Care Bears 1. Part 1: In the Shelter of the Oak

Disclaimer: This humble author does not own any member of the Care Bear Family, Dark Heart, No Heart, the Great Wishing Star, or any other character already under the possession of American Greetings, Nelvana, Dic, etc. However, this author DOES own everyone else who appears in this story. The tale you are about to read draws heavily on Care Bears Movie 2, substantially on the Marvel comics of the Care Bears, and very lightly on Care Bears Movie 1 (mainly for characters who otherwise do not show up in Movie 2). It is also the product of years of effort - so be warned, for in the span of these many years, a great deal of interpretation and imagination that is not part of the cannon inevitably snaked its way into this story, and became an integral part of it. Now that you have been forewarned, enjoy - and please read and review!

**PART 1: IN THE SHELTER OF THE OAK**


	2. Chapter 1: The Beginning

**Chapter 1: The Beginning**

With one final heave, Vera swung the obstinate bucket over the last unruly hedge and into the clearing. The little bear cub breathed in deeply, happily. Berries. The air was thick with their rich, sweet scent. Eagerly, she made for the nearest bush and tugged the morsels free, popping almost as many into her mouth as she dropped into the bucket. She knew that she was staining her cream colored coat with red berry juice, and that Mother would tease her for splurging on a second breakfast – but she could worry about that later. Right now, the summer berries were just irresistible.

Vera thrust her paw deeper into the bush, knowing that the sweetest berries were often the best hidden. She felt along the rough branch for the soft yet firm flesh…

Something warm and furry collided with her outstretched paw. Not a moment later, the Thing she had touched within the bush was screaming—

"Aaaaah!" shouted Vera in terror, scrambling away.

In her haste, Vera stumbled and fell, then sprang back up again. She fled to the nearest tree, crashing noisily through the undergrowth, and flung herself behind it. The Thing didn't seem to have followed her: The only sounds were the bubbling songs of the sparrows, the soft yet immense rustling of the leaves above her head, the hammering of her heart, and the ragged rhythm of her breath.

She waited a minute, and then dared to peer around the trunk of her tree to look at the berry bush. Sure enough, she saw that a small pair of eyes, frightened and watchful, hung among the thick green bristles. Before she could duck out of sight again, the eyes found her – and then they widened in alarm and retreated into the darkness.

The Thing was afraid of _her_!

Cautiously, the bear cub made her way back to the bush, making sure to take only a few steps at a time. She could see that the eyes were still there, and that they were growing more and more nervous as she drew closer to their hiding place. Finally, she stopped when she was four paces away, and cocked her head to one side, in an unconscious gesture of curiosity.

"How come…you're afraid of me?"

Two silvery eyes gazed apprehensively back at her.

"It's okay," Vera breathed, drawing nearer. "You can come out now – I'm not gonna hurt you."

The creature inside seemed to retreat farther into the bush.

"Come on, little guy," the bear cub coaxed. "How long have you been in there? Don't you want to come out and play?"

The eyes widened. Vera thought she could see that they belonged to a small, strange face.

"That's it," she said encouragingly as the little face drew nearer, as if it was daring to take a peek. "I won't hurt you. My name's Vera, and I like you."

The little creature poked its head free of the prickly branches – briefly, but long enough for Vera to realize that it had beautiful purple fur, and a small aqua and blue mane. Involuntarily, the bear cub gasped and clapped her berry-stained paws over her mouth. Startled, the little creature ducked back out of sight.

"But you're a baby!" Vera squealed in delight. "Awww…how cute!" When no answer came from the bushes, she went on, "Oh, I'm sorry – I scared you again, didn't I? I didn't mean it. You can come out and I won't say a thing, I promise."

For a moment, nothing happened. But just as Vera was about to sigh and give up, the little creature emerged again, his chubby little face now more curious than afraid.

"That's it," whispered Vera as the strange cub gazed solemnly back at her. "I knew you'd be my friend. Now why don't you come out? You can have some berries," she added hopefully.

Shyly, the little cub shook himself free of the branches. Now that she could see him clearly, Vera had no idea what sort of a creature he was. He had pointed ears that sat on top of his head, rather than on either side of it; and his tail was made completely of very long, thick fur. Yet he seemed to have the same body structure as she did, and he stood erect on his hind legs, just as she did. But Vera knew what it felt like to look different from everyone else, and so she didn't comment on how strange his appearance was to her. Besides, he seemed barely older than a toddler: He was no bigger than an average forest hare, and his face still harbored some of the last traces of infanthood. Smiling, she shared with him a few of her precious berries, and he clumsily tore the first open with uncoordinated fingers.

"Here," she said, placing a second pawful in his lap. "You can finish these, and then we can find your mommy together, okay?"

At this, the little cub opened his mouth, but almost immediately changed his mind as his lips began to tremble.

