Disclaimer - Watership Down (c) Richard Adams
Warnings - spoilers up to ch25. The Raid
Note – Originally written Dec 2010. Apathy towards others seems like something this sort of life might cause, so Clover, Boxwood and Haystack don't do a lot here. Comments much appreciated.

"Where is Hazel-rah?" - Laurel. Watership Down, ch25. The Raid

Run

It had been a good dream. In the dream he had been running across a large field of grass, the scent of dew heavy in the cool air of morning, the wind flattening his ears against his back as his claws left small gouges where they landed in the soft soil.

In the first moments of waking Laurel tries to hold on to the vision of the dream, but he blinks once and it is gone. The sun and sky are gone, and in their place there is only the hutch of iron bars that sits on a low shelf in a dark barn; the air is thick with dust visible in a shaft of light that shines in through a crack in the door. His eyes, that had been opened wide in wonder, return to a half-closed state with which he wearily regards the world. There is a soft rustle of old hay and newspapers as another rabbit shifts restlessly in another corner of the hutch.

He retreats back into the dark, and settles once again into a crouch. Once his senses had been sharp, but it has been a long, long time since then. Now the scent of cat is as common as the scent of dust in the air, and the fear has worn down into acquiescence.

The floor of the cage is hard and does not yield even an inch to his claws, but he scratches anyway. The frenetic motion brings some measure of relief to this anxiety he cannot place.

It has been many days now that he has not seen the wire pen in the grass, and he misses running, even if it is only round and round the small area it encloses. The food in the dish is becoming stale; he nibbles half-heartedly at the nearest bit of greenstuff, and thinks that he has not seen the child from the farm for some time, too. There is a persistent ache in his hind legs that will not go away, and he thinks that it might have something to do with these dreams that he has been having.

When they finally come for him, he runs and runs and runs, turning sharply right whenever the wire walls loom ahead, until his limbs are heavy with vertigo and he is lying on his side and and the world is spinning above him. He is returned to the hutch in a daze, and it is some time before he regains consciousness enough to flinch away from the probing fingers of the child who seems more curious than concerned.

He never does it again. The pads of his paws grow thin from bearing his weight, exposing skin and raw flesh such that it pains him even to walk; the instinct to scratch and move and twitch fades gradually into a dull unease. His eyes and ears grow heavy with lethargy that settles deep in his belly, until he regards the world only with a weary somnolence that falls a little further each day. When the child next comes to take him to the pen, he pads only once round at a slow pace, then sits quietly looking out though the mesh at the endless sky.

Here is a rabbit to whom life comes instinctively is Laurel's first thought upon noticing the stranger outside the hutch. Even as Hazel holds their collective attention with his voice, he is standing tense and ready to bolt, ears twitching about his head and eyes darting rapidly from side to side—Laurel thinks that perhaps it might be to look out for something dangerous, what was the name— elil, if his memory serves him right. Perhaps this is what it is to be a rabbit, perhaps to be a rabbit is to run from danger, to know it exists and is close, without having to think. He himself cannot begin to imagine what rabbits must do outside these walls, though he knows that they must do something.

Hazel speaks of evening and morning and high downs long grass. It does not particularly stir him, but he has never heard of any of it before and so Hazel's stories cause him to wonder, for the first time, what he has missed. He decides that he would like to do these things, too, though he is not very sure where to start. Perhaps the first step would be learning to sense danger again, but that would not be possible without first learning the different sounds or sights or smells that signified danger, of which there must be many, and what exactly the danger is, and how to escape it…

It is too much to consider all at once, and in any case, Laurel thinks, there will be time enough to learn when he does get out of this hutch, as Hazel promises they will. Until then, there is nothing he can do but wait, and wait he will.

He looks carefully at the rabbits that are not telling him what to do, and contemplates the space between them. It is an open door, and he cannot remember what to do with open doors. He cannot remember if he has ever known, too long has he lived in the relative safety and the relative darkness of the hutch in a barn without light. No one is telling him where to go or what to do and he does not know. He has never known. Perhaps he will never know anything. Perhaps he will never learn.

He makes one unsteady lollop and then another, in the direction that these strangers are so urgently herding him. To move on these feet again is a foreign sensation, though it seems that for some reason, it should not be. Try as he may, he cannot find the strength to run. He thinks that he might even have forgotten how to walk.

Come on, come on. As long as he continues moving, he is moving toward something better. And yet with each step the dream seems to be moving further and further away, blurring back into the mists and out of reach. Now he must stop and rest for a while, and regain his bearings at the same time as he tries to regain the strength the journey has sapped. For all his efforts, he has not come very far from the barn.

Hazel-rah and the rest will have to leave him here, if they are to survive. It was not for him that they had come to Nuthanger Farm, after all.

It does not disappoint him for he cannot miss what he does not know exists. As he watches them vanish into the endless night, as he finds himself being carried in the opposite direction, he tries to think of nothing. He finds that it is not so difficult after all.

Dawn. There is the dusty air, and the iron bars, and the light that filters in through the crack of the barn door; everything is the same as it was before, but there is also something strange, something that is different about this morning. It is colder than he remembers, and he can't help but feel that something is missing from this cage. He tries to remember the last time he was awake, and through the dream-haze there is a misty memory of moving silhouettes, and warmth, and voices. There had been other rabbits here then— there are no other rabbits here now. Perhaps he has dreamed them, like he has dreamed the sun and the wind and the flying grass under his feet as he runs free and far and wide across the fields of morning.

As the days grow steadily colder Laurel falls into a dark stupor. He dreams that the years come and go, summer into autumn into winter into spring, and sometimes he dreams of a rabbit with darting eyes that comes in the night to open the door. When he wakes, there is again the familiar ache in his right hind leg. He stretches his legs out behind him as far as he can, but it does not relieve the pain. He wonders if there is anything that will.

It is a long time now that he has lived like this, waking to dream and dreaming to wake. These days he is so tired that even the smallest exertion exhausts him. He can no longer tell the time of day, not noon from evening or night from morning; each hour of each day flows seamlessly into the next, measured uncertainly by the shaft of light that sweeps from one corner of the hutch to the other. It is as if a film has been placed over his eyes and nose and ears, so that he can neither see nor smell nor hear. All he knows is the passing of years, the cloying heat of summer days that fades gradually into a bitter cold, and the sharp crackle of fallen autumn leaves that disrupt the shaft of light as they blow in through the open door.

One day he wakes and finds that he can no longer move. It is a strange sensation, but no more unpleasant than the anxiety he has never been able to place, or the persistent feeling that there is something important he has forgotten. He closes his eyes and tries to remember. It had been a good dream.

You'd better run, run, run, run, run