The Bear by P.A. Brown

[reviews_and_ramblings]

This is quite a controversial short story, it plays a lot on the squicky feelings people have with shapeshifter stories and it's also very hot, being very graphic in details when arriving to the sex scene.

Scott lives inside a park reserve. He is used to share the park with bears, he knows them well and knows how to avoid trouble. But then poachers start to kill the bears and the beasts become unpredictable. One night, after a very near proximity encounter with one of them, Scott finds the same bear wounded in his stable and calls Luke for help. Luke is a park ranger, a different type of "bear", but one Scott is bringing a torch for long time.

Scott is gay and he has no trouble with that, when he wants sexual relief, he goes into town and finds someone. But the one night stands he has are always with ordinary man, like him, and instead he likes the "bears" (not the beast but the big and strong hairy men), and in particular he likes one bear, Luke. So when fate brings them together, and Luke is not against the idea to share warm with him in a cold night, nature takes its course.

But there is a little catch, the wounded bear in the stable that disappeared and the equally wounded naked man, Bjorn, Scott found in his place. The strange familiarity Bjorn has with Luke, and how Luke doesn't seem to notice nothing of strange in Bjorn's behavior...

Short story, so there is nothing more to say, if not that, I'm not really sure to like so much the closing sentence: it's true, it's an hint more at what I said in the beginning, the fact that the author is very well aware that she is playing with a controversial matter, what's the point to write shapeshifter stories if the shapeshifter characters don't behave a bit like animals? There are some primordial instincts that you have to consider and preserve, otherwise the shifter nature of the characters has no meaning to exist.

http://www.amberquill.com/AmberAllure/TheBear.html

The Rainbow Awards: Third (and last!) Phase: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/850354.html