Brother Bear: Chapters 1-3
I'm trying my hand out at writing Brother Bear Fanfic! Tell me what you think so far! It's written it first person view of Kenai, just so you know. But before you start reading, here's a few notes: 1) This was originally posted on http://0aaab0.proboards34.com/index.cgi . If you like it, please join us! 2) I started posting this as a Fanfic, so the chapters were smaller since they were posted in a forum. THERE ARE 3 CHAPTERS HERE, NOT 1!!! 3) If noone likes it, I'll just keep in on http://0aaab0.proboards34.com/index.cgi . Please comment if you want me to continue it. Prologue: It was nighttime and Koda and I were munching on an assortment of berries and fish we had gathered. It was my birthday today. Or rather, it was the celebration of the day I became a bear. We decided to have a guy's night out, so Nita was back at her village, visiting old friends. I had now survived 2 hibernations and 2 salmon runs with Koda. I still haven't learned how to spot traps from "miles away", nor have I learned how to successfully catch fish. Then again, learning all the tricks of the trade of a bear in 2 years would be pretty difficult for anyone! "Hey Kenai, you gonna finish that?" I sighed. Koda was a growing cub and shouldn't be denied food, but it was getting kind of annoying. "Ya I'm finished Koda." I pushed the fish over toward him. "Hey, why don't we get some sleep so we can head out *rested* tomorrow?" He hadn't been able to get any sleep so far. Koda kept having the same nightmare about the Hunters. I settled him down in a cave we had found by the river and he fell asleep almost instantly. I walked off down the river, thinking about the events that had passed. I still couldn't get over the fact I had killed Koda's mother. He may have forgiven me, but I don't think I could ever forgive myself... "KENAI!" *Oh, no* I thought. *He must have had that nightmare he's been telling me about.* I started back the way I had come. *Koda's nightmare* It was always the same. Koda would wake up and Kenai wouldn't be with him. He called out. "Kenai! You there?" Then from the bushes a wolf would burst out and tackle Koda. Grabbing him by the scruff of the neck, the wolf would take him back to his master, who throw Koda into a cage and locked it. Koda then saw Kenai from the bushes, with an arrow inside him...and then he woke up, hyperventilating. *End of Nightmare* "KENAI!" His screams sounded more frantic. Hopefully it wasn't anything more than a nightmare. When I got back to the cave, I found Koda crying. "Kenai...I t-t-thought you had l-l-left m-me..." "Koda, you know I would never do that!" I pulled him closer to me and nuzzled his cheek. "We're brothers! I'll always be here for you. I promise." "Pinky-swear?" He wiped his eyes on the back of his paw. "Pinky-swear." And with the flick of our claws, it was done. Chapter 1 ______________________ After last night events, Koda had had a pretty hard to fall asleep, and I couldn't blame him. It was all I could do to keep him from crying the whole night. But he had finally fallen asleep cuddled into me, and I was glad that he might be able to have a night's respite. I woke up to the smell of fresh fish. Koda had caught breakfast for both of us! It seemed as if last night hadn't happened at all to him. I yawned. "So Koda, feeling better?" He looked at me sheepishly and muttered that yes, he was feeling better. I imagined the terror he must have felt when he saw that he was alone in this world, but then I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time. Guilt. I was the only person he had in this life now, and it was my fault. I knew he didn't like nor accept Nita as a friend, and I couldn't blame him. I had almost completely walked out on him when she came into my life... I picked up on how he seemed to be embarrassed about his nightmares, so I brought up a new subject. "Wow! You certainly were up early! Look at all these fish you caught for us!" Koda gave me a questioning look. "Ya sleepy-head, it's mid-morning! You've a quarter of the day away and you still haven't told me where we're going!" Koda certainly could fit a lot of ideas into one sentence. I was about to explain where we we're headed was a secret place of mine but then I noticed something moving in the bushes."Koda, get back! There's something moving in the bushes!" I moved closer and inspected the bush...and found out it was only a squirrel rummaging through his stash. "Whoops! Sorry about that, you startled me!" But I had no sooner gotten these words out when the squirrel's jaw dropped and he looked up at me. "Don't eat me! AHHHH!!!!" He ran away screaming, and I sighed. *I've got to stop forgetting I eat these... it scares them out of their wits when I try and talk to them!