The Bear Shifter’s Promise

by Martha Woods

  She held her hands up, more shocked than anything by now, but knowing that if this wasn’t to devolve into disaster that she would have to make herself understood rather fast. “I’m… running away? What are you doing here?”

  “I’m running away too…” Orson answered, “Why are you running away?”

  “My clan betrayed me,” She said sadly, though she chanced taking a step forward as she said it. Luck seemed to be on her side, he didn’t turn tail and run, rather he took a step back towards her. “That’s why I just woke up in a cave and… not in a bed like I usually do. I’m guessing that you might be in the same boat? Is that why you were snoring here curled up like a big cat?”

  “My clan betrayed me too!” He said, with an almost childlike amount of glee at the understanding, “At least… I think they did, a few of them tried to kill me at least, that counts enough for me.”

  “Yeah, that’s fair enough,” She said, looking around the cave for a moment before she sat down next to where he’d been laying, the spot still slightly warm from his heat, “Well come on, take a seat. Looks like we’ve got some more time to talk now, huh?”

  “Yeah… looks like it.” After taking a bit to consider it, he shrugged his shoulders weakly and joined her in sitting, legs splayed out in front of him to ease the pain on his ribs. He’d clearly grimaced, or at least done something to give away that he was in pain, because the next thing he knew she was leaning in close with her head tilted inquisitively, looking him over from top to bottom.

  “What’s wrong?” She asked, “Are you hurt?”

  “Yeah I… took a couple of hard hits before I got away, they were really determined to mess me up in my own house.” Pulling the edge of his shirt up, he was annoyed to see that the skin was already purple and blotchy, his ribs a mass of bruising both externally and internally. “I didn’t notice it right away but yeah, looks like somethings probably broken. What about you?”

  “Hmm?” She asked, screwing her eyes up in confusion, “What about me?”

  “Well… you’re bleeding?”

  Looking down at her hands, the edges of her fingers had been sliced open on the edges of the wood from her prison, the effort of wrenching out a wall with her fingers as the major anchor had been more than enough to leave her with a streak of red down each palm, thankfully having slowed to an occasional drip or two when she moved the wrong way.

  “It’s what led me here,” Orson said, “I thought I was tracking a wounded animal, then I was too exhausted to actually go after it. Funny that we keep running into each other huh?”

  She chuckled, clearly thinking differently but not wanting to spoil the mood. “We’re going to have to find something to track soon, we’re both running on fumes it looks like, and I don’t know how much longer you’ll be useful with those ribs.”

  “Oh, thanks very much,” He drawled, “I can handle myself if I have to, I just need to get a meal in me to actually be at my best. I take it you know how to start a fire?”

  “Of course I do, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I just don’t want to do it.” He grinned, placing one hand against the wall behind him and pushing himself to his feet with a gasp. “You want to stay here another night? Or should we start looking for another place to stay?”

  “We?” Jennifer asked, “Why do you say that?”

  “Well we’re in the same boat aren’t we? Trying to stop the two of our clans from killing each other and screwing things up even more? Or do you want to just leave all this behind and run off to somewhere else?”

  “Honestly? With the way they’ve treated us after everything? I wouldn’t mind just leaving and letting them ruin each other, but… I guess that would probably make me feel extremely guilty huh?” She laughed, thumping her forehead with her knuckle, “It’s stupid caring about things.”

  “Well if we’re actually going to manage to help any of them we need to help ourselves first, we’re not going to be any good frozen to death out in the forest somewhere, we need food and shelter.” Tapping his temple, he stared off into the distance as he thought over his options. “I have a small cabin to the south where I liked to go to do private work, but that’ll be one of the first places they’ll look for me. But maybe…”

  He snapped his fingers, grinning and pointing in what direction he figured was north. “My friend has a cabin of his own that he and his wife like to go to relax, it should be stocked up with food and medical supplies if we need them, it’s about sixty miles through thick forest and across a couple of rivers, so the water should help to disguise our scent.”

  “And this friend of yours?” She asked, cocking her eyebrow, “Do you think that you can trust him?”

  “I thought that you were all about trusting people and seeing the best in them?”

  “Yea, but then one of them choked me out, threw me in a box and now I’m sitting in a damp cave with water on my ass. You could say that my faith has been shaken a little bit.”

  “That’s fair enough,” Orson said, shrugging his shoulders, “Honestly? I don’t know if we can trust him, but he’s probably not going to be anywhere near the cabin anyway, he’s neck deep in work right now in the camp. And if he is… well, we can deal with that when we come to it, if we have to.”

  “That’s encouraging, but whatever, let’s go.” She flicked her head at the entrance, cracking her knuckles in anticipation, “You sure you’ll be able to make it sixty miles?”

  “I can push it, if I really have to, but it might be better if we get halfway and then make camp, we could both use something to eat, don’t you reckon?”

  She nodded, taking him by the hand and leading him out into the frost, blowing a breath made of mist as she looked up into the sky. “Which way do you think is north?”

  “You don’t have a compass?”

