Chapter 166 - Ten

XXIV.

Against Bridgette's better judgment, they went out into the woods that night. She was trying to move at a brisk pace, following a path still fresh in her mind, but Jed insisted on gawking at the claw-marked trees as they went, slowing down and casting his lantern to examine each one. 

Feeling Bridgette's harsh glare upon him, he thought he should say something.

"Thanks for agreeing to this, Bridge." He said, barely able to contain his excitement. "I've never seen a bear before!"

Bridgette fumed. "Me neither, until today...after one almost killed me."

Bridgette was the one to stop this time. She turned to him, raising her voice. "I could have died today, Jed! But you're treating it like some kind of game!"

Jed gawked, taken aback. "I was worried sick about you, Bridge!"

He walked up to her, the top of her head reaching to just below the base of his neck as he touched her on the shoulder .

"If something ever happened to you...I don't know what I'd do."

He brought his hand to lightly caress her on the cheek, prompting her to blush.

"Idiot!" she huffed, her red pigtails bouncing as she turned away. 

Seeing her like this, Jed grinned. "Now aren't you the cutest little bear hunter," he teased.

"Shut up!" She snapped. Then moved away,  waving at him to continue along with the trek. "Hurry up, you idiot! We're almost there."

Eventually, and bickering the whole way, they reached the clearing. 

The bear was there in the same state Bridgette had left it, as the meat was known to make people sick. Only a crew of animal skinners would be sent for it, come morning. 

Jed breathed deeply, in awe. "It's even more massive than I imagined!" 

Under shroud of darkness, it was a great, lifeless blob silhouetted by moonlight, but upon closer examination, the gorier details were still there -- how the innards of its broken skull were spilled out unto the ground, drawing flies, a wretched stink emanating.

Bridgette plucked off one of her mittens and brushed a bare hand against its back. 

She thought about the warmth and softness it exhibited in life, where now it was cold and stiff like chitin.

"What's on your mind?" Jed asked, noticing her odd behavior and forlorn expression.

"I just...did what I had to do," she mused. "If I didn't... I would have died. I had no choice." 

Even though it was she that had intruded upon the bear -- her actions, that had forced it into a position where it felt it had to defend itself.

Jed scratched his head. 

"You're not feeling sorry for a bear, are you?"

She didn't answer. She knew Jed of all people wouldn't understand. 

"Forget about it. It's...nothing."

However, he did think he knew just the thing that would cheer her up.

"Bears live in caves, right?"

XXV.

The carriage made a stop at a roadside pub so the horses could rest, while the driver went inside to have a drink. Typhon wanted to get something for him and El, too, but remembered the clock tower man's warning.

He took El around to the side of the building, and told her to wait.

"It's just that you glow in the dark, and most people don't do that," he reasoned.

Ad it was while sitting there, amid piles of garbage in the shadow of the bustling pub, she was faced with an uncomfortable premonition.

Am I always going to have to stay hidden like this?

Groaning, El curled into herself, tucking her knees against her face.

Just then she heard a song like collapsed.

Glancing over her shoulder at the noise, she saw something poking out from within a stack of firewood, and shortly after a slender, pale body came slithering into view. Albino white, shimmering in the moonlight, its tongue was a slight blaze of red, flickering intermittently, as it raised its head toward her in salutations.

"Sissster..." She heard its familiar raspy voice.

El recoiled with a shriek."It's you!" 

At first she crawled backwards on her hands, distancing herself from it. Afraid of what it might be scheming for her this time.

But then, her eyes flashed with anger.

"You tricked me!" She said. "You made me eat that fruit..."

"I did no such a thing! Did I hold you down and force it down your throat?" The snake sounded annoyed. "That was your choice, and yours alone, and now you must reap the consequences."

El was crying. "You never told me it would lead to all this!"

"If I had, then you never would have eaten it."

"So why did you want me to eat the fruit in the first place!?" El was frantic. None of it made sense. All she wanted was to return home, to the garden. To Paradise.

"The life you were living was a lie. I merely provided you with a means to discover the truth."

"But I don't want the truth!" El wailed.

Why would someone want to live in a world like this?

"It isn't about what you want, stupid child!" The snake snapped, clearly starting to lose its patience. "So long as you remained in that prison, you would never be able to discover the truth...about what you are!"

El's distress at once turned to curiosity.

"I see you're curious." The serpent smiled, its thin mouth stretching to a grotesque, unnatural extent as it rose its head higher and higher, until it loomed over El. "And to be honest, if I wanted to, I could tell you everything right now."

El nodded slowly, her eyes vacant as if in a daze. "Please, I want to know!"

"It's something you must discover on your own."

Before she could press the serpent any further, El was startled by the sounds of clinking glasses and boisterous chatter she could hear coming out from the pub briefly, as the door swung open.

"Sorry I took so long," Typhon said, emerging from around the corner.

El halted him before he could come any closer. 

"Typhon, watch out, there's a--"

Glancing back to where the serpent had been, she saw it had vanished.

Staring flabbergasted, Typhon bumped her. 

"Come on, let's drink!" He said, handing her one of two glasses he'd brought out with him.

It was sweet. Warm. Oozy like honey, but even sweeter. It bubbled in the back of her throat, with a strangely satisfying burning sensation.

"Mmmm, that's good!" Typhon declared, for the both of them.

