Kids & Fables

by Scribes Stories · 7 min read · 1 view

The Rabbit Who Ran From Every Race Everyone in Bramblewood knew that Ophelia was the fastest rabbit in the meadow, faster even than her champion older brother Fitzgerald, who had won every single race the meadow animals had organized for the past three summers running. The trouble was, nobody had ever actually seen Ophelia's true speed in an actual race, because Ophelia had a peculiar habit of dropping out the moment any race began to matter. "You quit again," Fitzgerald said, not unkindly, after the autumn sprint that Ophelia had abandoned at the halfway mark, well ahead of every other competitor, before suddenly veering off into the bushes and refusing to finish. "You were winning, Ophelia. Everyone could see it. Why do you always stop right when you're about to actually prove it?" "I wasn't ready," Ophelia said, the same answer she always gave, an answer that had stopped satisfying even herself somewhere around the fifth or sixth time she'd used it. The truth, though Ophelia had never said it out loud to anyone, was considerably more complicated than simply not being ready. She was, in fact, entirely ready, faster than any rabbit in Bramblewood's living memory. But being the fastest and actually being seen as the fastest were two very different things, and the second one terrified her in a way the running itself never did. If she finished the race and won, she reasoned, everyone would expect her to win the next one too, and the one after that, forever, and what would happen the first time she didn't? What would happen the day her paw caught wrong on a root, or she simply had an off morning, and the whole meadow watched her lose after believing, based on nothing but her own careful avoidance of proof, that she was unbeatable? Better, surely, to quietly leave every race unfinished, keeping her potential exactly that, a private, unproven possibility that nobody could ever watch fail. It was old Matilda, the wise tortoise who had, famously, once beaten a much faster hare through sheer persistence rather than speed, who finally noticed the pattern and decided to say something about it. "You're afraid of finishing," Matilda said simply, finding Ophelia sulking near the edge of the meadow after yet another abandoned race. "I'm not afraid of anything," Ophelia said, too quickly. "I'm the fastest rabbit in Bramblewood." "You might be," Matilda agreed placidly. "Or you might simply be the fastest rabbit who's never actually finished a race long enough for anyone, including yourself, to properly find out. Those are not quite the same thing, dear, however similar they might feel from where you're currently sitting." "What's the difference?" Ophelia asked, more defensively than she intended. "The difference," Matilda said, settling herself comfortably beside the young rabbit, "is that one of them is a fact, and the other is simply a hope you've been protecting very carefully by never actually testing it. I understand the temptation. I've watched a great many creatures do exactly what you're doing, myself included, once upon a time, long before I ever raced that overconfident hare everyone still tells stories about." "You were afraid to finish a race?" Ophelia asked, genuinely surprised. "I was afraid of something considerably worse than losing," Matilda said. "I was afraid of trying my very hardest and discovering that my very hardest simply wasn't good enough. As long as I never truly tried, I could always tell myself I might have won, if only I'd really pushed myself. The moment I actually pushed myself and finished, win or lose, that comfortable uncertainty disappeared forever. I would finally know exactly what I was capable of, for better or worse, with no more comfortable excuses left standing between me and the truth." "So how did you finally do it? Actually finish, I mean." "I realized, eventually, that the uncertainty I was protecting wasn't actually protecting me from anything real," Matilda said. "It was only protecting me from information, and information, however uncomfortable, has never actually harmed a single creature the way avoiding it eventually does. So I entered that race against the hare everyone still tells stories about, fully expecting to lose badly, and finished it anyway, slow and steady, because finishing, win or lose, felt considerably better than one more race spent wondering what might have happened if I'd only had the courage to find out." "But you won," Ophelia pointed out. "Everyone tells that story because you actually won." "I did," Matilda agreed. "Though I want you to notice something important, dear. I didn't know I would win when I started. I finished that race fully expecting to lose. The winning was simply a happy surprise that came from finally being brave enough to find out, rather than something I could have predicted in advance. If I'd lost instead, which was genuinely the more likely outcome given the hare's obvious speed advantage, I still would have finished knowing something true about my own effort and my own persistence, instead of carrying around another comfortable, untested hope for the rest of my life." Ophelia sat with this for a long while, watching the late afternoon light stretch long shadows across the meadow grass. "What if I finish," she finally said, "and I'm not actually as fast as everyone assumes? What if Fitzgerald beats me properly, in a real race, and then everyone knows for certain I'm not actually special after all?" "Then you'll know something true," Matilda said gently, "instead of something comfortable but uncertain. And here is the part I think you're missing, dear. Even rabbits who lose properly finished races are still worth admiring, often more than the ones who were simply assumed to be talented but never actually tested it. Courage isn't only found in winning, Ophelia. It's found in finishing at all, in letting the whole meadow watch you try your absolute hardest and accepting whatever truth comes from that effort, rather than protecting a comfortable myth about yourself that nobody, including you, can ever actually be certain of." The spring race, when it finally came, drew the whole meadow out to watch, most of them expecting, based on years of established pattern, that Ophelia would drop out again somewhere around the halfway mark, whatever her actual speed might privately be. She did not drop out. She ran the entire course at a pace that left even Fitzgerald, watching from the sidelines having already finished his own earlier heat, genuinely stunned, crossing the final line well ahead of every other competitor, breathing hard, legs trembling, having finally, for the first time in her life, let the entire meadow watch her try as hard as she was actually capable of trying. "You won," Fitzgerald said, running over, grinning widely. "You actually won, properly, in front of everyone." "I know," Ophelia said, still catching her breath, something loosening in her chest that had been tight for as long as she could remember. "And it feels different than I expected. Not bigger. Just more real." "What changed?" Fitzgerald asked. "You've had that speed for years. Why finish now?" Ophelia glanced over at old Matilda, watching contentedly from the edge of the meadow, and smiled. "I finally got tired of protecting a hope instead of actually testing it," she said. "Turns out the real thing, even with the risk of losing attached to it, feels considerably better than the safest untested version ever did." She did not win every race after that, as it turned out, losing occasionally to faster rivals or simply having an off morning the way every runner eventually does. But she finished every single one, win or lose, having finally learned what old Matilda had known for years. That the fastest, most talented creature in the meadow is worth considerably less than the creature brave enough to actually finish and find out.