"Oh, yes please!" Damascus said brightly, nodding. "You should teach me more animals, too! I have the feeling that there are sooo many from Prussia that I don't know about."
"I definitely will!" she agreed. Then she thought for a moment as they approached the campsite, giving her brother a contemplative look. "...Do you know what a bear looks like? Boris was making you get all scared of them before, but if you've never been here before, you don't know what they look like, right?"
Schadel thought long and hard on the question. She could just barely make out the clearing up ahead now, but she stopped regardless as she mulled over. Boris did make bears seem kind of scary, and most of the human kids she overheard made them out to be especially terrifying.
But from the little of bears that she had seen, they didn't seem that bad.
"I don't think so," she slowly said. "They're kind of...fluffy. You just have to respect them! They can be dangerous if you upset them, but people can be dangerous if you upset them, too."
She glanced down at herself, then at her brothers.
It couldn't hurt...right?
She carefully put both Engel and Damascus down.
"I'll show you!" she excitedly said. Throughout the conversation, she had been making sure to speak in a language Damascus would understand and then repeating in German so Engel would get it, and she made sure to do it, too. Then he wouldn't get scared and confused when she suddenly turned into one.
After a very quick transformation, Schadel stood before the two as a bear on her hindlegs. She was on the bigger side, but bears could be big - it wasn't that much of a difference.
"This is what a bear looks like!" she said, spinning around and nearly falling in the process. "They live in forests, and mama bears always protect their young. Plus, bears can roar. That might be why people find them scary."
She thought carefully on what a bear roar sounded like, and then gave him her best interpretation. It wasn't that loud, right?
xXx
Edward turned his gaze away from his brother as he heard what sounded almost like a roar. Out of instinct, he went over to William and clutched the teddy bear close to his chest as he returned to his spot on the edge of the clearing.
James's heart fluttered in fear. He had been convinced that bears weren't in the forest, but he couldn't think of any reason there would be a roar like that if there wasn't one. Why would Schadel do that, if she knew Boris's fear?
He stilled his lips which had begun to tremble and stood up straight.
"My papa said not to run into things. We have to think this through," he said, though he had no idea what there was to think through. "I-I heard it too. But maybe it's far away... and just... loud."
Fascinating. No matter how many times Boris tried the old 'slip in an apology directly after an insult' trick, it never, ever worked. Even now he wondered just when he would finally get that through his stupid, stupid head.
Then a throaty roar resounded through the trees. Boris froze, and forgot everything.
It was the bear. It was divine retribution. Of course it was. It was divine retribution, for making up stories-
No. No. It was Schadel! It must have been. After the whole scare before (in which Boris had been only mildly concerned), a bear felt like a step down from a Martian. It was ridiculous. The whole thing was ridiculous, and completely unrelated to his slights against bears. Absolutely. Boris was sure of it, but he said a silent prayer just in case.
Then James the smart one thought that it was real, and he was convinced. It was only what he said afterward that allowed him to stay, for lack of a better word, calm.
"Yes." Boris agreed insistively. "It could be far away."
"But... but if it isn't..." He looked down, wincing. Then swallowed, and put his brave face back on. "If it isn't, there's trees."
But he looked at his brothers, and only felt more helpless than before. Edward was little. Could he climb a tree high enough to hide from a bear? Even if all of them could, what then, could they just wait for it to go away? And what about Engel, Damascus and Schadel?
"...Schadel could...fight a bear, if she needed to, right?" Boris asked nervously.
Bad souls have born better sons, better souls born worse ones -St Vincent
"...I think so," Edward managed to get out, nervously eying the dark woods. He scooted a little closer to both of his brothers. "She was able to make herself look like a Martian, so she has to be able to do something that would work against a bear."
He took a deep breath.
"...But I don't think that bear was far away," he said.
He glanced over at Boris and James, feeling another jolt of fear when he saw the worry and nervousness on their faces.
"We...We wouldn't have heard it that clearly if it wasn't nearby," Edward pointed out. He had never really seen a bear - he had only heard stories, back before his mom and him had moved to New York City. He knew they were supposed to be scary, but he didn't know much besides that.
And that made him feel absolutely terrified.
"...Should...Should we go and find the rest of our siblings?" he finally asked, glancing at his brothers again. "If they didn't hear the roar, then they'd be in trouble. We would just have to be smart about it and not go running in there - if...if we wanted to go in."
Damascus grinned at this, delighted, and clapped his hands. He wasn't expecting bears to be this cute! They weren't scary at all!
"Fantastic!" he cheered, and wasted no time in circling Schadel, taking in her bear form at all angles.
When he deemed himself ready, he shifted himself into a significantly smaller bear- closer to a cub, as a matter of fact.
"And they roar, too! That sounds a lot like the animals we have at home.", he attempted to say, though it only came out as a series of little growls. He paid no mind, only stumbled onto his back paws and let out a roar of his own.
"...I think there's another bear now," he managed to get out, his voice barely above a whisper. He glanced over at Boris and James. He had already been uncertain about his plan to warn their other siblings, but now he was really nervous about the idea.
xXx
"Aw!" Schadel exclaimed. Her form switched back to its actual one as she watched her brother do his best attempt at being a bear. Even the roar and growls were very nice, they were also kind of cute, too - although that was probably because he was so tiny compared to the form she had used. "You make a really good bear!"
James struggled to hide the growing stress he was beginning to feel. "Maybe... maybe Schadel turned into a bear at it. Maybe the bears are making friends. It doesn't sound... violent."
"It's a stuffed animal," he said. "You don't have to know what something sounds like to have it as a toy - I'm not the only kid who has one without ever having seen a bear."
James frowned. He knew the toy wasn't real, but he was surprised that Edward hadn't seen a real bear. He'd seen a bear before, from afar. His dad had told him to be quiet as they watched it climb a tree.
"I mean... I guess," he mumbled, looking back out into the forest, listening for more sounds coming from the bear(s?).
Did nobody know anything about bears? It made sense that Edward wouldn't, he was a city boy. But now Boris was being confronted with the concept that just because James was somebody he looked up to, that didn't mean he knew everything. He did not like that concept. But there was a silver lining to James not knowing everything. It meant that he might be wrong about ideas that Boris didn't like.
It was bad enough for there to be a bear at all. He wasn't going to let them multiply.
"There's no reason it can't be the same bear." he said stubbornly.
"And it might only be Schadel again, anyway." he added.
Bad souls have born better sons, better souls born worse ones -St Vincent
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