Live n' Learn

After losing to the turtle Bunny Bun's life took a strange turn.

She was fast, she was maybe faster than she had ever been. The shame of losing to the turtle had motivated her to train to exhaustion.

But, despite her amazing form, race organizers were reluctant to have her in their events.

'I don't know how to say this', an overweight hedgehog told her in a shy voice. 'Nobody wants to see you win...'

After a short break he added:'Are you willing to lose?'

Bunny Bun exploded.

'No, of course I am not willing to lose! That was ... a... hm... accident.'

The hedgehog shrugged his prickly spikes and excused himself.

'Gotta run, the wife has a card game and I need to take over minding the babies.'

And he disappeared in the golden rust of the fallen leaves.

Bunny Bun felt forlorn and purposeless. She had postponed having a family in order to become a high performance athlete.

She had won race after race, until she fell victim to her hubris and all that she had built crumbled. And now, now she felt like there was nothing left for her to do, unwanted and discarded.

Her feet hopped her around until she found herself staring at her sad reflection in the mirror of a cold lake.

The ears hanging dissolute around her face showed her a side of her she was not really familiar with.

Bunny Bun had never had time to think about things, she had always been moving and doing thinks.

She was a mover and a shaker, while this bunny looking back at her, was somebody foreign whose strangeness gave her the chills.

A large tear slid from her sad face and merged into the cold water. When this happened the lake surface shimmered and quivered in an unusual way.

Bunny took a step back, wondering what scary creature lurked beneath the surface, but to her surprise, it wad not a creature, but a shapely woman that rose from the water.

She was covered in flowy verdigris gauze and weirdly was holding a wide glass which had in it two olives and a cloudy liquid.

'Behold I am the Lady of the Lake...' a sudden cough made the woman shudder and stop.

When she recovered, she took a sip from the glass delicately balancing between her fingers and continued.

'Sorry, s'been a long time since I did that, and this water, I swear s' getting colder by the year. Who are you?'

Bunny Bun was sure she lost her mind.

‘Who? Me?’

The Lady of the Lake nodded from behind her glass, floating effortlessly above the shining water.

‘Bunny Bun …’

‘You don’t sound so sure!’, the Lady caught on the tone of disbelief.

‘And what do you do Bun?’, a joking smile flourished on her face.

For some reason unclear to her, Bunny felt compelled to answer.

‘I am a runner … I mean I was one, not sure now …’

The Lady finished her drink and dropped the glass in the lake where it sunk noiselessly.

‘I never could run, not to save my life! Swim yes! Did you ever try swimming? Sooo relaxing! The best thing ever!’

Bunny had never swam, and as far as she knew never had anyone in her family swam.

‘Nooo, never! The water is so scary!’, and she took a step back unconsciously wanting to add distance between her and the lake.

The Lady of the Lake went in and out of the water surfacing closer to Bunny.

Bunny could now see that the Lady had bright purple eyes and her hair was so long that it surrounded her in the water mingling with long strands of water grass.

‘Bunny, if you love running run, if you love swimming swim, if you do not know what you love, try different things until you find your passion.’

The Lady sounded almost sane.

‘Ok, but no swimming!’

‘Yes, Bunny!’, laughed the Lady splashing around in the water.

Bunny found the Lady’s joie de vivre and lightness of being contagious. Without thinking about it she started running around the lake while the Lady was telling her some weird story about a guy called Arthur.

‘That is quite a long tale!’, she said when the Lady had finished and she was resting munching on a wild apple.

‘That it is Bunny, that it is! And just like yours, it is a tale old as time!’

Bunny nodded enjoying the setting sun sliding behind the trees.

She did love running, it was maybe even more than that, running was part of her, and now she understood that, maybe, racing was not.