The day the Reesna arrived, Jerry thought he was dying.

It was early morning, and the orchard mist hadn’t yet lifted when he heard the sound:

“Reehonk… reehonk… reesna.”

It was musical and nasal and wet somehow—like a goose gargling a funeral dirge.

He stepped outside in his hand-sewn trousers, ears twitching, fur pressed down from restless sleep. The sound grew louder. And then they came.

Five females. Two males. A scatter of trembling crias with soft hooves and startled eyes. Humped creatures, somewhere between camel and alpaca, with fleece like smoke and faces like grieving angels. They’d wandered in silently, and now they stood under his golden flesh plum trees, chewing with deep ancestral focus.

Jerry blinked. Then he whispered, “I guess they’re Reesna.”

He hadn’t named anything in months. Not since the fire. Not since he lost his rabbit-wife, the straw-roofed sugar house they built, and the long string of hopes they’d kept strung between them like clothes on a line. All gone. Except the land—recently inherited from a bitter uncle who'd once called Jerry a "freak" that would never amount to a mackerel can. 

The plum trees saved him, barely. Their golden flesh glistened like exposed marrow and sold well enough—when Mr. Batney wasn’t in one of his moods. The general store manager had batlike features—papery ears, inverted elbows, and a fondness for hanging upside down behind the counter when no one was looking. He paid in store credit and uneven coins, often eating half the plums before they ever touched the shelf.

Still, Jerry pedaled his bike into town like clockwork, a sack of sweet fruits on his back, his long ears flicking in the wind.

The Reesna changed everything.

He milked them first with trembling hands. The milk was silky, pale green, and faintly floral. He boiled it down with sugar and a pinch of general-store flour, stirring with a wooden spoon for hours in the old copper pot. The resulting caramels were creamy, stretchy, and addictive.

Mr. Batney devoured them.

“Got more of these?” he asked, licking his bat-pink lips. “My bones feel loose in a good way.”

Jerry brought more. Then more. Eventually, he set up shop on feebuy.com, the global swamp-net auction house for handcrafted goods, expired apothecaries, and anything that smelled a little like medicine.

He wrote the listing like poetry:

> “Caramels made from the milk of Reesna, the triple- and quadruple-humped wool camelids who came to me in grief. Infused with plum blossom and survival.”

The orders poured in.

He put up a personals ad, too. Simple.

 “Rabbit-headed, god-bodied man seeks companion. Must love wool. Must not mind teeth. Bonus if you have ears, real or otherwise.”

Sal replied. Her name was short for Salandra, but she preferred Sal. Her profile picture showed a city skyline behind her, bunny ear headband tilted coyly, eyes wide and painted.

 “I’m not really a rabbit, but I feel like one. I hop to conclusions. I twitch when I’m happy. I want to burrow into someone’s life.”

Jerry wept when he read it.

He saved and saved. Sold enough caramels to buy a used car with moss in the seat belts. Drove it three towns over to see her. Brought a basket of caramels and a wool scarf made from the sheared underbelly of his gentlest Reesna, Opal.

Sal was wonderful. Talkative. Soft in spirit. But she liked the city lights. The hum. The night markets. She didn’t want to move.

Jerry returned heartbroken but determined.

He sold the bike. Took a small loan from Mr. Batney, who demanded a crate of caramels every full moon as interest. Then Jerry commissioned a roundabout milking carousel, fitted for his strange flock of Reesna with their asymmetric humps and docile, drama-queen dispositions.

He added wool to his offerings—spun into bats and balls, soft as the fur of arctic ghost monkeys.  Each was tagged with a label that read:

 “Grown from grief. Spun from miracles.”

Now, the barn hummed with machinery. The crias grew strong. Orders came in from five territories.

But some nights, Jerry sat outside beneath the plum trees, a mug of warm Reesna milk in hand, his ears bent to the wind.

And when he heard a far-off “reehonk,” he still whispered back,

“I know. I miss her, too.”