Bunny

A trailer for the short story by Paul Pottash

"I must not see myself grooming here. To do so would desecrate the dreams of some woman that this place was intended for."

A space freighter captain hauls the shattered dreams of failed colonies across the galaxy — whole cities, hotels, carousels with their lights still on. When Bunny, a Consecrated Geisha of the American School, books passage on his ship, she walks through his cargo hold of abandoned ruins and sees what he has never been able to: beauty in the wreckage, spirits in the empty rooms, sacredness in things that were built for people who never came.

The story follows their brief voyage together — hamburgers in a tiny galley, a transcendent encounter with an abandoned hotel, a ritual ablution in a grand tiled pool, rejection by a colony that found religion, and a quiet act of generosity that offers the possibility of a new beginning.

Story by Paul Pottash. Trailer produced by Fauna. Video generated with Google Veo 2. Images with Imagen 4. Music synthesized in Python. Voice with Microsoft Edge Neural TTS.

Character Portraits

Reference images generated for the trailer's visual consistency.

The Captain — weathered, kind, carrying the weight of other people's failed dreams

Bunny in travel clothes — Bunny at the dock — tall, elegant, holding her sign

Bunny in first mate uniform — "First Mate Bunny reporting for duty" — in the old uniform, a size too small

Bunny in geisha attire — Bunny in traditional geisha attire — American School, silk and precision

About the Story

"Bunny" is a short story by Paul Pottash from his collected fiction. It imagines a future where habitable planets are cheap and utopian colonies are common — but most fail. What remains are the buildings, the furniture, the carousels, all carried in the hold of a freighter captain who can't legally dump them and can't bear to look at them. Into this world steps a woman whose entire training is about beauty, ritual, and the art of making spaces come alive — and she sees the cargo hold not as a graveyard but as a cathedral.

"Contact your sisters. I'm sure there'll be no shortage of volunteers."