The Ones On The Ground (sequel to The One Who's Fallen)

Chapter 45

Clarke's POV

I can feel the ground shudder beneath my feet as the beast gets closer. It bursts through the brush to reveal that it's a freaking giant bear. It roars at us and the fear that sinks into my bones snaps me into action.

I begin shooting at it and see Lexa throwing her knives at it. In the back of my mind, I keep track of how many arrows I'm shooting and how many knives Lexa is throwing so I know when we're getting close to running out.

We're actually shooting/throwing at an impressively fast rate. I've become a surprisingly good archer, able to keep up with some of the archers who have been training for ten times as long as me. Lexa has been training with throwing knives since she was a little girl.

We take the time to aim and then shoot/throw our weapon. To be honest, its close enough to us that if we didn't aim we would still hit it. However, I would prefer to not get killed by a bear so we take the extra couple of seconds to make it count, hitting it a couple times in the shoulders but mostly in the neck.

The bear, understandably pissed that we're sticking pointy things in it, roars again. It gets up on its hind legs, its front paws and very large claws alarmingly close to us. Lexa and I take steps backwards, not taking our eyes off of the bear. I aim and then let another arrow fly. I realize with alarm now that we're both running dangerously low on our throwing knives and arrows, as ours are all stuck in this bear.

It's a good shot and hits the bear in the center of its chest. By my estimates, if it were just a little bit more to the left, I would have gotten my arrow right in its heart. As it is, this bear is bleeding out and should be dying pretty soon. But not soon enough.

Lexa seems to be thinking the same thing and throws another knife at it. This one hits true, on the right side of its chest. Based on my knowledge of human anatomy (bears, like other mammals, have the same relative bones as us, just in different places), her knife slid right through its rib cage. And if it's deep enough, it could have punctured its lung.

It lifts one hind paw like it's about to walk, but stumbles backwards. It crashes on its back, its chest heaving. Lexa and I cautiously approach it, both of us putting away our other weapons to pull out our sword. The bear lets out one last grunt and then dies, the light in its eyes going out. Lexa checks to make sure it's dead and then nods to me.

We begin taking our knives and arrows out. I grimace at the bear blood all over mine. "Ugh. We definitely have to clean these." Lexa nods in agreement. "One question, babe. How the heck are we going to get this to the wagon?"

"We carry it."

I blink and look at this giant dead bear. "Babe I love you, but I don't think that's possible. This bear is like 300, 400 pounds, there's no way we can carry that! I know we're strong women, but I don't think that the two of us can lift this giant bear." Lexa's stoic face breaks into a smile and I huff. "You were messing with me."

"I was," Lexa confirms. "Did you see the smaller wooden thing in the wagon? That is a smaller wagon that can be pulled by one horse, since the larger one is too big to fit between the trees. I will go get the wagon and the horse and I will be back. You stay here with the bear, make sure no scavengers get at it."

"Alright."

I kiss Lexa's cheek and she smiles warmly at me before jogging off with the bag of the other animals we caught. I forgot that we even had that in all the madness that was us being attacked by a bear. It's smart, she can drop that off and then grab the horse and wagon.

The only thing I end up needing to fend off is a couple if scavenger birds that circle overhead until they notice me guarding it. That's when they give up and fly away.

Lexa comes back with her horse pulling the empty smaller wagon. She smiles at me and tells the horse to stay put before walking over to me. She kisses me gently and puts her hands on my hips.

"I missed you," she murmurs.

I giggle and peck her lips. "You goof, I just saw you like an hour ago."

"That is an hour too long to be away from you."

I melt at her words and kiss her deeply. I pull away when we're both out of breath. "You're sweet, babe. Now lets do this so we can cuddle back at the cave sooner."

Lexa nods and kisses my cheek. "Alright. I will take the back, you take the front. We will lift the bear onto the wagon. If we cannot, we will find another way."

It's certainly a struggle and we're definitely going to have to give each other back massages later, but we do manage to get the bear on the wagon.

"Now we will push while the horse pulls. Once the horse gets moving, we should not have to push again unless it gets stuck or we are going uphill," Lexa says.

"Push it? Like...?" I trail off, unsure of what it is that I want to ask.

Lexa places her hands on the bear's butt and mimes pushing. "Like this."

I blanch. "I don't want to touch that bear's butt!"

"You don't mind touching my bare butt," Lexa points out.

"Your bare..." My eyes widen as I get the joke. "Oh! Oh my god. Raven would be so proud. That was terrible."

I raise my hand and Lexa high fives me. "You mean great."

"Same difference."

I was mentally planning this while I showered this morning, and came up with the bear/bare pun and it made me laugh so I couldn't resist adding it! By now you should all know of my love for stupid puns haha, I couldn't BEAR to let this one slip through my fingers! And I officially can text people! I'm using my really old phone that I've been using to type these stories for like three years or something crazy like that. But I've had it for longer than that... You know how the iPhone ten or something just came out? Yeah, this is the iPhone four. The lady was kinda baffled when I pulled this out at Verizon. She mentioned how a smaller iPhone's storage nowadays is 32 gigabytes... This has eight. It's old enough to go to kindergarten, but I love it anyway! Still works, with no cracks or anything! Anyway! Thank you all for reading and for your amazing comments! Stay awesome!