#White Rabbits

[littledeadling]

I know it’s not the lunar new year yet for a while, but all this rabbit talk has got me thinking about Southern Reach again 💛

[classic-asian-art]

Two Rabbits (colour woodblock print) by Takeuchi Seiho (Undated, colour woodblock print)

[silvaris]

Winter Fairy Tale by Ольга Бурмистрова

[upthewitchypunx]

Rabbit Rabbit

[houseofcatwic]

HARRY ROUNTREE (British, 1878-1950) Children's book story illustration

[averseunhinged]

hello! welcome to another wip wednesday: raging infection edition. as per usual, i've mostly been too ill and foggy for the past couple of weeks to do anything other than necessary life stuff and listlessly cycling through all of my wips, but did manage to clean up some of an older thing. and i'm full of antibiotics now, so hopefully things will pick up again. yay.

this was supposed to be my 2022 klaroline autumn exchange fic, but it ended up being way too long and impossibly complicated to finish in time. it's a multiverse cosmic horror soulmates thing in which klaus prime is dragging caroline prime through a series of parallel universes for Reasons. i previously shared a snippet from one of the universes here.

this is part of the set up. it's like the introduction to the introduction, if you will.

Caroline had always loved to sleep. Her parents felt smugly lucky she napped so easily, rested so peacefully, needed so much less from them than most babies took from their parents. If she was a bit cranky, they just put her down for a rest, and she woke up giggling. So, it was an uncomfortable shock when, after years of being an exceptionally manageable child, Caroline began to demand more.

She hadn’t been a late talker, not at all. Right on target, developmentally speaking. But one afternoon, on the Gilberts’ day to keep the kids after daycare, Miranda called to let Liz know Caroline had a terrible headache and might be coming down with something. She’d been in tears by the time Miranda picked her up, but seemed content enough with children’s Tylenol and Pedialyte, before curling up in the darkened guestroom and sleeping. And Caroline had been fine again when Bill picked up that night.

Fine and chatty.

It was like cracking open a dam and suddenly Caroline contained a deluge of words, wanted to tell them, in detail, every inane child’s thought she’d ever had. The only time it seemed to stop was when she slept. Could you blame them if bedtime became earlier and earlier?

“I’m so sorry about her. I know she can be a lot,” Liz said with an exhausted, commiserating laugh one day when she was picking up Caroline from the Bennetts' house.

Sheila’s steady, blank gaze made Liz uncomfortable. “Nothing wrong with sharing and she manages a little quiet contemplation time just fine.”

Could you blame Liz if quiet time became an institution in the Forbes household?

And then there were the headaches, giving Caroline anything from mild discomfort to blinding agony, increasing in frequency until they were happening several times a week, always easing with sleep. Her pediatrician sent them to an optometrist, who in turn sent them to a neurologist, who was the first person to ask if her headaches happened more often when she was feeling upset.

Caroline cut a quick look over to her mother and shrugged.

“Caroline?” Liz asked.

“You and Daddy are mean to each other,” she said, reluctant and quiet.

Tension migraines, the neurologist said, brought on by the stress of her parents’ disintegrating marriage, and since they already had something of a fix, suggested they allow her to nap in the school nurse’s office when she needed to. He gave them a referral to a family therapist.

“Do you feel better when you sleep?” the therapist asked.

Caroline smiled, happy to talk about something other than her mother’s new job as a deputy and her father’s increasingly lengthy absences, “I don’t remember my dreams. I just know they’re really good ones.”

Everything changed the first time she slept after becoming a vampire, not that she knew it at the time. She’d finally fallen into an exhausted slumber days after she’d turned, murdered all alone in her hospital bed by a monster wearing her best friend’s face. Bonnie hated her and it wasn’t even her fault this time. Damon--well. Let’s just say she had a whole retrospective’s worth of memories she needed to have, but wished she didn’t. She had to know Damon was dangerous beyond the uneasiness she’d felt leaking around the compulsion, dangerous to her life. Though, now, it was more the influence he was beginning to wield over everyone she knew. But God, it hurt. Stole her breath, her tears, her waking peace of mind, her sleep.

She didn’t tell her mom or her boyfriend. She stuffed it all down and lived with it. And she knew, if she wanted to keep living, she needed to be a good vampire. The best vampire. More human than ever. Perfectly human. Perfectly in control. Flawless in every way.

