Kaelin Belka, the misfit daughter of her village’s vanished blacksmith, tends the forge and tries to earn her keep until the day her father’s old stories come knocking. A family of Medved’ Beis, man-eating “bear demon” keepers of the land’s wild laws, takes her as the victim of a ceremonial kidnapping. Navigating her captor Ruyak’s moodiness and rough handling is frightening enough, but whether or not she’ll survive might depend on reaching the creature literally holding her life in his hands. Even as Ruyak starts to show a softer side, there’s something he’s not telling her.
Ruyak must make a choice between his own future and hers, a choice that will tangle their fates inextricably and begin a journey that straddles the thin line between love and death.
Because as it turns out, Medved’ Beis aren’t anything like the old stories say. They aren’t beasts, spirits, or monsters, they’re just people. As petty, vindictive, and complicated as any human.
Welcome! The Moth and the Bear is my ongoing fantasy series about an aspiring blacksmith and her misadventures with giant bear people as she journeys to find out what happened to her father, who's been missing for many years.
Overall, it's your typical “two people from very different backgrounds at first clash, but come to an understanding and venture forth on an epic journey together to find the people they’ve lost, slowly growing closer” type of slow-burn fantasy adventure romance story, only one person is a young blacksmith and the other is an actual giant monster.
The story features my original species of giants called "Kanai" and takes place in a fictional place called Kellabor. Basically picture late-medieval fantasy Russia and giant bear-sphinxes.
Links to some stuff:
Archive of all content related to the story: archive
FAQ
Story art in chronological order on my website
Kellabor lore dump on my website
Kellabor Vibes Playlist on Spotify
Story inspiration Playlist on Spotify
Summaries and content warnings:
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𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓜𝓸𝓽𝓱 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓑𝓮𝓪𝓻
Book I:
Kaelin Belka, the only daughter of her village's late blacksmith, is kidnapped by a family of giant bear people as part of a coming-of-age tradition for their youngest son, Ruyak. Kaelin tries her best to keep her chin up despite the circumstances, but her captor isn't easy to get along with, and not just because he's being constantly tormented by his pushy older brothers. As it turns out, the whole tradition has quite a dark side, and all the skill and charm in the world may not be enough to save Kaelin from her fate.
≫Read the first chapter here≪
Art and writing from book I
Content warnings for book I:
There are giant bear people and they can be pretty violent. There is gt violence, kidnapping, dehumanization, threats of violence, threats of eating people, and familial conflict involving emotional and physical confrontation. There's quite a lot of gt interaction, and although most of it is scary and threatening, some of it's cute. Some cursing. Absolutely no sexual content.
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𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓒𝓻𝓸𝓼𝓼𝓲𝓷𝓰
Book II:
Kaelin Belka’s blacksmith father has been missing for many years, but she believes he may be alive somewhere and is determined to find him. She'll need the help of Ruyak, whose older sister may hold the secret. However, as Kaelin waits for her friend to make an appearance, things in her village become more uncertain by the day. As Kaelin struggles with the pitfalls of village life, she finds just as many obstacles rising within her own mind. If and when Ruyak finally comes to meet her, it may be to find her in pieces.
As tangled webs become ever more treacherous, and dark secrets find their way into the light, Kaelin will need to discover for herself the boundaries of her beliefs, her willpower, and her trust.
≫Read the first chapter here≪
Art and writing from book II
Content warnings for book II:
The giant bear people are still pretty violent, but a bit less explicitly. There is familial emotional and physical confrontation, references to eating people (not explicit, but it gets mentioned several times), hella guilt, lots of general peril including rough handling and near-drowning, animal death, and depiction of PTSD symptoms including depression, dissociation, recurring nightmares, panic attacks, anxiety, and flashbacks. There is an absolute shit ton of cute gt interaction in this one folks. Some cursing, and slightly underage drinking. No sexual content except for one extremely vague and clinical anatomical reference.
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𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓢𝓾𝓶𝓶𝓮𝓻 𝓡𝓸𝓪𝓭
Book III:
Kaelin and Ruyak have already come farther than they’ve ever been: braving the harsh Kellaborn climate, fording raging rivers, and trying not to get lost as they search for the trail of their missing family members. But the road ahead will be even more perilous, and the two of them will need to learn to rely on each other despite their complicated past. The summer wears on, the mysteries deepen, and as Kaelin and Ruyak venture into new lands with nothing but a cold trail to follow, they’ll find themselves meeting allies and enemies, facing shadows within and without, and learning not just about themselves, but each other as well.
≫Read the first chapter here≪
Art and writing from book III
Content warnings for book III:
The giant bear people continue being a bit violent and sometimes casually dehumanizing, with several scenes of peril in various forms. There are more depictions of PTSD symptoms, mentions of child abuse, depictions of blood and violence, and some more explicit animal deaths. The cute gt shit is really ramping up in this one guys, hold onto your butts as things are getting more flirty. No sexual content except for one crude offhand joke.
