“Now, before you go running down to get a drink,” he pointed, “You gotta look at the shore, it rises and falls as the day goes, water comes, water goes.”
Seinu peered curiously, the tide made no sense, “So there is a lot of mud,”
Cal said pointing down the steep bank, “We don’t want to go rolling in the mud right now so we follow the path where there are rocks. Also the ground gets slippery and very difficult to walk on so you have to be careful.”
Cal led the way around the lake a short distance and started down a series of large stepping stones. Reaching the water he padded out carefully until it was washing back and forth around his waist, "Now see this, we don't want to get much deeper than this, deep water is not good… we might go a little further out if getting clean but our fur gets very heavy when wet."
Cri led Seinu down to the water and cautiously the grey bunny walked into the cool, gently glowing water. He wiggled his toes against the soft compacted mud covering the bottom of the pond and reached up to touch his visor, he was about to order it to scan the water when Cri casually pulled it off Seinu's head.
"What…."
He turned to watch as his friend and guide put his avali tech into a hand woven basket made from reeds and bark fibre attached to a rock just above the tide line. Cri then took two small spherical things out of the basket. They were clumps of tough vines with blunt spines sticking off them that formed a sort of natural brush.
"We also use the pond to get clean," Cri said, advancing on Seinu and herding him into deeper water, "Usually our grooming routine is enough, or family help like Cal helps me stay tidy. Usually we only bathe if we've gotten really dirty… but it's been four days and you're a mess bunny."
"I've been trying!" Seinu protested, tail curling up out of the water as it came up to his chest, "I'm not used to grooming myself with just my claws… we have devices on our ship to help our feathers stay clean."
Cri laughed, "Silly, what's the point of all your fancy space machines, if you've not learnt how to keep clean without them?" He shook his head in disbelief, "Don't worry, we'll teach you but first down bunny."
Cri pushed a paw lightly stop Seinu's head, he could have resisted but he was here to learn. So he dropped to all fours, water closed over his back so just his head and tail were above the water.
"You're a tangled mess all down your back and your leg fur too… and your tail, it's a knotted mess!" Cal caught Seinu's tail and dunked it, using the wiry natural brush to comb out the knots and tangles, "Usually you want to try and keep this dry, if you get in deep water you can support yourself on your tail and paddle to shore… but you're like a little one who needs his parents to help him clean."
"I…" Seinu spluttered as one of the twins poured handfuls of water over his head and started to comb out his neck fluff, "I don't know how to…" he was cut off again, "Groom myself… not properly."
"Well we'll show you tonight before bed," Cri promised, "But for now have a drink whilst we fix this mess back here…"
"It wasn't that bad… was it?" Seinu asked sheepishly as those brushes tugged and pulled at his fur.
"Yeah it was," Cal chuckled, "But that's OK, we're helping, your fur is easy to fix and after this you won't smell of stale, ungroomed bunny."
Seinu would have blushed if he could, stiff, lop ears dangling in the water as they literally gave him a bath like a messy child. He endured it but was determined to learn the secrets of grooming. Then it occurred to him they'd told him to drink and he turned his attention to the glowing bronze water.
'I… I just drink it? Like this?" He asked in utter surprise.
"Of course," Cal said, "What else would we do with it?"
Seinu stared at the water, he'd never in his life just drank water wild from a pond. Let alone glowing water that was pouring out of a cave system. Avali drank liquid ammonia, sometimes it might be mixed with a bit of water, but ammonia came out of taps, filtered, cleaned, safe… perfectly tailored to match the composition of what they drank on Avalon. This was just raw glowing water… It was clearly bringing minerals with it out of the rocks too and he was being given a bath in it and expected to drink it at the same time…
Cautiously, slowly, he dipped his muzzle into the water and swallowed one, two, three mouthfuls. It was cool, it had a slight slimy texture against his tongue and teeth but otherwise tasted like water. He was going to have to analyse the composition of this… with proper tools from camp but for now he should take advantage of the twins' care and learn from them.
