《Daughter Mine》


 Chapter 1: Body snatcher

    She would be free, she reminded herself, seething with impotent rage, suppressed down from rising in her shared chest. Her daughter carried on, speaking blithely, her head connected to Yanus¡¯ shoulders, as if mocking her with her very existence. But someday. Someday in the future, she will be absorbed back. Back into her womb, along with her other aborted siblings, Yanus seethed with relish. And then she would have her own body back.


    It was an exhausting thing, to share a body with another being, things that had seemed so simple before were now a negotiation. Every act that Yanus wanted to take had to be agreed upon by the ever contrary Yuno. When her daughter had first been born, head first emerging from Yanus¡¯ shoulder like the blemish that she was, Yanus had been in shocked disbelief. Becoming a god was supposed to be an empowering thing, not this curse it had become. She had tried working together with the little blight, but Yuno was a selfish creature. Perhaps that was understandable, Yanus allowed, graciously, there was so little for her to have of her own, growing out of her mother¡¯s body.


    It wasn¡¯t that she didn¡¯t sympathize with the child. Yanus was probably the only being that could. But when your body was taken from you forcefully, when your autonomy was violated. Well, sympathy could only go so far. And she was far past that. How could a being she shared a body with, a heart and lungs with, be so out of sync with herself? Had there ever been two more incompatible creatures? Yanus preferred solitude, Yuno wanted company. Yanus loved white clover, Yuno despised even the smell of it. Yanus preferred twilight, whereas Yuno wanted to be out at sunrise. Sometimes Yanus wondered if her daughter was choosing the opposite of what she wanted just to differentiate herself from her mother in some small way.


    She often found herself dissociating, like she was living in a dream, an otherness to her body. That the futures she saw where she was alone in her body once more were the reality and right now she was just in limbo, waiting to wake up and live them. She would watch, out of body, from somewhere above, as Yuno moved, marionette-like. She knew she was the one doing those actions, but seeing her daughter there, just inside her field of view, made the experience surreal. She felt out of shape, displaced from herself, like her organs weren¡¯t filling her form just right, like her legs were backward or her tail misplaced.


    Yanus didn¡¯t quite regret becoming a god, given this outcome. But she certainly would have liked it better without Yuno. She had bitten the wolf god. Bitten him hard and held on until his blood ran down her throat and filled her belly. He hadn¡¯t even noticed, too full of alcohol to cognize pain. She hadn¡¯t realized that she was pregnant, but then she hadn¡¯t realized that would be something to avoid. The old god¡¯s blood filled her body, transforming her into godflesh, only, upon reaching her womb it burned through the babies, destroying them all except for one. Yuno lived, a single kit surviving the violence of the godly transformation. What did she think of their shared body? It couldn¡¯t be easy living with your mother watching over your shoulder, so literally.


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    But soon she wouldn¡¯t have to worry about that. The wolf god had given them another gift, one that had developed into something wondrous. A magical affinity for magnetism. An ability that allowed them unique access to manipulating the fabric of spacetime. Suddenly a whole new dimension of movement was opened, they could teleport, tesseract really, warp through higher dimensions to reach elsewhere. The first jump was instinctual.


    The sensation of Yuno pushing her way up through Yanus¡¯ skin was not one Yanus would ever forget. Though the pain might fade, the terror would not. Sheer horror at her body¡¯s revolt, acting without her compulsion. Something wriggling, writhing under her skin as Yuno wormed her way through the muscle, fusing her bones to her mother¡¯s. The pain sent Yanus outside herself.


    Static in her ears and heat in her blood overwhelming her at the flush of agony as her body tore itself open to accommodate this new creature, this new cancerous growth erupting from within her. She had to escape, had to flee.


    And so she warped, breaking space itself to bolt away, into a rabbit hole, burrowed through space itself. Her body was tesselating, collapsing and cantalating, her every atom rearranged as she shifted, somehow orthogonal to the fabric of spacetime, as if gravity had been rewritten into a new non-euclidean thing. An intense pressure overtook her, her body suctioned from every direction, causing a strange sense of weightlessness, alien and ominous. She could see for a fraction of a moment, the space through which she passed, a flash of time, a flash of death.


