Today on "The Worst Things to Do in Another World": Bunnies almost get eaten out of home and country. Preggies crave carbs. Neara provides. They have emotionally preggy cries for Ding Dongs, Donuts, and other Hostess snacks and make the rabbit clan panic. Other pregnancy jokes. Basket making. Blanket making. And I have a burrito.

"I'm just not coming over until you're done with... all this." Shay gestured behind her back at Neara crouched over a small stone bowl.

Neara, too busy tossing her cookies, pancakes, pizza, and several salads, couldn't respond.

"Yeah, I'm just going to go." As she left, she yelled over her shoulder, "I'll find some ginger for you."

Face deep in igneous, Neara could only listen to a rabbit, probably Aetius, gently close the door behind her, leaving her in darkness. She didn't know why she insisted on remaining in the old hut when she could have gone to Aetius's... ok, she knew exactly why. She rinsed her mouth out with water and picked up the bowl. She didn't want to lose her autonomy and rely on him for everything... which is exactly what he wanted. He didn't trust her to be independent, especially since he'd sniffed the pregnancy on her. Captain, overjoyed at the news, had promised every Rabbit to her bidding and had at least one of them standing outside her hut every day, waiting for instructions.

"I guess it couldn't have lasted forever." She nodded to the young blond outside her tent, Cliff, and walked to the small stream. If Aetius knew what she was doing... but Captain had him checking the barriers every week now, worried the ferals would smell her pregnancy through the ice and snow and come charging over or something, who really knew. Her attention wandered whenever Captain came over. He only wanted to talk about how they could trust him implicitly and that sort of thing. She lost patience and interest after the first few minutes since he always said the same things. Those checkups, she suspected, were more to make sure she wasn't trying to kill the babies rather than a genuine interest in her well-being. So be it.

The stream felt good on her sweaty palms and she gave her face, and mouth, a quick rinse. She missed the spiky bushes they'd used for brushing teeth back in the valley and they'd resorted to pulling threads through their teeth and scrubbing with their fingers wrapped in hide. Shay, also pregnant, complained about the same level of attention and often waxed eloquent about the things she wanted to do to Captain when his back was turned. Everyone took it in stride as 'pregnant female' and nobody took it to heart. Or, at least, that's what Neara hoped.

There was... something weird about Shay though. She'd basically stopped eating since she'd gotten there, but now her appetite returned with a vengeance. Most of the rabbits were kept busy running everywhere looking for the specific foods she craved, but it was never enough. She'd even taken to chomping on whatever edible bark she could find, ripping it off the trees with her leftover good hand and a slight glow of her ankle or chest.

Shadows danced over the surface of the stream and she looked up to see branches being violently shaken from the trees above her. Small twigs clattered around her and she covered her face with her arms. The sun shone straight in her eyes and she couldn't quite make out who was up the tree... it definitely wasn't anyone other than a rabbit...

"Oh! Sorry Neara." A voice called from the treetops. It sounded too far away to make out who it belonged to... but there were only a handful of beastmen it could be. She took a stab at it anyway.

"Vincent?"

He scrambled down the tree, knocking more bark into her hair and clothes. He clutched a small nest in his hand, the greenish eggs mottled with brown and cradled in his palm. "Shay wanted eggs."

"Oh. That's nice of you to get them for her."

He frowned at the eggs, then plucked them from the twigs and nestled them into a pouch at his waist, stuffing handfuls of grass around them. "Not enough. I've been through almost every tree in the forest, leaving just enough for them to grow. I only have 38... this will never satisfy her."

"She still eating a lot?"

"More every day. She must be carrying a large litter." His tone was neutral though his brows furrowed and his eyes seemed far off.

"That's good, right? It means there's a bigger chance of females in the litter."

"Yes." There was more he wasn't saying.

"Vincent... what's wrong? You don't sound happy."

His good eye looked at her and she could see the depth of his despair. It gnawed at him, obvious in the hollow of his cheeks and the emptiness in his eye. "I don't want to complain."

