Part 1
There was once a land that was laid far from the consideration of men, during a time when the race of the sentient rabbit was young. This land was called Leporida, although it was also known as the "Island Over Easy," as it so resembled an egg frying in a pan. It was very close to being a perfect circle altogether, and in the center was a very peculiar, round landmass.
This landmass was a very massive plateau, thought to be a mountain that had been cleanly cut in half horizontally by a very frivolous deity. And every morning, the sky over the plateau, when visible, would be radiantly and vividly golden in the morning sun. They called it The Blessing. It cannot be reached, because it sits on a very steep and horribly dangerous incline, which any rabbit has yet to scale in testimony; those who have left to climb it and had not returned either died in their ascent, or found their way to a finer sanctuary.
No historical record stood that outlined any detail of this place, for all historical records were of wars and kingships. As all of the known Leporida was dank and dreary marshland, The Blessing was thought to be, veritably, a brilliant paradise, rife with brazen sunshine that poured in colonnades through the dense canopies of shining emerald and played in grace on the floods and floras of the galen wood, and reigned in epic breadth on the vibrant white and yellow of the meadows where larks sang of sunshine.
From this belief, the early race of rabbits extrapolated horrid hardships. Feuds were commonplace between counties and provinces, and those in control knew little more than the thirst for power and wealth. Tyrants succeeded tyrants; bloody crusades were halted by genocide; chaos was upon the face of order, from the turbulent sea to the base of the fabled paradise. Because the ocean around the island was so notorious for housing bloodthirsty sea-beasts, hellacious crags, and tempests comparable to divine malice, no rabbit left the nutriment of life on land, and never felt the necessity for adventure. So much more sensible was the impulse to turn back to the old country and wage war, rather than attempt to comprehend a surely foreign, a validly horrific, and a fully mysterious abyss.
Clad in leather and rusting chainmail, holding tight their blades and bludgeons, the rabbits sought hard and bloody resolve on everyone who were not kindred, or who thought with slight adversity, even confining their malice to their immediate vicinity, whether neighbor or brother. There were almost as many allegiances as there were villages, and so these sanguinary feuds were carried out without a moment of forethought. The rabbits were dirty, starved, antiquated, and barbaric; there were few things for which to live, and many things for which to die. Battles carried out between trees, over swamps, on the riverbanks, through the creeks, and in successions of arrows from the canopies. Most of the villages were built on wooden basins, and commonly faced turbulence with the man beasts of the bog, such as crocodiles and great bullfrogs that would swallow a rabbit whole. Suffering was the key to life in those days.
There lived in this country a rabbit named Marcus Gaius Scintillius, although his friends knew him as Gaius. He was a farmer on The Plains, one of its few cultivators, for The Plains were exclusive to a single bare portion of the island, and his laborious craft was valuable to the nourishment of rabbits far and wide. Born and raised on farming, educated well in the succession of plant over plant, he became quite content with his knowledge early on, and took no heed of the feudalism of the nation around him, and for a while, the bloodshed took no heed to him. Immersed in his trade, he remained very quaint; he raised a family of two boys and a girl, whom he loved extraordinarily, and helped his wife graciously in maintaining the household. Often he wrote in a journal, and wrote letters to his distant friends, because he was quite fascinated in hobbies of writing, whether transitory languages or the compilation of histories. He kept many books on his shelf, and took strife to contribute to his own library.
But this life was very fragile, as he understood, and he was often struck by anxieties, when he would imagine feuds passing over his tract of land. The worst of all his nightmares had come upon him one night, when the counties of Lindengale and Stratloss clashed in the fields and woods about his home. All his family retreated with him to the cellar, and they tried duly to wait until the morning came, and the battle was done. As they nearly had all fallen asleep, the door to the cellar swung open, and barbarians raided the house relentlessly. In this offensive, Gaius' family was seized, and the brutes asked him the county from which he hailed. Unknowing of the affiliation of the colors they wore, he pleaded Lindengale; with this, the barbarians spilled his wife's blood and carried off his children.
Robbed of all his most precious denominations, and left to bury his love in a shallow grave, he mourned every day of his life thereafter. In the daylight, he worked until he could work no more, and at night, he cried in a similar manner. He scoured the countryside by letter, searching for his daughter and two sons through his friends, who were peppered throughout the island. But no one knew, and they sent him gifts and condolences. However, no reassurance remained that might repeal his despair, except the embracement of his prides and his joys; still, he would fall short of repayment for his losses.
His life grew quainter, and closer. The empty room of his house disheartened him, that those to whom they belonged may never return. He found solace in his study, and would occasionally venture to the nearby town to retrieve books from the dark and dilapidated library. One day, after a ruckus in the night, he found the library had been half-burned, and noble rabbits were laid dead in the streets. The countryside became grey, and towns fell beneath monoliths of turgid smoke. Sometimes, bands of ironclad crusaders would approach him and ask his allegiance at bladepoint. Learning of their colors, he would respond accordingly, and they would take a bushel of carrots or corn before leaving him to his disturbances.