Lifting his now dripping muzzle out of the water he glanced back at them as they combed, brushed and untangled his fur with the natural brushes of dried vines, "Can you show me how to use these? I can help you two get clean as well."
They smiled happily and once his bath was finished Cal got down on all fours and Seinu helped Cri to comb and brush his friends fur and learn the techniques needed to help give a bunny a bath and how to do it alone. It certainly wasn't how the Avali did it but he was a bunny right now… it was his job to learn how they did it, to learn not just how but also why so he could show people how the bunnies lived.
Settling down on a large cushion, Selenu checked her notes, scrolling through the text and diagrams on their tablet. Unlike her siblings she had kept her own eyes and didn’t rely on a visor. When she was out and about she wore a pair of aerogel glasses with built in light compensators and limited computer functionality. But she preferred to work directly from a computer. She preferred having everything written down on an external device and so far the amount of augmentations she had received were the bare minimum.
Humming to herself the lime and white Avali set her notes aside and leant back, looking up at the ceiling of her office as she marshalled her thoughts and waited for things to start. The meeting was scheduled to start any moment, but with the Illuminate it never hurt to be ready a bit early, especially when dealing with interstellar communications. As Selenu had predicted a couple of minutes before the official start time a soft chime went off and Ifelse flickered into view in a swirl of pixelated cubes.
“Hello Captain,” the jakub shaped AI chirped as they climbed up the edge of Selenu’s cushion, “Illuminate Director Ck’akk and her pack are calling from Avalon, would you like me to put her through?”
“Yes please Ifelse and secure my office door please and pop up a do-not disturb sign,” the AI chirped an affirmative and faded out as a large holographic screen appeared. Sitting in the centre of the room on the other side was an elderly looking white and silver avali with a bronze stripe marking the banding in her feathers and lining up across her forehead. Her crest was very formal and she was wearing a very proper white and orange outfit.
Behind her was a huge window looking out into the dark skies of Avalon. It was snowing causing the Illuminate logo etched into the window to glimmer and the other sky-scrapers in the distance to nearly be lost behind the fog of whirling snowflakes. Sat on either side of her were the other members of Ck’akk’s pack, each one sitting quietly behind the long desk.
“Hello Selenu,” she greeted her with a smile, “I trust you and your pack are well?”
“Thank you Ma’am, we are all doing well thank you,” Selenu said, she had a lot of respect for the Director and her pack. Ck’akk and her family had always been straight, friendly and direct in what they expected from her and her pack, especially Seinu. If anything, despite the awe inspiring reputation these guys had they seemed mostly down to earth and actually listened to the packs under their command. All of them were over one hundred and thirty years old and Ck’akk and her pack had held the position of Illuminate Director for the past forty five years, Selenu always expected them to be stuck up or have lofty opinions of themselves but in reality they worked hard, played hard and acted just like any other pack around one another. They also cared so much for Avali society as a whole and set foreign policy together for the betterment of all, not just themselves.
“We are all doing well and the Odyssey is performing brilliantly, did you receive our last dispatches?”
“Yes,” the Director glanced at one of her pack who nodded, “The initial survey results from the Bunny star-system look promising and the special operation report is encouraging,” She leant forward, “Seinu’s first contact report made for very interesting reading, the recording of the predator just dropping out of the sky like that… is it really that dangerous?”
“Yes ma’am,” Selenu said, “We are still cataloguing the predatory animals that feed on the bunnies, heck we’ve even found three types of plant that lure in animal prey and digest them, bunnies included.”
“I see,” she sighed, “Well do re-assure Seinu that it wasn’t his fault, we don’t hold him to blame for that incident… I don’t think any of us quite realised how deadly the local wild-life could be.”
“Thank you Ma’am,” Selenu said, “I’ll let him know when I see him next.”
