The family had long since gotten lonely. Typically, whenever they were lonely, they would go out into the plains, striding across the tall grasses and swatting away at the bugs that would climb across their legs. They would often walk for days like this. Eventually, though, they would find something new and they would bring it home. There, they would play with it and make it one of their own until it broke, and they grew lonely once more. One of these things might last them a few months, or perhaps a single week if they had failed to be gentle. The last thing, a clay binturong painted as to glow a slight blue in the dark, hadn’t even lasted a day. Having left it upon the shelf, they had mistaken its glow for that of a small nightlamp sitting alongside it late into the night, and it had shattered as they slammed their hand into it in their sleep-ridden stupor. They had apologized to it profusely afterwards, ensuring every single shard and bit of dust was collected together to hear each word, though they never would have done the same for the lamp. For this, it resented the family, though it rarely ever expressed this.
After the thing had been buried, they fell into a deep despair, cursing themselves for their own negligence. “Why,” they asked, “had we placed our dear new thing there? How could we have been so foolish as to place it near the lamp? Are we not aware of our own habits? Curse us, curse us!” They would go on like this for hours at a time, writhing and groaning all about their home, steeping the air with their grief, only pausing to eat or to sleep or to work or to play. Eventually, though, the guilt had sufficiently replaced itself with that familiar loneliness, and they thought of other things once more.
“Well,” they decided, “the things from across the grasses will not do anymore. There is nothing to do but to have our own things, of our own design, of course. This way, they will not break, and we will not have them placed near the lamp, or the refrigerator, or the television, or the blender. We will hold our destinies close, and keep them within reach at all times in case we need them for something important.” So they pried open each cabinet within their kitchen and began to pick ingredients off the shelves, paying little mind to their own order. They were removed and replaced at a whim, a mess of loose powders and grains spilling across their countertops in the commotion. However, none of these powders or grains had been blue, nor had they shone in the dark, so no grief had been spared for them. Neither party particularly noticed.
They assembled their chosen ingredients into a sort of dough. It was a dark beige from the molasses, and coarse from the cornmeal, yeasty from the yeast, and sticky from the molasses again. They then allowed it a moment to rest as they allowed the oven to gain heat, briefly wincing at the reminder of last month’s paper crane. Once the oven was happy with itself, they laid out the dough onto an oiled sheet pan and, making sure to clean their hands often, stretched it into whichever shape they wanted. Though they had briefly been intimidated by the full spectrum of possibilities before them, they decided to replicate something familiar. They formed the dough into the form of a rabbit, dividing it between a head, abdomen, and thorax, before stretching each part to form ears and limbs and noses and mouths. They carefully placed pecans and raisins to form eyes and nostrils and fingers and toes before sliding it, carefully, into their patient oven.
Now with their agency stripped away, the family was given surplus time to worry for their impending thing. “We will not keep it in danger,” they said, “and we will not mistake it in the night, or in stupor. We will be of right mind, and no danger will ever approach it or us, for this home is a safe space for each and every thing we may bring, be it from across the bug-crawling grounds or from within our own home. There will be no more worry nor grief, and we will have all we need.” The loneliness, noticing its absence in their brief declaration, had then fallen into a depressive state and vowed to never partake of the family again should they continue to ignore its presence.
Once the oven had told them the thing was ready, they removed it before sliding it from its sheet onto a cooling rack they had prepared. Looking upon their new thing, the family could not help but be overjoyed. Though it had grown slightly lumpy as it baked, the thing had taken on a beautiful sheen, and they could note out each and every part they had made for it. They admired it this way for some time and, once they had gotten enough out of it for the day, placed the thing into their bread drawer where they reasoned it would be most comfortable. There, the family would occasionally remember its presence in their home and step away from their task to admire it before sealing it away once more.
It would lie there for some time until one night, the family had once again begun to wander in a stupor, retrieving it from the bread drawer. Holding it slightly too firmly, they admired it like they always had, brief reminders of their binturong and their crane and their stoat and their salamander flashing in their memory. In the blinding bliss of their past things, beloved but now broken, they began to walk with the rabbit, pressing it closer against their chest, touring it throughout their home. “Rabbit,” they mumbled, “we do hope you love it here as much as we love you. We do hope you love us as much as we love you,” just as they placed their foot on the stairs. Placing themselves poorly, they stumbled, and they crashed into the corners of the stairs with the thing in their arms. It warped and tore, and the family once again fell into a deep despair.