Meat
Her hair—coated in blood, mud, and something that felt like regret—hung low as Iris tilted the girl’s head back. The limbs had gone slack. She looked like Iris’s little brother used to after their father announced bedtime: limp, defeated, pretending to surrender but not quite there. Iris had never felt closer to him than now, scraping a body off the dirt and carrying it toward whatever passed for eternal sleep out here.
Three days since the crash. Three days since the forest had promised protection, nourishment, safety—lies whispered in the treeline. Now the girl in Iris’s arms was the newest casualty of those promises.
There had been nine of them to start. Nine warm bodies flung like confetti from a dirty-yellow school bus meant to deliver them to a Women’s Empowerment Conference in Denver.
The friend she carried was more than a friend; she was Iris’s bargaining chip, her last good faith gesture to a hungry wilderness—no need for declarations or scripture. The truth was carved into their bones, inked in the dull grumble of their stomachs.
Her sacrifice was necessary. Iris repeated it like a prayer, though she never said it aloud. She liked to imagine that when her own moment came, she’d stand still—stoic, dignified—as the cold wind slit her throat and bled her dry.
She adjusted her grip on the meat and carried the body the rest of the way, destined to lie among the others.
Her stomach pulsed, tight and rhythmic, as if echoing the lesson the forest kept teaching her. Everything is meat if you’re hungry enough.
*
“Iris!” The voice cracked through the hazy fog outside her high school in the suburbs of Albuquerque. One of those late-spring mornings when the world seemed shocked back to life after winter’s flatline. Fog crept low across the parking lot—thin as breath, her mother had warned the bus driver to be careful on the roads.
Iris sat on the curb in front of the school bus, knees pulled to her chin, sweatshirt draped over them like a tent.
“Iris!” She looked up, scanning left, then right, searching for Harper—the owner of the voice, the self-appointed decision-maker of their friendship despite being barely five feet tall. Iris reminded her of that daily.
She turned to glance behind her.
When she faced forward again, Harper was already there, standing in front of her like a ghost stitched out of fog.
“God, you scared me.” Iris shifted her stuffed backpack off the curb beside her. Harper took the cue and sat, her face’s natural highlight catching the thin morning sun like a flare.
“I was calling your name since I got out of the car,” Harper said. “You looked… lost in a hazy dream.”
Iris let her forehead drop to her covered knees and groaned. “More like a nightmare.”
Harper slung an arm around her—short, warm, insistent—pulling her close. She still wore the same floral perfume she’d sworn by since eighth grade. It clung to her like a signature, recognizable even before Iris’s senses had fully woken up.
“You’re such a downer,” she teased. “This trip is going to be fun. And even if it isn’t, at least we have each other.” Her smile softened. “Besides… I just want to be somewhere real. Where the trees and animals have voices, you know?”
Iris lifted her head enough to give a half smile, eyebrows knitting. Harper had always been the optimist. It was her idea to sign up for the conference. Iris still wasn’t sure why she’d agreed.
They sat together as the rest of the girls trickled in, the morning sun rising behind the high school and smearing gold across the smudged windows. The fog thinned but didn’t leave—hovering, as if waiting.
There were only seven of them, plus Mrs. Taylor, the AP English teacher, and Marcy, the bus driver. They gathered in a loose semicircle while Mrs. Taylor wished everyone a good morning. Seven teenagers responded with the kind of low, annoyed murmur, exhibiting they’d rather be sleeping, at least everyone but Harper.
“This is a wonderful opportunity, ladies,” Mrs. Taylor chirped. “The Women’s Empowerment Conference is all about finding your inner strength, learning to lead, and discovering how powerful you can be when you work together.”
Iris shot Harper a look and rolled her eyes. Harper elbowed her—hard.
Marcy stepped forward, clipboard pressed flat to her stomach. Her grey hair was pulled into a tight ponytail, though several strands escaped and swayed in the spring wind like thin branches of a weeping willow.
“I am looking forward to a calm and efficient bus ride,” Marcy announced, every syllable clipped and over-enunciated. “That being said, I have a few rules.” She began listing them—no talking above a whisper, no changing seats, no fun.
Harper listened with dutiful attention. Iris studied her cuticles instead, pushing the skin back to expose more of the small white crescents beneath—a habit she swore she would break someday, but not today.