El smiled. Just like that, all her previous worries seemed to melt away. Just from having Typhon near she felt safer, more secure in this world.

Glancing up at the night sky, noticing the curtain of stars or the first time. 

Perhaps, the nighttime wasn't so scary as she once thought.

While drinking the rest of their glasses together, they silently gazed up at the night sky. At those beautiful, dazzling stars, the constellations and streaking comets all, that could only be viewed in the skies beyond Paradise. When Typhon started telling her about the constellations, or what little of them he knew from his readings, El was certain she never wanted to return to the garden. Even after all she'd been through, and whatever else awaited her, as long as Typhon was there with her, she could face it.

"If none of those bad things happened," she mused, "I would have never had the chance to be here right now, with you."

She looked to Typhon, her bright eyes brimming with a brand new appreciation for life.

"I...never would have met someone like you, Typhon."

Typhon, a bit embarrassed by this sudden confession, said nothing. Even though rescuing El, and leaving his old life to be with her now, had brought a sense of meaning to his life he'd never known it lacked. A sentiment so fundamental, that he wasn't sure how to even express with words.

What laid ahead? He could only imagine. Would there be many more moments like this?

XXVI.

Bridgette gasped, her voice risen to a shrill, high-pitched whimper. Jed was on top of her, his warm kisses tickling her neck.

"We're seriously not doing this right now," she said.

The two had found a cave, not far from the bear's corpse. A wide mouth in the earth, only tall enough for Bridgette to enter if she crouched, becoming high enough inside for the both of them to stand up.

Bridgette wasn't even sure how it happened, but suddenly they were at each other.

"Was this your plan from the start?" She asked him, suppressing a smile.

He drew his lips away from her, for but a moment. "Careful planning makes a good hunter."

"I am not some elk," she fired back. "I'm dangerous, you know."

She tore off all his baggy furs and his shirt, revealing the toned body hiding underneath, slick with sweat.

"I'm aware," Jed mused. "Some might say even more dangerous than a bear."

Jed slid his rough hand down, down along her lean torso slick with sweat, to her shorts, and nestling his fingers within her thigh.

This is so stupid, Bridgette thought, with a suppressed laugh.

Jed knew every part of her body. 

Like how much of it was firm muscle.

Yet still, there were some tender spots remaining, here and there...

He pushed his other hand up through her top, squeezing her bare breast.

"Bastard!"

Laughing, she leaned forward and bit him on the neck in retaliation.

Then, she heard it. 

A plaintive cry, coming from further into the cave.

She sat upright, pushing Jed off her.

"Did you hear that?"

"Yeah," he huffed, taking out his hunting knife. "We might have woke something up."

A little further into the cave, they came upon an overturned log covered in toadstools, as more of the cries could be heard from within. Jed and Bridgette exchanged glances, both uncertain of what it could be despite having lived in these woods for their entire lives.

Receiving just a shrug from Jed, Bridgette sighed. 

"Fine! Let the injured girl go first."

With lantern in hand, she bent down to take a look inside the log.

"Nice" Jed said, pinching her on the rump, earning him a swift kick to the shin that left him squealing.

"Not now!" She flared at him. 

This prompted a louder, more frightened-sounding cry from whatever was hiding in the log.

"There, there," she whispered sweetly, trying to calm it.

A twinkling pair of beady, black eyes fixated back at her, with a thin red sliver of a mouth and tiny fangs.

Jed tried to lean around her to get a look. "What is it, Bridge?"

Reaching both of her arms into the log, as far as she could reach until her shoulders grazed against the dampened wood, her hands met with something soft, and furry. She felt around for its stick-like arms and legs, the cushy pads of its paws underneath, the smooth fur covering its body. These interactions were in turn met with small retaliatory bites and scratches, but she would not be dissuaded.

"Bring the light," she told Jed, as she finally found a firm grip on the thing and could finally bring it out, despite its audible protests.

It was a bear cub.

Jed's readied his knife. "Put it down!" He said. "I'll take care of it."

"What!?" Bridgette gawked, hiding the cub from him. "No way! It's only a baby."

"It has to die, Bridge. Wild animals can't be tamed, and you of all people should know what a full grown bear is capable of."

"But look at him! He's so cute. And totally harmless."

She cradled the cub in her arms, looking down at the back of its head sadly, while it curiously sniffed all up and down her arm..

"That was probably...its mother, that I killed."

She glared at Jed.

"It's all alone in the world now, and you're saying we should just kill it?"

Jed growled, incensed.

"Where would we keep him, then?"

Bridgette thought on it. It's true, as a ranger, she wouldn't be able to keep a crying bear cub a secret for very long.

But Jed, on the other hand...

Before she even opened her mouth, though, he saw the sly grin form on her face.

"No," he quickly said. "No way!"

"Since you live outside of the village, no one will ever find out!"

"No, no, no," he insisted, almost hitting his head on a low-hanging stalactite in his haste, as he turned to scramble out of the cave.

Bridgette chased after him."Jed!"

"I won't have any part in this!" He said, stumbling out of the cave. "Sorry, Bridge, I just--"

"Do this...and I'll marry you!"

Jed stopped. "Huh?"

Bridgette held the bear cub out to him. In the faint moonlight cast upon her face, Jed could see her eyes sparkling with fresh tears.

"Don't follow the rules, just this once!"