Chapter Seventy-Three. Daye
Daye
Bunnies kept flooding the meadow. It took Daye a while to notice—bunnies were always pouring into the meadow from spring to summer, their small bodies flopping in the sun.
But in this summerless, autumnless world, they kept coming.
More and more bunnies, small pale bodies, eyes squinted shut against the world.
Larger, months-old bunnies on the verge of adulthood.
Round-bellied mothers and lean-bellied ones, all stretching in the sun, side by side.
Filling the grass beneath the heather faster than the owls and foxes could pluck them out.
And still, more bunnies were born, every day.
They spilled forth: into the meadow, to the edges of the forest, to the garden of the house.
Within days (or was it a week? Maybe it was months, years, decades, that they had been here), they ate all the strawberries Rory grew there, all the mint and lavender and thyme.
Eating their way through the rows until nothing but stalks remained. And still, more bunnies came.
Daye tried collecting as many of them as she could in her arms and ferrying them to the border. Crouching down, she pushed and cajoled them over the line. But no matter what she tried, they kept wandering back, their soft wet noses bumping her ankles and burrowing into her shins.
She gave up.
On bad days, when the pain of Rory’s absence flared up and she missed him so much it hurt and hated him so much she wanted to punch, to rend, to tear—
In those days, Daye would lie down in the meadow and feel the soft trusting bodies pile around her, cuddling closer. Dozens of small hearts beating in time with hers, dozens of lungs billowing air like tiny forges, warming her.
It helped, a little.
At least there was that.