Trailing Archangel [Bear Hunt]

It was a fine afternoon. Partially cloudy skies, a good temperature, a light breeze, and little that needed to be done. It was looking like a day to take easy. Dena Blackmoore had sat herself down outside in the far north corner of the tribe with just a few supplies to busy her hands. With a slow day, she had the time to make some handmade arrows for herself. It wasn’t normally a task she had time for but it wasn’t exactly hard. Frankly, it was brainless.

She leaned back into her chair--otherwise known as Dawson the toki, who was enjoying a good nap--and sharpened the last few rocks she had into fine arrowheads. She did the activity in chunks and spent the better half of the morning making the arrowheads with the intention of tying them to the arrow shafts all in a row.

Dena was taking the old-fashioned approach to making arrowheads; knapping with basic tools on flakes of chipped rocks she had cracked apart earlier that day. She clacked away with her tools and arrowheads absentmindedly, her thoughts on other business in life.

When she finished up and put the last of the arrowheads completed down, Dena could actually begin to hear the rest of the bustle of her tribe. She hadn’t realized how little she had been paying attention, she had basically just been listening to tapping stones for hours. She rubbed her ears.

Maybe she could convince Yukio to whip up a good story and song to ease her ears. She quickly shook the idea out of her head. Convincing him into a light-hearted diddy would be harder than wrestling a moose bare-handed.

Still, the tribe could use a good night of easy fun. Dena looked up and over her tribe, her eyes soon fell on a small group of women chatting. Lady-like duties like playing sweet songs were never in Dena’s repertoire but maybe one of the gentler girls around here could prepare a flute and dance for a bonfire night. Something simple.

Dena cleaned up her arrowheads a little, Dawson finally stirring when Dena’s weight was no longer on his side. He looked up groggily as she got up and headed for the group of ladies. Slowly, Dawson got to his paws as well and padded after his handler.

As Dena approached the women, she quickly noticed their faces were not nearly as carefree as hers. They were speaking quietly to each other. What little Dena could hear of it, she could at least make out the tone was fearful. Was their trouble in the tribe?

“Is everything alright?” Dena spoke up clearly. Her tone was not a harsh one, but her face had become stern. She wasn’t about to let something bad happen in her tribe while she just sat around making arrows!

“O-oh!” One of the women gasped, taken by surprise with Dena’s interest. As fast as the girl looked at Dena, she shifted her eyes away and to the ground. As if ashamed.

“Chief Blackmoore… y-yes, everything is just fine…”

The other women looked at the girl with mixed expressions. Some looked understanding while others looked like they wanted to chew the girl out for answering as she did. Especially the other two women in in the huddle.

One of which put her hand gently onto the girl’s shoulder and cooed, “come now, child, our chief is here for all of us.”

They all seemed quite worried. Dena bit her lip impatiently. She didn’t want to get demanding with the delicate wittle flower of a girl, she might just send her running if she was already afraid to talk to her.

Dawson nudged against Dena’s hip and looked up at all of the girls. His eyes big, curious with what the humans were talking about. He cocked his head as he looked at the girl that was the center of everyone’s attention, including Dena’s stare that unintentionally bore into the young girl’s soul.

“Please.” Dena strained to stay sweet-toned. “Tell me what’s the matter?”

Honestly, Dena wasn’t even sure if she cared. What could possibly have gone wrong with the girl? She looked like the very definition of a young maiden; undoubtedly a girl fresh to adolescence with tight braids that she had bothered to squeeze an array of flowers into every day. What, had a boy rejected her confession?

It sure seemed that way with the look of guilt that came over the girl’s face. Maybe she felt bad for catching the chief’s attention. The girl looked up at Dena hesitantly more than once before dodging her eyes downward again like a submissive dog. She only settled her sights on Dawson when he cocked his head. Then she didn’t look away, she just stared into the toki’s eyes.