The bus idled behind them, rumbling like something breathing.
*
That first night in the woods was unbearably cold, the kind of cold that crawled beneath Iris’s skin and settled deep in the tissue. Hunger followed close behind, seeping in like a second temperature. She clenched her jaw to stop the chattering and swallowed hard whenever her mind drifted to thoughts of fatty steak, loaded cheeseburgers, anything warm and greasy enough to anchor her to the living.
Earlier, they’d cleaned their wounds like lions—quick, brutal, instinctive. Harper had needed convincing that lions didn’t actually roam the mountains of Colorado. Iris poured some of her facial toner onto a scrap of cloth, both of which she had rescued from her bag. The chemical sting bit into their raw skin.
“Press your nails into your thigh,” Iris told her. Harper’s eyes were glassy. “It gives your brain something else to focus on.”
They’d searched for any phones that survived the crash, scraping through the wreckage by touch more than sight, but none had. When darkness finally overtook them, they let their bodies settle on the uneven ground. From the scattered clothing they’d salvaged, Iris and Harper bundled themselves like they were gearing up to go sledding. Iris ended up wearing three sweatshirts under her own—the last layers belonging to the girls they’d left behind.
Every few minutes, Harper murmured something too soft to make out. Iris told herself it was sleep-talking, though she knew it wasn’t. Years of sleepovers had taught her Harper slept silently as glass.
Her own body shook with violent shivers, ribs fluttering like thin bird wings. She tried inching farther away so she wouldn’t wake Harper, but in the darkness Harper’s hand reached out, found her, and pulled her back into the cold tangle of their shared warmth.
“Harper?” Iris whispered. Tears welled, hot as bathwater, and rolled down her frozen cheeks. On contact, they felt like they sizzled. “Are you scared?”
Harper turned toward her. She raised a hand to wipe the tears, and her fingers were so cold they felt carved from ice—slow, tender, deliberate. “I was… I mean, I still am a bit,” she said. “But I’ve been reaching out for help. And the voices responded.”
Iris cupped Harper’s hand between both of hers, trying to warm it, trying to make sense of the words. “You think God’s speaking to you?” She meant to sound gentle. It came out with the flat edge of sarcasm.
“No.” Harper lifted her head and pulled her hand back sharply, as if Iris’s warmth offended it. “It’s not God. It’s the forest. The animals.”
The answer settled between them like a third body. Iris didn’t know what force had connected to Harper in the dark, what presence had answered her calls. But whatever it was, it had left Iris untouched. Unchosen.
And in that moment, she felt smaller than she ever had—even smaller than when they fell from the sky.
*
The first few hours of the bus ride passed in muffled snoring and scattered whispers. Iris and Harper shared a seat upholstered in tar-black leather that felt both too warm and too cold, depending on the angle of the sun. Harper yawned so often it seemed as though each breath summoned the next, her jaw opening like a slow hinge.
“Harper,” Iris whispered, “you can lean on me if you want to sleep.” She pushed her shoulder forward in offering.
Harper’s sleepy face cracked into a smile, and she let her head drop against Iris’s shoulder without hesitation. The weight was familiar and oddly anchoring.
Iris wasn’t tired. A soft hotel bed waited for her at the end of the day; she planned to meet it fully awake. So she kept vigilant by reading every sign they passed: Exit 17. Rest Stop: 4 Miles. Don’t Text and Drive. Click It or Ticket—a litany of roadside commandments.
The fog her mother had warned Marcy about only thickened. As the bus moved north out of New Mexico and into southern Colorado, Iris found stretches where all she could see was a wash of grey mist, with the faint, rushing green of early-spring trees smeared against it. It was like traveling inside someone else’s breath.
At the first rest stop, Marcy announced a route change.
“Conditions look better farther west,” she said, voice full of forced confidence. “It may take us a little longer, but we’ll be safe.”
Everyone nodded, not because they believed her, but because it was easier than disagreeing.
When they climbed back onto the bus, Iris reclaimed the window seat. Harper slid in beside her, balancing three bags of chips she’d bought from the vending machine. She tore one open and immediately offered it—bacon-flavored.
Iris raised an eyebrow. “Thought you were all ‘save the animals.’”
Harper shot a guilty glare as she crunched down on a chip. “It’s all they had left!” She laughed between bites. With her mouth full, she said, “I love animals, but come on—a girl’s got to eat.”
