Animals are some of the most resourceful creatures on this planet. They’ve honed their craft when we humans couldn’t pick up the slack on pastry making. Many animals are great at things that only some humans are good at. Geckos could be good at trapeze, while gorillas are good at bodybuilding or vice versa. The point I’m trying to make here is that animals have talents that are given to them that they can hone no matter what. That leads us to Rebecca Lapine and her family’s knack for making pie.

Rebecca and her family lived in a warren down in the meadow of a far away country but they made the best of it. The denizens of their little community had two things that gave their life meaning, pie and their god that they worshiped. The lupines have been a family molded by the generations before them to make top notch pies for the community at large. Rebecca had just turned two a week ago which was a bit late for the family to give someone the recipe but she was a special case. 

See, Rebecca would hear voices in her head that would tell her to do things. It wasn’t anything that would concern her family all that much, but it definitely was a reason for her to be left out of the pie trade for a while. That didn’t stop her, however, from watching her elders making pies and getting so many different perspectives on what it meant to be a pastry chef. When she got the recipe, her mom had just passed which made her severely depressed so she didn’t go to work making pies for some time.

Death was something that the warren wasn’t completely fazed by because they saw it a lot. Just last week, 8 other rabbits died which was a bit higher than usual but nobody seemed fazed by it. Their god (which had a structure in the middle of town), was enough to give them a reason to keep going. Daire was their gods name which meant fruitful, and oh was he. Just when Rebecca was about to give up on going back to pies at all, a voice came out of the clutter that is usually there.

“You want to know what really happened to your mom, Becca?” A deep demanding voice rattled her mind and startled her. 

“W-what? What did you say?” She was confused because her mom had just fallen off of a step ladder and fell, breaking her back.

“I saiiiid, do you want to know what happened to your Mom? Spoiler, she didn’t just fall to her death,” the voice said without regard for her feelings.

Rebecca had thought that her mom’s death was a bit strange because of just one fact. She died using the step ladder that she had always used for everything. There was evidence of the step ladder being dragged along the ground but it was thrown out as just a random thing that she did wrong before she died. She usually never listened to the voices in her head besides just to have people to talk to but she felt like she had to listen to this one just to see what happens.

“Alright, tell me what you need to tell me, oh random voice,” she said, a slight tone in her voice giving away her hesitation.

“If you say so,” the voice said, much quieter this time.

The voice seemed to have knowledge of the future and was willing to give some of that power to help Rebecca catch the killer who had taken so many lives. It was an easy plan, they would put out a decoy rabbit that looks like Rebecca to lure them out. For some reason, they seemed to be taking out anyone that ate pies constantly throughout the warren. See, people ate the pies but there were definitely customers that ate more than 3 pies a day. Rebecca had a hunch that the assailant hated how popular the pies were and wanted to make an environment that they weren’t able to make pies in.

The trap was set in the afternoon when things were slow. Rebecca had one of her friends dress in one of her signature outfits. A black and red dress with frills, a sun hat, and mary jane shoes; It was one of her favorites, and it was also pretty easy to hide their face. Her friend walked to the back to grab some more of the fruits and vegetables to put in the pies when someone attacked them.

“Now Rebecca, before they get away!” the voice screamed at Rebecca to move but something caught her eye. The shape of the attacker was so small, smaller than any rabbit that she had seen around the warren in all her life. She rushed towards her friend’s side and pulled the attacker off of them, but again something was off. She had touched them but their skin felt like worn out leather from a saddle, and they were the same shape as an oval which just wasn’t possible. The attacker rolled into a little bit of sunlight and exposed their form to her.

“N-no way that this is real, that’s just not possible!” she screamed, her world view shattered as she saw their form. They were a walking watermelon, just a watermelon with stick arms and legs; It just wasn’t possible for such a thing to exist. Although, it did explain why they were so hostile towards rabbits and just went straight to talking. Wait, could they even talk? What was going on? These were just a few of her thoughts at that moment.

“You’ve gotta catch them now, this creature killed your mother and countless others. You can’t let it get away,” the voice blared, causing Rebecca to forget what she was thinking about and just charge towards the thing. Because of its rotund nature, she was easily able to grab it but it thrashed about like a toddler having a tantrum. 

“What are these things, voice? You seem to know them if you knew that they were gonna be here at this time. How do you know the things that you do? She asked the many questions plaguing her mind the past day.

“Well that’s because I’m the god that you worship, I’m Daire. These creatures were made to see what you rabbits would do against an actual threat. There will be more coming so you have to prepare accordingly and tell the townsfolk.” Daire said this so nonchalantly that Rebecca was taken aback for once. There was just too much to process about all this. She was talking to god? There are gonna be more of these things coming back for revenge? How was she going to tell everyone without them thinking that she was crazy? What was she to do next?