* By now, Koda seemed to be out of his funk and was laughing hard at my folly. "Oh shut up!" I muttered. He must have heard me, because now he was ridiculing me about how much more of a bear he was than I. I took these insults without retaliating, and I was proud of myself for doing so. Besides, there was nothing I could say. He had me beat at being a bear. I made an attempt at ending his laughter. "C'mon let's head upstream. We're starting to fall behind." "So where are we going again? Because I know a million places you haven't been and they're all so close by! There's this one where --" But I stopped him before he could get onto any tangents about all the things I've heard everyday since I met him. "That's for me to know and you to find out!" I said tauntingly. "It's a surprise!" "We'll I'm pretty sure that I've been to every place you have, so this one shouldn't be a surprise to me!" There was a pause in the conversation before he said: "Well *IF* I haven't been there before, can I bring along a friend? I'm sure he'd like to see it too!" "I don't see why not. As long as his parents say it's okay." I almost stumbled over the word "parents". I looked over at Koda to see how he reacted to it. He appeared not to have noticed it, since he was busy telling me which friend he wanted to invite. "YES! Oh, thank you so much! Don't worry at all, his cave is right around here anyways." "Whose cave? Who are we going to bring along?" He gave me a "Your kidding, right?" kind of look. "I'm taking Bucky with us of course!" I groaned inwardly. Chapter 2 ________________ So off we went to Bucky's cave. I had never met Bucky, but I had heard countless stories about him. Koda had described him to me at least a hundred times now. He was about Koda's age, his fur was a richer brown than Koda's, and what set him apart from all the other bears was a long strip of light brown fur across his back. It looked like Koda was finishing up a story, so I started nodding and laughing. "Wasn't that the best thing ever?! So then, once we had captured the porcupine, we..." I had learned long ago to tune out Koda. Most of his stories I knew by heart now. This one was about a porcupine they found in a bear trap, and stuck various objects, like fruits, fish, and leaves to it's back, then they took it with them back to the salmon run to show all the other bears. Not necessarily the most exciting story I've ever heard, even coming from Koda. "...so after Tug had seen him we -- " I interrupted Koda as best as I could, without making him feel bad: "So, Koda, are we almost to Bucky's cave? I'm getting kind of tired." I tried to put up a nonchalant air, but I was kinda of annoyed with Koda right now. What had been, by Koda's words, "right around here", was actually in the completely opposite direction, way out of the way, and approximately a day's journey. Believe me when I say I was not in the best of moods. "Ya, it's just around on the other side of that mountain." "Koda! You said this was a short trip to his cave! The other side of that mountain will take at least another day and a half to cross!" By this point my temper was almost completely gone, and I was on the verge of lashing out at him verbally. "Ha-ha! Gotcha! No, it should be just on the other bank of that river right there..." Still fuming, I tried to contain my anger with Koda right now. I thought about how Koda managed to know the difference between all these rivers, hills and lakes, and how I only saw the exact same forest just in a new location. I just trusted him that he knew where he was. And he did. Most of the time. We set out for the other side of the river. The water flow was pretty rapid and Koda seemed to be having difficulty crossing the rapids, so he crawled up on my back. "Koda," I said in between mouthfuls of water," you know you won't be able to ride on my back when we get Bucky, right? It wouldn't be fair to him." "Ya, I know. But I won't need to, because Bucky and I'll be having the best time ever!" I was slightly taken aback by this statement. Wasn't he having fun with me? "I'm sure you will." I tried to evade my emotions by responding generically. My ears were tucked back, and now I was trying to focus on *not* getting thrown hither and thither by the river. The speed of the water was really picking up. "Koda, hold on tight!" I said, and I felt him hug my neck as I went underwater, seeing if that would be an easier way to swim. It wasn't. I soon found myself 100 yards away from where I was originally, but not forward. Downstream. The water was becoming too hard to push through! I frantically looked around for something, anything, to grab onto. There was a rock coming up and I lunged for it! Luckily, I timed it right and I grabbed hold of it, but the river was moving too swiftly, and holding on meant pulling my arm out of it's socket. I let go, and hoped for the best. "Kenai, watch out!," Koda yelled in my ear. "Wha--!" I twisted my body to see what was coming up, and I found that I was facing a tree that had fallen down over the river. I tried to duck, but was unsuccessful and my face collided with the tree, which knocked me unconscious. * * *
Several Hours Later
