FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

When the lioness awoke she was lying on her back, one arm folded under her head, the other draped around a soft, fluffy something that was cuddled up to her side. She opened her eyes, drowsy at first, squinting up at the silvery softness of the early morning sky.

Overcast. Might rain soon. She took a deep breath, wondering idly just why she could see the sky at all. Wasn't she back home with-

Oh.

She glanced down. Could see a red furred head nestled against her bosom, fox ears twitching and whiskers lying perfectly relaxed. The fox's breath ruffled her fur.

The lioness blinked. Relaxed slightly. Oh, right...she'd broken the fox in last night. The little residual tingle between her legs was a testament to that.

She couldn't help but grin a little at the thought of that. It was so delightfully taboo. There wasn't anything saying that it was specifically against the rules, not amongst her people at least, but all the same...

She gently shook the fox's shoulder and watched as his eyes fluttered open. For a moment the drowsy canid seemed content to stay nuzzled up against her, then he seemed to realize just where he was. And with who.

The fox jolted up straight, fur suddenly bristling, eyes wide with fright.

"Oh God." He said, clasping his paws to his mouth with sudden shock and terror. His tail had curled around him, the lioness realized, she could see its fluffy tip sticking from the blankets in front of him. It tickled her thighs. "Oh God we..." He trailed off, taking a deep and shuddery breath.

"We did," the lioness confirmed, watching the fox with slight concern, "...you okay?"

The fox stared, like she'd suddenly started speaking a foreign language.

"I...oh...we shouldn't have done that." The fox drew his knees to his chest, still partially under the blankets.

He was trembling, the lioness realized. She couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy for the poor thing.

"Why not?" She asked, "you enjoyed yourself, right?" But even as she spoke she knew the conflict raging in the fox's mind was deeper than that.

"I'm sorry," the fox said, "I was weak. I shouldn't have let you tempt me..."

The lioness blinked.

"Excuse me? Who said you weren't the one that tempted me? What if I have a thing for easily flustered foxes?"

The fox blinked. Stared uneasily.

"...Do you?" He asked.

The lioness sighed.

"That's not the point," she said, "we did what we did last night because we wanted to, and so far as I can tell we both had fun. I mean...you certainly looked like you were enjoying yourself when you-"

The fox waved a paw, silently begging her to stop.

"But...you...I...we shouldn't have done that. It was hedonistic and..." The fox trailed off, shaking his head, unable to clarify the complicated feelings roiling within him.

The lioness cocked her head.

"Aw hell..." She pursed her lips, mildly confused, "I thought you got over all this negative stuff last night."

"It was a moment of weakness," the fox insisted, "it won't happen again."

"Too bad." The lioness said with a short, huffing sigh. She stood up and stretched, the fox stealing a glance at her nude form before looking away.

He looked acutely miserable but the lioness knew better than to say anything. He'd have to deal with this on his own. On a certain level she felt kinda bad for complicating his values system...but not too bad. He'd been fairly serviceable for a virgin, and his tongue...

"C'mon," the lioness said, folding her clothes over one arm, "let's get washed up. We've gotta get started on finding my deer."

The fox followed her silently downhill. He'd put his loincloth on and though the lioness could tell he wanted badly to ask her to put at least some clothes on, he averted his eyes instead.

The stream trickling down into the valley was narrow but deep, frothing over rocks and swirling past cuts in the stone that formed pockets of still, clear water. The lioness could see crayfish nestled at the bottom of the creek and she contemplated catching a few before deciding that that would have to be a mission for later. The sooner she got on the trail of the wounded deer, the better.

"You never told me your name." The fox said from behind her as the lioness dipped a paw in the water, testing the temperature.

She glanced back, shaking frigid water from her toes.

"Yeah...guess I didn't." She said, and took a deep breath, steeling herself to jump in.

"Um...what is-" The fox was cut off by a whoop and a splash that showered him with cold water. He yelped, jumping back, what dry fur he had left fully bristled out.

