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puzzlepromptsTitle: Protector of the Forest
Author: Kat Lee
Fandom: Original
Character/Pairing: OCs
Rating: G/K
Challenge/Prompt:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
puzzleprompts: ALL Pieces of the October 2017 Puzzle and beattheblackdog 85: Peek
Warning(s): None
Word Count: 2,122
Date Written: 27 October 2017
Summary:
Disclaimer: This one's all mine!
Laughter wafts up above the trees from the gurgling river. It carries high into the sky, where the waning moon can still be seen and from where the morning sun smiles down on the bear and the fish dancing around her paws. She catches one and flips him up out of the water in grinning triumph. “Gotcha!”
He wriggles in the air before flopping back down onto her massive, upturned paw. “Okay! You won fair and square! Now are you going to let me loose?!”
The bear’s joyful face falls as she turns her paw over, allowing the salmon to fall back into the river. “Of course I’m going to let you loose! What kind of bear do you think I am?! How long have you known me, Norman?!” She’s so shocked by his behavior that her hind, left paw slips on a mossy rock, and she almost falls into the water herself.
“Only all your life, Kekoa!” Herman answers, laughing once more. He flops in the water and drives his powerful tail through the current, causing the water to splash up onto the bear’s furry face. She blinks as she scuttles backwards. Her little tail wags. “Herman!” she exclaims, splashing the water with her powerful paw. “Why, I oughta -- ”
“Oughta, woulda, shoulda!” the fish sing at her, passing in swift circles around her paws. She snaps at them with her powerful jaws, but only at. Kekoa would never harm any of them, and they know it.
Suddenly, the river shifts. The ground itself seems to somehow shift beneath Kekoa’s paws. Something scares the fish. “Hide, Kekoa! Hide!” Herman calls back to her just before he swims quickly out of her sight with the rest of his school.
She frowns and splashes the water again. The fish have always been scared too easily, which is exactly why some of them still get spooked when they play these games. Herman thinks their fright is funny. She knows his ploy was aimed more at her than at him. But something definitely feels wrong.
The forest has become quiet. The river’s happy gurgling has lowered to a mere whisper. Even the birds are hushed in the tall trees surrounding her. Kekoa looks up, glancing this way and that for any sign of what is amiss. The sun still shines in the bright, blue sky. The moon can barely be seen now. The wind still blows from the east, but . . . Kekoa stops, her hackles rising. She sniffs the air. Something smells different! Something smells . . . wrong!
Kekoa lumbers quickly up out of the river. She walks the bank quietly, still searching for some sign of whatever is different. She can’t place her paw on what’s happened, but something, she knows, is very, very wrong. She sees a couple of the squirrels peek at her from their trees, but nobody greets her. Nobody dares say a word.
Kekoa walks to the oldest tree on the edge of the river and carefully climbs up it. She’s not as young and spry as she once was, but her paws still know the way. It takes a great deal more of her strength to haul her massive form up the tree, but she manages, even if the old pine begins to sway underneath her weight.
She climbs to its very top, which is dressed in all the colors of Autumn. As the tree bends more underneath her weight and the spirit who calls the tree his home begins to plead with her to get down, Kekoa shields her eyes from the sun with a paw and looks out. She sees birds fly up in a great flock from closer to the road. She feels a scream pass through the trees, and the spirit in the one she’s in suddenly hushes. She can feel him trembling.
Kekoa rushes down the tree and toward the spot where she saw the birds flee. The trees are whispering now, their voices all saying one word, one call, one plea. “Help!” they cry out together. Kekoa doesn’t know if she is the only one who can hear them -- surely other animals of the forest can --, but she is the only one who answers.
Her massive paws eat up the distance quickly, and she has to slam herself to a stop just before she can barrel out of the safety of the forest. Peering out, she sees the main, black road where so many deaths have occurred. She sees, too, one of the humans’ strange, moving vehicles which is no longer moving. It looks old and battered, but one sniff in its direction confirms that it has that strange liquid for which the humans are always seeking and has been moving recently.
