TO LITTLE BEAR & LITTLE DOVE, MY LOVES
As the days passed by Little Bear and Little Puppy grew to be closer friends than anyone had ever imagined was possible. Eventually, when other animals met them in the forest, no one could tell them apart. Now the two of them had started to look like another kind of animal entirely. They seemed to glow in the sunlight, and they sang together like birds, and their laughter flowed just like the Great River.
A Little Turtle approached them one day, and asked them what everyone had been wondering: “We all remember you once being a Little Bear and a Little Puppy, and though you don’t exactly look different to us, we can’t think of you the same way anymore for some reason. What has happened to you and how do you sing without making a sound?”
“Because we sing the peacock’s song,” blurted Little Puppy, and then he realized that he should not speak of this because the other animals would not understand.
“What do you mean ‘the peacock’s song’?” asked Little Turtle. “How can a bear and a puppy sing like a peacock? I didn’t even know that peacocks sing.”
Little Bear quickly tried to remedy the confusion by saying, “You would not understand even if we told you. You must bravely follow the Great River and you will find out for yourself one day.”
Little Turtle looked puzzled, “But no one knows where the Great River goes! It might be dangerous!”
“The river goes many places, and yet it only flows in one direction. Because of this, it can take you on many adventures – and some of them can be frightening – but you can never be lost, for the river always leads back to where it began.” replied Little Puppy.
Little Turtle blinked in astonishment and wandered away from where they stood on the bank of the Great River. A minute later he went inside his shell to take a nap.
“Why do you feel the need to speak of the peacock’s song Little Puppy?” asked Little Bear.
“I guess that I forget sometimes that a song is meant to be sung. I just get excited sometimes, and I’m a little too eager to talk.”
“Well,” said Little Bear, “maybe that’s why I love you so: you dive right into situations that others might be more cautious of, even though they would miss the adventure!”
“Yes, but I wish that I could just sit still and be quiet like you without always feeling the need to speak or act….”
One day, as winter approached and the days grew colder, Little Bear said to Little Puppy, “Soon I must return to my cave and hibernate for the winter.”
“What is hibernation?”
“It is a kind of waking sleep, during which I dream lucidly for a whole season, and when I open my eyes again, it will be springtime.”
“What is lucid dreaming?”
“It is how I am able to sit so still and so quiet. It is a dream that tells me what is to come. I know things before they happen, and I am not surprised when they do. For example, I knew that I would meet you and that we would be best friends because I dreamed it in my hibernation.”
“But I thought that it scared you when we first met and we tumbled through the hollow log.”
“I said that I am not surprised when dreams come true, which is different than not being scared. In fact, having your dreams come true can be very scary.”
Little Puppy thought about this for a long time. He followed Little Bear into her cave where she curled up in the corner and went into a deep hibernation. He watched her for a long time before he wandered back out of the cave and into the cold air.
As he stepped outside, he noticed that the clouds above him were as dark as the night sky, and thunder growled across the horizon. Suddenly, it began to rain violently. He was freezing cold, and ran as fast as he could through the forest to try to stay warm. Finally, he stopped beneath a large Sycamore Tree to try to keep dry.
The tree’s trunk towered into the sky, reminding him of a strange, dark river flowing upwards. There he saw a nest of bees hanging from a limb, and the bees swirled all around it humming with anger at the rain. There were thousands of little cells within the honeycomb and it looked to Little Puppy as if the tree’s trunk flowed right into this enormous colony in the heavens. Then, in a instant, the sky exploded in a booming flash of light. Time seemed to stop in a spell of luminosity, and he could see every single bee in the colony suspended in midair. They all looked like fireflies lit up and frozen in flight. Slowly flames began to creep outwards from the bee’s nest and then onto the limbs of the mighty Sycamore. Little Puppy could no longer distinguish between the buzzing of the angry bees and the humming of the electricity vibrating through the body of the mighty tree. The fire was spreading quickly now and he ran to escape to a safer place.