Iris giggled. “Agreed.” She took a chip from the bag, savoring the fake-smoke saltiness. “My stomach has priority over my moral conscience.”
Marcy tapped the gas pedal, and the bus lurched forward—gentle, but enough to make Iris’s stomach flip, as though something outside had shifted its weight in response.
*
The second night among the worms, Iris slept all the way through, as if the forest had tucked her into its ribs. The cold had stopped hurting. It felt almost like home. But it drained her. Her stomach ached, scraped hollow, reminding her she hadn’t eaten in over a day.
Her hood was pulled tight around her face, leaving only the tip of her nose exposed like the knob of a door. When she sat up, her spine cracked like ice settling in the mountains. The woods were waking: sparrows counting the dawn, wind whispering through wet branches, a branch snapping somewhere deep in the trees. The air smelled of rot and damp fabric, yet each gust thinned the stench, mixing with the creeping mist that clung to the grass and the sleeves of her sweatshirts.
The camp looked like the aftermath of something already claimed. Harper’s clothes lay in a collapsed mound, travel bags torn open, the blanket she had once packed for sleepovers draped across a log. But Harper herself was gone.
Iris rubbed her hands along her scalp, shaking off the fog that clung to her senses, and moved toward the fire pit. They had slept in their shoes, double-knotted, ready to run at the slightest hint of movement—be it a monster or a bear.
Harper knelt by the fire. Bug bites bloomed across her thighs; her hair hung in tangles. In her arms, a small white rabbit rested, trembling yet impossibly calm. She held it the way she had once cradled a bag of flour in home ec.
Iris froze. “Harper… how did you catch that?”
Her hunger flared before her brain could respond. The rabbit’s warmth and life transformed it into a three-course meal in her mind.
Harper smiled, too wide for her face. “It spoke to me,” she said. “The forest sent it. It told me we’ll be safe.” Her voice trembled, but the smile remained, stretched thin across fear.
The ground under Iris’s feet vibrated faintly, a low hum that could have been concussion, dehydration, or the forest itself. She knelt beside Harper, careful not to disturb the fragile bundle.
“Harper, the rabbit didn’t speak. You’re hungry. Exhausted. Your mind is making it talk.”
“No,” Harper said, pulling the rabbit closer. “It’s not just meat. It’s a messenger. It’s here to protect us.”
Iris’s pupils darted to the black of Harper’s eyes. “Protect us… how? I haven’t eaten in a day.”
The rabbit twitched in Harper’s arms, a heartbeat against the forest’s pulse.
“Don’t touch it,” Harper whispered. “It’s the only thing keeping us alive.”
A gust of wind sliced through the clearing, cold enough to sting through layered sweatshirts.
Iris’s stomach growled, a twisting knot that reached into her throat. “Harper,” she murmured, voice low, “I’m starving.”
Harper shook her head, fast enough to blur, and the rabbit’s heartbeat thudded against her arms.
*
The bus swayed along the empty highway, each turn a slow, unsteady pulse—fog pressed against the windows, thick and unyielding, swallowing the road ahead. Rain hammered the windshield like a drum, sharp enough to sting through the glass. Beyond the yellow paint of the bus, mountains rose in jagged rust-red peaks, their edges blurred, molten and unreal.
The wheels teetered at the edge of the drop, the absence of guardrails daring them to falter. Iris’s fingers dug into the tar-black leather, leaving pale flakes under her nails, a grounding ritual against the chaos.
Harper’s hand squeezed hers, bone-white where their skin met, flecked with red that looked more like blood than sun or rust. Her body trembled, restless, and Iris felt the tug of her own heartbeat echoing in her chest. Harper had always been the one with answers, the one who led—even if Iris never let her admit it. Now, under the pressure of Harper’s stare, Iris felt pinned, like a mark on a map she couldn’t escape.
The other faces on the bus blurred, strangers in a cramped theater of fear. Every girl looked as small, as fragile, as Iris felt. Mrs. Taylor whispered to Marcy, hands folded so tight they could have splintered bone, body rigid in prayer or panic—it was hard to tell.
The road vanished in the fog, a hollow path that led nowhere. Iris turned to Harper, and for a moment, the tremor softened from her face. Just enough to make her seem human again. Just enough to make the mountains outside feel like something real, though they might be nothing more than a dream the bus carried.