"What's wrong, little guy? Don't you want to go back to your mommy?"

The cub nodded, but his eyes were full of an anguish he should have been too young to understand. Vera frowned in consternation: The look on his face was unmistakable. She had seen it only once before, when she found a two-week-old rabbit kitten whose parents had been eaten alive by Vultures. "Oh," she murmured, her eyes filling with an uncomfortable mixture of pity and horror. "You've lost your mommy, haven't you?" She didn't wait for her companion to answer. Instead, she went on, as brightly as she could, "Don't worry, little guy – you're safe now. Nothing will hurt you ever again, not while you're in _this_ forest."

She was only met with round-eyed bewilderment.

"Tell you what – you can live with me and _my_ mommy! It'll be wonderful! We can play hide and seek, and tell each other stories, and play Vines, and we can eat all the berries we want. Would you like that?"

The excitement in Vera's voice seemed to do the little cub some good. Or, at least, his small pointed ears perked up, and to Vera he seemed to look somewhat more hopeful.

"Good!" the bear cub smiled, delighted. "We can go find her together. Come on!"

At that, Vera sprang up to her feet and waited for her new friend to do the same – but all he did was stare at her. "Come on!" she said coaxingly.

But the little cub's eyes were darting back and forth to and from the berry bush he had been hiding in not long before. He started edging towards it, attempting to drag her with him. Vera realized that he was shaking.

"Aw, you're still scared, aren't you?" she said softly. Keeping her grip on his paw, she drew herself up to her full height, and she said as authoritatively as she could, "Look little guy – don't be afraid. Nothing's gonna hurt you here! This forest is magic! Not even No Heart can get you in here." She gestured proudly to the stately trees and vines around her, her eyes bright with childish trust. Suddenly wind gushed over the quiet branches, animating them with far more life than they had harbored a moment before. The loud rustling of the leaves, the treble of the birds perched on the twigs high above, and the chirping of the chipmunks from within the hidden recesses of the bark all swelled into a crescendo, as if singing their agreement with Vera's statement. The little purple cub stopped edging away and blinked up at her again, this time in awe.

"See?" she whispered. "They're all protecting us."

The bear cub smiled at her little companion's wide-eyed astonishment as the forest continued to serenade them with its majestic song. And then like a contented sigh, the wind died down, and the trees were once again the silent, stately pillars that kept vigil over them both.

As the last of the warbling birds fluttered away, Vera found herself hesitating for a moment. But then, when she saw that the little cub was still gazing wonderingly at the trees, she asked shyly, "You wanna come?"

The cub finally nodded, slowly yet firmly, and then tightened his grip on her paw. Grinning in delight, Vera began to pick her way towards the hedge, leading her new friend through the undergrowth. As he fell into step beside her, she began to chatter away about her life in the forest – about how wonderful her mommy was, what it was like to live in a cave, and how much fun it would be to have a new brother. Suddenly, she stopped in her tracks, tilting her head to one side.

"By the way – what's your name?"

The kindness in her voice seemed to have brought some order back into the cub's torn little life. It was probably this, more than anything else, that finally allowed him to speak for the first time.

"I'm Art – "

Before he could finish, he quickly clamped both paws over his mouth.

"Art? That's what your name is?"

Slowly, with wide, frightened eyes, the little cub nodded.

For a moment, Vera frowned; she knew without a doubt that she had just been told a lie. But seeing the frightened vulnerability in her new companion's face, she decided that now was not the time to press him, or he might just dive right back into the bushes where she had found him. "Okay Art – let's go find my mommy!"


	3. Chapter 2: At the River

**Chapter 2: At the River**

The broad leaves of the sugar maples rustled invitingly against each other in the fresh spring wind. A trio of spotted sparrows darted nimbly through the shifting leaves, coming to rest atop a thin twig high over the forest floor. For a moment, only their sweet, quiet twitters could be heard over the gentle rustle of the trees – but their conversation was cut short by a loud, happy shriek from somewhere below.

"Art, wait up - you know I can't run as fast as you!"

"Catch me if you can, then!"

"Hare-legged show-off!"

"Boring berry breath!"

Giggling breathlessly, Art and Vera raced over the fallen logs and hollows between neighboring tree roots, unaware of the twittering sparrows above them. The two cubs broke suddenly through the trees into the open air of the riverbank, where the towering pines gave way to springy green grass that melted into the sodden, rocky riverbed. The cub named Art reached the shallow water first, collapsing with a grin into the cool, sweet wetness. Clutched in one paw was a small basket woven from the bark of fallen logs and held together with dried sap. He barely had time to scoop some water with his paws into the basket before his companion reached the river's edge, still sprinting as fast as her legs could carry her. Art stood up to receive her, dripping and holding the basket with both paws behind his back, but the bear cub seemed to have no intention of stopping – and she was headed straight for him, at top speed!

