The Bear's House Guest

by Amy Star

  “Everyone is ‘someone else’ to everyone else,” Ambrose pointed out dryly. “But don’t worry. You’ll be fine here, and I’ve got Yusuke and Mara scoping out your house on a regular basis. If anything changes, we’ll know about it, and when the coast clears, you’ll be the first to know.”

  She nodded slowly, mustering up a smile.

  *

  Ambrose was out of the house. For as little as he actually did with his telecommunications work and for as much of it as he left to be governed by committee, every so often he did actually need to make an appearance in person, and Elizabeth had appreciated watching him walk around in a suit that morning before he left. And then, she had the house to herself, at least until Mara, Yusuke, or both showed up unannounced.

  She spent most of the day on the couch, being as lazy as she could manage. That was where she was when Mara and Yusuke entered her thoughts. On a whim she lowered her magazine to her lap, reached for her phone on the coffee table, and with her other hand turned down the volume of the television.

  Any updates on the situation?

  Elizabeth sent the text message to both Mara and Yusuke without putting much thought into it. It was either going to be a yes or a no, and considering it was her house and her property, she figured it was pretty understandable that she wanted to be kept in the loop.

  It was Yusuke who responded first, only a few minutes later. Presumably, he had his own job, though Elizabeth didn’t know what it was; it never seemed to take up much of his time, considering he seemed to be available in some capacity or another at nearly all hours of the day.

  situation? what situation?

  nah i’m kidding

  i haven’t had a chance to check today but as of last night something was still lurking around, or at least had been lurking around pretty recently

  Elizabeth would have been happy to learn why. Or rather, she would have been satisfied to learn why. She would have been happy to be able to go back home. As it stood, it made no sense. She had to assume it was pretty apparent she wasn’t actually there anymore, so why was anyone still loitering around like a smoker at a bus stop?

  Do you think someone specifically doesn’t want me to go home?

  I mean, considering it was a territory dispute or something, wouldn’t that make sense?

  not really

  territory disputes are mostly about making sure other shifters don’t wander where they aren’t welcome

  non-shifters sort of fall through the cracks and get ignored as long as they don’t get caught in the crossfire

  but i guess it’s possible that one of them doesn’t want you coming back for other reasons

  Elizabeth groaned and thumped her head back against the back of the couch. It was silent and painless, and sort of anticlimactic, but Elizabeth couldn’t be bothered to stand up to find something more satisfying to bonk her head against. Besides, that struck her as a little irrational.

  She had been hoping he would laugh the idea off as ridiculous. But if it was a known phenomenon for shifters to occasionally decide to just stop being human at all, she supposed they probably weren’t dealing with the most well-adjusted people in the world.

  Any guesses as to why?

  There was a longer pause this time, and Elizabeth paged absentmindedly through her magazine as she waited. Whoever had taken the photographs for the main article hadn’t been particularly talented and it was mostly just gossip. It wasn’t all that interesting, and she dropped it like a hot coal when her phone buzzed to alert her to another message.

  not really

  i’m not a psychic, i just have a decent nose

  if you’re looking for a link between smell and psychic abilities, i’d ask mara

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes down at her phone and debated just ignoring the response. But she supposed that was immature, and she probably should have expected some sort of non-answer.

  Duly noted.

  I already asked her, she’s just really slow to reply.

  yeah, she actually has an attention span that lets her focus on her job

  i don’t know how she manages it

  Elizabeth snorted quietly under her breath and set her phone aside, content to get comfortable and wait for some sort of a response from Mara. It seemed like all she could do until the situation blew over.

  Time passed slowly. Not as if it was some sort of drudgery, but just in the way things were prone to slow down when there was nothing going on. It was a relaxing sort of monotony, as strange as that sounded when she thought it over, but it fit. It was quiet and still, save for the sounds of the pages turning every so often.

  Elizabeth nearly had a heart attack when her phone buzzed almost forty minutes later to alert her to the fact that Mara had finally replied to her. Her magazine slipped from her fingers and flapped down to her lap, and she fumbled to grab her phone before she recalled that there wasn’t actually anything pressing going on, and so she had no reason to panic.

  She opened the text message from Mara.

  nothing new that I’ve noticed, but if all that’s happening is lurking there won’t really be any huge changes to spot

  we’re just waiting for a sign that the stakeout on your house has stopped

  is there something in particular you wanted us to keep a look out for?

  Elizabeth sighed and leaned her head forward until her forehead bumped against the phone, her eyes closed. The message didn’t say anything that she hadn’t already been aware of. She had just been hoping that something noticeable would have happened.

  Not really. I’m just getting tired of waiting for something to happen like I’m sitting in timeout.

  rude

  Ambrose’s house is much nicer than timeout. it’s at least a penalty box.

  Elizabeth snorted and rolled her eyes.

