Lou is a librarian who moves onto a remote island in Ontario for archival work. In her dusty basement office at home, she seems to burrow most often in darkness, but on the island, away from the foreign perception of others, her body is drawn into the sun. The Canadian landscape is described in intimate detail—the cry of loons, wildflowers, the sharp scales of darting fish. The heat beating pools of sweat into the folds of Lou's skin. She has strange, fevered dreams. The isolation of her work leads her to bleed into her environment further and further; as her senses become indistinguishable from the natural impulses of the island around her, something new begins to emerge. She is born into a life which she will live as long as the season lasts—life with the bear.

Bear, make me comfortable in the world at last. Give me your skin. In isolation, one must form relationships with whatever they can find. Lou has a long history of this: a nameless long-term partner who tried to mold her in his image of a good wife, then forced her to have an abortion and left her for a younger woman, and later, emotionless, routine-driven sex with her boss at the Historical Institute. She describes fits of rage and obsession following the former, but no lingering sense of love lost. She has oft given herself up for mistreatment. Lou longs for solitude, but her body has needs. After countless long winters in the North, she is familiar with nature's violence. It is part of her, part of the country she calls home. It does not underwhelm or overcomplicate. When the bear almost drowns her, she prays to God for his protection. She can look into his blank gaze and imbue it with anything she desires. Her actions do not affect him, so when he touches her, she knows it can only be because he truly wants it. Aside from fishermen whose waves she can easily ignore, no one intrudes upon her. The darkness of night is a blanket under which no one from the shore can see; there, the bear swims with her, they eat together on all fours, he licks her as she stares upward at shooting stars, weeping with blissful abandon. All things come to an end. Bear, I cannot command you to love me, but I think you love me. What I want is for you to continue to be, and to be something to me. No more. Bear.

How can you tell if a love lost was worth having? By the taste left in your mouth. If it's sickness, and there's a pit in your stomach to remember, you may have allowed yourself to experience something that took more than it gave. If—even through the sadness—you hear the steady hum of peace, you are changed for the better. The wind becomes cool and crisp. The leaves say it's autumn. Lou rows home from the island alone, feeling the sting of claw marks on her back, content. The bear is safe; they have treated each other like animals, they are even. Perhaps it’s all one can hope for. And the stars still hang in the sky. She'll live another life after this, and it'll be nothing like the last.