Part two
Prompts for day eight through fourteen of Inktober are: reckless, heavy, sweep, sting, shredded, drink, and trunk.
Where the story left off: Wolf gave his mother a special pair of earrings, which startled her, but he didn’t know why. She didn’t speak about her nonreaction. After that, Wolf talked to his mother about the starfish.
“You have a new friend,” she said. “Your new friend will help you with your journey. I don’t know how yet, but you will know when it happens.”
Wolf spent a long day at the zoo. He watched and listened to the bears intently, although he tried to avoid making it obvious that he was listening to bears and was understanding the things that they said.
“It’s almost to the point of a crime to understand and to speak to bears now,” Wolf thought. “I know that’s happened before somewhere else. The Land of the Humans has become a hard place to live. It’s not joyous anymore.”
Wolf left the zoo and walked down toward the waterfront, where he was started to see sharks jumping high out of the water. The display looked reckless to him. He noticed that the sharks were singing their famous shark song, but he didn’t understand Shark. He felt sad that he found understanding land animals to be easy, but he struggled to understand marine creatures.
Wolf left the waterfront and the jumping sharks and came across a broken down building. It was made of brick and the only thing that was visible was a single wall. The rest of the building had decayed years ago and had been removed after bricks randomly fell onto the pathway, narrowly missing hitting people on the head. The remaining wall was thick and was very solid and heavy. All that was on the wall was a very large mural. Wolf liked the picture, and he sat on a large rock to look at it.
“I wonder if the two differently colored eyes means anything or if it just means that the artist ran out of paint and had to switch to another color,” Wolf said out loud. No one walked by. Wolf remembered the rumors that the remaining wall could fall at any moment and that both the brown and blue eyes could follow people as they walked past and jinx them.
“Such nonsense,” Wolf said out loud.
Wolf walked home because it was getting close to time to eat, and he was getting hungry. When he arrived at home, he saw that there was dust all over the porch, so he grabbed a broom and swept the porch. The broom looked unfamiliar, but it was a good broom. It worked well, almost too well, as if it had magical powers. When Wolf finished sweeping, the broom seemed to go dormant after breathing a sigh of relief.
“A broom that sighs?”
Just as Wolf was about to put the broom back in the house, a wasp flew out of it, startling Wolf.
“Don’t be afraid,” said the wasp. “I have been sent by the Queen of the Hornets to look for you.”
“Um…” Wolf stammered. “B-b-but why?”
Wolf was focused on the wasp’s giant stinger.
“A long time ago,” said the wasp. “The Queen of the Hornets created a lasting peace between the Bears and the Hornets. After that, the Bears were always welcome in the territory of the Hornets and peace reigned for years and years. Now, unfortunately, that peace is threatened. We don’t know who is creating the violence because it’s neither the bears nor the hornets. We looked for Bearnacle Bear, who negotiated with the Queen of the Hornets, and we found out that he is missing. He had taken his ship somewhere and it vanished. We think that it vanished in the Land of the Humans.”
“Bearnacle Bear??” Wolf scratched his head, wondering who that was.
“We knew that Bearnacle was in search of a name when he was traveling through the Land of the Hornets. Also, he had a human friend. We are trying to find him, too.”
“Hmm,” said Wolf, thinking that his friend might have become Bearnacle.
“If you know Bearnacle, please help us find him.”
“Okay,” said Wolf, but he didn’t know how to go about finding the friend he hadn’t seen in years.
The wasp flew away, just as Wolf arrived at home. The ground surrounding the small house was covered with colorful autumnal leaves. Some were whole, while most were shredded.
Wolf went into the house, where he saw his mother stirring a giant pot of soup. On the table were several fancy glasses, with straws and colorful little umbrellas.
“Mmm, soup,” Wolf said.
“Oooh, what fun,” Wolf said. “I love little umbrellas.”
“I know you do,” said Wolf’s mother.
After dinner, Wolf’s mother took him outside.
“I found this in the woods. It is quite a mystery.”
Wolf’s mother walked him to a pirate chest with a rusty lock.
“What does this mean?” asked Wolf.
“I don’t know,” said Wolf’s mother. “But it could be a message. It’s just a feeling that I have, that your childhood bear friend is in serious danger.”
Suddenly, Wolf felt cold and apprehensive.
“I will go and look for my bear friend. He might be named Bearnacle now. I will leave in the morning.”
“Please be careful. It’s very dangerous,” said Wolf’s mother. Just then, a cold wind blew fiercely, and mother and son went into the house.
TO BE CONTINUED!
