when suddenly, she smelled a cat approaching
she began to run, darting off away from the cat, but the cat was faster. closer and closer the cat came, and that was when the rabbit realized she had a second problem too:
she was approaching the cliffs' edge.
in her panic to get away from the cat, the rabbit didn't even slow down. sprinting she leaped from the cliff, and her powerful legs carried her soaring forward so fast that she missed the sea entirely, falling around and around the great curve of water and land, and wound up in the sky-world.
"how nice it is here", sky rabbit thought. and she grazed on blue grass, slept among fluffy clouds, gazed at the stars from close up. when she got thirsty, she found she could draw water up from the water-world. she looked down at the goings on in the land-world, far above it all, at peace. but her idyllic existence in the sky-world was not for long...
... for coming up over the horizon, she saw sky-fox, trotting along, radiant and aflame. rosy-eared dawn caught sight of her new world-mate, and a grin came across her snout. she leapt forward in pursuit, and around and around the sky-world, the fox chased the rabbit. each morning, Sun closed in a little more, and Moon grew more and more withered and exhausted from the chase, growing thinner, weaker
and one day, she vanished. it seemed sky fox had her way, ate her up entirely. but Sun is a playful goddess, and a couple evenings after, coughed up sky rabbit. silver-tailed lantern, disoriented for a moment, looked around, and saw that sky fox was trotting off, leaving her in the evening realms of sky-world among the emerging stars.
dazed, silver-tail wandered along, and began feeding more and more on the blue pastures left in the wake of rosy-ears. she grew fatter and fatter, wandered further and further from Sun, until, one night, Sun began her chase yet again.
and so it went, over and over, sky fox chases sky rabbit each month, catches her right on the ides, and releases her from the hunt, until she grows so fat and tempting at the start of the new month that rosy-ears cannot help but give chase yet again.
