text: “You have awoken me.” The little man’s face grew comically wide, his eyes threaten to pop from their sockets. There was fear there and a generous helping of it, but there was also another emotion vying for territory upon his features, and the result of this battle pulled his facial muscles this way and that. It were as though he was suffering from the worst case of facial cramps in history. There were doctors, who if present, would make a name for themselves with this man in their care. This was a one-off show though, and the show on his face was not his doing. Neither was the growing damp patch at his crotch. He stepped back without understanding that this was what he was doing. He needed to put some distance between him and the speaker of these words. All he achieved was a further assessment of his dire situation. As his back hit the wall of the cave, he knew he was not in the best of places and that things were on the cusp of getting quite a bit worse. “S... S... S... Sss...” said the man. This was not what he had intended. He had wanted to say something placatory, but instead he was impersonating a snake, and he didn’t think this was going to do him many favours. “Calm down and take a couple of deep breaths,” said the only other occupant of the cave. The man tried. He really did. His eyes retreated a little back into their natural residence in his face, but part way through his attempt at a deep breath, it all went wrong again. The problem was the hulking mass before him. It was so very difficult to approach any semblance of calm in the presence of such a fearsome creature. There was nowhere that the man could look other than upon the huge edifice that loomed up before and over him. Set within an expanse of fur were the longest and sharpest claws he had ever seen and the pads of the paws in which the claws were set were large enough to eclipse the man’s head. Then there were the massive, pointy teeth. The teeth themselves were formidable, but there were so many of them and they were set in jaws that were modelled on a car crusher, only these jaws were bigger and more terrible and they could take apart an entire housing estate as though the houses were nothing more than delightful cupcakes. The setting for these terrible weapons of evisceration was a conundrum. Even in the face of his total and incredibly painful annihilation, the man had this inexplicable urge to hug the thing. Words such as cute cartwheeled through his beleaguered mind and this made his plight all the more horrible. But what really took everything to a level the man wished he had never known existed was that this bear could talk. Now, the man knew things. He was far from being a dullard, and one thing he was certain of in this world of his, was that bears didn’t talk. In fact, he happened to know that only people talked and many of those people weren’t all that good at doing it in a coherent and useful manner. Most people were limited and quite stupid, but the man was having to reassess his own standing in the pecking order of intelligence, after all, here he was, stood in a cave. Cornered by a talking bear. This was not something anyone in possession of their wits would willingly do. It was the most foolish of endeavours. He had got this wrong. Badly wrong. He doubted there was any way out of this, other than for a few of his bones at some uncertain point in the future, long after the bear had moved on. He tried for another breath. Any breath would do. Parts of his body had shut down and he was having to go for a manual approach to remind his body of what it was it should be doing. He clutched his chest and squeezed and pushed. “That looks a bit wrong,” said the bear as it observed the little man. The man wasn’t little per se, it was just that the bear was really, very big, and even the biggest of men were little in comparison, “did you know that you’d wet yourself?” the bear added. The man looked down and for the first time felt the sensation of the cooling liquid upon his flesh. He discovered that, even though his body was shutting down vital functions, it still knew how to be deeply embarrassed and perhaps because it was shutting down a bunch of really quite useful functions, including maintaining control of his bladder, it was able to really go to town with his shame. His face went a livid shade of a colour between bright red and deep purple. The colour rose within him and he looked like he was going to explode, such was his awkwardness in this moment. His mind took the opportunity to remind him that this was the least of his worries and went on to remind him of the story he’d heard about how bears started eating a person from the bottom upwards, and that bear dining etiquette did not include putting its meal out of its misery before sitting down for the main course. The terrible screams of prey dying the most excruciating death imaginable must have added a certain vibrancy to the atmosphere in the bear’s dining area. That was the only explanation the man had for such an approach to a dinner plate. Either that, or bears were quite deaf. The other alternative. The one where it turned out that bears were mean and dirty psychopaths. That was something the man really didn’t want to consider. And so he did. In vivid detail. And in triplicate, for good measure. Still, maybe being soaked in urine would make the bear think twice on the chowing down front. Every cloud had a silver lining, only in this case, the man had opted for the premium package and his lining was golden. He didn’t yet appreciate just how golden it was. “Sorry,” the man said. Somehow, it was far easier to apologise for his wetting himself in public than it was to say sorry for groping his own man boob in a lewd and disturbing manner, and it was a cake walk in comparison to addressing his monumental oversight in awaking a planet sized bear from the deepest of slumbers. He sneezed. Again. The first sneeze was the unwelcome sound that had awoken this sleeping mega-bear. “Bless you,” said