Pollan was a talker.
Aurum wasn’t necessarily opposed to it as a character trait; she enjoyed conversation well enough. Excessive chattiness she found a little bit grating sometimes, but it had never been a pet peeve. Now though it seemed as though she could not hold back wave after wave of annoyance at Pollan’s seemingly incessant narrative.
He talked about the trees, how green they were this time of year. About the weather – wasn’t it just so lucky they had had clear skies so far? About his fears that they might never find the crystal, always followed immediately by his assurances and his rationalizations for why they definitely would. It was driving Aurum to distraction. And yet, she was grateful. Annoyance was preferable to the alternative.
The alternative, of course, was to be thinking about what she definitely did not want to be thinking about. About a missing someone, and why exactly that person was missing, and whether or not it might actually have been a mistake, and exactly how that conversation had gone, and the look on that persons face when –
But anyway. Inane stories about potato deliveries were definitely preferable.
The travel was not difficult. That’s not to say Aurum found it comfortable, exactly; it was a far cry from the life she had been used to. But it was very different from her panicked flight through the forest after the witch had attacked, and as Pollan pointed out every few minutes, the weather was fair and their path relatively smooth. Walking through the ferns and other underbrush, Aurum was reluctantly listening to Pollan explain for the hundredth time just exactly how important fire magic was to him when she saw a shadow out of the corner of her eye. She came to an abrupt stop, raising her hand to stop Pollan as well, and to his credit, he fell silent and halted immediately.
Keeping her breaths steady and quiet, Aurum peered into the dappled shadows of the afternoon woods. A light breeze ruffled the leaves, the motion of the branches contrasting with a stationary figure, and Aurum focused on it. It was about a hundred paces away, and stared back, its furred brown ears twitching. A bear.
Pollan hadn’t spotted it yet, looking confusedly along Aurum’s line of sight. For a moment, Aurum froze. Should she tell Pollan, or would speaking draw the bear over? Should they run? No – the thought triggered a memory of her lessons on woodland safety. First, speak to the bear calmly. Then she was supposed to slowly wave her arms, making herself as big as possible. It was a brown bear, so if it attacked, play dead.
Letting out a breath, and raising her arms to start waving them, she started to speak. “Stay calm, Pollan. There is a brown bear ahead of us. It’s spotted us and is watching from right over there. We need to make ourselves as big as possible and slowly back away. We should speak quietly while we do so. ”
Pollan had inhaled sharply when Aurum had started to talk, but seemed familiar with the concepts she was explaining, nodding very slightly and starting to speak when she paused. “It’s very big. I once saw a brown bear when I was about ten years old, I was out with my sister in the woods looking for mushrooms when a mother with her cubs just sort of appeared in front of us. I didn’t know what to do, but my sister did. She…”
God, can this man talk, Aurum thought, amused and exasperated and very, very frightened of the bear which had begun to slowly walk towards them, chuffing disconcertingly. It was moving faster than they were, but not charging.
Pollan grew more nervous, his voice trembling just a bit in fear as he stumbled over his words, seeming to lose his train of thought. Aurum picked up talking, saying the words she remembered her teacher saying. “It doesn’t want trouble. If it realizes we aren’t normal prey animals it should leave quietly. It might be nervous and bluffing. It probably wants to be left alone.” At this, the bear growled, ears going back. It was close enough now that Aurum could see the saliva dripping from its jaws. The bear was huge, a reddish tint to its fur around its neck and shoulders, black claws obvious in the clear light.
She kept talking determinedly, going from talking to herself and Pollan to talking from the bear without consciously choosing to. “It’s just bluffing. It wants us to leave. If it was hunting us it would charge. We will leave, I promise. We don’t want any trouble. You need to keep on going your own way and we have places to be ourselves. Let’s all just stay calm…”
As she spoke, an image of Alice frowning at her popped unbidden into her mind. What if Alice had run into a bear on her way back, alone? Did she know what to do? Her voice started to shake, much worse than Pollan’s had before, and he seamlessly started to speak as she trailed off.
“Yes, friend, we don’t want any trouble –” And suddenly, the bear lunged, charging forward the last twenty paces, one eye flashing, the other scarred shut by some old wound, the dirt flying as it ran. Somehow, Aurum managed not to scream.
And then, the bear turned away, and left them standing shell-shocked. It sauntered off, as though newly confident now that it had frightened the two intruders half to death. Maybe more than half to death.
Aurum and Pollan stood frozen and silent for minutes after it left. As the shock wore off, Aurum’s legs turned to jelly, and she slid bonelessly to the ground. Pollan started to laugh, quiet but borderline hysterical.
“We did it,” he said, relief saturating every syllable. Rather than triumphant, Aurum felt empty. She couldn’t fully shake the image of Alice’s face, frowning at her in reproach. She wasn’t sure what memory that was exactly.
“Right. We did it.” She muttered the words resignedly. There was no way to know if Alice was alright, and that was her own fault. “We did it.”
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