A bear. A. Fucking. Bear!

She looked up the mound to see her tent dismounted and her backpack emptied on the ground. Some of her clothes were ruined with lacerations. But more importantly, a huge-ass brown bear was searching through her belongings and eating everything edible it could find. The beast might weigh more than 400 lb, and from where she stood, Mackenzie could see its long sharp fangs crush an apple as easily as she would have done with a cherry. The first thing she thought was that it could as easily tip her apart and devour her.

But this kind of thing never happened, right? She once red that brown bears didn't attack man unless they were really hungry from winter sleep or felt threatened, and that they were more ufraid of humans than the opposite. She would however not test her luck and started walking backward, then she walked on something hard and furry and heard a little whimper coming from behind her. Turning her head and looking down, she saw a cute little bowl of fur. A bear cub. Whose paw she just walked on. And whose mama bear, in all likelihood, was eating her rations a few feets away.

As she looked up, she had to correct her thought. Mama bear wasn't eating anymore. Mama bear was looking at her. Mama bear was standing up. And it didn't take long for Mama bear to yell at her furiously.

If bears are more afraid of men that the opposite, Mama bear was probably scared shitless, given that Mackenzie had never been so scared in her whole life. She turned over and crossed the river in a few jumps, then ran into the woods without looking back. She kept running without noticing the trees around her where slowly disappearing into the night. She kept running even when her lungs went on fire and she couldn't breath anymore. She kept running until she realized she was now lost at night in the middle of a forest inhabited by bears, naked, covered in leafs and scratchs, without food or water, and with no idea of where to sleep safely or how to find the trail back. She wrapped her naked body with her arms, for once not out of modesty but simply because she was cold and terrified.

She looked around, in the vain hope to find a solution, and her eyes widened as she caught sight of a light half a mile away through the bushes.

With no other options, she walked in this direction trembling like a leaf and holding her tears. It took her endless minutes, until she reached...