Methinks you need to go and see a therapist, namesake. It’s no wonder you are seeing dragons where there are none. You say hic sunt dracones as you tap your temples. I have come to consider you a sort of friend of rival, these days. Look at The Lady, behind me, on the curtained throne, being and beatifying the place with her mere presence. Look at how the curtains are quiet, this day is perfect, save for your rants. Maybe you scared away the poor deer. Where is the fawn, though? I haven’t seen him around as of late. Maybe Gadorprims ate it. He is a gharial after all, and fawns descend from fish, which makes them fish, and thus can be eaten by gharials, which also descend from fish, so they are also fish, so, is it cannibalism?
I am also descended from fish; I don’t like the implications of this line of questioning. I am dropping it. More important, the bear has woken up! She lumbers from room to room, from hall to hall, searching, sniffing the air. She’s always covered in black drapes, and she mostly avoids eye contact. A shy one, the bear. A servant of The Lady like all of us here, but a shy one. A disliked by the dogs one, too. I wonder what she is up to, the bear. I should tail her, document what she does.
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I don’t know what I expected. After following her for hours, all I have to report is bearlike behavior. Moves heavily from room to room, chews on whatever meaty remains she may find, looks back at me, growls and goes away with her awkward step. Being the annoying blister on the ass of creation I am, I follow her, and the cycle repeats itself. I don’t like you either, hirsute fat ass bitch. I don’t even know why The Lady keeps you around. I am wasting ink and paper on reporting this, I should tend to my tasks. Go back to sleep and stop being a nuisance, Bear, please.
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I am befuddled by the fact that The Bear is a bear is a bear is a bear. Not a zombie bear, not a stout, undead abomination bulging with gasses and entrails. No. She is an honest-to-God female bear that lives and sleeps here in the cave system. The kind you can find perusing your finest trashcans, that sort of bear.
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The only unsettling detail is that she is dressed in a black robe, as if a bear could be the incarnation of death itself. She cannot, because she is a dumb, mundane animal, so it may have been Scarreladai, Gadorprims or the “dogs” who dressed her as such.
And who would think finding out a bear is a bear would quell the solitude so much. How illogical is it? It’s not the first normal animal I find down here. The worms on the cave ceilings were, just like the bear, living the life they evolved for, never mind the dragon, never mind the servants.
A craving like a tumor grows inside me, a yearn for the warmth of the bear’s skin, just to know I am, against all odds, alive. To caress her soft fur, to feel her rhythmical breathing against my ear. To, if possible, not be mauled to death while doing so. To feel the touch of an equal after this long isolation.
Because she is like me. Trapped in here, living an unnatural life, forced by the dragon’s magic to behave unlike one of her peers. In will go to the pile of corpses my mad side believes is a dining table, and get a leg or arm for her to chew onto. Jillsenbane is pretty good at tearing limbs apart from the torso, I have learned. This bear could be the only kindred spirit, the only other mammal that inhabits this accursed, dark, moist place. I don’t care if she’s a wild, dangerous animal, her presence will help me cope with reality. And if, in the process, I can ease her suffering in this pointless life, I’d have done the bare minimum to consider myself worthy of a happy ending to this torment.
This is no life for a man, and this is no life for a bear. But, maybe, together and with a bit of comprehension, of tolerance, we can help each other out, so she becomes a little bit more like a bear, and I become a little bit more like a man.