Year of the Rabbit - Part 6

Sable could see the park ahead now. The parade was starting to wind to its close. She smelled something delicious. There was meat and spice and anise. “I smell lunch,” she said to Tempest. “Should we grab something for Senna too? She probably can’t have the satay beef because there might be ginger in it, but she can probably have the pho.”   “I’ll ask,” said Tempest, “but you know you’re going to have to send one of us for it anyway because nobody’s letting you get in line.” They got out their phone and started texting.   Too true. It was probably inappropriate for the Queen, anyway. Who was going to make her wait? “Kit, can you please find me the source of that delicious beef smell and get me some?”   “I’ll go with him,” Flubb said, jumping down before Kitoypoy could say a word. “He probably won’t remember all your dietary requirements properly.”   Kitoypoy opened his mouth to protest, but then shut it. “Probably true,” he admitted with a smile.   “Senna says sure she’ll have the pho,” Tempest interrupted. “Myko’s coming too, so should we get something for her?”   “Oh, probably.” Her voice trailed off as she noticed a display at the entrance to the park. “Hey. Wait. Hold on. Kit, James, come with me.”   Sable made a beeline for the park entrance, with James quickly moving out in front of her, and Kitoypoy protectively at her side. Tempest fell in on the other side as well, temporarily diverted from the quest for food. Tempest soon saw what she had seen. “Oh,” they said, a little grim, and Sable wondered if the phantoms of memory were clawing at the back of their mind.   A golden-furred hare was being displayed in a cage. It had a black, spiralling unicorn’s horn. Its ears were flattened and it was cringing from all the attention. Sable’s ears drooped in sympathy.   "Oh, you poor thing," Sable crooned. She figured the creature had to be a leveret, not even a year old. She turned to the smiling proprietors, who were standing under a sign that read, "Pet Horn Bunny Good Luck! $5." "Why do you have an endangered animal in a cage in a public park?" she demanded.   The proprietors said something back to her in a language she didn't understand. It didn't sound like either Chinese dialect to her, though. It might have been Korean. "The bunny," she repeated, pointing to the cage. "You're not allowed to keep it as a pet."   The young woman that was smiling at her just cocked her head in incomprehension. She said something back that might have been a question.   Sable started shaking her head and making an X sign with her arms. "You're not allowed... dammit." She looked helplessly at Kitoypoy. "Kit, I'm sorry, could you please find me a translator? I don't even know where to look."   Kitoypoy nodded. "I'll see what I can do, Sable-rah." He disappeared into the gathering crowd.   Her companion, a man about Sable's own age, looked at Sable for a long moment, and his eyes widened. He tapped the girl on the shoulder and then bowed deeply. She blinked in surprise, and she began bowing too.   They must have recognized that I'm the Queen, she realized. Sable came forward and took the older man's hands. "I'm pleased to meet you," she said with a smile, hoping her tone would convey her meaning, "but you can't keep an al-miraj as a pet. They're endangered." Well, to be fair, they were probably only endangered because they were new to the world again, though they might have existed before literomancy weakened and fell into obscurity. They were no doubt making a comeback – and they were lagomorphs, so it probably wouldn't take long – but until they did...   "Maybe..." Sable held up a finger and pulled out her phone. "Gobble Translate exists for a reason," she muttered under her breath, navigating to the page. There she typed into the English box, <No pets. Endangered species,> so as to not confuse the grammar, and held it up for the man to see.   That seemed to break the language barrier. His face fell and he started talking quickly, a dismayed scowl on his face. "I don't understand," Sable said. The gist of his dialogue was pretty clear – he was objecting – but she could not decipher the specifics of his objections.   After a moment, another idea hit her, and she laid a gentle hand on his arm to stop him. Then she pointed to her phone, and then to his.   Comprehension sparked in his eyes. He took out his phone, navigated to Gobble Translate, and typed in a sentence. He held it up to Sable and she read, <Bunny An’s pet's. We have more.>   "Yes, I understand that," said Sable, "but you're not..." She gave up and typed on her own phone, <Pets not allowed because endangered species.>   Now the girl started protesting too. "It's the law," Sable said stubbornly. She stole a glance at the al-miraj; it was looking increasingly distressed by the commotion. Its ears were flattened and it was crouched down in the cage. She thought it might be shivering. She wished she could shift to bunny form so she could smell if it was a buck or a doe. There would be different strategies for calming it down, in either case.   "I don't even know how you got the little guy through Customs," she muttered. "Clearly I need to have a word with the Port Authority." She was irritated now. She should not be having this conversation in the first place. Was somebody that unobservant, or was someone taking a bribe? She thought she'd managed to clean out most of the corruption that had worked its way into the system between the collapse of the Canadian and American governments and the establishment of the Protectorate, but she knew there were those she'd missed; especially with her necessarily-lax immigration policies.   