By Terra Marie Berta-Porcase

A transfemme retelling of “Peter Rabbit” Dedicated to all the little ‘boys’ who believed the world when it told them they were bad, and that their role in life was to be the troublemaker. That they were the Peter of their world, and became too used to being sent to bed with nothing but the taste of chamomile and shame. Too used to the heavy label the world placed upon them. Everyone deserves their day in the garden where they can be seen as they are by those that we love. -TMBP

This is a work of fan fiction, utilizing characters and settings from Beatrix Potter which are trademarked and/or copyrighted by, BEATRIX POTTER™ © / Frederick Warne & Co. This story is created for creative expression and is not intended to infringe upon these rights.

Once upon a time, there were four little rabbits, and their names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Penelope. They lived with their mother in a sandbank, underneath the root of a very big fir tree.

It was a good home. The sandbank was always warm, smelling of dry earth and sweet dried herbs that hung from the ceiling. For three of the sisters, the burrow was a place of soft giggles and easy comfort. They fit into the curves of the tunnels just right. But for Penelope, whom everyone, even her mother, still called Peter, the burrow felt tight.

It wasn’t that the walls were too close; it was that she felt too big, too loud, and too awkward inside them. She felt like a puzzle piece that had been left out in the rain all swollen and wrong, unable to snap into place with the rest of the family. She would watch her sisters grooming each other’s ears, their movements fluid and practiced, and she would tuck her own paws beneath her, trying to make herself smaller. She wanted to be soft. She wanted to be a sister. But the world kept telling her she was a ‘scoundrel,’ THE scoundrel of the burrow and that’s all she would ever be. Sometimes, in the quiet of the morning, she feared it might be true.

On this particular morning, the air was crisp, and the sun filtered through the roots of the fir tree in dusty golden beams. Mrs. Rabbit was busy; she had her bonnet on and her basket over her arm, ready for the baker’s.

“Now, my dears,” said old Mrs. Rabbit, bustling about with a hairbrush in one paw and a damp cloth in the other. “Hold still.”

She moved down the line. She smoothed the white fur on Flopsy’s chest. She straightened Mopsy’s ears. She wiped a smudge of dirt from Cotton-tail’s nose, clicking her tongue affectionately. “Such good girls,” she murmured, a hum of pride in her voice.

Then, she reached the end of the line. She reached Penelope.

Mrs. Rabbit didn’t use the soft brush. Instead, she reached for the hook by the door. There, hanging like a judgement, was the blue coat.

It was a stiff, serious thing. It was made of thick, scratchy wool that smelled faintly of mothballs and strict expectations. It had brass buttons that never seemed to warm up, no matter how long they sat in the sun. To Mrs. Rabbit, it was a smart jacket for a young buck. To Penelope, it was a shell. It was a heavy, blue shell that she was forced to retreat into every time she left the safety of the dark burrow.

“Come now, Peter,” Mrs. Rabbit said, using that name that sat in Penelope’s stomach like a cold stone. “Good boys stand up straight. Let’s get you buttoned up. You must look like a respectable young man if you’re to go outside.”

Mrs. Rabbit’s paws were brisk and efficient. Snap. Good boy. The bottom button captured Penny’s waist, squeezing the soft tummy she usually liked to keep round and relaxed. Snap. Young Man. The middle button pinned her chest, flattening the fluff that she secretly tried to fluff up to match Flopsy’s.

Snap. Peter. The top button.

This was the worst one. The collar was high and stiff, digging into the sensitive fur of her neck. As the brass fastener clicked into place, Penny felt the ‘Peter’ persona settle over her like a suffocating fog. Inside the coat, she couldn’t move gracefully; she could only stomp. She couldn’t curl up; she could only stand rigid. Her mind became equally as lost as her body as life became like a costume, and a poor one at that. 

