Through Chronoblivion's outer shells they plunged, facing each others' fears, confronting each others' terrible pasts, learning more than they wanted to know, losing something of their selves along the way, in some sad cases.
They do this, plunge through, giving it everything they have, and Chronoblivion goes down in a battle to end all battles. And Bunnymund goes back to his Earth with the sense of yet another job protecting the children of his world - and now, the children of the universe, once he finds his way back to the many ones he now knows need their protection - done well.
Later, he didn't remember his return as the time when the decline began.
It didn't happen with a nuclear holocaust or a plague or a disaster. The Yellowstone supervolcano didn't erupt and engulf the world in ash and famine. The ice caps didn't melt, halting the ocean's currents and freezing the world in a new age of ice.
Things went wrong, slowly, quietly, on small, intimate levels. And they went wrong everywhere, and they went wrong quickly. The small cruelties from one person to another that escaped even the Guardians' notice piled up, like ants swarming a dying animal.
By the time they realized it was happening, it was too late to stop. Too many cruel people had made more of themselves by their casual acts of disregard for each other. The ones who remained kind were too busy trying to save their own soft hearts to go the step beyond and flourish, to pass down their traditions and their beliefs to their own children. Anyone whose soul was a fertile ground for love and beauty did not receive them as seeds to cultivate within themselves.
And on top of it, the sky continued to darken with smoke, as passion for numbers of production and rates of profit outstripped passion for green things, for wonder and peace and any good thing that could not be sold.
The children stopped believing.
The others died. The Guardians, his friends, the family left to him after he'd lost his first one, faded out of existence. With them went the things they protected, even before the green world began to die.
And he was already too weak to do anything to stop it when it did.
Mother Nature, devastated by her childrens' abuse, sank into a torpor. She gave them only what they could forcefully engineer out of Grandmother Earth's devastated soil to barely sustain themselves. In her grief for her first child, the earth ceased to listen to him. She no longer cared to offer a hand in protecting what he wanted to protect.
The children opened their eyes to grey dawns with nothing in them but hope.
Nothing left to them but hope at all. For another dawn where, maybe, something - something besides this life might happen -
But this life is dull and repetitive. Everything in it is known. Nothing is novel, nothing inspires a good dream. Stories have become irrelevant, because no good story ever comes true.
Those who haven't died of the sheer lack of anything worth living for are able to survive without fun. Without joy. The rare good memory vanishes, in time. Everyone dies with their mind a cloud of demented, grey sameness. It's a byproduct of the poisoned world, kept alive only because the sun continues to shine bright enough - continues to shine because he continues to live.
Eos' light remains in his weakened, fragile body, enlightening, and enlivening him. Sentience, and life - the only powers left to him.
And that life is far from invulnerable.
He's made so many enemies, in his long, contentious life. And even if he hadn't, even if he'd befriended everyone he ever met, the number grows every day of beings - mortal and immortal - who, if they knew that killing him would dim the sun and kill the world, would do it.
Because this existence is terrible. But it's all he can give them, now. It's all he can give the children.
All he has to do is stay alive.
In a deadly, desperate world where he is the smallest of the small, the only soft and vulnerable heart left that remembers what it was like when this world had protectors that nurtured small, vulnerable things.
Sometimes, he still checks in. Sometimes he makes the treacherous, deadly journey to places within earshot of children, of the bent adults they grow into, to hear what they're talking about, to learn what's in their hearts in this world where no one can look out for them anymore.
More than once, he hears the same conversation, between people who've manage to glean awareness that once, things were Different. The world was richer, more vibrant. The world offered them things that inspired wonder. Their memories were treasures that could never be stolen. Even in the depths of the darkest years, someone could find a way to make fun. Dreams, beautiful ones, came to them, as if from a storyteller who knew what their hearts needed.
Once upon a time, they had all these things. Not this time, though.
Inevitably, the conversation ends the same way. "Well," one says, chewing on the drab, wonderless future. "We still have hope."
"Hope for what?"
"I don't know. But we still have it."
And that's all he can do anymore.
---
The hole in the desert that leads to the cavern where all life was born lies open like a yawning grave. Inside, not even the dust of the desiccated trees and plants remain, but there's still much to notice.
1
The standing stones in this place are the only sign left of life. Once, their carvings must have been richly detailed, but now they are weathered and eroded, some stones cracked and fallen, but if one looks closely, one can still tell that the carvings are of thousands of rabbits, busily engaged in work and play.
In among the weathered carvings, infrequent, but stark, are fresh images. Recent carvings, tiny and shallow, and these ones are not of rabbits, but hummingbirds - snowflakes - curves and swirls, and intricate rigid geometric patterns.
They increase in frequency down one of the many gaping tunnels leading deeper into the dark earth.
2
But it's not entirely dark - there's a slight glow down one of the other tunnels, like sunlight is pouring through a hole to the sky deep, deep into the tunnel. Which makes no sense, given that the sky is clouded over with grey. And yet, the air from that tunnel is perceptibly warmer, with a green scent that is smelled nowhere else in this world.
3
There's only the barest scrambling sound, and a puff of dust hovers before a third gaping tunnel.
It couldn't be more than a fleeing rodent. Their tracks are all over this dusty cavern. Only a closer look will tell that the fresh prints at the mouth of the tunnel are not those of a bushrat or hopping mouse, but a small - very small - rabbit.
