[Unsurprisingly, the Easter Bunny reads a children's story like he's no stranger to Storytime, all warm slow sincerity and pausing for the right emotional beats, despite the fact that he can't see his audience. Not initially, anyway, because as he gets a few pages in, a little face peeps around the shelf behind him, and Bunny pauses to let a little Katiri girl and her small sister take a seat just on the edge of the camera.
With an actual audience to focus on, Bunny sits proper, tilting towards the children instead of the camera.]
"'What is REAL?' asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. 'Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?'
'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'
'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.
'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'"
[Three more kids join two pages later, sitting in front of the communicator, not enough to block the audio, but enough for whatever audience Bunny has on the digital end to see the kids reacting to the story, sad parts and beautiful parts and all.
Something about the passage of the wild rabbits dancing in the forest makes even Bunny wipe away a small, dignified tear, held back through the force of sheer professionalism.]
"-And about his little soft nose and his round black eyes there was something familiar, so that the Boy thought to himself:
'Why, he looks just like my old Bunny that was lost when I had scarlet fever!'
But he never knew that it really was his own Bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped him to be Real."
[The child who sat down for the story last, halfway through, pipes up "Read it again!" and is followed by a chorus of "Again, please!" and how in this world or any other could Bunny say no?
He addresses the communicator before turning it off.] Be with you in a few, mate.
Video [Locked to Woody]
[In the library, Bunny sets his comm up to record, and crouches with a dog-eared children's paperback picture book.]
You better get comfy. Ahem. "There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid-"
[Unsurprisingly, the Easter Bunny reads a children's story like he's no stranger to Storytime, all warm slow sincerity and pausing for the right emotional beats, despite the fact that he can't see his audience. Not initially, anyway, because as he gets a few pages in, a little face peeps around the shelf behind him, and Bunny pauses to let a little Katiri girl and her small sister take a seat just on the edge of the camera.
With an actual audience to focus on, Bunny sits proper, tilting towards the children instead of the camera.]
"'What is REAL?' asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. 'Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?'
'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'
'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.
'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'"
[Three more kids join two pages later, sitting in front of the communicator, not enough to block the audio, but enough for whatever audience Bunny has on the digital end to see the kids reacting to the story, sad parts and beautiful parts and all.
Something about the passage of the wild rabbits dancing in the forest makes even Bunny wipe away a small, dignified tear, held back through the force of sheer professionalism.]
"-And about his little soft nose and his round black eyes there was something familiar, so that the Boy thought to himself:
'Why, he looks just like my old Bunny that was lost when I had scarlet fever!'
But he never knew that it really was his own Bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped him to be Real."
[The child who sat down for the story last, halfway through, pipes up "Read it again!" and is followed by a chorus of "Again, please!" and how in this world or any other could Bunny say no?
He addresses the communicator before turning it off.] Be with you in a few, mate.