Chapter 6

Everything remained peaceful and ordinary until one day Adair woke up feeling that she was too wet. This confused the still sleepy Adair, and her first thought was that Mr. Bear must be transporting her again using his mouth for some odd reason, but when she heard a massive clap of thunder her eyes opened wide to see that it was just raining.

The rain continued to pour down even harder and completely drenched Adair. She scooted off the back of the bear and tried to hide underneath it. This allowed Adair to escape from the downpour. She continued to hear the rainfall around her hit the ground.

She was wondering why the leaves above them had not stopped the rain, but when she looked up she saw that all of the leaves had retracted. 'Are they doing this on purpose to allow as much rain to hit the ground as possible?' she wondered. This wasn't too far-fetched a thought. In such a vast forest water should be a finite resource and to stay alive each tree would need as much water as possible. During the four months they've been in the forest this was the first time it had actually rained.

Alas, this knowledge did not help Adair and the bear right now, because it meant that they would be pelted by water until the storm stopped. The black clouds were a seemingly universal sign that a storm was going on. This was the biggest storm that Adair had ever seen in her life.

The previously 'green sky' had been replaced by black clouds that covered the whole sky, not leaving any open spaces. This made it impossible for Adair to determine the natural sky color. Fortunately, three balls of lights were bright enough to provide light even under these dire circumstances.

Adair was unsure what those three celestial bodies were, and her first assumption was that there were three suns in the sky, but since the black clouds were obscuring her view it was impossible to tell. Thinking about it, she concluded that it might actually be just one bright sun and two very reflective moons. She felt that this theory was likelier, at least given that the ritual her mother had used had featured one sun and two moons.

Making use of this rare opportunity she spent some time trying to see how big the forest was, but even with all of the leaves on the trees retracted, the forest appeared to go on forever. As far as she could see there were only more and more trees.

Eventually, it was time to go over to the blue tree, but the storm had yet to subside and the rain did not seem like it would stop anytime soon. While Adair would have preferred to wait it out, her four legged companion had no such intentions. She reluctantly got on top of the bear, and it could tell that Adair did not like getting wet, so it quickly filled up the bottle, and rushed towards the tree, so it could continue to offer Adair shelter.

When they reached the tree, it looked no different from all of the other trees, with all of its branches blank, allowing its roots to absorb as much water as they could. It still had the dark blue color of bark though. The bear poured out the bottle because the tree wasn't reacting, but nothing changed. This appeared to make the bear worried, so he went up to give the tree a nudge, but got no reaction from it again.

The bear then started to growl at the tree. Seemingly annoyed, the tree reacted by shaking its branches once before it went back to being an ordinary tree. This pissed the bear off to no end, and he started to scream at the tree. While Adair was unable to understand the bear, she got the feeling that it was cursing it out with words that were not something an innocent kid like her should listen to.

Eventually, the bear let out one last growl and brought Adair back to the lake and passed her the bag. This time, a small wool sleeping bag rolled out on top of her milk bottle. This was an unexpected surprise, since Adair had believed that the bag would contain mainly milk bottles, seeing as it had been the only item that had appeared up until this point.

She then scooted into the wool sleeping bag. After that was accomplished she tried to open the milk herself, but to no avail. She rolled it towards one of the bear's paws in the hopes her large friend could do something about opening the milk. The bear then pushed the milk in front of itself and stared at it for a bit. It might have been quite a long while ago, but it had not forgotten what had happened on the first day, so it was contemplating what the best way would be for it to open the bottle.

The conclusion it reached was to use a single claw to pierce a hole into the bottle's lid and quickly pass it over to Adair. While this method did work, a lot of milk was lost in the process and baby Adair only got to enjoy a partial meal that evening. After being drenched in the rain for so long, she was nevertheless happy enough to get any food at all and didn't complain about getting less than a third of what she normally ate. They both went to sleep and she hoped that the storm would pass when they woke up.

A week passed and the rain was still going strong. The two of them had visited the tree the next day, but that had turned out to be a complete letdown. No matter how much the bear had growled at it, the tree had refused to react, not even after the bear poured the water they had brought it. They understood it as confirmation that it would be pointless to come back, so they had stayed around the lake ever since.

Surprisingly, after all that time, the lake next to them had shown no signs of flooding over. In fact, it had kept the same height that it had before the rain had started. Another strange thing that Adair had noticed was that the ground below them had not been turning into mushy mud, instead keeping its rigid form. Adair's best explanation for such a phenomenon were the surrounding trees, although she had no concrete idea about the process.

A welcome surprise about their ordeal had been the bear becoming more proficient in opening the milk bottles. In the first two days Adair had lost more than a few meals worth of milk due to the bear's ineffective way of opening the bottle with its claw, but eventually the bear had switched over to utilizing its long tongue. Adair was quite surprised when it had attempted it, but she was glad when it turned out to be a success. With each passing day he had become more and more proficient.

During the entire week, the bear had not left her side even once, not even to get himself some fruit like it used to do a few times a week. While she was happy that it acted as her glorified umbrella, Adair did not want her protector to starve to death. When she opened the bag during mealtime on the seventh day she wished for some meat.

After a week of thinking and wondering why the sleeping bag had appeared, she had come to the conclusion that the bag must be reacting to the wishes of the one touching it. On the first night of the storm she had desired a place to crawl inside to stay warm and as a result she had received the sleeping bag.

Now that Adair wished for the bear to have some food, several bags of raw meat came out. When Adair scooted the meat to the bear, it looked apprehensive, but as soon as a loud growl escaped its stomach, it quickly changed its mind and ate the meat.

It let out an audible sigh of happiness, and Adair was glad that she had finally been able to help the bear out. Amusingly, at the same moment her own stomach started to growl. The bear realized that while it had been enjoying its own meal, it had neglected to open the bottle for Adair, so it quickly remedied his behavior.

For the next few hours, the bear was acting sheepish around Adair as if it had done something wrong. When Adair noticed this, she started patting one of its legs because it was the only body part that she could reach. When the bear first felt the pats, it had ignored it, mistaking it for more water dripping down its leg due to how light her touch was, but when she continued in intensity it looked at the leg and saw that Adair was petting it. The bear started to calm down and gave her what would probably pass a bear smile.

The storm continued for three more weeks and stopped roughly 30 days after it had first started. The last day of the storm Adair saw several different colored lightning bolts fly through the air. These bolts of lightning lit up the sky and eventually when the lightning ended the storm did as well.

Ironically the rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. It was as if someone had turned off the faucet. In a matter of minutes the tree leaves bloomed again and completely covered the sky.

Adair was shocked that everything returned to 'normality' so quickly, but above all else, she was just glad that the rain finally stopped.

She had been getting tired of not being able to roam around and staying under the bear. Fortunately, she had discovered she was finally able to crawl around. Although it had led to her face planting the ground numerous times, her arms eventually became strong enough to support part of herself, and she was intending to make good use of her newfound mobility.