Bunnymund - Open
They do this, plunge through, giving it everything they have, and Chronoblivion goes down in a battle to end all battles. And Bunnymund goes back to his Earth with the sense of yet another job protecting the children of his world - and now, the children of the universe, once he finds his way back to the many ones he now knows need their protection - done well.
Later, he didn't remember his return as the time when the decline began.
It didn't happen with a nuclear holocaust or a plague or a disaster. The Yellowstone supervolcano didn't erupt and engulf the world in ash and famine. The ice caps didn't melt, halting the ocean's currents and freezing the world in a new age of ice.
Things went wrong, slowly, quietly, on small, intimate levels. And they went wrong everywhere, and they went wrong quickly. The small cruelties from one person to another that escaped even the Guardians' notice piled up, like ants swarming a dying animal.
By the time they realized it was happening, it was too late to stop. Too many cruel people had made more of themselves by their casual acts of disregard for each other. The ones who remained kind were too busy trying to save their own soft hearts to go the step beyond and flourish, to pass down their traditions and their beliefs to their own children. Anyone whose soul was a fertile ground for love and beauty did not receive them as seeds to cultivate within themselves.
And on top of it, the sky continued to darken with smoke, as passion for numbers of production and rates of profit outstripped passion for green things, for wonder and peace and any good thing that could not be sold.
The children stopped believing.
The others died. The Guardians, his friends, the family left to him after he'd lost his first one, faded out of existence. With them went the things they protected, even before the green world began to die.
And he was already too weak to do anything to stop it when it did.
Mother Nature, devastated by her childrens' abuse, sank into a torpor. She gave them only what they could forcefully engineer out of Grandmother Earth's devastated soil to barely sustain themselves. In her grief for her first child, the earth ceased to listen to him. She no longer cared to offer a hand in protecting what he wanted to protect.
The children opened their eyes to grey dawns with nothing in them but hope.
Nothing left to them but hope at all. For another dawn where, maybe, something - something besides this life might happen -
But this life is dull and repetitive. Everything in it is known. Nothing is novel, nothing inspires a good dream. Stories have become irrelevant, because no good story ever comes true.
Those who haven't died of the sheer lack of anything worth living for are able to survive without fun. Without joy. The rare good memory vanishes, in time. Everyone dies with their mind a cloud of demented, grey sameness. It's a byproduct of the poisoned world, kept alive only because the sun continues to shine bright enough - continues to shine because he continues to live.
Eos' light remains in his weakened, fragile body, enlightening, and enlivening him. Sentience, and life - the only powers left to him.
And that life is far from invulnerable.
He's made so many enemies, in his long, contentious life. And even if he hadn't, even if he'd befriended everyone he ever met, the number grows every day of beings - mortal and immortal - who, if they knew that killing him would dim the sun and kill the world, would do it.
Because this existence is terrible. But it's all he can give them, now. It's all he can give the children.
All he has to do is stay alive.
In a deadly, desperate world where he is the smallest of the small, the only soft and vulnerable heart left that remembers what it was like when this world had protectors that nurtured small, vulnerable things.
Sometimes, he still checks in. Sometimes he makes the treacherous, deadly journey to places within earshot of children, of the bent adults they grow into, to hear what they're talking about, to learn what's in their hearts in this world where no one can look out for them anymore.
More than once, he hears the same conversation, between people who've manage to glean awareness that once, things were Different. The world was richer, more vibrant. The world offered them things that inspired wonder. Their memories were treasures that could never be stolen. Even in the depths of the darkest years, someone could find a way to make fun. Dreams, beautiful ones, came to them, as if from a storyteller who knew what their hearts needed.
Once upon a time, they had all these things. Not this time, though.
Inevitably, the conversation ends the same way. "Well," one says, chewing on the drab, wonderless future. "We still have hope."
"Hope for what?"
"I don't know. But we still have it."
And that's all he can do anymore.
---
The hole in the desert that leads to the cavern where all life was born lies open like a yawning grave. Inside, not even the dust of the desiccated trees and plants remain, but there's still much to notice.
1
The standing stones in this place are the only sign left of life. Once, their carvings must have been richly detailed, but now they are weathered and eroded, some stones cracked and fallen, but if one looks closely, one can still tell that the carvings are of thousands of rabbits, busily engaged in work and play.
In among the weathered carvings, infrequent, but stark, are fresh images. Recent carvings, tiny and shallow, and these ones are not of rabbits, but hummingbirds - snowflakes - curves and swirls, and intricate rigid geometric patterns.
They increase in frequency down one of the many gaping tunnels leading deeper into the dark earth.
2
But it's not entirely dark - there's a slight glow down one of the other tunnels, like sunlight is pouring through a hole to the sky deep, deep into the tunnel. Which makes no sense, given that the sky is clouded over with grey. And yet, the air from that tunnel is perceptibly warmer, with a green scent that is smelled nowhere else in this world.
3
There's only the barest scrambling sound, and a puff of dust hovers before a third gaping tunnel.
It couldn't be more than a fleeing rodent. Their tracks are all over this dusty cavern. Only a closer look will tell that the fresh prints at the mouth of the tunnel are not those of a bushrat or hopping mouse, but a small - very small - rabbit.