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𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓭𝓻𝓮𝓭
Book IV summary (not released yet, don't read this if you don't want spoilers):
Ruyak and Kaelin have made it through the winter far from home, but their journey is far from over. While Ruyak was sleeping, Kaelin received a tip about Piroshka, a smith who might know her father, who is residing somewhere across the Sunders, the great mountain range bisecting Kellabor.
They journey to find what they may, but what they encounter isn’t what they expected. They try to make the best of things in this new place, but just when it all might be finally looking up for the two of them, the very conflict that would tear the couple apart threatens to destroy everything they’ve come to love.
Can Kanai and humans coexist?
Art and writing from book IV
Content warnings for book IV:
There's a lot. Expect some closer to pg-13 levels of stuff. Things get a little spicier and a little darker. There are some "make-outs" and light discussions about physical intimacy, but nothing that'd be considered sexually explicit. Tons of sweet g/t interaction. But on the darker side, there is an extremely intense scene of character violence, several scenes of major peril, some brutal off-screen deaths, and one explicit on-screen death that might disturb readers.
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I just want to say that I had the craziest thing happen at an airport with my mom. She mentioned she was reading the third book in a series on the plane, and she couldn't remember the name of the series but she was like "the second book was the Crossing...?" and I swear to god I did a double take like "...The Moth and the Bear??" And pulled out the second book from my bag, which I was planning on reading on the plane, lol.
Turns out, I share an amazon account with her and bought your books on Kindle a while ago when you had a sale. I guess she was just scrolling through the library and either got them recommended to her or found them there and started reading them!
She seems to be enjoying them a lot. She likes Kaelin, and found the character relationships explored in the second book interesting. I just thought you'd enjoy this little story, of someone mildly freaking out and wondering how their mother learned about the story they found on Tumblr.
*spits out drink*
That's awesome! I have to admit, most of my family and many of my irl friends have read the books, partly against my will 😅 but they all like them a lot! Over the years, I've found the books can be a little introduction to our corner of fantasy without freaking out the average person. They're like... surprisingly approachable? Which is funny because I didn't really write them with that in mind, but that is what's happened. We'll see what people think of book IV when stuff gets more serious 🤔
Love doesn’t always happen all at once in a big, grandiose moment of heroism or sacrifice. It’s not all in a wave like a flash flood. Love rises in the small moments, slow as a trickle of snowmelt. In a warm smile, a thoughtful silence, a glance, a gesture. Rain across the stones, showers in the sunshine, dewdrops on the grass.
It’s only when the dam bursts and you realize how high the waters have risen that you’re swept helplessly away.
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Tell 'em what you know
Not all that you know, though
The truth be told you need it more than you thought
But you're managing, that's how you evened out, out
Vadik tried not to make a habit of post-hunt drinking. There was an itch in his spine at all times, a thrum of energy, that prodded him to move, to stay alert, to know what was going on around him. Hard drinks silenced it for a time, and its absence felt like a snuffed out fire. (Vadik called it diligence. A certain professor called it anxiety.)
Sometimes the habit caught up to him anyway.
At least he wasn’t drinking alone for long. Anfisa found him in the Shortwick inn bent over a cup of some horrifyingly strong local horilka that burned his throat. He pretended to ignore her as she leaned over the counter, trying to peer into the back area. The barkeep was nowhere to be seen.
Anfisa asked, “Did you help yourself? Or did the barkeep go somewhere?”
“Helped myself,” Vadik grumbled, taking a swig. It made his eyes water.
Anfisa turned to peer down into Vadik’s cup, taking a cautious sniff. She reared back, laughing, and shook her head. “Wow. You never drink real fire water.” Then she snagged herself a cup from under the counter and, with a strained grunt, leaned way over to fill it from the same keg Vadik had. As she sat down on the stool beside him, she sipped the horilka and didn’t flinch. “Not unless a hunt goes wrong.”
“It did go wrong.”
“Nobody died,” Anfisa chided him. “Be grateful.”
“I broke the law. Went against my oaths as an officer.” Vadik finished his cup and cringed.
“Laws. Oaths. You did the right thing, and that’s what matters.”
“Maybe.” Vadik blinked in the swirl of horilka behind his eyes, then got up to refill his cup. It would have been easier to drink from a bottle, but digging around through this strange village’s tavern stores would have been rude. Especially after everything that had happened. “If the general finds out, I’m a dead man.”
“Alexeyev is too concerned with his own machinations to care. I’d bet anything that if he saw Ruyak alive tomorrow, he’d think he was looking at a different Beis.”