The brown fur on Kekoa’s back is already raised in alarm, but she steps closer to the end of the ring of trees. She peers out between two who are both whispering over and over again, “Help! Help! Help!”
The sun glints on something sharp and deadly, and then Kekoa sees it. She sees the blade swinging down toward one of the older tree’s trunks. She feels the spirit crying out. “HELP!!!!” the forest screams as one, and Kekoa springs into action.
She barrels out of the safety of the trees and across the land. She jumps toward the swinging blade. She hears a human scream as she bites down not on flesh but on wood. The lumber jack drops his axe and, shaking from head to foot, begins to slowly back away. Holding the axe’s handle in her mouth, Kekoa glowers at him. She tries to speak, but the wood handle muffles her language.
All the man hears is grunts. He screams for help now and staggers backwards. Rocks catch his feet, and he falls down, hard, on the ground. Kekoa spits out his axe but wisely puts a paw on the handle, keeping the human from darting forward to retrieve his deadly weapon and use it against her. She tries to speak again, but she can tell from the horror in his eyes that the man can not understand a word she is attempting to say.
She stops speaking. She stops moving. Everything around her seems to also come to a still. Great Spirit, she thinks, bowing her massive head a little, help me!
A crow caws as her prayer wings its way up through the wind to Father Sky. Its jet black wings flap. The man, still trembling all over, looks at where the crow is leaving his home in one of the nearby trees and then immediately looks back at the bear. “Pl-Please d-don’t eat me!”
Kekoa snorts in disgust. “I don’t want to eat you!” she speaks, and from the wild look in the man’s eyes, she realizes she has spoken to him in his own language. He actually understands her.
“B-But th-then why -- ?!”
“Because you were hurting my friend. You will leave these trees alone! You will leave this forest alone!”
“B-But I-I-I only wanted a little wood to keep my family warm!”
The bear pulls her head back slightly and looks at the human again. She studies him for a long moment. Perhaps he is not the killer of trees she thought. Perhaps he does want to keep his family warm. Humans have a strange way of making wood hot and warming themselves against its bright orange heat. She has seen them do it many times over her years of living in this and other forests. At last, she snorts again and says, “Then wait here.”
She starts to turn away from the man but, thinking better of it, turns back around and lifts the wooden handle of his weapon in her mouth. The instrument is heavy, and its blade hangs down, cutting a path through the grass as Kekoa lumbers away. Once she is far enough into the forest that she feels certain the human will not be foolish enough to try to follow her, Kekoa drops his weapon and hurries on along her path.
She finds the tree she seeks, the one already downed by the Great Spirit’s hand and His mighty blows of lightning. She fixes her jaw around one end of the mighty tree and pulls, but even with all her strength, the fallen tree only moves a little. “Come forward,” she calls to the animals who are all watching her both intently and curiously, “and help me!”
Squirrels scurry from the trees. Birds swoop down. Opossums open their sleepy eyes and slowly start forth. Hedgehogs and gophers lift from their hiding places in the ground and come forward as well. “This may not be a wise thing you are doing, Kekoa,” one of the noisier and braver squirrels chatters at her.
“It may not,” she agrees, lowering her massive head, “but if it gives the human what he needs for his family while harming none, it is the right thing to be done, Frisk.”
“Still stupid!” he chatters back at her.
Kekoa grunts from around the tree whose old trunk she has again lifted in her mouth. She shakes her head and rolls her dark eyes. “You don’t have to help,” she argues from around the tree.
“Hmph. Like you said. Right thing to do! I’d never hear the end of it!”
Kekoa grins from around the bark. Her animal brothers and sisters continue to come forward and help her lift the downed tree until, working together, they are able to pull the tree to edge of the forest. The second they see the man, they drop the tree and run for their lives -- all but Kekoa, who stands bravely and calmly beside the tree and grunts for the man’s attention.
