{"sf1_id":1122458,"sf2_id":null,"title":"Ursa Minor","author":"Aux Chiens","words":9237,"posted_at":"2017-01-11T16:23:00.000Z","tags":["Abuse","Bear","Blood","Lactation","Male","Male lactation","Muscle Growth","Rape","Revenge","Tail Growth","Transformation","Violence","ursine"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1122458-ursa-minor","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/view/1122458","image_url":"https://www.sofurryfiles.com/std/thumb?page=1122458\u0026ext=.jpg","description":"","content":"Bears sleep by day. At night they stay awake to\nchase away bad dreams.\n_________ \nJesse O'Neil\n\n            February in western Virginia\nis the time of the thaw - the weather becomes finer and warmer and the careless\ntossings of Winter's wrath become muddy snowmelt on hills and mountains. \n            The trees bristle with their\nfuzzy buddings over the purple, seductive, poisonous crocuses, who defy death\neach year by bursting through the ground...and the robin, friend of Man,\nreappears to hop about the warming soil to feast upon the first, foolishly\nadventurous worms, to feed his chicks which will hatch from blue eggs in cozy\nnests.\n            He and his bird fellows begin\ntheir return, and they sing of things to come - victories to be won, defeats to\nbe endured, disasters to impend and fortunes to be made. This month is full of\nbloom and revitalization, and the birds take notice. They tell each other what\nthe rest of the year might hold.\n            It is the time of passions to\nreignite, it is the time for vows to be made and to greet the year that is\nstill new and still fresh with renewed promise. In other times and other places\nthis was the season of the feudal lord and his loyal paladins sallying forth to\nbattle foes - of the samurai on horseback with his yumi, to defend honor and\nemperor.\n            Proserpina will be reunited\nwith her mother, the seasons will change, the promise of the rebirth of the Sun\nis nearly come, sumer is icumen in.\n            Yet as Father Winter lies\na-dying, he is not slain.\n            The skies at sunset still say\nthe equinoctial days are yet to be - the hues of pink and sanguine that hurt\nthe eye because their beauty is so pure, the liquid emulsions of Saint\nValentine's own heart spewing across the sky.\n            Now is the time that the bears\nstir from their caves and lumber out to end their interregnum over the hills and\nthe forests and the streams and retake their rightful place as monarchs and\nrulers.\n            What is a bear? He is a king -\nhis wife is fearless, peerless queen, his cubs little princes. \n            The mountaineer and the hunter\nknow his place in the domain of the bear and will hold fast their guard against\nthem - their pelts make peerless capes and clothing and their meat will feed a\nfamily for months from only one kill, but he is a fearsome adversary, he will\nnot be felled easily like the squirrel or the fox.\n            Long ago in the cosmology of\nthe Medieval European was it assumed that bears - brown, bruin, not his smaller\nblack cousin venerated and feared in Appalachia or the horrid grizzled ghost\nthat stalks the Yukon - were the smartest and most intelligent of the beasts in\nthe wild, and also the closest to Man himself for behold, does he stand on his hindlegs like Man, does he protect\nhis cubs like Man, too.\n            Perhaps that, more so than the\nstartling sight of a furry animal daring to adopt a manlike pose, is what moved\nthe scribes as they illuminated their manuscripts and bestiaries.\n            Out here in Roanoke there are\nseveral places where the bears still lumber, watching their strange naked,\nfurless counterparts with knowing and wary eyes from their safe places of woods\nand cave - this time of year in the area called Back Creek, down a little ways\nout of town, approaching Bent Mountain, as the weather warms, one watches for\nthem.\n            They are not foolish, these\nbears, nor do they relish being around Man...sometimes it is Man that is foolish,\nand the confrontation between the two results in unutterable tragedy.\n            Sometimes - sometimes it is\njust convenient enough to believe that.\n            Some years ago there was a lad\nof eighteen, named Theodore Taylor Godwinson, always going by his middle name, who\nwas the nephew of a prominent lawyer who had his enormous estate in the Back\nCreek area, and who was found murdered and mauled by such a bear one awful\nevening.\n            That same night, the night of\nValentine's Day, actually, Taylor himself vanished for good, and some months\nlater was declared legally dead, only a few weeks before he would have\ngraduated from Hidden Valley High School - there was a case like it in\nneighboring Franklin County about a year and a half later, also with a young\nman of eighteen, named Daniel Hodges, and also with no resolution, which deeply\nshook both of these tightknit communities.\n            At the time it was theorized Taylor\nhad stepped out of his house to take a nightly walk, like he liked to do,\nleaving the door open for the bear to accidentally enter - the bear had done\nhim in first, then his uncle, but such a violent bear as the Commonwealth had\never seen was never found, so it was a guess as good as the next person's.\n            Sometimes people just go\nmissing - just like sometimes people meet bad ends at the claws of wild\nanimals.\n            Taylor was swallowed into the\ndarkness of the hills, one with these places that are pristine because they are\njagged and wooded and unruly, where the gorgeous February sunsets yield to a\nsky much darker, where the glorious Byzantine-purple light of Downtown Roanoke\nis much farther off.\n            In Back Creek, out in the\ncountry like this, one is always under the stars here, it might as well always\nbe night, a dusk that always aches.\n            One burns by them as Saint\nValentine burned for his beloved.\n            The night his uncle was\nkilled, Taylor was doing what he usually did on nights when the cold was\nretreating and he could sit outside again - sitting on the grass, watching the\nsky.\n            This time in February he could\nstill find Orion easy - there were three jewels in his belt. \n            If he laid all the way back in\nthe grass he could find his favorite constellation, Ursa Major, the Great Bear,\nwith the Big Dipper inside it...and from there Polaris, the North Star, inside\nthe Little Bear, which - using his finger - he could take the arc to Arcturus, that was related to bears too, he'd read\nit was Greek for bear-guardian.