Alex could have followed the bunny anywhere. It had piqued his interest as he explored the wide woods that now encompassed his new backyard.
It wasn't that the backyard was the woods, however, the yard did open up into the woods if you walked deep enough and managed to squeeze yourself between a gap between two entangled trees that had somehow grown together.
How that had happened, he wasn't entirely sure, but he did like it. It gave this feeling of isolation and adventure, something he desperately needed in the early afternoon.
As much as he loved his grandparents, the trip to the island had exhausted him, as had the subsequent socialising and unpacking. He couldn't help being extremely thankful for his Grandma telling him and his sister to make themselves at home.
Erica had taken that as an excuse to start using the indoor gym - a recent build that surprised even Erica - and Alex had used the opportunity to slip out of the back door. He took only three things with him; a pen, his iconic embossed notebook, and a water bottle full of tropical juice.
The further he walked into the woods, the more he realised that he maybe should have grabbed himself a snack too. Breakfast might have been a heaping plate at the Inn, but he burnt through that already, even through the small snack his Grandma had prepared for him and his twin - a stack of wonderfully sweet and flavourful banana fritters.
As he sat down on a rotted log in order to further understand his predicament, he couldn't help but be amazed at the beauty of the greenery around him.
Already the sun had been at the highest point in the sky, as it was just a few minutes past noon, and the lovely dappled light filtered through the picturesque canopy.
He and his log were covered in an amazing green hue courtesy of this, furthering the almost magical movie-like view was the forest floor.
It was covered in a crunchy combination of dried leaves, dead branches, ample mushrooms and spongiform.
Briefly, he considered eating some of the mushrooms he found dotting the clearing he currently sat in, but thought better about it. Better to temporarily starve, than to end up dying a rather painful and unfortunate death.
Instead, he sat back and gazed at the clearing, letting it seep into his mind and relax him.
That was when he saw the bunny.
It had hopped into the clearing, the dappled light juxtaposing against its pearly white fur in a manner that seemed almost dreamlike.
Alex sat up a little straighter and the bunny hopped towards him, stopping roughly a yard away.
Upon closer inspection, he noticed certain peculiar irregularities in the fur of the bunny.
Whilst it's fur was a uniform creamy white everywhere - even down to the tips of its ears - its fur itself was furrowed in peculiar symbols. As if someone had taken the bunny, shaved it down, and then performed scarification on it.
The symbols were hard to look at, seeming to swim and shift under his gaze almost constantly. The bunny, however, was none the worse for wear.
It licked one of its front paws, before using that very paw to softly swipe at its own pinkish nose.
The scene was very cute, and Alex found himself smiling at the sight.
With nothing better to do, he decided to spend the rest of his afternoon watching the bunny.
He had a soft spot for animals in general and although rodents were pretty low on that list, they still ranked somewhere in his head.
He would watch this rabbit, the interesting cream bunny seemed to signify the start of new beginnings.
He reached over, tearing a clump of green moss from the side of the log that he sat upon. Stretching his hand out, he let the bunny sniff his now opened palm and then watched with delight as it quietly ate of the moss.
Murmuring, he smiled. "You must have been hungry, eh?" The bunny's only response was to eat even faster.
"Slow down there, little guy." He tutted, "You might choke, and I'm not a vet."
The little ball of fur stopped, gazing at Alex through one eye, its head cocked at an angle.
He felt very weird, seeing his reflection inlaid into the wet surface of the bunny's eye.
It beheld him with a kind of weird intelligence that seemed to hide behind its gaze.
And then just like that, it bolted off. Alex himself was shocked by the sudden flurry of movement, and as a result, had almost fallen off of the log.
Regaining his balance, he looked across the clearing and did see the bunny. It had stopped roughly ten yards away, at the exit of the clearing. As it sat there, it looked at him and then took a few tentative paces further away, as if it needed him to follow.
"Intriguing," Alex muttered to himself.
Picking up his belongings, he quickly gave chase. They ran past a bubbling brook, its waters fresh and almost crystal clear, looking closer he saw some fresh water salmon sparkling beneath the surface of the water.
"Must lead out to sea somewhere," He said under his breath, "I should find the outlet one of these days."
Running even further they came through a small valley in which the ground had cracked into two separate shards, and then in some currently unknown fashion, been smashed together, leaving in its place a narrow ridge that rose several feet into the air.
Passing further around the ridge, he and the bunny entered another clearing and he felt the air leave his lungs in shock.
