Chapter 2

Snowdrop arrived to a large, circular, iron barred gate leading into a narrow cave guarded by 2 wolves. This marked the beginning of the mineshomes. She reached up to the bright blue collar around her neck and grabbed from under it a gold key attached to a silver chain. As a blue collar rabbit, she was allowed to roam freely in and out of the mines, so long as her business there pertained to her job.

Behind the gate, cobbled together homes of stone, wood, and surface garbage cluttered the walls of an ever growing tunnel system. The minehomes were busy in a way that was different from the bustle of the marketplace. Rabbits felt more real there somehow. They laughed, mothers watched children play hopscotch in the corners where they could find enough space to, even the despondent or exhausted were honest with their emotions, laying together in the sidelines of the thin walkway between homes. Though the conditions were doubtless tiresome, a kind of camaraderie bound these rabbits. A camaraderie Snowdrop often found herself jealous of. These were black collars, most would be born, live, and die more or less within the mines. Her status as a blue collar mostly bought either reverence or disdain from these people, and neither was very much like having a friend. She had something close in Milia though.

Millia ran a bar which was a well kept secret within the minehomes. None of the rabbits had coin to exchange, but candy pieces acted as a good replacement-- except for when someone's kid ate their life savings on occasion. "Millia's place," locals called it. Even some friendlier wolves would take a moments reprieve here, where they could find stronger than average ale at dirt cheap prices. As soon as Snowdrop brought her wheelbarrow within line of sight of the open air bar, Millia started to shout and reached for a cowbell on her countertop "LUNCH! LUNCH'S ON!" This caused Snowdrop to whisper as loud as she could.
"Wait wait wait wait wait!" she said, dashing towards Millia with her head hunched low. "Voros gave me someone's *head.* Their head!"
"What? You talk to that wolf??"
"It's in the cabbages, he just... threw her in there!"
"That's gruesome! Where does that man get off--"
"I don't know what to do with her! I've been to scared to look her in the eyes, I screwed up lunch, there's blood on everything-- I've just been so scared! I rushed here-- I'm sorry! I--"
"Girl, breathe. Bring that wheelbarrow to the back and wash the cabbage off, I'll take care of this." Millia said, and grabbed the nameless head by it's ears, yolking it up out of the wheelbarrow.

They moved behind the counter where they were mostly out of sight and Snowdrop wrenched the handle for a water faucet to the right. A flow of fresh, freezing water drained from a brass spigot into a grate in the ground. She began to wash off cabbages which were tainted with specks of blood. Millia on the other hand found in a drawer a great assortment of hand sown bags. The dimly red rabbit looked like a war goddess holding a decapitated head in one hand, but she was kind enough to close the dead girls eyes before packing her away into a small leather sack, tying a knot in the top. "There, now you don't gotta look at it at least."
"How do you do that? I don't even like being close to things like that and you can just pick her up, it's not scary?" Snowdrop said, shivering as she threw away cabbage leaves that had become soggy in blood.
"Oh I wish shit was still scary. I would love to tell you death always keeps it's sting, but it don't. When you're around it all the time down in the mines you figure not to care less it's somebody you know. This ain't even that, it's just some criminal that got turned into meat. 's a product."
"Well she doesn't look like one, she's a person. She was a person..."
"Why're you carryin' the thing around if you feel that way?"
"Voros told me to give her to Charis. As a gift."
"You aught've thrown the danm thing straight back at the man, forget carrying it!"
"I know but I pass him on the way back and if he sees me without it he's gonna chide me to death. And besides, I can't... touch her, I can't... look at her, can't even smell Voros, I don't want to do any of this, I can't do..."
"Hey." Millia knelt down. "You wanna still clean these cabbages?"
"...Yeah."
"You want me to do it? I'll do it, move over."
"No... No I've got it..."
"You're strong, you can handle this. I'm gonna go round everybody up fer lunch."
"I can handle this. I can do this. I'm strong..."
Snowdrop continued to whisper mindless affirmations to herself until a squeaking voice interrupted her. "Do you talk to yourself?"

A brightly blue eyed rabbit glared teasingly at her, a little girl so short she still needed to look up at Snowdrops kneeling body. She was accompanied by a little boy, slightly older, with patchy white and brown fur, and a tall gray half boy, he had a bunny's ears and a wolf's muzzle. All 3 had large black collars hanging loose around their necks.
"Sorry, Kris wanted to come talk to you." Said the sheepish rabbit boy. "Kris she looks busy lets go, she's an adult."
"I'm just cleaning the cabbages for Lunch. Would you like to help?" No, the boy thought, but he felt obligated and knelt down.
"Do all blue collars talk to themselves?" Kris chimed up, not even considering helping. "Are you, like, really really smart? Is that why, how, you got a blue one?" The wolf behind her barked something out next
"No, idiot! It's because feeding us is her job. She's a rank above us."
"Lynus, don't be mean to Kris...!" Said the rabbit boy, seeing Kris recoil and blush at being called a name. "Asking questions is good Kris, it's okay."
"So, Kris... And Lynus. And what's your name?" Asked Snowdrop.
"Pello..." Said the little boy while scrubbing water into some of the last of the cabbages.
"Well, it's nice to meet you all. And Lynus, you're partially right, feeding you all is something my master gets paid for me to do, but it's not really the reason I'm a blue collar. I'm a blue collar because I displayed obedience, punctuality, and grace, and my master filled out some paper work and had me monitored and tested for a while."
"Hmph." Lynus scoffed. "It's not like any of that matters for any of you guys. Miner bunnies never get promoted. I don't care though, I'm different! My dad's a wolf, and he says he's gonna promote me to a blue, and then a green, and then a white collar, and I can work with him in management when I'm older!"
"Oh, that'll be so nice!" Snowdrop said with a smile. She imagined being so well ranked, appreciated by those around her for cunning and smarts and treated quite nearly like a peer by wolves. She couldn't imagine it happening to her, but maybe if she were at least half, like Lynus...

Her and these kids talked til the cabbages were clean, and then all through lunch after that. A grizzly team of well worn rabbits returned from a dig and made lunch lively. At one point in the meal Kris told a wolf regular something that caused a silence. "Whenever we get a wolf come in, Ms. Mil gets real mad and she says you're gonna blab to the wrong wolf friend and get us all in trouble!" she must've known it was inappropriate, even if she didn't understand the gravity, because she said it with a big grin and coy posture. But the wolf broke the anxious silence with a mockingly apologetic voice, saying: "Oh is that how she feels? So do you think I should take down all the posters I put up??" Kris nodded emphatically, and everyone else laughed, in part because it helped break the tension. This general merriment continued until a bell toll indicated it was time to switch shifts, and time for Snowdrop to go home.