  “Why would I have a compass Ranger Mike?” Squinting and trying to see any of the tiny signs that she could remember, she settled on the faint outline of a star visible through the low morning light, slowly fading as the sun rose higher in the sky. “It’s… this way, I think. Come on.”

  “You think?”

  “It’s better than anything you’ve got.”

  “I suppose that’s fair.”

  Though they were tempted to shift and run the entire way, they wanted to conserve their energy at least until they managed to find some other form of life, a deer or even a rabbit that they could cook and eat to replenish some of their energy. Greedy mouthfuls of water from the river were about all they could get at the moment, the cold sliding down their throats and shocking their insides, the perfect wake up that they needed to get the job done. Starting in the direction that they’d decided was north, they set off in a half run, half jog, making good ground as they ignored the aches in their bodies threatening to distract them.

  The two shifters had better endurance than the average human, as a rule, but a few years of fighting in the war had led to routines that didn’t exactly drop in peacetime. Sprinting, sparring, these were things that they’d been trained in and had never really given up, aware from personal experience just how fragile their situation was between their clans, and now that the fuse had been lit it was a good opportunity to see if they could outrun the detonation.

  Branches were stepped upon, trees shouldered into, rivers stumbled across, and yet they showed no signs of stopping even once, a stubborn desire to live and make everything right again pushing them forward with a tenacity that they could hardly remember possessing before. Perhaps they were just bored of everything that had happened before, in a lot of ways this was maybe the most interesting thing that had happened to either of them in years.

  Then again the fear of death always made a given situation interesting, so maybe it was a little biased in that favor.

  About twenty miles into their trek they could tell that they were starting to lose their energy fast, a few mouthfuls from a nearby river only giving them enough to crest the next hill and keep standing, though it
wasn’t going to be long before they weren’t even going to be able to do that.

  “I can’t smell a goddamn thing,” Orson panted, leaning forward with his hands on his knees, “Not a deer, not a bird, nothing. We’re out in the middle of goddamn nowhere and there’s not even any food.”

  She was about to nod in agreement when her nose perked, a slight hint of something other hitting her senses and drawing her attention to the west. It was faint, almost mistaken for just the thought of another animal, but soon enough it began to move slowly, without a care in the world. “There’s something over that way,” She said, “About three miles, walking towards the north.”

  “Three miles?” He said, astonishment clear, “You can smell that far? How the hell didn’t you sense me when I was near?”

  “I was asleep, do you usually smell things when you’re asleep?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck, pushing off and following her lead towards their prey. “That’s a fair point I guess.”

  Once they reached the one-mile mark even Orson could smell it, a deer that had recently fed, but there was no hint of any sort of milk or young upon it. This was merely a lone deer, without a family to take care of, there would be no harm done to the rest of the wildlife if they partook in their meal. Of course, they would respect its sacrifice in the name of their survival, just as they respected all the animals that fell in order that they may live, but this deer could possibly be the most important prey that they would ever catch in their lives. In a weird sort of way, they wanted to honor its memory.

  “I’m slower, I know that for a fact,” Orson said, crouched low next to Jennifer, “I’m not going to be able to keep up with you, or even the deer in the shape that I’m in, so I’ll circle around and chase it towards you. Once it gets close you spring into action, it should be no trouble at all for you to take it down huh?”

  “None at all,” She replied, nodding her head, “Get it close and I’ll bring it down before it can even see me, I’ll just wait for your mark.”

  They each took a deep breath before emptying their lungs, centering themselves as they split off in their own directions, Orson keeping the deer to his right as he circled around keeping a mile between them, low to the ground and breathing slow so as not to create any noise to ruin the hunt. As soon as he shifted that would be the last stretch of energy that he would be able to manage, so it was important to do it at the right moment with as little room for error as possible.

  “Alright, here we go,” He said to himself, the deer now exactly north of him, “Let’s hope that this works.”

  The ground quaked underneath him as he shifted into his bear form, a low rumble in his chest that transformed into a snarl as he pushed himself forward and sprinted towards the deer. Even with half a mile still left between them it wasn’t hard for the deer to both hear and smell him, darting off to the east to try and outmaneuver him. He matched its path, heavy feet slamming into the dirt while he chased it down, changing direction every time that the deer did, leading it perfectly towards Jennifer, who was lying in wait for a sign of the prey.

  Low to the ground, eyes sparkling in the light, Jennifer had already shifted and rolled herself through the mud, disguising her scent under a layer of dirt that would hopefully give her a half second advantage, legs twitching in excitement at the feeling of the two of them getting closer. She heard the shuffle and cracking of bushes and branches nearby, head flicking to the direction of the deer before she heard a resounding snarl, Orson crying out into the empty forest in an obvious sign to go ahead, just as their target burst through the bush.

  Completely unaware that there was a wolf only ten feet from it, the deer keep sprinting north, ears flicking before it stumbled in place, turning to see the form of the great wolf leaping out at them with hunger in their eyes, powerful jaws clamping around its neck and taking it down to the ground with a rough thud, its few seconds of struggling cut short as the wolf twisted her jaws and snapped its neck cleanly, legs twitching for a few moments before they too fell still.