Actually, she looked all the more guilty when she looked at Dawson. Dawson apparently noticed this as well and let out an uncomfortable whine. At that, the girl finally moaned sadly and covered her face before pivoting around so her back was to Dena.

Dena’s nose wrinkled and she folded her arms.

“Would someone tell me what’s going on?”

The older woman who had tried to encourage the girl finally sighed, defeated. Obviously the young girl wasn’t going to talk.

“My granddaughter had a bit of a run in with a bear...”

“A bear.” Dena deadpanned. Was that all? There were always bears. They skulked around for easy fish and apples but Dena knew there weren’t any man-eaters roaming on her land.

“Just...  tie your fish baskets in the trees next time.” Dena added, looking at the young teenager again.

“It’s not like that!” The girl finally spoke up and whipped her hands down. She sounded angry.

“I went to hunt a bear, I… I was learning a lot from my brother, I thought I was ready… Especially if I took a good tokota with me.” She didn’t turn to face Dena or the others. Her head dipped down and Dena could just barely see the girl biting her lip hard, just short of making herself bleed. She was fighting herself to speak.

It took her a moment but finally she blurted it out.

“I lost Archangel! I-I just.. I just--”

“You lost my tokota?” Dena interrupted. Her hands gripped into tight fists. It took all her strength not to grab the little witch by the braids and demand answers, demand her tokota back. She was pretty sure if she let herself do that, the girl would probably just faint from fear.

“What do you mean lost?” Dena pressed and took one step closer to the girl.

“The--the bear is supposed to run away but it didn’t! It turned around and fought! Archangel kicked me off and ran.” The girl looked over her shoulder at her chief but quickly turned her face away again.

“The bear gave me a good roar a-and then… and then chased after Archangel! I-I don’t know where he is!”

The girl sniffed and covered her face. Dena could see the tears trickling down the side of her cheeks and hand.

“I-I’m so sorry, Chief Blackmoore!” Before Dena could utter another word, the girl bolted. She weaved through the tents and completely out of sight.

The other women were quick to chime in and explain why they hadn’t brought this very important news to Dena sooner.

“We were planning a search and rescue.”

“I just wanted us to wait a little while longer, my husband went out hunting today, so maybe Archangel found him and is perfectly safe!”

“Would a bear really be able to hurt a healthy tokota like him? I’m sure he’ll show up soon.”

Dena couldn’t steady her breathing. She pushed past the huddle of women and hurried off for the south side of the tribe grounds. She wasn’t going to just sit around and hope that Archangel was okay. She was going to go find him herself!

She made a straight shot to where she knew her tokotas were settled for the day. She gathered her tack and saddled up two tokotas. Dena suspected this bear was a big mother bear, and might have fought back to protect her cubs. A mother bear would fight to its last breath for its children, and while it was honorable to have such a mindset in the bear, Dena did not intend on coming home with a dead tokota.

Her choice of tokotas was easy. She picked two of her tokotas she felt would be keen to fight but keep their wits about them as well. Hellion the sly and Montgomery the loyal intellect.

Of course Dawson had waddled along behind Dena the whole time. When she strapped the saddle on Montgomery, Dena could hear her toki boy whining with excitement. He must have thought they were going off on a carefree hunt. Dena paused for a moment to think about bringing him.

At first, she wasn’t keen on the idea of a stumpy toki tagging along for a fight with a bear. Especially if the bear was big enough to send a full-sized tokota like Archangel running; the beast might be twice Dawson’s size and have a swipe capable of breaking the toki’s jaw off. However the more tokota she brought, the more likely it might be that a mother bear would realize her odds and just cower at the sight of them. If Archangel wasn’t fit to walk, or worse, they might need the extra strength.

She grabbed Dawson’s own collar and harness, strapped him up, and headed out. She rode atop Montgomery, the most protective of her hunting party, and allowed Hellion to freely move, sniff and put his sharp mind to good use.

“Find Archangel!” Dena commanded, pointing her words directly at Hellion. The red-coated trilled with excitement before bounding forward and leading Dena’s pack along.