"Gotchya!" she squealed as she pummeled into her friend, who was so startled that he dropped the berry basket.

"Ouch! What was that for, Vera?"

"That was for running ahead," said the cream-colored bear cub, placing her own basket squarely over her friend's ears. The two cubs were now sitting side by side in the stream.

From under his new hat, Art tried to keep his face straight, but he couldn't suppress a sly smile. He made to reach for his own berry basket and dump its wet contents onto his friend's head, but his paws only met empty water and abruptly came to rest on the smooth, hard stones that lined the riverbed. "Uh, oh," he said, as he spotted the missing object bobbing away from him downstream. It was dangerously close to the point where the shallows abruptly fell off a U-shaped cliff, diving into a foamy waterfall that fed the winding river below.

Luckily, they had spotted the basket in the nick of time. In seconds the two cubs had scrambled to the cliff edge, snatched their prized possession, and had raced back to the green plains. Soon they were sitting in the springy grass, their feet dipped in the chilly water that tickled their toes as it glided past. Vera was smirking, but Art's face was contrite.

"Let's do that again! We'll let it go even farther this time, and then we'll race to see who can get it first!" the bear cub exclaimed, placing her basket back into the river.

Art snatched it back out again and set it down next to the other basket on the grass (he was no longer wearing the makeshift hat). "No, Ver – you know what Mother would say if we lost another one."

"Oh, Art…"

"Remember how annoyed she was when we had to make the first one all over again from scratch?"

"She'd love us just the same."

"No, Ver."

"Scaredy squirrel."

"I'm a horse, Ver."

"You're not acting like one."

The purple horse (or foal, rather) grabbed both baskets stubbornly. "Mother's getting too old for this."

The bear cub gave up with a good-natured sigh. She leaned backwards with her legs spread wide, so that all her weight fell on her upper paws, which were planted in the dirt behind her. Art handed her back a berry basket and got to his knees, tearing tufts of the tender grass blades out of the earth and dropping the juicy morsels into the second. Every berry season, it was their job to collect at least one basket of the green shoots apiece, to supplement their diet of soft masts and roots and tubers. Vera watched for a moment, but then with a resigned smile got to work, too. She had wanted to play water tag in the river first, but as usual, her friend was determined to fulfill all promised chores before having fun. Sometimes she felt that she was the younger sister, even though Art was three years her junior.

It had not always been this way, Vera remembered. Six berry seasons had passed since the day she had found her friend in the bushes. When Vera had brought the frightened foal back home, her mother had taken one look at the small, bedraggled horse-cub (this is what she had declared Art to be, when Vera had uncertainly said that she had found some kind of mutant rabbit in the woods) before deciding to take the little one in. Since then, life had ensued as Vera had promised. The two cubs had grown up side by side as brother and sister, frolicking through the forests of the Peaceful Valley by day and sleeping under their protective cover by night.

Over the years, both Art and Vera had come to realize that, although the forest was their home, they were somehow separate from it, just as a flower, though nestled intimately with all the leaves of a bush, remains distinct from its leafy green companions. There was no resentment, seclusion, or even arrogance in this separation; rather, the two cubs stood out from all the other animals like the soft-petaled beauties of a rosebush. In reflection of this, the inhabitants of the forest had fondly bestowed several nicknames on the pair of them, but the one they most commonly used (and not without a twinge of envy) was "the evercubs" – for it seemed that Art and Vera would never age.

Art and Vera were of two different species, but they looked remarkably similar. Both were small and squat, like baby bear cubs – but rather than walking on all fours, they both stood on their hind legs, like the groundhogs that stepped out of their burrows every spring. Their bellies and their muzzles were round and covered completely in snow-white fur, and their small faces were also round, and quite chubby. Because they could hold and manipulate objects in their front paws, they were often in high demand among the forest animals; as one squirrel had put it, carrying an acorn from one side of the forest to another is much easier than rolling one the same distance. But what really drew everyone's attention was the color of their fur. Vera's fur was light yellow-white, very much like cream, yet nothing at all like her mother's dark brown coat; the contrast was so stark that sometimes, she pretended that she was a polar bear of the northern realms. But Art's fur took on an even more unnatural hue. Its soft purple was rivaled only by the lavenders and lilacs; and nothing like his tail or his mane, both striped blue and aqua, had ever been seen in the forest.

Art's young face was at peace as he worked, diligently picking away the dirt that clung to the ends of each tuft of grass before dropping them into the basket. From the light smile on his face and the cheerful brightness in his silvery eyes, a casual onlooker would never have guessed that his story had begun so sadly. But it was now common knowledge to the inhabitants of the forest that Art was a refugee from the Great Wide World, that mysterious expanse of land and water that composed the world outside the Peaceful Valley – and that he had fled here after losing his parents to an evil red sorcerer.