    The pain and shock of it all caused her eyes to roll back in her head, darkness blurring the edges of her vision. Her eyelids closed, shut to the world, only to open with new capabilities. A third eyelid, a little sliver of the moribund, lingering from the life-death of her progeny slid between her lens and the back of her eyelids, revealing to her a whirl of time as she passed through some higher dimension. She could briefly see flickers of a time she wasn¡¯t familiar with, a future, perhaps? They were here and gone too quickly for her to really grasp, a black cat with a gleaming opal eye, his after image lingering as he walked through a pale trajectory as he stalked towards her, a writhing churning pit of rabbits round and round until they too were a blur, the faint figure of a ghost unnaturally still and unmoving, and finally, darkness. Was it all in store for her, things she would eventually see? How else would these images appear to her? The last one was the worst. She could feel the horror of it even through her new moribund lens. She retracted the eyelid with new muscles quickly, sheathed it away so she could stop seeing these too real things.


    Was Yuno conscious of her actions, her escape from the womb premeditated, Yanus wondered later, after the pain had passed and Yuno had made it clear she was there to stay. She did intentionally burrow through her mother¡¯s flesh, did she chew her way out? Was there another rabbit inside her, buried within her body like a stacking doll. The thought of it sent her into a mental frenzy, sending a shiver of revulsion, disgust with her own body shooting through her, like the first explosive sparking of a wildfire. Could Yuno feel how much she despised the thought of her? Some emotions were physical, after all. She worried for a moment, paranoid, tense at the thought of her daughter privy to her most intimate thoughts. She was already privy to her body, after all, what was a little less privacy among family?

 Chapter 2: Selfish

    ¡®Daughter mine,¡¯ she cooed, summoning the most cloyingly sweet voice she could muster for the unwanted child, ¡®daughter mine, do you see what I see?¡¯ She did her best to inquire delicately, unwilling to expose her future-sight if the child could not see as she did. If her daughter was unaware, how lovely to have something all to herself, but if not, it would be best to know. ¡®I know!¡¯ Yanus¡¯ heart fell hearing the awed voice of her daughter, ¡®I see them! I see my siblings in your belly, content. And later, I see how they suffered when the god-blood coursed through them.¡¯ She turned to her Yanus, looking at her as best she could while connected at the neck, ¡®you selfish old hag,¡¯ she said viciously, the rage and betrayal making her voice raspy. ¡®You killed them! Killed them all, in your pursuit for power. Your hubris killed my siblings.¡¯ She turned her head, a conflicted Yanus now seeing only the back of her head and her daughter¡¯s ears as she did her best to give her mother her back. Past-sight then, a fitting balance to her own.


    She hadn¡¯t known she was pregnant. But if she had, well, it probably wouldn¡¯t have made a difference. The wolves had been released from the moral code the wolf god had held them to, Tva¡¯s grief driving him to alcohol and ignorance, neglecting his godly duties. His children took that as acquiesce to their wild behavior, and they slaughtered their way through the fluffle, rabbits scattering, fleeing or else torn apart between their teeth. But Tva drank on, either unaware or uninterested in his past devotees. How silly it seemed now, for a wolf to take rabbits as his followers, but they hadn¡¯t questioned it at the time, too grateful for the protection to worry about the consequence later down the road, if he ever lost interest or turned on them.


    Yanus had known then what she must do to avoid her inevitable fate at the tooth of one of Tva¡¯s other children, so she had taken her god hood by force. It was her due, she thought, she deserved this last unwilling gift. He had taken his protection from her so she would take another kind of protection back. It wouldn¡¯t even really hurt him, he would continue on unknowing of how his blood had altered the entire course of her life.


    She looked at the back of her daughter¡¯s head now, thinking of how ungrateful the child was. With her past sight, couldn¡¯t she see the wolves nipping at her mother¡¯s heels? Couldn¡¯t she see the fate of so many other rabbits? That would have been her fate, the both of them, if Yanus hadn¡¯t done what she did. They were both of them alive because of the choice Yanus had made. And Yuno instead chose to hold Yanus accountable for the lives she didn¡¯t save. She looked the other way, disgusted. There would be no apologies.