The lioness resurfaced, staring up at the fox from the center of the cut, eyes wide and teeth chattering. She was hugging her arms to herself, tail wrapped tightly around one leg.

"Come on in," she managed, the shock of the temperature change jittering through her body like an electric current, "i-it's not so bad."

The fox gulped, shed his loincloth and, covering his sheath with both paws, stepped delicately into the water, hesitating on the edge of a stony drop-off that the lioness was paddling a few feet away from.

Then, shutting his eyes, he slipped in, yelping as he resurfaced, arms flailing and ears pinned back in dismay.

"T-This is s-snowmelt!" He cried, arms clutched to himself, in identical fashion to the lioness.

"You'll get used to it." The lioness assured him, through gritted teeth.

She forced herself to unclench her muscles and unclasp her paws, releasing the death grip she held on herself. With that, she got down to the business of cleaning herself.

The fox turned away, blushing fiercely as she rubbed between her legs. The lioness rolled her eyes.

"Isn't anything you haven't seen before," she said, shooting him a look, "now...can you come over here and get my back?"

"Um..." The fox said, but obeyed, hesitant paws scrubbing the fur on the lioness' back. It felt surprisingly nice, almost like a massage.

When he was finished the lioness turned the fox bodily around and returned the favor, though she suspected her own technique wasn't as refined, judging by the politely restrained winces the fox was giving as she raked through his fur.

With that they exited the water without hesitation, dropping to all fours and shaking themselves off like wild animals. The lioness straightened up and cracked a grin as she caught sight of the fox, his fur puffed all around him, like he'd been caught in the middle of a lightning storm.

"So..." He began, adjusting his loincloth and beginning to smooth down his fur, "I was gonna ask you your name."

The lioness took a little breath. Tugged her pants on and looked away.

"Have you seen my shirt?" She asked.

The fox glanced quickly behind her and produced it from where it had fallen from the branch she'd hung in on, handing it awkwardly over.

"Thanks," the lioness put it quickly on and shouldered her pack, taking a breath, "feels nice once you're out of the water, right?"

"Um..." The fox looked slightly aggrieved.

"Alright," the lioness said, nodding to herself, "we gotta pick up the trail."

It didn't take long. The deer had still been bleeding when it had run from the clearing and had crashed through brush and crushed plants in a large, obvious sort of trail. The lioness followed this, bow out and an arrow nocked, though she was sure they were still some distance away from the animal. Deer were hardy, they could survive just about anything so long as they were left alone in the aftermath.

The fox kept a few yards back, quiet and careful in his footing. He'd packed his spear away and didn't seem to foresee playing any active role in the hunt. That was fine with the lioness. She only needed him for the butchering.

They descended further into the valley, the stream burbling pleasantly to their left, rocky hills rising on either side of them, blocking the sun and erasing the morning entirely. The overcast sky above certainly didn't help with lighting but that didn't matter. The trail was still obvious enough for even a novice tracker to easily follow.

Thoughts began to brew as she proceeded, picking her way through a thicket that the deer had gone through, dried blood apparent on battered leaves and broken twigs.

Was she handling this thing with the fox correctly? He seemed torn up with weird religious guilt, which she had no idea how to counter outside of dismissing it entirely. She'd been raised in a particular way, in a particular setting. She tried to put herself in the fox's position. How would she feel if she were a canine and a member of his weird fucked up society?

Well...she wouldn't be out hunting in the first place most likely...but if she was, and if she ran across a strong, handsome and dashingly charming feline hunter...

Yeah. This wasn't working. If anything the thought of a reversed scenario only made her feel even more isolated from the fox's experience. She'd probably have tried to run away and become a cat if she were him. Try as she might, she had absolutely no context for the fox's religious and cultural beliefs beyond a feeling of bafflement, contempt and mild pity for the people who actually believed such things.

Should she have kept it in her pants the previous night and simply left the fox alone?