In this blue wool, she wasn’t the imaginative, sweet-tempered girl who knew where the best clover grew. She was the ‘boy.’ She was the problem. The coat seemed to whisper expectations to her: Be loud. Be messy. Break things. That is all you are good for. She let out a breath that snagged in her throat, her shoulders slumping under the weight of the fabric. She felt clumsy and dangerous, a bull in a china shop, before she had even taken a single step.

From the side of the burrow, three pairs of dark, liquid eyes watched the transformation. 

Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail stood in a row, their capes of red and pink soft against their shoulders. But they weren’t looking at Penny with the judgment of good little girls looking at a bad little boy. There was no smugness in their faces, only a quiet, fierce sorrow. They saw the way Penny’s eyes went dim the moment the coat closed. They saw their sister being buttoned into a cage.

Cotton-tail, the youngest and often the boldest, didn’t stay in line. She took a hop forward, ignoring Mrs. Rabbit’s distracted humming. She reached out a small, white paw and gently touched Penny’s face.

With infinite care, Cotton-tail used her thumb to smooth Penny’s whiskers, which had been crushed against the stiff collar. It was a tiny gesture, a silent realignment. I see you, the touch said. You are still in there.

Penny blinked, the moisture in her eyes catching the light. She gave a microscopic twitch of her nose their secret signal for thank you and for a second, the brass buttons didn’t feel quite so cold.

Mrs. Rabbit picked up her basket and her umbrella, casting a shadow over the sunny entrance of the burrow. She looked at her children—three in their soft capes, and one stiff and blue in the coat. “Now run along, and don’t get into mischief,” she said, reciting the warning she gave every morning. 

“I am going to the baker’s to buy a loaf of brown bread and five currant buns.” She adjusted her bonnet, preparing to turn away, but then she paused. She looked at the way Cotton-tail was still lingering close to Penny, her paw resting on the blue sleeve. Mrs. Rabbit’s expression softened, though she didn’t quite understand why the sight made her chest ache.

“Stay together,” she added, her voice gentler than before. “The world is big for small rabbits. Look after one another.”

With a rustle of skirts, she was gone, disappearing through the woods.

The four siblings stood in the silence she left behind. In the old stories, the ones Penny told herself when she felt most alone, this was the moment the scoundrel ran away. This was the moment the ‘good girls’ went down the lane to gather blackberries, safe and obedient, while the ‘bad boy’ ran to the garden to court danger.

Penny felt the itch of the wool against her skin. She felt the ghost of that expectation pulling at her legs, urging her to run, to hide, else she became the trouble everyone expected. She looked down the lane. It was dusty and gray. It was safe.

“I don’t want to go down the lane,” Penny whispered. Her voice felt small, muffled by the high, starched collar pressing against her throat.

Flopsy, who was the oldest and usually the most sensible, tilted her head. “Where do you want to go, Penny?”

Penny turned her gaze toward the end of the wood. There, shimmering in the distance, was the wooden gate of Mr. McGregor’s garden. Even from here, she could smell it; the sharp tang of green onions, the earthy sweetness of carrots, the perfume of damp soil. It was a world that was alive, vibrant, and bursting with everything the dusty lane lacked.

“I want to go where the colors are,” Penny said, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. “I’m tired of being gray. I’m tired of this blue. I want to see the green lettuce and the red radishes.” She braced herself, waiting for the scolding. Waiting to be told that gardens were for naughty bucks and that she should know better.

But the scolding never came.

Instead, Flopsy reached out and took Penny’s paw, the one that felt so heavy and clumsy in the thick sleeve. Mopsy stepped up and took the other. Cotton-tail, refusing to be left out, grabbed onto the hem of the blue coat. “Then we’ll gather Blackberries at the lane tomorrow,” Flopsy said firmly. She squeezed Penny’s paw. “No one goes to the garden alone. Not anymore.”

Penny’s eyes widened. “But… Mama said—”

“Mama said to stay together,” Mopsy interrupted with a mischievous twitch of her nose. “And we are.”

