The old bear

By Strega

All the other bears knew about the old bear who claimed the mountain meadow for his own.  He was old, and slept a lot, but he was enormous. The largest of the younger males might defeat him in a fight, but that sort of drama only happened in an argument over a female, an argument the old boar no longer wished to have. He was still king of his little patch of mountain, and he was not to be trifled with. From time to time he had to teach someone that.

One cool fall day a younger male, hardly half the size of the old boar, happened to wander by and had his attention drawn by a high-pitched shriek. He blinked and watched as the old bear chased a squealing human woman back and forth through the meadow. Grunting and growling a fifteen-hundred-pound grizzly loped after the long-legged woman.

The old bear must be very tired, the young boar thought.  No human could outrun a bear over a short distance, yet this one stayed just ahead of the old one's fangs. After evading a strangely lethargic swipe of the big bear's claws the woman ducked into an old hunter's hut, little more than a dome of interwoven branches with moss stuffed into the cracks to ward off the rain.

The young bear blinked in puzzlement as the old bear once again failed to secure his meal.  Small though the opening was into the hut he was certain the big bear could squeeze in, then eventually squeeze back out of what would by then be an empty structure. Instead the old bear clambered over the hut, apparently planning to crush it with his weight.

And that is where the old boar sat for long minutes, draped over the hut and groaning.  Occasionally he twitched and ground his belly against the branches but he was so immobile the younger bear began to entertain the thought that he had finally witnessed the last moments of the forty-year-old patriarch.

Then the old bear out out a long roar, gripped the hut for a moment with his claws and finally slid off it into a sitting position.  As he sat there panting the young bear's curiosity overcame him and he stepped off the boulder and approached.

"Greetings, old father," growled the young bear, and accepted a glare from his senior as he stopped a few feet away.  The old bear had sown his seed widely until a few years before and it was quite possible they were closely related. He might be the big bear's son, but there was no way to tell since male and female bears associated only during the breeding season. Sometimes the mother remembered who the father was and told the cubs, but other times she mated with more than one male. The young bear's mother had shrugged when he asked, but the old one had been the chief male in the area at the time.

The young bear turned his head as he heard something from within the hut. To his surprise the half-dressed human woman peered out of the shadows and past the furry shoulder of the great old bear, who was close enough to kill her with one swipe of his claws.

"You must be very tired, old father," the young bear said with creditable politeness.  "I can catch the human if you will not. We could share the meal."

"No," growled the master of the meadow.  "I catch what I like.  If I do not catch her then no one shall."

"All right," said the young bear.  "I will wait until she leaves, if you not eat her, and catch her then.  I can be patient."

"I said, if I do not catch her, no one shall," growled the old bear.  He had recovered from his panting and gave the young bear a glare that wilted his spirit.  "This is my place.  Here, I decide."

"You own the meadow, but not the lands around," said the younger bear with a spark of defiance. It was the mating season, and if he was too small to fight the big bears for the right to mate, it still made him short-tempered. He was to regret it very soon.  "I will leave you be, and wait for her elsewhere."

"Let me tell you why you will not do that," growled the old bear, and a great paw landed aside the younger bear's head. The blow picked him half off the ground and spun him end for end. He was unconscious before he realized what had happened.

When his bleary eyes opened, not too long after, he waited for the dark to clear. Stars spun before his vision and his eyes were gummed shut with tears, but blinking did not clear them.  As he roused to full consciousness he felt with alarm something gripping his skull and neck and even pinning his forelegs to his sides. He still could not see what was happening and it was not until the fleshy sheath wrapped tight around his skull gripped down in a gulp that he realized what was happening.

"Old one, wait!", the younger bear cried, and scrabbled with his hindclaws at the grass.  After clubbing him senseless the bigger bear had stepped forward, yawned wide - some bears could gape wider than others, and the old one must be a master - and swallowed his head. A rolling contraction of the throat muscles eased the young bear deeper and by the time he was fully awake his nose slid into the big bear's stomach.   It was not tears that dripped into his eyes, but rather saliva that lubricated him for his trip down the big bear's throat as it swallowed him whole.

"Stop!  I'll leave her alone!" Whether it was the woman or his refusal to meekly comply with the bigger bear, he had annoyed the old one. Wet flesh slid around his shoulders and ribs as the big bear heaved its head up, and he felt and heard the muscles creak as the old bear lifted its head. The big bear had created a steep chute of gullet into which he slipped as with a slow wriggle of its jaws the old bear worked its maw over his hips.

"Please!" Begging did not come easily to the proud young bear but fighting was not working.  The old bear was twice his weight and had him half swallowed by the time he awoke. The mass of muscle, bone and shaggy pelt around him pressed his jaws shut and he could only move his forelegs feebly as his long-clawed forepaws slipped past the bigger bear's back teeth and into its gullet.

