Hare Scent

There is a whisper on the wind tonight, and it’s telling you to go. Not that there’s anything wrong with where you’re at, mind; the work is plenty honest and the company pleasant enough, most of the time at least. Nevertheless, you’ve been scenting adventure in the direction of the foothills for days now, and the familiar itching in your feet has become truly untenable.

-

The hare had appeared to you again a couple of nights ago. You didn’t usually make a habit of staying in town so late, but for once you were on a good winning streak at the card table, so it was coming on midnight by the time you staggered outside, heavy with drink and winnings. Your snug little shack sits about half an hour’s walk out of town—when sober. In the state you were in under the stars that night, you reckon you were probably traveling at about half speed.

You saw the hare as you approached the one crossroads between town and home; the lights of the tavern were but distant twinkles, and only your shaky lantern lit your way. The hare revealed itself to you as it always does: a shadow at the edge of the lantern’s range, tall and still in that particularly active way it has. As you focused your hazy eyes on it, you got a better look at the soft glow of its night-dark fur, the small silver fires of its eyes.

-

It had all started on a night with a full, bright moon, when you were a much younger man. You had just buried your brother, the only family you’d had left. He’d always dreamed of an explorer’s life from the shabby confines of the cottage you’d shared, and when he told you stories of adventure his eyes would dance in the firelight, shining like silver from under his soft, dark curls.

But then he was gone, and you didn’t know what to do with yourself. You were left unmoored, unguided, unhappy. The cluster of neighbours who comforted you at the graveside seemed duller now, chained to the earth, while you were still free to fly. Perhaps more free, now. It was in this mind that the hare found you, lying in a field in the hypnotic light of the moon. It had approached you slowly, staying just out of arm’s reach. As you sat up to better marvel at it, the hare hopped a few paces towards the road leading off to the highway. You knew what it wanted then, and without even stopping back at the cottage that had been home you followed it into the unknown.

-

For a few moments you regarded one another at the crossroads: man of earth and hare of stars. The lantern’s flame flickered as a breeze rustled in the silence.

“Well?” you asked, eventually. “Where are we going now?”

In answer, the hare simply turned and hightailed itself at top speed across the valley floor, straight for the hills.

-

You’d followed the hare over the mountains from the goldfields a year ago, and over the seas to this wild island at the far end of the world a few years before that. Now it wants you to pass through those hills on the other side of the valley, to whatever lies beyond. There’s a settlement off that way, you know, maybe even big enough to be called a city; perhaps that’s where you’ll end up next. Your windfall from the night you last saw the hare is enough to supply you for a journey that far, anyway.

It’s about time to listen to that mistral whisper and head out, you reckon.