  I stand corrected, but you know what I mean.

  fair enough

  but like I said, if nothing huge is happening, there won’t be anything huge to spot

  I’m keeping an eye on things, though

  I’ll let you know if anything changes

  Elizabeth knew that was all she could expect, but she still couldn’t quite help but to feel like it was a letdown. Not that Mara or Yusuke had let her down—they were doing what they could in a situation where there wasn’t much to be done—but the situation in general was not shaping up in quite the way she had wanted or expected it to.

  She kept her disappointment to herself, though. The others all knew she wasn’t thrilled with the mess, and they were doing what they could to straighten things out. Whining unendingly wasn’t going to do anything except make it look like she didn’t appreciate their help at all.

  Thanks, Mara.

  You should help me convince Ambrose to attack the wolf eventually.

  I can turn it into a rug once I have my house back.

  For a split second, she was worried that the joke was maybe a bit too dark, but then Mara simply sent back a thumbs up emoticon and a grinning face, and Elizabeth figured it was alright.

  She glanced at the clock to get an idea of when Ambrose would be back, before she tossed her magazine aside and slumped down sideways on the couch to get comfortable. She turned the volume of the television up again, unsure if it was the same movie as before or if a new but entirely interchangeable one had started while she wasn’t paying attention. Not that it really mattered; it would kill time just as easily either way. She squirmed for a moment until she achieved optimal comfort, and she settled in to wait for Ambrose to get back.

  *

  The door opened, footsteps entered the house, and a moment later the door closed again. Elizabeth sat up on the couch, looking in Ambrose’s direction to see that he was already working on pulling his tie off.

  “Not much for dressing up, I take it,” she guessed, one eyebrow rising.

  “I can dress up just fine,” he protested mildly. “I’m just not one for looking like an overly starched and pressed prick.” He dropped h
is tie on the table and kicked his shoes off, not even bothering to put them away. “Have a decent day?”

  “More or less,” she replied. “Nothing really happened, other than hassling Yusuke and Mara via text messages.”

  He nodded once in satisfaction. “That’s always a worthwhile endeavor. Any plans for this evening?”

  Elizabeth shrugged halfheartedly. “I hadn’t really thought about it,” she answered. “But now that you ask, I think you should show me around the property. Show me all the hidden corners and secret spaces.” She grinned broadly. “Take me on a fairytale adventure.”

  Ambrose’s eyebrows rose as his expression shifted to faintly incredulous amusement. “What, are you expecting to find fairies and gnomes?” he asked dryly, his hands landing on the kitchen table as he leaned back against it. “I mean, I’m not going to say nothing like that exists, because who knows, but I’m pretty sure we’re not going to find any of them around here.”

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes and picked her magazine up. Rolling it up into a thin rod, she pointed it at him like a scepter. “You are missing the point.”

  “I’m pretty sure it would be more fairytale-ish if you were being led around by an animal,” he pointed out, his tone turning slightly thoughtful. “I can maneuver through the woods a bit better that way too.”

  “So, show me around as a bear,” Elizabeth returned, shrugging carelessly. “It’s still you either way, and since I’m pretty sure we plan on keeping in touch even once I’m back at my house, I’m pretty sure you being a bear is something I’ll need to adjust to, to consider it normal eventually anyway.”

  Ambrose feigned a pout in her direction. “You don’t think I’m normal yet?” he asked, purposely pitching his voice to something that was almost a whine.

  Elizabeth scoffed. “Come on, let’s be real. You’re never going to be normal,” she reasoned. “You turning into a bear just has a chance of becoming normal.”

  He shrugged one shoulder and tipped his head to the side, as if to silently concede ‘fair enough.’ “Yeah, alright,” he finally agreed. “I’ll go dress down, and you can put on something a bit more appropriate for wandering through the woods,” he added before he pushed himself away from the table and headed towards the stairs, forgetting his tie and his shoes in the kitchen.

  Elizabeth loped up the stairs after him to get changed, made it back down the stairs to the kitchen again before him, and she could still hear him upstairs. She headed out onto the porch to wait, and she set about shoving the cuffs of her pants into her boots and gave her bare arms a spray with tick spray, because no one wanted to deal with that sort of thing. The entire porch smelled sort of odd and like it had all been dipped in slightly caustic chemicals afterwards, but she was content that she wasn’t going to be afflicted with Lyme disease in the near future.

  When at last Ambrose came outside, Elizabeth had to stare for a moment.

  She had expected him to be wearing something.

  She had not expected him to be completely naked from head to toe. Granted, they had already discussed that he would be in bear form and thus would need to strip naked anyway, so she probably should have seen that coming, but it had sort of slipped her mind that plans to shift into a different shape necessitated either losing clothes or else ruining those clothes.