\n            Taylor liked bears. \n            Some said he looked like a\nbear, if he were an animal a bear would suit him best - he was modestly hairy\nfor his age already, and while he wasn't freakishly tall, maybe six foot four\nat best, he had strong shoulders, bulging biceps from dedicated workouts, and a\nquiet, gentle demeanor that turned ferocious and intimating on a dime when he\nwrestled or, in the Fall, when he played football.\n            He had weird-looking hair - thick,\nmaking crazy shapes every time he woke up, it was blackish in places but brownish\nin others, uneven, near streaks or spots but mixed in, together, and he always\nkept it shaggy because he liked the feeling of being to rub his hand through\nit, so it gave the impression of being multicolored, never looking quite the\nsame day to day.\n            When he was in the zone with\nwhatever sport he was playing he gave off the appearance of being something\nreally more than human - his eyes would go dead and would obtain a focus so\ncomplete people in front of him would, for no real reason, get frightened. \n            It was like they were about to\nbe charged by something big and unstoppable - like a bear.\n            His daddy called him Honeybear when he was still living,\nbefore he was killed in that hunting accident and left him in the care of his\nuncle - Larry E. Godwinson, Esq., The Man\nYou Can Trust, law offices Roanoke, billboards in Salem, Vinton, the New\nRiver Valley.\n            He missed his dad all the\ntime, a constant pain he kept inside him that never abated day after day, all\nthese years.\n            His big interest in astronomy\n- in reading - was because of his dad. He'd learnt how to find all the stars\nwhen they'd go out to Smith Mountain Lake together - he'd actually learnt how to\nread with him, and he remembered like it was only hours ago sitting on his lap,\nthe rocking chair creaking in time beneath them:\n            Brown bear, brown bear! What do you see?            I see you daddy! I see you!            The memory pressed against\nhis heart and slammed him in the stomach. \n            He ran his hand over his face\n- a little warm, a little clammy in the cool of the evening, he knew he\nshouldn't think about the past, about the trauma, every time he did he made him\nfeel weird and sick.\n            He shut his eyes for a moment,\nturned and spat into the grass.\n            In another life he would have\nbeen a warrior monk who would dedicate himself to something unselfishly but for\nhis own sake, some greater purpose, a Teutonic Knight fighting infidels under\nthe unfurling auroras - helfen, wehren,\nheilen - he could forget his past and break with it to make his body and\nmind a more fitting masterpiece for the better good of his neighbors.\n            Not - as he was - always\ntormented, always tapped on the shoulder, by his memories, the phantasms of how\nhe had grown up.\n            Having undiagnosed\npost-traumatic stress disorder when you barely done getting hair on your balls\nwas a Hell of a thing.\n            It had gotten especially bad\nlately, some malaise Taylor felt settle into him that he recognized but did not\nknow the name of, coming and going ever since he hit puberty - he never figured\nout just what it was.\n            It was good, then, that his\nuncle never talked to him anymore, other than those gruff words of hello,\ngoodbye - there was never a chance for awkward one-on-one interaction together,\nbecause they never shared a holiday, really, unless being dragged to public\nbanquets thrown by his law firm counted. \n            For the past some-odd years -\nafter it became apparent what puberty was doing Taylor, how he could defend\nhimself - it was like Taylor was living at a hotel rather than a house, or\nmaybe his uncle was his roomie instead of his caregiver, they never shared\nmeals but food was always plentiful, they never discussed money but the lights\nwere always on. \n            Just as fucking well.\n            His uncle was a devil, a\nwalking piece of human shit but nobody would ever believe it, that round,\nfriendly-looking man on the billboards and bus benches that had amassed such\nhuge fortune and prestige in the Roanoke Valley, that ran local commercials and\nmade love to the camera talking about how much he cared about malpractice and\naccident victims during the Super Bowl\nand donated all that money to the local homeless shelters and food banks and\nwas planning on running for Congress because everyone would vote for him and never\nknow or ever believe he was a child rapist who told Taylor every morning in\nelementary school his mother deserved to die like the whore she'd been.\n            When people asked Taylor what\nhe was like - it was like being the weatherman's kid but a lot worse - he just\nshrugged.\n            Back in the present, lost in\nhis thoughtlife, the strange, nameless feeling welled up inside him - he shook\nhis head, putting his eyes back up to the stars, feeling it ebb away as he\ndrank in the crystalline light, tossed across the sable sky.\n            He fixed his eyes on Arcturus\n- bear guardian - back to Polaris, watchful\nnorthward guide, in the Little Bear, and then to the Big Bear.\n            The sky was full of bears.\n            And he was a bear too - here\non Earth.\n            Down here, from up there, they\nwatched over him - like his mama and his daddy.\n            He missed his mom as much as\nhe could but it was hard to, she died when he was three, he barely remembered\nher and he hated himself for it, he wanted to remember someone who, he heard,\nloved him more than anything.\n            She was known to be an\nexceptionally strange woman when she was alive, with a soft and gentle voice\nthat would rise to a hysterical pitch if anyone other than her husband would\ndare touch little baby Theodore Taylor - when Taylor was still quite literally\na newborn she had screamed crazy things at the doctors if they tried to get\nnear her and her baby, still bloody from the womb, crazy things that grew\nrapidly and extremely uncrazy when\nthey contained the words malpractice\nand lawsuit...the nurses watched in\nnauseated horror as she cut her own umbilical cord with her teeth, licked the\nbaby clean, held her close to him and refused to give him up until Taylor's dad\narrived, hotfoot and flustered from Covington. It became a well-known little\nstory amongst the RNs at Lewis-Gale, a little urban legend that would come up\nin the coziness of after-dinner conversations for some years.