Into The Wildlands: Chapter XXII - Much Ado About Bunnies
Erik's uplifting quest continues as life gets heated.
October crept on as the town prepared for the onset of winter soon. Many of the fresh veggies were traded off in the market for other ones that they didn't grow, helping to diversify their food stocks. Peppers and carrots turned into cheese and wine at varying levels, onions into a big comforter. While the family worked on ensuring winter food stocks, Erik continued his work on the designs and planning after hours in the schoolhouse. Jenny, as usual, went over it with him, sitting on the other side of the desk, looking at the drawings upside down.
“It's getting late, you two should go home.” Celia motioned to them as they pored over the technical drawings.
Erik nodded, not really looking up from the desk. “Yeah, I'll head home soon.”
She shrugged a bit. “Alright. Well, take care.” Her hooves clacked on the ground lightly as she left, the door closing with a heavy clunk.
Jenny pursed her lips in curiosity. “Not in a rush to get home, Erik?”
“Not particularly, no.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Hmm? How come?”
He sighed. “Because some of the produce is still around, we're trying to get rid of it, but... some of the townspeople have been complaining that the food smells like me.” He explained, to Jenny's light chuckle, still not looking up from the page he was sketching his fake blueprints on. “So, if I stay here, and away from the food, it won't bother people so much.”
“Oh, well, I think you have a good smell. Little bit like dog, but something else, too. I like it.”
“Thanks, but most don't, so I'm trying to keep it down if I can. The twins constantly tell me I'm stinky. I sometimes have to wipe myself down with some plants just to mask myself a bit.”
Jenny giggled. “Well, Kelsey must help you a lot, right?”
“Mm, she's usually too busy to pretend that I smell bad to her.”
Her tone changed slightly. “Too busy? She's your wife, she should be taking better care of you.”
He answered with slight confusion. “She always is.”
“Not if you're the one wiping yourself down with pine needles on your own.”
Erik stopped and finally looked up to her, facing him somewhat sternly, across the desk. “Alright. Jenny, you need to stop being so judgmental. Kelsey is working hard, she's changing her life in a very big way. That's not easy. If anything, it's me that's not stepping up enough, I'm out here doing all of these drawings.”
“... For the greater good, right?”
“Of course. But she's entering a very tumultuous period in her life, and even though it's noisier in the house, and the twins think I stink, and she's busy in the kitchen with her mother, I should still be with her more.” He explained quickly.
Her expression lightened somewhat. “But you're not.”
He sighed, and looked back down to the page. “No... because I do still need to get this crank design done.” He rested his head on a hand and then batted the page with the back of his fingers. “This isn't going to work. The stress of the sawblade on the crank is going to snap it off. But I can't make it any bigger or it won't fit. Maybe this piece was originally made with metal and I'm barking up the wrong tree.” He grumbled.
Jenny looked at him silently for a moment, pensive, but with an odd air of caring. She took the pencil from him and moved her fuzzy paw to the page.
“Erik, why don't you try this?” She quickly doodled his teardrop-shaped crank arm as before, but instead of having the connecting rod from the sawblade simply hooking into it, she drew a second crank arm, and connected the two by a pin. “This looks more stable, if you add a block on the other side as well, that should make it a lot stronger, right?”
Erik looked at it. “Of course, make it like a piston... because it is.” He quickly scribbled the new connecting arm, instead of having a pin attached to it, it had a hole in it for a pin that would connect it. “Yes, that's the ticket! Good call, Jenny. Agh, why didn't I think of that?” He focused intently on his new technical drawing, now that he finally got past a roadblock.
She watched him for a moment as he worked furiously at the art. Finally, he finished drawing his plan for it. It all seemed so obvious now. He breathed a sigh of relief and slid the page away. “Alright. That's it. That changes everything. I can finally think again.” He kept staring at the table, boring a hole in it with his imagination.
“Mm. I know why you've had such trouble concentrating. Your mind's been elsewhere.” The thought of it being an odd statement was interrupted by a light thumping, then her paw in his vision. He looked up, following the arm, to see her laying on her side on the desk, head on her other hand, gazing into him with her yellow eyes. “Hasn't it?”
“W-what?!”
“You've been spending a lot of time away from her, and more time with me. A lot of time with me.”
“Because we work together.”