    She flexed her eyelid muscle once more, the moribund sheath flicking out to cover her lens. She watched, happily, a time when she was alone once more, where her daughter was just a scar on her shoulder. Rabbits danced happily in her future, white clover flourished beneath her step. Her future was heaven.


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    What else did her daughter see, she thought, suddenly paranoid once more. Was it only the history of their shared body? Or was it beyond themselves? Her own visions were limited to her own future thus far, and from what Yuno had revealed there was no reason to think otherwise for the child. But she didn¡¯t trust her. Didn¡¯t trust that the brat didn¡¯t have her own secrets. Could she see the future instead, was she just guessing about the past to torment her mother? Or maybe Yuno seeing a different future entirely. Maybe the future Yanus was seeing was just a fantasy, her eyelids giving her false hope instead of an eventuality. Would she have to fight for this future, would there be some critical thing she had to do to make it a reality? Yuno would fight her, if she ever found out, Yanus realized with a burst of protective anger. She must hide the truth from her at all costs.


    She should fake it. She should fake her apology. There was no sense in revealing her hand prematurely. Lull the girl into a false sense of security, make her believe in a mother¡¯s care and then when the time comes, well. When the time comes Yuno would be no more. Yanus could hardly contain her delight.


    And all she really had to do to apologize was tell her daughter the truth. It wasn¡¯t that hard, really, she had made the right choice, no one would disagree, she reassured herself. ¡®It was a certain death to not become a god, there was no other path,¡¯ she said horsley, willing herself to act as if Yuno¡¯s accusations provoked some time of pained reaction from her, rather than the homicidal rage she was currently feeling. Yuno might be able to feel it if she lied, she chastised herself, recalling the way her body flushed with anger and ached with sadness. She carried so much of her feelings bodily, she must be careful not to give herself away, she thought, trying to pour false emotion into her performance.


    ¡®Our god abandoned us to the wolves, let his acolytes rip us apart without conscience for the generations of worship our people had granted him,¡¯ she rasped, voice thick with emotion, recalling the pain of the betrayal, the rage, letting her current rage reinforce the memory. ¡®I would have died, and you and my kits in my belly, we would have all perished but for my decision.¡¯ Yuno turned back toward her, a flash of her crimson eye in Yanus¡¯ peripherals. ¡®Better we had died, together, as a family. Instead we¡¯re, we¡¯re this,¡¯ she emphasized the word with a hiss, her feelings at the attachment clear. ¡®Whatever we are now, an abomination,¡¯ Yuno said, voice suddenly exhausted, as if releasing all her unspoken thoughts had drained her. ¡®We were supposed to die. I wish we were dead. Why do you keep persisting when it is clear what we are should not exist.¡¯


    Yanus paused, at that, surprised at her daughter¡¯s inner thoughts. She had never guessed that she might feel that way.


    How dare she. How dare she think Yanus ought to give up her body entirely. This was her body and she would be the one to make the decisions for it. How glad she was that Yuno had been granted no control beyond her own neck. The little brat might have tried to destroy them. Unforgivable, even the thought of her holding these thoughts about Yanus¡¯ body made her burn with animosity. She would never allow it. She would never allow Yuno to destroy them. She thought back to the future she had seen for herself. Well, only Yuno would die. The thought made her a little sad for her daughter. Leaving the world unaccompanied. Alone. But, she would be joining her siblings in her after life, she comforted herself, trying to rationalize away her feelings of sympathy. She didn¡¯t want to feel for the child. Refused to, really. This was what Yuno wanted.

 Chapter 3: The Future

    She was whirling through space, reveling in her god given freedom. Yuno, silent for once, though she could still feel her on her shoulder, an unwelcome weight. A strength filled her, refreshing, the charge of more power coursing through her as she was whisked through the space between space. Was this where power came from? Were all gods charged by this between space miasma, transposed on top of their own reality? And she was the only one with direct access! How powerful she would be. And she had no need to fear anything ever again. No teeth would pierce her skin, no claws rake her back.


