a bear and a magic wizard
I started writing this again, FEELS GOOD.
Birds Sick of the Birds
The Seney Wilderness of Michigan is a land of perching bald-eagles, peaceful brooks with trout lapping at the surface, and gregarious woodland creatures of all shapes and sizes. On the map, we know Michigan by it’s comforting glove-shape, as it waves “hello” to the world— but Seney actually sits in the central Upper Peninsula of Michigan, detached, as if it’s what the state has been reaching for it’s entire life.
Encompassing roughly 95,000 acres, or almost 150 square miles, the land is truly boring. Honestly, the only people who catch themselves here are old, bored white guys, who occasionally trick their younger, even-more-bored white sons, to come hunting or “experience nature.”
Yes, there are fantastic areas to birdwatch, with over 200 separate species making their home in Seney, but even the birds get sick of the birds, and sometimes they just want to fly away, far away, to Detroit, or even Chicago.
It is here, in this forsaken land of beauty, that a particular Ursus americanus, the American black bear, named Steven, makes his residence.
Least Concern
The conservation status of the American black bear is Least Concern, which is one below Near Threatened and at the opposite end of Extinct. But Steven the black bear from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is miserable in his life of Least Concern. He spends his free time eating various bugs, honey, and foliage. Sometimes he surprises himself catching a salmon; when it’s cold he sleeps and even when it’s not cold he sleeps. When he wakes up, he defecates anywhere he wants to— really, the only plus to living in the wilderness is shitting anywhere you feel like it.
More than all that time he spends digging his paws into berries and grubs and ants and trees, he spends a vast majority of his free-time having sex with animals that are not bears.
The Prevalence of Abandonment in North American Black Bears
It should not come as any surprise that many bears are abandoned and neglected as cubs, and as such, this was the sad, all-to-familiar story with Steven. The call of family-life is never appealing to any true, proud male, but to a black bear, it is especially putrid. It seems as though the penis does the talking, and then the legs do the walking.
To Steven’s father, Mark, a life of spiritual-disillusionment was the call, as he wandered from campsite to campsite, ever in search of picnic baskets, like the great prophet Yogi, a sort of bear-Christ. When Steven was but months old, Mark disappeared into the night without uttering a word to his wife or saying a final “goodbye” to his son.
And as such, Steven’s mother, Juanita, thought it best to keep the disappointment in her only son’s life to a confined, packaged space-of-time. She left— to where, no one knows— three days after his father, and Steven sat alone in their cave with a small supply of berries and a single, mud-print of her paw on the cave wall. Time passed, tears were shed. Some of the kinder, gentler patrons of the forest took to helping Steven grow from there on. A wolf taught him how to hunt, another bear taught him how to catch fish in the river, some birds taught him to hate birds because they no manners and think they are better than you just because they can fly.
It was in this strange amalgamation of adolescence that Steven developed his affinity for animal-tang that was not becoming to anyone, but especially not for his own species. Soon enough, it was everything but bears that Steven wanted to fuck. Confused, but complacent in his routine, this is life Steven lead: a rather usual life of romping sexcapades with non-bears, pooping, sleeping, and eating. Until Thursday.
Thursday
It was mid-morning when Steven wandered out to forage for some food. He came to a clearing near a small stream and found himself staring down the barrel of a doe’s rear. This doe was lapping at some water, head down. Steven had a thing for doe, they were quiet, didn’t fidget, and easy on the eyes. It occurred to him that he might want to have sex with this doe, he might want to have sex with her very badly.
And so, after a little coaxing, he did.
“Say it again, Janey,” moaned Steven, from behind.
“Number,” breath, “one!”
“The whole,” breath, “thing!”
“YOU ARE NUMBER ONE!”
“I’mnumberoneeeeeeeeaayeahh!”
In a great deluge of endorphins and primal-instinct, Steven released his bear-sperm onto Janey’s back, dotting her caramel, soft fur. This bear-sperm was confused, confused as to why it was not inside of a bear, and what it was doing on a not-bear, and then all those thousands of bear-sperm died, drying in the sun as the day went on, as it always does.
“Thanks, toots,” Steven gave Janey a pat on her bushy, white tail and stepped to the opening of his cave, where he had a rather mundane view of trees, as did everyone in the forest.
“I hate what you do to me, Steven. I have a family, you know. Jerry, he has antlers, antlers, Steven. He has antlers that I can see my god-damn future in.” She began to weep and sprinted out of the cave in a huff. He tried not to think about how many families he’d ruined.
“I have claws,” the bear whispered to himself. He did have vicious, sharp claws that could kill, but they mostly just made marks on the bark of trees. Janey was dashing in-between dotted trees, back to her husband when Steven felt his head with his own paw, “No antlers, though, you’re right.”
Steven retired to his mossy slab of a bed, and sat on it rather morosely. It was becoming apparent that he would have to die a lonely, notoriously-horny bear in Michigan, or leave, like his father.
He shut his eyes and slept.
What a Portal Smells Like
A portal is synonymous with gateways, doorways, or entrances. Steven had his own portal that made a funny lightbulb shape, it was the entrance to his cave and he disliked it because when he laid on his side, it looked a bit phallic.
If you would ask most anyone on Earth what a portal smells like, they would look at you funny, and maybe you could convince them to run their noses along the old, wood finish of a door, or the steel frame of an office building.