“We get them done because we fit together, her brain isn't the same as ours. You work better with me.” She reached forward and snagged the collar of his shirt with her paw. “My brains, your brawn... We're going to build that lumbermill, and then some.”
Erik was incredulous, shocked at her shamelessness, and slapped her paw off of him. This obviously wasn't about some lumbermill. “No! Kelsey and I are married. We're having a fucking baby, Jenny.”
She switched up her position quickly, sitting on the desk right in front of him, her feet at his side. “And? When she's too pregnant to be any fun, what then?”
“None of your business. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Did you know that us hares c-”
“No, I don't care! This has gone too far. Get out of my face before I hurt you.”
She grinned, enjoying this far more than she should. “Oh? With what?”
“My fist.”
She stroked her paw back across her ears in the most flirtatious manner she could manage. “Heheh, it's pretty big... but I think I can handle it.” She didn't take it as a threat at all.
Erik quickly pushed the chair back and got up to leave, but not before she planted herself down on the ground in front of him. Her paws hit the ground without a single sound.
“You're out of your fucking mind!”
“Ah, give me a chance, Erik. I promise I'm much-”
“Fuck off!” He gave her no such chance, reaching forward and shoving her off to his left side. He took his paperwork and moved around the desk, but Jenny came right back around it as he went to the exit.
What should have been aggression from her in return was merely greater desperation. “Come on! I can take the punishment!”
“No!” He returned, simply slamming the door behind him, leaving her to deal with shutting down the school.
She stood for a moment in quiet contemplation in the empty schoolhouse. “Tch, aw shit.”
Eventually, Jenny took her things and exited the empty building into the dusky town, still a bit charged from her explosion.
As she closed the door, a voice made her jump. “Well, that was embarrassing.” Celia leaned up on the building coolly, one hoof against the wall, like she were some delinquent enjoying a smoke at the school.
“Ah! Uh, Celia, don't do that!” She scolded, then stopped for a moment. “H-how much did you hear?”
“All of it.”
Were Jenny hairless, she would have blushed. “You weren't supposed to! You were supposed to be gone!”
“I had a hunch, figured I would stay for a bit.” She stepped off the wall and approached Jenny. “You can't do this, Jenny.”
She searched for an answer that made sense, but not many appeared. “But I know I can-”
“No, bad idea. Erik or Kelsey won't stand for cheating, you should know that by now. They're crazy about each other. Besides, either of them could definitely take you if you push too hard.”
She grabbed Celia's shoulders in his fluffy white paws. “But I want him. Where else am I gonna find a guy like that?”
She slid one of the paws off of her shoulders with her spindly, tan arm. “Not there. That's Kelsey's guy.”
“He's tough enough for two! She can share!”
“Have you lost your mind, Jenny?”
“No! I don't know, maybe! It's too early for this, but I can't help it!” She threw her arms up emphatically, then pointed at Celia. “W-well you like him too!”
“Sure, he's interesting and exotic, but I wouldn't lose my mind like this even if I were single because he's still taken. The time for this sort of thing was when he showed up in town, not after her suiting.”
Jenny heard the words, but tried not to understand them. “I'm going to go catch up to him, maybe h-”
“No, you're not.”
“We're not working now, you can't boss me around!” Jenny childishly attempted to storm off, but Celia grabbed her instead, and hauled the bunny over her shoulder. She might have been a gentle doe, but Jenny simply didn't weigh enough to deal with what strength she did have. “L-let me go!”
“No way. You're going somewhere to get some rest, maybe it'll fix your brain.”
Erik hastily returned home, closing the door behind him and dropping down to the couch, with a confused and worried expression.
As always, Kelsey greeted him quickly, her tail happily wagging behind her. “Ah, welcome home, love! I hope you wa-” She took one look at him and knew something was up. “Oh, dear, what happened?” She sat down next to him gently, and rested a paw on his leg.
He took a moment to respond, craning his head around a bit. “Jenny's fucking crazy!”
She chuckled. “Heh, yeah. Bunnies are kind of weird sometimes. No wonder everyone used to eat them in the Before Times.”
“I mean, she's super... horny.”
She chuckled again, and shrugged. “Oh, uh, I guess bunnies are like that, too...”
He realized he had to change his strategy here. “N- for me.”
