Chapter 5

Adair was woken up by the sounds of splashing water. She looked around and discovered that she was still on the back of the giant bear who had at some point arrived on a sandy beach and had gone to sleep. There was a small reservoir of water that had a small waterfall running into it in their vicinity, which happened to be the origin of the noise.

The water in the lake was crystal clear, and Adair could see different types of fish and other marine life swimming inside from her elevated position. She tried to get off the bear to explore this new location, but her body quickly reminded her that she was still a mostly immobile baby.

The light movement on its back woke up the bear. The creature was about to stretch, but remembered just in time about baby Adair. It shifted a bit to the side so that she gently slid off onto the ground. The bear assumed that she might be hungry again, so it pushed the bag towards her. However, right before she was about to reach the bag, the bear remembered what had happened earlier and quickly pulled the bag away.

While it had been busy handling the bag Adair was able to discern that the bear had the same crystal blue eyes as the burly man, strengthening her belief that they must be one and the same. Of course, the fact that the bear had not immediately eaten her had already been a strong indication for that. Armed with this knowledge she decided to trust the creature.

The bear gave up his careful approach and used its claws to sling the bag on his huge back, before he did the same thing with Adair. 'Will he do this every time now? I just hope I will be able to move on my own sooner rather than later', she lamented her own body once more as they began to quickly walk away from the lake.

A few steps in Adair cried out to signal to the bear that he was going too fast. It stopped for a moment, which resulted in the bag falling down. This helped it realise that at the current tempo it was just a matter of time for Adair to follow, so it reduced its tempo. As a result it took them half an hour until they arrived back at the spot where Adair had initially appeared.

The bear then set Adair down in the center of the circle and did the same for the bag. After that was done, it pushed the bag towards Adair so that she touched it. At first nothing happened. She had expected for more milk bottles to come out and seemingly reacting to her desire, a milk bottle rolled out of the bag. The bear carefully used its nose to roll it over towards the special tree that had helped them last time.

Adair looked towards the tree anticipating it helping her with her next meal, but instead she heard its branches rub together and the rustling of its leaves. She had no idea what it meant, yet the bear seemingly did and growled back. This strange 'conversation' continued for several minutes before both parties had reached some sort of consensus.

The tree skillfully opened the bottle and helped Adair to drink from it. Once it was empty the tree put the glass bottle on the ground. Then the bear gently rolled the bottle with its nose and headed in the direction the two of them had come from.

'There he goes, just leaving me alone here with the tree. Will the tree protect me from wild animals? Does this forest even have any apart from the bear?' Adair wondered as she waited for her companion to come back. Fortunately, without a baby on its back slowing the giant creature down, it merely took 10 minutes for the bear to return. The bear had gone to fill up the glass bottle with water and rolled it to the front of the tree.

'Is this the water from the lake where we were earlier?' Adair pondered. 'Does the lake water have any special properties or does the tree just need more water? Just how did he manage to fill up the bottle when he was so clumsy with the glass bottles earlier? And just how did he not lose all the water while rolling it on the ground?'

Adair had many questions, yet no way to get any answers apart from observing the strange scene. The tree appeared quite happy with their arrangement judging by the rustling of leaves when the tree poured the water on its roots. After the tree finished absorbing the water, it lifted Adair onto the bear's back along with the duffel bag. It also took the glass bottle and lay it on top of the bag making it disappear to Adair's amazement.

Adair considered quite a few things which she had failed to account for previously on the journey back. The first important one was the length of a day on this planet. After her teleportation she had waited for 10 hours before the bear had found her, yet the green light had stayed the entire time. Even after she woke up from her nap it had not become dark yet. The only logical explanation for it was that the days on this planet must be either dramatically shorter or longer than the 24-hour cycle adapted by the Galactic Empire.

The second major thing that Adair had begun worrying about was how the massive bear was going to live. She assumed that the bear had to be a carnivore due to how massive it was, but the only animals she had seen so far were the fish in the lake and the tree if it could be called an animal. Would it be able to sustain itself or would it have to go out and hunt, thereby leaving her alone?

Suddenly Adair landed on the ground. She was puzzled why the bear had made her get off until she realized that they had arrived back at the lake. Adair sat there disappointed since she would trade the hard and cold ground for the soft fluffy bear fur every day of the week.

