FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

I'm a stupid little bitch. Just a dumb nag on fire. A witless shit-dropper and a fuckin' chore. I'm the dumb bitch just waiting for a chance to break loose and stomp your poor ass into ashes if you give me the inch of slack to do it, and I'm a she-devil that deserves mostly a good beating before I'm put down for the good of good folks, God help 'em. I don't deserve any more kindness than the quick death my kind denied to somebody's friend, somebody's wife, somebody's son. No, I don't deserve any kindness now.

I still don't know all those words, exactly, but I learned that all of them mean the same thing.

My name is Clover and it's nice to meet you. That's how you start when you talk with people, when you're not just being talked at. I never got any other name growing up, so I can be Clover just fine, and that's what you can call me. Thank you for listening to me. I don't know how to make my story interesting, but I'll tell it as long as you stay to hear it.

In the rodeo and the farm I've lived in so far, there are humans in as different sizes to each other as me and the people I grew up beside. The smallest human I've seen was very small, and I don't remember her well, but I think she was just as tall as me when I was still at my smallest. She's the one who came up with a name for me. I don't remember that's what happened, but I was told it. All I know that I remember is that she smiled a lot at me when no one else did.

But the biggest human I've seen, I see every day now. She's even taller than I am. The hair on top of her head is pink and 'queer,' I've heard it called, but trust me, pink isn't how human hair grows naturally. She wasn't the first human I met, and I mean really met, but she's the nicest. Her name is Rosalie. It was very nice to meet her.

“Shit, too early to be conscious… hey, Clover. Are you up already, girl? How are you feeling this early? Better than me?"

It's much earlier than Rosalie usually comes to talk with me. She's still rubbing her eyes like some of the other humans do when they come this early, and her top clothes smell the same as the other humans', too. Like something fresh and wild. Someone else could tell you exactly what the smell is—I can say it's nice, but I don't know where it's from. She doesn't smell like her clothes have already taken on the scent of her shoulders, at least.

There are no Miltanks for her to stumble around this morning as she unlocks my pen. Usually she comes in here after they've been taken care of, but we won't stay at this farm as long as that today. No. Today, she opens my pen without putting the steel and rope on my face and neck.

“There you go," she says for me to really listen to. “Now let's get out of here before Harley and Apollo come back with all their friends. We'll find somewhere a little more comfortable."

I don't have the words she does, but I speak back to her the way I learned to with a nuzzle of my chin over her cleaner neck, then a big nod with my whole head.

Harley is the younger human on this farm. She doesn't treat me poorly, but I know that she and Apollo, her shortest friend, don't think highly of me either. I can't talk to them the way they can to each other. And they prefer sharing their affection in private, too.

Rosalie takes the coiled steel and rope collar with her, but she only holds them by her side as we walk together past the farmhouse and into the training yard. The path is mud again today. I walk through it loudly, though I don't mean to. Even Rosalie makes—I think it's a sloshing noise, is what they call it. A sucking of earth for each step, and a noise we make together this time.

“The trailer will be here in another hour, so I'm told," Rosalie says. We keep walking while she talks, mostly in a circle around the yard. “So this could be our last chance to speak candidly. Sorry, do you know what 'candidly' means?"

I nod my whole head. I'm lying.

She smiles. “It means talking without worrying about who might be listening."

I bump her shoulder, and she just giggles. She says, “Point is, this is where things get harder for you again. I've never met that girl you're going to. I still can't promise how she's going to treat you, no matter how I teach her to."

Her voice lowers to something she's trying to keep from sounding sad.

“You're the one who's going to have to be gentle with them—the better person, maybe for a long time. You've got to remember to. That girl and her family are going to be scared of you because they've never met anyone like you. They've only heard bad stories. You've got to act nicer than their fears, and it won't be fair."

Most days on this farm, Rosalie's told me about the adventures she had in other lands. She used to travel. She told me how she met Jojo, her best friend, in a cave so deep and dark she could hardly see. Years after that, she found a nice lady she fell so much in love with that she put the lady on her arm. Marriage, too—she told me what that can be. It sounds nice. She got to meet people as she liked, and she told me about any I wanted to know more about.

She asked how many siblings I had, too, and I couldn't tell her that, so she didn't ask much more about my past. Only how I thought about things now.

