And Such Are Stones

1. Bear Necessities

Oh Atmos, son of man an Lord,

Where do you get your tales?

Said, "From corner of every rocky shore,

An every glen an dale."

(excerpt from the poem, "Atmos" in the writings of Nissenger the Large, Scribe of the Ethos)

I asked him once that very question while I was again spendin' time with the adopted family of Atmos. "Where do you get all those wonderful stories?" It's probably one of the most asked questions in the known universe. It's right up there with, "Why are we here?" or "What happens when we die? I think he always answers it in a similar fashion. He said, "In all the worlds o' the Mother ... An in each an ev'ry cranny that ya may not have ever even heard of ... Each Pearl has a voice, an each voice has a story all to its own."

The story that I plan on givin' you today is one of those little pearls that he told me after we were listenin' to a musical rendition of the "Ballad of the Bear." Now, that one was done by one of those travelin' troupes that make their livin' gatherin' songs and then gettin' other people to pay 'em for spittin' 'em back out again. Not a bad gig, I expect, but if I was with 'em, I have a feelin' that I'd have eaten 'em all into the Debter's Rowe in no time.

Those guys are all skinny, and prancy, and fancy, and ... never mind them. I wouldn't like all that "not knowin'" about where the next meal is comin' from. I ain't no little snowflake that can nibble on a sprout and expect it to give me any kind of sustenance. That's all I got to say about that.

Anyway, while I was listenin', I thought about the content of the story within the ballad, and there were several questions I had never even thought about before. It might have been the close proximity of the great Atmos that caused my mind to start spinning. He has that way of gettin' you to think about even the little things.

The question that I was ponderin' about mostly was about the Bear himself. I know he was a Shapeshifter, but from what I know about the Shifters, they have to 'print on a livin' creature to save that form in their arsenal of potential shifts. If there are no cave bears that are that big, or that powerful, how in the Mother's name can he shift into it?

I thought it was a very noteworthy question, and evidently, so did Atmos. He proceeded to tell me a story of the Bear and how he came to be called that. This is pretty much what he told me. Of course, I had to change the intonation of the telling because we all know that Atmos has such a strange accent that it's hard to say everything exactly how he told it. I still tried my best to keep the story intact and as close as possible to the story that Atmos gave me.

Nissenger, the Large, Scribe of the Ethos

The boy slowly slipped into the crack. This was the third cave he had found today, but there still hadn't been any luck so far. Those little cave mushrooms were being particularly hard to find this season. Malkin wasn't about to give up, though. The Grandmother of his Clan wasn't too keen on quitters, and she was quick to show her displeasure.

It was a tight cleft between the sides of a broken cliff face that had separated in some ancient upheaval. It was so tight that Malkin thought about shifting into something that could slip through the crack a little easier. He didn't make the shift, but he did have to blow out his breath to allow room for his chest to make it inside.

There wasn't much light here, and he lit the first of the torches. He didn't like to do this inside the caves because sometimes there wasn't much air to breathe already. The flame of a torch was a greedy gobbler of available oxygen. Using the glow crystals was usually much better, but there were only a few other ways to make light without them. You could use magic, you could light a torch ... or you could just shift into a creature that could see better in the dark.