One Of Us Must Now Die.

This is an excerpt from 'The Promise', and from the same story's much warmer version, 'Loss of Innocence'.

The bear drew ever closer, but this strange, injured animal he had been watching had melted away from him.

It was hiding now in some brush under that tree. Should he advance or draw back?

The other human had begun to behave differently again, causing him to back off and wait, and watch. Then it went out of sight, but the other was hiding and was vulnerable, like a fawn left by its mother. That thought, and ravening hunger, obscured any consideration of a trap or of danger.

The bear saw an opening. He would hunt that hidden one, while the other human was somewhere else, kill it, eat his fill for once, before others came to challenge him for it, drink at the river, and rest in some hidden place. He might eat two or three times from it before he would leave.

If only the pain in his nose and jaws would stop.

After a few minutes that seemed to last forever, Susan heard scuffling sounds approaching where she sat at the base of the tree, tucked into the branches where Doug had secured her.

She heard a low grumbling, from a large animal, and something sniffing the air and the ground, coming closer to her.

She was no longer afraid. There would be only momentary pain, and then it would soon be over. She did not know where Doug was or what he was doing, but did know that he was somewhere close by. He would not let her be hurt.

Some large animal was getting closer. The hairs on her neck rose. She knew what the animal had to be from those sounds, but preferred not to think about it, or what it meant for her, or for him. She focused upon being still, as Doug had said she should be.

The sounds came closer. She could hear large padded feet moving across the ground near her, and the rattling click, of large claws upon rock, and root.

A bear!

It was attracted by her smell. The sweet smell of ketones from her breath and body. It may have been attracted by the smell of her urine too, and its sweetness, leaving an easy trail to follow in the air, and where they had stopped, when she had peed.

Susan recognized that that was that why Doug had moved some of the fire they had slept by, on the previous night, over the place where she had 'gone', behind the tree. After that, he had peed everywhere she had peed, to cover her smell with his own, but he could not have entirely succeeded. Perhaps he had carried her for a similar reason; not to leave so clear a trail of her weakening condition.

No. He had carried her when he had seen that she could no longer walk as fast as was needed, and when she was having other difficulties.

She held her breath as she felt the shrub in front of her move, and at the same time, was overwhelmed by the sudden fetid smell of 'bear', that drifted in, and threatened to swamp her senses and her caution. She did not dare open her eyes. It would be over for her in a few seconds.

Had it already killed Doug, the man who was her lover?

She had seen that promise in his eyes, and she had responded in the same way. Could fate be so cruel as to bring two people together as it had, and then part them in this way?

She had not heard him die.

She felt the shrub being dragged from her hands. What was most frightening for her, was the anticipation of pain. She would never see her family again, nor get to know this man any better than she had, or him, her, and her future would end here. It might take weeks to find her body, or his, or what would be left of them.

Then, the bear was distracted by something else. Something close behind it.