The Whole Term

There was an essay, and there were three months in which to write it.

The Rabbit was told this at the start, clearly.
A whole term.
Time laid out like a long, open field, the deadline standing small and distant at the far end.

The Rabbit looked at the field and felt nothing move.

It is hard to explain what those three months were like from the inside.
The essay existed.
The Rabbit knew it existed.
It could picture the field, and the small distant shape at the end of it, and feel entirely calm.

Weeks passed.
The shape did not get closer in any way the Rabbit could feel.
Until, all at once, it did.

Something would flip, days before the deadline, never sooner.
The distant shape would stop being distant.
It would arrive, suddenly, directly in front of the Rabbit, and the calm would become its opposite.

And then the Rabbit could work.

Through the night, if it had to.
The whole essay, the reading, the shape of the argument, all of it arriving in one continuous burst, as though it had been waiting somewhere fully formed for the pressure that would finally let it out.

The Rabbit handed it in.
It was usually good.
Sometimes better than the work of animals who had started in the first week.

And the Rabbit hated how it had done it.
It promised itself, every time, that the next one would be different.
That it would begin early, work steadily, become the kind of animal that used the field instead of the edge of it.

It never was.

The Rabbit did not yet understand that the burst and the waiting were the same animal.
That the engine which would not start until the deadline was the same engine that, once started, could not be stopped.
It only knew that it could not summon the field.
It could only ever wait for the edge.