"Don't view it as complaining then; view it as venting to a friend. Unless you don't want to, then it's ok." She tried to respect his boundaries while her insides pressured her to ask for more information about her friend. When it came to physical pain, Shay kept it to herself, even if it meant endangering her life.

Vincent sighed, his shoulders sagged as if he'd just taken the weight of the world from them. "Shay is my world. I have never met a female that inspires the sort of feelings she does... one who is almost ..." he sighed and quickly said, "This is why I dislike talking before I think... my words trip over themselves. She is like the other half of my soul, my mind, my everything seems to have been molded to fit her exactly."

Neara felt a touch of queasiness return and she dipped her hand into the running stream again. "What are you going to do when you have to give her back?"

His mouth tightened, throwing the cuts and curls of his scar tissue into sharp relief. "I will let her go. What can I offer her that they can't provide?" He threw the nest down and it exploded against the ground. "I can't even find her enough food."

Neara, shocked at the outburst, said nothing. It didn't feel like he was done talking.

"Listen to me ramble... I apologize for boring you."

"It's ok... I wasn't bored."

"Forgive me."

"There's nothing to forgive, it's really ok." She looked at her empty stone pot draped over her massive belly.

His attention was drawn there too, although he didn't smile like the other rabbits did when they noticed her waddling around. Stretch marks zoomed up and down her stomach and back, dark purple against the white of her skin. The oil branches may work for Shay to prevent her stretch marks, but they did nothing to stop the steady march up her stomach, or the constant crush of her organs as her uterus swelled to accommodate the young. Rabbits weren't that big when they were born, right? She had to have a pretty hefty litter in there. Were rabbit babies called litters? Shay called them kits, so would it be a kitter?

"Are you worried?"

"How could I not be? She wastes away every day and her size rivals yours, although she's at least a week behind."

"Do you think... she's going to..."

"I don't like to consider the possibility, but I don't know how much longer I can watch her slowly die. I'm tempted to... leave the mountain and find her food elsewhere. If that's possible."

Neara slowly had an idea... though her brain felt like it was thinking through oatmeal. "Do you have wild grains here?"

"Yes, they grow all over the valley. They're inedible to beastmen, but the birds like to eat them so we continue to grow them."

"Could you gather as much of it as you can, or ask the others to, and bring it to my hut? Along with the biggest stones you can find, about this big." She set down her bowl and gestured with her arms. A grindstone would be hard to make without the natural strength of Winston to carve it into shape, but she felt confident they had some sort of tool to finish the job quickly. Or at least in a day. Bread was very filling, much more so than the constant diet of salad, and the small prey animals allowed to live in the valley didn't provide much nutrition either.

He nodded, then cupped the pouch with the eggs and sprinted off towards his hut... she thought. It had to be, right? He wouldn't be hauling stones with all those eggs, right?

The birds above her chirped angrily at the theft of their eggs, adding more stress to the already horrible day. Poor Vincent, and poor Aetius and poor... well, everyone. She and Shay carried their last hope of escaping extinction and Shay... she couldn't think about it. She thought about how to go about explaining the mill if they'd never heard of it. Well, they obviously hadn't or flour would be more common. They'd understand the basics of a picture, right? Winston did. He seemed to understand everything that she did, sometimes before she could do it. Warm fuzzies filled her chest as she thought about him, although she wasn't sure she'd be able to mate so soon after giving birth to all these rabbits.

Speaking of which... would they be regular baby rabbit size, or giant rabbit size? More proportional to a human? Because that might shrink the size of the litter depending on how many were actually in there. She thought about her last pregnancy, about her baby boys... if the odds were the same as regular human birth, then one of them should have been female, right? Maybe she just gave birth like a regular female of this world and could only produce males... or one single female. She doubted she'd grow so quickly with just one female though.

Or maybe it'd be a whole group of female rabbits and she'd single-handedly save their Clan. Could she bear to part with her daughters though? She parted with her sons easily enough, but what about the next time? Everyone said the second time was easier, at least in terms of pushing, so she probably wouldn't almost die this time, right? Plus baby rabbits were smaller than baby sheep anyway. She hoped that was the case and they weren't secretly Fleming Giants, or whatever they were called.