“We are just four sisters on an adventure today,” Flopsy declared, pulling Penny gently toward the forbidden gate. ” And sisters stick together.”

The wooden gate of Mr. McGregor’s garden loomed high above them, smelling of old rain and iron. To the sisters, it was just a barrier. To Penny, it was the threshold between the gray world of expectations and the technicolor world of truth.

“Underneath,” Flopsy whispered, pointing to a small gap where the earth had been worn away.

Flopsy went first, her red cape fluttering as she slipped easily through the space. Mopsy followed, then Cotton-tail, their soft bodies moving like water. Then, it was Penny’s turn. She dropped to her belly and shimmied forward. Her nose tasted the rich, dark garden soil. She was almost there, she could see Flopsy’s paws waiting for her on the other side, when she felt a sharp, violent jerk.

Clang.

Penny gasped, scrambling for purchase, but she couldn’t move. One of the large, brass buttons of the blue coat had caught fast on the iron latch of the gate. She kicked her back legs, trying to force her way through, but the coat held her tight. It dug into her armpits; the collar choked her.

For a terrifying heartbeat, the old panic rose in her throat. She was stuck. She was clumsy. She was Peter, the awkward boy who always ruined everything. The ghost of that identity pulled at her, trying to drag her back out of the garden, back to the safety of the lane, back to the life that didn’t fit.

“Penny!” Cotton-tail cried out, reaching through the gap to touch her nose. “Are you stuck?” Penny stopped struggling. She lay still in the dirt, feeling the heavy wool pressing against her skin. She looked at the brass button, gleaming coldly against the rusted iron.

A sudden, fierce clarity washed over her. And she was done fighting. “I’m not going back,” Penny grunted, her voice low and determined.

She didn’t try to unhook the button. Instead, she inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the scent of freedom, and she pushed. She writhed against the wool, twisting her body with a strength she didn’t know she had. 

Ping! The top button popped off, flying into the weeds with a musical chime.

Ping ! The second button gave way.

With a final, triumphant shove, Penny wriggled backward, slipping her arms out of the stiff sleeves. She left the blue coat hanging there, a hollow, empty thing snagged on the metal, looking like the ghost of a rabbit that no longer existed.

Penny tumbled forward into the garden, landing on the soft moss. She stood up and shook herself. The air hit her skin, cool and electric. She felt light, impossibly, wonderfully light. The heavy weight that had sat on her shoulders for years was gone, left behind in the dirt.

She looked at her sisters. She was bare, her soft brown fur ruffled by the breeze, but she didn’t feel naked. She felt revealed. “Oh, Penny,” Mopsy breathed, her eyes wide. “You look… you look like you.”

Flopsy, however, was already moving. She hopped over to a sprawling azalea bush near the path, its branches heavy with vibrant pink blossoms. With quick, nimble teeth, she nipped off several large petals and a long, flexible vine of bindweed.

“We can’t have our fourth sister catching a chill,” Flopsy said, hopping back. “And besides, you can’t be part of the adventure without a cape.”

With Mopsy and Cotton-tail helping, Flopsy wove the petals together, draping the makeshift garment over Penny’s shoulders. It was soft, fragrant, and brilliant pink, lighter than air and brighter than the morning. Penny turned in a circle, the petals fluttering around her. She wasn’t Peter the Scoundrel, trapped in blue wool. She was Penelope the Garden Princess, crowned in pink, standing amidst the radishes with her sisters.

“Ready?” Flopsy asked, grinning.

Penny wiggled her nose, feeling the sun on her back. “Ready.”

And oh, what an adventure it was.

The garden was not the terrifying place of forbidden shadows that Penny had always feared. Now that she was standing in it with her sisters, it was a banquet hall. It was a playground. It was a symphony of green, and for the first time, Penny felt like she was part of the music.

“First course!” Penny announced, her voice ringing clear without the wool collar to stifle it. She didn’t hesitate. She hopped boldly to the nearest row of lettuces, her pink petal cape fluttering behind her like the wings of the butterfly she had always sensed was there.

