While Matis was in the workshop dealing with his new bonded companions, Charlene finally started to stir from her sleep. Feeling warmth on her back, she turned over expecting to see the face of Matis in bed, still sleeping soundly. When she was granted with the waking face of Sheera, she felt conflicted on how to feel. She had been expecting the love of her life, not her partner for the last decade to be laying there. As her eyes focused back in, she realized that they were back in their house, with the blinds drawn and the door closed. She must have slept in well past sunrise, while Matis had probably already gotten a number of things done around the place. Rubbing her cuddling partner on the head a little bit, she slowly clawed her way out of bed and got changed, before making the bed behind her. After all, if she was going to have the bed stored to be able to be brought out again and again, it might as well be in a state where they could just climb into it.
Once she had stored and duplicated every item in their room, Charlene opened the door to the rest of the house. As she did, she noticed that the floors had a shine to them. Matis must have mopped, but she had no idea why he would. They were mopped just before they left so they would come back to a clean house, and none of them tracked in any dirt when they came home last night. Looking around for anything else that felt off, she noticed that there was a large open space between the kitchen and the living room, leading towards Matis' cave of an office. Following the trail, her curiosity led her to take a peek inside his office, to see if he was trying to read anything in the windowless room. As she did, she noticed that all of the furniture was in pieces, with papers and books all over the place. It was almost as if a tornado had hit that room and thrown everything around.
Frantically, Charlene ran all over the house, wanting to make sure Matis was alright. Room after room, she went without any sign of his presence, save for the main hallway was cleaned up, with furniture roughly back in the same spot. Every other room seemed to be untouched. When she had gone through every room, she started to panic. Sensing her partner's mental state, Sheera quickly brought up one word. 'Workshop?' After all, it had been the one spot that the two of them had not been to yet. Moving to the front entrance, Char threw on her shoes and jacket before heading out to the workshop.
As she entered into the room, she was greeted by two sets of eyes and three bodies. On the table was a bear cub, who seemed to have been put under. On the far side of the table, her husband stood there with a bit of blood covering him. His hands seemed to be on one of the legs of the cub in question. Beside him though was where the real fright came in for her. An adult grizzly bear, her head right beside her husband as if it was the most natural thing. As they registered her presence, the bear made her way around the table and approached her. Before anything happened, Matis called out, "She's my mate! There is nothing to worry about!" Instantly, the large bear stopped approaching her, looking at him curiously. Turning back to focus on Charlene, she stalked forward slowly. At this point, Sheera made her presence known by walking up and standing beside her partner. The grizzly only gave her a passing glance and a grunt, before walking straight up to Char. As it came right up to her, the bear started sniffing her all over, seeming to be wanting to get a sense of who she was. After a minute of this, the bear let out a huff of air, before turning around and taking her position right beside Matis once more.
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Charlene was dumbfounded at the whole thing, not only did Matis raise his voice and yell at a grizzly bear, but it seemed to listen to what he said and had an understanding of the context. That, and she had never had a bear just come up to her and sniff her before. Looking at her husband, she saw his focus was already back on the cub in front of him, not even sparing a glance to the bear beside him. In fact, he was speaking to the bear, talking about what he was doing and why. She must have been the cub's mother, but that made even less sense to her. The entire situation seemed alien, as if it should never happen. That was just not how bears interacted with others, especially not a mother grizzly with its young being cut open in front of her. Walking around to the other side of her husband, she wanted to see what was going on that was the reason for all of this.
As she came beside him, she saw the piece of shale that had become embedded into the cub's leg. It did not look like it was a recent thing, showing signs that it had been in there for at least a few months as the flesh of the leg had grown around it. Her husband had been working carefully to extract it with as little damage as possible, though the cub would need to get stitches to have that heal cleanly. Turning around, she got out some latex gloves, and started getting everything ready to stitch the wound back together. She could hear Matis talk about what she was doing and how she was going to help make this better for the cub in front of him. Time seemed to fly in the workshop, as both focused on taking care of the cub that was in front of them.