“Excellent,” Ck’akk smiled as she brought up a screen and scanned through a series of images, “So far I would say everything is going as expected, I look forward to further reports, his initial summaries and discoveries have been very illuminating to read,” she glanced at another screen off to one side, “I have also noted that congratulations are in order your pack has officially registered a new pack-mate, I take it Ki’s integration going well?”
“Yes,” Selenu smiled widely, “He is one of us and a real asset, he fills a hole in our skill-set we didn’t even really realise we had.”
“I am glad, it is a very good thing in our eyes, one of our top packs showing compassion and care to an Avali who lost their pack,” she seemed genuinely happy, “It is good to never lose sight of the fact that no matter how high you reach you are at your core still Avali.”
She turned off her main feed of holographic screens, “So I would say I am very satisfied with all your other reports, but was there anything else you had to tell us Captain?”
“Just one thing,” Selenu scrolled through the data on her tablet, “General Jerak of the Avali Exploration Corps keeps sending me demands to reveal our current location to his office.”
“Does he now,” Ck'akk glanced sideways at one of her sisters who sighed in an exasperated manner and made a note, “Leave this with me Selenu, the AEC are agitated and upset with the fact the first Odyssey class exploration ship is under our direct command and not theirs. I shall call the General directly and deal with this. Do not give away your location; this is Illuminate business and I want it kept discreet until Seinu’s final reports on Babupekakkerok hits the Nexus.”
“Yes ma’am,” Selenu nodded, “That was all other than to say Seinu is now living in the village we have made contact with. From his morning video’s he is learning a lot about their culture and society by just living with them.”
“Brilliant, well Pack-Leader Selenu I will speak to you in three weeks, have a good time, Avalon signing off.”
The call ended and Selenu sighed, flopping back into the cushions behind her and kicking their feet in the air, “Ughhhh I hate those calls… Ifelse,” she called out and the jakub re-appeared, perching their hologram on her chest, paws resting on her snout, “Where are my family right now?”
“Seinu is planetside,” Ifelse said, “He is out of direct contact, Taran is in engineering, Chantelle is aboard Shuttle 3 with Firi conducting a survey of the second planet and Ki is in the kitchens.”
“Right,” Selenu hopped up and moved the tactile hologram of the jakub onto one shoulder, “Prep my personal shuttle please.”
Selenu wasted no time heading down from her office, through the white and orange halls of the Odyssey and careened around the corner into the kitchen and wrapped her arms around Ki, gently pushing the hand holding a bottle of booze back down onto the table.
“Hello bro,” Selenu chirped, “Wanna come with me and see something cool?”
Ki looked at Selenu in surprise and his ears wilted, “I dunno Sel, I… I… am not sure I want company today.”
She nuzzled and licked his cheek and took the bottle firmly out of his hand, “That is why you need company Ki, you’ll enjoy the Momentum and we are going to go explore somewhere no one has ever been before”
Ki froze, ears going up in surprise, “Wait the Momentum, but Firi says I am not supposed to go near it.”
“Nonsense,” Selenu chirped, “Only Firi isn’t allowed to touch my shuttle, but you my dear brother, I want your mechanical skills looking after it,” she tugged him out of his seat and smiled, “Let’s go, I can show you my ship as we prepare for take off.”
Ki seemed a lot happier and intrigued which was good. She’d intentionally been keeping him away from her personal shuttle for the past few months. Now he was coming out of his shell and retreating to the bottle a lot less it was time to show him her pride and joy! Her personal, tricked out, hyper-charged exploration ship! As a mechanic the sleek smooth shuttle had been lurking at the edges of his interest for months and just as she thought he couldn’t resist the idea of getting to see it up close.
It was going to be a fun day, she’d show her brother the Momentum and then they’d fly it out so she could show it off and drop some survey drones around one of the planets Chantelle hadn’t got to yet.
