Water Rabbit

Lunar New Year fell on Feb 8. Anyone born before that date belongs to the previous year (Tiger).

Rabbits are good at standing slightly outside the frame and watching the room. They notice who has lost their voice and whose laugh is being pushed out, and they file it away without saying so. They speak with a margin, decline by the side door, and cannot bring themselves to embarrass anyone. First impressions say gentle and easy. The hidden part is how selective that gentleness is. Good manners are not the absence of judgment, and once a line is crossed they leave so cleanly that it takes you a moment to notice.

Grass rises overnight, the stream swells, the banks cannot hold it, and the low ground goes under water. Such people are too full: they give outward at every turn, talk until the sentence runs on, and their kindness often overshoots. They are sensitive, ears turned in every direction like a small animal, and they feel the slightest hesitation in others, so they give more. What they need is a bank, not a dam: a low place for the surplus to go.