This is my first skimmons fic. I hope that you all like it!
The characters are not mine. All rights belong to Marvel.
Mama had always told us fantastical stories to fill our heads with wonderful dreams before bed time. It was always a new story, a different legend, except for one which she told every so often. The stories of the bear people were ones I had heard all my life growing up. My brothers and I consumed the tales told by her like starving chicks fed by the mother bird. Perhaps once, when I was very young, I believed them, but never to the extent my siblings did. Magic was something that simply didn't exist, though the fascination with the tales remained. I believed more in what I could see with my own eyes and what I could touch. Magic was unexplainable and therefore in my mind, nothing more than a figment, a story for children. We dared hope life would be forever happy, filled with fairy tales and the chance of magic. When mother died, taken by a swift illness of winter in my seventh year, all fantastical ideas in my mind faded with her. I stopped believing in fairy tales. I stopped believing in happy endings. I stopped believing in bear people…at least, until I saw one with my own eyes.
When I was nine, I loved to play in the field just beyond our home. In the spring it was laden with the most beautiful yellow flowers found for miles in any direction from the village. You could smell their sweet aroma all through the spring and summer time wherever you were, and from the top of the bell tower you could see the fields extend for miles. I played there often, examining the flowers for small insect friends. Life fascinated me. How one creature could be so large and another so small. How they lived, what they did.
Ladybugs were my favorite, and they covered the flowers, looking like little red spots against the yellow for two weeks out of the summer. I loved the other creatures I would come upon as well. Rabbits, birds, foxes, snakes, what have you. I loved to watch them with my youngest brother Fitz. My older brother Grant had more fun chasing them and trying to catch them.
Once he had chased a fox beyond the flower field and to the river, and had our father not caught him, he would have passed the village boundary after the silly little beast. We had all been scolded quite severely at supper time, for beyond the field was a river, the boundary of our town, one that we were to never cross. Wild and dangerous things dwelled beyond the river and in the woods past, and instead of happy legends, monstrous stories filled our heads about them.
This particular day, our father had gone to town to sell his sheep's' wool, a cart filled four feet high with it. He had sheered the sheep for spring and the money from the wool would help us to buy crops for mother's garden, which we still kept up. He had left the three of us to play in the flower field, but we were not alone that day.
We often played hide-and-seek amongst the flowers and underbrush of the field and that bright spring day was no different. I was seeking, as being the middle child did sometimes have its disadvantages, and saw a rustle in a bush. Assuming it was my youngest brother who had so poorly hidden himself I went quickly to it. With a swift jerk I pulled back the bushes to uncover not my kin, but a cub. A bear cub.
It cried out, as I did, in fright and I released the bush and fell into my back. Its cries continued and in its confusion it sprang from the bush. My siblings all heard and came rushing to the source, but the cub had vanished into the flowers.
"What was that noise, Jemma?!"
"It sounded like an animal!"
I was awestruck. I did not know what to say. I did know that bears had not been seen within the town limits for a century. I sat, in stunned silence, until Fitz pestered the information from me. As I picked myself up from the ground at last, only four words left my lips, "It was a bear…"
My siblings were elated. We had never seen a bear before, in real life. All we knew of them were pictures in our legend book, and those carved into the walls of the town hall.
"I'm going to go tell father! Maybe we can see it again! Maybe we can catch it!" Grant exclaimed and dashed off into the flowers back towards the village before I could disallow it.
"We should look for the bear! I want to see it too!" Fitz said, eyes and mind alight with the tales our mother had told us years ago. He was most eager, tugging at my arm before I shook him off.
"No, Fitz! We should leave it be! It was just a small thing," I urged, but his excitement did not wane and instead he dashed away to seek it out. I did not. I wanted nothing to do with a bear. It would only bring trouble. Our ancestors used to be known well for bear hunting before all the bears left our region. Our mother had instilled a false fantasy into us that bears were brave and noble creatures. I knew better. Or at least I thought I did.
Not but minutes later, I heard the same squeal from the animal that I had when we first laid eyes on one another. Thinking that little Fitz had actually found it again, I raced in that direction. As I neared, I stumbled over a branch in the undergrowth, and fell to the dirt. Before I could rise again, a dark haired, scruffy man walked past. I was hidden in the flowers, but I could see that he had a gun–a big one. No one in the village was allowed to have guns unless they were on the council, and I did not recognize this man. I recalled my father speaking once of poachers, those who shot animals for no purpose but to make some coin. That was against our laws, as we only killed animals if it was for food or clothes. It struck me then that he was after the bear cub. Some places in the world, their fur still went for a high price. I no longer had any doubts that was what he was after.
I heard the squeal again, and as I stood to maybe prevent him in some way from hurting such a poor babe of a creature, there was barreling towards the man the likes of which I had never seen. A full sized brownish red bear, roaring, charged into the man, knocking him to the ground and the gun flying from his hands. I immediately hid again, heart almost pounding out of my chest in fright.
Over the screams of the poacher and the growls of the animal, I heard shouting in the distance. By the time the first of my people had arrived, the poacher was without a doubt, dead in the grass, and the large bear wandering about. I shot up from hiding and ran to my father as he approached. All the men of the village had come with him and the elders had brought their guns.
Perhaps, fearing for its life, or something more, the bear turned on us. It stood so tall–taller than any human I had ever met, and unleashed a roar from deep within its belly.
The elders took aim, but something in the cry from the bear made me understand. My heart seized in my chest as I reached a hand out towards the bear, its roar, turning into words in my ears.
"No!" I had shouted, "No don't hurt her! She has a ba-"
The shots rang out so loud I had to cover my ears. As I realized what they had done, tears streamed down my face, and I did not understand it. Why did I feel so for this creature? How had I understood her cries?
A group of men rushed to where the bear had fallen, blocking my view and the views of my siblings.
"Get the children out of here!" My father shouted, and as we were being shuffled away, I heard them.
"M-my god! It's a woman!"
I knew in that moment I had not seen an ordinary bear, but I had come close to and had understood what my mother had told us was a Bear Person…and somewhere in the flower field there was now an orphan.