Archangel was ridden by the girl through the forest and to the traditional hunting grounds of the tribe. She made no effort to hide the trail she took. It was lucky for Dena and Hellion but as the tokotas hiked onward, Dena had to ponder how the girl even stumbled on a bear.

Bears were a surprisingly sharp bunch. On their land, they had plenty of large grizzly bears that, despite their size, typically only ate meat that was fresh fish or deer carrion left by wolves and cougars. The bear is smart enough to get enough berries and roots to satiate their large size, and their nose strong enough to pounce on any easy opportunity. If a bear could smell a dead moose miles away, Dena could hardly believe that the bear wouldn’t also smell the girl and tokota running downwind into the hunting grounds south of the tribe.

Some part of Dena feared for what they would find. It was entirely possible that Hellion wasn’t following the trail the girl had left then, but instead the stink of Archangel’s blood wafting through the wilds.

If… If anything had happened to Archangel…!

Dawson whined loudly and shook the concerned woman out of her thoughts. She wasn’t sure how long she had been worrying but when she looked down, Dawson stared up at her like it had been quite a while. His eyes were large and he didn’t even bother looking ahead--actually, he was stumbling a little with the way he was walking.

Dena sighed and waved her hand at the toki. He was too short to pet from where she sat on Montgomery.

“I’m fine, Dawson.” She said as calmly as she could and took a moment to take a deep breath.

She brought her eyes forward and started to study the land that Hellion was leading them into. The dense forest had long given away to open fields with a sparse amount of trees and boulders. It was good land for foxes to hunt mice and for deer to graze. She looked about the area for good foods that a bear might be after.

Honestly, she saw none. There were a couple bushes here and there but they were all growing flowers, not berries. She wasn’t sure why a bear would be out here, especially with a cub.

Yet it was near the center of the field that Hellion began to circle his trail and finally stop. He looked up and looked over their surroundings with visible teeth, clearly ready for a fight. Dena kicked her heels against Montgomery and urged the boy to catch up with Hellion quickly. What Dena saw was nothing comforting.

The grass was all torn up in the area. The ground kicked and dirt freshly scattered. A scuffle. Had this been where Archangel and the girl met with the bear or was this where Archangel could no longer run from the bear? Dena couldn’t tell.

Hellion suddenly let out a high-pitched growl and Dena jerked her head to him. He was looking at her and then pointed his nose downward to a patch of grass by his forepaws. Smeared on the pale strands of grass was blood.

Dena closed her eyes tight. She didn’t know if it was Archangel’s blood but as much as she wished that thought was comforting, she couldn’t bare to look at the stained grass. Whatever the case, Archangel wasn’t here. Hellion needed to find Archangel and Dena went to repeat her previous command.

“Find Archan--” She was cut off by the loud whines of Hellion again.

She opened her eyes and looked to the tokota again but this time the red tokota wasn’t point to anything at all. He was just sort of looking around. More curiously, Montgomery had joined in, his big head swaying from side to side as he scanned the horizon.

Did they see it? Did they see the bear?

Dena looked all around here, not even sure what to be looking for. It’d be hard to spot too. Even if it was an open field, the grass was tall. Bears weighed a lot, but if one was resting, they’d be hard to pick out. Just beyond their location, the forest thickened and darkened to the point a deep-colored animal would be hard to spot if it stood still.

It would be very hard actually, for Dawson to spy anything. Dena looked down to check what the little toki was up to but found no toki there by her side.

“What?” Dena couldn’t help but say out loud. Where had Dawson gone?

It was then that she realized that her two tokotas weren’t looking for the bear, they were looking for Dawson. The little bastard had snuck off into the tall grass and was completely out of view now.

The fool. If the bear wasn’t intimidated by Archangel, she sure wouldn’t be shivering in her fur at the sight of Dawson, a little toki! She sighed loudly and patted Montgomery’s shoulder, moreso to calm herself down than to do anything for her mount.