Vadik chuckled at that. The drink was tickling him, and Anfisa wasn’t wrong. “He’d recognize Kaelin if he saw her. And recognize that she’s not in a Sutzgrad prison cell where she belongs.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. Kaelin usually looks more put-together than she did this morning. And I hear these days she dresses like a trapper, rather than a common village girl. And gets mistaken for a young man, at that.”
Vadik raised his eyebrows, but didn’t comment.
Anfisa asked, “What will you tell him, if he asks about her?”
“She escaped custody.”
“He’ll believe that?”
“Maybe I’ll tell him she sprouted wings and flew away.”
Lowering her voice, Anfisa leaned closer to Vadik. “He’s always been so disinterested in Medved Beis. Why was he so determined to track Ruyak down?”
“He’s not disinterested in them,” Vadik whispered. “He’s disinterested in studying them. Killing them is another matter.”
“But why Ruyak? What sparked his interest?”
Vadik fiddled with his cup and considered. That itch (Anxiety? Diligence?) warning him to be as wary as a prey animal was silent. Silent, but in its place another feeling was rising up. Unnamable and aching, like a stitch in his side. “That man is… bloodthirsty. Killing excites him. Like a rodi on a chain, left to drool after passing prey. Peacetime is a bane to him.”
“Should have been a hunter instead of a commander.”
“A brigand, more like.”
“Hmm, brigand as career path…” Anfisa swirled her cup. “Wonder why that isn’t a more popular choice?”
“Pays well, great opportunities for advancement, supportive work culture.” Vadik nodded grimly. “By all accounts should be a burgeoning field.”
“Well, you’ve convinced me. Time to resign and begin a new illustrious career as a criminal.”
Vadik laughed, but the mirth died out of his voice like he’d been gripped about the chest, the meager joy squeezed from him. “We’re already criminals, professor.”
“That depends on who you ask.”
Vadik hissed, “If you ask me, we’re murderers.”
Anfisa stiffened. The inn galley was silent. The commander and professor were the only two souls there, and not even the wind dared disturb the stillness. Anfisa downed her drink, then refilled her glass.
“What makes you say that?” she finally asked, voice hoarse.
Vadik just sighed and took a drink. When Anfisa turned to look at him, he choked out, “You know.”
Anfisa pinched her lips together and narrowed her eyes. “I want to hear you say it.”
“I don’t- I’ve never…” The ache, the stitch in Vadik’s side, welled up into his throat. He covered his eyes with one hand. “In battle all they ever do is snarl and bellow. You told me they had their own language, I assumed it was like that. A language of… snarls and grunts and roars, like beasts. Just beasts. I didn’t know…”
“In your defence,” Anfisa said blithely, “I never corrected you.”
“What else didn’t you correct?” Vadik demanded, still hiding his face.
“A lot of things, but none of it matters. It doesn’t change anything.”
Vadik looked at her, “What?”
“Listen,” Anfisa turned to face him, looking him in the eyes. “If a bear demon-- a Kanai-- is gorging themselves on a village’s cattle, or crops, or very townsfolk. What do you do?”
Vadik just stared at her and gestured obviously with his cup.
“There’s nothing that can be done but to slay them,” Anfisa said for him, “and yours is the only company with the skills and equipment to do it. So, if you ask me, standing between innocent people and gruesome death does not make you a murderer. It makes you a hero.”
Vadik looked away with a doubtful, inebriated mumble.
Anfisa sat back in her stool. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you. You’ve been doing this job for what, thirty years? Forty?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get over it,” Vadik sighed, taking a drink. “I’ll be back to skewering the bastards by next week.”
Anfisa said nothing, just shook her head and stared at the ceiling.
“Is that not what you wanted to hear?” Vadik asked sarcastically. Still Anfisa didn’t respond, so Vadik said, “If you knew they were like this, that they could be so… human, didn’t you ever even try-?”
“Try? Try?!” Anfisa’s voice hitched, but she cut herself off and glared at the far wall until she could regain some composure. “You have no idea what I tried. It was never enough. There was no leverage, no incentive, no reason for them to listen. I didn’t know enough about them, anyway. And now that I do, I know it wouldn’t have mattered. Negotiating with Kanai is impossible. Impossible.”
“You tried to negotiate with them?” Vadik asked, disbelieving.
“Not directly, but yes. You remember how I was.”
“Your absurd levels of optimism? Yes, I remember.”
“And it got people killed. Too many. I tried everything I could think of, but after Yefim and Katia, I just… I was done. I was angry. I wanted us to have something, some kind of power, just an ounce of it. Anything!”
“That was when you started helping me.”
“And every Beis you slayed made me think, finally! Finally we can fight back, finally we can hold our own! I’ve never recovered my compassion for them. Not even now. In my heart, I wonder if I’d even mourn them if they vanished from the world tomorrow.”
“But you’ve never told me all you know. You still haven’t.”
“Well,” Anfisa chuckled, “maybe those are the last drops of my compassion.”
