Koska, Whose Ears Wouldn’t Fit Into This World

Koska, Whose Ears Wouldn’t Fit Into This World

In the looking-glass reality of our Home, every object has its own Grandmaster of Memory, and for Koska that count began on a warm, resonant spring day. Those were the Easter days — that time when the buds on the trees burst with an excess of life, and the first sharp, fresh grass pushes up out of the ground.

A rabbit with long ears and gently blue paws was given to the Little Man — the Elder Son — by Valentina. She wasn’t a nanny in the usual, strict sense of the word, but more of a wonderful magic wand, a kind “ambulance” who occasionally came to Mum’s rescue. On that festive day, the Little Man simply pressed the plush creature to himself and said, quietly but firmly: “My Koska.” Like any beloved child, he had a great many treasures — mountains of toy cars, bright paints, building sets, and other important childhood things. But from that very first hug, Koska took the main throne in his heart. It was clear: this bond was forever.

The Little Man didn’t take to kindergarten, and that story ended quickly — he happily stayed home with Mum, under the protection of the lavender walls. But that brief kindergarten era did leave behind one bright day. The teacher gave the children an assignment: draw your favorite toy.

The Little Man approached the task like a true artist. In his big nursery, among walls the color of lush spring grass, he set up a real easel. The air smelled of forest, from the beautiful furniture made of natural pine. Mum, as always, was right there — a sensitive, silent co-author. The Son began the monumental canvas from the bottom: he carefully drew Koska’s blue hind paws, moved upward, sketched in the plush belly, reached the head… and suddenly the room rang out with bitter, inconsolable childish crying.

“Mum! The long ears won’t fit!” — the little artist said through tears of despair. Koska’s character, and his famous ears, simply, physically refused to submit to the borders of an ordinary standard sheet of paper.

Mum, who possessed the Home’s chief talent — saving what is truly precious — instantly came to the rescue. She took glue, a second sheet of paper, and carefully extended the canvas upward, giving the great ears the freedom they’d been waiting for. The Son lit up at once, finished drawing Koska in the full glory of his long ears, and the next day proudly carried this two-story masterpiece into kindergarten.

From then on, Koska and the Little Man became utterly inseparable. Every night the boy fell asleep tightly wrapped around the rabbit with his right arm, holding him close to his chest — so that the two hearts, human and plush, would beat in time. Even when it came time to start elementary school, Koska wasn’t left behind. Sometimes he traveled secretly at the bottom of the school bag, among the textbooks and notebooks. The Little Man brought him along for one single, very important purpose — to show Koska how this great big School Life worked.

Together they visited many countries, and there is irrefutable physical evidence of this in the Home’s heavy family albums. In those days, people still truly loved, and knew how, to leaf through living, paper photographs — people of a completely different century, and of speeds not nearly so mad❤️.

Koska was a faithful guardian through every scrape. He didn’t leave the Little Man’s side when the boy twisted his ankle in a pool in exotic Thailand, and a local doctor had to come see him. The rabbit held him tight when the Son’s temperature spiked at the Paris Disneyland. That time, for some reason, a giant fireman showed up at the hotel room instead of a doctor. Mum carried on a long, desperate, and thoroughly useless dialogue with him: English and French simply refused to be friends, and “did not understand each other” at all. The one thing Mum came away firmly certain of, from this whole comical foreign muddle, was that at Disneyland it is physically impossible to get medical help without the involvement of the fire brigade. But Koska was there, and it all ended well.

And then came the Maldives… That trip turned out to be incredibly instructive for both of Mum’s children: one normal-eared, the other long-eared. They spent hours walking along the endless ocean, swimming in the turquoise water, examining the timid crabs on the white sand together, and eating juicy coconuts.

But it was time to fly home. Right before the flight, in the bustling airport, the Son reached for his green backpack with the usual motion — and suddenly froze. A terrible, blood-chilling realization set in: Koska had been left behind in the hotel room. It’s unclear how the parents missed that moment — perhaps subconsciously trying to raise some independence and responsibility in their son… But in that instant, the world collapsed. Shock, horror, and the Little Man’s tears rang through the terminal.