Now, Little Puppy was not scared of the fire or the storm or the night, but he felt terribly alone without Little Bear, and as he ran a thought occurred to him: He did not know who he was without her. He began to howl wildly in sadness. He did not pay attention to where he was going, and before long he came to the end of the Great River, where it emptied into the Great Sea.
He ran along the shore for weeks and weeks and this whole time the storm did not let up. He was miles from home now.
Finally, one night the storm started to break up. The Great Sea calmed, the wind died down, and the full moon began to peak through the clouds. Looking into the moonlight on the water, a strange feeling came over Little Puppy. He felt as if Little Bear were right there with him, or maybe to be more accurate, that she was watching him from just beyond the horizon on the sea. “Are you there my best friend, Little Bear? I miss you so!” he yowled.
Then another thought occurred to him, “If I can be still and quiet enough, just like Little Bear said, then maybe she will come to me.” He closed his eyes and immediately saw her there smiling at him. Something near his foot made a sound – Clink! – and when he opened his eyes, he saw a bottle on the beach in front of him. It had washed up on the shore. At first it appeared that there was a scroll rolled up inside. “A message in a bottle?!” he thought. No, as he looked closer, he realized that it was in fact a Little Dove.
“Hello!” said Little Dove. “I’m stuck in here. Can you get me out?” It looked at him through the glass in much distress. For once in his life, Little Puppy was scared. He had no idea how to get the Little Dove out! The little guy looked so small and delicate that Puppy was afraid he might hurt him in trying to help.
But before Little Puppy could do anything, a whispering voice floated by them in the air. It said, “Do you want to come out Little Dove?” to which the little bird chirped in acknowledgement. “Then just squeeze on through. It looks impossible, but getting into that bottle in the first place was much harder.”
Little Puppy recognized the voice at once. It was Little Bear! “Where are you? I miss you so much!”
“I am always with you, my love. What’s more important is that you know where you are.” Little Puppy realized that he had no idea where he was.
Little Dove looked at him again and chirped once more, and then he exhaled loudly and squeezed as hard as he could through the flute of the bottle. In an instant, POP! He was free!
The tiny bird flew up and landed on Little Puppy’s shoulder. He whispered in his ear in a voice that sounded very much like Little Bear’s, “I can easily show you the way back home if you promise to be my friend take care of me. For I am a very small bird, and you are strong and fearless.”
“It’s a deal!” cheered Little Puppy.
They walked for the rest of the winter together and became the very best of friends. As they neared home, they came upon the tree where Little Puppy had seen the bees and the fire. He stopped and noticed that the leaves were growing back, and that new bushes on the ground below were growing out of the ashes. He looked high into the branches of the tree and saw that the bees were still there and that they had made lots of honey.
He said to Little Dove, “Little Bear likes nothing better than honey. I would like to take her some, but how can I get to it all the way up there?”
“Don’t be silly! I can fly up there and get it!” And that is just what he did.
A few minutes later they were back at the mouth of Little Bear’s cave. She was just stirring from her hibernation when they arrived. As if no time at all had passed and as if she already knew Little Dove too, she hugged them both and said, “I’m hungry! I feel like I haven’t eaten in weeks!”
“Well, you haven’t, but we brought you some honey.”
“My favorite!” she yawned as she stuck her paw into Little Dove’s bottle where they had stored the honey. “Mmmm!!! You’ll never guess what I dreamed in my hibernation!”
“What?” Little Puppy and Little Dove said in unison.
“I dreamed that I was going to another world across the Great Sea and through the clouds in the darkness. I thought that I was dying, and I was scared. But then I closed my eyes, and you were there Little Puppy, and you were smiling at me. When I opened them again, I knew that although I felt like I was dying, I was really being reborn. Then the clouds parted and there was a rainbow that I followed back here to this world.”
From the mouth of Little Bear’s cave you could still barely see the old Sycamore Tree and there was the most beautiful rainbow that they had ever seen above it in the sky.