Nah. It had been too much fun, and though she was facing repercussions for it now, the lioness couldn't say that she regretted letting the fox hump her. And, though she knew she was biased, she suspected that the fox would do it again if he had the opportunity. Men were men, culture be damned.

All the same...was there something more she could be doing?

Should she go ahead and let the fox know her name?

The lioness sighed. Focused hard on the blood trail ahead. It was growing shakier and weaving from side to side. The deer seemed to be weakening.

Good...

Glancing back at the fox, the lioness saw that he was still maintaining distance. He could be surprisingly stealthy when he wanted to, if she didn't already know where he was then she'd have almost been surprised to find that there was someone behind her.

As she turned back around, a raindrop plinked down onto her muzzle. She blinked. Glanced quickly up to the sky.

Fucking great. She'd have to hurry...if it rained too heavily then the blood trail would be washed away, and the deer would become more difficult to track.

As she proceeded, she could see that the jagged smears and spatters of blood marking the animal's progress were beginning to land closer together. The deer had been slowing at this point in its journey. Dying perhaps. The blood was fairly fresh too. It had dried but not yet lost its color. Even if it was dead, the meat would still be salvageable.

The trail began to veer to the lioness' right. Perhaps the deer had been spooked by something. It seemed to attempt to climb the valley wall at one point before looping back down and sticking close to the hill. The lioness wondered what it had seen or heard. Whatever it was, the deer had managed to evade it.

The lioness became aware that her tail was swishing excitedly behind her. She felt alive with anticipation, hardly noticing the sporadic drops of frigid rain beginning to coalesce into a proper drizzle.

Then, suddenly, the brush and trees were gone from around her. She'd stepped into a clearing at the side of the hill. The blood trail wove erratically for a few steps, then made a hard turn to the right and vanished into a jaggedly shaped cave set into a lichen covered rock wall that dripped with water.

The lioness stopped, glancing around her.

The clearing she was standing in was perhaps twenty paces wide and deep, covered in tall grass and a few scraggly bushes. No trees had taken root here for whatever reason.

The fox caught up with her and glanced into the cave.

"Is it dead?" He whispered, reaching for his spear.

The lioness shrugged. Stepped forward and examined the mouth of the cave, arrow still nocked. It was a few feet taller than her, roughly triangular in shape and frosted with lichen like everything else. Water dripped languidly down from hanging plants that nearly obscured it from view.

The lioness tore a few aside. There was something about the nature of the stone that didn't look right to her. It was too flat, too perfectly smooth beneath all the erosion and lichen.

Feeling uneasy, she stepped into the mouth of the cave, squinting into the darkness. Beyond the mouth the roof of the cave rose well above her, like she'd just stepped through a-

The lioness stepped hastily back, fur bristling.

The fox jolted away too, dancing quickly over to the lioness' side, spear aimed uncertainly at the mouth of the cave.

"What is it?" He asked, voice high with anxious tension.

"A ruin," the lioness felt as though her chest was being clenched, "God...I almost went inside."

The fox blinked. Took a small step forward, staring hard at the hole. He let out a breath.

"Nothing happened though, right?" He asked.

"No." The lioness confirmed. But she'd heard stories...

For a moment the two of them were silent, a cold drizzle falling upon them.

"I think it's safe." The fox said, breaking the silence.

The lioness blinked, glancing over.

"How do you know?" She asked, a little warily.

"The deer's in there," the fox pointed to the blood trail, where it vanished off into darkness, "if anything was triggered then it would have gone off on the deer."

Oh. The lioness couldn't help but smile. She hadn't thought of that.

"You have a torch or a lantern or anything?" She asked.

The fox started to shake his head, then took off his pack and came out with a little cylinder made of ancient, clouded plastic. Inside, suspended in an oily, viscous liquid, were a few chunks of something translucent and vaguely blue tinted. The fox shook it and the chunks seemed to energize ever so slightly, a weak blue light emanating from them, amplified by the liquid.

