A rabbit walks down the desolate streets. Its ears listen for any signs of life, but it hears only the echo of its own footsteps and the whisper of the wind.
The rabbit's fur is matted with dirt and dust, its body broken and bruised from a million lifetimes of tragedy and misery. The rabbit feels no pain or hunger however. Something else is on it's mind.
It continues going through the empty streets, its sorrowful eyes peering into the dark windows of abandoned buildings. It cannot remember the last time it felt something other than loneliness.
Suddenly, the rabbit heard an unfamiliar sound, and its fuzzy ears perked up. The sound was coming from a building, and the rabbit went straight towards it without hesitation.
As the rabbit got closer, it saw that the windows of the building were practically flooded with paper, with some of it spilling out and piling up on the ground all around the building. The sound of rustling paper filled the air, as if some unseen force was slowly pushing the paper out of the windows.
The rabbit approached the building cautiously, its ears twitching with curiosity. Its heart beats faster in anticipation. It seems like its search for life has finally led to an unexpected discovery.
With caution, the rabbit enters the building, its paws treading the paper flood. Among all the rustling, it discerns a different sound. Slow mechanical clattering, that would sometimes speed up before quickly slowing back down, as if struggling.
Swimming through the sea of paper, the rabbit reached the point where the sound was coming from, but the source of the sound was nowhere to be seen. The rabbit realized. It was right below it. So it dug straight down into the paper, but carefully, as to not damage whatever was making the clattering noise.
It was a typewriter. It was typing all on it's own, and somehow producing more and more paper. Thanks to the rabbit digging it out, there was no paper pressing down on it's keys anymore, so it sped up and typed as fast as it could. Despite an endless supply of paper, it seems to have ran out of ink a long time ago.
Intrigued, the rabbit digs through the paper surrounding the typewriter, sits down, and watches the typewriter keys to determine what it is typing.
M A Y
T H E I R
A B S E N C E
B E
O U R
S A N C T U A R Y
"May their absence be our sanctuary," the rabbit repeated to itself.
The rabbit paused, considering the typewriter's words.
"Their absence," the rabbit said out loud, as if hoping that the machine would somehow hear it, "refers to whom, exactly?"
The typewriter did not react. It kept typing the same message, over and over. The rabbit shrugged.
"Everyone is gone anyway. Everyone but me."
The rabbit decided to leave the machine be, for now. This encounter was the closest thing it had to company in a very long time, but all the cluttering was getting annoying. It left the buidling, and promised itself to dig through all the paper eventually, hoping to find the old sheets that still had ink. With these thoughts, it went to sleep.
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