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“You know, I really appreciate you coming along with me,” the man called Kronk continued his incessant muttering. Bagheera rolled his eyes even though it was lost on Kronk, who was several paces behind the panther. “Safety in numbers. Anyone who’s not embezzling will tell you that.”
“Whether you want them to or not,” Bagheera grumbled.
“Of course we did just leave Jasmine by herself. But, hunters and gatherers right?”
Bagheera did his best to ignore the man who was undoubtedly smiling at him. He’d hoped the lack of response would convey his disinterest in the conversation, but Kronk was determined to continue.
“Actually now that I think about it, we’re the ones doing the gathering. You think any of these plants are edible?”
“Help yourself,” Bagheera suggested, taking more of an interest in the thickness of the nearest tree branches.
Kronk cleared his throat. “Snarl snarlen snarly snarl snarl.”
It took Bagheera a moment to realize this man was expecting a reaction from him. He looked back to see if Kronk was going mad prematurely.
“Did I say something?” he grinned like an infant.
“You said something, yes.”
Kronk hopped in place giddily. “What did I say? I never learned to speak panther but I’ve got a grasp on basic fundamentals. I was hoping they’d transfer over. So tell me how’d I do?”
Without a word, Bagheera slipped up a tree trunk and stretched out on one of the branches.
“Okay…” said Kronk. “Mental note. That may have been offensive. No hard feelings, buddy?”
“Remind me when I became your ‘buddy’,” Bagheera sneered.
“Aw, come on, basic survival etiquette. We gotta stick together.”
"We don't have to stick together. We're not pack wolves. And you don't need etiquette to survive the jungle, you just need to adapt." The panther closed his eyes. "I saw some yellow fruit in the direction of the sun. It should be safe for humans."
"You're just going to stay up there?"
Bagheera sighed. "Yes. Why not?"
"Well, it's just..." Kronk shifted uncomfortably. "Jasmine is a beautiful princess, and we only found the one cave. I thought it might be less awkward if we all camped out there, you know?"
Bagheera reluctantly raised his head again. "I have no idea what you're babbling about, but it's going to be dark soon."
"Yeah, you've got a point. Well, if you change your mind-"
"I've got your scent."
Kronk stood in silence for a moment, not sure if that was a dismissal or not. "Were you always a panther?"
Bagheera gave him a look. It was a look Kronk had seen many times before, most recently from Yzma (over and over), but receiving it from a panther just seemed...judgmental.
"Kronk out." He gave Bagheera a respectful scout salute and turned to walk away. "Oh," he called over his shoulder, "While you're up there, best keep an eye out for that guy with the spear!"
Kronk was out of sight before those last words seeped in. Bagheera's senses were suddenly alerted.
"What guy with the spear?"
Jasmine tried again to get a fire started by rubbing two sticks together. She'd seen this done at least a dozen times but she wasn't having any luck. The sun would be setting in an hour, give or take. Fortunately the group had found a surprisingly hospitable large rock with a couple of natural caverns and an outcropping that towered over the jungle like a balcony. Animals had clearly lived there at one point, but a quick survey had suggested the rock was now abandoned.
The smaller of the two caves seemed to have been previously occupied by someone with a penchant for cave drawings, although they'd faded over time. It was warm, but a tight fit for two people and a panther. The larger cave had enough room to get lost in, but the temperature was freezing. Huge icicles hung from the ceiling, and Jasmine was disinclined to explore it alone for fear of dislodging one of the sharp frozen points, much less risk building a fire inside.
"Son of a jackal!" she snapped as the piece of wood slipped from her fingers. She checked her skin for splinters, trying to keep her mind from thinking about the possibility that she and Kronk might freeze overnight.
She tried again. Until this point, building a fire herself had been an issue of pride. But as the question of how cold the nights must get to create icicles that large kept circling around in her head, this unobtainable flame was beginning to feel progressively more urgent.
"Think, Jasmine", she told herself, "this isn't working". Three people (well, two and one cat) all with no recollections of how they got there. Nothing particularly in common from what she could tell. Probably some sort of magic at work, though she was beginning to doubt it was specifically targeting her. The big question was whether or not this was all an accident or a prearranged intention.
"Outside the basket then." Jasmine stared into the large cavern. Maybe those icicles were out of place for a reason. Ice. Fire. Fire. Ice. In all likelihood she was reaching for a meaning where there wasn't one but she kept at it, determined to spark something-
"Spark," she whispered aloud. The ice. And the sun rays. Jasmine stepped carefully into the cold cave and used a branch to strike at the first icicle within her reach. She got a large enough piece broken off and carried it back to her makeshift furnace. She held it in the sunlight, finding an angle that bent the beam into a single point, and pointed it at the dry leaves.
For a while nothing happened. She had to keep blowing on each hand to keep her fingers from going numb. But several minutes later a small trail of smoke began to trickle from the brush. "Come on," she coaxed it. The sun was drifting nearer the horizon to where it would no longer be of use. Jasmine spotted a tiny glow underneath the smoke, but it wasn't catching. She blew softly against the glow, which pulsed reluctantly. Failing that, she went back to shining the beam at the same spot.