Now she had two lost tokotas.

She wasn’t all that sure where Dawson had gone but she had to assume he was following the trail of Archangel too. The pack couldn’t do anything else but continue their search, could they?

“Find Archangel.” She repeated her command finally. Hellion shortly stared at his master before getting right to work. Once again, she and her tokotas were following the trail.

Some part of her just wanted to find Dawson first. He was little, if he was caught by the bear he’d be less capable of defending himself than Archangel would. However she knew that if Dawson hadn’t gone for the bear, he was at least safer than Archangel was. Considering they had just found blood, Dena had to assume there was a good chance that Dawson had realized the gravity of the situation, turned tail and ran back to the tribe.

Hellion was leading them southwest now. Not far from them was the river. There were already several bears there fishing. Dena watched them carefully, trying to pick out a bear that might have the bravery to attack her tokota.

These bears kept to their own duties. They were fishing and if they weren’t fishing, they were clearly backing off to give Dena’s pack their space. The bears did not want to risk being hunted or even just injured enough that they couldn’t forage for themselves. The only squabble that Dena saw was between two male bears that entirely ignored Dena on he other side of the river.

She stopped Montgomery for a moment and headed a little closer to the water’s edge. She watched the two males with narrowed eyes. She tried to spot any wounds that might suggest they had done something severe recently. However from what she could make out, the bears weren’t even wet. They hadn’t even gotten into the river yet.

None of these bears were the one that chased Archangel. They couldn’t be. Dena kicked her heels on Montgomery and continued the search for her tokotas.

Out of the corner of her eye, thick grass not far from the river, Dena caught the flash of movement. She quickly turned to look but did not immediately see anything.

“Oy!” Dena called out to Hellion. She grabbed both her tokotas attention and then pointed in the direction she saw the movement.

“Rush it!” She commanded. Hellion burst forward at the grass patch, he only needed half a reason to bite something, even if he didn’t know what it was. Montgomery lumbered behind him, not seemingly all that confident that there was something worth biting.

However the next thing Dena knew, her ears stung at the terrible cry of a tokota coming from the grass. Her heart stung at first, thinking it was Hellion, but then she could hear his confident growling.

It was a tokota in the grass!

“Stop, stop!” Dena called out and urged Montgomery to catch up with Hellion with a little bit more pep in his step.

Soon she could see the tokota, or tokotas, that Hellion had found. It was none other than Cooney the piebald and Kasatka the black-coat. No wonder Montgomery didn’t seem all that interested, he likely recognized their scent from the time they had met at the river.

The two tokotas were known to be a wily duo but today they looked nothing short of pitiful. Despite there being two of them, they were both rolled over submissively at the presence of Hellion alone. Hellion actually seemed to have restrained himself from attacking, he was actually doing little more than standing over Cooney and Kasatka with his tail held high with dominance.

In the amount of time that Hellion had, he couldn’t have possibly caused what had happened to the two girl tokotas. It was hard to make out on Kasatka’s dark pelt but on Cooney’s piebald, Dena could see splashes of red; the two were injured. Very injured.

The marks looked like slashes. Either done by a cougar, a tokota, or well, a bear. It was seeming like they had a tokota-fighting rogue bear on their hands, not simply a protective mother bear. They had their work cut out for them. This meant that the bear might very well be even bigger than expected and in fact be a formidable opponent.

Hopefully Archangel was in no worse shape than Cooney and Kasatka were, or better yet, had out run the bear. Dena could imagine that Cooney and Kasatka, as a duo, might have underestimated a rogue bear intent on fighting tokotas. Hopefully Dawson wasn’t out somewhere being just as foolish.

They needed to keep going.

“Get off of her!” Dena said sternly to Hellion and he listened. He looked like Dena was ruining his fun but he backed off enough to let the two tokotas get to their paws.

