FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Dynamics

Part one of four

---

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Cougar

_ _

_ _

Mark exhaled, settling in for an afternoon of chilling out. The anthro cougar, finally, didn't have much to do, though he had worked hard since finding a job as an HVAC installer and an apprentice (in training) technician. Of course, that meant that sometimes he had to work weekends and do the grind as the lowest guy on the ladder, though he didn't mind that. It had let things go as they were meant to, after moving out of the family home not more than six months after his sister had also left.

He put his feet up on the coffee table, his hind paws left bare, though it was not as if he had anything to worry about there. He had a small, one-bedroom apartment and no one to bother him, friends to hang out with and, well...it was proving to be tricky for their schedules to all line up, though they made it work. It was just one of the many things about being an adult, to be fair, that he had to deal with. Everyone had to deal with that.

He'd been working at the HVAC place for just over a year and a half by that time, pretty comfortable in the role, though the cougar was still glad for the time off. His tail lazily swung back and forth over the edge of the sofa as he kept his hind paws up, though Mark would never have anticipated the text that was to come through that day.

Or just how it was going to change his life.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and his ears twitched as he fished it out, his brow furrowing lightly.

"Hm... Oh!"

Mark thumbed the touch screen, scrolling open the messaging app. But he never would have anticipated that Mercy, his older sister, was going to message him that day, after she had been out of touch for so long. It wasn't that they had a bad relationship or anything like that; they had just kind of found it more difficult to stay in touch when they had both gone out and off and done their own thing in life. Life was just busy - and that applied to many anthros, not just them.

The message was pretty standard, asking how he was - then got interesting. Mercy was going to be in town the next week for a festival that she was attending, which she did rather a lot but all over the country, going from state to state, and was asking if he wanted to meet up. The cougar's lips spread into a grin, showing a flash of white teeth as he let out a happy growl that was very feline-like in nature.

His tail flicked and, even if he should really have sent a quick message back, it was too tempting to reconnect instantly. Dialling her number (flicking open the contacts app and scrolling to her name was clearly going to take too much effort, old habits dying hard), he held the phone up to his ear with his tail swishing back and forth. The rasp of his fur against the sofa seemed obnoxiously loud as the phone buzzed and rang in his ear.

"C'mon, Mercy, you were just on the phone."

A click of his sister, finally, picking up sounded down the line.

"Mark?"

He grinned without even thinking about it.

"Mercy? Hey!"

"Hey, you!" The cougar said back down the line to her younger brother, though Mark could almost imagine just how her tail would be flicking back and forth, always excitable and bold in her emotions. "What's going on? Aren't you working today?"

"Nah," he said. "I've got a day off. How's everything going? I didn't think you'd be anywhere near here anytime soon!"

It was easy to slip into natural conversation with her, as if they had never been in different homes at all, though it had, of course, been necessary for both of them to move on and grow into themselves as adults too. Her tone was a little deeper than he remembered it to be and he relaxed back into the sofa as they chatted, a little tension that Mark had not even paid due attention to before melting from his shoulders. Speaking with his sister just had that way of relaxing him.

"No, but things changed, you know, some things happened and I've been training," Mercy went on. "So, you know how I was doing the re-enactment stuff before?"

He made a noise of assent.

"Mm-hm."

"So... I kind of got even more into it, 'cause, you know, I was really good at it." It was easy for him to hear the pride in her voice, though it was not as if Mercy had ever been restrained at all in that kind of thing, no. "I did the sword fighting and acted a spear holder for some time, did some paw-to-paw combat... It was hard but at least I had all the fitness from sports before too, right?"

Mark chuckled.

"Yeah, you were always into the more intensive stuff... What, you did hockey and roller hockey, football, hm... That whole rock-climbing era, boxing..."

"Hey, hey, hey," she cut in, laughing the whole time. "You don't have to go through the whole list, that's not the point! Anyway, I kind of got into the armoured combat portion of the SCA and, well...it's just what I was made for. There's a whole load of training to go into armoured combat, lots of safety stuff, especially when we're using real blades and gear, but I passed all the qualifications and tests to fight in the heavy armour category. Now it is _literally_my job to do this all day - and I love it!"

He smiled.

"That's so great, Mercy, I'm so pleased you found something that works so well for you," he said, genuinely meaning it. "I never thought you'd end up doing something like that for a living though, but it's not as if I ever thought about jobs like that existing either. That's really cool. Wow, heck of a lot more interesting than me working as an installer."

He laughed but he didn't mind it too much. It was interesting, to him, to work on the technical aspects - but that was the sort of thing that would have bored the pants off Mercy. They were just different in that way.

"Nah, I'm glad you found something that works for you too," she said easily, smoothing things over without boasting or bragging. "Not like I was any much good in school anyway, just couldn't sit still long enough but school isn't for everyone."

"Do you do tournaments and stuff?" He asked, his interest more than a little perked. "Like, real ones with rankings, not just performances? Though those are cool too, I used to watch the jousting and stuff. Hey, you should try that!"

"Oh, I'll definitely pick up a lance one day," Mercy said, as if she was confident that there could be no question at all about that. "But I want to really excel, yeah, in the tournaments first. I've got a lot of catching up to do in the rankings because I started late in the season after qualifying. I'm up to the rank of Knight though."

