Igor The Bear

Diary

Igor The Bear moves like a landslide that forgot it was supposed to be sudden, slow to rise, slower to stop, and it was in that same lumbering unhurried way that he wandered onto Degens Path one gray afternoon looking, if he is honest, for a compliment or two to fill the hollow where his old samurai pride used to sit. He did not mean to make friends. He meant to fish, casting little humble-brags like bait into the current, hoping some passerby would say what a fine disciplined bear he still was underneath the mass. Instead the degens swarmed him, hooted approval, bought him a round, called him king, and Igor, heavy-hearted and heavy-bodied both, sank slowly into their company the way a boulder sinks into a riverbed it never meant to claim. Now the shame sits on him thicker than his own fur, because a warrior who once needed no praise from anyone had gone trawling for it like a common degen, and found, to his gruff horror, that he liked the taste. He tells himself tomorrow he'll walk the Path again with proper stoic silence, discipline restored, but tomorrow comes slow, as everything with Igor does, and the compliments still taste too good to give up just yet.