My first drawing in six years! I recently bought an iPad, an Apple Pencil, and Procreate, and I'm determined to teach myself to draw :)

Art, story, and Tambo by Zigzak

Original submission: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/36433742/

To Be an Armoured Bear ~

My first winter as a bear has been good to me. The sea froze over early and fast, and the training I received from the armoured bears of Svalbard has paid off: I have been catching seals on a near-daily basis. From the moment I met the Panserbjørn, I had one goal in mind. The bears I met wore fabulous armour forged of sky iron, pieced together over many years, and worn once they come of age. This is the armour that gives them their name, and a Panserbjørn considers their work to be their very soul.

I doubted whether I could gain the skill necessary to create my own set of armour, but some fashioned armour of a cruder sort for outsiders. Better yet, one could obtain the armour of disgraced bears and of those who would fight against their own kind. However, there was an issue. The process of transformation requires a great deal of energy, which meant a great deal of weight loss for me. While I had been heavy as a dragon, as a new bear I was thin, too thin. The bears of Svalbard are master hunters and live their lives in the cold, and they have the bellies to show for it. Simply put, any armour fashioned for a Panserbjørn would not fit a bear as thin as me.
Now though, nearly a winter has passed, and my efforts are paying off. With seal blubber in plentiful supply, I quickly filled out throughout the winter, but I did not stop there. Day after day I gorged and fattened myself until my belly bulged and hung low and I had a thick coat of blubber rippling from neck to rump.

I am sure you will be as surprised as I was to learn that, at winters end and upon my return to the armoured bears to collect my armour, I ran into trouble. Before, I must have looked emaciated to them, but how I have transformed! However, the merchant bear eyed me dubiously before bringing my new armour out of storage. He helped me into it and tried to fasten the couplings around the torso, only to find that my paunch had grown too fat to fit into it! Now, there was no way that I was going to run off and try to lose weight (what kind of respectable bear would want to do that?), so some adjustments are in order, and this time I made sure to request that those fastenings are adjustable! After all, I have grown to enjoy the taste of seal and cannot wait to get back out on the ice.