\n            Taylor heard it before from\nolder cousins before they had families of their own and lost interest in him...sometimes\nhe thought they were just exaggerating how his mom was but sometimes - like\ntonight - he believed every word, he knew that deep down something wasn't quite\nright with his family.\n            He just didn't know what...\n            Now he sighed - that feeling\nwas getting worse - it had faded for a little bit, now it was back.\n            Right or unright, Taylor's\nmother loved him - while she was alive, everyone agreed, Taylor was her whole\nworld and he was never, not once, out of her sight. \n            She decorated his nursery when\nthey lived in Penn Forest with a bear theme, teddy bears everywhere - sometimes\nlate at night, when the sky that the stars burn in becomes the same color as\nthe floor in a child's eyes when he is rocked to sleep and all the night\nbecomes one warm womb of darkness, he could hear her voice, with its homey\nAllegheny lilt, singing a strange lullaby. \n            She died of a heart attack,\nstruck dead in their back yard, clutching her chest. \n            He only heard that one time,\nthat horrible, alienating image - it was one time enough to wonder, cynical boy\nthat he had become, if it had been natural.\n            It was left to his dad, to\nraise him...\n            There were no words, no real\nwords, to try to describe what Taylor's father meant to him. \n            He could try: tired clichés he\ncould use in essays like hero and best friend - something that could be\nput in Earthly terms, something that could ground a love so pure and complete,\nthat clawed like a...like a bear chasing lightning bugs...\n            Taylor caught his breath -\nsuddenly, there was no grass beneath him to hold him down, no February sky with\nthe dying late Winter constellations to keep him in the gravity of the Earth,\ntime could dilate and let him be young, so he was six again, somewhere out near\nBedford because his dad had a boat, and he was in a field, his dad watching\nchase lightning bugs.\n            He brought them over to his\ndad and his dad picked him up and the whoosh of the loss of being tied to the\nplanet itself made him feel like so mighty, invincible to anything - the little\nphosphorescent creatures crawled from his smooth, inexperienced hands, paws, to\nhis dad's big, strong ones.            Is\nthe firefly lonely, Daddy? Like in the book we read?            Not as long as it remembers you and me, Honeybear.            Taylor had no mother so\nTaylor's father had to be both - his vision, his life, was filled with this\nman, so big and so strong, he could do anything, he would do anything, for his little cub, his little Honeybear, kiss\naway all the pain, hoist him on his shoulders to show him the whole Zodiac\nabove him: and there's Polaris, you can\nalways follow it home, but if you want, you can take the arc - to Arcturus...\n            The memories retreated like\nthe black, light-studded tide, how the ocean supposedly looked at nighttime\nthough Taylor had never seen it, how the lakewater out near Moneta appeared,\nthough, when his dad had taken Taylor to see it.\n            This immaculate father-son\nbond - this peace, this joy, this brotherhood...\n            ...so he had gone from - that - to his father's brother, who was\nlukewarm to him at his very best, cold on his average, an abusive fiend on the\nregular. \n            Taylor was back in the present\ntime - it was February and there were no lightning bugs, fireflies - the stars,\nin their place, burned above him and he turn burned by them.\n            It was time to go back inside\n- the weird feeling he could feel coming into something like critical mass, he\nwanted to be inside if it meant he needed to puke or something.\n            He started off for his uncle's\nestate, the rambling building that, like Larry Godwinson, Esq., himself, had no\nreal center and no sense of taste - a hodgepodge of things that were\nsimultaneously, improbably, both ostentatious and hollow.\n            Behind the public façade of\nthe smiling lawyer - The Man You Can\nTrust - was someone that was deeply damaged and never learned how to truly\nlove someone without using them. \n            There were other men that Taylor\nread about that reminded him of his uncle - kings, men of business - but these\nother men in history, to a one, had someone, male or female, who humanized them\nwith their friendship or romance...some of them went crazy without them, forever\nchanged for the worse because of their loss.            Like\nTaylor went crazy without his dad.\n            He stopped, just for a second,\ngritted his teeth, shook his head hard, powered through the moment, kept\nwalking back to his uncle's house - not now, not now...\n            He went back to thinking about\nhis uncle - Taylor didn't believe his uncle even knew how to be sad about someone else...not just a\nlack of empathy but seeming like empathy was an untranslatable word from an\nalien language.\n            Taylor had never known someone\nhe could really trust, someone he could really love or talk to - so he didn't,\nhe spent all his time lifting weights, reading old books, studying astronomy.\n            He could have been a jock, but\nhe wasn't - and if it weren't for his natural talents at sports he would have\nbeen something else: a strange kid, a loner, someone the school administration\nwith their Stepfordian lock-step paranoia about school shootings, mental\nhealth, the endless debates about what to do with kids who didn't fit in monitored in secret to make sure he didn't pull a Cho\nand go on a rampage one day.\n            Strange kid.\n            A loner.\n            His life could have been a lot\nworse were he not really good at football and really, really good at wrestling, carrying his school to state three years\nin a row starting from just being a sophomore...he put off a lot of people, even\nhis own teammates, by not talking much or at all like he did, but a long time\nago Coach Kovacs, who was one of the many adults who suspected something was\ntruly dire in Taylor's life but did nothing, had settled the matter by saying Taylor does his talking on the mat.\nThree championships later there was little doubt Coach Kovacs was telling the\ntruth.\n            Maybe, people thought, he was\nautistic - maybe he had Asperberger's - if only his uncle let him be tested,\nthey'd surely find the truth.\n            Or maybe - but no one was\nsensitive enough to think this, believe this - his uncle was the root cause of\nthe problem itself, he was already morbidly damaged from having been cruelly\ntormented by this man, who everyone else, to a one, knew to be a smiling man on\ntelevision.