Summer
Spring had been brief this year. It came late, as Winter refused to release her grip. There was a slow thaw and then the rains came, not over weeks but in a great torrent. After flood waters had abated, there were only a few weeks of the balmy temperatures typical of the season. Then the heat came and it stayed for the duration.
It was a full five or six weeks ahead of schedule. Every Spring had the anomalous day or two of extraordinary temperatures. This was different. After the first full week, almost into the second, all of the life in the Great Forest seemed to respond as if some great switch had been simultaneously tripped. Vegetation grew rapidly, thick and lush. The cooling, deep green hue of Summer spread across the forest floor. In the open meadowlands flowers burst open in a sea of blossoms. The sun beat down for long hours every day, without even as much as a veil of cloud for a filter. Insect and bird life likewise sprang into their summer milieu, each day a growing symphony of buzzing, clicking, chirping. Everything responded in kind.
Bear knew what was happening, or at least he had seen this before. Nature has it's own universal Gnosis, to which every part of Nature is attuned. Within this there are patterns, the delicate dance of balance. The earth had lain beneath a thick blanket of heavy snows for months. The slow thaw was accelerated with monsoon rains. The earth was soaked, waterlogged. To restore balance, Nature brought the summer sun hard and early. Hot sun, clear skies, wet earth. This was Summer's cauldron.
These seasons were a delight for Bear. The berries and honey would come early, and he knew just where to look. He wandered his range for hours, day after day, mostly within the forest. There was all manner of game in abundance. When Nature gives abundance, it is no gift; abundance only allows that more may be taken. And take he did. Bear's appetite was sated enough that he might often retire to a grassy meadow, to nap in the warm afternoon sun. Summer seasons such as this one were not rare, but they were not the norm. Bear had lived through enough to know to take full advantage.
Fortunate circumstance was accompanied by a new element, the prelude of which had come in the early weeks of Spring. Bear's second encounter with the hairless beasts below the falls had been alarming. On that particular day, the result had been the same as when the ice dam had broken above. The beasts had fled and he was left with some lovely fish. Bear had continued to visit that pool daily for some time, and there was no further sign of the mongrels. As Summer arrived ahead of schedule, Bear had the bounty of an entire realm to explore. He had not been visiting the pool as often as he might have otherwise.
After absence of about ten days, Bear began to saunter that way one morning. He had been deep into the ridges to the northern edge of his domain, approaching from the east bank well above the falls. The path was clear save for buzzing insects and the calls of birds. The hour was still early, but the climbing sun signaled the heat to come. This would be a good day for the water. He reached a spot on this path where the steady roar of the falls became audible. There was the smell of the spray hovering in the air, and then something more. Again now, there was that sour smell of the two-legged, hairless creatures.
From the tall grasses ahead, there was a sudden rustling, followed by a shrill whistle. It was like no bird call that Bear had ever heard. Bear did not possess the reasoning capacity to connect these two occurrences, yet he sensed a warning, nonetheless. He knew that the mongrel beasts were again at his fishing hole. The apparent loss of one of their cubs had done nothing to deter them. A blood rage boiled up behind Bear's eyes as he charged to the top of the falls.
The humans had also found the value in this fishing hole. They had since learned of Bear as having a competing interest. Where Bear is a solitary hunter, the humans worked as a pack. They had learned to scout the pool in advance, and to post sentries above and below. Bear did not yet understand this, only the defensive instinct triggered by their incursion. The last of their little party were clear of the opposite bank below, as Bear arrived at the top of the falls. He roared ferociously from a slate precipice, the volume amplified by the large cavern below. To the humans the roar resounded such that it seemed that Bear was right on their heels.
Bear waded out into the waters, bellowing a further warning to those sour smelling beasts scurrying into the tree line. The current was soft and even as he made his way across to the opposite shore. He had chased them off again, his fury was at least partially vented. Still, he stalked down the slope after crossing, determined to check the pool and dispatch any stragglers. He growled and huffed all the way down, still in a state of agitation. After thrashing his way across the remaining vegetation, he came to the pebble strewn shore of the pool, breathing quite heavily. Bear's entire body was charged to pounce upon something and render it limb from limb. But this was not to be.
Even as they could still be heard fleeing into the brush, Bear was stopped there at the shoreline. Their stink was heavy here. In the narrow sliver of sand at water's edge, there were fresh tracks. Long paws with thick toes. He now knew them by sight, by smell and by their tracks. The tracks showed that there were four of them this time. With each encounter there had been more of them. Bear should have been growing concerned for the sanctity of his fishing hole. Instead, his attentions were lured to a solitary stick in the sand, just a few feet away from the tracks. There were three rather plump bass impaled upon the stick, one of those still wriggling against it's fate.
Bear had no understanding of what this meant. He understood only that these were fish that, for whatever reason, were not in the water. Fish that he liked to eat. And he did. For the rest of Summer, not every time but often, Bear would come to the falls and again find fish that were left for him in this fashion. Every time he would devour them. He would ignore the unpleasant taint left by the hairless mongrels; or the fact that there were ever more of their tracks throughout the land. Though Bear still preferred the taste of a live fish, direct from the water, over time he found that freshly dead was good enough.
The heat grew and grew as weeks passed and by late summer a drought had fallen upon the land. The river, in some places, had dwindled to a mere trickle across the rocks. The water level in the pool below the falls had even dropped noticeably. There was abundance still, but a change was in the air. Not just the change of the looming season, but something greater. Something that would alter the Great Forest forever more. The change would be savage. It would not be beautiful.
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