Chapter 13

From Mr. Bear's explanations the Otto Empire seemed to be the country they had lived in and while Adair thought about asking more about it she dismissed that thought as it could wait for later. Right now there were more interesting questions on her mind.

Thus Adair's next question she wrote was something born out of childlike curiosity. First of all she asked what his name used to be as a human since she had always been referring to him as 'Mr. Bear' in her mind, yet doing so felt disrespectful now that they could communicate and continued her array of questions.

She continued thinking of questions while Mr. Bear was answering her first question such as what was it like to be a bear? Did his way of thinking change in any perceivable way ever since he became a bear? Did he like his change or did he find it annoying? What did he consider the biggest perk, and what was the biggest letdown of this transformation. And lastly she wanted to know if given the chance would he turn back into a human or prefer to stay as he was?

After the first few questions Adair became aware of certain limitations due to her still growing up, in this case the lack of stamina making her fingers feel tired, so she picked up a small stick and started writing down all her questions for Hank. Or at least what was the name he wrote to answer her first question. When Adair realized that she was actually doubting the validity of someone's name, it made her aware that she still had trust issues from the civilization test. Given everything the bear had done so far to help her, she had no reason why she should not trust him. Nevertheless, as a follow-up question Adair asked the bear whether he felt protective of her before the portal or only after turning into a bear.

Adair saw the bear think for a moment before writing that he had felt a bit of connection before they had gone through the portal, but mostly in the sense that it would be an assignment from the Queen. On the other hand, ever since he had turned into a bear, he started to feel extremely stressed out if he did not know where she was at all times. He then wrote that the most stressful part of his life had been right after finding himself in the forest unsure where Adair had been and that he felt the greatest sense of relief of his life wash over him once he found her.

He then went on to explain that the feeling would return if he left a certain radius from Adair the stress only worsened the further she got from him. It had tested this out when Adair had been sleeping in the first few days, and he had determined that it was an instinctual reaction and not one that came from himself.

When Adair read this, it felt like she almost had a guardian angel (in this case, a giant bear) protecting her from all harm, and while thankful she still found it weird. She eventually realized that it could have been a ploy by her mom to make sure she would be safe. It was impossible to be the case if her mother would have had the powers to make that happen. All Adair knew about the young woman was that since she had been powerful enough to vaporize someone, what could stop her from making a "spell" forcing a certain type of behavior onto someone?

The more Adair thought about it, the more that this made sense to her. While she was partially morally conflicted that she basically had an unwilling slave to protect her, she chose to set this issue aside for the moment because it benefited her the most in this current situation and there was nothing she could do about it at the moment. Who knows what might have happened to her if she did not have the bear protecting her for all this time.

While Adair was pondering over all of that, the bear finished answering the rest of the questions that she had written down. The first one was that he did not mind the change. While it did make many things more inconvenient, the increase in hearing, taste, and smell more than made up for it. The one thing that he found annoying was the fact that he occasionally tripped over himself due to having four legs instead of just two.

He did like that he was now able to move significantly faster than he could when he had been a human. Interestingly, with the last question on whether he would like to return to his original form, Adair noticed many crossed-out words. Hank eventually ended it with a 'maybe'. When asked about it, the bear refused to go into more details.

Not wanting to anger her protector, she asked how far the bear had explored around the forest, and it wrote 200 Einheiten in every direction around the lake. Adair did not know what an 'Einheit' would be converted into some distance she was aware of, but judging by the number it sounded like a lot.

Adair then asked, if he found anything interesting when exploring, such as animals or new fruit? The bear answered that the trees seemed to go on forever and that as far as he had seen the waterfall, river, and lake was the only thing besides trees.

This made Adair wonder how big the forests would be in its entirety. In the Galactic Empire, forests had been tourist attractions and even the biggest one had been slightly above 2 square acres. This forest that she was in right now made her own planet's forests seem tiny in comparison.

Now that her curiosity had been sated it was time to find out what exactly her furry friend meant by "this side of the planet"? Was it just some sort of slang to refer to a second continent that was far away from the one they had been living on, or did he literally mean the exact other side of the world?

Either way, it sounded like the distance between their current and former place was great, so this brought up the question of what separated the two places. Was it just a vast distance which would be hard to travel with the means they had at their disposal? Was there perhaps a magic barrier blocking the way? Maybe it was more simple, and there was a literal wall that separated the planet into two sides?

Adair's next question to the bear was whether there was a way to get back to the castle they had lived in. The bear's response was what she expected but it still disappointed her. According to Hank there was no way to return to the other continent. The way they had gotten here was a one-time use item meant to be used in emergency situations only where the Queen was in danger. The bear also notified Adair that the Queen must have gotten into a lot of trouble for using the teleportation scroll on Adair instead of herself.

This made her feel bad. Adair had never forgotten how extremely worried her mother had looked right before the young woman sent her newborn baby away. While Adair had blamed her initially, she understood that her mom must have been very worried something very bad would happen if Adair had stayed. The inability to return was also bad for her future plans. The "spells" that her mom had been using seemed extremely powerful and if Adair could have learned a spell or two, that would have been just amazing. She made a mental note to try and find a way, but since she had spent the entirety of previous life without any special abilities, not learning them in this life wouldn't be that big of a deal.

Still, it was more of a passing fancy. By now Adair was far more attached to this bear than any of her sets of parents in either lives. According to her own estimates she had been with the bear for more than two years Galactic Empire time, and she had much more attachment to it than nearly anyone else in either of her lives.

Realizing that she was still thinking in Galactic Empire time she made a note to herself that she needed to ask Hank how long a year was on this planet and what are the different seasons? Also she needed to confirm how close she was to to guessing how long each day was on this planet. But before she started asking these questions a realization happened.

This realization was that Adair suddenly realized that the Hank kept on referring to her mother as the Queen. 'Does this mean that I'm a princess then? If that is the case, does that also mean that since Hank 'rescued' me from whatever mom was worried about that this means that I was a 'damsel in distress'? If I take that thought farther, doesn't that also mean that in the classical story regarding damsels in distress that I would have to marry him!?'