Blacktail Deer Plateau A little lair for a very small bear

Tagging both @Finley and @Sun Spark and anyone else who's hungry - bear, it's what's for dinner!

Peregrine would never mess with a bear. When he arrived at the plateau's ledge and saw one pacing along the riverbank below, his fur prickled and he remained there, silent, still and watchful. As he observed the bear, he realized it was fussing over a small bundle on the shore. A carcass? Yet the beast didn't eat. It pawed at the small shape, grunted and growled at it, but never ate it. After a time, it—she, Peregrine decided, having deduced that the thing lying on the shore was her dead cub—made one last sound of distress before shambling away downriver.

Long after she'd gone, the Alpha male picked his way down to the river, sniffing along the ground until he arrived at the small body. It was fresh. Drowned, he thought grimly, thinking of Osprey Jr. He hesitated. Could he eat the offspring of another bereft parent, another young victim who'd shared his daughter's fate? Meat is meat, he decided. The Gamekeeper gathered the cub's scruff in his jaws and dragged it the short distance to the towpath, then upward toward the plateau proper.