\n            Now he was back at his uncle's\nhouse - he passed through the front door, up the stairs, into the bathroom, all\nautomatic motions, he was barely aware of them he had done them so much.\n            There was a girl in his grade\nhe really liked named Claudia, Claudia Fraticelli, who was very pretty and had\nred hair and seemed genuinely interested in him because before she had\nblossomed into the gorgeous girl she became she used be homely, unkempt and -\nlike Taylor - just about friendless. \n            Taylor had wanted to be\nfriends with Claudia - he had wanted to date\nClaudia - and he knew that Claudia felt sorry for him because of how lonely\nhe was despite his good looks and great strength...but he also knew his own\nlimitations, his own social awkwardness, that made making friends really hard,\nand then beyond that, if even she could get\npast all that, there was the lasting damage that his uncle had inflicted on\nhim, the longings for his dad that bordered on incest or maybe actually were incest, holy shit where would she\neven begin?\n            He was going to ask her to\nprom anyway - he didn't go to any of the dances but he was a senior and he\nreally should, this time.\n            Maybe - maybe she wouldn't be\nfreaked out.\n            Yeah, right.\n            Taylor's entire existence was\na minefield of weirdness and awkwardness and he really would just prefer people\nnot even bother, that way he never had to explain a thing - not about his\nmother, or how his dad died, or why he hated talking to people and would get\nshy and nervous at the slightest interaction, why he poured all his free time\ninto lifting weights and reading and studying and never wanted to be home...why\nhis uncle was such an obvious weirdo despite being the most powerful lawyer in\ntheir town, Larry E. Godwinson, Esq., The\nMan You Can Trust, law offices Roanoke, billboards in Salem, Vinton, the\nNew River Valley.\n            His plan was to go to a\ncollege far away from Roanoke and his grades and his athletic achievements were\nsuch that recruiters from Duke, Notre Dame, had gotten in contact with him, and\nin the next few months he had lot to mull over before he made the decision - he never discussed it with his uncle.\n            Uncle Larry embarrassed the\neverloving shit out of him every chance he got: Taylor hated the way his uncle\ntouched him, even in public he could always feel the people stare, or let their\nlooks linger a little too long, how his uncle liked to tickle his neck and pull\nhim into a deep hug, it was really not\nokay, it was pretty inappropriate, it caused people to whisper and wonder\nbut they could never prove a thing, gossip and rumor is hardly the same thing as\nevidence, and his uncle was important in the community, he had commercials on\ntelevision for his law firm, who the fuck would ever believe Taylor if he did say something?\n            He tried it. \n            Once - just once.\n            The worst memory, the genesis\nof everything bad, but it was okay, he was alone in the bathroom and he could\nthink about it, he could think about it here and wallow in the weird following\nand get in touch with the inner self that he constantly undertook to purge with\nstudy, and at the gym...\n            ...how he only tried to expose\nhis uncle one time, just one time.\n            Three years after his uncle\nwas granted custody, he told the school counselor that this man, who had just\nexpanded his law practice to include being on personal retainer by the mayor of\nRoanoke himself, liked to diddle his butt when he got angry. \n            So this counselor, who was\ntransferred to another elementary school after that semester - by no fucking\ncoincidence, Taylor realized years later - notified the authorities, and when\nthe police came to investigate, his uncle had convinced them that he, Taylor,\nwas suffering from nightmares, still, because he was only nine - then - and he\nhad repressed memories of the horrible things he and his father used to do. \n            Taylor remembered: the\npolicemen - there were two of them, one young and a trainee and the other older\nand a veteran who should have fucking\nknown better - nodding sagely, of course, yes, little Taylor should really\nsee a child psychologist, they have one they use who had an office in Salem, he\nreally ought to go, poor thing.\n            And Taylor had screamed at\nboth of them, feeling his one chance to be okay slip away out of his small\nlittle paws - to adults it was just a damaged little boy having a fit but no, Taylor\ncould feel it then, the first time, the primal rage that did not have words, the\nblind, totally inhuman state he would enter when he was desperate or cornered. \n            In an elder and less\nunderstanding age he would have been judged bewitched or possessed: how he huffed\nout weird sounds from his throat, and pawed the ground with his hands and\nwished as he might wish to keep breathing they could turn into claws. \n            How dare his uncle say those\nthings, his daddy protected him from everything, his daddy loved him, his daddy\nnever touched him like that!            You'll\nalways be my Honeybear, right son?\n            He promised his daddy and a\npromise was a promise, even to a nine year old.\n            He'd show them.\n            He leapt at the older\npoliceman, his mouth was open and his palms were wide, he would tear this man\napart, he would eat him all up.\n            But he was no match for the\nveteran, he was but a cub, no claws or teeth, a little weakling, and after no\nstruggle at all was he, Taylor, handed back to his uncle - sad-eyed, shaking\nhis head, the veteran cop of twenty years who had never suffered the way Taylor\nhad was so sorry, oh so very sorry, oh the things that people would put a child\nthrough, awful, just awful.\n            That night after the policemen\nleft, Taylor's uncle beat him so hard he missed school for two days. \n            Then he raped him - Taylor\nrealized that's what his uncle had done, he was far too young to know the word\nand know the consequences - until he couldn't sit down without wincing and it\nhurt to go to the bathroom for a full week.\n            How dare he - how dare Taylor do that, everything he had done for him, little bastard, little piece of shit, what a freak of\nnature acting like he did, just like your dad who married that inbred hick\ntrash of his stupid whore mother, bunch of worthless nothings, well that's\nwhere he came from and that's all you'll\never be Taylor.