“You don’t really want them to vanish tomorrow. We’d both be out of the job, if they did.”
“You’d be out of the job,” Anfisa corrected. “There are a hundred other chimerics I could spend my tenure studying.”
“And none of them half as interesting, you have to admit.”
Anfisa cocked her head. “My colleagues tell me in Xiahyra, the great forest in the west, there are tree-cats the size of men, with intelligence to match. Language, culture, writing, song. The Rowean settlers are at war with them. I think that’s at least half as interesting.”
“Talking cats?”
“Talking cats. And they can fly.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“It’s what they say. They have wings on their arms.” Anfisa held her hand up, flexing her fingers. “Like this.”
Vadik considered that for a moment. “Fine. Granted: interesting, if true. But…” Vadik smiled a tired, horilka-addled smile. “Our motherland’s monsters are still the biggest.”
“You’ve got me there.” Anfisa snickered. “So what will you do now?”
Vadik let out a long, weary sigh. “Write my reports, go back to Loske.”
“Business as usual, then?”
“I’ve been in the field tracking that bloody hooligan down all season. I have a lot of paperwork to catch up on.” Vadik cringed. “Chancellor Orlov is going to give me an earful. Probably has half a dozen Beis encounters he’ll want me to investigate.”
The two sat in silence for a time, sipping their drinks, staring at the wall. A man came into the inn from outside, grabbed something from behind the bar, and left again without a word.
Anfisa lowered her drink and studied Vadik’s face. “You look worried.”
“Just… wondering if their story will have a happy ending. The real world isn’t kind to such love stories.”
“And what would you know about love stories?”
Vadik shook his head at her with a wry smile. “I know they’re usually kinder to their subjects than their flesh and blood counterparts.”
“Only if all you read is drivel.” Anfisa rolled her eyes. Then, more solemnly, she said, “There are songs and stories about those two already, you know. From Sutzgrad to Southern Province, and there’s no stopping the spread. Soon the tales of Kellabor’s man-eating forest demons will be just a shade softer.”
“The Suzerein will be thrilled,” Vadik mumbled into his cup.
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? He’s so determined to bring Kellabor into the modern world, to show the world that we aren’t merely the strange, wild country where the trees have teeth. This should be a lovely change! People will be singing ballads! And yet he set you and Alexeyev on our young celebrity.”
“I suppose the Suzerein would prefer Medved’ Beis vanish from memory, rather than become cheerful folktales.”
Anfisa shrugged heavily. “Well, whether we like it or not, they won’t be vanishing anytime soon.”
That much was surely true. Vadik frowned thoughtfully and set down his cup. “The stories… do you think there’s a chance, with a change in perception…”
“Humans having a positive view of Kanai will do as much good as pheasants having a positive view of the zatel that stalks them. A rosier world it might paint, perhaps, but ultimately?” Anfisa took a long drink. “A delusion, at best.”
“But, if Ruyak changed his mind, then others-”
“Other Kanai probably think he’s a fruitcake.”
Vadik snorted and raised his cup. “Well, they wouldn’t be the only ones.”
Anfisa casually clinked her cup against Vadik’s and they both took a drink. “You want the truth?” she asked.
“Probably not.”
Anfisa gave it anyway, “You have no choice but to assume nothing has changed, or will ever change. Hesitation is death. For you, your men, for the people who need you. It’s death.”
“I know that,” Vadik grumbled.
“However. If, somehow, things do change, you can be ready.”
“Ready how?”
“You’ll need to figure that part out yourself. You’re the one in charge of the ballistae and drake venom and such.”
“Fair enough. But it’s not as though Beis come to us with their gossip. How am I to know if things are changing?”
Anfisa shrugged. She set her cup down and got up from the bar, leaving a few coins. “Hopefully you’ll know it when you see it.”
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Compared to the beginning of book I, to the end of book III. How much taller/larger has Ruyak gotten (for both quadruped and bipedal)?
Also, does the average height/bulk of Kanai differ much between the other regions of Kellabor?
That's a great question! I haven't sat down and thought about how much he grows, but it'd probably be hard to see just looking at him. It'd definitely be noticeable over 5-10 years. Kanai growth slows down at around age 25-30, but before that, males grow just a little faster, so they're usually bigger by the time they're adults, and also end up being much bulkier as they age. All Kanai continue to grow very slowly well into their thirties. Ruyak's on the small end for a male Kanai of his age, but he'll catch up a bit in his twenties and thirties!
There's not too much difference regionally in Kanai size, but there's a lot of variety in Kanai appearances just in general, including size. The bigger they are, the more they have to eat, but the easier it is to get through winter and brief lean times. So size tends to be a reflection of their overall diet and the health of the land they're living on. A lot of small Kanai in an area would be indicative of a lean ecosystem/food chain.