The sisters feasted. They ate some lettuces (crisp and cool). They ate some French beans (snappy and sweet). And then, they ate some radishes (zesty and crunchy)

“Catch!” Mopsy cried, tossing a bright red radish into the air.

Penny leaped, catching it mid-hop with a grace she had never possessed while wearing the blue coat. She landed lightly, took a bite, and tossed the leafy top back to Cotton-tail. It became a game, a chaotic, messy, wonderful game of catch-and-crunch. 

Not a soul concerned herself with being a ‘good little rabbit’, only themselves. They were being loud. They were getting their paws muddy. And they were laughing so hard that the sparrows flew down from the crab apple trees to see what the commotion was about.

When the sun grew hot, they retreated to the rhubarb patch. The leaves there were giant, veined with crimson and broad enough to hide an army of bunnies. They huddled together in the cool green shade, their sides pressing against one another.

“I never knew,” Flopsy whispered, wiping berry juice from her whiskers. “I never knew the garden tasted like this.”

“Sweeter than anything in the lane,” Cotton-tail giggled.

“Not nearly as sweet as being here with you all.” Penny said softly, looking at her sisters through the filter of the sunlight on the leaves.  “As sisters.”

But every adventure has its dragon, and theirs appeared with the crunch of a heavy boot on gravel. “Hoy!” The sound was thunderous. Mr. McGregor came around the end of a cucumber frame, a rake in his hand and a scowl on his face.

“Time to hop!” Flopsy commanded, her voice sharp and authoritative. She darted left, flashing her red cape to draw Mr. McGregor’s eye. Mopsy and Cotton-tail zigzagged right, knocking over a watering can with a deliberate clatter to confuse him.

Mr. McGregor spun around. “Stop thief! Stop thieves!” he shouted, chasing after Flopsy, then stumbling as he turned to chase Mopsy. He was dizzy with rabbits. He couldn’t focus on one as they flitted between tussles of green.

“This way!” Penny yelled. She stood atop a wheelbarrow, her pink cape snapping in the wind. “Through the gooseberry net! Then the tool-shed window!”

Her sisters followed her without question. Penny led them on a merry chase, diving under nets that she knew were loose, skipping over flowerpots she knew were sturdy. She felt a surge of power in her hind legs. She was fast. She was clever. She was the brave leader of the Rabbit Girls.

They looped back around, leaving a red-faced and panting Mr. McGregor searching the cabbages for them.

“To the gate!” Penny breathless, her heart racing not with fear, but with the thrill of the win.

They scrambled toward the wood. The gate was still there, looming tall. And there, hanging on the latch, was the blue coat. It looked sad and deflated, swaying slightly in the wind. Penny didn’t even pause to look at it. “Under!” she commanded.

Flopsy eagerly went first, then Mopsy with a wriggling squeeze, and next Cotton-tail squeezed through the gap. Penny went last. As she wiggled her soft, unbuttoned body under the wood, her hind foot brushed against the sleeve of the blue jacket. She kicked back, pushing off against the brass buttons to launch herself into the safety of the wood.

They tumbled out onto the soft moss of the forest floor, safe. They were dusty. Their whiskers were bent. They were breathless.

And they were all together.

“We did it,” Cotton-tail gasped, flopping onto her back. “We actually did it.”

Penny looked back at the garden gate. The coat remained on the other side, trapped in the world of Mr. McGregor. She turned her back on it, looking instead at her sisters, who were already checking each other for scratches and smoothing down their ruffled fur.

“We did,” Penny said, a smile spreading across her face that was wider than any she had ever worn before. “Now, let’s get back to the burrow.”

“Before Mama gets home!” Mopsy and Cotton-tail said in near unison.

“Only if we hurry!” The eldest Flopsy said as she called to her sisters.

They ran through the wood, their feet light on the pine needles. By the time they reached the big fir tree, the sun was dipping low, casting long, warm shadows across the sandbank.