\n            His uncle spat on Taylor's face,\ntore up his bedsheets when Taylor tried to run away and hide under them, forced\nhimself on him again, and it hurt, it hurt bad, but then it felt good...and the\ngood feeling made Taylor, far, far more than the pain, want to die, want to not\nlive anymore.\n            He cried and cried and cried\nuntil his uncle said if he cried anymore he'd do - do something - Taylor\nforgot, of all the appalling things right then the trauma had reached a climax\nand had deadened everything that came after.\n            So.\n            That was the last time he\ntried to tell anyone his uncle was the one, not his daddy, who did bad things\nto his butt and who, far worse than that, had made sure that all the pictures\nof him and his dad were hidden away so that he could never find them - all he\nhad, all he would ever have, were memories.\n            The whole town was against\nhim, if need be the whole fucking county, shit why not the whole damn world, gaslighting\nhim, telling them there was no way Larry E. Godwinson, Esq., The Man You Can Trust, law offices\nRoanoke, billboards in Salem, Vinton, the New River Valley could ever be that much\nof a devil and live to torture his own nephew because he had hated his\nsister-in-law, and then his brother, just that much.\n            And Taylor may have been many\nthings, but no way was he a fool. Sometimes - he knew this because his uncle was a lawyer, after all - justice took a\nlong, long time to get served...sometimes it was never served at all.\n            So for now he kept his head\ndown, with all the truth he knew.\n            When he was playing sports he\ncould tap into the just the smallest bit of that blind fury that overtook him\nthat night when he was small - that's partly how he kept the memory of what\nhappened alive - he kept tasting it when he needed to, when he needed to be\nfearsome and when he needed to charge the memory.   It was - himself separating from\nhimself, if he had to put it into words, it was a great feeling, marred\nwith all the unfair bittersweetness inside it, to get in touch with something\nsharp and savage but noble that lived inside his heart, that he could let loose\nto be something greater than he could ever be as a human being.\n            That couldn't be normal, could\nit...?\n            He kept his eyes trained on\nhis reflection, wondering if that weird feeling - linked, related, to that\nblind rage, he felt - would get worse...then he'd really have to puke.\n            ...then again his whole family\nwas full of just a little bit of freakishness.\n            Whenever he thought about his\nuncle making up that awful shit about his dad he bristled, he tensed up, so\nhard it was all he could do but not crush the man's skull with his bare hands -\nbut - but he did remember something a\nlittle bizarre, a little off, with\nhim and his dad...something, something faint, about being held close, and a\ndelicious sweetness, and his dad's chest, pressed up to his nose...            You'll\nalways be my Honeybear, right son?\n            I promise, Daddy - I promise!\n            He shook his head - the memory\nwas incomplete, the images too inchoate, so instead he made the conscious\ndecision to remember something else...he held onto it, he gripped it tight, he\nwould never let it go - how his daddy always seemed uncomfortable around his\nbrother, he thought he could hear neighbors saying how his mother when she was\nstill living would get visibly angry whenever Taylor's uncle was anywhere near\nher. \n            They were the only two people who\nseemed to know Taylor's uncle was truly a sinister figure but, being dead, they\nhad no say, and so there he was, imprisoned in a cage chased out of solid gold.\n            The entire time these memories\nplayed out behind his eyes Taylor had kept on staring at himself in the mirror\n- his tongue had been searching the inside of his cheek, up on his teeth, nice\nand white, weirdly whiter than the other kids at school, never had a cavity,\nnever had to see an orthodontist.\n            Taylor's tongue retreated from\nhis cheek - he smiled, then he grimaced.\n            People who would see him would\nmaybe think he had a model's good looks, with his wild hair that was caramel\nand sable all mixed together, with his body that he attended to with a\ndedication that belied his young age - yet even with this he was afflicted with\na dysmorphia, for he had always wanted teeth, big teeth...to tear them all apart,\nto eat them all up.\n            Studying his mouth - his teeth\nwere kinda sharper than average, he guessed, he hoped.\n            But not sharp enough.\n            Not sharp enough to slit his\nuncle's throat, and drink his blood, and even in that monstrous state he so\ndesired and still hallucinated when he got angry, really angry, not a single\njury in the world would convict him.\n            He swallowed hard - those were\nbad thoughts, maybe he really should see a therapist.\n            But...\n            But who would do that to a\nlittle boy? Who would gaslight a child and put on a show for the authorities to\nsave his own hide, whose purpose in life was to torture his own flesh and blood\nbecause of how deep and how livid his hatred was for his older brother, and his\nwife, both dead near to two decades?\n            Not a man but Larry E. Godwin,\nEsq., The Man You Can Trust, law\noffices Roanoke, billboards in Salem, Vinton, the New River Valley. Call us anytime to speak to an attorney!\nArea code 540--\n            Taylor swallowed hard,\nbreathing deep, an unwelcome wave of nausea reappearing.\n            He didn't want to leave the\nbathroom - not yet, not still while he felt this...weird.\n            Outside of the bathroom was\nthe realization that, all the bears in the stars or night, he was alone,\npitifully alone, he would have to take on the world as someone woefully\noverprepared for it, for no child understands the world better than one who has\nalready been betrayed, than one who has already felt the pain of the lie and\nthe falsehood.\n            The nausea passed, and it\npassed in a profound way, that was the only way to describe it, vanished where\nit was, like it never existed, his stomach settling not in a wave or an ebb but\na feeling of contented emptiness,\nlike it was, oddly enough, anticipating food, or nourishment.\n            What was left was a galloping surge\nof energy, small at first, that rose into a jolt that sent Taylor standing\nstraight up with an uncomfortable hyper-awareness of his surroundings...\n            ...and a prickling, tingling\nfeeling in his pecs, centering around his nipples, pleasurable, numbing.