If the old bear heard him it paid no heed. A heave of its great head and the jaws gripped down around his rump, forcing his hind legs out straight. With a massive gulp his hips were forced into the waiting gullet, and with that the wide parts of him were inside and what was left outside, though bulky, was narrower.  The natural tendency of the big bear's gullet to try to shrink to its normal diameter squeezed him downward, sucking his kicking legs in as he passed through the bigger bear's ribcage and into the stomach.

Bit by bit he was forced to curl up, pressed against the larger bear's pelvis from inside. It turned his head toward his own belly as his legs were gulped down. His elder showed no mercy and even as digestive fluids soaked the smaller bear's fur he knew he was doomed. There was too much muscle between him and the cool sweet air to tear through before he suffocated even if he had more room to work. As it was the larger bear ignored his squirming, tossed its head once again, and pinned his hindpaws between its fangs.

With a last heavy gulp the smaller bear was forced down the larger's throat. His head still spun from the overpowering blow to his skull and dizzy, weakened by the lack of air and the fight to escape, he slid helplessly into a fetal position. He could feel the larger bear shifting and turning to get him settled in for easiest digestion. It was what he had planned to do to the woman: dispose of her so tidily no inquisitive man would ever know.  Instead he was the one to become a meal that no one would know of unless the old bear cared to mention it.  Only his fur and fragments of bone would survive the bigger bear's stomach acids, and a heaved-up mass of brown fur could be mistaken for many things.

As the larger bear's lumpy, swollen belly dragged the ground the smaller had a final moment of hope.  Maybe the old bear would swallow the woman and he'd have a last meal before the slow gurgle of digestion took him.  It was a hope that was dashed.

Paula watched the struggle from the relative safety of the hut.  She had never seen the old bear swallow a fellow bear before and the meal seemed impossibly large, yet somehow, once the hindpaws were finally gulped down, the enormous bear didn't seem all that much larger.  His belly was tight as a drum, with skin showing through the stretched fur, but he was rotund in a bearish way at the best of times.  She waited until the bulge was gone from his neck and stepped out next to his flank just as a massive belch bubbled up through his jaws. The smaller bear was still kicking, but the larger showed no sign of distress.  He had his rival just where he wanted him.

"Thank you, dear," she said, and scratched one of his fuzzy ears.

"It was nothing," he growled in bear-talk, a language she'd been learning since she first met him, just as he had learned hers. He could not speak her language or she his, but they got by.

His great head swung toward her and she smiled as he gently licked the residue of their earlier play from her face and shoulders. It was not the first time they had played the frightened-maiden game and he had draped himself over the hut so his sheath entered it through a gap in the branches.  Her hands and lips had soon teased him into an explosive release which she only partly dodged.

"You cracked the hut again," she murmured as his tongue tasted her breast. A blob of congealed bear semen was wiped away.  "Now I have to fix it."

"Your fault," growled the old bear.  "For making me so excited."

Five years before she had fled her husband, bruised and terrified.  She had married too young and to a jealous man who saw her only as a possession to be greedily clasped close to his chest. In the meadow she had stumbled upon the old bear, who himself was recovering from a fight with a rival. She had seen, in this huge old beast, a final escape from her horrid existence and approached without fear.

But he had not eaten her. The occasional hunter had annoyed the bear over the years and earned a  bear-fur coat much different than the one they had sought, but he did not hate humans. He somehow sensed her hurt and let her sleep against his flank. She left the next morning when she decided to give her husband another chance.

For a year she would return to the meadow at her lowest ebb, often when hurt. She would stay for a night and draw comfort from the strength of her strange furry friend.  In that time she found the broken remains of the hunter's hut and rebuilt it, slowly learning to make it stronger and bringing the occasional blanket or other furnishing.  It became her second home and her refuge.  The bear would lick her bruises clean and occasionally she would tend to his injuries as well, for though huge, his rivals were nearly as large and younger. When he was hurt she would tend him and when she was bruised and afraid he returned the favor.

It couldn't last. Her husband suspected she had another lover and forbade her to leave, so she had to sneak out when he was asleep or drunk. It was going to end badly for someone and it finally did.

He followed her to the meadow and found her dozing against the shaggy side of her bear friend.  His sanity snapped and he seized a branch she had been planning to weave into the hut and attacked her, ignoring the sleeping bear. With a startled grunt her friend awoke and batted her husband away as a cat would bat a mouse, but not before she was wounded and bleeding.

Maybe she could have saved her husband.  She had learned the old bear's moods and was learning how to talk to him. Later she would feel guilty for not trying, when she wasn't overjoyed about him being gone. At the time she watched with a grin frozen on her face as the enormous bear stepped forward and swallowed her husband's legs.

