Hiding

The air caught in Moriah's throat as she saw the bear appear in the moonlight glow. She had been joking with her friends earlier in the night about bears, and how if any came she would defend the rest of the girls from it - she was the tomboy of the group, having grown up taking martial arts lessons and having a very conservative father teach her how to shoot guns. But now that she was actually looking at one, and it was looking back at her, the terror was shooting through her system like wildfire. There was no way she could take on a bear. She would be lucky if she could get away from it. Hell, she would have been better off in its presence if she were still sleeping in her tent - then at least she wouldn't be viewed as a threat.

But now that she had been seen, what was she supposed to do? She was frozen in place, but the bear did not have such a fear. It was already beginning to stalk toward her, and no matter how innocent its intentions may have been, she couldn't help but imagine it tearing her apart. She hoped desperately that she wasn't in between a mama bear and her cub. She would be doomed if that was the case.

In the back of her mind, she could hear her father telling her that in this kind of situation, the best thing that she could do was to pretend to be dead. Just lay down, close your eyes, and don't move. But the bear had already seen her up and moving. Would that really work? If she bolted, the bear would likely be scared by the abrupt movement and chase her down, and there was no way in hell that she was going to be able to out run a bear. She couldn't out climb it, either. She couldn't out anything it. It was a bear.

Slowly she laid down on the ground and closed her eyes, doing her best to be still and not curl up into a ball. She needed to be prone. It made her more vulnerable, and in that way, made her appear more dead. If the bear for some reason decided it wanted to claw her or bite her to check if she was actually still alive... There really wasn't anything that she could do about it.

She could feel and hear the bear getting closer to her, and when she thought it was close enough, she held her breath. If she was breathing, it might give her away. She could feel the bear leaning over her and sniffing her up and down, moving agonizingly slowly. The longer it sniffed at her, the more she could feel her lungs straining to hold onto the air it was so tentatively holding. If the bear didn't decide to move on soon...

Just when she didn't think she could her breath anymore, she heard the bear start to make its way away from her. It gave her the strength to hold on just a few seconds longer, to make some space between them, before she gasped and felt the life returning to her body. She sat up as she breathed in and out hard, thankful that she was still alive, and watched the bear move away.

And right towards their campsite.