The Little Listener
A fictional remembrance story set in New Zealand.
When Isla was nine, she practised reading aloud to a rabbit named Pippin.
On rainy afternoons in Wellington, she lay on the living room rug with a library book. Pippin, a small caramel rabbit with one white front paw, settled beside her.
At school, Isla worried about getting words wrong. With Pippin, she could start a sentence three times. He never minded.
Sometimes he nudged the page before she had finished.
“You have to wait,” she would tell him.
Years passed. Picture books became novels, then notes for her first university presentation. Whenever Isla came home, she still sat on the rug and read him something.
Pippin died shortly before she moved into her first flat.
While packing, Isla found a photograph her mum had taken years earlier: her younger self holding a book upside down, laughing, with Pippin stretched beside her.
She chose that photograph for a FurLunea Forever Photo Memorial, personalised with his name and a few words:
Pippin
My first and kindest audience.
It now stands beside the books on her desk.
Before an important presentation, Isla sometimes looks at it and reads her opening sentence aloud.
She still wishes he were there to nudge the page.
But she remembers how it felt to speak without being afraid, and tries again.