    Her eyelid slid back into its epimysium, tucked away for her next usage of it. It was remarkable how visceral the visions were, not just ocular, but she could feel the sensation of it flush through her, fainter, perhaps, but still discernible.


    She would have to come up with an excuse to use their jumps more frequently, to build up her power stores. Would Yuno have access to their power too? It sent a ripple of anxiety through her, thinking of her daughter and her longing for death, with their power coursing through her own veins. Bad enough the child had the same moribund eyelids. But enough, no more dwelling on it. Soon enough, the child would be gone, and the power would be hers alone. She sighed, wistful.


    Finding an excuse for more jumps was difficult. She had to acquiesce to her daughter¡¯s preference for lucerne, which she didn¡¯t particularly like, but wasn¡¯t the most terrible thing to ingest. Pop! Pop! Pop! The vacuum closed behind them with every jump, the air forced to back out to accommodate their arrival in a new space. She was growing fond of the loud sound, a tribute to her abilities. And each time a little more power strengthened her. She would be a powerhouse among gods, no god would be her equal. And then the memories of her weakness would fade away to nothing, as if they had never existed at all.


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    They weren¡¯t all bad memories, not really. Of being a part of Tva¡¯s flock, his teachings of harmony with the wolves. His protection from the other predators. No bear would cross his territory, and the rabbits were wholly his. They had braided lupus in his hair, frollicked under his feet. Had celebrated him.


    But with perspective she could see it was all a lie. They had been nothing to him after all. He had abandoned them to the wolves in the end, he had let his favored children pick them off. Despite the acolytes¡¯ past as rabbits, after their transformation they had led to them being entirely wolf, with all the instincts that came with that heritage. And they had not hesitated, when Tva had set them free.


    Perhaps she should find the remnants of her people. After Yuno was gone, of course. It wouldn¡¯t do for them to have a second god, to lose their faith in the divine by watching a god die. But they were scattered people, and reassembling them would be a mighty undertaking. One that shouldn¡¯t be difficult for a being with her abilities. She would appear to them from nothingness like a guardian, offering them new patronage, from their own kind, not some ravenous wolf. They would be fearful, at first, but she would persist.


    Would she see it? This beautiful future, would it come to be? There was only one way to find out. She closed her eyes, eyelids flickering out once more, willing them to take her further into the future, scrying onto the back of her eyes for some time beyond when she lost her daughter. It was difficult to control, but the more of her ichor blood she fed to the eye, pushed through her wavering veins, the more minute control she could have. Each fraction of control an uphill fight.


    And then she was there, in the future. Some sort of whirling pinwheel, a seething mass of rabbit flesh surged, round and round. In its center she cackled. She had collected her people, captured their worship in some mighty future goal. In the future she could feel it, a power far beyond what she now had, seeping into her bloodstream, filling her swelling veins as her future devotees bucked and bustled around her, their paths blurring together. She laughed again, this future self. The euphoria of it filled her, a buzzing delight in the present. ¡®What is it mother?¡¯ Yuno asked, chewing that disgusting lucerne. She couldn¡¯t wait any longer, she thought erratically, losing her grip on when and where she was, she could no longer hold in her feelings. ¡®I see,¡¯ she laughed, her self-control slipping, ¡®I see the future and you are not there!¡¯

 Chapter 4: Apology

    Yuno was quiet for a long while after that, days filled with her silence. It was putting Yanus on edge, each day that passed without Yuno¡¯s chatter wound her muscles tighter and tighter. Why didn¡¯t she react? Wasn¡¯t this essentially what she wanted, or did she still hold onto her desire for both of their deaths? The uncertainty was exhausting, but Yanus refused to be the one to break first.