\n            It was so sudden, so abrupt,\nso out of nowhere.\n            Another deep breath - what the\nfuck was going on with him tonight?\n            He glanced down to where the\ntingling was centered - the black-brown hair, like that on his head, forming\nspiral patterns like faraway starry galaxies on his body.\n            The two argumentative, but\nrelated feelings inside him - the tastes of the warrior's rage, the discomfort\nthat may have been the post-traumatic stress - were starting to merge.\n            Something was happening.\n            He cupped his breast, feeling\na tingling shiver of pleasure as his fingers grazed against it.\n            He tried not to moan, tried to\nstifle the noise - he tensed up, trying to cease his inwardly flowering desires,\nbut his eyes flew open, and he took his whole hand to press it, squeeze it,\ntease it, so that exploding from his throat was a new, immodest, broken groan\nof sheer, newfound pleasure.\n            He squeezed his hard, furry, well-toned\npectoral, for whatever reason tonight so ticklishly sensitive.\n            In the mirror, Taylor's eyes\nlocked with those of his reflection - they were wide with surprise.\n            He felt something...wet on, in, his hand.\n            He looked down into his palm.\n            Honey.\n            What had come out of his\nbreasts, out of his shudderingly sensitive nipples - his well-developed\npectorals - was honey.            Will\nyou always be my Honeybear, son?\n            I promise, Daddy - I promise!            Like a thunderbolt,\nbreaking through his normal walls, usual precautions, of suppression and\nwillful forgetting, he remembered:            One day, a bright sunny\nday in the Summer and nobody was around, Taylor had suckled at his father's\nnipples even though he was far past the age for weaning, but the fluid he drank,\nsitting together, naked, the blinds drawn in suburban secrecy and familial\nsafety, was - honey.\n            More days than that.\n            Many days.\n            When his uncle said that his\ndaddy had done awful things - did he know? Something like this? Something\nreally strange that humans never do - or are even capable of?\n            All the days he had smelled\nhoney, seen honey, even tasted it - shouldn't that have triggered something,\nsomething before now?\n            Trembling, Taylor squeezed his\nnipple again, bringing more of the stuff back up to his mouth.\n            He licked his fingers clean.\n            No - no, this - this was far\ndifferent...he tried to make sense of the difference but it was all happening so\nquickly, the thoughts, the connections, the\nmemories...\n            As though it were a changed\nchannel on television inside his head, the taste of the honey - his honey - forced him to remember the\nawfulest part of the first and only time he had tried to turn in his uncle.\n            The threat his uncle had spat\nhim came back, clear, vivid, word for word - why, why now, Taylour couldn't\nknow, but there it began to appear, reappear, coalesce in his mind's eye...            I'll\ntell everyone what you really are, you little freak! You and that whore mother\nof yours - I'll tell everyone what you really are!\n            \"What...I really am,\"\nhe repeated, mystified, a fear starting to grip him that made him fidget where\nhe stood, there in the bathroom.\n            He had never been normal -\nHell, he'd never been human.\n            The weird way his hair was,\nhow hirsute he was, already - all the discomfort from remembering the past, all\nthe effort he had made in putting it off, was just a way to delay the\ninevitable, to turn away from this second adolescence.\n            The relatives on his mother's\nside and those on fathers' avoided him or...or\nlike that fucking uncle of his, hated him.\n            Now he understood why.\n            He knew so little about his\nbackground, deliberately kept in the dark by his uncle, by his living family -\nnow he understood why that was, too.\n            It all made a terrible kind of\nsense - leaping logics like one feels in a dream, where the most surreal and\noutlandish concept need not be ever explained because in complete thought it\nbecomes basic, understood knowledge.\n            Now Taylor knew everything.\n            His mother was not human - she\nlooked human enough, but she wasn't.\n            The same with his father.\n            And he remembered what he and\nhis father used to do - he absorbed it, all the feelings, something close to\nincest, the closeness and the utter completeness of love as he was sure he\nwould never again feel with anyone else in his entire life, let them invade his\nbody and then his brain.\n            He remembered - he was not ashamed\n- he let out a cry of despair, just some of the sorrow he wished he could\nrelease, so pent up, built to never feel.\n            Had he lived, had he fucking\nlived, Taylor could have one day stopped this charade, this human illusion, he\ncould have dwelt with his father and everything he didn't understand about\nbeing a man - being a bear - he could\nhave taught him.            Bear\n- bear - bear - all his life the clues were all around him but silent, how\ncould he not have figured it out, how could he have been so stupid?\n            But then - he had spent\nliterally half his life suppressing things. It was tonight, and only tonight,\nthat the dam could no longer hold, that it, and maybe Taylor along with it,\nwould burst.            Brown\nbear, brown bear! What do you see?            He answered, himself, for\nhimself, to himself:\n            \"I see - I see me.\"\n            The last word trembled on his\nlips as though he was not sure what it really meant.            He stared at his own\nreflection as the pieces came together, all the images became a complete story,\nthe curtain parted and the truth revealed unto the world - he saw his eyes downturned\nand helpless and sad, then get big, narrow, his face screwed up with an anger\nthat words could never coalesce around, the blindness, the sightless fury that\nhe would taste when he needed but had not flooded\nhim this way since...since... \n            He collapsed to the floor, he\nthrust his arm out to catch the counter but he missed, he smacked into the\ntile, his mouth open, groaning, moaning, the sounds coming to him natural,\nunnatural, this exiled prince come into his inheritance.\n            His teeth bared in a rictus\nlike this, still sticky with the honey he had tasted, Taylor could not see them\n- could not see them grow larger in\nhis mouth, bigger, still bigger, until they were a set of fearsome jaws, the\njaws he had always wanted.