Connecting the dots in that whole story was easier than expected when Koda told him what had happened in detail in a tremulous voice and red eyes, much more dull and sad than usual and with good reason.
The account began as the beginning of a Nordic fairy tale, one that a mother bear could have told her cubs in the den, a story Iorek had never believed in being too cynical by nature: it told of a man and a bear and in a sense of a monster.
...And with a series of listless, sad and poorly detailed descriptions Iorek finally managed to understand why Kenai had always appeared to him as the least bearish he had ever met.
The bears were divided into categories; the timid, the reckless, the aggressive ... here, for Iorek and Koda Kenai he had always been the progenitor of a category in itself, completely new and unidentifiable but shared by various aspects including little sense of direction and hunting, slowness in sprint, zero readiness in a fight, etc ...This was all due to Kenai being turned into a bear by spirits for killing Koda's mother.
When the story ended, only the crickets outside were heard, those few who had not yet retired for the night and who persisted in their song until the first light of dawn.
That morning Koda had woken up very early and when Iorek had also soared from the world of sleep to wake up he found him outside the cave, paws in the snow and muzzle facing down.
Every now and then he ran a paw over his black nose, sniffingbut never looking back to see if the white bear was awake ... he looked so small in all that snow.
His first instinct would have been to order him to stay warm, but instead he freed himself from the torpor of sleep and left the cave sitting silently next to Koda.
The cub didn react in the least; His little body barely moved, such was the fatigue that had been on him the day before.
Iorek had met Koda by accident, with his chatty face and happy eyes that he had only recently begun to consider the greatest joy in the world ... and seeing that vanished light was heartbreaking.
Seeing his ears so curved, his aura so dull and dry as a leaf in the sun was so poignant. Silence was the master of the air for quite some time, and usually Koda would fill that silence with a question or anecdote. It was as if the cub's mouth was sealed, unable to utter words, sentences, verses.
Nothing.
This was not the Koda he knew.
Attempting to dampen the hatred that Koda had to feel towards Kenai was useless, because doing so would only increase the cub's anger towards him and in this moment, trying to calm him down was a priority.
"Do you think my Mom is up there now?"
Koda's voice was brittle and hoarse, but hearing him speak opened a wound on his heart.
A wound that seemed to have long since buried. He turned to look at the hollow face of the destroyed cub, those two dull and shiny eyes with the ghost of so many tears that had fallen in the previous hours.
The white bear sighed, placing a paw on Koda's back and gently pulling him to him "yes. I'm sure. Your mother is up there, and maybe she and my parents are already becoming good friends."Koda didn't sob, didn't tremble, didn't move an inch.
He simply hugged Iorek's leg without looking him in the eye. The white bear lightly rubbed his paw on the other's small back when Koda asked another question "what were your parents like?"
Iorek's mind was short-circuited briefly on that question, because it had been so long and the memory of Audunn and Gunnar was starting to get more and more blurry, distorted… confused. "I don't really remember." he then said "I spent little time with them, objectively."
"are they gonna be nice to her?"
His heart clenched in such a tight grip that it was painful even on the skin: he had been anesthetized to new kinds of pain for quite a while ...
but Koda wasn't,
and the loss of his mother had been a blow. Terrible and especially so out of the blue. Yet he himself felt tears stinging his tear ducts with overwhelming insistence.
"I'm sure. They'll treat your mom like family."
Another moment of agonizing silence followed, interrupted again by Koda.
At the beginning of that crazy journey, Iorek would mentally sigh as he felt the peace interrupted by an innocent question ... now hearing him speak was in real relief.
"I saw some footprints."
Iorek let out a rather harsh curse on his lips, to which Koda reacted in a confused way: looking up at him "they are hunters." answered the white bear "hunters of my island ... and that is why we must leave immediately."
But koda did not object because at that moment two voices joined theirs in the silence, and both bears knew very well who they belonged to ... the two brother moose had somehow managed to track them down and reach them.
Oh, this is nowhere near the time for comedy ...the first detail that caught his eye was the absence of one of Rutt's antlers. It appeared to have been severed abruptly and very neatly, leaving only the stump still attached to the skull.The unicorned moose seemed unhappy with this fact, and his brother was much less because they were just discussing (presumably about this).
After a very sharp sigh, Tuke turned to his brother after a long silence between them "Look, I am sorry!" he said accusingly to which Rutt replied with equal malice stating: "If I was driving, this never would've happened." His muzzle turned down in evident annoyance and anger.
"Just stop it."