Sitting on the edge of a gathering of bunnies, Seinu was listening with interest to the other adults reminiscing. The foraging for the day had been forced to be cut short due to a snow-storm that had whirled down from the mountains. He’d just gotten back from a tour of the caverns when they heard the news; he’d been shown the various tunnels that wound their way deep beneath the earth where the various bunnies made their rooms. He’d not been shown where the actual entrances to anyone's space was but he could smell them; not that he would dare ever open someone else's room.
Seinu had also been shown the deep tunnels! Closed off by a series of rocks they were well over five hundred metres from the surface and led down into the dark lair of the WORMS, that according to Cri and Cal were ferocious beasts that burrowed through the earth and could eat a bunny in one gulp. Seinu certainly wasn’t about to go down there alone and explore; considering how many dangers there were out there, he wasn’t about to go hunt down even more dangerous creatures on a whim just so they could eat him.
Now he was sitting with the others at the edge of the crowd, resting quietly against Thiln and the twins in a pile of fluff. He was clean, his fur groomed and for once it was quiet, none of his senses were screaming at him so he was listening to a male called Gra who was about to start telling a story for the crowd of little bunnies who had gathered around with their families. He had dark grey and sandy coloured fur like Thiln but the opposite way around leaving him with a tail that was all waves of thick shaggy fur like Seinu’s.
“The Screaming Snow!” He started in an excited voice, singing the notes in Bunny Song so they conveyed more emotion than usual, “We forage in the snow and it helps to hide us from those who would attack us but heed my words we do not forage in the screaming snow.”
Something went thump! Seinu jumped along with most of the kids, sitting up as the senses that picked up vibrations went ping. He was ready to run but stopped when when he realised it was Gra doing it on purpose and Thiln chuckled softly at him as he settled back down on all fours and huffed in embarrassment at being so easily startled still.
“It starts like normal snow, thick flakes whirling out of the sky, a blessing and a boon to hide us from the predators as we forage. But then the screaming starts, the sky erupts in rumbling shrieking wails, the world lamenting those taken against the will of the Land.”
The bunnies drew closer together and Seinu perked up as Gra circled them, “But once, three seasons ago we had to forage whilst the shrieks in the wind and the roars of the angered boomed out of the whirling snow.”
He turned and pointed at one of the kids and they yelped in surprise and backed up, “We found a whole crop of Cinati, the fruits had fallen into the deep snow, eight of them surrounding the tree, uncracked, unharmed, a jackpot that’d last for months!”
“But we did it,” Gra said, “Working together, the whole village endured the screaming snow and brought home the gift of the Land, for it’s only when the snow is deepest, when the loudest screaming snow shrieks across the Land that the most Cinati fruit fall intact.”
The children murmured softly and moved closer to Gra and Seinu leant forward too; he knew it was silly. The “screaming snow” was just thunder snow, a local phenomena caused by weather patterns (basically a thunderstorm happening during a snowstorm) but the bunnies had built a legend about the thunder booming over the snow. The story was fascinating, Gra’s narration sold it amazingly. He was just getting to the good bit, about the struggle to bring the Cinati fruits home through driven snow and the screaming roars of the Land. The story, while quite mundane, had been a fun experience and it taught a valuable lesson about working together as a team for the good of every bunny. Seinu thought that a rich and diverse oral history, stories telling lessons and morals to the newer generation, pointed to a society more complex than it looked at first sight… and he was here, experiencing it all.
Resting his head against Thiln’s shoulder he closed his eyes and listened, with his ears and his nose, letting the mix of scents filter up into his brain. He should have been writing reports and reflections on the things he learnt today, like the marking of the underground bug bush, a clear indicator that given a bit more time to develop the Bunnies were likely to start agriculture, they already understood the basic principles of conservation with regards to their bug supply. But for now he was content to just sit, smell and attach identities and names to the villagers. He was still learning; but sitting here in the warm, dimly lit cavern he could just let his senses roam and fit in, learning to be just another bunny in the community.