Hearts were still full of laughter and happiness even after sunset.
The sun disappeared behind the great mountain where the lights touched the earth, leaving the sky a purple color mixed with the remaining orange of the warmth of the sun now asleep. But the voices and the chatter of the bears were certainly not stopped by the setting of the sun, rather they increased after everyone gathered in a scattered circle around the figure of Tug who called to silence for a focal moment for each year: the bear would have left the salmon (the head of it) and whoever would take it would tell the most interesting thing that had happened to them that year:
well, I can only hope not to take that salmon.
"All right. Settle down, everyone. Hey! Don't throw your fish bones over there. Somebody could choke on that!" and saying that Tug looked about ten years younger than he had seemed at first glance as he thought hard and fiddled with the salmon head moving it from one leg to the other.
"Look, OK, I'll go first. OK, let's see. The most interesting thing that happened to me this year. Hmm...Oh, I know. Listen to this! I'd say it was when I finally knocked down that tree ... that was blocking the view from my cave. Now I got a family of chipmunks staying at my place! " he finished the speech with a thunderous laugh hardly shared by the so-called rodent family who looked at him in rant. Tug cleared his throat and went on to exclaim "Yeah... All right, everybody, come on, let me see some paws in the air. Who's going to be next? Come on!" waving the fish in the air, pretending to throw it and laughing again when he looked at the faces of those who were ready to take it on the fly.
"Watch me, watch me. Hey, got you!" and finally he gave the salmon to an old curved she-bear and with an extremely sad look, she spoke in a trembling voice as if her vocal cords could barely hold up.
"This year, I lost my dear husband Edgar..." she said in a fragile tone and even before any of them could feel sorry for her situation a voice came from the distance, the voice of a male "Quit telling everyone I'm dead!" "Sometimes I can still hear his voice!" and threw the fish away, she seemed to be crying.
Iorek, Kenai and Koda were sitting side by side and listening to the stories, Koda whispered into Kenai's ear and said, "I'm getting the next one."
The fish landed in the paws of a bear with bulging eyes, short and stocky with a madman's gaze. He looked around and then literally started shouting in an unknown language "Gotovo sam se smrzla kad sam učinila korak iznad ogromnog zaleđenog prolaza. Bilo je to nešto Jedvasam preživio. jedva !!! "
...uh...okay?
there was a grave silence, confused and hesitant.
Had he just said a lot of swearing? this theory was denied when he laughed out loud and from it followed timid laughter from the other bears. Iorek spun his eyes " I mean, that guy is a little tossed in the head.."
and this sent Kenai and Koda in a pang of giggles that calmed down only when the fish came between the paws of a bear who spoke in a honeyed tone addressed to a she-bear next to him "I guess it's our turn. This is the year I met the most gorgeous ... "
but she interrupted him by rubbing her muzzle on his neck "No, you're gorgeous."
"You're gorgeouser."
yuck.
Gross.
Yuck, Yuck, Yuck
Tug brought his paws close to his mouth and shouted "Get a cave!" wich sent everyone back to laugh another and in an even more thunderous way, especially after Tug's underlining on the honeyed situation. Iorek wrinkled his nose and stuck his tongue out "Blah ..."
he had never liked things that were too sweet and so obvious, they got on his nerves. The bear threw himself on his beloved throwing the fish away and they exclaimed "I love you, buttercup!"
and Koda rose immediately, running towards the fish. "I got it! i go-"
aaaaand...
the head of the fish slapped directly on the muzzle of Iorek, who had let his guard down for a moment.
The fish remained on his nose for a short time, as soon after he slid down from it and ended up between the paws of the white bear (he had stretched them as a spontaneous reflex). And let's face it, Iorek wasn't the kind of fooling around as soon as he turned the corner. In fact, he was rather staid being a predator ... but he made a fool of himself as soon as he had clawed at this gathering (shallow water knows something) ... and then the fact that he was the only bear with the lightest fur it was absolutely destabilizing.
"do I have to?"
Koda sent him a nod of encouragement "It's simple! Just talk!"
Tug's laugh erupted again in an overwhelming way "come on boy, give it in!"
and this was followed by a horde of exclamations from the other bears
"come on, you can do it!"
"we're curious!"
"oh, don't leave us with bated breath!" Iorek raised a paw "Okay! Okay! Let me think ... uuuuh-"
When had he mauled a raccoon? No, there were puppies present ...
When had he seen a whale dive back into the water?
When had he nearly drowned? no, that was last year.
"the most interesting thing that happened to me this year?" he asked reflecting out loud, shifting tge fish from one paw to the other.
"uh ... well I would say ... when I was almost knocked out by an enraged...walrus?" Some cubs gasped fascinated by that story and by the image of a bear fighting against a creature that for them must have seemed mystical "what's a walrus?"
"it's a ... a big fish with fins and two very long fangs facing downwards" one of the little ones leaned forward, eyes as big as two dishes. "and did you survive?"