Aetius waited for her when she got back, his arms full of wheat as he shook his head. "You know I specifically requested..."

"I know, I know, I just wanted to get outside for a little bit and I thought some fresh air would help my nausea."

"Then open the door. The breeze can cool the Burrow in minutes." He waited for her to open the door, then pushed past her. Several mounds of wheat lay inside, all ripped from the ground with most of their roots intact. Two large stones sat in the corner and as she watched, more rabbits came running in, similarly laden. They threw the wheat on the ground and looked at her curiously.

"Can you make something for me if I show you what I want?" she said to Aetius, ignoring their stares. She'd never get used to those.

"Out of the rocks? Or the wild grains?"

"It's out of the rocks to process the wild grains." She gestured to the stones then pointed outside. "If I draw a picture, can you carve them into it?"

"The size of the picture or as big as the rocks?"

Neara groaned in frustration. "As big as the rocks! Why would I ask for giant rocks if I wanted you to make something tiny?"

"I was just asking, you don't need to yell."

"It feels like you're purposefully being obtuse." The two rabbits slunk out of the hut nervously.

"I don't know what that means, but it doesn't sound flattering." His voice started to sound dead inside, almost like he was purposefully ignoring her, or trying to piss her off.

"It means you're being stupid on purpose."

"Then why not say that? Why not just say what you mean?"

"Because that's the first words that popped into my head, sorry I can't dumb it down for you."

"So you think I'm dumb?"

"No, yes... ugh!" She gave a little scream of anger and threw her hands up, dropping the stone bowl as she did so. It missed her feet and rolled by the bed. "I just wanted to know if you could help me."

"I will always help you in any capacity. Just say what you mean next time."

"Ok, fine, will you please make a to-scale version of the drawing your breeding factory draws for you outside?"

"Like you didn't try and mate with me when we were alone. You really got into that singing and dancing." Now he sounded accusatory which... he was. He was totally accusing her. Why did it feel so hard to think?

"Yeah, right. You jumped all over me quick enough, even after you said you'd 'never love again' and 'had no desire to mate with me.'" She raised an eyebrow. "Glad you waited so long to get over yourself. For my sake. I would have thought you were shallow..."

"Why do we always fight? For the love of the gods above, why do we always fight? I just asked for clarification and you attacked me."

"You attacked me! And you were obviously pretending not to understand what I was talking about. How was I supposed to react?"

"By clarifying. You're a female, a mostly irrational one at that, so how can I believe, at face value, everything you say? Even if I did follow you outside, what if I did it wrong? Then you'd be mad at me for misunderstanding. That's why I asked you to clarify so I knew exactly what you meant."

Neara turned this over in her mind and her rage slowly calmed. "I'm sorry... I shouldn't have gotten mad like that."

"It's alright; I know females get irrational when they're pregnant and I didn't expect anything different."

"Shut up!" All of her fire and scorn returned. "Stop calling me irrational! Are you pregnant? Have you ever been pregnant? No? Then shut up! You don't get an opinion and if you can't do this, I can find someone else to. Or, better yet, I'll just do it myself since everyone thinks I'm too weak to do anything. I'm not useless!" She unintentionally screamed the last part.

"You can draw whatever you like, I'll make it for you."

Before Neara opened her mouth, she thought about Shay, who looked so thin she could snap her in half. Normally, they weighed about the same, but while Neara's weight had dropped slightly, in no small part due to the stress of finding enough food, Shay seemed to shrivel overnight. She'd heard one of them wonder if it was because she had had a snake batch before, which were draining as well. No, forget that. Make the bread for her. "Fine. I'll draw it. You fix it." She stalked outside and began drawing a rough mill, not bothering to see if he followed. She felt him crouched above her, his thigh muscles poking the back of her head. "You make it into a disc-like thing, then cut grooves into it, then drill two holes and put a piece of wood in one of the holes and the other leads to the grooves. It sits in a saucer-type thing where the flour collects."

Aetius stepped back. "And this will make the wild grains edible?"