It was a good thing she wasn't in the kitchen, because if Kelsey were holding anything, she would have dropped it. Her stare intensified, and she turned to look at Erik much more deliberately.
“She... is trying to take my man?”
“Tried is the keyword here.”
Kelsey didn't answer, but instead stood up strongly, bumping the small table in front of them forward with an abrupt clatter. “Fucking bunny! I knew she was bad news!”
“She's definitely lonely. I guess she doesn't have anyone, huh?”
“Not my problem!” Kelsey growled as she began to storm towards the door. Erik quickly grabbed her by the paw and pulled her back. The two reefed on each other until she finally laid down across the couch over top of him, allowing him to pull her down. “Let me go, I gotta deal with this!”
“Nope, nope. I'm mad too, but we can't just fight her.”
“Well, what did you do when she came onto you?!”
“... Fought her- Look, just calm down. I am now, too. She'll get over it.”
Kelsey frowned at him, still somewhat lovingly laying across him. “Uh, no? She's a bunny. She's gonna be after you forever, unless...”
“Unless what?”
Kelsey sat up finally. “Unless someone else catches her fancy.”
“What... are you getting at?”
She thought for a moment. “Why does she like you? Besides being a bunny, they like everyone.”
“Because I'm big and strong and can work on projects that interest her.”
“Okay, who else is big and strong and maybe smart enough to get along with her?”
Erik shrugged. “Not me?”
Kelsey shook her head with disappointment. “Duh, it's not you.” She turned herself around to sit on the couch properly next to him. “Come on, guess better.”
“Brutus?”
“Rots, not that big, he'd crush that fuzzball. Come on, you're supposed to be the smart one.”
He thought for a moment. “I... don't know, Kelsey.”
She held her snout with her paw for a moment and sighed audibly. “Ha... Get some paper, we're going to write... a letter. Uh, after dinner. Potatoes are boiling!” She stood up and quickly made her way to the kitchen.
Erik returned with a sheet of paper after dinner that would have been used for some of his working drawings and a pencil. She sat down with him and began to write, though her penmanship was rather awful, it was legible enough.
“Ohhh...” Erik nodded. “We're going to pawn her off on Colton?”
She shrugged as she continued to write. “Why not? They're both looking for someone, and since I was going to set you up with her, it only makes sense now I set her up with him. Bit of a trade, you know?”
“But she might not go for it.”
“That's why we're going to plan this out a bit... if I know that bunny, she won't be able to resist the bait.”
“Hmm...” Erik watched over her shoulder and she wrote.
A few days had passed as Erik continued to rebuke Jenny's advances, with both Kelsey and Celia keeping a watchful eye on their involved party. Eventually, a delivery came to the house. Terry held a letter out to Kelsey, folded up and sealed with a small blob of pine sap, dried enough to the touch to not stick to absolutely everything. On the outside was a small bit of writing, which said simply, 'KELSY BARNS'.
“Hey. 'Yote dropped this off at the hall, looks like you've got mail.”
“Oh, thanks!” She took it in her paw and showed Erik. “Look, we got one back!”
Erik, still working on his designs, looked up as she closed the door behind her. “Oh? What's it say?”
“Let's see here...” She opened it up to take a quick read of it.
KELSY AND ERIK
I AM INTERSTED IN MEETING YUR BUNY PROBLEM HEAD ON.
I HAVE A BOOK YU MAY LIKE, I WOULD BET IT WILL HELP WITH THIS WOOD PROJEKT OF YURS, ERIK.
MEET IN BENSONVILLE AT THE TAVERN AS SOON AS YU CAN, I WILL WAIT THERE.
Kelsey laughed. “And you thought I was bad.”
“Damn, his literacy is just atrocious.” Erik groaned, squinting at the letter. “Alright, but he's receptive to the idea. And he apparently has a book for me? I wonder what it could be.”
“Who knows. But now we can solve the Jenny problem. You just have to... bring her to Bensonville.”
“How far away is that?”
“Just follow the road north of us to the east about a day.”
“So, I'm going to be stuck out of town with her all that time?”
“Yeah.”
Erik sighed. “Oh boy.”
“Relax, you'll survive. Besides... I'll be following out of sight. Not that I don't trust you, but I don't trust her.”
Erik held his head. “The things I do...”