Settled into the crook of a branch halfway up the big oak tree, Angel watches the leaves around him brighten slowly from grey to green. The night sky pales behind the leaves, the black fading and deepening to blue.
It means the sun's coming up. He knows that. He knows so many things now.
He didn't used to, but that was such a long time ago, he scarcely remembers how he used to live not knowing and thinking and feeling and understanding.
Knowing and thinking and feeling and understanding. Like the sun coming up, it's just something that ponies do, something that ponies make happen around them. He knows that, too.
"Angel Bunny?" He hears the back door rattle. He doesn't want to look, but his eyes shift, drawn to the swinging motion. The little, curtain-framed window catches the light of the rising sun. It scatters back at him, the sharp, cutting brightness making him squint. "Breakfast time!"
With an effort, he doesn't move. It'd be the best thing for her if he stayed put. He knows that. It'd be the best thing for him, too. It'd be the best thing for everypony.
"Angel?" She sticks her head out, and her nose wrinkles with that darling smile. "Are you being a naughty bunny? Are we going to have that kind of day today?"
He doesn't want to look at her, at her smooth yellow hide, at her pink mane soft as dandelion down! He should turn away and look east! East to the rising sun! To the big wide world! To the life in the wild, the life waiting just over the horizon! He shouldn't think about how she cuddles his cheek and how he cuddles hers because it's wrong in every way! There's no lust involved in it, of course, not like there would be between a buck and a doe out in the wild. There's no love in it, either. How can there be? Love's another thing that ponies do, and he isn't a pony!
"Angel?" The word wavers a little this time. She takes a step out the back door, but she'll never look up into the oak beside the cottage. He knows that. Rabbits don't climb trees, after all.
Unless they're not rabbits anymore, but then that's one more thing that ponies do. They change the world, shape it and squeeze it and mold it till it looks like them, looks the way they want it to look. Ponies sing, so birds don't just chirp anymore. Ponies build houses, so badgers don't just burrow anymore. Ponies want things, so rabbits find themselves full of longings, longings for things they can't begin to express. And that makes them surly and cross even to those who don't deserve it, even to those who deserve nothing but the finest, gentlest, sweetest—
"Angel?" She's completely outside now, the sunlight dancing over her and plumbing the depths of those wide turquoise eyes.
He shouldn't be looking at her! He should dig into the bark and make an anchor against her rising tide, slow and relentless and cool and refreshing—
Stifling! Unnatural! An iron chain attached to jaws of steel, jagged, sharp, and clamped so tightly, the only possible solution is to gnaw that leg off! Throw it away, throw it all away! He never had a soul before he met her, but now that he has met her, his soul stagnates without freedom's breeze stirring its dust, scouring its rust, chipping at its crust! The horizon beckons, and its call—
"Angel!" Her urgency smacks his ears, and he knows he can't blame her. He knows she doesn't know what she's done, what she's doing, what every pony has always done. To ponies, the world isn't a place outside and beckoning. To ponies, the world is a mirror, a reflection of themselves. They're constant in their efforts at self-improvement, and that means they're constant in their meddling with the world.
When his brow is wracked with fever, she drapes a damp washcloth over it. When he craves something green and crunchy that doesn't grow in her garden, she makes a special trip into town for it. When his frustration at the thoughts and feelings whirling through him makes him kick out at her head, her hoofs, her heart, she presents him with gifts both perfect and wildly inappropriate.
She's a pony. It's what she does.
But he's not a pony. He doesn't know what he is. So how can he stay? How can he continue being his own creature if she wants him to be hers? How can anything be right if he's near her or she's near him?
"Angel!" Birds flock around her now, most of them looking for breakfast but some also chirpily asking what the hubbub's about. "Angel Bunny! Have any of you seen him? I've been calling and calling, but he hasn't come in yet!"
Wanting so much not to look at her, wanting so much not to care, wanting so much for her not to look and not to care, he loosens his claws, lets himself fall, air rushing through his whiskers, and closes his eyes to the horizon being swallowed by the peonies blooming in her garden.
"Angel!" With the air suddenly swirling, familiar hooves catch him and gather him to a warm and trembling chest. "What in Equestria were you doing up there, silly? Bunnies don't climb trees!"
He clings to her, face buried in her delicate clover honey scent. The kicking will come later. He knows that. His little paws will flail against her overwhelming kindliness, and the weight of her expectations will bludgeon him into submission.
And tomorrow? Maybe he'll find the strength to heed the horizon's call. Maybe he'll finally be able to give her the only gift he has to give: the joyous misery of true, animal freedom.
Yes. Maybe tomorrow.
