Marcella, Blood Tight

Chapter 2

She reached the cave as the second sun was in the process of rising into the sky. The stars were fading as the sky began to lighten. She thought to herself aloud with a raspy voice, "I hope this cave works out this time, the last time I found a cave, it was already occupied by a small pride of lions. They were not too happy about my dropping by, I still have the scars from that encounter".

She looked at the cave and turned to survey the surroundings. It gave a magnificent view of the forest on one side, on the other an even better view of the whole village. She looked out between the two views and saw the bush forest that the lumberjacks were working in. There were paths, of a sort, leading from the cave in both directions.

From the mouth of the cave there was quite a steep slope of stone down to a plain. It made her think of a cave hidden behind a waterfall. All evidence implied that this was a waterfall but there was no water. Above it is green moss-like growths and directly below the entrance there is a hollowed-out part which was now grown over leading to faint tracks towards the forest.

She turned to face the inside of the cave. She is struck by how perfectly suited for her it is. There is a large cavern and from within it you can easily see the forest, plain and village. Off the main cavern there were quite a few smaller caverns. Some with stone outcrops where she can make a semi-comfortable bed. On the edge of the main entrance there were a few outcroppings like seats where she could put a table.

Then it hit her. An overwhelming sense of something being with her in the cave. It was hidden deeper in the cave than she realized as the cave went on for quite a distance. She was only planning on the immediate area. She slowly turned around and saw it. Fear etched on every inch of her face. She immediately knew she was in mortal danger.

She knew instantly what it was. Tall, brown, hairy, sharp teeth, long snout, black eyes. All of which focusing directly on her. She instantly knew she was standing between the only exit and the bear who will be more than happy to rip out her throat.

She looked at the bear, and the bear looked at her. It started towards her roaring but did not sound like a roar to her. MINE!! It started to circle towards her. Not a menacing approach but more like defending its turf.

She opened her mouth to say GO AWAY! But what came out was a low voiced, guttural roar like the bears. It stopped, twitched its head, looked at her again and started to advance again. This time it was directly at her. She must have offended it, 'damn' she thought.

She tried to step to the left to avoid it, but the bear stepped right to block her. It was not going to let her go. She had no escape path.

The gold speck in her iris then started to cover her entire iris. Her lips went up savagely. She went to say STOP, but the guttural sound came out like it did before. The enormous black bear stopped its advance, twitched its ear. It re-advanced on her again. This time in earnest. This time she yelled NOW. At that the bear stopped advancing on her. It shook its head, like trying to clear bees from its ears. It took a step backwards, lowered itself onto its paws like a human would do into a lunge. The bear supplicated itself to her. She frowned. This had never happened to her before.

The bear then plodded over to her, nuzzled her and roared gently one last time MARCELLA! The bear backed out of the cave, turned around, and went on it's way.

She is in awe at what just happened. She could talk to bears! How great is that. She was a little bit confused how it worked, but she knew she would work it out, eventually.

She had experienced a similar thing, but with chipmunks. She was sitting in a meadow one day when she started to here little noises, like talking, but not normal human language. She had looked around for awhile and then had spied some chipmunks fighting over nuts. It was like they were saying MINE! She had wondered then, as she wondered now what other hidden tricks this morphing thing was to have.