"Yeah, it turns it into flour and you can cook with flour."

"Some flowers are edible, but the sprouts of the wild grain plant are too small for effective consumption."

"Ugh, not the flowers of the plant, the powder made from smashing the grains is called flour."

"That's confusing. Why not call it a powder? And if you want it to be a powder, I can make it for you."

"No, it's easier this way. You don't have to wait for a beastman to do it, you can just do it yourself."

He scoffed. "Why do you always insist on doing things the hard way? I offer to do something nice for you and instead of accepting..." He took a deep breath. "I'll carve your stones. Just let me know if I'm doing it right."

"You can show me when you think you're halfway and I'll make any corrections, but the design itself is pretty simple." She, too, struggled to keep her tongue in check. Why did he bring out the worst in her? With Winston, she felt insecure, but safe. With Orson, she felt challenged, but loved. Aetius just pissed her off, although there had been that initial spark.

"Ok." He left her crouched on the ground and didn't offer to help her up. Not that she wanted him to, she just noticed that he didn't. She stared at her drawing for a few more minutes, trying to see if she'd made any mistakes in the design. It looked similar to the one at Tiger Castle, so it should, in theory, work the same.

She wandered into the forest to eat berries and by the end of the day, Aetius had carved her model, with a few modifications. He pointed to the wood handle and said, "I covered it with leather so you could grip it better and lined the grooves with hardened tree sap so the stone won't break off. It will eventually wear down, but I can always replace that. I also made it slightly smaller than you indicated, listen before you yell at me, so you can carry it places. So if you want to go to the fields and grind these flowers, you can do it because it's portable."

"I wanted a big one so I could do it all at once." She pointed out, not caring if he thought her ungrateful. She'd specifically asked him to do that, right? Make it as big as he could?

"Yes, but I also thought it would be easier for you if you could actually carry it around, and it would save your arms from being exhausted. A smaller, mill you called it, would help so you can make more without straining yourself too much."

"Ok... thank you." It was a nice thing, right? Why did it rub her the wrong way? She asked for something and he made it better... by completely disregarding what she wanted. Is that why it felt so... wrong? Like an empty gesture? Or was she crazy... again?

"I have the wild grains, and I can help you turn it since you're pregnant." Without waiting for her, he poured the seeds into the mill and began cranking. The stones squeaked horribly against each other and Neara covered her ears with a shout.

"Stop it!"

Aetius paused, his ears flat against his back. "Is it supposed to be that loud?"

"No, you must have carved the channels wrong... there's a grinding, yeah, but not this bad." She pulled it apart and saw he'd carved the channels in opposite directions; the ridges were rubbing against each other.

After some more tinkering, and a lot of help from Henry who proved to be more mechanically inclined that she'd thought, they finally had a working mill and flour. Aetius gingerly tasted it and grimaced. "That's horrible! I don't like these flowers."

"Flour! Just call it wheat powder if you can't remember." She mixed equal parts flour and water in a small stone basin and covered it tightly with boiled leather. It wasn't airtight, but it would have to do.

"What are you doing?"

"Making a sourdough starter."

"A... what?" Aetius looked at the jar suspiciously.

"You mix flour and water and keep giving it new food and eventually you can make bread with it." She'd done this all the time with her mom back... oof. Tears flooded down her face and she sniffed sadly. Snot soon joined the water on her face and smeared on the back of her hand when she tried to wipe.

"What's wrong?" He sounded alarmed.

"It's nothing, I just... I miss my mom."

Henry patted her back consolingly. "When you get out of here, you'll be able to see her again. Have no fear, Neara."

"Thanks, Henry." She shot Aetius a look to cool it. He wisely said nothing.

"I'll go harvest more wild grains." Henry left them alone.

Aetius raised an eyebrow.

Neara dabbed at her eyes with the backs of her hands. "Shut up. I'm never going to see her again because I'm stuck in this estrogen wasteland and you're making fun of me for being sad about it."

"No. I wasn't going to say anything about you coming from another world."

"Well, good." She started grinding more flour, letting the dull buzz of crunching grains distract her from the