The last foresaken bear

Hope is not good

This was the last house we had in mind to find Brimm. But as we saw the dying fire, we knew that he was gone. The second we came to a hold; I heard the sound of Philla shifting and her scream was heartbreaking. Timothy and the rest of the "pack" also shifted to support her. Now I was the only one at animal appearance, so I hid behind a massive tree to shift. Nobody should see me shifting, they wouldn't understand. When I shifted the first time ever, my family rejected me for my "demons", but I have no demons, only my hair looks like it's burning when I shift. And I think even as we are like family, they would also reject me, my people are not that tolerant and I'd never ask why.

As I stepped slowly towards Philla and Dee, her sister which supported her to stand upright, I noticed that half of my friends started to search for a dead body in the ash. I hoped that they wouldn't find Brimm.

I knew that Philla would be heartbroken to lose her best friend, but still I wasn't prepared for the intensity of her grief. When I was at her reach, she jumped into my arms and I almost fell.

"Shsh" I mumbled in her gold shimmering hair, "it'll be alright, we'll find him. You'll see! Maybe he could escape and is stumbling around here. You know him, he isn't the smartest, but he escapes whenever he can!" It was clear that neither she nor I believed what I said, but it helped her becoming calmer and drying her tears. She took a deep breath and the others went back to us. "I don't know if it's good or bad, but there's no body in the ash and no sign he was here. I think we should give up!" Tailor said. Dee looked angry at him, "WE. DO. NOT. GIVE. UP!! Have I made myself clear?! Brimm is one of our beloved fellows, we are not betraying him by giving up so easy!" It was kind of funny to see little Dee that mature, but I hesitated to show my amusement. Her animal appearance was not that small and innocent as her human appearance. In fact, it was terrifying, to see the little pure Dee shifting into a massive green dragon with eyes like fire. Even Brimm, our beloved but too tall friend, looked in his animal appearance like a toy compared to Dee.

As I was holding back my smile, Timothy shifted into his animal appearance, a lion, and roared till everyone was quiet. Then he spoke into our mental group link: "As Dee said we do not give up on our friends, but here and now we are powerless. We should go back to the academy and rest." The academy was a place for beings like myself, who do not have a family to life with. It also was the place where we met for our meetings. WE ARE ALWAYS IN TROUBLE!

We all shifted and ran back to the academy. When we were there, we all went into our beds and rested a bit.

"Lee, wake up, we have no time! The fire is one second behind us!" Not a nice wakeup-method, I hate it when Glory does that, but wait... didn't she mention a fire and why am I smelling something like... SMOKE! I jumped out of my bed and almost ran Glory over. Together we jumped out of the window, shifted and ran into the woods. After a mile or so, we saw the others or rather saw the flying dragon. It's always the same, you look for my friends you got to be looking for the giant dragon and you find all of them. I think it's our animal nature that have to protect the youngest. In our case it is Dee, so whenever we have to go somewhere in a hurry, all of us are around Dee.

When we reached the others, we heard Dee in the link: "Do not stop, hurry up! The enemy is behind, so we have to fly blind." All of us panicked and ran, but the lunar queen made us ran in the same direction. After hours of running we had to make a break to eat and rest. But some of us couldn't find food, because they were used to cooked stuff or could only eat fish because of their animal appearance. That was the moment our grief from Brimm hit us hard, he was the only one who knowhow to fish with nothing but ourselves.

The only thing we are excellent in is conversations and arguing, so, of course, we started arguing. Till we heard the growling from around us, in shock our instincts appeared and we built a circle around Philla and Dee. The wind howled and the trees danced, some of us were terrified. Then the growling became louder and the bush moved and a pack of bears showed up. You might wonder "a pack of bears"? Look it's a world with shapeshifters and these are a social species, when you're smart you know that they're bear-shifters.

But one bear looked familiar. "Can it be? Can it be that ... that this is... Brimm?" Philla's voice went through our link. We shifted into human appearance. Even if it weren't Brimm we had no chance of defending ourselves against five massive bears. But to our surprise the bears also shifted into their human appearance and we saw that one of them, he looked like the alpha-bear, reminded us of Brimm. We all looked at him with eyes wide open, he looked like a close relative from our friend.

"Good evening, Moy dorogoy. You must be exhausted. Come with me, my people will look after yours." I couldn't believe what he said. He had to be kidding. His Russian accent was confusing, but do I look that innocent and naive, to follow a complete stranger and leave my friends behind? I growled of anger and G, my twin brother, hold me back. Timothy took the word: "Do you stupid bears really believe that she is our leader? A true alpha? No, she isn't, she is our stupid little puppy and out of your range. But we have another question for you. Why do you, big fat alpha bear, look like our friend?" – "I do not know, why I, Ivan Gordon Ivanovic, look like your stupid little friend." As he spoke his face went closer and closer at Timothy's face. I think it should scare him, but from my view he looked like sweet little grandma. A Russian grandma of course. I smirked, now the big fat bear tried to scare us with methods from kindergarten. Hilarious!

The other bears saw my smirk and one of them twinkled in my direction, I froze. Why was that funny teddy bear so disloyal and sympathized with me? Even his boss guy obviously didn't like us. But he looked like a funny companion with his long blond hair and the charming smile.

After a little bit of power games, the Russian grannies took us to their home. I thought they'd life in a small, dirty cave or so, but we came to a huge mansion with high tech security. Neither me nor my pack did know what to say, but the surprise was perfect when we saw the mom of Brimm.

"Charlie, what are YOU doing here? These bears are dangerous, cruel creatures!", Timothy shouted. Charlie answered in a surprised, but angry, voice: "Don't call my nephews cruel! They are not the greatest gentleman, but they do have some good behavior. Ivan and Victor show our guest around!" We all saw the humiliation in the face of the bossy grannie, but nevertheless he showed us the mansion and our bedrooms. We searched for Charlie but she did kind of disappear.