Iorek refrained from chuckling, given the embarrassment. "uh ... well ... I'm here in front of you, so yes." Tug also listened in fascination. But the atmosphere had gone silent again after Iorek didn't continue the speech "okay, who's next?" and lifted the fish back into the air forcing a very, very tight, tight smile.. At that moment the bear moved a paw and exclaimed "Wait, give us some details!"
damnit.
Iorek played with the fish, looking up to think ...It was before he met Kenai and Koda ... more or less on the journey over the frozen sea. He twisted his mouth to one side, running a paw over his temple. He was slowly warming up to remember the adrenaline of the moment.
"the sun was high, the wind was blowing from the north west and it was very warm ... the walrus has popped out suddenly and I counterattacked. With a few scars I came out alive. " and without adding anything else he threw the fish directed towards Kenai, who caught it on the fly with the same disoriented face.
"wha-" the white bear gave him a very smug look.
"it's up to you." he simply said "if I made it, you can do it too." This was followed by a chorus of encouragement to which Kenai eventually gave in "OK, all right, already, all right. You want to know what I did this year?"
"Yeah!"
"I went on the longest, hardest, most exhausting journey I've ever been on, with the biggest pains in the neck I've ever met!" and said this to Koda and Iorek. The cub looked at him, hurt by that abrupt and unexpected response. Iorek, on the other hand, was irritated and ready to make his own reasons, but then Kenai's face softened. The brown bear wrapped a paw around Koda's head in an embrace and rested his forehead on Iorek's
"What do you expect from your brothers?" he then said sweetly, affectionately. Iorek mentally took a sigh of relief in thinking that Kenai didn't really think those bad things "and b'sides I know that I myself have been a painstaking nuisance."
Iorek shrugged with a smile that he wanted to casually pass "hm, no more than usual." he answered, an intrinsic voice with giggles ready to surface. Kenai threw the salmon to Koda "okay, it's your turn" He saw the cub's dark eyes clearly revive with a joy that seemed to have vanished with that comment. He grabbed the salmon on the fly and wasted no time in starting the story "OK, OK. Here we go."
He cleared his throat and pitted a sentence at a speed that Kenai didn't think existed "This year I watched my mom in a life-and-death struggle, against all odds battling possibly, the most fiercest creature on the face of the earth. OK , who's next? " A confused chorus rose from the bears, Iorek and Kenai understood with a "What?" .
Tug jovially called to silence effectively "Wait a minute. I think we all want to hear the rest of that one, Koda." The cub smiled satisfied towards the leader of the Run "I thought you might say that." and from there the story that long before Kenai had told him to keep to himself began "Let's see ... It was probably the fifth or sixth most coldest day, in my entire life. Me and mom were eating fish, having a great time, when all of a sudden, she pushes me into the bushes, and tells me to be real quiet. " he lowered his tone to mimic the whisper that his mother had to direct him "She says," I smell something, "so I started sniffing. There was something in the woods, running right toward us, getting closer and closer ... " He made the tone more threatening, and a cub hid behind his mother. Kenai chuckled looking at Iorek, with the same pride the white bear replied "he's going great."
"And then, out of the trees, jumps the hunter!" a jolt rose from the crowd of bears, Kenai's heart skipped a beat for a moment.
... hunter?
Why did that scene sound familiar like a memory attached to the back of the mind, but that for some reason fails to surface?
" And now there's nowhere for mama to go. The monster has her backed up against this giant glacier! "
The world vanished from Kenai's senses, his heart pounding too hard in his chest, so strong that he believed his lungs would not hold. The landscape vanished and in front of his gaze remained only that fatal day when Sitka had lost his life.
that bear ... managed to see his dark, emotionless eyes and massive body again
"The monster attacks! But mom's too quick for him. And before he can do it again, she stands up real big and yells," Go away! "
The bear had pushed him off the cliff and by a miracle Kenai had managed to hold on to a spur in order not to fall into the void. Confused images flashed in his mind, Sitka's frightened voice, the bear's roars, the glacier that fell with his brother on
"Then mom smells more of 'em. There's a whole pack coming right at us! She runs out to stop them, before they can get to me. And all around they're poking her with sticks. The whole thing broke, and they fell into the water. There was ice everywhere! She couldn't hold her breath any longer before, pow! She burst out of the water. I've never been so scared in my life! "
Continuous images like lightning during a storm pierced his brain, a mother calling her cub, a scream, the last fight with Denahi, Sitka's funeral ...
"Sitka wouldn't want it""Sitka's not here, because of that monster!"that monster ...that Monster.
Kenai couldn't breathe, his rib cage didn't obey the order to attempt to let the air in. He felt he could pass out at any moment ...
that bear ...the bear ...
That was Koda's mother.
"Whoa! Fell off a glacier? I've never see anything like that. Can you imagine?"
Tug commented lightly. Iorek next to him seemed shocked in turn
"and what happened next?" He asked "was your mother okay?"
Koda nodded "She got out of the water OK, but that's how we got separated. Right after that, I met Kenai!"
No, no no no ...
he had to get out of there.
Regardless of who called him, he turned and ran away