Her first day here was the other time she talked about harder things with me. Very quietly, so that it was just between us, she told me that was hired to come here for training. She said, 'There's a girl named Veronica who I was asked here to help. She's expected to be in control of you, and we've got to get that idea out of her head. But neither of us will meet her for a few more days, so let's get to know each other before then.'

That's a secret reveal, isn't it? I think that's something interesting I have to tell you. I know some secrets humans don't, too.

'It's something important I learned,' she told me then. 'Good trainers don't train you guys; they train humans.'

But I still don't know why she called me a guy. I'm really not.

We quit pacing, but it's at my lead. The hills are waking up again. Usually I don't get to see it but through gates and windows, but now I'm one of the first people the sun peeks over to from the trees. The grass is still cold and wet, a bright fog still rolls distant through the treeline, and through all the warm new yellow and greens and reds rising together, there's a warmth rising in me with them.

Maybe that doesn't sound as beautiful as it looks. Maybe this time it's just for me to take in.

Rosalie watches, too, but she takes the steel and rope collar and holds it up beside me. She says, “This is your last chance to run."

Jojo pokes his head out from his bag to say hello here. He doesn't really say anything, actually, but his eyes are much more expressive than mine.

“You can keep as much faith in me as you'd like," Rosalie says, “but sometimes faith isn't enough. Seriously. I can't promise you anything that might happen if you risk going."

She wants me to run. I don't think she's even trying to hide that from her tone. Jojo's eyes don't hold the same, um—gravity, I think it is, but they bend and slope and he puts some kind of a sparkle behind them to say what he means.

Instead of running, I pull closer to Rosalie and nuzzle what of her face I can. That's how I say what I mean, and I know it can mean different things, but I know this time Rosalie understands me.

She understands, but she doesn't move.

She doesn't rush to her vehicle, and we don't get away from here without the others.

Rosalie just takes my nuzzle in one hand, then pulls away and faces me. She says, “Hey. This is something humans normally do when one is right about to leave, but we won't have the chance later, so here—"

And she puts her whole arms around me. She leans down for it, and her shoulders wrap loose against my chin. One hand rubs my mane up and down, and the other pats it gently just above.

Jeez, I—I know what a hug is.

But I lay into it as much as I can, too. Rosalie's even warmer than I am.

“Here's to being friends," she says. “And to kicking ass together."

Then she puts the collar back on my face. We keep walking after that, and I pick our pace. I get to watch the whole sunrise.

It seems very soon when the trailer comes for me. Rosalie hears it before I do, and she whispers it to me before she leads me back to the road, rope in her hand and distance between us again.

Around the bend of the farmhouse, another human I met is already waiting by the road. He's the one always smiling no matter who he's talking to, though. The one with a fake scent layered under his clothes that he thinks covers up his sweat farther beneath.

It doesn't.

I don't think I'd need to tell him that even if I could.

“Good morning, Rosalie! Good morning, Clover. How are you two lovely ladies feeling this fine day?"

His smile reaches his eyes today, too, but he's very good at putting most of his face into the look. He's the most polite human I've met.

“I told you, Lewis, I'm engaged," Rosalie says to him. A tone's in her voice that she's used only for him the last few days. “And honestly, I just don't think Clover's interested, either."

Lewis lays a hand over the breast of his scented shirt and scoffs. No matter how polite he stays, after one or two meetings, no one ever offers the same politeness back to him.

“Damn, and after I'm such a gentleman," he says. “My heart may lean elsewhere already, but that's just hurtful."

Rosalie splits her attention between Lewis and the trailer as it turns and rolls just off the way of the road, rumbling to a stop in the grass in front of the barn. To Lewis, she says, “This is me being nice, man. I have way stronger words for anyone else with the gall to tell me it's a 'good morning.'"

“Oh, then don't you worry," Lewis says with a chuckle that goes away fast. “You wouldn't be the first to use those words against me."

Ahead of the trailer, in the truck guiding it, another man steps out in high boots and a real crunch beneath them. His shirt's wrinkled despite the fresh detergent I can already smell off of it. There's a permanent curl at its bottom, wrapped upward and inward over his faded blue pants, because those are the clothes he's worn for every year I've seen him.

I don't know his name. We've never met. I just know he's paid to do whatever another man tells him to.

