A Bedtime Story for Little Monarchs That Bite (Or: Why Bunny Now Sleeps With One Eye Open)
Once upon a time, in the Kingdom of Velinwood, Bunny, THE Bunny, the Chief Documentarian and Petty Herald...was terribly, dramatically, artistically ill.
He had constructed a magnificent fortress of blankets: seven layers deep, perfectly arranged, with strategic pillow buttressing and a single breathing hole oriented toward the window for optimal air circulation while maintaining thermal insulation.
It was, he felt, his finest architectural achievement while fevered. Structurally sound. Artistically brilliant. A masterpiece of fevered proportions.
He was just settling into what, he hoped, would be blessed, uninterrupted and somewhat prolonged unconsciousness when he heard it:
Whisper whisper whisper.
Bunny's ears twitched. He told himself he was imagining things. Fever dreams. Thermal hallucinations. Probably the pounding in his head was just creating a sound that wasn't there. Nothing more.
Whisper whisper...rustle rustle.
Bunny opened his eyes. There, barely visible in the moonlight filtering through his breathing hole, was another BLANKET FORT. But not HIS blanket fort. A NEW blanket fort. Right next to his bed.
"NO," Bunny whispered into his pillows. "No no no no—"
"Shhhhhh!" came a small voice from inside the mysterious fort. "You'll wake the WATCHERS!"
Bunny sat up so fast he got dizzy and almost fell over. His blanket fortress collapsed around him. "EMMA?!"
Her Royal Highness of Contradiction (and Cutlery), poked her head out of her blanket fort, eyes wide with theatrical terror. "Bunny! BUNNY! They're HERE!" In one hand, she was holding Sir Stabbington, her trusty wooden spoon, and had a box of cookies in her other hand.
"Who is here? WHAT is here? WHY ARE YOU IN MY ROOM?!"
"The WATCHERS!" Emma whispered dramatically, beckoning him closer. "They come at night when you're sick! They sneak in and..." She paused for maximum effect. "...they READ YOUR BOOKS!"
Bunny stared at her with the one eye he could see out of, the other was squinted against the fever and his patience. Then at his bookshelf. Then back at Emma. "Books," he said flatly. "They read... books."
"YES!" Emma nodded vigorously. "Without asking! Without even using BOOKMARKS! They just—" She made creepy finger-walking motions. "—creep creep creep, flip flip flip, and then they LEAVE THEM OPEN! FACE DOWN! ON THE SPINE!" She flourished her wooden spoon dramatically as if fighting off a foe.
Bunny gasped, his paw goes to one fevered cheek. "MONSTERS."
"I KNOW RIGHT?!" Emma grabbed his paw and pulled him toward her blanket fort. "Quick! Into the fort! They can't see us if we're in the fort!"
"That is not—" Bunny swayed slightly, dizzy. "—that is not how vision works—"
"It's how MAGIC vision works! Come ON, Bunny, they'll be here ANY MINUTE!"
Against his better judgment—and because he was feverish and exhausted and Emma was surprisingly strong for a squirrel—Bunny found himself dragged into the blanket fort.
It was, he had to admit, structurally impressive. Emma had used chairs, pillows, and what appeared to be several of Sir Reginald's spare cloaks to create a multi-chambered fortress with sight lines to all entrances.
"When did you BUILD this?" Bunny demanded.
"While you were asleep! I've been PREPARING!"
"For imaginary book thieves."
"They're not IMAGINARY, Bunny, they're REAL! Sir Reginald told me about them!"
Bunny's eye twitched. "Sir Reginald."
"He said the Watchers come when someone's sick because sick people can SEE them! Usually they're invisible but fever makes them VISIBLE! It's like—like—thermal VISION!"
"That is not—"
"SHHHHH!" Emma clapped a paw over his mouth. "Do you hear that?!"
They both froze.
Silence.
More silence.
Then...
Creeeeeeak.
The door to Bunny's quarters opened slowly. A figure entered, moving with silent purpose toward his bookshelf.
Bunny's eyes went wide.
"See?!" Emma whispered triumphantly. "WATCHERS!"
The figure reached for a book—one of Bunny's favorites, a first-edition history of Kingdom recordkeeping—and pulled it from the shelf.
Then it SAT DOWN.
Right there on Bunny's favorite reading chair.
And began to READ.
Bunny watched in growing horror as the Watcher—illuminated now by moonlight—turned pages WITHOUT SUPPORTING THE SPINE. Just... letting the book FLOP OPEN, stressing the binding—
"I cannot allow this," Bunny whispered, starting to emerge from the fort.
Emma yanked him back. "BUNNY NO! You can't let them SEE you seeing them! That's how they GET you!"
"Get me? They're DAMAGING MY BOOKS!"
"Exactly! They FEED on the horror of proper book-lovers! They THRIVE on your distress! You have to—" Emma rummaged in her fort supplies and produced a small notebook. "—DOCUMENT THEIR CRIMES!"
Bunny stared at the notebook.