*
On the second day, hunger had become a weight pressing against every thought. Speaking burned calories she could not spare. The ache in her stomach twisted the shadows, making them tilt and sway.
Iris forced her cuticles back, stretching the skin until it flared with sharp pain. The fire pit before her sputtered, a small flame that flickered as it might vanish entirely.
Harper crouched on the log beside her, murmuring to herself, words too soft to catch.
When Iris finally found the energy to ask, Harper twisted her head slowly, each movement deliberate, like a Jack-in-the-Box waiting to snap.
“The bunny came back,” Harper said, staring ahead, her eyes locked on the small white shape at the fire’s edge. Her fingers smoothed frizzed hair from her face and wiped dirt from her cheek. Iris crouched beside her, heart hammering, trying to gauge how long Harper had been “talking” to the creature before she even noticed.
The firelight stretched and warped their shadows against the trees: two thin girls and the round, tense form of the bunny. Its fur gleamed in the flames, slick as if it were sweating. When the fire popped, the acrid tang of singed hair cut through the night air.
Iris’s eyes followed the twitch of the bunny’s nose. She waited for Harper to translate it into sense, words, a joke—but then a whisper brushed against her mind, delicate and strange, tickling her thoughts.
“Oh my God…” she breathed, dropping to her knees, mirroring Harper’s earlier posture. When she reached toward the bunny, it stayed still, alert, expectant rather than tame. Her thighs itched with bug bites like Harper’s, a reminder that they were both prey here.
Harper stood behind her, moving with ghostly grace, toes tapping in the nervous rhythm Iris knew well. “What do you hear?” Harper asked, voice thin, distant. Iris considered offering water, but the bottles had long run dry.
She closed her eyes. The words came—not spoken aloud, but felt, a pulse on the surface of her brain. “We have to give the forest some of our blood. Just a few drops. An offering. A devotion.”
Iris tilted her head toward Harper, waiting for guidance, but the weight pressing on her chest told her: this was her burden now. She wanted to scream, but the voice inside her mind held her still, strange and demanding.
Harper lingered close, just out of reach. As she shifted her weight, Iris could feel the certainty in Harper’s belief slipping, stretching thinner, like smoke dissolving into the cold night. The forest, the bunny, and the hunger all pressed in—tightening the space between thought and instinct, loyalty and survival.
That night, Harper went to bed as the sun grazed the rusty mountain tops, leaving the world in a dim, uneasy glow.
“Are you sure you want to stay up alone?” Harper asked, her yawns stretching like punctuation marks across her words.
“The fire isn’t fully out. I want to be sure before we go to bed. I’ll be there in a minute.” Harper raised her eyebrows. “Really, Harper, I’m good. Go to bed.” Iris waved her off. Harper shuffled away, the sound of her boots soft against the dirt.
Iris’s eyes stayed on the fire, the embers flickering weakly. A white flash caught her peripheral vision. The bunny had returned, hopping closer. Its red, beady eyes gleamed, unnatural in the dim light.
Iris glanced toward Harper’s retreating figure, debating whether to wake her, but the bunny’s presence surged into her mind. The voice was no longer a whisper. It struck sharply and commanding, like a fist on a wooden table.
“We’re going to perform the sacrifice of our blood tomorrow. I promise.”
Iris’s throat tightened. She opened her mouth, voice cracking. “What do you mean, the rules have changed?”
The words inside her head shifted, twisting around before she could grasp them fully.
It is no longer enough. You must give more.
Iris felt the tension in her chest deepen. She had thought Harper was the chosen one, the one the forest had called. But maybe it was her. Perhaps this—this impossible weight—was what leadership demanded.
“I can’t do that. Harper is my best friend. We’re in this together.” Her hands pressed to her cold-cracked face, trying to hold herself steady.
The bunny’s response was no longer gentle. Words danced from her ears into her skull, a threatening two-step that made her hunger feel like iron claws twisting inside her.
“Yes, I want to be saved more than anything, but…” The growl of her stomach crawled up her throat, felt like it would strangle her. “Will I be fed?”
The voice softened slightly, metallic on her senses, smelling faintly of blood on coins. Its reassurance wrapped around her psyche like a tightening noose.
“She’s my best friend.” Tears ran hot and sharp down her cheeks, splashing onto the dirt in a hollow, relentless rhythm.
