As she offered another perforated leaf to the rabbit, Belle was absorbed in watching the way it took hold of the very tip. A soft tug and the doxie was pulled from her fingers and twisted this way and that. The fluffy grey of the rabbit's upper lip swallowed up the green. Belle's smile was one of easy rapture. She watched as the little creature rummaged around in the depths of the tall grass, foraging for more tasty treats.
Oh, how it would be to be a bunny rabbit,she thought.No chores, no boredom. Only a warm fur coat, fresh air, and a paradise of food as far as the eye can see.
Lost in a silly reverie, Belle sat up upon her heels and drew her braid forward over her breast. Her fingers broke the tie at its end and raked through the messy curls. They had grown since last summer. Unbound, her hair now reached almost to her waist. Snatching up a stem of green, Belle split her mane in two and fastened the stalk around half. Repeating the process, she then lay down in the grass once more. Drooping masses of hair now hung down either side of her face like ears. Soft and fluffy ears.
"How do ah look?" Belle asked the rabbit.
The rabbit stared at her for a few moments, its eyes as dark as twilight ponds. Her nose wiggled, and her whiskers shimmered. She looked away, unimpressed.
Belle scowled ferociously.
"Well, there be no need to be rude about it," she laughed.
So, ah do not pass for a rabbit,she thought, before rolling onto her back. Yet, even as a human, she could appreciate a day such as this.
Her shoulders nestling into the grass beneath her, Arabelle looked up at the sky to watch the clouds pass by. The sharp aquamarine of spring was passing into the deep azure of summer, and the change was being shepherded along by pretty wisps of white. The sun cast glints of silver along their edges, and the entire image was framed by the tall and coarse grasslands amidst which Belle lay. The razor edges of green, stained darker in silhouette, reached up towards the sky as if to rip holes in its prettiness.
They will never reach, Belle assured herself with a secret little smile,for the sky is all-powerful and all-mighty. It would never fall.Despite how her mother liked to live her life, constantly panicking that such a calamitous disaster should befall them.
As if summoned into being by her very thoughts, a voice came trailing over the breeze.
"Arabelle!"
Belle stiffened where she lay, her hands behind her head and one leg dangling over the knee of the other. A piece of long grass was pinned between her teeth.
"Belle!"
With a sigh, Belle dropped both feet to the ground and sat up. Her head and shoulders breached the surface of the fauna, and she was instantly spotted.
"Belle! There ye are!"
Belle had to hold up a hand against the summer sun to make out the shape of her mother coming through the grass. Despite the warmth of the day, the woman was wrapped in her thickest shawl. She kept trying to fasten loose strands of hair back into the bun on the back of her head.
"What is it, Mother?"
"Ye've been gone since noon, child."
There was a softthump thump thump,and Belle looked around in time to spot a bright white tail disappearing into the underbrush.
Ah would run too if ah could, little rabbit.
"Ah was playin'." Despite the twenty years since her birth, Belle felt no shame to say as much. If life was not for enjoying, then what was it for? Play was not solely the occupation of children. Elliott had taught her that.
"Come nah, Belle." Her mother was cross now, her hands planting themselves upon her waist and her tone one of long-suffering. "Work is to be done at 'ome, and I cannae do it all m'self. Ye do ken that I be growing older now? Ye'll not have me around to care for ye for all times."
The reminder brought a sharp little pain to the center of Belle's chest. She knew very well how people were not forever. First, it had been Fredrick, her eldest brother. Born already asleep to the world, Belle had never known the boy and yet she knew his burial marker. It lay at the bottom western edge of their little garden, the first in a little line of three wooden crosses.
Their father laid beside his son.
Again, Belle had never been given the chance to meet him. He had passed and, just under a year later, she had come into the world. She was given a mother and one brother but never a father.
Still, she had been content.
Until the third cross was planted beside the other two.
Standing and dusting off the seat of her skirts, Belle wondered if it was her mother's own thoughts of the sons she had buried that made her sound so drawn or if she were simply, once more, frustrated with her daughter. She always sounded so tired when she felt the need to deride.
Which was often.