And that’s when Dad the Lighthouse, as he always did, shielded the family from the storm. Able to instantly calm any unforeseen tempest, he immediately called the faraway hotel. The rabbit was found! Already back home, Dad the Lighthouse mounted an entire rescue operation, becoming that same reliable wall it’s always so safe to hide behind. He managed to work a small miracle: he arranged for some completely unfamiliar but kind fellow guests at that very hotel to bring Koska back to the boy. That week of waiting felt like an eternity to the whole family. And then the day finally came. The boy, Mum, and Dad the Lighthouse met Koska at the airport — with flowers, gifts, and endless gratitude for those responsive strangers. Koska smelled of the Maldives, of salt wind and distant sun. The Son was so happy that he wouldn’t even let Mum bathe the rabbit after the long, dusty journey. He simply hugged his long-eared brother and went straight to bed with him — because it was already very late, and children in this Home absolutely must get their sleep.

After that, their shared life held plenty more — new roads, flights, and travels to all sorts of countries. But the Elder Son learned that Maldivian lesson for good: never again, anywhere, did he forget his plush friend. Koska became his indelible talisman.

And then great happiness happened in the Home — a younger brother was born. There was no need to share Koska with the second little one: Bear was already dutifully waiting for him on a glass shelf at the Mothercare shop🤷‍♀️. The Elder Son, who had once begged Mum and Dad so hard and for so long for a little brother or sister, became Mum’s main support and helped take care of the baby. A little later, watching how merrily and noisily their band of boys was growing, the Elder Son finally and firmly decided: a little brother is, after all, a lot cooler than a little sister❤️.

The Elder Son grew up, growing fast, the world around him changing, but Koska waited for him at Home unfailingly, settled on the pillow. They still slept together. And this now-grown boy wasn’t in the least embarrassed by his childhood attachment: in this family, everyone knew far too well the true value of real loyalty, and no one in the whole world would have dared to break this solid friendship with a careless word or someone else’s opinion. It was their own, untouchable space. They even always bathed Koska together.

The boy grew up. All sorts of things happened along that road to adulthood… As a teenager, as often happens, he clashed sharply and stormily with Mum. Mum in the Home is a strict force of nature, holding order with an iron hand, and only once he had truly grown up did the Son finally understand how genuinely fair she had been, in her endless love. But in those very difficult, prickly days of teenage storms, Koska waited for him, faithfully and quietly, on the pillow, without fail. He accepted him just as he was — angry, silent, prickly, or exhausted. Every boy, in the course of growing up, needs an anchor like that — soft, long-eared, and remembering him as a defenseless little one at the pine easel.

The Elder Son grew up, like all normal children do. It came time to fly off to study. And he chose a path across seas and oceans, far from the parental nest — because it’s precisely there, far from the accustomed warmth, that growing up happens more properly, more deeply. Koska, who by then had already traveled half the world, gathered his plush strength once again and flew across the oceans, to far-off America, with his one and only friend. Seeing them off at the airport, Mum hugged the rabbit tightly and whispered, long and quiet, into his long, faithful ear, the most important, most secret maternal request: that he, all the way on the other side of the earth, watch over her Son.

And so they flew together, back and forth, on holidays to the parents and back to school — two inseparable buddies, splitting every grown-up road in half. Sometimes, from the hard journeys, the endless flights, and the frequent washings, one of Koska’s paws would come loose, or his long ear would tear a little. But the moment they returned to the Home by the sea, Mum would pick up a needle and thread and carefully, stitch by stitch, restore her most important looking-glass patient.

But one day, Koska’s little tail fell off for good. Mum fixed that too, of course, but the family council reached a grown-up, wise decision: it was time to take care of Koska. Traveling had become too dangerous for the old friend. So Koska stayed on to live in the Home with Mum, for the time being. Now he has his own room, and his own personal bed, strewn with soft pillows.

Right now the Son and Koska are far apart — thousands of kilometers, seas, and time zones separate them. Someday Mum will carefully pack the rabbit up and bring him to his one and only buddy. But for now, talking on the phone in the evenings, Mum and her now fully grown Elder Son quietly discuss one incredible thing: the Son admits that, to this day, on the other side of the earth, he falls asleep unconsciously curling his arms as if he were, right at that very moment, holding his beloved Koska tightly and tenderly against his chest…❤️

Our reckless monkey Dolce knows about this. In this Home, she hears everything and notices everything with her gear-wheel eyes. That’s exactly why, this morning, she pulled Koska out of his quiet room and dragged him into her mad steampunk chaos. Dolce gave the noble veteran the most honorable, safest place — she sat him in a snow-white kitchen colander, like a royal bowl of his own, right in the center of her first photo shoot. Dolce did this on purpose. She staged this entire card-table syndicate for one reason only: so that this unfinished shoot would make people stop. So that this touching, great story of loyalty, growing up, and endless love would reach absolutely every child and parent on Earth.