When I enter the warehouse, I hear the voices immediately. At first, they are just soft whispers, hushed and airy, as if no one is supposed to hear them. The warehouse is cold and dusty, and the voices slide along the concrete floor like an idle breeze on the tips of corn, or a long-legged fly on the surface of water…low, modest, till they touch the toes of my worn sneakers.

They are the rabbits of the rabbit show. I know rabbits don’t make a lot of noise, but here, conversations are flying left right and center. These are farm-bred rabbits, you see, and they are never kept penned up individually. Pet-store rabbits rarely speak, and when they want to, they always have a hard time getting their point across.

I try in vain to make out their words as I follow my sisters through the rabbit show. They are elf-like, light, and weirdly accented from rabbit to rabbit. Every so often, I turn around, wondering if I’ve imagined that giggle or if it is in fact the girl next to me. Perhaps, this curiosity of mine in the language of the rabbits is the reason why, as a child, I sat beside the kitchen window, trying to understand what the rabbit who lives under our porch was trying to tell me.

My sister picks up one rabbit. It is a beautiful, black baby Rex, with fur as soft as velvet and eyes as black as coal. But as soon as she lifts him up, the charm fades. He’s scared; his teeth are chattering and his ears are pressed against his skull. And I can hear him muttering under his breath, “This is too much, this is too much…”

He’s cute, but even after he’s fallen silent in terror; I’m unnerved, too unnerved to agree on buying him. Even after we left, I hear him ramble, “This is too much—the truck ride—the jostling!—the separation from my brothers and sisters—this is too much—why did Mom send me away?”

We keep walking around. The guilt for leaving that darling Rex… I want to leave, but my sisters want to see all the rabbits, and I’m finally starting to make out what the rabbits are saying to each other:

“Sally’s going for first place in the rabbit show.”

“Again? She’s quivering like Jell-O in the judge’s hand right now. As if she’ll win.”

“Aren’t humans weird? They keep staring at us.”

“It’s probably the cages. They’re ugly, just like them.”

Quiet whuffling of laughter.

We approach the last stand of rabbit breeders. I hear a “hey!”, and look down.

Bluish eyes gaze up solemnly at me. “Take me out of this cage, please?”

When my sister asks to hold one of the rabbits, I point at her. “That one, there.”

She rests her on her chest, and the baby girl cocks her head a little bit, her eyes a little sleepy.

“You are very strange,” she says to me. Then she nestles into my sister’s jacket. “You’ll do.”

We buy her. When we leave the show, her eyes are wide open and she is sitting up in my sister’s arms, curious of her new world.

“So, what will you show me?” she asks.

I shake my head, unable to answer. My sisters are asking me a question.

“What should we name her?”

“Freya,” I say automatically.

My sisters snort derisively. “That’s an awful name. Let’s call her… Bijoux!”

Like the hamster in Hamtaro?

“… All right.” It was kind of cute.

Bijoux’s eyes flutter shut. “If you say so.”

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She hasn’t bitten me once.

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Author’s Note: You probably think this is a pretty odd thing to write, especially for a short story, but I hope you enjoyed it! This was actually a brief English assignment we had to do, where we used magical realism in a short story. For those who aren’t familiar with magical realism, it’s where a very ordinary incident (in a narrative, usually) that would be considered realistic if it weren’t for the odd magical component that, in my story, ‘flourishes’ up a more basic theme or a very real perspective/concept. So…. I suppose I’ll let you think about that. Try it! It’s lots of fun, and you can impress your English teachers with a gobbet of it.