Title: Friendship that lasts
Author: LucridLucifel
Genre: One shot, drabble, gen.
Rating: G
Fandom: The Jungle Book
A/N: Disney classics will always be in my heart.
Summary: Baloo and Mowgli have a moment to reflect on the facts of life.
Friendship that lasts
Mowgli: You eat ants?
Baloo: You better believe it. And you're gonna *love* the way they tickle.
-Disney's The Jungle Book; 1969.
"You are strange for a bear."
"Of course. Can't deny the truth. What makes you think bears can't have fun?" I said, with a smile.
"Do you always walk around shaking your fuzzy bottom like that?" Mowgli asked once more the many train of curious questions.
Bears, according to Mowgli, aren't "allowed" to say or do unbear-like acts. It was the constant talks they, and by "they" it is implied as the villagers, brainwashed Mowgli into thinking.
Mowgli was never going to be completely be accepted by the humans. It hurt me to know this bitter truth. "Why shouldn't I? Is it weird in a bad way?" I inquired and emphasized it with a few cra-azzy cool moves I picked up from King Louie. I, am, of course, the waay better dancer than that or ape.
Mowgli thought about it for a moment. He was mulling over his thoughts and replied,"No. I don't think so. I never thought it was weird."
I stopped and walked over to Mowgli. I scooped up my little man-cub in my arms and cradled Mowgli. "Good to know."
"I wish everyone else thought so too." Mowgli frowned. He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the human village he lived for the last 8 months. There was a loneliness in his eyes that couldn't be shaken off.
Mowgli was the Jungle Boy. A feral child. As much as the other female man-cub kept him company, he couldn't completely integrate with humans.
I tried going to Mowgli's village a couple of times, despite the warnings and scoldings of the panther Bagheera, to visit him, but the humans were not happy about it. They were scared, screaming, running around for their lives. The humans were not nice or friendly to us fuzzy folks as Mowgli was.
It made our visits impossible sometimes.
Mowgli felt more comfortable with us animal folk out there in the jungle. Mowgli occasionally escaped for a few hours at a time from the human village to see his jungle friends.
"Baloo? You won't ever leave?"
"Leave where?"
I lived in a cave within the jungle. Sometimes I lived in the tree tops or on a nice bed of leaves. The jungle is my home.
"Where else would I go?" I said.
Mowgli reached out to hold one of my paws. He was careful to not graze my sharp claws. His tiny little tan hands where small next to my paw. Hairless and funny looking. As funny as I thought it was, I tried not to follow that train of thought.
Mowgli needs me now. "Don't worry about it. I will always be in the jungle. You know I will be around, man-cub," I said cheerfully.
Mowgli smiled for the first time in a while. "I can't really be upset by that then. You're my big papa bear, after all."
The End.