Adair was surprised to see that even though the bear was huge, it was able to climb trees exceptionally well. At the top of a few trees, there were fruit-like things that were the size of a Galactic Empire basketball. Based on the bear's expression while eating, Adair assumed that they had to be extremely tasty.

After it finished its meal, the bear went to the closest tree and started trying to scrape off the bark. Adair immediately became alarmed, afraid that the tree would retaliate. However, the tree did not react to the bear's action in any way. 'So only the blue trees seem to be alive,' was Adair's conclusion on the matter. 'Hmmm are those blue trees born that way or are there other factors deciding whether they become blue and alive later in their life?'

Adair then began to look around to see if there was anything different with the area around the lake compared to the rest of the forest. She never had any big interest in biology, so all she could determine was that the trees in this area might perhaps be slightly bigger.

Hours later, the bear stopped its struggles. It had unsuccessfully tried to scrape off the bark from different trees, but somehow they were all more resilient than its claws. It came over to Adair and pointed to the bag before it pointed to the lake. She was at first confused about what it wanted, but when it repeated the gesture she understood it as the bear's way of asking for a water bottle.

Adair touched the bag and an empty bottle came out. The bear very gently started to push the bottle towards the water. Once the bottle was floating on the edge of the lake all filled up, the bear went to retrieve the bottle. She was confused why the bear was less gentle with the bottle, once it was full. 'Now that the bottle has the liquid, shouldn't he be even more careful with the bottle? How can it be that the water isn't escaping the bottle? The bottle is getting rolled on its side! This goes against every principle of science! Maybe that isn't water but another living thing? But if that is the case, why did it enter the bottle in the first place?'

The lack of answers she was getting started to really frustrate Adair, but she could only let it go. The bear came over and tossed her on his back again. This time the bear grabbed the bottle of water with its mouth, and they headed back to where the conscious tree was. When they reached the dark blue tree, the bear set down the bottle in front of the tree who quickly picked it up with one of its branches, and when the tree did so, the liquid in the bottle fell onto the ground just like water should.

Moments later, when the liquid was all gone, the bear pushed the pack towards Adair, and when the pack touched Adair a bottle of milk came out. The tree then opened the cap, and Adair opened her mouth, and the cold milk went down her throat. Once the milk was finished, the tree put both bottles on to the backpack making them disappear. When the bear and Adair arrived at the lake the green light had dimmed considerably which she took as a sign that night had begun.

After a couple more visits to the tree, Adair was able to conclude that each day lasted approximately 48 hours or twice as long as a normal day in the Galactic Empire. This made Adair wonder if a year was also twice as long. She determined that was something she would have to find out once they returned to civilization, assuming that this society even had the concept of counting years.

From that point onwards it became part of their routine to go to the tree four times when there was light out and four times when it was dark. Nothing extraordinary happened for four months, assuming that the months were the same as the Galactic Empire and lasted 30 days. During this time, a few significant things changed.

First was that Adair's teeth were starting to come in. While this was a fairly painful process for her, at least it meant that soon she would be able to eat something besides the milk in the bottles. Although it had proven to be a very reliable source of food that she had been able to consume, she could not help the fact that she had eventually gotten tired of it.

The second was the fact that her body had developed to the point that she became able to move a bit about. While it would be a stretch to call it 'moving' per se, she had became able to reach out with her legs and pull herself towards a specific direction. Alas, whenever she tried moving 'normally' her center of balance would feel way off, which made it practically impossible. And while she could now hold items, she did not have enough control over her arms to crawl yet.

Ever since Adair had learned how to move independently, she often went off exploring the woods to see if she could find out anything new about the area, but each time she went off by herself, the bear would follow her and limit her exploration to a certain range but for some reason it prevented her from going too close to the lake water.

Eventually, Adair had seen everything there was inside of her allowed perimeter, so she had snuck outside when the bear was sleeping. Unfortunately, the usually heavy sleeper must have had a nightmare on that particular day and when the bear woke up, it freaked out and started running through the surrounding woods looking for her.

When it finally found Adair looking at a tree which had light elements of blue on its bark, the bear had been so frustrated with her that he grabbed baby Adair with its mouth and carried her back to the lake. Being in the bear's mouth had not only nearly scared Adair to death but had also been an extremely slimy and gross experience, so she made a mental note to never go off by herself again.