Then the bunny vanished into the woods, moving in the opposite direction from Harper. Iris sat motionless, head throbbing like old, aching bones, unsure what had been real and what had been demanded of her.
*
When she regained consciousness after the crash, her body felt numb and tingly, as if her nerves were rebooting one by one. She kept her eyes closed, letting her brain crawl back to normal function, fearing what awaited in the open. Dirt pressed cold and uneven beneath her. Something heavy, warm, pressed against her right hand.
She opened her eyes to see Harper beside her, arm outstretched, hand resting on hers.
“Harp—” she tried to speak, but the air seemed to have thickened, occupying the space meant for lungs. A cough ripped through her, and she rolled onto her side. The motion jolted her like falling off a swing as a child. “You got the wind knocked out of you,” her mother’s voice echoed somewhere far away.
Harper shifted toward her, hand on her back, steadying her as she coughed again, each breath a labor.
“Iris,” Harper said when she could speak, trembling like a tuning fork, “look around.”
With effort, Iris pushed herself upright. Pain flared through her left arm, lightning striking every nerve. She saw deep slices across her skin, blood thick and gleaming.
Her eyes roamed the scene. Five bodies lay scattered, twisted and flattened, grotesque and unnatural, like raw chicken pounded beneath a mallet.
Harper was frozen, silent, eyes fixed. Iris followed the gaze. A ball of fire and smoke rose to their left, heat radiating like a cruel, unnatural sun.
“That’s the front of the bus,” Harper whispered, voice broken and small. “That’s where Marcy and Mrs. Taylor were sitting.”
The words dug into Iris’s chest, twisting her stomach until she nearly vomited.
She scanned for their end of the dirty-yellow bus. It was gone, shredded across the dusted, sorrow-soaked plain like the remains of her peers. No screams, no voices—only the wind moved through the emptiness, carrying an eerie, indifferent whisper across the wreckage.
*
On their third day in the woods, the lighter sputtered and died. The fire shrank to embers—flickering orange pulses that barely pushed back the dark. Iris watched the light gutter out, feeling the same dimming inside her. Hunger kept its own tally: thirty hours, maybe more. Her body knew even when she tried not to.
Harper sat cross‑legged, carving a stick with nail clippers, humming a choir song about mercy. The notes came thin and wavering, as if she were running out of breath or faith.
Then the bunny reappeared—maybe the same one, but impossibly whiter now, luminous, its eyes no longer red but a blank and depthless black. The sight jolted Iris, though Harper reacted as if greeting an old friend. She dropped to her knees, whispering, listening, her lips barely moving.
Iris joined her before she realized she’d moved. They knelt like children in front of a television, wide‑eyed, starving for whatever came next.
Harper looked up at her. “It’s time,” she said. The words fell like stones into water—ripples, then nothing. Iris held her breath, lungs tightening, searching for air somewhere else inside her. A cold sweat coated the back of her neck.
Harper reached for the sharpened stick.
Iris lunged, grabbing her arm. “Harper, stop.”
Harper blinked at her, startled. Iris could see how thin she’d grown, moonlight catching the tremor in her hands.
“I think we should draw blood for each other,” Iris said. The idea arrived fully formed, as if whispered. “It’ll be easier.”
Harper twisted free—small, but impossibly strong. “I’m fine. Iris, chill. We’re almost there. The forest is going to save us. In return for our blood, we will finally eat.”
Her voice was too calm. Too certain. Iris felt a flicker of pity, quick and confusing.
She looked for the bunny, but it had vanished. The shadows thickened, closing in. Her vision tunneled.
She dropped to the ground and pulled at Harper’s ankle, dragging her down with her. Dirt scraped under Harper’s knees.
A kick connected with Iris’s temple—a bright, electric pain—and Harper scrambled forward.
“Iris!” she cried, fear lighting her voice even as anger sharpened it. “What the fuck?!”
For a moment, Iris considered letting her go—letting her crawl off into the bristling pines and become someone the forest chose instead. Someone the forest wanted.
But then her hand closed around the stick.
Before she understood the movement, the sharpened point drove into Harper’s stomach. The motion felt automatic, a reflex older than thought. Harper’s breath left her in a wet gasp.
Iris yanked the stick free and struck again, closer to the heart. The dull, tearing puncture filled her head with the memory of slicing through salmon fillets for dinner.