The smoke was growing but the sun was on its way out. This was going to be close.
At least until the roar from inside the cave. A loud roar.
Jasmine dropped what was left of the piece of ice which shattered on the rock below her. The ember she'd worked so hard for died, but she forgot about it instantly. Something in that cave had woken up and it was making its presence known.
Despite her impulse to dive off the outcropping, Jasmine kept her wits about her. The creature was roaring, but didn't seem to be coming to the mouth of the cave. She picked up the same branch she'd used to break off the icicle and held it like a quarterstaff, sidestepping as silently as possible past the entrance.
There was a crash from one or more icicles hitting the floor and some kind of fast breathing between roars. Jasmine was past the cave mouth now and almost ran for it, but she was struck with the thought that someone else might be in there. Perhaps with no memory of how they got there, like her.
She poked her head back into the entrance and saw nothing in the huge cavern that she hadn't seen before. The growling was coming from one of the tunnels that bent away from the main area. Another crash. And then she saw it. Two shadows stretching into one of the tunnels that kept switching places.
In spite of her sense of self preservation, Jasmine charged into the tunnel. It opened into a smaller cave where the floor was partially iced over. A young woman with blondish hair had taken refuge behind four pillars of ice, forming a barricade between her and the hairy white creature with powerful arms that was trying to dig her out. It swiped its massive claws at the pillars, shattering two of them in one stroke.
"Hey!" Jasmine shouted, uncertain as to whether either one of them knew what the word indicated. The large creature with the white hair turned its blue ape-like face in her direction and bared its teeth in a terrible growl. She didn't speak its language, but she was sure that it meant something more permanent than 'hey'.
The creature lunged toward Jasmine. She ran at the creature. At the last possible moment, she used the branch as a crude pole to vault over the beast. Its claws split the branch in half, and Jasmine landed on the icy section of the floor, sliding to the cave wall.
She turned to the woman behind the pillars. "I'll get you out of here but you have to trust me," she told her. "Do you understand?" The woman's eyes were wide in shock but she managed a nod.
Jasmine's feet slid too much for her to stand up before the creature was on her again. Back-up plan, she thought, scooping up a handful of frost shards and stones. The beast reached down to grab her by the waist. Jasmine stuffed her pseudo-snowball in its open mouth, prompting it to momentarily lose interest in her in favor of spitting out the pebbles.
The creature flailed its arms about, and Jasmine deliberately absorbed an impact to send her sledding in the direction of the woman behind the pillars. From where she was seconds prior, it sounded as though the beast had half-swallowed a few of the rocks and was trying to cough them up.
"Come out in front," Jasmine told the woman as she carefully stood up on the ice. She used the gem in the middle of her tiara to scratch several deep cuts into the two remaining pillars, weakening them at eye level. She did a quick calculation of the trajectory to the tunnel leading out and positioned the other woman's back to it. "On my command, we push off each other."
The beast had recovered and was lumbering towards them. "No, switch," the woman said. Jasmine didn't have time to process how the woman got on the opposite side of her without slipping, but it wasn't important at the moment.
"Push!"
Jasmine slid toward the tunnel, falling backwards when her feet hit the section without the ice. The other woman skated back to the opposite wall. And the beast smashed headfirst into the ice pillars, causing a huge pile of frozen crystals to fall on top of it.
The other woman had somehow made it all the way to where Jasmine was before she'd even gotten to her feet again. An even angrier roar pushed them through the tunnel by sheer volume. "It's still coming!" the woman said.
They ran and didn't stop. Back in the main cavern an icicle broke from the ceiling and shattered into the floor in front of Jasmine. She lept over it and kept scrambling. Two more crashes close by. "I'm right behind you!" her rescue/er assured her. Jasmine sprinted towards the dying sunlight, just hoping to not get impaled by a falling object. Another loud crash, possibly several at the same time. Jasmine reached the cave entrance and dove through it, followed by he echo of the creature's roar.
Then the loudest longest series of smashing and crashing ice she'd ever heard drowned out all sounds from anything else. When it was finished, the roaring continued but significantly more muffled now. Jasmine looked back at the cave entrance which was now obstructed with piles of ice. The beast's deformed image clawed at the barrier from the inside.
The other woman knelt down next to her, looking completely detached from the whole experience. "Are you all right?"
"I think so," Jasmine struggled to control her breath.
"Did you see that?"
Jasmine swallowed hard. "What is that thing?"
The woman thought for a moment. "I believe it's called a yeti."
The creature gave up on the ice and disappeared back into the cave. Jasmine regained her composure and dusted herself off. She put out her hand. "My name is Jasmine, princess of Agrabah, daughter of the sultan."
The woman glanced at Jasmine's hand and slowly met it with her own. "Elsa."
"Elsa," Jasmine repeated. "A pleasure. So how long were you in that cave?"
Elsa tried to remember to no avail, just as Jasmine had predicted.
"I think we both have questions-" Jasmine was cut off by the familiar sound of the yeti's roar, now coming from the top of the rock high above the two women. "Oh that's not fair!"
"So questions later then?" Elsa asked half-rhetorically.
"Yes. We're going to need a different shelter."
Continued in Chapter Four.
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