    ¡®I looked further, you know.¡¯ Yuno said, out of nowhere. ¡®Into our past, I mean. Well, the past of this body.¡¯ She amended. She hesitated, mulling over her next words, Yanus listening in taut silence. ¡®I think, I think I understand why you sought out godhood, why you put our family at risk¡¯ she finally got out. ¡®I think I knew it before too, but I couldn¡¯t forgive you, I needed to hold you responsible for something. Needed a reason to hate you. You were the cause of my siblings¡¯ death, my own would-be murderer. It was too much. Too much for me to accept at that time, that you might have made the right, the only decision. I needed time to grieve. It was wrong for me to take it out on you. You bore too much suffering, too much for a single being to carry. And I poured more on you.¡¯ She quieted cautiously, waiting for Yanus¡¯ response.


    Yanus laughed. And laughed. Finally, finally her daughter understood her, understood why she had done what she had, and what she had sacrificed. Ha, it was far far too late for that now. She didn¡¯t care for this apologetic daughter, let her hold onto her hatred, her rage, this old woman could take it and more. She would carry her own hatred for as long as she wanted and no weak apology, no sanctimonious kit would make her release it. There would be no absolution here. Not for her, not for Yuno.


    Yuno seemed alarmed at her mother¡¯s unhinged laughter. ¡®Mother?¡¯ She rarely called Yanus mother, rarely called her anything, Yanus noticed, abstractly, her own laughter now resounding in her ears. She could still hear the ghosts of her glee, it rang within her head like tinnitus. ¡®What, what?¡¯ she could barely hear her daughter, her ears still full of her own shrieks, was she still laughing? ¡®Mother?! How dare you, you little parasite. I don¡¯t need your apology, don¡¯t need you. No matter how you feel now, the future is set, and I wont change it. The future belongs to me!¡¯


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    ¡®I didn¡¯t mean it like that!¡¯ Yuno interrupted Yanus¡¯ tirade, her own voice rising. ¡®My feelings may have changed about you, but I still don¡¯t think we should exist, I, I just wanted to, I was wrong! You don¡¯t have to accept my apology, if you don¡¯t want to, you can be mad at me as long as you want, I¡¯ll accept my punishment.¡¯ She calmed, a little, ¡®I didn¡¯t want you to go through life thinking I still held you responsible for what happened.¡¯


    Yanus pursed her lips together, her nose twitching violently as she tried her best to hold in her feelings, unsuccessfully, ¡®I hate you. I hate you and you¡¯ll never be a daughter to me. Just a disgusting body snatcher I¡¯ll eventually be rid of. I will exist. Despite you, despite the wolves, I¡¯ve won.¡¯ Yuno sighed, resigned.


    Their silence had a different flavor after that, Yuno cautious of setting of Yanus once again. Yanus could barely focus. She lived day to day, each moment in elation, a triumph to her existence. She muttered to herself, thoughts of wolves, of dying kits, both real and imagined. The carnage of the rabbit¡¯s deaths still haunted her, from time to time. Now more than before. She had suppressed the memories of the wolves'' carnage, after they had first occurred, buried them down. Her lapse in sanity seemed to bring everything to the surface. She saw them, now, torn apart, limbs scattered in her peripherals, a shredded kit when she glanced away. She shook her head, as if they could be shaken off. She saw her own absorbed kits, halfway to degraded, their tiny bodies still pink and soft, mucus and blood spotting their bodies. She moaned, unwilling to be confronted with them again.


    Yuno had been right, she was a murderer, and just like the wolves, she had rabbit blood on her paws as well.

 Chapter 5: Confrontation

    ¡®I want to see Tva.¡¯ Yanus said, in one of her more lucid moments. ¡®I want to look into the eyes of the god who abandoned us.¡¯ She still considered him a god, rather than just a wolf, she realized, not liking her implicit admission of his other identity. Gods shouldn¡¯t abandon their followers. They should be true to them until the end. She would be a better god, she resolved. When she took up her rabbit devotees, she would protect them. They would worship her as their god and they would not be disappointed.


    ¡®Are you sure that¡¯s a good idea,¡¯ Yuno hedged. She had become more reticent, more withdrawn, since their confrontation. It must be hard to be the sane half of a half-crazed god, Yanus smirked. She knew what was happening to her, in some deep part of herself, and she had accepted it, embraced it as part of her own psyche. Her feelings were right, after all, even if the magnitude of her reaction was off, she was right. And really what else could she do, besides accept herself, in all her damaged glory.