"The hell is that?" The lioness asked, leaning over to examine it more closely.

"Fungi. It helps me sleep." The fox said with a wan smile.

"You didn't need it last night." The lioness said, before she could stop herself, and the fox turned partially away, looking stricken.

"Come on." She said, ignoring the fox's discomfort, and stepped carefully into the entrance of the cave, unable to suppress the instinctive shiver that ran through her.

It smelled musty and damp, like rot and decay. The fox stepped next to the lioness, shaking the plastic vial of fungi some more, the light just barely enough to see the blood trail in front of them.

"Um...before we go any further..." The fox said, catching the lioness gently by the elbow.

"Yeah?"

"About last night..." The fox gulped, "I mean...I guess I have to get this off my chest before we get killed or something..." He glanced quickly into the impenetrable darkness with a barely contained wince.

"We aren't getting killed." The lioness assured him, shifting from paw to paw. She didn't like lingering like this, clearly silhouetted against the entrance...

"I...I liked what we did," the fox mumbled, blushing, unable to look the lioness in the eyes, "just...it meant something, right? Between us?"

The lioness blinked. Of all the questions the fox could have sprung on her in the entrance of an ancient and very possibly boobytrapped ruin...

"You mean like...?" She blinked again, was caught off guard enough that her last word failed to manifest.

"Well..." The fox rolled the vial between his paws, blue light leaking from between his fingers, casting shadows across his anxious face, "I know that...sex means something different for your people but, um...I...I wanted to know what it meant...for us. I mean...it had to be more than just a single night, right?"

The lioness chewed the inside of her cheek, almost hard enough to draw blood.

"I think we'd better find that deer." She said, and turned away from the fox, letting a breath hiss from between her teeth.

She told herself to focus on following the blood trail. To not put her paws anywhere the deer hadn't been.

The fox kept carefully behind her, almost close enough to touch, arm stuck straight out in front of him, the vial trembling slightly as his paws shook.

The floor in front of her seemed to have been made of an odd plasticky material, back when this ruin had been new, but it had degraded and decayed to the point where all that was left was a few ragged strips of faded white and black, layered atop pitted, powdered stone.

The blood trail wove through the room, and the lioness chewed her cheek anxiously, until it hurt. Behind her she could hear the rain intensifying, echoing into the vast room they were in, seeming to solidify the darkness around them. The little bubble of blue light cast by the fox's vial seemed immensely fragile. The lioness found herself wondering just how old the fungi was. Whether or not it would cut out at some inconvenient time in the near future...right as they needed it most.

Then there were stairs. Made of the same smooth, seamless stone, channels worn into them by years of dripping water. The railing along the side of the stairs looked corroded and almost worn through. Some sections looked to be missing entirely. The lioness let out a breath, steeled her courage and started down, the fox's spare paw finding her shoulder. He was practically hugging her back now and she could feel him trembling. Still, he kept with her. Every step of the way.

At the first flight down, the lioness saw a jagged smear of crimson on the wall, rendered a strange greenish black by the light of the vial. If she had to guess then she'd say that the deer had tumbled down this flight of stairs and landed up against the wall before limping on.

A drop of icy water landed on the lioness' head and she flinched hard, eliciting a similar reaction from the fox before she realized just what it had been. She stopped and took a deep breath, swallowing hard before continuing on, deeper into the ruin.

A similar smear adorned the wall along the next flight of stairs. The deer seemed to be leaning hard against the wall as it navigated the stairs. The lioness proceeded carefully, watching the farthest fringe of the vial's light as it exposed more and more of the blood trail.

The fox's claws dug into her shoulder but she couldn't say she minded. The pain helped her focus, helped her keep her eyes straight ahead.

And suddenly they were at the bottom of the stairs, the floor here cracked and buckled in places, a hole gaping open before them. Down below the lioness could see the vague shape of what looked to be a massive metal pipe, tall enough for her to stand in, worn through with rust, its edges jagged and lost in shadow.