  Orson skidded to a halt next to them, falling flat on his face and struggling to keep himself still on his feet, observing Jennifer letting the deer’s neck slip from between her teeth and slump down to the ground, the two of them looking at each other in a moment of joint satisfaction at a job well done. There was something else that Orson couldn’t quite put his finger on, nor could she, but for now they were more than content to allow themselves a moment of celebration.

  Jennifer flicked her head towards the north, picking the deer up between her teeth again and dragging it between them, obviously capable of doing this faster but wanting to allow Orson to keep up, his legs dragging through the dirt in his obvious exhaustion. They came to a small dip in the trees, a clearing that would be perfect for a campsite if they could only find some wood to make a fire, and with all the fallen trees around them that would be no trouble at all.

  Much as they both loved being in their other form, it came as a moment of relief when they shifted back to human and let themselves rest against the deer, breathing hard and smiling from the adrenaline pulsing through their veins. It had been a long time since either of them had been on a hunt, both because of responsibility and frustration with the other hunters, but now that they had a partner who could keep up with them or come up with a plan? They would have no problem with making this the first of many.

  “I’ll strip and prepare the deer,” Orson said, holding his hand up and displaying the claw on his index finger, “It’s not going to be a prime cut or anything, but I’m better than most at doing this. Do you mind finding some wood for the fire?”

  “I’ve got no problem at all with that,” She said, resting for just one more moment before she got to her feet, heading off in search of whatever fallen tree or trampled bunch of sticks that she could find. It was going to take more effort than usual to actually start the fire in the first place given they didn’t have any flint, but if push came to shove they could always eat the meat raw and deal with the consequences later. It would kill them like if they were humans, but with the fact that they could be considered halfway in between it was likely to get them some level of sick.

  And speaking honestly, Jennifer would be hard pressed to think of anything less attractive than scarfing down a mouthful of raw, bloody meat. She’d gotten used to cooking it first and that was going to be the priority.

  Orson meanwhile had successfully skinned it with a minimum of wastage or damage to the skin, it would make for a decent blanket for the night since it looked like it was going to be another cold one. With a fire and an improvised blanket it could almost be considered comfort. The meat that he’d gotten so far was stacked next to him in as neat a pile as he could manage, small cuts that would each make up what could be considered two meals for a regular human, but would really be only half a meal for him. Separating them into smaller cuts though would allow them to save more of the meat, and if by chance there happened to be no food at the cabin that they were going to it wouldn’t hurt to have a few nights worth of meals to fall back on as they made their escape. The cold and an improvised sling of deer skin would do very well at keeping it semi-fresh.

  Once Jennifer arrived back with an armful of wood and some kindling, they both began the long, arduous process of rubbing two sticks together to try and spark a flame, spending over an hour and a half of constant rubbing and blisters to their hands before they saw the first puff of smoke. They kept at it even as their hands started to shake from nervousness and the cold, the puff becoming a stream, before the fire sparked and lit up the kindling, passing to the rest of the wood and melting the frost around them. Orson collapsed backwards in thanks, Jennifer doing the same, before they picked up two of the cleanest sticks that they could find and speared themselves a cut each, roasting it over the fire just so long as they could bear before they tore into them ravenously, eyes rolling back in their heads at the feeling of food finally being back in their stomachs.

  An
d that was how they fell asleep, with the rest of the meat covered in a thick covering of deerskin and nestled next to each other, so exhausted from the day they’d had and the meal that was finally sitting in their stomachs that they couldn’t very well be bothered moving. At least there was little need for the blanket if they could share their warmth next to the fire, but when they woke up… it would likely be nighttime, and they would have a hard decision to make when that time came. Would they keep pushing on through the dark and the cold, or would they chance having another few hours to just rest and gather their strength.

  Either way, those were questions that could be answered another time, for now their eyes were closed, their chests were rising and falling steadily, they were in just about the best condition they could be.

  All things considered.

  Chapter 5

  Just as predicted, the moon was high in the sky and the fire was dwindling to embers when they next woke up. Rather than discuss anything just yet Jennifer reached over and grabbed another two logs, tossing them onto the fire and watching with rapt interest as they slowly took and went up in smoke, a roaring fire in front of them once more taking the bite off of the cold around them. Orson watched her as she settled back into place, the firelight reflecting and dancing off the flexing muscle in her bicep, muscles clearly solid and corded beneath skin so soft that it looked like the most delicate of paper. Appearances could definitely be deceiving, and though he had never considered her weak or incapable by any measure of the word, he could see just with that one look that she had been through a lot more than her happy attitude would indicate. Then again who hadn’t, most of the people who had never been touched by the war had been born after it had ended, if you had even just a few months in the world at that point you bore the scars of the conflict, sometimes literally, it was something that had swept in and encapsulated their lives so completely that the idea of having something outside of it even now… seemed impossible.