[Diamond18]

Somewhere between the Smoggy Mountains and the village of Beer, angling southward toward the Forest of Canned Corn, and occupying a slightly different dimension of reality, was the Northern Division of Mantoes' Sub-Halls in Muddled-Mirth. In this sub-hall, which could quite easily be missed if you were still alive, deceased souls waited to be shipped off to The Big Hall way away in Valium. It was, in its own little way, the airport terminal of the afterlife. The staff were usually working their way back from The Big Hall to the plains of the living, and being so close to smelling the rain and breathing the fresh air, without actually being there, tended to make them a bit grumpy.

Sometime after the Itship left Leninia's dungeon and roughly before they tarried in Beer, Ffrallihoo the Dwarf was working the midnight shift at the front desk, accepting new applicants for transeferral. The midnight hour was usually a pretty busy hour in Muddled-Mirth, the ideal time for covert operations, burgleries, Orc scuffles, spider luncheons, battles in the rain, and (Ffrallihoo's favorite) death-by-fear-of-a-ghost-sighting. This particular depth of night was, however, fairly quiet, and Ffrallihoo was dosing. The closer she got to life, the more she felt the need to dose. In her previous life she had lived at Héartbréakhôtél-dum, a Dwarven stronghold of the First Age. Her life had ended during an altercation with a dragon, and she had spent a long and arduous thousands of years working her way back to the not-burnt-and-digested state. She looked forward to the day when she would be born again, perhaps as a little dwarfling or maybe, if she was lucky, a woodland species of bluebird.

To return to the point at hand, Ffrallihoo (her friends called her Ffralli) was dosing, snoring into her luxuriant red beard, and the night was unusually inactive, death wise.

Then a rabbit hopped through the door. It paused, wiggling its nose and blinking in the bright supernatural halôgen lights. With a snort, Ffralli awoke and shuffled a stack of papers, trying to look busy. "Rabbit," she said, rifling through the papers. "Let me see... Kevlar - Mammals - Rodentia - Rabbits. Please move to Room BB and await transportation, after filling out this form... can you fill out this form?"

The rabbit blinked, twitching its nose more vigorously. Luckily, Ffralli spoke Rabbit and was able to ascertain that no, the rabbit could not write. She muttered a word in the Dwarven language under her breath, then said, "Right, well, our dictation specialist just got promoted to Alive, so I suppose I'll have to help you with your form. Not that I'm supposed to have to... what? Oh, well, I'm sorry, but we'd all like to be alive again, wouldn't we? A... what? A dragon?" Her face softened. "Poor bunny. Dragons have the worst breath. Yes. Well. Let's get to it:

"Name (last, first) - Rabbit, Harvey.

"Age - you don't know? We'll say, oh, a couple months. You look like a young thing.

"Place of origin - Moredough...?" She paused. "Most Moredough residents are Orcs. Bloody Orcs. You would not believe how rude they are when they come throuh here. And you would not believe how many sweet little things come through here because of those terrible creatues, why, Death By Orc is such a large category that we have entire seperate forms for the different types of Orc Death.

"Well, anyway. Reason for death - dragon, yes, I know, nasty things, should be exterminated the lot of them. I've had so many dragon deaths in the last few months, you would not believe...! Well, maybe you would, poor bunny. I met the sweetest little dwarfling the other day, it brought a tear to my eye. If this keeps up Death By Dragon may outnumber Death By Orc! Right now, Death By Itship is in first place in this month's Office Stat Pool.

"Method of Death, A) Eating B) Burning C) The Burn and Eat D) Other. A, is it? Not surprising. You look very tender, and I mean that as a compliment, you know, no don't look worried! I haven't eaten in Three Ages, though the closer I get to Alive the more often I almost feel hungry..... Well, I think that does it. Take this form and hand it to... oh that's right, you can't. Just a moment, I'll close the desk down. Seems all the Orcs, Dragons and Itshippers are taking a break for the moment."

Ffralli scooped up the little bunny and carried it through a labyrinth of halls, stairwells, and filled-to-capacity waiting rooms attached to shipping docks, till she reached Room BB, which was supervised by Bügs Bünní, the erstwhile Amazing Talking Rabbit With Opposable Thumbs of Noodleor. From inside the room could be heard dull thumping noises.

Bügs was munching on a midnight snack (force of habbit), and paused only momentarily to mutter, "What's up, Doc?"

"It's Ffralli. Ffrallihoo to you," Ffralli frowned. "I have a new arrival."

Bügs stamped the form and waved them through, staring ahead with the zombie eyes of the over-worked dead. Ffralli carried Harvey into the room and looked around. It was a sad sight -- a whole room full of rabbits who were not breeding, sleeping, eating, or doing anything else remotely rabbitlike. They all sat in a catatonic state, waiting to be shipped to The Big Hall where slowly they would be skinned, gutted, deboned, shredded, and made into hasenpfeffer for the Elves of Valium. Only one rabbit showed any signs of life -- a pink fellow in sunglasses, who paced the length of the room, perpetuating a thumping rhythm on a large round drum.

Ffralli whispered in Harvey's soft little rabbit ear, "Watch out for that one. Rumor has it he's not really dead, he just wandered in here one day and he keeps going, and going, and going, and going..... Well, make yourself comfortable. I'd better get back to the desk." With that, she left him among the throng of listless bunnies, passing Bügs by on her way out and feeling a thrill at the vague hungry feeling she got from looking at the carrot he was spiritlessly devouring.

Just another night at the Northern Division.....