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The small rabbit, satisfied with the soundness of his plan, crawled into
a fortuitously bunny-sized alcove, where he was able to rest, out of the
blistering heat of the sun. He lay there for that day and a part of the next,
filling his stomach, when he grew hungry, with the remains of his would-be
predator. As the sun sank behind the dark-leafed trees to the west, he stood,
stretched his aching legs, and determined that he could apply himself with
some chance of success to an impossible ascent. The first, principal, and
most strenuous task, he reasoned, would be that of conceiving the best method
and route to gain his goal, after which the execution of the plan would be
a very simple matter.
He first considered that
climbing a slope of forty-five degrees should logically be twice as difficult
a task and take twice the amount of time and exertion as would traversing
flat ground of the same distance. By extrapolation, a slope of nearly ninety
degrees, as was the cliff above him, would require twice again that exertion,
making the prospect of climbing for twenty meters of sheer rock equal to
that of hopping for eighty meters through some pleasant meadow (an activity
which he had, on numerous occasions in the past, completed without the
slightest of difficulty). The mathematical simplicity of his ascent thus
established, it remained only to resolve those matters of logistics that so
often confound the elegance of scientific thought. With this end in mind,
Hopper set himself to more practical observation and speculation.
The difference, mused the rabbit,
between a vertical surface of granite, and a horizontal surface of earth, is
that the latter provides much better footing than the former. This is for two
reasons: first, that one has better footing on firm earth than on smooth
stone, and second, that one always has better footing when standing flat
than when askew.
"My chief consideration,
then," he said to himself, "is that of cant, as stone varies less
in temper than in angle."
Hopper then stepped back several
paces to examine this wall of rock that occupied one half of his horizon. A
narrow shelf, possibly just wide enough to accommodate his passage, started a
meter above him and ran crookedly upwards and to the right until he could no
longer make it out among the other incidental outthrusts of stone. Seeing
that this was the best route by way of both angle and firmness of footing,
Hopper, without further contemplation, leapt up onto the narrow rock ledge,
and started to carefully make his way along and up the face of the cliff,
leaving his erstwhile companion to decompose in relative peace.
By the unknowable decree of
providence, Hopper found himself, after near a half hour of painstaking
traverse, at neither the lip of his destination, nor at that hopeless impasse
that would have arisen had his narrow path ended with an unceremonious void.
Instead, and whether by good or bad fortune, the narrow mouth of a grotto
gaped at him with ravenous darkness. It exhaled a cold wind that chilled the
tips of his white fluffy ears, and tickled his paws, seeming to moan some
disjointed tune. When he poked his head in, he could barely see past his
whiskers before the last remnants of oblique sunlight dissolved into a
blackness so perfect it was as if God's first word had there been defied.
Though he trembled with fear, Hopper saw that to enter this passage would be
a matter of necessity, not one of discretion, and so, with only a brief
hesitation, he stepped into the breach and all light seemed to perish before
him.
As he crawled through the passage of
cold stone, his bloodied and mud-streaked fur might well have been that same
shining white pelt that had yet to change but once for the seasons, for the
pitch blackness of the depths into which he wandered effaced those outward
blemishes his adventures had dealt him. In his mind, however, as he felt
blindly for the one winding path that would take him forward, those wounds
that had scabbed over began to fester, and those that were hidden bled
freely, for though the marks made of flesh may scar and fade and be shed and
forgotten with the seasons, lashes laid on the mind will be fostered by time
and take their places, for good or ill, among the legion of their peers,
which no darkness can obscure.
Though his spirit ached and his body
grew numb in the cool of the dark rock that pressed him on all sides, Hopper
pressed on, taking up a merry tune to hum while the drafts of the earth
moaned around him. That chilling breeze still blew his gentle fur, now
inwards, and now out, like the moaning breath of some great wounded
beast.
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