05-21-2023, 04:05 PM
It is Spring -
She awakens - -
Bear - mare; it makes no difference.
No cub or foal has she carried through winter’s hibernation in many moons.
She is old; grizzled and graying.
Ought to be no more than bones on a mountainside in a cavern.
But she’s not.
And everything looks so green, so new. It even smells so good… there is a faint shimmer of grizzly over the mare as if the transformation is about to take place but then her shape settles and smooths itself out - four hooves, mane and tail, and nostrils that suck greedily at the air.
(She’ll honey-hunt and salmon-fish later! Favorite pastimes as the grizzly bear smacks its jaws together inside her, sharing her halved soul.)
What gives her pause is the lack of scent that tells of kith and kin - -
Their names a litany of prayer she refuses to utter, as if by sheer willpower and love alone, she can keep them tethered to the here and now, and not in remembrance as those that have gone before.
(Balto. Ryan. Tickaani. Clayton. Fiadh. Thistly.)
Lovers. Sister. Children.
Their names found her in the blush of morning light that stole across the land. Such power in them is enough to almost trip the more into her ursine form to escape the flood of faces and names and love that surged into her heart and mind. A tide of remembrance like that is the inescapable killing kind that slays what is left of soul and self.
Keeper, like she always has, perseveres.
Head tipped to the dawn in almost childish wonder, as if not having seen one through these eyes in quite some time.
(She always looked through the piggish squint of the bear — )
It is beautiful and she admires it alone amidst the chirp of birds populating the morning.
(If this was animation, she’d almost bear a strong resemblance to a famous cartoon equine of feral nature with mane and tail streaming behind in the wind in a proud stance.)
But it’s just Keeper, come again and already dreaming of berry-picking in her bear-form.