The girl's thick, bare legs dangled from the windowsill, contrasting sharply with her clothes.
"Uh..." Unana jumped back toward the door.
"Don't be afraid, little bear. Would you prefer me to speak to you through Unachan, or is this okay?"
Unana didn't answer, as she didn't understand anything.
"Okay, let's speak through Unachan," the girl closed her eyes. "You're not ready yet. I want to sleep. Wake me up later."
The girl disappeared before Unana could even process what she'd said.
"I imagined it. I was just really scared," Unana thought.
"Don't leave me… I've already been abandoned, and I'm left without a head…"
Unana became even more frightened, but couldn't get out into the hallway. The youngest of the "plush bears" felt sorry for the toy that had lost its head...
Unana emerged from the stairs carrying a large plush bear. Its lower paws almost reached the floor, and only the lack of a head made it smaller than the girl herself.
This time, Aragas stood silently near the stairs and watched as someone dragged something valuable from a place where only the great lord was allowed to be.
"Here's your head," Unana said, walking over to the sofa and looking at the brown pillow. "But how do I position it so it doesn't fall off?"
"Oh, I don't know. I'm just a little bear. I'm headless, and you are, so it's up to you."
Unana placed her new "friend" on the sofa, next to a brown pillow. The next moment, it clawed paw began to wiggle, as if trying to reach a missing body part.
"Do you want your head?" Unana felt something inside her clench. "Just wait a bit. I'll help you."
The girl picked up the brown pillow and turned it over, but couldn't find anything that would put it back in place.
Meanwhile, a paw rose from the sofa and reached for the "head" in Unana's hands.
"No, bearry, you won't be able to put this thing on," the girl looked sadly into the red eyes. "Your paws are still weak. But don't worry. I'll put the head on you myself, and then you'll be able to do whatever you want."
The paw landed on the sofa, but the fingers and claws continued to move.
Unana soon realized she'd tricked her plush bear. She'd previously hoped that if she found the missing body parts, she could put them back in, but in reality, it turned out to be much more difficult.
"Maybe this head just fits into the hole? There must be some space for it."
There was indeed a round hole in the upper part of the torso. Unana laid her head directly on it, but the miracle didn't happen. The pillow began to fall as soon as the archer released it.
The growl echoed in Unana's head again. The pillow fell onto the sofa, and then the bear's hand grabbed it...
The growl stopped. Unana saw the pillow surrounded by pink flames, then rise above the body.
"Bearry, come on, you can do it," Unana worried about the toy's head as if it were her own.
But the bear couldn't, or rather, its head couldn't. The flame around the pillow died down, and it began to fall again...
... Unana caught the head just below the floor. The red eyes still glowed, but not as brightly.
"Bearry, don't die," Unana hugged the pillow. "You will have paws."
The eyes lit up brightly again, as if the pillow had heard the girl's voice.
"Bearry, you're alive," Unana rejoiced.
"Now I know how to get my pawies back," the voice in her head answered. "But I'll need your help."
"Ask for anything. I'd even eat a table for the bearry."
Unana sighed and smiled, then turned to her brother...
Yueret sat with "his" blue-white pillow in his arms. His eyes were closed. It seemed the older "bear cub" was asleep and dreaming...
"If that's what you want, bearry," Unana thought. "I'm ready to be your pawies."
The eyes of the youngest "bear cub" closed. Unana couldn't see anything in the room...
"My little bear cub, wake up. Yum-yum has come..."
Unana opened her eyes and saw a snowdrift with a black stone sticking out.
"I'm somewhere. Unachan, were you talking to me?"
"Not quite," a translucent silhouette of a brown bear with pale red eyes appeared before Unana. "I'm just a plush bear. I can't talk. But I can roar. Show you?"
"No. You roar too loudly. Why did you bring me here?"
"So we can play. It's the end of winter, and the bears are still sleeping. You need to wake them up."
"Wake who?"
"The bears… How can you not know that? You're a bear too."
Unana looked at her hands and saw long nails protruding from her brown fur gloves, like bear claws. Nearby, on her wrist, was a bracelet with a miniature brown bear head.
"Uh…"
Unana waved her hand in front of her. A normal interface screen appeared, only with bear heads in the corners. But the little sister didn't pay any attention. She selected the oval icon, after which a mirror appeared over the screen...
"Uh..."
A girl in a brown hood with round bear ears looked at Unana.
"I've become... a bear?"
Unana began to examine her new appearance. The bear costume didn't cover her completely, but only to mid-thigh. Her legs were bare, except for her feet, which were protected by slippers shaped like bear paws.
"These are the pawies I wore at home," Unana said, recognizing the garment she'd been using for something other than its intended purpose. "Where are the other pawies? The third and fourth, I mean?"
"This is enough to keep me from freezing for now," the voice answered.