He still shakes as he turns to look at her, but he has not yet left. “You wish me to take that one instead?” he asks, slowly daring to approach the bear.
“The Great Spirit killed the tree. This way, you do not have to take another life to give your family warmth. Although,” she asks, cocking her head to one side, “are you not aware that animals are cold too? Do we not also sometimes freeze to death in the Winter? Yet we do not take a life just to keep warm.”
The man stops moving. He stares at the bear for a long moment before, lowering his head, he murmurs, “I never thought about it that way.”
“Well, do,” she says, “and seek what is dead that can help rather than taking a life. You feared I would eat you. The fish fear I will. I live off of berries, nuts, and honey, all things that are dead and yet I can use for nourishment. You could do the same.”
The man stares at her, not daring to voice the fact that he would never consider the lifestyle she suggests -- she, a bear!! Later on, he will swear he was dreaming, but he’ll have the old tree in the back of his truck to prove he wasn’t. Finally, Kekoa drops her gaze from the shocked human’s and rumbles away.
She moves quickly back into the dark of the forest, leaving the man to haul the tree up onto his truck and beat a hasty retreat. Later, after he’s told his tale, people will come to the forest searching for the brown bear who can talk, but even as she walks away from the old man, Kekoa’s fur begins to fall away. Brown fur turns white. Her head and paws grow though her claws also shift within her paws, becoming smaller.
She lifts her head. The river is calling, but so, too, is a new voice from the North. She is not to stay here, the protector realizes even as the squirrels, birds, possums, bunnies, and numerous other animals applaud her bravery. Her mission here is completed, but she will be needed again. She turns her head into the North wind. She hears the voice again and obeys. The great, white polar bear rumbles off toward the North, never to be seen again by her friends, her family, or the humans who will seek her, the enchanted, talking bear, for hundreds of years.
The End
Author: Kat Lee
Fandom: Original
Character/Pairing: OCs
Rating: G/K
Challenge/Prompt:
puzzleprompts: ALL Pieces of the October 2017 Puzzle and beattheblackdog 85: PeekWarning(s): None
Word Count: 2,122
Date Written: 27 October 2017
Summary:
Disclaimer: This one's all mine!
Laughter wafts up above the trees from the gurgling river. It carries high into the sky, where the waning moon can still be seen and from where the morning sun smiles down on the bear and the fish dancing around her paws. She catches one and flips him up out of the water in grinning triumph. “Gotcha!”
He wriggles in the air before flopping back down onto her massive, upturned paw. “Okay! You won fair and square! Now are you going to let me loose?!”
The bear’s joyful face falls as she turns her paw over, allowing the salmon to fall back into the river. “Of course I’m going to let you loose! What kind of bear do you think I am?! How long have you known me, Norman?!” She’s so shocked by his behavior that her hind, left paw slips on a mossy rock, and she almost falls into the water herself.
“Only all your life, Kekoa!” Herman answers, laughing once more. He flops in the water and drives his powerful tail through the current, causing the water to splash up onto the bear’s furry face. She blinks as she scuttles backwards. Her little tail wags. “Herman!” she exclaims, splashing the water with her powerful paw. “Why, I oughta -- ”
“Oughta, woulda, shoulda!” the fish sing at her, passing in swift circles around her paws. She snaps at them with her powerful jaws, but only at. Kekoa would never harm any of them, and they know it.
Suddenly, the river shifts. The ground itself seems to somehow shift beneath Kekoa’s paws. Something scares the fish. “Hide, Kekoa! Hide!” Herman calls back to her just before he swims quickly out of her sight with the rest of his school.
She frowns and splashes the water again. The fish have always been scared too easily, which is exactly why some of them still get spooked when they play these games. Herman thinks their fright is funny. She knows his ploy was aimed more at her than at him. But something definitely feels wrong.
