Facing Facts

Facing facts was never where he excelled: avoiding them, he flitted, like a blind bat guided as by sonar past obstacles crowding the dark cave of his existence. Still, some sight sifted through his shuttered eyes. Onlookers might have guessed he was merely another smug fat cat forever grinning at the luck that put him where, secretly, he wished he would never have arrived. Appearances aside, he was terrified by his own fragility and that of those he loved -- a worrier, he merely masqueraded, a graying rabbit with a nervous nose, cowering in corners into which he heavily hopped at the drop of each and every hat: his mild pink eyes as tightly closed as any bat's against the sight of hatchets which might be flashing through the black toward his hairy, cringing neck.