And then Unana realized she didn't feel the cold.
"I'm like a real bearry," the girl pressed her palms to her cheeks and closed her eyes. "If Yueret saw me, he'd feed me a giant squirrel with a nut in its belly."
The mirror was replaced by a screen with a round button in a plain blue frame.
"Unachan, can you take a picture of me?" Unana asked.
"I can't hear you," the voice in her head answered. "Talk to me with your thoughts."
Unana repeated her request in her mind. The silhouette transformed into the same brown little bear with glowing red eyes, and its paw landed on the button.
"Thank you, Unachan. Now I'll show this to Yueret. He'll be so happy if he actually loves his little sister. What could be better than a little sister who is a bear cub?"
Unana fell onto the snow and swung her legs in different directions for a while. Her eyes remained closed, and her hands massaged her cheeks.
"You can't show this to your brother."
Unana abruptly snapped back into an upright position. There was no trace of the cute little sister who is a bear cub.
"Where is Yueret?"
"He is somewhere in these mountains. You need to find him."
Unana looked back and noticed she was standing on a small, almost flat pass between two mountains. Their slopes were so steep and the snow so thick that the little sister became afraid.
"I hope I don't have to go up," Unana thought.
But something told Unana that the descent would be just as difficult. And she soon became convinced of this: the descent from the pass was along the same steep slopes, thick with snow, held back only by groves of coniferous trees and black rocks of varying sizes.
"Maybe there's something else out there somewhere?"
Unana raised her head slightly and saw a fog, white and so cold it seemed composed of icy vapor.
"No, Unachan, this is too much," Unana fell to her knees. "I can't."
"If you can't find your brother, then you're not a real sister," a voice in my head replied. "Bear cubs have a connection greater than the size of their heads."
"But I don't feel him. I don't feel anything at all."
"You need to eat some yum-yum."
"What is yum-yum?"
"This is the tastiest food for bearries. It gives them a lot of strength. And it also makes them sleepy when winter comes."
Unana took a step down the slope, but quickly realized she couldn't walk properly here.
"Unachan, I might fall. Do bearries have some lazy way to get down?"
"You guessed right, because you're a real brown bearry. Go into the interface and check your skills."
Unana summoned the interface and entered the skills tab. There were arrows of different colors, but now their place was taken by bear paw prints and bear heads.
"All the skills here are different," Unana raised her hand to her face, nearly nicking her cheek with her claw. "Which one is the one?"
Unachan didn't answer. Instead, he appeared before his mistress and pointed with his paw at a block of several cells with the heads of bear cubs of different colors.
The choice narrowed considerably. Unana raised her finger to the screen, and a few moments later, a fearsome bear claw descended on a button with a brown bear's head.
Unana felt the snow beneath her begin to shift and decided to look down, but it was too late. Something large and brown emerged from the snow...
Soon, Unana found herself sitting astride a huge pillow that looked suspiciously like the head from the selected slot.
"Ahh, now I understand. Thank you, Unachan. I'll feed you some squirrel and berries later."
"It's so big," Unana snuggled up to her new "friend." "Can I ride?"
"Yup, it's a bear snowmobile," Unachan explained. "It's made especially for the laziest bearries that can't get downhill."
"That is, for me."
Unana looked at her brother and imagined a brown bear cub in his place. Soon, Unachan indeed appeared before her.
"Little bear, do you want yum-yum?" a voice rang out in the archer's head.
"I always want yum-yum, but now I want something else more," Unana answered mentally. "I want to know if the blue-white bear girl will be offended if I melt her ice."
"Bearries don't like it when something they do is ruined. Then they become angry. But if you've become something special to a bearry, then the bearry won't do anything to you."
"I saw a bear girl on this lake. She knows me."
"It wasn't you. It was another bear girl, a brown one. You were just in her form, but the white-blue bear girl didn't know about you."
"Then how will I know what's under the ice?"
"Bearries are big. They don't ask permission from little bearries like me. If they want something, they just go and do it."
"But if I do that, the blue-white bear won't like it."
Unana smiled and closed her eyes. She was so happy that she didn't notice the pillow beneath her begin to move...
Unfortunately, the happiness soon gave way to fear, which only intensified as she realized what was happening.
"Bearry, uh…" Unana said, grabbing the round bear ears and wrapping her thighs around the pillow.
"Are you afraid to open your eyes?" a brown plush bear with red eyes appeared in her imagination.
"Why are you here? You shouldn't be here."
"If you don't want to see me, open your eyes. It's very beautiful there."
"Okay then. If the bearry asks me to..."
Unana cautiously opened one eye and saw a snow-covered pine forest, where white and dark green colors seemed to overlap each other. The youngest of the "bear cubs" instantly forgot her fear and opened her other eye.