The forest has become quiet. The river’s happy gurgling has lowered to a mere whisper. Even the birds are hushed in the tall trees surrounding her. Kekoa looks up, glancing this way and that for any sign of what is amiss. The sun still shines in the bright, blue sky. The moon can barely be seen now. The wind still blows from the east, but . . . Kekoa stops, her hackles rising. She sniffs the air. Something smells different! Something smells . . . wrong!
Kekoa lumbers quickly up out of the river. She walks the bank quietly, still searching for some sign of whatever is different. She can’t place her paw on what’s happened, but something, she knows, is very, very wrong. She sees a couple of the squirrels peek at her from their trees, but nobody greets her. Nobody dares say a word.
Kekoa walks to the oldest tree on the edge of the river and carefully climbs up it. She’s not as young and spry as she once was, but her paws still know the way. It takes a great deal more of her strength to haul her massive form up the tree, but she manages, even if the old pine begins to sway underneath her weight.
She climbs to its very top, which is dressed in all the colors of Autumn. As the tree bends more underneath her weight and the spirit who calls the tree his home begins to plead with her to get down, Kekoa shields her eyes from the sun with a paw and looks out. She sees birds fly up in a great flock from closer to the road. She feels a scream pass through the trees, and the spirit in the one she’s in suddenly hushes. She can feel him trembling.
Kekoa rushes down the tree and toward the spot where she saw the birds flee. The trees are whispering now, their voices all saying one word, one call, one plea. “Help!” they cry out together. Kekoa doesn’t know if she is the only one who can hear them -- surely other animals of the forest can --, but she is the only one who answers.
Her massive paws eat up the distance quickly, and she has to slam herself to a stop just before she can barrel out of the safety of the forest. Peering out, she sees the main, black road where so many deaths have occurred. She sees, too, one of the humans’ strange, moving vehicles which is no longer moving. It looks old and battered, but one sniff in its direction confirms that it has that strange liquid for which the humans are always seeking and has been moving recently.
The brown fur on Kekoa’s back is already raised in alarm, but she steps closer to the end of the ring of trees. She peers out between two who are both whispering over and over again, “Help! Help! Help!”
The sun glints on something sharp and deadly, and then Kekoa sees it. She sees the blade swinging down toward one of the older tree’s trunks. She feels the spirit crying out. “HELP!!!!” the forest screams as one, and Kekoa springs into action.
She barrels out of the safety of the trees and across the land. She jumps toward the swinging blade. She hears a human scream as she bites down not on flesh but on wood. The lumber jack drops his axe and, shaking from head to foot, begins to slowly back away. Holding the axe’s handle in her mouth, Kekoa glowers at him. She tries to speak, but the wood handle muffles her language.
All the man hears is grunts. He screams for help now and staggers backwards. Rocks catch his feet, and he falls down, hard, on the ground. Kekoa spits out his axe but wisely puts a paw on the handle, keeping the human from darting forward to retrieve his deadly weapon and use it against her. She tries to speak again, but she can tell from the horror in his eyes that the man can not understand a word she is attempting to say.
She stops speaking. She stops moving. Everything around her seems to also come to a still. Great Spirit, she thinks, bowing her massive head a little, help me!
A crow caws as her prayer wings its way up through the wind to Father Sky. Its jet black wings flap. The man, still trembling all over, looks at where the crow is leaving his home in one of the nearby trees and then immediately looks back at the bear. “Pl-Please d-don’t eat me!”
Kekoa snorts in disgust. “I don’t want to eat you!” she speaks, and from the wild look in the man’s eyes, she realizes she has spoken to him in his own language. He actually understands her.
“B-But th-then why -- ?!”
“Because you were hurting my friend. You will leave these trees alone! You will leave this forest alone!”
“B-But I-I-I only wanted a little wood to keep my family warm!”
The bear pulls her head back slightly and looks at the human again. She studies him for a long moment. Perhaps he is not the killer of trees she thought. Perhaps he does want to keep his family warm. Humans have a strange way of making wood hot and warming themselves against its bright orange heat. She has seen them do it many times over her years of living in this and other forests. At last, she snorts again and says, “Then wait here.”