Meat, she said. Meat. Meat.
Harper’s scream rose—and the forest swallowed it whole. The night absorbed what was left, leaving only the restless whisper of the pines.
*
A day after Harper’s death, as she watched the ash-ridden pit and dreamt of a sparking flame, a voice called for Iris. She wasn’t sure if she actually heard it—or if she wanted to.
The mountain rescue team had found their camp. Hands lifted her, voices overlapping, but the warmth of human contact felt thin, distant, unreal. Her skin prickled; the forest pressed in on her from every side. Its shadowy branches felt like fingers, threading through the air and through her own blood-soaked memories.
She blinked at the sudden flood of safety, but the taste of dirt and copper lingered, a residue the wind could not wash away. The helicopter lifted off the ground—the ground that had claimed Harper and the others—but its roar seemed to shrink and fade, swallowed by the trees.
Above the rusted peaks, the helicopter vanished into clouds. Somewhere, the bunny twitched, and Iris twitched with it, a heartbeat shared, a being doubled.
She was no longer a visitor. She had been absorbed. She had become the cold, the shadow, the hunger, the whispering undergrowth itself. Harper’s floral perfume flickered through each inhalation.
*
The chicken was pale, its fibers pulled apart by a fork that had never known resistance. It was too clean. Too separated from what it had been. Her fingers trembled as they closed around a piece, slick with gravy. She hesitated, waiting—for permission, for instruction, for the voice that had once pressed so close it felt like her own.
Iris tore the meat in half and took a slow bite. She wanted to feel each separation of flesh as her canines clenched.
The taste was dull. Disappointing. Still, her jaw worked automatically, tongue pushing the chicken back. She swallowed and felt nothing change. It did not heat her. It did not quiet the low, persistent hum that had taken up residence beneath her ribs. The food disappeared into her body without consequence, as if consumed by something deeper that refused to be satisfied.
A doctor asked her questions. Did she know her name? Did she know where she was? Did she remember what happened?
“Yes,” she said, because it was easier than explaining which parts she remembered and which parts had been rearranged.
“You’re incredibly strong,” everyone told her.
“A miracle.”
“A survivor.”
The words slid off her.
Tall men in uniform with un-scrtahced badges asked about the others, they spoke in low, reverent tones, as if volume itself might bruise her. Iris stared blankly, watching a single bead of sweat dribble down one of the mans’ face.
“They didn’t make it.”
She watched their shoulders loosen, the way a body does after it has been fed. The sentence had been the right size—enough to satisfy, not enough to invite more questions. She understood then that stories worked like rations. Give too much and they would choke on it. Give too little and they would come back hungry.
They quickly scribbled on their notepads and thanked her for her time.
She closed her eyes. In the dark behind her eyelids, the forest rose instantly—branches knitting together, damp earth yielding underfoot. She smelled rot and iron and something sweetly alive. Her pulse slowed. A memory rose unbidden: Harper laughing on the bus, crumbs on her lips, offering the bag of chips without thinking. Iris’s throat tightened, but the feeling dissolved before it could become grief. It had no function.
When her parents arrived, her mother wept into her shoulder, fingers clutching at her hospital gown as if Iris might dissolve if she let go. Her father stood stiffly at the foot of the bed, eyes red. Iris noted how thin their wrists looked, how the skin at their throats pulsed when they spoke.
The helicopter footage played on the news. Commentators spoke of tragedy, of young lives lost too soon, of the miracle girl pulled from the wilderness. Iris watched herself being lifted on a stretcher, hair matted, eyes vacant. She looked smaller than she remembered. They did not show the woods. When she closed her eyes, she still could.
At night, when the room emptied and the machines hummed softly around her, Iris listened for the forest. She imagined it stretching beneath the asphalt, roots threading through pipes and foundations, patient and waiting. It did not need her anymore. That was the truth that settled heaviest in her chest.
She had been useful. Now she was excess. And excess, she knew, was never kept for long. It was buried, burned, forgotten, or dressed up as a miracle and sent back into circulation.
She dreamed of a field stripped bare. No trees. No undergrowth. Just dirt scored with tracks where animals had passed through and moved on. In the center lay a small white shape, perfectly still. When she knelt beside it, she saw it was not a bunny, but hollow fur arranged around nothing at all.