When the cubs had been younger, Vera had curiously pressed the young foal for details about his past. But Mother had soon put a stop to this, sternly informing her that her new friend needed the space to grieve, and the time to heal. Vera had been disappointed and perplexed at first, for she lived as plainly and honestly as an open field, which splays itself before the sun and the sky and birds overhead, bare patches and all. It was her way to explain to her friends everything about herself and the life she led, and she had trouble understanding why he would not reciprocate.

However, Vera had gotten her answers soon enough. Before long she had found him doodling long, graceful faces in the dirt with a rather unwieldy pointed stick. That day, and for several instances afterwards, Art had hurriedly smeared the images the moment he realized that she had been watching. But one day, Vera had waited in the undergrowth until she was sure he had finished. When she saw the completed sketches, she couldn't help but exclaim at how beautiful they were – and after recovering from the shock of being caught, the little foal had grinned shyly up at her and had finally admitted that he had been drawing the faces of his parents, to keep him from forgetting what they had looked like.

After that day, many afternoons would find the pair of them huddled together over a bare patch of earth, where Art would draw the things of his past, and Vera would gaze on in wonder. She learned that her friend had once lived with his parents and with many other kinds of animals in a human structure called "Barn" on some kind of settlement named "Farm." He would draw out what he remembered of that life, of the hay and the stalls and the geese that would sometimes poke their heads under the stall doors to take a curious look at him. He told her of the human who was the master of his former home, of the loving way the benevolent creature had fed him carrots and apples and sugar cubes. Vera had never heard of these things, but they filled her with powerful longing. The tart, juicy sweetness of an apple; the rich, musty smell of hay; and the odd, long necks of the curious creatures called geese all sounded irresistible to her. Fueled by the exotic stories of her friend, the little bear's thirst for a glimpse of the Great Wide World ripened with each passing day.

But as Vera learned more about her friend, her longing to see the world outside the Valley took on a chill of dread, too. It was mainly the things she learned at night that frightened her. Especially in the early days, she and Mother had often been awoken by Art's anguished cries for his parents in the aftermath of terrible nightmares – and from what she overheard as Mother soothed her little brother back to sleep, she gathered the details of this tragedy. She learned that a great red sorcerer had arrived in the night at Art's beloved Barn, and that he had done away with everyone in Farm: Art's parents, the other horses, the cows, the pigs, the geese that had peeked at him under his stall, and even the farmer. He had then chased the helpless foal to the edge of the woods. Art had scampered into the trees, terrified that the sorcerer would still catch him, but the red demon had been unable to follow him: A powerful force, one that belonged to the Great Tree of the Valley and the lesser trees of his dominion, had kept the evil one at bay at the forest edge.

But for the moment, in the crisp spring daylight on the banks of the glittering shallows, Art's past was as forgotten to them as the mist that coated the Valley meadows at dawn. Her basket nearly full, Vera stood up and stole quietly into the river waters, careful not to make a sound. If she timed it just right, she would be able to wet her friend's mane.

"Don't even think about it," Art said flatly, not even bothering to turn around.

"Aw…" groaned Vera, un-cupping her paws and letting the river water she had collected there spill onto her feet.

"Besides, I'm not done yet."

"That's 'cause you're cleaning all the grass like it's poisoned or something!"

"And Mother will like my share better."

"As usual," huffed Vera, wading farther into the wide riverbed. For a few more minutes the pair was silent as the foal finished his work, and then finally clapped the dirt off of his paws. Then he looked up to find his friend pouncing in the shallows, in a half-hearted attempt to catch a fish. Even at thirteen years of age, she had yet to capture her first kill, and Mother had been nagging at her with every passing day to practice. Then again, Vera was not like most thirteen-year-old bears – she was still a cub, rather than the middle-aged matriarch she was supposed to be.

Art watched for a few moments with a funny rumpled expression on his face, an uncomfortable mixture of amusement and consternation. He knew that bears needed to live on fish, but he had never liked the idea of eating something that had once thought or felt. But fortunately for the foal, Vera found the task of fishing tedious and unrewarding. Realizing that he was watching her, the cream-colored cub stopped in her tracks and gave up with a cheerful grin. "Well, I guess fishing time is over!" she said brightly. "Let's see if we can beat Mother home!"

Giggling once more, the evercubs trotted back the way they had come, considerably more slowly now that their baskets were full. As they picked their way back to their den, dripping river water along their path, the dogwoods clustered at their feet with tiny sighs and lapped in the delicious droplets. Overhead the birches leaned quietly against the sugar maples, which whispered through their leaves to the spruces and junipers that towered over the smiling cubs. With a fond collective breath, the trees gently showered the wet pair in petals and fragrant needles, as if decorating them for their homecoming.


End file.

Care Bears, Adventure, Drama