the bear. “Thanks,” said the man, “I think I might be allergic...” He ceased his words. Words that had come unbidden. He did not want to continue and risk offending the bear. Adding insult to injury was never going to go well for him. He looked up at the bear with something like an expectant and conciliatory expression. It was so difficult to tell, his face was continuing to behave as though a crowd of crickets were having a silent disco under the duvet of his face. The bear nodded slowly, “it happens.” Only now did the man attend to the bear’s voice. The urbane and sonorous voice that didn’t quite fit the owner of that voice, a voice that belonged to an impossibly old and unimaginably wise mage. But then, what would a bear sound like, if it could indeed talk? What the man did know about that voice, was that he liked it. It was the best of voices. “This...” said the man, nodding his head slightly towards the bear, but refraining from any gesticulations. He did not want to make any sudden movement, or any movements at all for that matter. He wanted to avoid further provocation of this magnificent and deceptively, but also very obviously deadly beast. “We have something of a problem here, don’t we?” said the bear stating the very obvious. The man nodded, “I am so very sorry about that,” said the man, making the most genuine apology of his entire life. “Your apology doesn’t change the fact that I am awake, when I should be asleep,” the bear told him, “I wasn’t due to wake up for another two months. Do you know how much havoc you are playing with my circadian rhythms?” “Sorry,” said the man again, thinking that it was really very important to emphasise to the bear that the bear was standing menacingly before a very sorry, but also a well-mannered and polite man, “if there’s anything I can do..?” The bear raised one of its gigantic paws. A paw so massive it could swat the man and crack his skull like an egg. Even then, the crickets would continue dancing at their disco. They were partying and nothing was going to stop their good vibes. These crickets had priorities and right now partying was number one on their list. The man did not flinch, but this was not because he was at all brave, it was because he was doing all he could to prevent further disgrace emanating from his nether regions, and generally to keep it together and stay conscious. Losing consciousness would be a very bad idea in these most calamitous of proceedings. Thankfully, the bear brought that paw to his jawline and stroked its chin with its deadly array of oversized katanas, “there is something you can do...” it said as it ruminated. “Anything!” the man said overeagerly. Now he flinched. Some of his options were unsavoury and others were deeply unpleasant, so he was a fool to willingly invite them all into his beleaguered life, “what is it you would have me do?” he quickly added. “Tell me a story,” said the bear. “A story?” asked the man. The bear nodded, “yes, I will return to my deep slumber if you tell me a story.” “Oh well,” said the man as he ran full pelt to a more relieved state and for the first time saw light at the end of the cave. The bear flicked forth one of those wicked claws of his, and the man fell silent, “I must warn you. This is not going to be easy. You must know two things before we begin.” The man nodded, but dared not say a word. His entire focus was on that raised claw. The word disembowelled trotted to and fro in his quaking mind as the man stared unblinkingly at the long sharp bestower of the most painful of deaths. “Firstly,” said the bear in a solemn and business like tone, “once you start this story of yours, you cannot stop until I am done. Do not pause unduly. Do not falter. It will go so very badly for you if you should fail in this.” The man was in no doubt of how so very badly his plight could be, no doubt whatsoever. “Secondly,” now the bear was chirpy, and the man swore that he smiled a warm and encouraging smile, “make it a good story. Make it the very best of your stories, for your sake as well as mine.” The man returned the smile, despite the traumatic situation that he was caught in. Despite his being between a rock and a hard bear. That smile was the very best of smiles, and in the circumstances, the little man deserved to smile like that. It was fitting and it was proper, and it was just a little bit tragic as well. “Let us begin,” said the bear, gesturing to the little man. The little man took the huge bear’s prompt, and would have taken to the floor in a more elegant manner, but normal services had not returned to his body, so he slid awkwardly down the cave wall and landed in an ungainly manner. It would just have to do. The bear joined him. The manner of the gigantic bear’s movements were not rushed or ungainly, but the sheer size and bulk of him made his manoeuvre look for all the world like an office block crashing down to earth and the very floor of the cave shook from under the man. Then, there was a strange and poignant moment of calm in the cave, before the man began his story. There was a moment between man and bear, and in that moment was an intimacy that should not have been possible, but there it was all the same. His body may be betraying him, but the little man’s mind played a blinder, cueing up the very best of stories. The man’s favourite story, and he knew there were more stories at his disposal if needs be. He would recount the very best of stories and he would not pause for breath, he would tell the stories for all he was worth and he would keep going until there was no breath left in him. He entered the story, he gave it his all and he told it for all he was worth, and things did not go badly for him. Only when the man’s anguished screaming ceased did the bear pause its meal. It raised its giant head and tilted it curiously as it looked intently upon the dead man. The bear looked sad and it looked disappointed, as though the man’s screams were a song, or a story that had not yet reached its end...