This man walks closer and doesn't say hello to anyone. He nods to Rosalie and Lewis, and I'm glad that he doesn't to me. He just takes the locks and latches on the doors of the trailer and bangs them open, heaving the doors clear and pulling out a softer ramp from the floor.

Lewis wipes his hand at his jaw, saying quieter to Rosalie, “Hey, uh—how nervous has she been?"

Rosalie chuckles nicer, “Not as nervous as me."

Lewis wipes over his cheek next, nodding. He says, “Would you mind if I lead her in? And, uh—you think she would mind?"

Rosalie looks just to me for the answer. She raises her brow, but her opinion's not in the look of her face. It's just what I want that she waits for.

Today, I'm not afraid of who might watch me express myself. I nod toward Lewis. Rosalie doesn't have to tell him what I mean. The smaller smile hiding under his hand tells me what he really thinks, too.

“Here, first," Rosalie says, handing the rope dangling from my collar to him. “This is what you're supposed to use. Don't ever tug. Whenever you think there's a good reason to, you're wrong."

It's a battered voice that speaks up after her, older and something that sounds like a cage in its throat, as the man by the trailer says, “Christ, don't go spoiling the dumb nag."

Rosalie keeps her voice just as nice and proud as she says back to him, “Don't tell me how to do my fucking job, old man."

The man raises his hands, shrugs, then creaks open the door on the side of the trailer. Rosalie steps out of the way for Lewis and I, and Lewis waits for my next steps before he walks with me. It's once we start up the ramp that he lowers his voice to me.

“I know I haven't been here as often as Rosalie has," he says, “but I'm going to keep my promise. I'll do right by you and Ronnie, okay? Might be hard for you at first, but I'll be here, too. You got me."

We step onto a rubber mat laid out in the trailer, my hooves squishing soft each step into where I'm staying for the ride. The walls and the ceiling are a metal that's not supposed to give way to the flames down my back, grated at my eye level so that I still get some light through the black. It's the only vehicle they've ever put me in.

Lewis unclips the rope from my collar while he whispers, “Please go easy on her."

“Closing it behind you, Clover," Rosalie says louder, sliding the ramp back up and shutting the doors in the back.

Lewis steps back out the single door beside me, climbing down and gripping it with one hand while with the other he bundles a fist and jabs his thumb upward. Whatever it means, he does it with his smaller smile. And closing his door next, looking away from me, he calls, “Good morning, Harley! Good morning, Missus O'Pine."

It's the older of the two he's noticed that says from somewhere behind me, “She's all set in there now?"

Those two should be milking the group of Miltanks on this farm by now, but some humans like to say goodbye out of habit, I think.

“We're all ready to go," Rosalie says. “If you want to say goodbye for now to her, now's the time."

Harley's the one who comes up on my other side, looking to me through the grated windows, wiping her hands on her pants. Apollo's by her side. They don't say anything, and I don't really know what they're thinking.

Rosalie comes up by their side shuffling a leather jacket over her arms, patting one hand on Harley's shoulder but looking to me as she says, “I'll be right behind you the whole time, Clover. You ready to go meet Veronica?"

I shake the flames higher down my back. Rosalie smiles big again.

“Then let's ride."

There's more shuffling and noises all around me: Rosalie tromps out of my sight, the door of the truck opens and slams shut from the other direction, and Lewis calls from past the back corner, “Damn, look at that. Can I ride with you?"

“Only got one helmet," Rosalie says back to him.

“That's all right—"

“No it's not."

Harley and Apollo are the ones who keep quiet. After another simple few seconds, they both just turn back toward the barn, Harley waving over her shoulder and muttering to me, “Good luck."

Another door slams ahead of me from the other side and my trailer shakes a second as its truck rumbles awake. Rosalie's vehicle wakes up even louder behind me. At their lead, we go.

The road gives a breeze through my window as we ride. It's a very bright day, so every tree we pass flickers my sunlight, too. I can't watch much of the sky anymore, but I can see the plains and the hills stretch much farther than I've ever been from my cage. It's a strange feeling. What are the words for it? The sight is wonderful, but—my view isn't, I think.

It really does feel like the view of just a dumb nag.

We drive down a road all empty except for us. The hills rise, and so do we. The truck thumps off of the road onto dirt, and then so do I. The smell of feces and hay smeared into dirt clings back into my cage, and I pull away from the window.

