FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

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Hello, and welcome to the Hockey Hunk! It is nice to see all you here (to see you nice!) and I'm pleased to have this story out once more. Spring is in the air, though it's autumn in Kirk City...interesting conundrum there! Hopefully this chapter intrigues you, and I look forward to seeing your feedback!

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"I once saw a picture of a fox from China, some young kid, who had attached clothes pins to his head furs, strung from this kind of a...sock drying apparatus he hung from the wall, and he was using it to stop himself from nodding off while studying for his exams."

The fox's ears flicked back and forth.

"You're shitting me," he said.

"I kid you not!" I chuckled. "Must've been one of those funny pages online..."

I browse too many of them. I'm like a filthy-minded high school kid browsing memes on my computer when I should be reading about the troubles of the world and keeping up with the current trends in cycloplegia.

I have no life.

"And if it wasn't a fake, it really was...to keep studying past being tired?" the fox asked.

"I think so, yes," I nodded thoughtfully. "They take education a bit more seriously than we do here, I assume."

"Ridiculous," the fox mused.

"They don't give second chances, I understand," I continued my tale, "you get a single opportunity to pass the exams and if you don't...then you don't."

"Sent to the camps for hard labor as a punishment," the fox said roughly between bites on his sandwich.

Ahem.

"Isn't that more of a North Korea kind of a thing?" I suggested. "In this context?"

"Whatever they do, I still prefer our brand of freedom to theirs," he said. "Whatever the cost."

He sounded like a man who'd had to pay a lot of for his share of freedom, and I had heard a little about his background from the computer company, saying he was a war veteran on a re-education training program, and hence they could offer us a good deal if we wanted it, because they got a subsidy. Of course my partner Hal, always careful with his purse strings, was immediately ready to seize to opportunity to spare a few bucks. There was that, and the fact he'd come to visit the store earlier with his soldier friend, too, the one with the mutilated face and no paw - not something that was easy to forget on any day. He'd been walking with a stick then, though I had not seen him with one during the time he'd come to work with us every day. Some sort on an injury, I presumed.

"Expensive kind of freedom, this American one," I carried on his thought into my words.

"No shit," the fox rumbled.

He looked tired. Foxes were generally thought to be...what was the word...just in their looks, anyway, you generally thought a fox was perky, even if they weren't at all like that in character. You just had to think of something like that when you saw one, at least that's what the general consensus seemed to be. This fox sitting here and eating a roll with pieces of lettuce falling from it to the tabletop, he didn't look like he could jump up and down and do an impromptu song and dance number.

He didn't look wily either, like the one called...oh God what was he called...Reinek-ke? Something in the old stories my mother's mother used to tell to me when I was little, stories she had heard from her parents when she had been but a cub herself, having arrived to the United States via Ellis Island on one of the big steamers from Europe as a tiny bundle in my great-grandmother's arms.

"Indeed," I said.

I didn't know what else to say. Trying to make the world a better place to live over a quick working lunch wasn't really what I had in mind. The chatter about bizarre news had been much more entertaining before we ended up on this tangent. I had devoured my sandwich by then already, only left with coffee I was savoring with every sip.

"Can I get you a drink as well?!" I asked. "A coffee or a juice, perhaps?"

His ears perked curiously at my offer. Maybe he didn't expect it. I kept on smiling.

"My treat."

"Well I don't know...are you having anything?" he circled.

"I'm craving for some apple juice," I replied.

He shrugged.

"I'll have one as well, then."

"Splendid!"

I made a quick tour of return to the service counter to fetch the treats, which my favorite otter hostess served into two glasses that fogged up with the cold beverage being poured into them. I paid them and re-appeared on the table where the fox was sitting, looking bored.

"Here you go!" I said, putting the glass down in front of him.

"Thank you."

"Call me Patrick," I flicked my ears amiably. "I should've offered before, already."

"Juice, or first name basis?" he stated.

"Both," I smiled. "Mister Crane sounds awfully formal."

"Heh."

"Unless you'd prefer to, of course."

"I'll be fine with Patrick, "he said. When I hear myself called Mister Michaels, I wonder who that is."

"Tate it is then," I nodded in approval. "Think we'll have to be quick with these, however. My 12-o'clock is coming in and it's a tricky cause of a frog with strabismus, and that's always a double booking."

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