\n            That night when he was just a\nboy - a cub - he wasn't ready, he\nwasn't ready then, but dammit to Hell he was ready now, now, he was remembering everything because his body was going to make him remember it, it was going to\ntake him on a new journey whether he wanted to or not.\n            His ears rounded on the edges,\nblossoming with fur, a swirling mixture of black and brown like his body hair\non his chest and belly, which now thickened and softened where it was.\n            His heart pounded, slamming\nagainst the bones in his chest...he was sure he was going to die, the feeling of\nhis body separating from his body so\npainlessly, like a heart attack, a stroke, wracked with spasms, every sinew,\nevery tendon twisting and moving in gruesome ways, tightening, strengthening,\nhardening...he felt his muscles twist beneath the flesh, growing larger, tauter, his\nmouth opened and out of his throat came noises he never thought he could make,\nthe terrible baritone roar of the king of the forest, the creature that made\nchildren weep from terror and grown men clutch their guns in dread - the sound of the bear that had dwelt inside\nhim.\n            Honey poured out freely from\nhis nipples as he felt a small little nub of a tail shoot from an elongated\ntailbone, enclosed in flesh and blooming with fur, as still more fur exploded\nfrom impatient follicles from his elbows down, hairier and hairier until they\nformed a pelt - his hands grew uncomfortable,\ngaining brute strength beneath the bare flesh that was swallowed by that same brown-black\nswirl of new bear's fur.            His\nfingernails pushed out, hardening, sharpening, into claws, at last - his\ngreatest asset, his deadliest weapons, what he would use for the rest of his\nlife - the palms of his hands and fingers darkened and keratinized, second by\nsecond, into pawpads.            At\nlast, it was over - the tremors stopped, his muscles raw, his sight blurry but\nfocusing, this delayed transfiguration into his true form.\nMinutes passed as hours, but his new physical strength was matched by an older,\ninner one, and he forced himself first to sit up right, and then rise.            He\nstood up.            He\nwas complete.            Behold,\ndoes he stand on his hindlegs like Man.            His\nfirst taste of what his father had given him - what, if he had a son of his\nown, he would have given him - had\nawakened him to this:            Manhood.            Bearhood.            And\nas he stood up, as he pressed himself against the bathroom door to gain\nprecarious balance in his  the first\nthing he did - the very first act of his new form, of his new life, the\nconsequences of every realization made, every memory uncovered - was cry.            He\nwept, he sobbed, for today, for every day before that where he simply couldn't\nhandle remembering being happy or being\nmiserable, he wept for his mother whose genetics had given him this legacy, but\nhe wept hardest for his father, gone, never to return, who had been allowed\ninto his mother's fold with the promise of love, who had given his son just\nslivers and grains of the world he wanted him to have.            And\nwho had taken it from him? Who?            Larry\nE. Godwinson, Esq., The Man You Can Trust.            Taylor\nhuffed, his blood pressure rising with an anger that had sat purled and dormant\ninside him all these years that was itching to incandesce into something\npowerfully uncontrollable.            Where\nwas he? Where was that son of a\nbitch?            Taylor\ncrashed out of the bathroom, down one hall, then another, until he came to his\nuncle's study, the big doors that he would open with a dramatic flourish for\nThanksgiving and Christmas - the doors, paired, solid maple, Taylor took by the\nknobs and ripped backward, so hard that their hinges warped in the frame.            Taylor\nstood, snorting, his arms sore but ready - here was his uncle, pipe in mouth,\nserene for the evening, the copacetic capitalist who thought he earned everything\nand deserved nothing, who had not heard his son achieving the bestial\nenlightenment of the Appalachian ursine warrior because his house was too\nfucking large for one man to live in.\n            He was startled by his\nnephew's theatrical entrance - he stood up, back the wall, eyes wide first with\nconfusion and, then, fear.\n            But what came out of his mouth\ntook Taylor, even in this state, completely offguard.\n            \"Finally - happened - you\nGoddam freak--\"\n            He may have said more - he may\nhave revealed more, far more, about who Taylor was, how they had gotten there\nas nephew and uncle, but the anger, the seething livid fury, it could not be\nquenched...it would not go unanswered.\n            Taylor answered him with a\ntriumphant roar, that menacing clarion of nature itself.\n            He charged at him like a\nbattering ram.\n            Panicked, shaking hands ripped\nopen the desk before him, his uncle's grabbing the gun inside, and with no hope\nof aim, defeated by the terror, the gun, a revolver, went off uselessly, the\nexplosion casting off little stars, burning stars, that disappeared a breath\nlater, but Taylor in this state of hybrid fury could see them appear, then die,\nevery spec of combusted air, so deeply drenched was his brain on new, pure,\nursine adrenaline.            Taylor\nflipped over the desk with swiped with his paw, finally as mighty as he had\nalways wanted and finally, somehow, willed into existence - he swiped with his\npaw, slapped the gun out of his uncle's clumsy hand, the bullet harmlessly\nlodging itself into the wall.            The\ngun fell to the floor - and Larry Godwinson, his camera-ready mug distorted\nwith the primal fear that all humans feel as they see the ursine jaws that\nmaster the forests they foolishly felled so long ago, tried to run.            Taylor\nchased him.            In\nMedieval times, of course, the scribes who wrote the bestiaries that pondered\nthe mysteries of the bear forever feared the Vikings - A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine! - for the reputation of the\nNorseman was well-earned as ravager, pillager, yet so amongst their brethren\nwere they called the berserkrs, those\nthat openly asked their Allfather for glorious death, named for their wearing\nof bear-pelts. To meet them, so it was said, was to know the Lord early.            And\ntaste their rage as Taylor always did - to know nothing but the fury of the\nNorthman that God was so often and so uselessly called upon to stop - was to\nenter a state of being berserk.            