As he had no one to talk to, and no virtue, he studied the woods in the day, and the sky at night. He furthered his knowledge in the succession of new life over old in the fallen logs and saplings laid about. Sometimes a herd of deer would scurry off from the still distance, or birds were fly away suddenly. On some occasions, he would elude a band of crusaders scouring for Stratlosians, who would kill anything they saw regardless, but were not expedient or determined in dispatching. And in the darkness, he would make bonfires and sit about them as he stared into the sky. The next morning, he might draw out constellations he saw on paper, or document the motion of different celestial bodies, perhaps the wanderings of the Milky Way and Andromeda, which drew very slightly closer in his recurring observations.
For twenty years he lived in this manner. His journal was rife with his expressive rage, malice, and sorrow. In his solitude, he turned to his study for joy, but it only served him so much. Tea, bed, and breakfast were all he had left to himself. His philosophies surmounted his joy, and he was left to disparage the pieces that made him up.
Annually, he made trips to the city, where he sold the finest bits and pieces of his crops. One his twentieth trip since the night of his loss, he experienced something very perturbing: the capital city of Lindengale was in utter disarray. He holed himself and his crops into an inn on the square, where he waited for the riots outside to end. In the meantime, he was served hastily prepared tea and stale bread, due to the innkeeper's preoccupation in arguments that occurred just outside his window. Through this window, he watched brother turn on brother, and the screaming was so loud and concentrated that he could hardly sleep through the night. Twice, he jumped up in the night, believing that he was experiencing a horrible nightmare, only to find that his dreams had been led on by what he heard in the streets, and that his nightmares were real. As he would look out, he would see one rabbit causing violence upon another.
But his expenses ran out, the innkeeper was unsympathetic, and a band of Burgundian crusaders had taken his crops forthright, opposable only in combat; Gaius did not have a mace, as they did. A crowd had amassed in the square, and the Burgundians were flurried for their contraband. Blood was spilled, and Gaius watched the rabble incur unspeakable abomination. Bludgeons were swung, blades were thrust, and arrows were flung from the windows. Gaius scrambled for safety amidst complete chaos, splattered in the blood of those around him, trying in vain to seek an alleyway or cellar in which to duck. He watched skulls explode about him, and stomachs slice open, and fists thrown at faces until they seemed as faces no more. Rabbits lay abstract on the ground. The clouds above him congregated, and thunder roared. White fur turned to red, and the skies mobilized into darkness. He looked over and saw that the Burgundian chieftain was standing atop his cart full of goods, screaming triumphantly over the whole of the crowd, holding his blade high in the air.
Gaius flew into blind malice. He felt the despair in his heart, the labors he brought upon himself so fervently in the last twenty years, the strength he had accumulated from so much hard work in a blithe attempt to surmount his horror with rage. He took haste in approaching the Burgundian brutes. Hazily, he arrested and turned the weapons against the guards about the cart, dropping them like a cat upon mice, until he knocked the last one out with his fist and took the sword he held, which was stained in innocent blood. Gaius alighted the carriage and stood before the droning brute; the crowd silenced, and they looked upon the passion that had succeeded over the previous holders of power. Quietly, placidly, and surely, Gaius addressed the brute thus: "Be off my cart," he said, "or bid me reason why I should not subtract you from this world."
Horror came over the face of that vile Burgundian. The bludgeon fell from his grip as he tripped off the cart and fell on his back, then was seized by a troupe of enraged patrons from Eurlingdale. As if conscious of the attention he had acquired, and awe he had struck, he grasped his control tight and turned to the populace as he harangued with conjurations of deep and dire origin:
"Friends, Lindens, men of country, spare me a moment of your attention. For the many years I have been alive, I have grown parallel to the violence wrought on the motherland of Leporida; but many years ago, perhaps twice a decade, my most beautiful and benevolent wife was relieved of her life, and my children were taken away from me."
Silence fell in absolution, and Gaius paused to look at the ground and close his eyes, as the pain ran through him like lightning. He continued,
"The men who did this wore blue, and they called themselves the Stralosians, but I did not thirst for the destruction of Stratloss; and my family was beautiful, and they were disgraced by unprecedented injustice, but I did not seek revenge; I only cried, mind you. And this I have done every day of my life since then, as I near my midlife a hollow rabbit. I find I am one of many; behold the whole of our single, lonely country as it is and inquire as to how it is we will survive ourselves, should we continue on our crusades, whether against each other, or in conflicts over a phantom paradise. By what providence do we capitulate to fear, and doubt, and dogma, but the providence of our own arrogance, and ignorance?