She starts to turn away from the man but, thinking better of it, turns back around and lifts the wooden handle of his weapon in her mouth. The instrument is heavy, and its blade hangs down, cutting a path through the grass as Kekoa lumbers away. Once she is far enough into the forest that she feels certain the human will not be foolish enough to try to follow her, Kekoa drops his weapon and hurries on along her path.
She finds the tree she seeks, the one already downed by the Great Spirit’s hand and His mighty blows of lightning. She fixes her jaw around one end of the mighty tree and pulls, but even with all her strength, the fallen tree only moves a little. “Come forward,” she calls to the animals who are all watching her both intently and curiously, “and help me!”
Squirrels scurry from the trees. Birds swoop down. Opossums open their sleepy eyes and slowly start forth. Hedgehogs and gophers lift from their hiding places in the ground and come forward as well. “This may not be a wise thing you are doing, Kekoa,” one of the noisier and braver squirrels chatters at her.
“It may not,” she agrees, lowering her massive head, “but if it gives the human what he needs for his family while harming none, it is the right thing to be done, Frisk.”
“Still stupid!” he chatters back at her.
Kekoa grunts from around the tree whose old trunk she has again lifted in her mouth. She shakes her head and rolls her dark eyes. “You don’t have to help,” she argues from around the tree.
“Hmph. Like you said. Right thing to do! I’d never hear the end of it!”
Kekoa grins from around the bark. Her animal brothers and sisters continue to come forward and help her lift the downed tree until, working together, they are able to pull the tree to edge of the forest. The second they see the man, they drop the tree and run for their lives -- all but Kekoa, who stands bravely and calmly beside the tree and grunts for the man’s attention.
He still shakes as he turns to look at her, but he has not yet left. “You wish me to take that one instead?” he asks, slowly daring to approach the bear.
“The Great Spirit killed the tree. This way, you do not have to take another life to give your family warmth. Although,” she asks, cocking her head to one side, “are you not aware that animals are cold too? Do we not also sometimes freeze to death in the Winter? Yet we do not take a life just to keep warm.”
The man stops moving. He stares at the bear for a long moment before, lowering his head, he murmurs, “I never thought about it that way.”
“Well, do,” she says, “and seek what is dead that can help rather than taking a life. You feared I would eat you. The fish fear I will. I live off of berries, nuts, and honey, all things that are dead and yet I can use for nourishment. You could do the same.”
The man stares at her, not daring to voice the fact that he would never consider the lifestyle she suggests -- she, a bear!! Later on, he will swear he was dreaming, but he’ll have the old tree in the back of his truck to prove he wasn’t. Finally, Kekoa drops her gaze from the shocked human’s and rumbles away.
She moves quickly back into the dark of the forest, leaving the man to haul the tree up onto his truck and beat a hasty retreat. Later, after he’s told his tale, people will come to the forest searching for the brown bear who can talk, but even as she walks away from the old man, Kekoa’s fur begins to fall away. Brown fur turns white. Her head and paws grow though her claws also shift within her paws, becoming smaller.
She lifts her head. The river is calling, but so, too, is a new voice from the North. She is not to stay here, the protector realizes even as the squirrels, birds, possums, bunnies, and numerous other animals applaud her bravery. Her mission here is completed, but she will be needed again. She turns her head into the North wind. She hears the voice again and obeys. The great, white polar bear rumbles off toward the North, never to be seen again by her friends, her family, or the humans who will seek her, the enchanted, talking bear, for hundreds of years.
The End
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2017-11-05 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-08 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-30 03:22 am (UTC)Also, really like when the bear changed - very cool! I am now off to look for images for your banner. (I got a subscription to a public domain sight, so it's a lot easier to find pics for original works now :-)
no subject
Date: 2018-02-01 07:15 pm (UTC)