When you grow up in the outdoors with little more than a cozy cabbage leaf for a blanket, the clothes on your back and a few personal trinkets it always seemed natural to be scavenging for items to make nothing into something.
It was a lifestyle I had led for years simply running around and taking the odd unwanted item here and there or bartering to get the best prices on things to turn the cabbages and other seasonal produce around me into delicious dishes and sell-able items that might interest a passing adventurer.
I had of course seen people leading different ways of life but I could not fathom how they got there or imagine a day when it could possibly become an attainable lifestyle for myself. But one day there was this fluffy tailed thing with wiggly ears just staring straight at me as I tried to grab a bottle of mineral water from their backpack and instead of scorning me they simply smiled and let me take it. The sun was starting to set and if I didn’t start the sauerkraut soon then it wouldn’t be ready to sell to the expected bustling crowd for tomorrows big All Saint’s Wake event.
The next few hours were a complete blur and before I knew it the sun was rising. It was then I realised I had completely fallen asleep and not even finished the dish. But somehow I was in my usual spot in my cabbages with an actual blanket wrapped around me and this blurry figure giving the pot a gentle stir. I could do nothing but exclaim “oh my cabbages, it’s you!” as the realisation that it was the friendly grown up cat sitting there. They started asking me to check they had seasoned the dish right, I gave them some suggestions and we just made general chit chat along the way. They seemed surprised to find out that not only was I short in height but that I still had relative youth on my side too. Nobody had ever really paid attention to me before, being a lalafell made it easy to hide and especially when I made ends meet in such socially questionable ways, but this friendly fellow was making me feel like a valid member of the community and bringing some much needed smiles to my face.
Over the next few weeks they kept visiting, sometimes bringing spare ingredients and other random items that they thought I might find useful, and I would always return the favour by making them up breakfast or some snack for on the go. One day they brought another fluffy tail to meet me and we chatted away. Before I knew it they wanted me to stop sleeping in the cabbages with no family to call my own and suggested that they could look after me and protect me as part of the family! All of a sudden I had a Mama and a Papa! And not only that but other family to share meals, smiles and little adventures with too. On that day I happily went from being Bhridean Littleaf to Bhridean Battousai.
DANNIIXBHRI 