But the other had no intention of giving up the subject as well, and in fact flared up again within seconds "You ever let me drive, you never let me do nothing."
the other's tone became sharper "Trample off? I said I was sorry. Let it go." he said accusingly for the second time. "I can't believe you totalled a mammoth."
"Come on. That mountain came out of nowhere!"
Exactly how does a mountain come out of nowhere ...?
well, the fewer questions you ask yourself when you're close to those two, the better your brain is ...
the discussion quieted down only when the two moose seemed to see them, mainly because of the glares Iorek was giving them as if to go and discuss somewhere else but not there.
"hey, the little bear and the white bear..." Rutt said in a whisper that Iorek heard anyway and signed with a mental sigh. Tuke intervened too, and for a split second Iorek appreciated the interest when he said "What's wrong, ay?"
Iorek wanted to give one of his dry, distant and cold answers. But Koda preceded him on time with a "nothing. We're fine."
"Good. Now, where were we? You're a big selfish, reckless hoofer, and you're never gonna change!"
wow, his interest lasted a really long time. Iorek barely held back a snarl as he listened to the discussion sideways.
Tuke was surprised at his brother's reaction, which changed so suddenly from zero to one hundred.
"What?" he asked confused.With an indignant movement Rutt pushed Iorek and Koda aside, much to the disdain of the white bear
(slow down, dude ... I barely know you.)"I'm fed up with it? From now on, he's my new brother!" and cuddled Koda with his square muzzle. Tuke protested indignantly.
"You can't do that!" with a hint of desperation in his voice at the expectation of losing his brother and being replaced. "Sorry," replied the smallest moose haughtily, "you've been replaced with my dear brother ... I forget your name. What's your name again, little bear?"
seriously?!
Koda pushed Rutt's muzzle away with a swipe of his paw, taking refuge against Iorek "Leave me alone!"in such a pained tone.
Rutt railed against his stunned brother again "See, he's had enough of you!" he snapped abruptly, getting up to face the other "Come on. I promise I'll change ..." Tuke defended himself, with an incredible beat-up dog face.
There and then Iorek mistook it for an expert move ... then he realized the sorrow was genuine.
"Trample off. You'll never change. Being a brother means nothing to you!" and in saying this Rutt seemed hurt by that discussion. So hurt, you could tell by the way his voice cracked towards the end of the sentence in pure sadness.
"Of course it does!"
Rutt had turned his back to his brother, and replied weakly 'like what?'
Tuke did not hesitate even in an instant "What about the time your hooves froze in the pond? Who sat with you all winter, eh?" She said. Rutt replied in a murmur "You did..."
"And who showed you where the good grazing is? I mean the really tender stuff, all covered in dew? Why do you think I did it? It's because ..." but he broke off when he said three words ... three words that everyone wants to hear "Because I ... Because I love ... dew."
Well, male pride had gotten in the way of course.
But the intention was there and it was good even if terribly embarrassed in the face of such a sudden show of brotherly affection. Rutt did not think the same way, because at those words he raised his head towards him with an almost amazed.
"Excuse me? I don't believe I heard what you said." and although mumbling his brother repeated "I said I love dew ..." and sat hesitantly next to him.
"... I love dew, too."
He didn't understand ... after everything they had said to each other up to that moment, the conversation ended with a
"I love you" and peace made? Iorek was confused.
"I will never understand them ..." he muttered under his breath without being heard as the two began to joke playfully, tickling each other."Like, we'll see you later, smallish bear!"
Tuke said with all the nonchalance in the world as the brothers headed off to wherever the hell they had to go chatting amiably and in a split second Koda and Iorek were alone in the snow again.
Though brief, that scene had left something about both of them.
Iorek, who had grown up with the idea of not forgiving anything or anyone and with the belief that he had to defend himself from everything, for the first time recognized forgiveness as something acceptable.
He had never known Koda's mother, just as Kenai didn't know that the bear he had brutally killed was the mother of the cub who was now sitting between the paws of the white bear.
He had felt anger at Kenai, at the bitter tears he caused. Koda, who had experienced this on his skin from a very young age (much more than Iorek had been when his parents passed away) and who until then had been an only child, whom he had found with what was finally a family after having wandered for so long and then to see it shattered by such a revelation, he understood the importance of it.
How much is someone next to you worth, and how important it is to show them that you love them.
but forgiveness was a common thing they had learned.
"Iorek."
"Yes, Koda?"
"We won't let Kenai get hurt, will we?"
They both turned their gaze to the stormy summit of the mountain where the lights touch the ground.
"No. We won't allow it."