“Like nothing,” they’d say.
Yes, if you asked most anyone on Earth, that would be the case.
But on Xiaps-9, you would get a very consistent, different answer as to what exactly a portal smells like, because you would also be asking about a very different object entirely.
“Old books,” they would tell you, “portals smell like old books. Good ones do, at least.”
And really, why wouldn’t they? Before there could be the first portal, there was the book that told you how to open it. The old, old book that had an author who everyone knew of but no one really knew.
You
The first book on maintaining, opening, and closing portals is something of a cosmic mystery. The text appears in the manifestation of an ancient, bound codex, painstakingly scribed on vellum, with detailed illustrations. “Going Through Portals by You,” as far as we know, has appeared individually on 14 different planets spread throughout 14 different civilizations in 14 different arenas of the universe. Thusly, these 14 civilizations all have access, by portals, to each other, but with some minor tweaking, conjurers are able to strand themselves, or exile, on planets that have not seemingly made the discovery of the book.
The debate rages whether or not “by You” is part of the title, or a declaration of the author, You. The manual is unable to be replicated or disseminated in any way other than public readings or crude drawings and approximations of the text; which always end up flawed and incorrect anyway. Thusly, the only real way to successfully operate a portal is to be in possession of the book, or to have been taught it’s ways for what amounts to a lifetime.
As such, of these 14 copies, there are but fourteen creatures in the entire universe who can portal, but there is soon to be a fifteenth.
Chu’ran is the youngest wizard in all of Xiaps-9, resting at 309 Earth years, meaning he’s more or less fresh out the womb in Xiaps years, leaving him with the appearance of a mid-twenties man, with fiery red hair that’s thinned from stress, and a height that placed him precisely between being able to be called “tall” and deemed “short.” He is the only child of a loving witch and wizard, who’s approach to child-rearing had been decidedly laissez-faire, until it was too late.
Can’t Defeat the Sweets
Chu’ran went to school, like all young Xi-Ni, and was taught the ways of magic. Normally, this would be enough to make novels of: being taught the ways of magic! That archaic, mysterious word that seems to exist only to confuse itself! What is magic? Forces we do not fully comprehend? Oh, all the spells, the history, it’s so rich, so dense, so vibrant. So old. A wizard would have a lovely time with a gun.
Yes, Chu’ran was taught to levitate, polymorph, spark, illuminate— he was even able to boil water: all those great magics that culture and science later went on to make truly useless with advancing-technology— why should you have to make the proper stance, contort your tongue, recall slippery phrases, and give an all-around unnecessary amount of unf to making a crystal glow so you can see, when you could just install these light-systems that are running on simple gestures like, flipping a switch?
Truth was, the hard magic, the epic stuff, that wasn’t taught. It would be dangerous and irresponsible to teach every citizen on Xi-Ni how to make it rain fire, or explode your enemy, or even to open portals. So, the basics were perfected, and then, later, you might be called upon to be one of the chosen, to be a battle-mage, a sorcerer, or a magician king. But mostly, you just made frogs turn into chickens, and then levitated them over your head.
And so, Chu’ran’s ultimate defeat came not in spells that take a lifetime to master, or in the mysteries of the world, but they came mostly in carbohydrates and fats. Chu’ran was addicted to the sweets, and it showed. The life of not being chosen had gotten to him.
While it’s appropriate that a society has varying body shapes, much like the intellect and skills of a people will have varying degrees, Chu’ran was by and large, the fattest wizard on Xi-Ni.
No Perks
There were no perks for being as shapely as Chu’ran was. His life had been a series of tests to avoid succumbing to his terribly low self-esteem and drowning himself in O’ka, the Sweet Lake of Xi-Ni, which was where he found himself now. Standing on the coast, his town behind him, as the waves licked at his bare feet, his cerulean robe undone, exposing his round, bulbous stomach.
Shaped like a swirled dollop of whipped cream, the lake had a history of sadness and loss attached to it’s profound vanilla after-taste. Legend tells of Himul, the lonely baker, who designed and prepared a feast of immeasurably glorious, amazing candies and pastries for his love, a dairy maid named Jan’ej. Unfortunately, Himul had not prepared an allergen-free feast, and Jan’ej puffed up to the size of Chu’ran before dying of an allergic-reaction to a legume native of Xi-Ni, the nonut.
Distraught— and panicked over having a dead girl in his possession— Himul took the girl and stuffed her into a garbage bag, along with all the food he had prepared for that evening. Then, he threw them in the lake.
The locals choose to ignore the fact that this means they would be drinking extremely dangerous, tainted water, and attached an addendum to the fable stating that Jan’ej somehow escaped the lake, or at least did not rot in it.
But Chu’ran was seriously considering becoming another part of that tale by letting himself prune and die at the bottom, amongst the soft rocks and history.
“‘Ran,” a voice came from behind him, it was his father, Chu’chu.
“Dad? What are you doing here?”
“I’ll ask the same of you.”
“I’m just thinking.”
Father stood beside son, and it would be apparent to a passing stranger that the larger one was the father, even though it was not. It bothered Chu’ran to his core that his family uncompromisingly loved him, it made him feel like it was okay to be so large.
“What are you thinking about?”
It occurred to Chu’ran that he should lie, “Leaving.
“Really? Where to?”
“I don’t know, any suggestions?”
