Ben - Chapter Eight

Tapping with his foot furiously and feverishly, time was running out for Ben. His grounded concerns for the approaching cold were built up to a fever, and like all other creatures that lived for green underfoot and the warm yellow in the sky, he dreaded with grayness the approaching time slot when his paws stopped working just like the surfaces of the lakes.

He had lost his timepiece and slighted sight made difficulties in advancing, so a frantic tap would reveal more direction. His eyes, although daft in advanced age, were not his ears.

These were still tack-sharp from birth as any rabbit’s, but especially keen for him. A gift from his grandfather rabbit who had fought in the first Great Carrot War a century ago.

As soon as he was about to give up hope and retire to his burrowhole with slugs, earwigs and worms to eat, he heard that promising rattle of a chain disrupted by the falling earth around it.

Those ears, it was widely spread, could hear a kind fly drink from a watered buttercup from several trees away. They could pick out the thoughts of sea-plankton from seas away. They could read the harmony of the mountains, lakes, forests and rivers. Life was abundant in these wise old ears.

Ben would need to burrow in safe as foxes soon, lest he meet the same fate as an unstirring puddle.