"How does that work with going around the festivals and such though?" He probed. "Do you get a hotel or what?"

"Oh, I have a van, it's really comfortable, did it all up myself," Mercy said with a hint of pride in her tone. "So, I can park up and have everything I need right there, even a tiny kitchenette in there. I need the big gas bottles filled from time to time to heat the living quarters but it still works. It tends to be more than warm enough for the majority of the year anyway."

His muzzle wrinkled slightly. He didn't think he could live in a van like that, all cramped and such... But it was Mercy's life, not his, and it wasn't up to him to make judgement on things like that.

"It's cool that you can do what you love," he said instead. "I feel like you're doing so much better than me sometimes."

"Nah, bro," she said. "The thing is, I don't make all that much money yet, though I hope things will pick up, there's lots of extra things we can do. It's all the fuel, the food, the travelling, but everyone is great, everyone helps each other out, and I'd definitely do it all over again to keep going as an SCA performer. Maybe I could even do things on YooToob later on!"

"Or TokTik?"

"Yeah!" She chirped - and Mark could hear the smile in her voice. "I don't know how to work that social media stuff but I'm sure I can learn, there is a lot of downtime around here and I think there's usually free Wi-Fi that I could use for anything not covered by my phone internet."

Mark's lips parted automatically, wanting to say that he could help her out. But maybe it was the case that Mercy did not want to be helped out, for his sister seemed to be out there living her best life.

He'd help if he needed to, though he was most likely overreacting.

"Well, always let me know if you need anything, anytime, okay?" Mark said, trying to put things as delicately as possible. "But, yeah, I definitely want to come by and say hi. What about the rest of our family though? I don't know what everyone's doing but maybe Auntie Sue is free..."

"Hm..." There was a note of conflict in her tone, audible even down the phone line. "I think she's going to a wedding of a friend, I spoke to her the other weekend. I'll check in with her though. It would be nice to see her again, maybe John."

John was one of their cousins on their father's side, though none of that side of the family either had heard from their father after, well... After things had gone pear-shaped with the divorce and him leaving them. Tom, as they had taken to referring to him as his name, allowing them some kind of separation from the male who had thrown their lives and their family into disarray. Sometimes, Mark thought of him. But he didn't have to. He had been so far away from them and so distanced for so long that he was unsure if he would even have recognised the cougar as his father anymore.

They, notably, did not speak of their mother. Even though Mark still tried to stay vaguely in touch with her, their relationship most definitely would have been branded as "low contact" and nothing more than that. Marsha, as their mother was called and as Mercy preferred to refer to her as, if not something worse, was high maintenance in the sense that he always felt like he had to be on-guard with her, always on edge, always anticipating something going wrong. Still, Mark didn't know what else he could have done, considering the fact that her outbursts had never seemed to have any rhyme or reason for them. Things had only gotten worse when Mercy had moved out, though that explosion too had been a long time coming.

Maybe they all just didn't get on together, the children and the mother, as adults. But he hoped that things could be better with his mom one day, for he had better memories of their younger years, how she had taken them to the parks and done her best for them. He had seen her going without meals and only realised, in hindsight, that that had been because she didn't want to deprive her children of food in the case of them being short.

She had tried, she really had. Yet he had never gotten a satisfactory reason for why things had gone sour.

Mercy cleared her throat.

"Hey, did you hear that Ivan," she moved the conversation on, "started college too? He was always the smart one. I kind of wish I could have done things like that, science-y stuff, but there didn't seem to be enough time for me to concentrate and learn how to do it all."

Ivan was another cousin on their mother's side, Auntie Sue's son, though Auntie Sue had a daughter too, Hannah. They had been close at one point and it seemed like Mercy was staying in better contact and touch with them than Mark was, though that was all beside the point. He had never been too close with Auntie Sue like Mercy had, but the cougar had perhaps wanted to find a mother figure that her own mother was not quite filling the role of.

"You are smart, you know that," he argued back lightly. "School is... Ugh, they were never all that good around here, were they?"

"Are they anyway?" He could hear the frustration in Mercy's voice. "They're all about one system and only one way of doing things, learning things, we all know that... But there's no way for them to change anything either when there's not enough money, not enough teachers, not even of anything."

Mark hummed, commiserating with her. That made sense, even if he had done all he could to just get through it and deal with it.

"Yeah, but at least you found your thing. I like what I'm doing but I don't know if it's my thing yet, you know?"

"Yeah, I know. It's... Maybe you'll find it by exploring a bit more." She chuckled. "Sorry, Mark, I can't say that I know what you've been up to lately. But I'll hear all about that when we catch up. Do you know where Three Oaks fairground is?"

They made the arrangements, setting up for him to meet her at the fairground, which he did, in all fairness, need a little help with directions for, the Friday of the next week when she would have the most free time between her shows. However, he would be able to stay there for the long weekend, taking a couple of his vacation days to make sure everything would be covered, though he was sure that his work would not need him. Things had gone a little on the quiet side, though he was still getting plenty of experience. The earlier he booked his time off the better for them, because they could then more easily work around him.

He was glad, at least, that his workplace was understanding like that. There were a lot worse places to work, he was sure.

Continued in part two...