The bear cub disappeared, and in its place appeared the lower part of the slope. A view opened up of a basin with silhouettes of mountains, shrouded in white, icy fog.
Meanwhile, the pillow quickly "flew" across the snow, swerving at just the right moment around the trees and rocks it encountered.
Unana's fear soon returned, but it was too late. The pillow came to rest on the edge of a cliff, offering a more detailed view of the basin and mountains.
Unana opened her mouth and released a cloud of steam. The fear disappeared, but nothing appeared in its place. For several dozen moments, the girl forgot what she was doing there, and only Unachan's voice brought her back to her senses.
"The second bear cub is somewhere here. My big brother stole him and won't let him go."
"What?"
Unana looked down. The fog had cleared considerably. A lake of white-blue, not yet completely frozen water appeared at the bottom of the basin.
"Should I go down there?" Unana let go of the pillow's ears.
"I don't know. I'm just a plush bear with ears that transmit signals, and you're a real, live bear with paws. I think you can do it."
"Have you decided yet whether to help me or not? Unachan, you're as stupid as a toy."
The voice didn't answer. Unana realized she'd have to act on her own from now on, and she looked around.
The silhouettes of the mountains surrounding the basin were now partially detailed. Green and black patches, forests and rocks, appeared on the slopes, but in the distance, only white outlines were visible against the overcast sky.
"Even the sky has changed. When I arrived here, the sun was shining. This place is special."
Unana rarely left the house. Previously, her entire world consisted of her home and the surrounding forests, and the city, populated by so many people, seemed strange and frightening. But meeting Timnichan changed everything. Now Unana wasn't afraid to go anywhere far, away from that wet lizard tongue...
"This thing's for sliding on snow and ice," Unana said, noting the cushion she was sitting on. "Can it be used to fall? I don't have a purple aura, do I?"
Unana tried to push the cushion down with her hips, but it refused to move.
"You don't want to go there?" Unana stroked the bear's ears. "Okay, I'll find someone else. You were a good bearry, lazy and fast."
Unana climbed off the pillow and summoned the screen. Soon, the brown "bearry" went back to its nest, and another pillow, purple, took its place.
"I don't have a purple aura, but I do have this thing," Unana jumped with joy and landed on her new "friend." "It's about to fly."
As soon as Unana thought this, the pillow rose over the edge of the cliff and slowly moved forward.
"Ooh! It's flying! I wonder if these bears have names. Unachan has a name."
Unana read the skill description on the screen and found a rather odd name.
"Boo-boo Bearry…" It's a bit childish... okay, but at least it's immediately clear what it's for."
The other skill names weren't much different from the purple pillow's name.
"Accumulator Bearry," "Eater Bearry," "Stupid Bearry." Why stupid?"
Unana didn't notice the pillow sink to the bottom of the basin. A coniferous forest of dark green trees, covered in a layer of snow, began on the shores of the lake and continued on the steep mountain slopes.
"A smart bearry wouldn't ride on its belly in the snow," Unana suddenly understood the name of the blue-white pillow. "It's soft and can get damaged."
The "bear girl" placed her hand on her belly; as if afraid it would disappear. But the bear fur jacket-dress well protected what gluttonous little sister considered being the most important part of her body.
"I hope that stupid lizard isn't here, but Yueret is. But where will I find him? I can't just go into the water and look for an underwater tunnel, like in the games?"
After a while, Unana realized she'd have to go into the lake. Of course, the "little bear girl" was smart enough not to dive in. She waited until one of the large ice floes approached the shore, and then jumped on it.
"You're like a blue-white bear," Unachan said mentally. "But you're brown bearry. Are you sure you can swim on that thing?"
Unana turned her head to the side and noticed the translucent silhouette of a brown bear cub, which had emerged from her inventory again, but this time not completely.
"I need to find the blue-white bearry," Unana thought. "Ice is the best transport for that."
"Yup, but don't fall. Ice is slippery and not tasty. Don't lick it, or you'll stick."
The ice floe carried Unana to the center of the lake, where many other ice floes had accumulated. It was here, hidden in the fog, that a small island with a stone arch lay.
"This is a portal," Unana guessed. "In the games, you have to activate it. But what do you do here? Maybe you know, Unachan?"
This time the bear cub not only did not respond, but also disappeared into thin air. Unana was left alone with a complex riddle and immediately remembered her brother.
"If Yueret were here, he would be able to do something with this thing."
But her older brother didn't appear either. Then Unana looked at the arch and decided to go through it...
As soon as the former archer approached the arch, a blue, translucent energy screen appeared in the space between the stone pillars.
"It's not a barrier. It doesn't protect against anything. Maybe I can press it?"
Unana raised her hand to the surface of the screen and felt a faint, barely perceptible vibration.
"It's just a screen. You can press it."
The "bear girl's" claw descended onto the blue surface inside the arch...