The girls kept their heads low and licked their chops submissively in front of Dena. Still, they wagged their tails a little. Obviously they were a little relieved at the fact that it was Dena who found them and not the bear.

Dena kicked Montgomery into gear and started walking off again, she led Montgomery back to where Hellion had been following the trail. She snapped her fingers to get Hellion’s attention back on the trail.

Hellion was hesitant to ignore the girls but ultimately was back to work. Much more surprisingly, as Montgomery and Hellion started walking, Dena caught the glimpse of movement in her peripherals again. When she looked behind her, she saw Cooney and Kasatka were joining the hunt.

Well, they were injured but it sure did mean her pack was now plenty big enough to fight off any bear no matter how big. Kasatka and Cooney were more keen on the wilds around them too, and once they caught up with Montgomery, the two passed him to join the scent trailing.

It wasn’t all that long before they were away from the river but onto their next crime seen. They were in an open forest now, and the signs of a scuffle surrounded them. A big one this time. Cooney and Kasatka became visibly uncomfortable. This must have been where they fought the bear and judging by the way Cooney’s wounds still stained a bright red, one could guess it actually happened recently.

The bear was close.

A whine echoed through the trees and shook Dena from her thoughts. She instantly recognized the tone; it was Dawson. Was he hurt? She looked around frantically.

Soon she spotted his grey coat amongst the dark trees. He was in a dence patch of fallen trees and boulders, she could barely make him out, actually. She really could only see his tail, and it was wagging.

The group all headed over there. Dena letting out a call to let her tokota know who was coming.

“Dawson! Dawson, it’s me!”

The toki poked his head out from his hiding place but as soon as he saw Dena and gave a smile, he ducked his head away again. What was the boy doing? He had nothing to hide from! With the group already pretty close to the toki, Dena haulted Montgomery long enough for her to hop down and walk to her toki for herself.

There were a few trees she had to pull herself over--it wasn’t anything that would be easy for her tokotas to all do, even though she could see many scratch marks from tokota--or bear--claws along the trunks of the fallen frees.

In fact, Hellion and Montgomery didn’t seem all that keen on following Dena across the rubble just to fetch a toki from his hiding place. They took a more sentinel approach and kept an eye out for the bear in case it decided to return and finish Dawson off.

Actually, much to Dena’s surprise and relief, Dawson was clearly unharmed once she found him. He hadn’t gotten into a fight, he had just run ahead of them. Thank the stars!

Yet despite the good news, Dena could smell the thick scent of iron; the scent of blood. Dawson was dancing on his paws and trying to get Dena to follow her with all his whining. He only gave her a small greeting and a lick before he scampered off around some boulders. Dena followed. The trail of blood grew thicker to the point she could visibly see it laying on the dark dirt ground. At the end of the trail, there lay a tokota.

“Archangel…!” Dena gasped and hurried to his side.

He had pushed himself back into an area where he was guarded from another attack. He looked tired and weak, but was breathing. He carried a few wounds and held one paw gingerly, but he’d surely feel better in no time so long as they cleaned him up. In fact, it looked like Dawson might have already started that. Some of the wounds looked like they had been lapped furiously by some tokota.

A scratching sound and then a thump came from behind Dena. The two girls had navigated the rubble to join the group. They approached slowly but pushed past Dawson to directly meet Archangel. He greeted them like they had met before, and licked their noses.

If Dena were to guess, Archangel had run until he couldn’t run anymore, and then the bear had him. If he already knew Cooney and Kasatka, then maybe they had witnessed what happened and stopped the bear from finishing Archangel off. At the price of their own blood.

She looked to the two girls thankfully before returning her gaze to her own dear Archangel. She sat down and stroked the top of his head and he relaxed his large muzzle onto her lap. They stayed that way for minutes quietly until the sounds of a bear and tokota could be heard off in the distance.

Dena raised her head and looked to her tokotas. Archangel needed help, but so did someone else. With fire burning in her eyes, she growled.

“Let’s go bear hunting.”