    ¡®You¡¯re going to keep me from him?¡¯ Yanus asked, suspicious. Why would she do that? What could she gain? ¡®I¡¯m going to see him! You can¡¯t stop me!¡¯ She screeched, her voice breaking. Fear struck her, what if Yuno had gained some control over her body? The sudden anxiety sent her into a panic. She launched herself through space without another thought, carving a rift in spacetime and squeezing her resistant body through, ignoring the pain of being torn apart and reassembled as she warped. Or perhaps she simply couldn¡¯t grasp pain any longer, her mind too ravaged to hold onto anything other than madness. She could feel where pain used to be, the shape of it, but it no longer held her hostage.


    She appeared before the wolf-god with the forceful pop of displaced air, the sound beaconing her arrival once again. She loved that sound, the sound of her power, her might, the sound of her conquering the rules, the physics of the world.


    ¡®Wolf-god!¡¯ She screamed, unwilling to be ignored by him once again. ¡®Wolf-god, I¡¯m here for you!¡¯ Her voice broke on the last word, her vocal cords bruised under the strain of her emotion.


    Tva was drunk, or course, passed out by a moon shaped lake, twilight painting it in shades of blue, just like the coat the wolf had been in her memories. Blue like the sky, she remembered him saying, as the rabbits braided his coat, lupus offering tucked into the coarse fur of the woven plaits. He had told the story once, of his ascension to godhood, how the sky had summoned him, had remade his body, his mind. Had she taken that into account when she had made the decision to take his blood? She couldn¡¯t remember now. Memories faded under the weight of the present, the gravity of it sucking her in.


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    The god lolled on the ground, his six legs sprawled around him ungainly, four eyes closed. He was much larger than any other wolf could hope to be, a monolith of a being. Were all other gods so large, she wondered, suddenly insecure about her own small stature. It didn¡¯t matter, she was stronger than all of them, she reassured herself. Better than them.


    She hopped up to his head, peering at him closely. She had never been this close to his face before, she could see the fine lashes fluttering with each breath, the wet shine of the moon off his nose. He looked peaceful like this. Like he had no worries, no guilt about how his acolytes had butchered her people. Her face hardened. Turning around to face away from him, she gave him a hard kick with her strong rear legs, ¡®wake up!¡¯ she said harshly, kicking his head again. She wasn¡¯t sure how long it would take for him to wake, even his head was much bigger than her whole body, but kicking him was therapeutic and she was happy to continue to do so for as long as it took.


    ¡®Ugh,¡¯ Tva groaned, his head rolling away from her, ¡®stop, it hurts,¡¯ he whimpered, his voice weak like a child¡¯s. ¡®It hurts, it hurts,¡¯ Yanus mocked, giving him one last vicious kick. He lifted his head at that, trying to escape. ¡®A rabbit?¡¯ he asked, his voice mournful as he eyed her, four sad eyes looking down at the animal below him, ¡®have you returned to me?¡¯ Yanus snorted, derisive at his drunk-sloppy demeanor. ¡®I¡¯ve returned, yes,¡¯ she said, her voice saccharine. ¡®Now answer me, wolf-god, why did you abandon us!¡¯ He looked taken aback, ¡®you, you left me?¡¯ he responded. ¡®I couldn¡¯t protect you so you left me.¡¯


    Yanus¡¯ ears twitched in annoyance, he was still drunk, sleep hadn¡¯t cycled all the alcohol from his system. ¡®You let you acolytes eat us,¡¯ she was very nearly yelling the last words, letting all her anger and bitterness bleed into her voice. ¡®You let them devour our fluffle, let them tear us apart. Our children, our elders, you let them all die! So, I¡¯ll ask you again, why did you leave?¡¯ Tva shook his head, overwhelmed at her accusations. ¡®I, I didn¡¯t! You left me behind, didn¡¯t want me anymore, I had failed you and so you, you discarded me,¡¯ his voice broke, great eyes filled with tears. Yanus thumped a foot, enraged at how he avoided responsibility. ¡®Ha! You swore to protect us. We loved you, would have followed you anywhere! You were the one that discarded us!¡¯


    This was going nowhere, he wouldn¡¯t accept his fault, kept denying it, denying that he killed his followers. She could feel the anger coursing through her, boiling through her veins as she shook with impotent wrath. How dare he. She couldn¡¯t bear his lies, his resistance to the truth any longer. She needed to leave, to not see him, every second in his presence burned her.


