In the story, a boy receives a toy rabbit as a Christmas present but he doesn't like the rabbit much. In fact, after a few hours, the rabbit is discarded in favor or more high-tech, windup toys, and for a long time, the rabbit sits on a shelf, untouched, unknown, safe.
While on the shelf, the rabbit talks to the Skin Horse, an old shabby toy, who tells the rabbit what it means to become real:
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side ... "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Read 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."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once, " said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges,k or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Becoming real always comes with a cost.
It means risking the fear of being rejected.
It means losing freedom in order to make the promises that allow for relationship.
It means the everlasting humiliation of the never-ending need for confession: "I lied. I betrayed. I belittled. I'm sorry."
It means letting go of the remote control, and of control in general.
It means wrapping our heart around someone else's well-being.
It means being wounded ...
Getting close means getting hurt.
And yet, no one becomes real without getting close, without being loved.
And love, like grace, sneaks up on us mostly when we're unaware.
"Weeks passed, and the little Rabbit grew very old and shabby, but the Boy loved him just as much. He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink lining to his ears turned grey, and his brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit any more, except to the Boy. To him he was always beautiful, and that was all that the little Rabbit cared about."
"And then, one day, the Boy was ill. His face grew very flushed ... and his little body was so hot that it burned the Rabbit when he held him close...
Presently the fever turned, and the Boy got better ...
Now it only remained to carry out the doctor's orders ... The room was to be disinfected, and all the books and toys that the Boy had played with in bed must be burnt ...
Just then Nana caught sight of [the Rabbit].
"How about his old Bunny?" she asked.
"That?" said the doctor. "Why, it's a mass of scarlet fever germs ! Burn it at once ...
And so the little Rabbit was put into a sack with the old picture-books and a lot of rubbish, and carried out to the end of the garden behind the fowl-house ...
He felt very lonely .... He was shivering a little, for he had always been used to sleeping in a proper bed, and by this time his coat has worn so thin and threadbare from hugging that it was no longer any protection to him .... He thought of those long sunlit hours in the garden - how happy they were - and a great sadness came over him. ... He thought of the Skin Horse, so wise and gentle, and all that he had told him. Of what use was it to be loved and lose one's beauty and become Real if it all ended like this?
And then a strange thing happened. ... Quite the loveliest fairy in the whole world [appeared]. ... She came close to the little Rabbit and gathered him up in her arms and kissed him on his velveteen nose that was all damp from crying.
"Little Rabbit," she said, "don't you know who I am? ...
"I am the nursery magic Fairy," she said. "I take care of all the playthings that the children have loved. When they are old and worn out and the children don't need them anymore, then I come and take them away with me and turn them into Real."
"Wasn't I Real before?" asked the little Rabbit.
"You were Real to the Boy," the Fairy said, "because he loved you. Now you shall be real to every one."
Here's the best part of the story: "Once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."
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