  Ambrose grinned at her as she stared before he stepped down from the porch and began to make his way towards the trees. Elizabeth shook her head quickly, dragging her thoughts back to the present, and she loped after him. It wasn’t until he reached the tree line that he actually transformed, and it was still a sight that Elizabeth hadn’t quite gotten used to. She couldn’t decide if it looked like it was painful or not, and she wasn’t even sure if she was really seeing the whole thing or if her brain was just plastering over parts of it because she wouldn’t understand otherwise.

  Either way, Ambrose didn’t seem to be slowed down at all, and he glanced at her over his shoulder before he cocked his head to one side, turned back around, and set off at a lope into the woods. Elizabeth buried her still-complicated feelings on the entire matter of transforming and having multiple forms at the back of her mind.

  Mixed feelings aside, she expected a reasonably relaxing day, and she followed him at a sedate pace as he lumbered along.

  There was a stream that wandered and wove its way through the woods, lazy and slow except for a few spots where it burbled and foamed over the rocks. They followed it for a time once they found it, and Elizabeth shoved pebbles and leaves and twigs into the water every so often, just to watch them get swept away by the current.

  When they came to a broken tree draped at an angle across the stream so one end of it was nearly six feet off the ground, Elizabeth couldn’t quite help but to climb it, the urge overtaking her like a child presented with a jungle gym. It wobbled under her feet, but it held up under her weight, and once she was standing at the highest point of it, she stretched her arms out and jumped. Her fingers wrapped around the nearest branch of the next tree over, and with a grunt, her side thumped against the trunk. She shifted and squirmed until she could plant her feet against the bark, and she scrabbled her way up onto the branch until she could sit on it, one leg on either side and her back against the trunk.

  Ambrose hopped across the stream, so he was gazing up at her, looking sort of bemused, or at least as close to bemused as Elizabeth figured a bear could look.

  “Look,” she started, “if you expect me to go walking through the woods and not climb a tree, then you are very mistaken.”

  Ambrose snorted and rolled his eyes (and frankly, watching a bear roll his eyes was never not going to be more than a little strange). He leaned against the trunk of the tree just to make it wobble, and Elizabeth’s grip on the branch tightened as she scowled down at him.

  Of course, climbing a single tree wasn’t quite what they were out there for, so Elizabeth appreciated her elevated seat for only a few moments before she began to make her way back down to the ground. She stretched, back arching and hands in the small of her back, then she followed in Ambrose’s wake when he began walking again.

  *

  They were deep enough into the woods that if she squinted and climbed up to a low branch, she could see her house. They didn’t get any closer than that, though. If there was still something in her yard, neither of them wanted to deal with it just then, especially not when Elizabeth was there and essentially defenseless. Her self-defense skills wouldn’t be much help against a wolf the size of a carriage horse, as much as it pained her to admit it.

  And besides, her house wasn’t what they were there to see, so they kept moving in short order. Elizabeth had a general idea of where they were largely because of her sense of direction, but even so, she peered around at everything with interest, as if the entire woods had suddenly become new and fascinating.

  Deeper and deeper they wandered, until the trees were thick around them, the light was falling dappled and spotted across them, and the trees grew as tall as buildings.

  Eventually, Ambrose slowed to a halt and looked straight up towards the canopy of leaves. Elizabeth tipped her head back to follow his gaze, and she gasped quietly at the sight.

  To call it a tree house would be a bit disingenuous. It sprawled throughout six trees, with ramps making it so it was multiple levels. There was a staircase wrapping around the trunk of the broadest tree, and another towards the easternmost edge. Ladders hung down in three other locations, and there were strings of lights spread between numerous branches.

  Elizabeth gaped up at it in awe for a long enough moment that she didn’t even realize that Ambrose had shifted back to his human form until he spoke.

  “Took a while, but it was a good distraction,” he observed wryly, arms folded over his chest, completely comfortable in the knowledge that they were far enough out in the woods that no one was going to see him exposed.

  “You built this?” Elizabeth asked, her voice low, as if she was observing something otherw
orldly.

  “Mara and Yusuke helped occasionally,” he replied, before he confirmed, “but yeah. It felt nice to have a place to get away to every so often, even if I had to put it together with my own hands.”

  Elizabeth continued to stare upwards, and eventually she managed, “This isn’t what I expected when I decided we should go for a walk in the woods.”

  Ambrose laughed and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I like to show off sometimes.”

  “Very effective,” she assured him as she headed towards the nearest staircase. Leaves crunched under her shoes as she began to climb, but the railing was smooth when she wrapped a hand around it.

  The tree house was only partially covered by a roof, with the ramps uncovered, and it only had true walls in a few strategic places. But even so, once she was standing at the top of the stairs, there was a distinct difference between standing in the tree house and standing in the open woods. She looked over her shoulder, looking down at Ambrose expectantly, only moving deeper into the tree house when he began to follow her up the stairs.