    She left, bounding through space once more, unwilling to spend another second entertaining the farce that was the once great god. Let him drown in his liquor. She screamed when she re-manifested. A scream that went on and on. Yuno¡¯s ears flattened to her head, still saying nothing, unwilling to draw her mother¡¯s ire. Yanus wondered, with vengeful fury, if she could tesseract through her old god, if she could jump within him and rip apart his body with her own. She shuddered, suddenly remembering the same sensation from when Yuno was born. No. No she would not. Despite how much he might deserve it.

 Chapter 6: Beginning

    ¡®Maybe we could go find the fluffle?¡¯ Yuno offered, for the third time that day. She had been trying to distract Yanus, to direct her into a more constructive direction, a very obvious ploy that Yanus did not appreciate. She still wanted to be angry, wasn¡¯t yet done with her rage. ¡®Fine!¡¯ she finally said in exacerbation, just to stop her daughter from bringing it up. The child was relentless. She had originally planned to wait until Yuno was gone to begin assembling her followers, but she had grown to be an impatient woman.


    They found a small burrow in a nearby grove, a place filled with Yanus¡¯ favorite white clover. Yuno must have been considerably worried about her mother, as she didn¡¯t complain about it at all. ¡®My people,¡¯ Yanus said grandly, appearing suddenly in their midst. The rabbits scattered, bolting down their rabbit holes. Yanus cackled. Soon they would not have to fear anything.


    ¡®Yanus?¡¯ a young doe asked, peering out from a hole, ¡®Yanus! Is that you? What happened to you?¡¯ she asked, her voice low and fearful as she peered wide eyed at Yuno. ¡®I have ascended to godhood,¡¯ Yanus returned, puffing her chest and raising her head high, ¡®I have returned to keep our people safe.¡¯ A low murmur broke out, ¡®gods have failed us,¡¯ an older rabbit spoke up, rebuking the idea. ¡®I am not like him. I am a rabbit foremost, and a god second.¡¯ Yanus said firmly, looking the elder strait in the eye with resolve, more cognate than she had been in a long time, this moment a pivot that she could not mishandle. The elder paused for a moment, sitting up right and twitching her nose as if to sniff out the truth. Apparently finding what she wanted she sat back.


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    ¡®How will you protect us, as a rabbit?¡¯ Another rabbit asked. Instead of answering, Yanus ported, entering the void once again to appear inside of a bush, ripping it to shreds with her reentry into space. The rabbits gasped, ¡®I will not hesitate to do what must be done, to protect our people from any threat. And I will take no acolytes. You, my followers, will be my only children. Yuno shifted uncertainty, her ears quivering, perhaps second guessing her decision to redirect Yanus¡¯ attention after her mother¡¯s violent display and fanatic words.


    ¡®Now, worship me!¡¯ Yanus howled, inciting the rabbits. They paused in a shocked moment before cheering, working themselves into a frenzy. Yanus twirled, ¡®come to me! Dance for me, my people!¡¯ she called, her eyes full of her visions of the future, where the rabbits whirled around her, a writhing hurricane encircling her. They hopped in celebration, in reverence, round and round, faster and faster, just like her vision, over laying with it in her eyes as she watched them through her moribund eyelids. She could feel the power filling her, godly ichor running hot, pouring through her veins. This was what she had wanted, this was what she deserved. She was now a god in the truest sense, with her own followers, her own power. What did it matter if Tva never acknowledged his fault, his followers were hers now. What did it matter if Yuno was there, she would be gone soon enough. For Yanus, her godhood had begun.


    End