"You can see the clouds on the horizon, and hear the thunder in the sky; if we do not seek out our hovels now, the tempest will consume us; as I have optimism for the aftermath, I would be dismayed to emerge and find I am the only one left. But this storm is not the work of some heavenly force, or god; it is the work of us. Never a hand but our own has grasped a blade; never an outrage was felt but in our own animosity; never a war was waged by truth, but only by injustice; see, then, what injustice has done to us.
"We are a humble people. Ultimately, we are driven by very fragile reasoning. For whom or what do we truly fight, but truth and complacency? How will we justify our violences? I have seen the smoke in the distance, and the libraries burned, and the streets littered with the spoils of death. Is this the nature of peace? Are we simply to know chaos before order?
"We are very unlike the creatures of the swamps. Where they adhere to greed and natural linearity, we have retained some meager representations of law; if only we should have practiced order, as well. Where they live in nature itself, we have conceived of shelter. And, of course, where they are blunt and coarse, whether in body or mind, we are soft and fragile. We could not have come from the marsh; we could only have originated from a place that shares specific attributes as us – fragile, refined, and beautiful.
"Perhaps we came from there," he said as he pointed his blade toward The Blessing, which loomed over the canopy. "Perhaps that place holds ruins of ancient Leporidaean civilization, sitting idly amongst the emerald and the gold. In these lands, the dark of the moors and marshes, we never seem to retain sacredness for very long. We become angry, and conflicted, permeated by some endless measure of temperament and dogma.
"But who are we to return to The Blessing? Look at these things we have done, these turbulent arts of vendetta and phantom priority, and ask yourself if we so deserve a place like The Blessing anymore. Who is a person, who believes in phantoms? What is a reason that brings us to our knees, that drags us through terror and tragedy? Why do we frolic and creep through mud like salamanders? Since our departure from that sacred place, we have changed. We are flawed, we are angry, and we are lusting of blithe personal gain.
"And so, we have no reason, and we have nowhere to go. If we cannot acquire power or strength, you may ask, what remains? Many times I had seen the ocean in my youth, for my father was a fisherman. I remember the turning of the waves, the turbulence at the edge of the tide's wake, and the joy I had in thrashing about its physics. But I have grown since then; the world has lost some wonderment, and now there is only reason. However, the ocean still calls to me. I yearn to see it again, as I would sometimes stare out into the endlessness of the blue as a child, and I would contemplate: this blue cannot go on forever, I thought. And the trees we see around us, and their shores, and the mountains and valleys and plains and all the beauty on this strange and lonely island, cannot be all that exists in the whole of the world. Perhaps we just live in a mysterious place.
"There were only meager vessels that ever did venture out into the sea; they brought back stories of fierce beasts, of violent storms, and of great stress dealt upon them in the interim. But this is only a worn man's tale; what would the recollection of a curious mind bring us? Would it have noticed islands, remedied flaws in the ship's design, or studied weather patterns? What is there in this world for someone who is incurious and demeaning, but misery?
"We must leave the island. The Blessing makes us yearn, and the marshes make us perish. How many wars must we fight in this place before we conclude that it is unsuitable for life? How much love must we expend before we learn of the tragedies of hatred? When will we capitulate to that which is evident, and cast away our ideas of fantasy, of worlds that will never be reached by greed and superstition? When will we thirst for a more beautiful morning, and do away with the tragedies we have amounted in the night? When will the time to pretend be done, and the time to create be upon us? When will we be a peaceful race? When will we begin to live? May we contribute to these morbid banks no longer, and may these rivers of blood run dry, once and for all."
With this, he collapsed into tears, and the clouds above him dissipated as the sun shone through, and galvanized the faces of the onlookers. The crowd rejoiced passionately. They took him carefully in his hands and supported him well off the cart, as he was taken to an inn and sat down with a warm meal and a fireplace. The riots thus halted, the malice was thus appealed to, and the violence was left in history.
Word spread fast of his speech. With it speed, the swords and bludgeons of all the barbarians were cast into closets, and treaties were forged with obliged expedience in the following months. Villagers approached their burned libraries and collected of the books that remained. Letters were written and received with determined vigor, and they spread the popular ideology across the country.
Feuds simply ceased. The gray of the marshes was met with artisanship in sophisticated design, and sport in fighting its beasts. Hearths became the center of every household, and lanterns adorned the porches of those friendly abodes in the night. Peace flew swiftly over the whole of the old country.
Gaius spent his days writing awhile, as he was given parchment and pens. Many curious patrons approached him and asked him questions about life, careful not to test his complacency.
Because he still lived at the inn, he was often pandering to these askers, but eventually he was informed of a university that had been established in his honor. He was granted therein a grand study, and a righteous dormitory arrangement. The office was octagonal, and adorned with high ceilings, tall windows overlooking the Ptelethorian Fjord, an immense desk, and shelves stacked with all worthy histories and literary canons that remained. He wore robes, fancied, tea, and hobbied endlessly to write; peace, he felt, was finally upon him.