She edged past, following the near continuous dribble of blood over the stone, past large thickets of watery greenish mushrooms as big as her head. The silence was absolute, interrupted only by their footsteps. Still, the lioness couldn't relax. Even if she'd been told that the ruin was perfectly safe she didn't think she could have let her guard down. It was simply too dark, too quiet...

And then, in front of them, collapsed up against a tiny stone berm still flaked with a few vague remnants of yellow paint, was a dark, blood streaked shape.

The fox sighed with relief, the paw clutching the lioness' shoulder relaxing slightly.

"Thank God." He said.

The lioness put away her arrow and knelt down next to the dead deer, putting her paw on the creature's shoulder. It was still very faintly warm...hadn't been dead for long. The lioness quietly murmured to the deer, almost unaware she was doing it, the whispered words coming as naturally as her next breath.

"What are you saying?" the fox asked quietly, so his voice wouldn't echo.

"I'm thanking it." The lioness said, and unsheathed her knife, the fox doing the same.

They butchered the deer as quickly as they could, blood washing over their paws and arms. The fox held the vial carefully in his mouth, the fungi contained within provided just barely enough light for them to do a half decent job.

In the end the lioness packed both of the haunches away, as well as one of the racks of ribs and most of the choice organs. She left the pancreas and the rest to the fox. It felt only right.

Still, her decisions and thoughts remained harried by the prevalence of the darkness around her. She ruined her portion of the deer's pelt but decided that she wouldn't mind, just so long as she was able to get out of here before too long.

"You good?" She asked, straightening up, glancing uneasily around her, into the impenetrable blackness.

The fox, muzzle glowing a bright blue thanks to the proximity of the vial, nodded vigorously and stood up with a grunt, pack laden with venison. The deer's stripped remains lay before them in a puddle of cold, coagulating blood, glazed eyes staring as if to ask what it was doing there.

Had she had more time and patience the lioness might have cracked the deer's skull to get at the brains, but this wasn't an exercise she wanted to pursue in the pitch black middle of an ancient ruin.

Laboring under her load, the lioness glanced back to the fox, who now found it rather hard to remain as closely behind her as he wanted to. She caught him glancing back into the darkness, jumping slightly each time their shadows slid off of a nearby surface.

They made it to the stairs and moved up them as quickly as they could, huffing and puffing, glancing anxiously around them in all directions, ever so careful to place their paws only where the deer's blood had stained the decaying stone.

When they reached the top the lioness paused. It was a bit lighter up here, she could see the entrance at least, a triangle of light blazing at the opposite end of the room, perhaps a hundred paces away. The rain was still coming down. She took a step forward. Her foot hit water, perhaps a half inch of it.

The lioness recoiled, stepping back up onto the very top of the stairs. It was raised perhaps six inches above the main floor of the vast room and she treated it almost as a life-raft, staring helplessly down at the sheen of water now covering the pitted stone.

The rain had come in during their absence.

"Fuck." The lioness said, voice flat, concealing a growing sense of panic in the back of her mind.

"What?" The fox asked from behind her, balancing on the edge of the little platform.

"The trail's washed away," the lioness muttered, running her blood soaked paws over her ears, trying hard to remain calm, "we don't know where to step..." She shifted uncomfortably from paw to paw, eyes flitting across the room.

It was a long way...

"Maybe there aren't any traps left..." The fox said hopefully, but it was clear that he didn't believe his own words.

"We went kinda through the center of the room, right?" The lioness asked.

"I think so..."

"Let's try to retrace our steps," the lioness suggested, voice dripping with a false sense of calm, "if anything goes wrong then we'll just run."

The fox hesitated, then nodded. It was clear that their options were limited.

"Alright." He agreed, then grabbed the lioness' shoulder.

She glanced back at him.

"What?"

"I..." He hesitated, "nothing. Let's go."

