My Beautiful Bear Doesn’t Return

After a clumsy misstep, I fell to the rocky ground from further than I had intended. I would surely sustain another injury, maybe even a broken bone, but it didn’t matter at this point. I had gone too far.

I fanned my eyes to see through the downpour of rain. There it was. Her cave, waiting right before me. I stood in awe before a place that offered little awe on its own. This couldn’t be a good idea. Revisiting something so far into my past? A broken bone wouldn’t have sent me away, but the promise of a broken heart could have.

Against every force and with every instinct, I shouted at the mouth of the cave.

“Bear!”

Silence. It hung there infinitely in the deep and cavernous blackness. If the shadows had once danced, it seemed they had ceased to long ago. I stood motionless in that moment, but the desolate landscape seemed to be dragging me into an empty future.

Footsteps. It’s what I was hoping for, but it seemed all wrong; a ripple in a pool that had always been dried. They were not the heavy and lumbering footsteps of the creature I had called, but small, uniform—the steps of one of my own.

And there from the shadows emerged a tall man.

“Can I help you?” he asked, polite but inquisitive. The beating rain outside began to lose its touch in the face of this unsensory presence.

“Can I speak to Bear?” I asked.

“Why?” countered the man. His kind eyes matched no other part of him.

“She’s an old friend…”

“I’m not sure she wants to speak to old friends,” the man stated, but his stagnating assumption was disproved by a weightier set of footsteps. It was a marvel I could remember how to breathe.

Bear lumbered by the side of the tall man.

“GRRRRRRRRRUNOOOUGGGH,” said Bear. The voice that had been lost somewhere in my memory, but the sight was not.

“Hi, Bear,” I began, casually and not by choice.

“GRRRRRRRRRUNOOOUGGGH,”said Bear, the echo rocketing across the expansive cave. I could smell vegetable stir fry on her breath. Bear had always loved vegetable stir fry.

“Honestly?” I replied, becoming increasingly aware of how saturated I was from the rain. “It’s cliche, but—for closure.”

“GRRRRRRRRRUNOOOUGGGH,” said Bear as she began to trudge away toward the right side of the cave.

“Bear, it’s been years,” I pleaded. I had been galvanized by the confidence that comes when one dreads an inevitable failure. “I’m not here to hurt you. Please.”

“I don’t think she wants to see you,” said the tall man. He would have stopped me from following her had I been the type to try. Rather, I walked toward the left of the cave entrance to trace her. A light flickered in front of her.

I could now feel the chilling embrace of the rain.

“Are you on Tumblr right now, Bear?!”

“GRRRRRRRRRUNOOOUGGGH,” said Bear.

“You’re turning away? Just like that?”

“GRRRRRRRRRUNOOOUGGGH,” said Bear, scrolling aimlessly through her Tumblr feed.

The tall man stepped into my view. I looked up at him, a twinge of sympathy escaping from his resolute expression. My spirit had not given up, but I found myself turning away from the cave as if somehow my body knew: There would be nothing more here.

The glow of the computer screen was snatched by the shadows, and soon the cave itself became enveloped in the dreary storm. I attempted to scale the ridge I had fallen down earlier, but all my energy had been expended to become devastated.

I think it might be you.

By chance, an old memory was passing by.

We’re more than compatible. You said it yourself. You know it.

It was what I had told Bear, just as she was first leaving me. Without explanation, it was returning to me in vivid fragments, and the last of these fragments presented itself.

You just have to tell me what you’re feeling, Bear. If we can face those fears, we’ll be as happy as we’ve always been.

Some things never change.