digital.

Among themselves, the jackalopes express a profound camaraderie verging on the familial, born of shared hardships through a legacy of subjugation and battle. Though these bonds may seem overtly intimate to outsiders, jackalope relationships actually rarely develop into romance.

This is a practical consideration for a warrior race of finite numbers, and romantic love is seen as something compromising focus, discipline and strength. An occurrence of love is comparable to the sudden formation of a cyclone; a singular natural event without warning, powerful and destructive within a narrow scope, and to be avoided at all costs when seen on the horizon.

Those that do succumb to passionate love do so completely, and declarations of that love are akin to declarations of holy war. It is a challenge issued to the beloved to struggle to the death, to love without mercy or reprieve, and with the full conviction that God is on your side. The commitment is such that when one inevitably dies, usually from distraction in battle, the other becomes lost, unable to process the end of the conflict and reintegrate into society. Or she goes simply, vulnerably, and heedlessly mad on the battlefield. It is said as a warning among jackalopes that love killed, dies twice.