scrubjayspeaks | Lake Lewisia #353

Growing up, she had a stuffed bear, the sort that actually looked like a bear and not just like a toy with vague animal shapes, and she had always imagined that it would somehow protect her from the things that kept happening to her at night. So when she encountered the bear out on the trail, when she had been staying away from home as long as she could get away with, she was not afraid–not like she knew she could be afraid of something, of someone. When it followed her home, it was like a promise kept at last, and when it opened its jaws wide enough to fit, say, a man’s head, it was like a dream made real.

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LL#353