Two hours later, he’d managed to catch a grand total of three bass, each a foot long or less.  Normally he’d just throw them back, but he thought Fuzzy might enjoy them.  When he stood to stretch his legs, the bear woke up.   He immediately sniffed out the fish but didn’t touch them.  Sitting on his haunches, Fuzzy looked up at Allistor and huffed.

“Go ahead, buddy.  Those are for you.”

The moment he spoke, the cub ripped into the first fish.  He ate all but the tails of all three fish.  “I’m not sure, but I think you probably shouldn’t have eaten the bones, Fuzzyboy.  But you seem alright, so we’ll assume I’m wrong.” Allistor patted the cub on the head, then scratched his ears.   Fuzzy growled happily, leaning into the attention.

“Did I somehow just become your mama?”

Allistor thought back to all the games where he’d played a hunter, druid, or wizard type class that possessed skills enabling the player to tame pets or familiars.   With a grin, he pictured going into battle with an octopoid alongside a great big grizzly bear.  “Bear tank for the win!”

Looking at the sky, he said, “Time to head back, buddy.  I want to be safe inside those walls before dark.”  He got up and started hiking up the hill in the general direction of the Outpost.  A rustling behind him let him know that Fuzzy was following.  Each time he stopped and turned around, the bear would stop and stare at him.   After half a dozen times, he just kept going.

An hour later he reached the road and spotted the Outpost a short distance uphill.  Trudging along, he turned to find that the bear wasn’t there.  He scanned the tree line and found Fuzzy was ghosting along inside the tree line, keeping pace with him.   Shrugging his shoulders, he continued up the road and opened the gate.   Turning to look for the bear, he didn’t see any movement.  With a smile, he dropped a turtle steak just inside the gates and walked to sit by the front door of the building.

It was less than a minute before Fuzzy stepped gingerly onto the pavement, sniffing it as he did.  Deciding it wasn’t going to bite him, he trotted across and scooped up the meat.  When he sat to gnaw on it, Allistor closed the gates behind him.

“You can’t come inside, little buddy.  I don’t want to be cleaning up after you rampage through and knock everything over.  You’ll be just fine out here tonight.”

As he was about to go inside, the memory of the drake flying off with Candy hit him.  “On second thought, how ‘bout we make you a little bed out back?”