Virtual Quill

I feel lucky to be alive as I write this, although I'm getting ahead of my story.
It all started when we all received an invitation to attend a Thanksgiving feast in the underground rabbit warren. This was a special event because previously, rabbits had never had anything to be thankful for...until Kell took over Herd Thinners. That led to her employees never catching rabbits since they knew she was married to Dad and didn't want to offend her by catching in in-law...an echo of her own situation when she first married him.
Elanor stayed home to cook a real Thanksgiving meal, and the rest of us headed underground (escorted by Wendell) for a carrot-based dinner. The other purpose of the feast was the dedication of the new Great Hall, built to accommodate the booming population that was no longer being hunted.
Amid thousands of rabbits, Kell felt enormously guilty since she never gave any instructions to her staff to stop hunting rabbits; they did that on their own. She was feeling like a total fraud when an earthquake hit.
It was a 5.8, nothing that folks on the West Coast even break stride for, but a major event here on the Eastern Seaboard. It nearly had tragic consequences as the new Great Hall wasn't built to code, and began collapsing.
The rabbits (except for Dad and Gran...interesting) were frozen in fear. That's when Kell truly became a hero...by baring her fangs and scaring the multitudes out of their panicked state and toward the exits. Everyone had made it out when the ceiling came down.
Lawsuits aplenty are already being files against the construction company, but thankfully none of them will involve a loss of life. Meanwhile, Kell's status among rabbits is now genuinely deserved.

To my utter astonishment I received a message from a person I assumed I’d never hear from again: Catherine Aura. A series of Emails originating from anonymizing IP domains contained details that effectively established her identity to me...and also made it impossible to trace her. That would be difficult anyway, since she says that she and her son Nigel are now happily human and living on the other side of the portal.
She then requested my help in finding out the identity of the squirrel I kept caged for a number of years. A while back I released him as soon as he requested that I do so, and I hadn’t had any contact with him since.
Apparently it turns out that he’s a former human just like myself and Danielle. The portal is currently balanced due to a female kestrel who has crossed, but Catherine would still like to know the squirrel’s former identity in order to find out how he accessed the portal.
Neither myself nor the mice who shared the cage with him were able to offer much in the way of clues; he was very secretive. I gave all the information that I could.
Then I started investigating Catherine. I found...nothing. It takes a lot to make someone vanish in this day and age, and I’m beginning to put together a picture of an organization much more extensive than I’d thought. I’d assumed she’d belonged to a small cadre tasked only with guarding the portal and maintaining the balance between the two dimensions, but what if it’s larger than that?

Trouble often arises when one least expects it, and this week it came just after Dad switched lawyers. As I mentioned last week, he needed to find a new law firm after the old one raised its rates. An alternative presented itself in the form of the parents of Coney’s friend Lin, the Lees.
They’re tigers, unlike most lawyers who are of the aquatic persuasion. They both showed tremendous fortitude in gaining their degrees in an underwater habitat. The wife, Mei Li, will do most the Hare Link work.
Almost immediately, Dad was sued by a bear that he rebuffed in a hostile takeover attempt. Traditionally, any prey species is entitled to use whatever means necessary to defend themselves, but this bear felt that Dad shouldn’t have used his fists. (I think what Dad mainly wounded was his pride.)
His rather novel argument was that Dad’s use of fists violated the “original intent” of the Founding Fathers in the Constitution. What many people today use the original intent argument for is to justify their current positions, whatever that may be. However, what we're absolutely sure of is that the Founding Fathers wanted to create a living document that could adapt to changing realities. To this end, they brilliantly succeeded.
Mei Li came up with a clever way of getting the case dismissed, saying that the bear shouldn’t have used the judicial system to attack Dad. He skulked off to hibernate.

Hare Link has settled into a small, reliable existence as the ISP for Domain and its vicinity. It has a long-term contract to provide broadband service to the city government, and that seal of approval has led to a decent percentage of the local population using it for their hosting needs. Within its small pond it’s profitable.
Fenton and I still oversee its hardware and tech issues, which sometimes cause moments of panic but usually mean just regular maintenance. Our salaries allow us to have a higher standard of living than most of our fellow college students. (For instance, we’re free of student debt, for which we’re eternally grateful.)
Dad told me that one problem has arisen: the company’s legal arrangement. The law office of White, Mako, Hammerhead and Bull has been contracted by Hare Link since Dad started the ISP, but now their hourly rates have risen to the point where he can’t afford them any longer. (Having to drive all the way to the shore to meet with them is another expense!) But, a small business like Hare Link has to have some way of getting legal counsel, so what can you do?