The clearing was several meters wide and a perfect circle, the circle itself was made up of several tall trees that seemed to create a natural barrier around the rest of the forest, with the forest floor in this area seeming to be a combination of sweetgrass, wildflowers, and several small berry bushes dotted around.
However, the main attraction and the reason for his surprise was the massive tree that rose above the rest and sat in the perfect centre of the clearing.
The tree itself was huge and ornate. An Oak? He couldn't be sure, the tree seemed to share many of its attributes with many different trees.
Here and there he saw a few Oak leaves, but the roots of the giant tree resembled Mangrove roots, and if he looked closely at the ground, he found many seed pods that seemed like a cross between a Sycamore and a Lychee. It looked edible and smelled sweet, but he wasn't willing to give it a try.
The tree was covered in ornate carvings that seemed to be vaguely mathematical in origin with a dash of the occult.
Straight angles met with pentagrams, perfect circles encircled strange runic symbols, acute triangles intersected, and descriptions of peculiar geometry wrapped around several branches. The entire air around the tree seemed to hum with a bizarre tension.
A tension so strong that Alex felt a migraine blooming, it reminded him of the terrible pressure that built up in his ears during turbulence, only this time the pressure was in his sinuses. He felt like he had a giant head cold, and yet he was sure that he wasn't sick.
The bunny watched him inquisitively, it currently sat in a wide hollow in the dead center of the tree's main trunk. Wincing against the sudden migraine, Alex decided to check out the hollow and the bunny hopped deeper into the hollow still. As he stepped closer he couldn't help but be impressed.
"Wow..." He chuckled to himself. "I sense future secret hideout vibes."
Whoever had inhabited this hollow previously had done an impressive job, despite the tree obviously being alive, the internal hollow was wide and large enough to encompass a huge set of rundown wooden furniture. Tables, desks, chairs, and even a rickety bed sat in the corner.
He frowned, the internal geometry of the room seemed a little off, like the room was bigger than should have been possible given the size of the tree. The same markings as outside covered the walls in here, and if he wasn't mistaken, the hideout seemed to also be partially underground.
Indeed through a marvel of what appeared to be carpentry and digging, lay a set of steps that descended several feet below ground level.
Ignoring the bunny, his curiosity carried him down the steps. The steps themselves did not end in a landing of any kind, instead, they went down an approximate fifteen steps before opening up into a wide room with a ceiling that sat a little low.
The room itself, whilst the walls and ceiling were made of some kind of stone, its floor appeared to be simple hardened soil and was covered in many scattered pieces of paper.
The papers appeared to be in various states of decomposition and were covered in a healthy helping of dust and cobwebs, leading him to believe that it had been a while since it had been visited by anybody.
"At least I don't need to worry about anyone coming back to claim this place." He said aloud, bending down to pick up a piece of paper and dusting it off.
Whilst the paper was mostly illegible, he did recognise that it carried on it a drawing of the same three intersecting triangles that he was starting to see everywhere.
Walking back up the steps he bid the hollow fair well and then did the same to the tree as he left the clearing.
The bunny followed him out, almost guiding him back to the yard, as if it didn't want him to get lost.
When they finally arrived back at the yard, some forty minutes later, he couldn't help but ruffle the bunny's fur and hope to see it later. It merely twitched its nose at him and then proceeded to hop back into the undergrowth.
Sitting down on the porch, he could already hear Erica's loud mouth singing along to some retro pop song he wasn't familiar with. He chuckled, she often did this whilst working out.
He was actually thankful though, it gave him time to himself for a little while longer, and this was time he needed to be entirely frank.
He glanced at the paper from the hollow once more, whilst it was mostly illegible, there was a small fragment of text that was actually readable.
He peered at it, squinting his eyes and read;
"... wondering what else she has been spreading around. Is that cruel of me? Nevertheless, I must focus on what little I have managed to garner from both my studies and the mound. The pattern is there, I know it is, I just have to see. Three parts and I've already gotten the intent. I mustn't forget that the shape is important too, the Thamataurgy of the perfect circle means that it can be used to focus the quinta. I must complete the circu..."
The rest of the page ended in illegible scribbles whose meaning he could not discern.
"Huh.." He folded the paper neatly into his pocket, "Curiouser and curiouser, this stay might not be boring after all."
He was tempted to walk back and find the clearing again, but the smell of freshly cooked lunch called him, and he headed inside, vowing to return to the hollow the next day. Maybe he would bring Erica with him this time.