This is a story I wrote when I was 19 years old. At the time I didn’t consider it to be finished, but I’ve always liked it and thought “I’ll finish it one day”… but when I look at it, I can’t think of anything else to write about it. What do you think? Where should it go from here?
The rabbit sure has an unexepectedly rich inner life. I’d’a thought the general leporidae thought patterns leaned more toward EAT! RUN! DIG! MATE! (repeat)
My humble two cents - I would say it’s still unfinished. I would like either a) a resolution of whether the rabbit stays with Leighn or goes off leaving him sadder but wiser or b) a sense that the ending is being left deliberately ambiguous. (Is Leighn his name or is that Leigh with a stray ‘n’? Just curious…) Right now, I don’t get a sense that you’ve made either one of those choices.
Your writing style is very good - clear, straightforward prose that serves the plot. I really like the reversal of viewpoints that shows the rabbit is just as sensitive to Leihgn’s fears. No reason not to go further and polish this up.
Nor is there any reason you shouldn’t be writing more. It’s rather dangerous for writers to work on just one story; if there’s one story in there, there are at least a dozen others lurking behind it and the trick is learning how to get them out before they vanish. Developing writers ought to seek out opportunities to have their work read by others, whether that’s in writers’ groups, classes, entry-level magazines or short story contests. (Hint, hint…)
I’m leaning toward having the rabbit decide to live in the garden and essentially stay with Leighn. I may also change his name to “Lane” but I’m not sure. I was 19 when I wrote it, an into more grandiose sounding names at the time.
ETA: I’m 38 now.
The story seems to be about 1) should the bunny stay and 2) will the bunny stay.
#1 is probably covered, but #2 needs a resolution.
I think it’s a terribly interesting idea, that the usual action we associate with a rabbit in fear (tentative hops, freezing) could actually be because the rabbit is, uh, lagomorphizing fear onto a human and trying to alleviate it. Wonderful twist there.
I think this story would greatly benefit from, how to put this…more words. There’s a lot of, as they say in creative writing courses, “telling, not showing.” I’d rather you show me more about the initial encounter, the injury, the meeting at the mudslide, instead of telling me it happened. That doesn’t mean you have to go back in time and start the narrative earlier, but it does mean I need less of a laundry list of plot points and more of a sense of remembrance and being there. Does that make any sense? Like, in a painting, the difference between using your paintbrush to paint the word “apple” and using your paintbrush to paint an apple that looks so round and full and crisp that I can just imagine biting into it and feel the juice running down my chin.
Oh, and I’d seriously consider changing the boy’s name. I spent too much time at the first mention of it trying to figure out how it was pronounced, and that takes me out of the story. Plus, what I came up with was a homophone for “Lean”, and that’s just a silly name. “Lane” is actually ok, but given that Leigh = Lee, it’s not intuitive from that spelling.
3.,
I think it can stand alone as a finished story.
I know you’re not asking for a critique but for some reason I kept thinking there was a build-up for something dreadful to occur.
OK I changed the name–let me know if I missed any 
I agree that it’s a bit spartan for words, but I had always intended it to be one of those books that is mostly pictures (yeah I meant to make it into a book–possibly a one-off–that I illustrated myself)… but I could flesh it out more.
If I add more to it what would you want to see happen, given that the end of the story is this:
the boy releases the bunny
the bunny digs a burrow in the garden and lives there
I mean I could just write up that fact and leave it at that but what intermediate things might you want to see happen?
Ah, now that may be a different story (pun not intended, but appropriate!). I know what a gifted visual artist you are, and that may indeed be what’s needed to “show, not tell” what’s going on in the memories. I’d love to see it again with even some simple sketches of what you envision.
Heck, with the right illustrations, you could *excise *half the words and still have a lovely tale!