Destiny and Choices

Roaming around the forest was the only pass time for Nickel who was a large black bear at the peak of its youth. He used to roam around the forest to find something interesting, though he never knew what he was searching for he kept on wandering through the forest. He ate when he was hungry, scratched the trees around when he wanted to stretch and slept under his favourite tree when he had done all the wandering he wanted to do.

One day while he was having a nice afternoon nap he sensed a strange odour in the air and heard sounds of someone approaching. The odour was very distinct but he knew it was coming from an animal the sounds of rubbing against bushes were unlike that of any other animals he knew in the wild would make. The sounds had a weird pattern and it seemed like the animal was lost since they were short bursts of sound. There wasn’t much sound at every possible foot the animal took which suggested that the animal was small but the sounds also came from branches of higher altitude suggesting that it was tall, naturally he took a cautious stance waiting for the confrontation with this strange animal which he had never heard or seen in his life. Slowly a figure in brown started to appear from the bushes and Nickel held its breath. The strange animal was looking behind, it hadn’t noticed Nickel and was looking everywhere and seemed to be lost. It was a very strange looking animal, it was tall and was using only two limbs to walk, its fur was very smooth as though some dry leaf like material sticking on its skin and then half of its limbs had very little black shinny hair, it seemed like it was suffering from some disease, It had long fingers like the monkeys and on one hand it was holding a stick. The animal didn’t look ferocious so Nickel relaxed a bit and started approaching it with curiosity. The animal slowly turned around and their eyes met. The animal immediately took a defensive stance pointing the tip of the stick him lowering its body a bit. Nickel was taken aback but he could clearly see that the animal was frozen with fear. He then carelessly walked towards his right to have a good view of the animal. But the animal was still trembling and kept pointing the stick at him. He was surprised that the animal didn’t run and for a long time didn’t make any conversation.

He was annoyed, not able to make out anything out of this encounter and was no more interested in this animal and decided to chase the animal away. In situations like these Nickel would usually charge towards any animal for a short distance to scare it away. So he made a half hearted effort to chase the animal away by performing a slow lazy dash, He thought that it would run away but then it started trembling in fear and did something that scared and startled him like hell. The animal made a very sharp and loud sound loud as thunder, it was the first time he had heard such a noise. He noticed that the animal also jerked very sharply and it seemed like the stick was making the noise. Scared out of its wits for a while now Nickel took threatening stance, his head lowered, rear legs ready to spring he began roaring to tell the animal that it was serious now. It didn’t have any effect on the animal which was still frozen and trembling with fear and was now making noises like a baby animal which is cornered and out of breath. It wasn’t threatening like an adult would even in this stage and its trembling grew more with every roar. Now Nickel had lost it and began to charge for real, his heartbeat was increasing rapidly and half way through he was again met with the annoying sharp and loud as hell noise which made him very confused and scared. He paused for a fraction of a second, made up his mind, and then he dashed with all his energy like his life was on the line.