Super Bears

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Stephan Bear awoke one morning to a surprise. At the other side of the den, his brother Fredrick's tail was on fire. He yelled, "Fredrick! Fredrick! Can't you feel that? You're tail is on fire!"

Fredrick opened his bleary eyes. He was also shocked to see the flame from his tail. Strangely, he felt no pain. An instant later the flame mysteriously went out. Fredrick shrugged, "The fire's out. I'm better now. You see?"

But, as he pronounced the "Ess" sound, an additional flicker of fire came out of his mouth. He asked, "Did I just breath fire? Am I still dreaming?" Fredrick decided to test whether he was still dreaming. He took a deep breath and then blew out with full force. A plume of fire stretched 2 meters across their den, and singed floor in front of Fredrick. "Yup, I'm dreaming."

"Fredrick, no you aren't," said Stephan. "You're a fire-breathing bear! We should go outside and have fun with this!"

"But it must be a dream. Look, I'm going to pitch myself and I'll wake-up." Fredrick pinned his front leg. "Ouch! That hurt. I guess you're right. I'm a real-life fire-breathing bear. Awesome!"

By now their other brother, Elasar, had woken up and seen the fiery display. "Hey guys, I don't mean to over-shadow what's going on, but have you seen Ivana?"

None of them had seen her, but a second later they heard her voice, "What do you mean, guys? I'm right here."

They still didn't see her. "Are you playing a trick on us?" asked Stephan. "Are we supposed to find where you're hiding?"

"I'm right in front of you. Have you gone blind?"

Just then, he felt something poke his nose. He knew he could see Fredrick and Elasar, so he couldn't have gone blind. He asked timidly, "Have you gone invisible?"

There was a soft popping sound, and then they could see her. "Wow," said Elasar. "What a neat trick. We really need to go outside and have fun with this!"

And so the quartet got up and went to find their breakfasts. When they got outside, Stephan leaned against a tree and noticed it shift a couple of inches under his weight. "Did you guys see that?" he asked.

"See what?"

"Watch the tree." He stood up on his rear legs and used his front paws to push the tree. He easily pushed it to the ground, snapping it in half in the process.

"Fire and invisibility and super-strength!" exclaimed Elasar. "Man, you guys are lucky. I wish I could do something cool."

They loitered through the forest the rest of the morning, searching for breakfast and experimenting with their new-found powers. Ivana popped invisible and caught a squirrel. Stephan gave it one quick super-strength slam with his front paw to kill it, and Fredrick cooked it with his magical fire-breath.

As Elasar watched, he saw fruits in a tree. They looked like they'd be out-of-reach, and he knew Stephan could just knock over the tree, but he tried to get them anyway. He reached his paw out and it just kept getting closer and closer to the fruit until he was able to easily knock it off the branch.

"Holy cow," yelled Ivana. "Elasar has a super-stretchy power that allows him to reach the really tall fruits. Guys, this is so awesome. I wonder what could have happened that caused us to have these amazing powers. You think there's a logical explanation behind how we were able to get four completely unrelated powers?"

Stephan looked at her, "Maybe we were struck by galactic cosmic rays while we were hibernating in our den?"

"Sounds good enough for me," said Fredrick. "Now let's go figure out how we can use these powers to have some fun with the local humans who like to run around this forest in their ugly orange hunting jackets."

Original image is a oil-on-canvas painting by Ivan Shishkin. It's called Morning in a Pine Forest and it was created in 1889. The painting can currently be found in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, Russia. High-definition version of the image is here while a Russian hosted version of a regular definition is here. Supposedly, this is one of the most recognizable paintings within Russia, like some of Norman Rockwell's paintings in America. More details are on available on Wikipedia.org.

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