Once upon a time...

A farm girl, leaning on a pasture rail, saw a little bear riding on a little horse.

Normally, bears and horses aren't friends. Partly because of their size and personalities, partly because of their smells.
Bears smell like forest berries and fresh-caught fish and cosy bear caves.
Horses smell like open fields and pine tree trails and sweet apples.

But on a balmy September day, she saw the bear and the horse together, wearing what looked like contented expressions, and she wondered how that odd pair came to be together...


The little horse had been wandering through the forest contentedly about two hours ago, and she took a different trail than normal, and that's when it all began.

The bear was wandering along the ground looking for stray nuts and berries when he heard an odd noise. Being more careful than curious, he climbed a nearby tree. As he climbed the tree, he let out a little noise of his own as he crawled out too far on a shaky limb. The horse, being more curious than careful, turned through the trees to find out what the second odd noise had been. She stopped right underneath the tree, looked up, and made the first noise, a horse noise. At that, the bear got so scared he lost his hold and fell right onto her back.

The horse started running, and the bear started growling pathetically for help while hanging on for dear life.

Eventually, the horse grew too tired to run any more, and slowed down. The bear grew too hoarse to keep growling and his paws lost hold as well. He fell off with a bump.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself staring into the horse's face. They sniffed each other cautiously, the way dogs do when first meeting. Before long, they were having a friendly conversation of sorts, mostly about the weather and the varying tastes of blackberries. Eventually, though, they realised the sun was getting low. The bear had an excellent sense of direction, but short paws, and the horse admitted she had the speed but was totally lost. She brightly suggested the bear find some convenient rock or fence and climb on, the way humans did. The bear pointed out that they were in the middle of the forest, but eventually settled on climbing a tree. Then falling off again onto the horse's back. She made an encouraging noise, and off they started.

When they wound up back at the area of forest where it all started, the horse knelt down nicely so the bear had less distance to fall. All in all, it had turned into a good afternoon. They made friendly noises (more pleasant than the original ones) and said vaguely that it would be worth repeating the day. With that, the horse trotted off toward the open farmland of her home, and the bear trundled back to his cave. Both had quite a story to tell their families.

And after that, they could occasionally be seen adventuring around together, the curious horse and, on her back, what seemed to be a small furry child but was actually the careful bear.

The End