Bearclaw Valley et peccatum meum contra me est semper

her gaze had gone blank, staring past the pallid, wriggling shape.

(wormlike)

within, unrest.

there was entitlement.

all of ursus were small-minded. incapable. brutish. none as dedicated and learned as she. 

she'd earned the revelations of a true god. to bless or scar, but leave her with proof enough.

other was dread.

all she did, she'd done for long. and many had done so before. yet the only tangible things had to be studied, could be debated, seen by so many as mundane - godless.

what if the meaning in all things was that there was no meaning what if there was nothing beyond the base repulsive writhing of reality nothing that would make of it a paradise or wheel that would make the dog soul worth more than a h u m

down that path was madness.

the person crept back into her eyes, and bernadette looked at the thing before her very face, as if seeing it the first time.

what a rumble its little throat made.

foolish of her to expect more. the bear was a spirit. with the cult left, nobody tended to it, its meager power, which once so enthralled a great warlock, faded.

this could never have been a shattering of reality. so uneducated to guess at it.

she felt the conduit; how the bruin within mimed a canine, attempted to wield those underdeveloped articulators to speak with her.

but the message was there - not what she wished to hear, but there.

"i comprehend." bernadette whispered, gathering the conduit into her paws. slowly, she came to lie on her back, it on her chest.


the sky had turned red, orange and pink.