And\nit was a descendant of the Vikings who defeated the Son of Godwin at the Battle\nof Hastings.            So\nit was Taylor, wearing his bear shirt,\nslew the usurper who stole his rightful prince's crown, from the kingdom of\nbears that he had been stolen from.            His\nuncle stumbled, knocking into bookcases that Taylor splintered with his bare\nhands, throwing books at him in pathetic self-defense that Taylor shredded in\nseconds, this clumsy, corpulent oaf's voice reaching a girlish, shrill pitch as\nhe screamed for mercy - he only wanted the chase to stop, and stop it did, he\ntripped and fell and rolled over to the vengeful creature come to do judgment, his\nhands were up in supplication, a monk at prayer, as his nephew stood atop him.            And\nTaylor - smiled - to show his uncle\nhow big his teeth had gotten, he raised his arms to fling his claws outward, he\nrolled his eyes as his nipples dripped more honey, this transcendently\nbeautiful ursid-hybrid freak of nature would be the last fucking thing Larry\nGodwinson would ever see.            Taylor\ndove at him, headfirst.            In\nthe glow of bloodlust, in the redness of the vision that overtakes the\nberserkergang, there is a religious cadence, a cloying towards the holiest of\nstates, where stands no barrier from the earthly and the divine - how\nunutterably terrible it must be, to experience this immortality as a mortal, to\nbecome a pawn of the gods unwitting, unknowing.            Or\nperhaps - perhaps it was that Taylor knew what guided him, hi paws, his claws,\nhis tooth and his nail - perhaps there were no gods to come down, no spirits to\nintercede.             Only\nhe - only the dark truths of his tribe - as blood splattered the walls, as\nflesh was torn from bone...as revenge, sweet, cold, was had.            He\nrent his uncle's bloated body, fattened in glib success and unearned decadence,\nin ways that a Medieval torturer, who crossed himself when he saw a bruin in\nthe woods but paid no mind to the screams of his fellow man, could only imagine\nin his most rabid fever dreams - years and years of rage, allowed to fester in\nabsence of thought, exploding into fresh, sanguine violence.\n            The blood ran down his claws\nand as they touched his face it dripped, trickled, onto his the skin of his\ncheek.\n            He wiped it - he rubbed it in,\nand as the coarseness of his pawpads caught the ever-human flesh of his face he\nfelt the sense of power flood him again, the rattling in his lungs of something\nbigger and more capable having replaced the ones he had been born with.\n            He felt his pecs tingle again,\nthe honey pour out of his tits again, but he did not mind, the sweet smell\nlightened the heavy iron of blood that had tainted the room - he did not\nunderstand its purpose, gumming up the now-thicker hair on his body, but one\nday he would, he would figure it out, there was time now.\n            In his nightvision he could\nsee: the study was a disaster - books flung and torn apart, pieces of paper in\na blind snow, furniture ripped open and their innards of stuffing and springs\nlaid bare.\n            He had not cared where his\nclaws had swung, just so that they could strike.\n            As its centerpiece was his\nuncle, a mangled corpse, so he had been a monster in life, so he would be a\nbloody, gruesome nothing in death.\n            Yet justice would not be\nserved.\n            Taylor had turned, he had\nbecome what he truly was, before he knew anything about who his mother was,\nabout any of the secrets that draped his existence - but how can one speak to a\ndaytime shadow when the night falls?\n            He wasn't meant for this...not\nthis life, not this way.\n            But he had lived - he had\nlived because his daddy had loved him, and gave him the strength to endure the\nevil that had relentlessly befallen him since. \n            His rage had passed but his\nbody was forever changed, the perfect synthesis of bear and man - he could\nthink clearly, now that his uncle was dead, for maybe the first time in his\nentire life.\n            Now, he blinked - something\nhad caught his eye, something off and to the side, undisturbed, on the floor,\nnot a foot from his uncle's oozing brain matter. \n            Could it really be...?\n            The picture.\n            He knelt down to pick it up,\nto make sure.\n            Yes - this picture.\n            The picture he couldn't find,\nthe picture he kept in his head all this time, that he had thought his uncle\ndestroyed out of spite but here it was, it had fallen out of a book, some book,\njust for him - his daddy was trying to tell him, trying to show him.\n            Now he could see - now he\ncould see just how much he looked like his daddy.\n            He was sitting on his dad's lap and it was sunny and they were on the\nfront lawn of the old house and they were smiling, laughing, he loved him, he\nloved him so much...\n            ...sons never understand how\nmuch their fathers love them. \n            Even in death, through the\ninterstellar blackness of existence, fathers and sons have a connecting cord -\nnot physical, like the motherly umbilical, but invisible, a rope that strangles\nas much as it saves, because it must kill as it also must let live.\n            Taylor's humanity died that\nnight - so he could be who he always was had been, what he needed to be, when\nit was too late to save anything left when he was a human.\n            He held the picture in his\npaws, gently, gingerly, so that the ivory raggedness of the natural weapons he\nhad been gifted would not damage it. \n            A tear welled in his eye and\nfell, graceless, to the image - plip - over\nhis smiling face, he quickly wiped it away.\n            Gently the photograph went\ninto his palm and his paw closed around it, it would be safe, he would find a\nsafe place for it - a fallen tree, a cave, a\nsafe place - and he could look at it any time he wanted to. \n            His uncle had taken it, it and\nso much else from him, but now he had gained it back - as he had gained his\nlife back.\n            People - the people he\ncouldn't be around anymore, the people who wouldn't understand the way his daddy\nloved him, the way his daddy had changed him - would find Uncle Larry, they\nwould find him and they would cry and wonder and scream. \n            They would say how a bear did\nit - and they'd be right.\n            Taylor turned away from\neverything - from everything - and he\nshambled away.\n            I'll always be your honeybear, Daddy.            I promise."}