Then at the Watcher, who was now DOG-EARING A PAGE.
His professional instincts warred with his horror.
Documentation won.
He took the notebook.
"What are they doing now?" he whispered, scribbling furiously.
"Subject is... holding book by single page... spine unsupported... pages bending... THIS IS ARCHIVAL VIOLENCE—"
"Good! Good documentation!" Emma peered through a gap in the blankets. "Ooh! Ooh! There's ANOTHER one! By your desk!"
Sure enough, a second figure had materialized, this one rifling through Bunny's filing system.
"They're in my FILES!" Bunny hissed. "Emma, they're touching my ORGANIZATION SYSTEM!"
"Document it! DOCUMENT EVERYTHING!"
And so, for the next hour, the Chief Documentarian and the Princess of Chaos huddled in a blanket fort, carefully recording the crimes of the Watchers:
- Subject One: Read for forty-seven minutes without proper bookmark, then replaced book BACKWARDS on shelf
- Subject Two: Examined three files, left them in WRONG ORDER, did not return folder tabs to proper position
- Subject Three (appeared at 2:47 AM): Opened atlas to MAP OF VELINWOOD, traced routes with FINGER (oils from skin now on archival document), left page FOLDED
With each new violation, Bunny's documentation became more detailed and Emma's commentary more dramatic.
"They're like BOOK VAMPIRES!" Emma whispered. "Sucking the LIFE out of proper organization!"
"That is not how vampires work—"
"DOCUMENT VAMPIRES then! Knowledge vampires! They steal the ESSENCE of well-maintained libraries!"
Bunny, despite himself, wrote this down.
Finally, as dawn began to break, the Watchers began to fade.
First Subject Three, dissolving into morning light.
Then Subject Two, vanishing mid-file.
Then Subject One, who had the AUDACITY to leave Bunny's book open, face-down, on the chair before disappearing entirely.
Bunny stared at the devastation of his room. Books misshelved. Files disordered. Papers scattered.
"Now do you believe me?" Emma asked triumphantly.
"I..." Bunny clutched his documentation notebook. "I have seventeen pages of evidence. I... may need to revise my understanding of nocturnal phenomena."
"TOLD YOU!" Emma bounded out of the blanket fort. "This is why you ALWAYS need a fort when you're sick! The Watchers can't resist a feverish documentarian! You're like CATNIP to them!"
Bunny emerged more slowly, still dizzy, still feverish, now also deeply traumatized.
"I need to reorganize EVERYTHING," he said weakly.
"Nope!" Emma pushed him back toward his bed. "You need to SLEEP! I'll stand guard! I'll protect your books!"
"Emma, you are the LEAST qualified person to—"
"I have a FORK!" She brandished one of her signature utensils. "And I know how to use it! Any Watcher that comes back gets the TINES!"
Bunny was too tired to argue. He collapsed back into his ruined blanket fortress, clutching his documentation.
"Emma," he said quietly. "Did Sir Reginald really tell you about the Watchers?"
"Oh no!" Emma said cheerfully. "I made them up! But YOU saw them, so I guess they're real now! Isn't that COOL? We manifested book-disturbing entities through the power of BELIEF and FEVER!"
Bunny stared at her.
"You..." He couldn't even form words. "You made me... document... imaginary..."
"REAL NOW!" Emma corrected. "You saw them! Seventeen pages of evidence! That's like, SUPER real!"
"I am going to tell the Queen."
"The Queen already knows! Who do you think SENT me to protect you?" Emma grinned. "She said you were being 'dramatically ill' and needed 'distraction.' I DISTRACTED you! You're welcome!"
Bunny pulled his blankets over his head.
"I quit," he mumbled. "I officially, formally, permanently quit."
"You can't quit, you're the Chief Documentarian! Who else would document the WATCHERS?"
From somewhere in the hallway, Sir Reginald's voice drifted in:
"TO DOCUMENT OR NOT TO DOCUMENT—"
"NO!" Bunny shouted from under his blankets.
Emma patted his head through seven layers of fabric.
"There there, Bunny. The Watchers are gone now. You're safe. Until tonight."
"EMMA!"
"Kidding! Probably kidding! Sleep well!"
She skipped out of the room, leaving Bunny alone with his fever, his violated filing system, and seventeen pages of documentation about entities that may or may not have been real but were now DEFINITELY in the official archives.
Which meant they would eventually become part of Kingdom history.
Which meant future documentarians would have to explain them.
From under his blankets, Bunny laughed.
Then coughed.
Then laughed again.
Then fell asleep, dreaming of properly organized bookshelves that no Watcher—real or imagined—would ever disturb again.
THE END
MORAL: When you're sick and feverish, EVERYTHING is real if you document it properly. Also, never trust a princess with a blanket fort and an agenda.
SECONDARY MORAL: The Queen knows EXACTLY what she's doing.
TERTIARY MORAL: Sir Reginald's soliloquies can be heard from anywhere in the castle and there is no escape.