Of course. What else was new?

The less she thought about it all, the better. It’s not like she could do anything about anything. It’s not like she’d ever had the power to change what happened around her, to her. Maybe everyone was right after all. Maybe the only thing she was good for was how she looked on some guy’s arm after hours of primping. Maybe her level of fuckability was it. Nothing more to see here. Maybe she really was worthless except for that and stupid and useless, and now she was evil on top of everything else. Maybe she should just let herself die.

Don’t think about it, Caroline.

Sleep.

Everything was better when she was asleep.

Just sleep.

She did.

She thought she did.

It felt like sleep. Felt like dreaming always had, but no. Not quite that, either. She was there in the dream. Asleep there, right there, in her bed in Mystic Falls, Virginia. Population: ever shrinking. And she knew it.

Caroline had never known she was dreaming before, never known anything but the vague, hazy, precious sleep of her childhood. It was clearer, this dream, though not terribly. More like being trapped in a coffin made of wavy glass. And there was something else, too. Not beyond her, but also, yes. Just out of her reach. She was equally torn between reaching toward it and shying away. If it made something skitter, wide-eyed and feral, inside of her, then why did she want it to wrap around her and scare the other monsters away? She was certain it could.

A hum of pleasure reverberated through her, and if Caroline could have startled in her condition, she would have.

“While I appreciate your well-placed faith, sweetheart, bit ahead of schedule, this. Well,” it paused for effect, dramatics shot through with warmth, “you’ve always been precocious.”

Caroline tried to respond, but only felt a jagged, angry pulse of pain. The presence hushed her and then it truly was wrapping itself around her. It was up against her skin. Sort of. Her skin wasn’t skin, not really. She knew that now. Whatever she did have, this outer layer of herself, was soothed by the contact, like aloe on a sunburn. The more it sank into her, the less she felt as though she was squeezing through too small an opening.

“There now,” the presence cooed. “There. Is that better?”

Caroline tried again. She still couldn’t speak, but managed to push an affirmative, distant and weak, at it.

The presence was delighted.

[michelledrawz]

 🐇 White rabbits 🐇

Watercolor painting <3

[wolfman-al]

Another one for Micro May. The twins are still in Wonderland, and run afoul with the Queen of Hearts. Should have eaten the cookies instead of drinking from the bottle.

[teddy-bear-naps-and-random-snaps]

[femme-gremlin-energy]

I have unusual White Rabbit flavors I will be slowly convincing myself to try.

Our first candidate is banana: it tastes pretty much exactly like banana laffy taffy.

[rabbitsociety]

✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿

x x x

[julieschulerart]

The Rabbit Maid. https://www.etsy.com/listing/173584547

[anauro]

Living my dass James life rn

[petsincollections]

Easter Bunnies for rent

Man looking at bunnies wire cage. There are three white rabbits in cage, one black rabbit in the man's hand.

Milwaukee Public Library Historic Photo

[loveshotproductions]

I’m trying to get more comfortable drawing in a sketchbook, as well as actually coloring some of my drawings.

I thought it would be fitting for me to draw something for the Lunar New Year, since this year is the Year of the Rabbit, and I myself am a Rabbit. 

It’s funny how throughout my life I’ve had this associated with rabbits, whether it was in my love for stuff like Alice in Wonderland or even in cryptid like Jackalopes. In recent years I’ve felt the comparisons between myself and rabbits were more intertwined to a slightly more negative context, like in this small, quiet, and meek little animal that runs at the sound of danger kind of context. But even with those feelings I actually still like this kind of connection I have to Rabbit in the quick-witted, kind-hearted, lucky little guy kind of sense. I don’t know, I guess it’s very hard to describe it as coherently as I would like, but it’s something interesting to think about it whenever Chinese New Year comes around. And honestly, rabbits are really fun to draw for me. If you’re wondering why the ladybugs, last year I was apparently a magnet for ladybugs because I kept finding them on my whenever I walked my dogs(and resulted in the unfortunate deaths of several ladybugs in the process), and with ladybugs also being a symbol of luck, I thought it was fitting.

[autistme]

i love that our favorite white rabbits song, as tcmc heads, is company i keep. its just such a blanket of a song