The lioness stepped down onto the stone, paw splashing through the water once more. Here and there she could see little flecks of blood swimming in the water, just barely visible in the tiny light cast by the vial, but for the most part the trail was obliterated entirely.

It would be guesswork past the first few steps.

The lioness stepped gingerly forward, stomach clenching each time her paw hit stone. But time and time again nothing happened. The darkness around them remained empty and still but for the hiss of the rain.

The lioness swallowed hard, looking down at the next bit ahead of her. The stone was unclear, covered by a strip of the odd black and white plasticky stuff, bunched up in the middle.

She stepped carefully over, aware as she did so that she was trembling from head to toe. Her paw touched stone. For a breathless moment she waited. Nothing happened.

Turning carefully back around, shuffling her paws, unwilling to touch so much as a centimeter of ground she hadn't already cleared, she reached out a paw to help the fox.

He was shaking too, eyes wide and the vial in his paw trembling. He took the proffered paw and stepped over the plasticky material, tail kept well above the ground.

The two of them stood there for a long moment, shaking, hearts racing and paws clutched together. The lioness glanced to the triangular opening. They were close enough now that she could see the silvery needles of rain lancing down to the ground outside.

"Almost there." She assured the fox with a nervous chuckle.

The fox managed to nod.

They continued, the lioness taking the largest steps she could manage, loathe to put herself in any more contact with the ground than she absolutely had to. The fox followed her lead, but his legs were shorter and he almost had to hop, the light from the vial making alarming leaps as he progressed, sometimes drenching in blackness the very places where the lioness was about to step.

She stared hard at the ground. Focused entirely on the stone. She'd make it out of here, she promised herself. She'd walk from this place and go back home and never delve into a ruin ever again.

She'd-

And suddenly she was in the doorway. She glanced behind her, to the fox. He stared, blinking in the light, rain blowing into his face. The lioness stepped out into the clearing, hardly minding the rain slashing against her, arms falling slack against her sides, a relieved grin splitting her face.

The fox stepped after her, stuffing the vial into a pocket. He let out a long breath, shoulders slumping, and upturned his face into the rain.

"Fuck..." The lioness breathed, stepping further from the opening, "at least we found the deer."

The fox straightened his pack and stepped forward, a strangely determined look crossing his face. The lioness began to ask how he was doing and suddenly the fox was kissing her, hard on the mouth.

Her eyes widened and for a moment she was surprised, then an almost celebratory feeling of joy seemed to uncork itself within her. She kissed the fox back, hugging him close, the rain driving down all around them.

When she broke free, still trembling, still breathing hard, the lioness couldn't suppress a little laugh.

"We..." She had to pause to catch her breath, "we ought to go set up camp in the trees." She said, and the fox nodded mutely, eyes bright with all kinds of relief.

They staggered uphill to the thicket that was bordered on one side by a craggy stone wall and one two others by fallen boulders. There, on the damp, mossy ground, the lioness laid down her pack and slowly collapsed into a sitting position against the side of one of the boulders, a full body tremor passing through her as the full danger of the situation they'd just escaped settled home in her mind.

Back in the room it had mostly been obscured by a fog of adrenaline. She'd been scared, sure, but she'd also been busy surviving. Now that she was out of it...

"That wasn't worth it." She said after a moment, looking from the venison on her pack to the ground in front of her.

The fox was silent for a long moment, then edged a little closer, laying a paw on the lioness' shoulder. He squeezed gently. The lioness glanced over, putting a paw over top of the fox's.

"Was that what you wanted to do back in the ruin?" She asked. "Kiss me?"

The fox looked conflicted for a moment, then nodded very slightly.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I was just..." He shook his head, an odd, guilty look flashing across his face.

"Aza." She said after a moment.

The fox blinked.

"Huh?"

"My name," the lioness said quietly, "I think you asked me earlier."

The fox settled back against the boulder next to the lioness. He was still shaking, but less so.

The lioness put her arms around him. The fox shuffled closer.

They sat still and watched the rain fall.