Which she was getting heat for in Parliament right now. Maybe they had a point.   Kitoypoy returned with a steel-haired Korean woman in tow. "Sable-rah? This is Kun Bo-Kyung. She'll translate for you."   Sable turned a warm smile on her. "Thank you for your help! I'm trying to explain to these folks that al-miraj are an endangered species and they're not allowed to keep them as pets in the Protectorate; it's against the law. I don't want to arrest them because I'm sure they didn't know –" she wasn't sure, but why create more trouble than she had to? Already they were upset, and if the little guys were the girl's pets, she could definitely understand that. No need to add insult to injury. – "but I'm afraid they'll have to surrender them, or return to a country where they're not protected."   The woman nodded along as she was speaking. "Absolutely, Your Majesty, I'll tell them." She spoke to them in Korean. A rapid-fire conversation that Sable couldn't follow ensued.   After a couple of minutes, the woman turned back to Sable. "They have a small group of them who are family pets, and apparently they've been pets for about a year now? They just came to the Lapin Protectorate so An, the young woman, could go to school. She's going for a biology degree at UBC. She's intending to write a paper on them for her graduate study. It would be devastating to them, both personally and for her education, if they had to surrender them."   Sable scraped her thumbnail between her bottom teeth; a leftover habit from chewing her nails as a kid. She could definitely understand the dilemma. She glanced over at the Premier, who'd been standing quietly by this whole time. "Don't we have some kind of special allowance for academic studies?"   He cleared his throat. "I'm not sure, ma'am," he said, "but I can find out. Hold on just a moment." He dialed someone on his phone. "Get me the Minister of Education and the Minister of the Environment, please."   Sable wanted to slap her forehead. She should have thought of that. Well, she could smooth ruffled feathers in the meantime. "Let them know that we might have a special allowance for academic studies," she told the woman who had volunteered, or been voluntold by Kitoypoy, to translate. "We're looking into it now."   The woman smiled with obvious approval, and turned back to the al-miraj's owners to relay the information. An said something to her and bowed, and then turned to Sable and repeated it and the gesture.   "Don't thank me yet," Sable said, but she smiled back. "We're working on it, but we don't know yet what we can do."   The Premier walked off away from the group and the crowd and began talking with the people on the other end. Sable followed him. "Would you mind patching me into the call, or maybe putting it on speaker?"   Premier Eby blinked in surprise. "Oh, uh... of course, Your Majesty! One moment." He held the call and switched over to his secretary, asking him to patch Her Majesty in.   Sable's phone rang. "Hello," she said cheerfully.   "Your Majesty... forgive the intrusion," began the secretary awkwardly, "but I have a request from the Premier..."   "Yes please, go ahead, patch me in."   "Right away, Your Majesty." The secretary awkwardly set up the call.   "Welcome to the call, Your Rabbitness," said one of the Ministers smoothly.   Sable grinned. "Your Rabbitness" was a thing that only literomancers tended to use with ease, but it was a perfectly valid regnal title. "Thank you, Ministers. Yes, so I'm sure Premier Eby hasn't even had a chance to fill you in yet?   "I was just getting started, ma'am."   Sable nodded. "Well, we're at the Lunar New Year celebration in Vancouver and we have a Korean biology student who wants to study the al-miraj she's been keeping as pets back home. Unfortunately, here they're on the endangered list, so it's illegal. I'm hoping we have some kind of special dispensation for students."   "What's an al-miraj?" the other Minister asked.   "They're one of the protected species we fund with the Lagomorph Trust. They're hares with a unicorn horn. Native to the Middle East, so I'm not sure how they got them, but they've got one on display in the park here and they're charging $5 a pat."   "Oh, well, that's definitely not allowed," the first Minister chuffed.   "Yes, and I'm glad of it, because the poor thing looks distressed by all the people and handling. They tend to be pretty reclusive in the wild." Sable knew more about lagomorphs now than just about anybody else she knew. Everything from the more familiar rabbits, hares, and pikas, to the cryptids that had begun reappearing in some numbers; skvaders, wolpertingers, jackalopes or horned hares, as they were known in Europe, and al-miraj. Lovely little beasties.   The first Minister cleared her throat. "We do have special dispensations for universities, but generally not for individuals... we don't have anything in place for keeping endangered species as pets."   The Premier jumped in. "What can we come up with? I think Her Rabbitness–" this flowed off the tongue, now that he had heard it once– "is concerned about separating them because she doesn't think the bunnies would do well in the wild, now. Correct me if I'm wrong, ma'am?"   "You're not wrong," she agreed.   "I... suppose we could allow a special dispensation if you're willing to sign it, Your Majesty," said the second Minister reluctantly. "On a personal level, I wish we knew more about the situation. We don't know anything about the endangered cryptids. We can't make sufficient judgments as to their well-being and safety because we lack the necessary data."   Sable considered that. "Good point. Well, I can offer some personal insights on jackalopes now..." She remembered when she'd adopted Jean, and all the work it had taken to determine his needs, then. She'd had no idea that jackalopes were omnivores. "There may also be something in the Lapin archives. I can look it up. I'd probably better anyway," she added, thinking aloud, "because I'm not willing to put my personal seal on anything unless I'm sure the well-being of the animals is being sufficiently met. Do we have any experts on lagomorphs we can assign to oversee this? I'm sure they'd appreciate the opportunity to have a look at some al-miraj, anyway."   "Hmm..." the second Minister murmured. "There was a study on jackalopes out of Berkeley from just last year. Maybe they could send someone?"   "Great, please look into that. I'm going to get these folks to take their bunny home, then, and get their contact information so we can continue to monitor the situation. Do you have this?" she asked Premier Eby.   "Of course, ma'am," he said.   "All right then, I'll leave you to it. I'm going to give conditional permission for their maintenance of the al-miraj, and depending on the conditions, I'll give permission for the study, too; as long as we have someone who's qualified keeping an eye on things. Maybe we can also recruit a vet who works with bunnies to make regular check-ups and whatnot."   "Good idea, ma'am," agreed the Environment Minister.   "Okay, I'll leave the arrangements in your capable hands, then," she said. "Thank you, all." She hung up on the call and made her way back over to the Korean pair and the translator. They all looked at her expectantly.   "So I'm afraid we're going to get a bunch of red tape involved," she explained. "I'm going to grant a personal, conditional dispensation to keep the al-miraj and conduct the study. But, we're going to regularly monitor them and the study through an expert on cryptid lagomorphs from Berkeley, and we're going to have a bunny vet do regular check-ups. If they agree, it won't go any farther than this."   The Korean woman nodded and started speaking to the al-miraj's owners. They nodded and asked a couple of questions. They must have been pretty straightforward, because their translator didn't ask her for any clarification. "They understand," said the woman at last, "and they agree. And they want to thank you for not fining or arresting them."   Sable smiled and nodded. "They can't keep showing off the al-miraj in the park, though. I can tell the poor thing is deeply upset. They'll have to take it home."   The woman explained that, too, and they nodded and bowed. The man started taking down the sign, while the girl picked up the cage by its handle.   Sable reached into her fanny pack and pulled out her official ink and stationary, marked with her Royal Cypher. James came over and shifted back to human form to provide his back for a writing desk so that she could pen the writ. The Korean family watched the transformation with wide eyes.   Carefully, she laid out the conditions of the special dispensation so there could be no confusion, and fixed it with her seal. It took a minute or so for the ink and wax to dry properly. "There you are," she said, handing it to the girl. "Keep that on you so that you can show any officials who might ask about it. I'll need their contact information – names, emails, addresses, phone numbers, the works. James, can I get you to make a note of all that for me?"   "Of course, House Leader," he said, and he began copying down what the woman who was translating was saying.   "Thank you, Majesty," said the girl in halting English, bowing again.   Sable smiled. "You're welcome. Take good care of my little friend here, okay?"   Her eye caught movement just past the girl's shoulder, and her gaze focused on Senna, who was coming this way. Myko was with her, and someone else she didn't know.   "Oh, did we get something for their friend?" Tempest asked Gwen. "I wasn't expecting anyone else." They sounded like they really wanted any excuse to change the subject. Caged bunnies, yes. I imagine they do.   "I got us all lunch, actually," Gwen said with a rabbity smile. "I figured we'd probably need extra." Sable's senses were overwhelmed with the delicious scent of satay beef and the sweet anise aroma of pho.   "Double score, Gwen," she said approvingly. "Good thinking. That smells amazing."   "Well, I'm glad you're going to eat, at least," Flubb chuffed with satisfaction.   Sable nodded to the girl with a smile, and moved away so she could wave down Senna and Myko.   They waved back and they all found each other when the crowd cleared to make way for the Bunny Queen and her family.   "Hey Mom!" Myko trilled. There were hugs all around, even cursory ones for Senna, who often didn't like being touched.   "Hey guys!" Sable grinned. "We brought lunch. I hope you're hungry."