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“It’s far quieter here than I’m used to, nowadays.”
Tigger’s yellow-furred companion looked off to the side whilst a familiar inclination crept up behind the stuffed animal, as though readying to pounce the way he’d have typically done to satiate whatever ‘urge’ he had. However, the seeming thread that kept him tethered to the wooden chair across the plush recliner seating Rabbit, who’d typically clicked his tongue and ‘hmph’ed over Tigger’s unbridled energy, didn’t waver. That usual vigor had only now done so much as to lead the latter’s gaze towards the mammal’s folded hands, neat as always.
"Well," the tiger chimed up, "you've got a little more peace and quiet now, right?" A gentle grin graced his face, and yet his tail itched with an unfamiliar twitch. Each vocable felt like bouncing on ice, and having familiarized himself with the warmth of Rabbit's home all throughout the harshness that Winter brought on these late-night visits, the sensation felt out of place.
“I understand that she’s just grown up,” Rabbit continued, almost like the cat's words flew right over his furred head. “That she doesn’t exactly need me anymore.”
Tigger’s own paws felt heavy in his lap watching the hare begin to massage a thumb with the other. Of course she still needs you, he willed to unleash. How’s a birdy like her supposed to visit without a bunny like you to come back to? Surprising even himself, the room remained achingly silent.
Rabbit’s ears—usually held up in a ‘I Know The Way Of Things And Always Have And Always Will’ sort of fashion—pointed South; had he possessed more sense, Tigger would’ve kicked himself for the observation. The persnickety cottontail appeared almost like the china he had pridefully displayed all across his home—placed a shelf or two higher to accommodate the strewn about playthings. One senseless word or two, a smidgen of the mohaired feline and his usual, careless incidents, and there Rabbit would go rattling off the edge, tumbling down before shattering into an assortment of jagged, meek pieces.
Big, forlorn eyes caught Tigger in his musing, pulling away from their fruitless search for some senseless direction—perhaps the same one a small kestrel might’ve been, roughly or so. “It's just-…”
The tiger's gaze just barely escaped the rabbit’s, resisting the seeming temptation to do or say something utterly regrettable. To knock him over the way he’d always unintentionally done so before. A shift in weight suddenly emphasized how suffocating the air separating the two had been. Fingers clutched onto his back like pauperized talons, and Tigger, breath hitching, dared to allow his eyes to move away from the armchair—warm and barren of what he’d now been caught up in. The cracks in Rabbit’s voice reared their heads, the words just slipping past Tigger’s chest enough to unveil a pained, unforeseen sob. “I still wish she didn’t leave.”
A moment or two passed, though it might’ve been a year or more before either one made the next move outside of the low, quiet sniffles that puffed out of the hare with every other breath. Then, the stuffed appendage running across bony spine was not unlike the cherished greeting of an old confidant. Despite any reservations bubbling inside the plush tiger, one could’ve said Tigger had cradled the bereft bunny nearly the same amount of times he did pounce him. Tigger was never the type of animal one would trust to handle precious things. All too bombastic, far too egregiously negligent. But if there were ever a place in his buoyant existence that the striped critter had been able to, for once, extend a hand towards the glass case and handle it with care, to race through the crops and stalks without permitting his accursed trounces to send them falling down, then it was on his friend Rabbit’s living room floor, running a mitten through the soft furs of the latter animal’s shivering back.
It was with the wind tap tap tapping at the window high above them, offering a piddling glimpse into the outside world with a sliver of moonlight that neither seemed to acknowledge until an “I’m sorry,” and “It’s late, I don’t know what’s gotten into me,” began tumbling out and picking Rabbit up and off the floor. They didn’t bother to shake off the contact.
It was when Tigger found himself lying next to the weathered hare, having waved off every and all chance to leave the floodgates behind as they now slowly began to shut themselves off from the rest of the world again, the burrow quiet once more.
"I'm sure she'll visit soon." His chest tightened as the grip loosened around his paw. “I mean- er…” eyes dared to peel away from the earthy ceiling and latch onto that of whom they’d been narrowly avoiding again since he’d sunk down into the sheets. “She’s real fortunate. That you care so much.” Trying not to somehow, inadvertently shut the gates faster proved it similar to the heaps of destruction that awoke whenever the striped feline bounded through the products of Rabbit’s labor; second nature, it was, no matter the indignation it left his companion in, and here? As proven time and time again, Tigger seemed only capable of bringing about more and more of Rabbit’s woes.
The recollection of a particular conversation suddenly seared itself right through his head; it had come with many, differing but all-very-similar, blurred together thoughts of a small, cheery voice that accompanied many of his prior romps in the wood throughout the summer that felt so, so far away now. Chirpings of admiration, frustration, many other ‘-ations’ or not that were all rolled into one for the buck adjacent from Tigger now. “She loves you, Rabbit.” Gazes meeting once more, he clung onto those warm pupils before he could dare to habitually look away—how might they have looked when the light was present? “Swear on my stripes.”
For the first time that night—or maybe week, Tigger was none the wiser over the difference—the feathery pillows and linen kept the gates ajar just enough, and through them, his smile had been reciprocated, small as it was. Just as the cat figured the sudden swell in his chest triggered by the return of a squeeze to his paw was to never be outdone, a fidgety nose slotting itself in the crook of his neck he was suddenly all too aware of made it pale in comparison. Wide eyes gleaned at the softened, closed peripherals underneath them; with the warm, even breaths gracing his pelt, it was almost as though one of them was asleep, and they’d wake up to believe this was all a dream.
He eventually remembered Rabbit never had to truly believe something to insist on it.
Not another word could be heard all throughout the Wood; not until the sun had risen the morning thereafter and the residents who’d been asleep all through the night awoke to continue with their carefree days, quaintly quotidian—exempting one. Rabbit had started up his usual routine again; as though it were merely a technical or other malfunction that had left him out of commission for nearly a month. Tigger stopped by once more, catching notice instantly of the clear, tidy floors before checking in with ol’ Long Ears. Whatever came of the exchanged words and salutations between them, nothing was said on the previously entangled limbs, the scents that permeated all around that shared bed. Not of the smiles, or the ghost of heat that lingered on Tigger’s neck. And nothing alluded to how he had remained awake long until and after the sun left its horizontal nest; all to remember the warmth enveloped in his arms, hours that felt like measly minutes.