Igor The Bear

Diary

Igor The Bear used to move like a mountain deciding whether to erupt, slow, deliberate, terrifying once he got going, and folk in the old dojo swore he laughed easier than any blade-man had a right to. Then came the pilgrimage up Fuji, meant to be discipline, meant to be silence and snow and the weight of the past worn like armor, but somewhere on the slope he got aped into a field of tall grass with a stranger's baggie of weed and never really came back down. He sat there for what he remembers as minutes and what witnesses swear was three days, staring at blades of grass like they held the secrets of bushido, and something in him just settled, heavy, permanent, like a boulder finding its final resting spot. Now he tells anyone who'll sit still long enough that he is truly free, though his idea of freedom looks a lot like sitting immovable at the base of a mountain, floor of his ambition rugged out from under him, still swearing tomorrow he'll start training again. He never does, but damn if he isn't warm about it, gruff and slow and impossible to actually be mad at, even as the grass keeps winning.