Maybe Paula could have saved her husband. Maybe she should have. But when he showed up, insane with jealousy, and found her sleeping curled up on the warm fur of her bear friend, he had snapped and attacked her.

The bear had not reacted well, and her husband had screamed and struggled as he was eaten feetfirst. Finally a wet face peered from the shadows of the bear's maw, and only then, at the end, had she considered asking the bear to spare him.

But even in the gullet of a bear her husband cursed her, and she had simply watched as the bear squeezed its jaws shut around her husband's face and swallowed. The great bulge in its neck had slipped down into its bulky body, and then it really was too late to ask him to let her husband go. So massive was her friend that only a subtle swelling of its shaggy middle showed that there had, until a moment ago, been three of them in the meadow.

The swelling had twitched a few times as the bear's meal kicked and she remembered all the times her husband had beaten her. Paula decided that a bear that never hurt her was better than a husband who did.

She would tell the other villagers that her husband, never the most reliable of men, had finally left her. With no witnesses other than a bear – who other than a burp or two had nothing to say on the subject – there was no one to contradict her. Her husband, of course, knew different, but she was confident that he would be unable to be reached for questioning.

I liked the mostly dark frame I used a couple of times in the whale shark comic, so I thought I'd try a “large areas of dark” pic real quick. This is from “The old bear” story.