"No, krolik, we go now!" Yana grabbed him by the arm and firmly hauled him to his feet, after which he simply flopped back onto the mattress. The second time, the bear scooped him up and roughly shook him, scattering any thoughts of sleep from his mind. "Look, zanudnyy, you put on coat, or I throw you in snow."
"Fine, fine, just... give me a minute." Yana released him from the bearhug, and he slowly began the arduous task of getting geared up for the snow. There was his underwear, his t-shirt, his sweatpants, his sweater, his socks, his snow pants, his scarf, his gloves, his coat, and finally, his heavy snow boots. "There, you happy?"
"Da." While Mark had been getting suited up, Yana had taken all of thirty seconds to put her own clothes on, and once he was ready to go, she grabbed her scrap-greatsword before heading out into the snow. Mark quickly followed her out and closed the door behind them, and once they were out in the snow, the human was greeted by the sight of a bustling village. Polar bears of various statures went about their daily chores, curing meat or carrying wood, and none of them looked twice at the human stomping through the snow. Yana first went over to another of the wagons where a pair of bears were building simple spears, and once she'd grabbed the shortest one they had, she came back over and tossed it to her mate. "We go on hunting trip," she said, "Get meat for tribe."
Mark nervously clutched his spear as he tried to imagine what that would entail. Would it be ice fishing? He'd tried that once... didn't really end well, though. "Don't you have designated hunters?" he asked, "I mean, the chief shouldn't have to kill her own food, right?"
Yana chuckled at the human's naivety, slightly shaking her head. "Da, krolik, but I want to see what you do." As they walked up toward the gate, the bear exchanged a few words with the guard, who quickly deactivated the gate's massive spike trap. "We hunt lion of sea," she continued, "It not too hard... maybe you hunt for once, eh?" She nudged him playfully, chuckling as they stepped out into the barren tundra, but Mark's mind was more concerned than excited. Didn't sea lions weigh almost a ton? How were they going to get it back to camp? Was Yana just going to carry it?
"So... how do you hunt sea lions?" the human asked, "Do you dive for them, or..."
"No, you cut hole in ice, then stab it when it comes up. Is easy, even you could do it." They continued on for about ten minutes, finally emerging onto what looked like a thick sheet of blue ice. Mark was a bit hesitant to step on it, but Yana was not; the big polar bear just strode out like she'd done this a thousand times before, which, Mark realized, she probably had. While her human mate cautiously inched his way across the ice, Yana brutishly stabbed down into the ice with her sword, sending a spider web of cracks radiating out from where she'd stabbed. Mark watched in horror as she continued to stab at the ground, each blow landing with practiced precision; to the human's surprise, by the time Yana stopped, there was a large chunk of ice just waiting to be pulled out, and the bear didn't hesitate to use her sword to lever it up. "Come, krolik," she said once she saw Mark was standing back, "Is total safety."
Mark, however, quickly decided on keeping his distance. He wasn't sure what the next step in the hunting process was, but out of all the things he could think of, stripping naked was last on the list. He watched with a mixture of confusion, surprise, and arousal as Yana stripped off her clothing; it took a while for him to realize she was doing it for camouflage's sake, mainly because his eyes were fixated on her plump, furry ass cheeks. After undressing, she took up a position with her sword raised point-down, becoming as still as a statue poised to strike.
For the first two minutes, the human mimicked her stony stillness, but he quickly grew tired of standing stiff as a board. The next eight minutes passed with him just standing casually, scuffing the ice with his boots as he waited for something to happen. Yana was still as ever, barely moving a muscle as she waited for... something. As ten minutes stretched into fifteen, he began to wonder if anything was going to happen at all, and he sat down onto the frigid ice to wait it out. Maybe he should just go back to camp, he thought... or perhaps he should talk to Yana, ask what she was doing. Maybe-SHANK!
The hunt was over before Mark even knew what happened. In a split second, Yana had driven her sword downward into something below the ice, something that the human couldn't even see. He watched with confusion as Yana reached down into the water, then pulled something up from the depths with her massive strength; it turned out to be a massive, 8-foot sea lion, and as she laid it out onto the ice, Mark saw it still had her sword buried two-thirds of the way into her skull. The human sat in utter shock as Yana pulled the sword back out of its head like it was the most normal thing in the world, wiped the blade clean on the sea lion's fur, then turned to beckon him closer. "Come, krolik," she said, "Mne nuzhna tvoya pomoshch."
After beckoning him a couple more times, Mark finally took the hint, standing to his feet and walking over to Yana's kill. The beast looked even more impressive up close, easily weighing a literal ton, and he was more than a little shocked when Yana said, "Now pick it up."
"What..." Mark looked from the massive sea lion, to his own skinny arms, to Yana, then back to the sea lion. "I... I can't pick that up!"
"Try."
Mark just stared at her, dumbfounded. "Yana, there's no way I can lift that, it's gotta weigh at least two thousand pounds, and-"
"Try." Yana gazed at him with steely resolve, almost like a mother trying to push her child to greatness. "You are not lodyr, no?"
"No..."
"Then try."
"Okay... sure." The human let out a long sigh, trying to psyche himself up for this impossible task. He walked over to the sea lion, dug his gloved hands under its blubbery corpse, and... "Hrrrrrgh!" With all his strength, he only managed to push it a few inches over before his might failed him. After taking a breather, he tried grabbing hold of a flipper and pulling it, earning the same ineffectual result. His next thought was to try the head, but the stream of blood and brains flowing from its head deterred him from that approach, so he instead ran around and tried yanking on its tail. He actually managed to move it a few centimeters before he lost his grip, causing him to fall flat on his ass with a loud thud. "Yana, I can't," he panted as he got to his feet, "It's... god, I can't even move it. How the hell are we gonna get it back to camp?"
"Easy." After Yana put all her clothes back on, Mark watched in amazement as she stepped one leg over the sea lion, grabbed it around the neck, and hauled it up over her shoulder. From there, she swung it around into a fireman's carry, then began trotting off back in the direction of the camp. "Come, krolik," she said, "Grab sword and follow."
The human quickly picked up the sword, which was almost too heavy for him to lift, and began plodding along behind the polar bear. From behind, he could see the blood leaking out from the sea lion's head, staining both the ice and her pristine white fur. It was then that Mark began wondering what kind of woman he was sort of married to: sure, she was a massive, super-strong polar bear, but the casual ease with which she'd slaughtered an enormous sea lion stuck a dissonant chord in his heart. Had she killed before? Well, obviously... how else would she eat in this frozen wasteland? That in turn, brought up the question of how he'd ever survive out here... hell, if it weren't for the grace of the polar bear tribe, he wouldn't have survived a day. Then again, if it hadn't been for them, he'd probably be back home now, looking over his photos and- "Ey, krolik, how much kilogram can you carry?"
"Uh, well..." Mark knew he could deadlift about a hundred and seventy pounds from his brief forays into the gym, but he wasn't all too sure what the conversion rates were. "Maybe... sixty?"
