Author’s Note: July 4th, 2025, was the second anniversary of my cub’s passing, which is why I’ve decided to start sharing this series. There are three parts and each is written in an entirely different style. This part has never been published before. I’m not sure if he ever read it, though I think I sent it to him. I hope you enjoy this trip through the five stages of grief, and remember, not all grief relates to death.
Fun note: “Anvil” was a red flag word that my cub and I used to call out when we were fighting over nothing and needed to cool off. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the chance to use it more than once.
Read The Bear Forge pt. 1 here.
PS - This is from the world of Islands of Nightsea, a children’s book series with an extended world that’s less child-oriented (though not necessarily child-unfriendly). The overall series is currently on hiatus, but you can find two Tales from the Nightsea on Amazon for a few coins.
The Broken Anvil
The bearsmith and her cub apprentice sat in a sizzling silence. The element lay between them, blazing a hole in the stone floor in its opalescent brilliance, though the Forge’s heat had long since ebbed. The day’s glow from outside was beginning to fade and the tension was too thick for even a smith to cut with their sharpest blade.
The bearsmith staggered to her feet unsteadily, keeping one paw on the bandage on her shoulder, wincing as it shifted painfully. She passed the water and a clean cloth to the cub, along with the cinnamint soap. The cub snatched them away ferociously, without looking up. As he began to scrub at his wounds – a bit more aggressively than was good for them – the bearsmith’s eyes began to flare with an angry heat. Rules had been broken. Standards had been set. So much work had been done just to make sure that this sort of thing did not happen.
She took a deep breath. And yet here they both were: scorched, angry, and hurt. Trust had been broken, and badly.
She stayed silent, because there were no words that would make the situation better now, hot as things were. She had already learned – or at least had been in the process of learning – to choose her moments with the cub wisely, and this was very clearly not a good time. She knew that warzone in his eyes and had felt its wrath before.
So instead, she began to tend to her own wounds. She left the herbs out, in case someone else was to need them for his own injuries, put on her gear and contained the element, and then began to sweep up the broken glass and shattered pottery. The cub didn’t look up the entire time, eyes glaring into the ground, scrubbing his wounds until they looked raw. It pained the bearsmith all the way to her core to leave him in silence as she closed up the Forge. Still, she left the door cracked, in case he wanted to follow.
The next morning, when the bearsmith went into the Forge, the cub was nowhere to be found.
Everything was exactly as it had been before. His woolen hats were still piled in the corner. His apron was on the hanger and his gloves were in the basket. His books were on the shelf. His little box of treats was in the drawer by the window. The secret stash that she wasn’t supposed to know about was even still there. The cub was simply gone.
