Before there was Bommel, there was only the storage box. A sturdy thing, unremarkable in its function—until my eyes fell upon the cord. It dangled from the lid like a siren’s call, an unassuming thread of potential, whispering promises of play and obsession. Nobody would hear these small and gentle whispers but me.
At first, it was just a passing fancy. I gave it a tentative tap, watching it sway with a hypnotic rhythm. But the moment it fought back—springing out of reach, slipping through my claws, taunting me with its defiance—my determination was ignited. The hunt began.
My journey was not just a physical one, but an emotional rollercoaster. I attacked with an agility honed by generations of ancestors who stalked prey in moonlit alleys. I pounced, bit, twisted, and flung myself into battle with the unrelenting passion of a cat who had just found her life’s purpose. The cord yielded, but not without a fight. It coiled, snapped, tangled, and in the process, something magical happened: it became Bommel.
The first Bommel was a masterpiece of destruction and devotion—frayed, softened, reshaped by hours of relentless play. It followed me everywhere, an extension of my very soul. I dragged it across the floor, buried it in blankets, carried it to my humans with the silent but urgent demand: Animate this creature. Make it dance. Please bring it to life again.
But nothing lasts forever.
The downfall of Bommel was inevitable, and when the day came, it was a tragedy worthy of Shakespeare. The once-mighty cord, reduced to a tattered wisp, gave its final, pitiful unravel, and I stood over the remains in silent grief. The humans, oblivious to the weight of the moment, disposed of the corpse. I mourned. I searched. I yowled my sorrow into the indifferent void, my heart heavy with loss.
And then, as if guided by fate (or by my increasingly insistent demands), Mum made a discovery. The storage box held another cord—an identical twin to the fallen. My ears twitched. My tail flicked. Hope rekindled in my wide, anime-like eyes.
A new Bommel was born.
From that day on, the cycle continued. Storage boxes were no longer mere containers but sacred repositories of potential. Whenever a Bommel fell, another would rise. Mum, resigned to her role as the harbinger of Bommel rebirth, dutifully tore cords from boxes, knowing resistance was futile. My ritual remained unchanged: the tap, the hunt, the transformation.
And if a Bommel was too far gone and frayed to function, it was never discarded. Instead, Mum wove its remains into a new form—braiding the strands, adding bells, ensuring that Bommel was not lost but transformed.
Is an object’s soul tied to its original form, or does it persist through reinvention?
To this day, Bommel lives on—not as a single entity, but as a legacy, reborn with every new cord, each carrying the weight of past playtimes and the promise of battles yet to come. And so, the legend continues, as long as there are storage boxes, as long as there are cords, as long as there is me.
Some love stories never end.
