PLAYING WITH DEATH [o]

[beck.]

    With all the humidity and suffocating foliage, their quaint little swamp home had been transfigured into a boiling pot with the stretching summer days. His corporeal peers had barely any options to escape the increasing heat, leaving most of them to bubble and steam like cooked lobsters until their skin was sunburnt red and they desperately fanned themselves or lazed in the shadows all day. To jump into Tanglewood's water was a hazardous relief to the scorching weather, considering the water itself had turned on the wildlife and corrupted their genes enough to produce disfigured mutants. But it was understandable -- from the few nature documentaries Beck stumbled across during those late nights in a sleeping household he had taken up as a haunting, he recognized what Zimavich was. Polar bears were meant to be in cold, vast arctic wastlelands, not a forest bayou. How the senile polar bear ended up sauntering into their unforgiving swamp was beyond him, and a mystery likely to remain unsolved.

    The sight of the filthy bear soaking in a murky pond brought a distantly worried look to the wiry feline's face, slinking past brambles and bullrush to watch in silent curiosity while he procrastinated his responsibilities as commander. At least he wasn't the only creature present, otherwise Beck's stalking would become obvious. "Was that a gator?" he rasped in a hushed voice, split brow furrowing in unreadable thought. He wasn't surprised that an alligator would be hanging around, nor was he excited to be seeing one around so many possible meals. The boy didn't know what else to mumble out, anxiously gnawing on his intact cheek while the other exposed his nervous habit to the world. Zimavich's missing eye was another oddity that intrigued him, but again, he doubted the bear would go around sharing scar stories anytime soon.

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