'The Woman Who Wore Her True Colours' by ...kruse

She hauls out of her bath and puts a bearskin on her bare skin. It is the colour of earth and wild honey. Heavy claws, curved like moons, clack on the wooden floor; they are tree cleavers, bark peelers, hive breakers. She lumbers on fat brown pads, her shoulders heave and roll. She is too, too big for this little, tiny house.

At the threshold, her bulk squeezed against the frame, she sniffs and tastes airborne news; who passed by and where they were going, when rain is due, where food is, if enemies lurk. She smells shadows and sunshine, berries and bees, what is sweet and what sour.

She pads, huge, hairy and magnificent, muscled and mighty, small eyed and long toothed, out into the world.