- * * "Kenai.....Kenai.....Kenai!" Someone was calling my name. I hurt everywhere, and I didn't want to move. I tried to recollect what had just happened...we we're on our way to Bucky's...we tried to cross a river and then...everything else was a blur. I tried to open my eyes and was immediately rewarded with a blast of sunlight. I groaned, shut my eyes and buried my face in my paws so the dreaded sunlight couldn't attack me again. "C'mon, Kenai, wake up!" I knew that voice. "Koda...?" "The one and only. Now hurry and get up before I lay some moves down on ya!" "We should probably rest for a bit...those rapids really beat me up." "Rest? You've been resting all of last afternoon and night!" "I was out for that long?!" "Yeah, its mid-morning now." "Ok, fine...I'm getting up..." And with a huge effort, I pushed myself off the ground and into a sitting position. I opened my eyes for a second time. It wasn't as bad as the first time I had tried it, but it hurt nonetheless. Wiping the water out of them, I looked around me for the first time. It looked like any other part of the forest. "Great. Now we're lost..." What had seemed like a short trip was now looking more like an adventure. And I wasn't in the mood for an adventure. "Lost? We aren't lost! Not with me around!" Koda struck a heroic pose and I rolled my eyes at him. "So where are we, then?" "Just because we don't know where we are doesn't that we're lost! ...We're just misplaced, somewhere in this big, open, forest..." I sighed. "Ya we're lost..." "So...this may be a bad time to ask, but can Bucky still come with us?" Koda jumped onto my back. "First of all, Koda, we can't get to Bucky's if we don't know where we are, and second, get off my back!" Today was not my day. Chapter 3 ____________ We headed back the way the river so violently pushed us down. I had been unconscious for most of the time we had been in the river, so nothing looked familiar to me. Koda on the other hand, had been conscious, but, unfortunately, he had shut his eyes most of the way down. Not that I could blame him. It must have been a pretty frightening ride. This part of the forest was slightly more barren than the part we had originally been in. Some of the trees were charred and the rocks had been scorched by what looked like a crush fire. I wondered aloud if we were close to the Valley of Fire, which would then get us on the path to the Salmon run where we could get our bearings and start to head back to Bucky's cave. Koda said it wasn't. He said he had never known this part of the forest existed. I taunted him: "I thought you knew every inch of the forest!" "Ya, well, maybe I have been here and I just don't remember it!" He stopped and thought about the statement he just made. "You know, it does look kind of familiar..." "Ha! I'm not falling for that one Koda! Just admit you don't know where we are!" "I'm not trying to cover myself up. I really think I've been here before...I just can't place it..." I gave him a skeptical look. He seemed genuine, but one minute he had never seen this place before, and the next he had. Hopefully he would get his story straight. "Well, since you have been here before, do you mind telling me how to get to Bucky's cave then?" "It's not like that! It's like I've dreamed about this place or something..." He looked scared now. I knew what he was thinking. "Koda, that was just a nightmare..." "I'm telling you this is the place I dreamed about!" He started to tear up. "So...so what if that wasn't a dream...what if that was actually a vision?" Koda jumped on my back and hugged my neck."...I don't want to lose you..." He was starting to scare me now. What if he was right? What if...No. That was just a dream. Nothing is going to happen to us. "You're not going to lose me, Koda. It was just a dream...You'll see..." But I said that more for me than him. I didn't know what to believe. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ It was almost mid-afternoon now. We had been walking for a while now, and we still couldn't seem to find the place where we tried to cross the river. It seemed to go on forever. Koda and I hadn't really talked all that much after our conversation about his "vision". I was about to tell him that we should probably stop and get something to eat, but I noticed he was asleep. I decided to keep going on. I sighed. It would have been nice to have a big brother to sleep on when I went on long journeys... After walking another mile or so, I spotted a cave in the side of an upcoming mountain. It was more than likely the only cave we would see for a long time and so I decided to stop. I wasn't whether or not I should wake Koda up to go attempt to catch fish. It was worth a shot, but considering how poor I was at fishing, it probably wouldn't work out for me. I woke Koda up. "Mmmm...wha? I was sleeping..." He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "Yes, I was aware of that. You were only dead weight on my back." I rolled my eyes at him. "C'mon, we're going to go catch some lunch in the river nearby." Koda shot back at me with a caustic," You mean I'm going to catch fish. You're just going to flail around in the water..." I was completely taken aback by his sudden change in behavior. I wasn't sure how to respond, so I brushed it off as a consequence of his nap I cut short. Off we went to the river... That's the end of the first 3 chapters! please let me know what you think and how I can improve! All comments welcomed!!!