Keeper-

The grizzly sow should not be exploring now that she has found her den for the winter on the northern face of a Hyaline mountain. She ought to be fast asleep and dreaming of berries and fat little fawns that’ll drop from their mothers’ tawny flanks. Instead, the grizzly bear is lumbering through the woods, sometimes leaving her mark on a tree with a swipe of her claws. Eventually, she finds a rock nestled in the crook of three birch trees growing up out of the ground and it is here, that she rests at last.

Keeper is cold when she wakes.
Cold and dreamless. Well, not quite but almost - she recalls the taste of berries in her mouth like it was yesterday’s meal instead of a memory. But she knows that all the berries have long since dried up and dropped from the bushes, rotten and squashed into the earth. How could she have tasted them, more so in her dreams? She tries to ignore the other taste, the one that is raw and bloodied and sickens her stomach.

Back to the moment she woke though;
Her back had been to a rock and she found herself beneath the bare branches of three birch trees with silver bark that peeled back from itself in long tattered curls. That accounted for why she was cold even though the earth underneath her retained some of the heat from her own body. She gave a sad little shake of her head and climbed to her feet, unable to shake the unflagging sensation of confusion that swam through her thick and conquering. Why on earth would she fall asleep here, of all places? She had her red maple back in Hyaline to nap beneath.

Never had she once trusted herself to sleep in these woods though she trusted them to yield up their mushrooms and their secrets, but little else. Worse, she smelled like bear again and the musk of it began to add to the churn in her gut that compelled her forward in search of a stream. She needed to cleanse that animal scent from her skin! Keeper felt that was all she could do, dream and wake and be puzzled then wash the stench from her fur.

It never occurred to her that her summons to the mountain had left her with a gift.
It never occurred to her that Keeper was the bear and the bear was Keeper.
Heart and brain for both had yet to reconcile that much.

But the little dunskin found a stream and splashed her way through it until the cold water had rinsed and rid her of the foul stink she earlier wore. Once she could breathe in damp horse and little else, she felt more relaxed though still off, knowing that something wasn’t quite right inside but she could not pinpoint the how or the why of it. She just knew, like she knew standing hock-deep in the freezing stream was also bad for her.

Keeper left the stream; shook the cold and the damp from her as best as she could then lowered herself to the loam and took a good roll. Dry leaves and dirt would warm her up good, though clouds of steam rose off her the moment she clambered back to her feet and looked around, a small bit of guilt lining the friendly expression on her otherwise plain face. She hoped no one had noticed her odd dip in the water and the roll afterwards, that left her exposed, belly up and almost grunting in delight until she remembered that she was in a rather open space.

Keeper almost looked contrite.

not knowing how deep the woods are and lightless