The Woods

𝓒𝓱𝓪𝓹𝓽𝓮𝓻 9

Mari's point of view

I woke up and was surrounded by the warmth, the sunlight was slightly blinding me so I had to blink a few times for my eyes to get used to the light. I sat up and felt something heavy around my waist and something heavy in my lap, it turns out that Bear head was resting in my lap and his arms were hugging around my waist. Bear was smiling and was making similar sounds that a dog makes when their dreaming, sometimes he would twitch now and again. I stayed in sitting up for a few more minutes and he slowly woke up.

"Good morning Bear" he jumped a bit when he finally woke up. He sat up as well and grabbed my hands and looked at them, he put his palm against my own. His hand was huge, like gigantic "Your hands feel like sandpaper Bear, you can borrow some of my hand cream if you want" he softly thrilled and warped his arms around me "aww thank you Bear, this is nice" I jumped when I heard something crash in the house and loud, heavy footsteps. Bear jumped up and helped me off the bed and pointed underneath the bed. I crawled underneath the bed, Bear made a gesture to be quiet and gave me an apologetic look. He draped the blanket over the bed leaving me in complete darkness.

I heard some scuffling and something break like a vase or something. Bear was speaking to someone, I managed to decipher the voices Bear and Yeyin were speaking to someone with a gruff voice. I thought that they stopped but I was ripped from under the bed and was hanging upside-down, I grabbed the ends of the sack dress I was wearing to prevent it from falling down. I saw something I really didn't want to see, Bear must've slept nude and I saw his... thing and I want to die now. I shut my eyes immediately and went to my happy place.

Bear's point of view

"MAR'JA PUT MARI DOWN!" I roared at him, I would've tackled him but he was still holding Mari. "I knew you had an Ooman fetish! Gods Dto I always knew you were pauked up!" Mar'ja cackled. "Oh! What's wrong Dto? Did I hit a sore spot? Scared I might break your toy?" he started to pretend that he was losing his grip. He was still cackling until Yeyin clasped his shoulder, his claws digging into his shoulder.  "Put. Her. Down" Yeyin growled. Mar'ja slowly put Mari on the floor. I ran at him before he had a chance, we both fell on the floor with me on top of him and started I to yank on his dreads and slamming his head on the floor when he tried to get up. "Dto that's enough" a stern, feminine voice spoke.

I glanced up and saw one of the female elders, her arms folded but her expression was calm. "Get off of him" I did as she said but I grabbed Mari and held her like a mother would a pup. "Mar'ja get up and out" he scowled at me and staggered out. "Please explain to me why you've brought an Ooman here" I sat on the bed and cradled Mari. The elder still wore a calm expression. "This is Mari, she is the Ooman that lives on the outskirts of the forest. I've been taking food from her for a few months now and a few days ago she caught me. We came to an agreement that I am allowed to take some food as long as I tell her. The only thing she asks is that I visit her regularly and we've become friends because of it"

"Why have you brought her here then?"

"We were chosen to decorate the celebration area and well, me and Yeyin would be hopeless with it so I asked Mari if she could help us. She did and I think it is the best it has ever looked. But if we were to take her back when we finished we would be breaking curfew so we took her back here. And that's about it" she was silent for a few minutes, her mandibles scrunched up while she was deep in thought. "I assume you two are just friends?"

"Yes we are" I felt a little twinge of pain saying that.

"Then why does she have a love bite on her neck, can you explain that?"

"I-well... do you know about the flower thing? The cyan ones and what they do"

"Oh... I thought we burned the ones around the village, where are they?"