Watching

 

 

Percy arrived quietly between the magical and more mundane moments of my early life and would have been a complication had it not been for this one fact: the moon wobbled. We're telling a story about life in all its multiplicities and mutations on a planet that is intimate with ONE orbiting ancestor. Mahina or Hina is the name my ancestors give to Earth's moon. My matriarchal ties favored my mother's language, so my stories reflect that lean. Percival, he hates it when I call him that, was slow showing up to keep me company. Four months can seem a long time for an infant human. While I waited, I found my thumbs and have grown guilt-free since in my dependence upon them ... either one. To soothe me when I'm confused, or confounded by too many options, or tummy tumbled because my Ma could not nurse, and cow's milk was far too off the genetic track for me.

 

"Research has shown a thumb sucker was either born premature, or, born into a family suffering setback," Percy came to me late, but was legendary for his researching skill. I never doubted his ideas, and even when we used words that made no sense at the time, it was just me and my rabbit. And he was always there for me.

 

"Rabbits are tricky and resourceful. Quick, but not meant to long treks." This was one of Percy's principals. Whenever the possibility of escape, or leaving home came up, he'd remind me: trick and short, but no grand capers. So our friendship was made in the heavens. My curiosity, love of stories, and underdeveloped musculature were all fed substantially by Percy's encyclopedic facility, his practicality and his tricks.

 

Before I could understand human language, Percy was prone to being verbose, I could feel his meanings. While my thumb pressed gently against the roof of my mouth, and my tongue pressed began to suckle, the young and red-brown mottled rabbit found a nook in the bend of my elbow. His long ears listening for the beat of me that might be congested, sad or misplaced. Rabbit's gifts do NOT include particularly keen sight. It's there ever-quivering nose and large ears that play big. Along with the blessing of powerful hunches that can slip into hyper-speed to escape hound, and stop dead still, Percy and his kin also have a piercing cry meant to startle, at least momentarily. But, sight, through eyes, was my part of the bargain between us. We worked that agreement out before my first birthday.

We grew well and fond of one another.

 

I was thirty-two and still the Rabbit listened, and I watched. Percy was a Hoaka Moon Rabbit, a rabbit born on the waxing moon. There was strength in a being born while the moon was fattening.

ৡ