They were just in time. Mrs. Rabbit was standing at the entrance of the burrow, her basket on her arm. She had already seen them coming, a tumble of four small rabbits, hopping together in a tight, protective knot.

Mrs. Rabbit set down her basket. She looked at Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail, who were dusty but bright-eyed. Then, her gaze settled on the fourth rabbit.

She looked for the stiff blue collar. She looked for the brass buttons. She looked for the young man she had sent out that morning. But all she saw was a little rabbit with soft, tousled brown fur, wearing a crown of wilting pink azalea petals and a cape woven from flowers.

“Peter?” Mrs. Rabbit asked, her voice uncertain. “Where is your jacket? Did you lose it?”

The sisters held their breath. In the old silence of the burrow, this would have been the moment for shame. This would have been the moment Penny looked at her feet.

But Penny didn’t look down. She felt Flopsy’s shoulder pressing against her left side and Cotton-tail’s paw resting on her right. She took a deep breath, smelling the fir tree and the home she loved.

“I didn’t lose it, Mama,” she said. Her voice was steady, clearer than it had ever been. “I left it. I left it on the gate.”

Mrs. Rabbit blinked, her ears twitching. “You left it?”

“It didn’t fit,” Penny continued, stepping forward. The pink petals of her cape fluttered. “It was heavy, and it scratched, and it felt like it belonged to someone else. It belonged to Peter. But I’m not Peter, Mama.”

She stood tall, feeling the wind ruffle her fur—the fur that was soft, just like her sisters’.

“I’m Penelope,” she said. “And I’m your daughter, just like Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail.”

The woods went quiet. A bird chirped somewhere high in the branches.

Mrs. Rabbit looked at the little rabbit standing before her. She looked at the pink flowers. She looked at the way her child’s eyes were sparkling, no longer dull and hidden, but bright with mischief and joy. Slowly, Mrs. Rabbit dropped to her knees in the sand so she was eye-to-eye with them. A look of profound tenderness washed over her face, as if she were seeing something clearly for the very first time.

“Penelope,” Mrs. Rabbit whispered, testing the word on her tongue. It sounded sweet, like rain on dry earth. “What a very pretty name.”

She reached out, not to brush Penny’s fur into submission, but to gently touch the azalea crown.

“I am so sorry, my love,” Mrs. Rabbit said softly. “I didn’t realize that stuffy old coat was hiding my daughter all this time. I thought I was keeping you warm, but I think… I think I was quite mistaken.”

Penny let out a breath she felt she had been holding her entire life. “Thank you Mama.” She leaned into her mother’s touch. “I’m not a scoundrel, am I?”

Mrs. Rabbit laughed, and it was a warm, bubbly sound. She pulled all four of them into a heap of a hug. “A scoundrel? Heavens no. You are one of my four lovely daughters. My four good, if slightly dusty, daughters.”

She stood up, wiping a happy tear from her whisker. “Now, come inside. You must be starving after such a big adventure.”

That night, the burrow was filled with light.

There was no chamomile tea. There was no medicine. There was no bed of shame for any good rabbit who had dared to disobey. No shame in the rebellion of sisterhood.

Instead, Mrs. Rabbit laid out the white tablecloth. She brought out the loaf of brown bread and the five currant buns. And then, with a wink at Penelope, she brought out a large ceramic bowl filled to the brim with the blackberries the girls had brought home in their pockets and the ones she had gathered herself.

“Eat up, my four good little girls,” Mrs. Rabbit said, pouring rich milk into four equal bowls.

Penelope sat between Mopsy and Cotton-tail. She took a bite of a blackberry. It was sweet, bursting with juice, and tasted of home. She looked around the table at her family and felt the warmth of the burrow sink into her bones. She wasn’t too big, or too loud, or too wrong. She fit perfectly.

She was Penelope Rabbit, and she was finally home. 

The End 🐇🏳️‍⚧️