Bunny stumbled into the Warren on all fours, too tired for his usual grace or to even try at the dignity of two feet. He avoided looking at the decimated eggs and their shells littering the tunnels, too exhausted as much emotionally as physically to clean them up just yet.
...maybe he'd use the shells to make a mural for the weekend, to celebrate gaining a new Guardian. He'd done some kind of art project for each of the others, may as well make something joyful out of this pain, pull victory from defeat. It seemed fitting, somehow, that the thing that had almost driven Jack away from them be used to show that he was one of them.
Thinking of the others had his half–asleep feet moving without realizing just where he was going until he was there, looking over the gardens he'd made for their marriage, each section abloom with flowers he'd chosen to symbolize each of them individually. He sat back on his haunches to look over the gentle valley and the flowers blooming there, just taking in the sight and scent of the flowers.
...how long had it been since he'd tended these gardens, he suddenly wondered. He'd barely even visited them over the last few hundred years, trusting the magic of the Warren to keep them safe and tended for him while he focused on his job, the eggs and chocolate. He hadn't even shown it to the others, had barely let them into the Warren until this Easter, he realized with a start.
Looking over the gardens, he suddenly came to full alertness, ears pricking forward as he realized something else.
When he made a garden, he usually went all out, but these...each Guardian was separate, their section of the garden strictly kept away from the other five. It had been a style choice before, to show how each was separately important to him, but now...it just felt wrong. And to make matters worse...the realization hit him with all the force of one of Pitch's nightmares that the flowers he'd chosen for each were only here, in this garden, and the sections were all the same shape and general design.
Nothing to personalize them for each Guardian beyond flower choice, and even then they were mostly by color rather than meaning, almost like he'd just been going through the motions for a Marriage Garden without the spirit behind it, despite how excited and heady those first decades had been, nothing to keep them in his thoughts when he was in the rest of the Warren, nothing connecting them all together.
It was a Marriage Garden in form only by now, not in spirit or symbol.
Well, he could start doing something about each of those, at least. He bounded away, fetching sketch paper from the burrow and dragging it out into the light, pen flying across the paper as he designed, exhaustion forgotten in the surge of inspiration.
Swirls for Sandy, to go through the Warren proper and lead back to this garden, plus around and through the Marriage Gardens...he'd need more red and white, for North, maybe some oaks and evergreens to shade the other gardens, sturdy and strong...purples and golds for Tooth, and something sweet but strong...Jack, what kind of flowers for a winter spir...snowdrops! Snowdrops, for hope and the meeting of spring and winter! And mints, fresh and clean and energizing, just like Jack!
He was still designing when the weekend caught up with him and he slid off to sleep, curled protectively around the sketchpad, ears twitching as flowers and designs danced through his dreams.
Tooth was directing the fairies as soon as the others had disappeared, not quite ready to rest, too full of nervous energy and knowing that she would be unable to rest even if she tried. After an hour or two, the newly christened Baby Tooth – and did Jack know what he'd done, accidentally, by naming her? Even if it was in passing, it had stuck and she already was different from her sisters, more assertive if nothing else – fussed at her, gathering a group of her sisters to join in fussing at Tooth until she agreed to go rest.
