Once Upon a Time...
and not too long ago, Bear and Rabbit met. Rabbit was certain Bear was a conceited jerk, and Bear was certain he didn't know what to think about Rabbit. But they had a mutual love of slamming each other's faces into a wrestling mat, throwing each other around the room, and bruising and spraining their everythings. This turned out to be a great gauge of character, because Rabbit became certain that "shy sweetheart" could be substituted for "conceited jerk" and Bear became certain that he knew what to think about Rabbit (i.e. that he liked her). And so they agreed that they mutually loved slamming each other's faces into a wrestling mat, throwing each other around the room, bruising and spraining their everythings together, and that they really liked one another in that way.
A year later, Bear was moving into Rabbit's newly acquired Warren. And by "move-in," the reader should see between the lines: "Bear's stuff gradually accumulated in the corner until he didn't have to go home to his Den to get clothing for the next day." Rabbit didn't mind, in fact, she was very happy. What she wasn't happy about was the mess. A one-rabbit Warren wasn't meant for two, and soon they both felt like their combined holdings were outgrowing the defined space of the Warren. Things disappeared and didn't come back from under the bed or in the closet. They had officially broken the limit of how many things should exist in a small, one-bedroom, basement Warren, and the Universe was happily reestablishing dimensional equilibrium by disappearing socks, books, and eating utensils.
A year later, Bear and Rabbit agreed to move into a larger Warren a little further down the road from Big Town. It was a two-bedroom deal, big enough to be a Den, but still a Warren because others lived on top or around them. They called this the "Darn," as in, "Darn, it's still somehow too small," and, "Darn, it's still a Warren, only bigger, more expensive, and it gets noisy on the weekends, and crowded on the morning commute, and we're a bit tired of it." So they found a nice little place in Small Town, down the road from Big Town, to move into two years later. Rabbit was ecstatic. It had a backyard to garden in, walls that could be painted something other than white, and a set of stairs that didn't lead to another Warren, but to another floor that was also theirs.
It could be classified as a Home, not a Warren or a Den, something she hadn't had in sixteen years and that she liked since she had been up and moving everything she had into various Warrens every two years, on average. Bear liked it because the slope-y floors, "not-so-standard" stairs (i.e. uneven), and big kitchen cabinets that reached from floor to ceiling reminded him of his very old childhood Home out in Smaller Town Even Further from Big Town.
It was, however, quite small, Bear noted. Homes were like this in Small Town. So Rabbit knew that, well...some stuff they had accumulated would have to go, and the other stuff they'd have to get creative with in order to fit it all in without feeling like it was just another ill-fitting Warren. Though she swore she'd never be a "bourgeois home-maker" like Martha Stewart when she was young, she realized that she secretly loved it because she had never had those things and was supremely jealous. And the beautiful thing was, given her skills in finding sales, being crafty, and knowledge from her mother of making things work on a budget, that she could do these things and make a House a Home. Bear was good at building things and he had a great eye for color and space. He had tetrachromacy, which means he had an extra cone in his eyes that made him able to distinguish subtler shades in colors, a mantle he wore, often, with resentment since Rabbit was always bugging him for help with color coordination.
And thus, Rabbit and Bear began their move into the new, little Home in Small Town. Rabbit thought it would be fun to document the process, to show their friends, family, and the world the misadventures and successes in domesticity. You, reader, will have to follow along to see if this is a not-so Fairy Tale that ends in "happily-ever-after"...
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