BORIS 🐺
Wolf | Big Bad — Self Designated | Graduate of the Velikiy Ustyug Big Bad Wolf Academy — Middle of His Class | Briefcase Owner | Seeker of the Question Mark
Boris came from Velikiy Ustyug.
This is a small magical town in the far north of Russia where the forests go on forever and the winters are magnificent and his Grandmother Natasha makes the finest blini in the entire region, possibly the entire world, certainly the entire universe as far as Boris is concerned.
He left on a Tuesday morning with a briefcase, a blue pompom ushanka hat that Grandmother Natasha adjusted before he left, four jars of buckwheat blini mix packed for emergencies, a carefully folded map covered in Russian annotations, and absolutely no idea what he was looking for.
Grandmother Natasha knew.
She always knows.
She just didn’t tell him.
That would have ruined the finding out.
Boris graduated from the Velikiy Ustyug Big Bad Wolf Academy in the middle of his class. The Academy was established in 1742. Its motto is “We Huff. We Puff. Results May Vary.” Boris took three years of rigorous training including Fundamentals of Huffing, Advanced Puffing and Structural Theory — a module he did not pay sufficient attention to and would later regret significantly — and Field Operations and Target Selection.
He was described by his instructor as “enthusiastic but imprecise.”
He passed.
This is the important thing.
He passed.
He followed Grandmother Natasha’s map across Russia, through Finland, Sweden, briefly and incorrectly through Denmark, across Scotland, over the Atlantic on a container ship that smelled of fish and had no suitable hammock, across the vast and frankly unreasonably large expanse of Canada, through the Rockies which were magnificent and slightly alarming, and finally into a forest outside Vancouver where the map ended.
Not with an X.
Not with a destination.
With a question mark.
Just a question mark.
In red pen.
In Grandmother Natasha’s handwriting.
Boris stood at the edge of the treeline looking at the question mark for a very long time.
Then he looked up.
There was a house.
Warm. Solid. Beautifully structured. Glowing gold in the afternoon light.
Smelling of something warm and buttery and slightly sweet that traveled straight past his professional dignity and his carefully maintained composure and his briefcase full of plans and landed somewhere deep in his chest where Grandmother Natasha’s kitchen lived.
“Blini,” said Boris very quietly.
A small panda in a red vest looked out of the window and waved at him with tremendous enthusiasm.
Boris looked at the panda.
The panda waved harder.
Boris looked at his map.
He looked at the question mark.
He looked back at the panda.
He waved back.
He was not sure when he decided to do this.
He opened his briefcase.
He wrote Plan A in very small handwriting.
Huff and puff. House falls down. Boris moves in.
He did not yet understand that Grandmother Natasha had sent him not to a house but to a home.
That would come later.
Boris has been huffing at Bear House for several weeks.
The house has not moved.
This is because Ava designed the load bearing walls herself and the foundations go four metres into bedrock and the wind resistance rating is two hundred kilometres per hour and Boris’s maximum recorded output is forty seven kilometres per hour. Boris does not know these numbers. Medved does. Medved has not shared them. He is waiting to see how long it takes Boris to work it out.
Boris has not worked it out yet.
Boris has however worked out several other things.
He has worked out that Eugene, who is exactly his size, will be at the window every morning without fail, and that this is somehow the most reliable thing in his current life.
He has worked out that Honey Nut Cheerios are the finest cereal variety available in Canada possibly the world and that Eugene’s generosity with them is without limit.
He has worked out that the smell of pancakes from Bear House is identical to the smell of Grandmother Natasha’s blini and that this is not a coincidence.
He has worked out that Yogianna, who could flatten him with one paw and knows it, has been leaving a small plate of pancakes on the porch every morning without mentioning it to anyone. Boris has been eating them without mentioning it to anyone. They understand each other perfectly.
He has worked out that Danger Bear, who classified him as a SMALL situation on his flowchart — Boris finds this insulting, Boris has written a strongly worded letter about this, Danger Bear has laminated the letter — shares his belief in the emergency properties of pancakes with a conviction that Boris finds deeply professionally respectful.
He has worked out that his briefcase full of plans has a fundamental flaw.
Every plan ends with house falls down.
If the house falls down there is no house.
Boris sat in the forest for a very long time after working this out.
He looked at the question mark on Grandmother Natasha’s map.
“Oh,” said Boris.
Very quietly.
“Oh.”
He is not ready to knock on the front door yet.
He is getting there.
He waves at Eugene every morning.
Eugene always waves back.
Some doors, Boris is learning, don’t need to be blown down.
They just need to be approached at the right moment.
With the right hat.
With a jar of blini mix.
Da. 🐺🌟
Hometown: Velikiy Ustyug, Russia
Graduation: Big Bad Wolf Academy, middle of his class. He passed. This is the important thing.
Special skill: Huffing, puffing, very small handwriting, briefcase organisation, waving at pandas
Known weakness: Honey Nut Cheerios, pancakes that smell like home, Eugene’s complete unconditional friendliness, the question mark
Personal motto: “Boris is very dangerous.” 🐺
(He is not very dangerous.)
(He is trying his best.)
(Da.) 🌟
Grandmother Natasha packed four jars of blini mix.
“For emergencies,” she said.*
Boris has used two jars.
One at Permafrostia’s birthday party, shared with Danger Bear over a conversation about Maslenitsa and emergency preparedness that Boris considers one of the finest conversations of his life.
One on a Tuesday morning when he sat at the treeline eating blini and watching Bear House wake up and thought that perhaps the question mark was not a destination at all.
Perhaps it was an invitation.
Da.
Perhaps it was an invitation. 🗺️🌟
How does that feel? 😊🐺