He beat at the bear's great head. He tried to gouge its eyes.  He screamed for help.  It did not save him. With a toss of its head the old bear gulped in his hips. The pull of its powerful throat sucked him in, though for a moment he stopped the slide by wrapping his arms around the bear's neck.  The bear lifted its head and gulped, and the long bulge in its neck surged downward, only to be resisted by the straining grip her husband had. His face was white with fear and effort as his grip was loosened and the relentless pull of the bear's swallowing muscles forced his arms to slowly straighten.

"Paula," he had cried at the last, in a moment she would remember forever.  "Help me, you bitch."

"No," she had whispered, and she had smiled as his face disappeared into the shadows of the bear's maw.  She caught a last glimpse of his terrified face, wet with saliva, before the bear's tongue pushed him deeper. The old bear swallowed, the long bulge slipped down through his neckfur, and that was the end of her husband. He hardly even showed as a bulge in the enormous bear's gut.

"Thank you," she whispered as his tongue cleaned her wounds, and for the first time she pushed at his broad flank.  He allowed her to push him over, something she could never do by force, and peered inquisitively past his chestfur at her as she felt her way through the thick pelt of his belly.

She could feel her husband kicking beneath the fur, but that was not why she was there. The big bear's sheath was half sunken into his hide but not hard to find when she looked.

It was a reward for saving him, one she thought she'd never repeat. He let out a belch and blinked at her as she kneaded his sheath. Bit by bit his shaft was teased forth and she was startled at the size of it. Her husband was kicking his last in the old bear's stomach as she gripped the big bear's cock in both hands and lowered her head.

She sucked and pumped him as he grew harder, though even at the start his shaft was held stiff by its internal bone. The panting bear burped up the last of the air that went down with his human meal and lay watching her, his paws kicking from time to time as his excitement grew. Once a forepaw reached out, its long claws hooking over her skull and pushing her down, but after a moment it slipped away. Engorged with lust and with his fist-sized balls tight beneath her fingers he was still careful not to hurt her.

There was a roar building in is chest as he began to shiver, and just in time she took her face away and directed his tip upward. The roar burst out at full volume as ropes of seed spurted onto his chestfur. His haunches shuddered as big muscles spasmed that would drive him to the limit in a bear sow as he came. Instead his hindpaws kicked the air on either side of her. Paula smiled as her friend enjoyed himself, never thinking to see it again.

Afterward he nosed at her scrapes and bruises.  Her husband had not managed to hurt her much, luckily. For the first time he accompanied her most of the way back to the village. She knew it was not due to any greedy urge for sex, but out of concern for her health. The big bear could force himself on her at will, but he didn't.

She told her neighbors her husband had finally left, and with the only evidence of his fate making its way peacefully through a bear's guts they nodded and comforted her. She inherited the inn he operated, shared the management with her cousin, and lived a quiet life for months as she recovered.

But she could not forget the gentle and protective bear. He was as old and battle-scarred as she was young and battered, and she still needed her friend. She went back to the meadow, able to do it whenever she liked now, and bit by bit she and the bear became more than friends.

Now with his belly swollen around another who had threatened her he let her push him once more onto his side. He rolled onto his back and blinked up at her as she straddled his great muzzle. He knew the taste of her sex well and his tongue was long and powerful.

More than once he had happily licked her to her pleasure but she wanted more than that this time.  When she was wet and ready she climbed over the twitching bulge that used to be another bear and slipped down into the space between it and his haunches.

Normally he could reach her here, and would gently paw her as they made love, but the great bulge of swallowed bear was in the way. It was up to her to rub his sheath and straddle him as he roused.  After a minute of so of teasing him erect she put a knee into the hollow of each of his haunches and impaled herself.

This was why the old bear didn't fight for the sows any more.  Not all of his cock would fit into Paula, not nearly all, but it was more than enough to satisfy her and enough to eventually tease the seed from his balls. Even in the quiet times of the year they made love and now it was the mating season. The other boars were off fighting or longing for sex, but he had his lover right here.  Whether sprawled in the meadow with her atop him, hunched over her thrusting, curled around her in the hut or even draped over it as her hands and mouth serviced him, she was enough. She was all he needed and all the old bear wanted.

Tomorrow it was Paula's turn to manage the inn. She would go there in the morning while her lover rested, then be back here in the evening until the sun rose the day after.  It was the bear's mating time, his blood was roused, and the little hut and her lover's warm, smelly fur were all the shelter she needed right now.

Occasionally someone would wonder where her husband had departed to, five years back.  Paula would just shake her head. She had a new husband now, a strong and gentle and protective one who was, in a sense, a continuation of the first.  A little bit of her departed husband lingered in the bear's body, converted into flesh and bone and fat as he was digested, but no one needed to know that any more than they needed the know about her shaggy lover. It was enough that they were both happy.