Bumblebears!! (original) (raw)

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The window was about 3 football field's length away. It was beginning to dawn on Grover just how gigantic this world was. His yard, his *real* yard, was slightly longer than he was tall. Now those two meters became 600 meters. This world was apparently 300 times bigger than his. A local version of Grover Cleveland, if such a creature existed, would be about 600 meters tall.
Grover paused. This didn't make sense no matter how you sliced it. Gravity felt normal here. How could a 600 meter Grover Cleveland function?
Grover mused over this as he worked his way over a very ragged landscape. Twigs and leaves littered the earth, making him find his way around and through obstacles and extending the length of his journey. Grover picked his way carefully along until his out-of-shape body demanded he stop and rest. The air was oppressively thick here, and breathing too deeply made his head swim and his heart race. It was definitely a different atmosphere. Too much oxygen, maybe?
Grover took a seat on a smooth stone to rest his bones and calm his heart. That's when he heard it: the buzzing, unmistakable, even though it was much lower pitch. A bee. Adrenaline flooded his blood, and Grover's weak heart nearly exploded. The implications of a bee in a world like this hardly needed consideration. Grover was allergic.
He scrambled for cover and wound up digging a hole in the loose stones, hoping to hide in the ground. But the buzzing was growing louder and louder, and Grover was now panicking. He was sure it would be upon him at any moment. He abandoned his hole in the ground and ran, only to trip on a loose stone and twist his ankle.
Then it was there, silhouetted in the light of the full moon. It was a flying bear. Two feathery antennae sprouted over its head, rooted a little above and between the creature's eyes. Its gossamer wings spanned twenty feet, and fluttered so quickly that they were visible only as disturbances in the air. And it had a 3 foot long stinger sprouting from the end of its spine and curving wickedly downward.
Grover stared up in horror at the beast. Its gruff fur was patterned in broad horizontal stripes. The moon bleached out the colors, but Grover could guess that they were black and yellow. It was bumbling seemingly aimlessly through the grass, that is, until it caught sight of our petrified hero.
The creature darted instantly to Grover. It came within a foot of Grover's face and let its antennae tickle Grover's contorted face. He could smell the creature's breath, sickening sweet and a little rotten, like a corpse sprayed heavily with flower-scented Febreze (R) in a vain effort to conceal the odor.

Grover and his new friend slid outside into the harsh Xanadian atmosphere where another friend picked them up in a spacecraft. Views of other worlds…

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