I'm glad someone's still listening to me.

The truck stops. Rosalie stops. Doors creak open fast, and Lewis is the first person I hear on this new farm, too, as his door slams shut.

“Happy birthday, Ronnie! Oh, come on, what's that look for?"

The softer steps of Rosalie's boots tap behind me. I squeeze back around, facing the doors, and she's the first person I get to see here as she opens them. Her helmet is tucked on top of her vehicle again, and she swings the doors wide and clatters the ramp down for me before she comes up here with me to clip the rope back onto my collar.

“Give them a good first impression. They won't be as nice, but give them a good first impression," she whispers. “It goes a long way."

We walk. The ramp still has mud tracks caked over it, but the ground is drying faster. I can step easily—

Him. Oh, please, no.

“Happy birthday, honey! What do you think of that? Is it a good surprise?"

There are four more humans standing in a row before me—a girl, two adults clinging by her shoulders, and a man who isn't supposed to be here. He works at the rodeo. He's not supposed to be here.

There's a fear in the girl's eyes I've never seen in a human before. She's not scared of me. She's scared with me. I'm scared? I'm terrified.

The man has a gun.

“Hi there, Veronica. I'm Rosalie, and this is Clover," Rosalie says at my side. “She's here for you two to make friends with each other. You want to say hello to her?"

The girl—Veronica—she doesn't say hello. She pulls her hands into a grip over her chest, and she mutters, “I don't—"

Her lips confuse the words she's trying to say. All the rest she gets out is, “This isn't a good surprise."

The woman over her shoulder leans down to her, but I can hear her fine as she says, “Veronica, show some gratitude. We're not going to let it do anything to you, all right? You don't have to be scared of it."

Lewis comes up beside the rest, offering his hand to the man with the gun. He's still smiling.

“Mister, uh, Leroy, was it? Good to see you again, good to, uh—what are you doing here?"

And that man answers, “Just here for some nag training, son."

The other man, around Veronica's shoulder, clears his throat and pulls an envelope out from his shirt pocket, walking closer than I ever want him to toward Rosalie and I. He keeps his voice low, like he thinks Rosalie is the only one who can hear him, and he gives her the envelope as he says, “Miss Favreau, Tammy and I would both like to thank you for coming out all this way and for your work done thus far in making sure the Ponyta is as tame as we need it. This is the full pay we agreed to, don't worry—but it turns out we won't be needing your assistance anymore."

All the words are a lump in my stomach and I know what they all mean. This man is not polite. He's horrible.

“Mister Henderson," Rosalie says just as low, “I understand how you might not think much of my training so far from what anyone may have told you, but the bulk of my work doesn't take place just with Clover—"

“Rosalie, I didn't mean to accuse you of anything," the man says. “I'm not patronizing you. I'm just letting you know what Tammy and I have already decided. Our gratitude is sincere."

“Sir, I thought you were looking to hire a professional because you understood how important my work is for Clover and Veronica both."

“That's exactly right. And now we've hired another professional with further experience."

And I'm supposed to just stand here and be the stupid little bitch all over again. I'm supposed to stop squealing after they hit me enough times. I'm supposed to follow them wherever they drag me and let them onto my body for their photographs and horrible broken smiles.

“I'm not here to make a quick buck, Henderson, I'm here to do my job to the greatest extent I am able, and you are interfering badly."

“Please don't make this difficult, Rosalie. You're spoiling Ronnie's birthday."

Lewis comes closer, too, and he says, “Listen, Dad, we all want the best for Ronnie, but I really don't think it's a good idea for Leroy there to—"

And the man in front of me jabs a finger in Lewis's face, and his voice grows firm. He says, “Lewis, not now. I am not in the mood."

“This is more important than not being in the mood, Dad—"

“Get in the house. Now."

I'm supposed to live alone forever. They won't let me have Rosalie or even Lewis or anyone.

How can I be brave alone?

The woman over Veronica's shoulder pushes her forward and says, “Go on, honey, it's all yours. Happy birthday!"

“She looks scared," Veronica says, hands still curled. “Can't we just let her go? She doesn't want to be here."

“Don't be ridiculous, it's tame now. Rosalie and Lewis have both touched it. It doesn't burn people. Don't you want to pet it?"

I can't be this brave alone.

Rosalie spits back to the envelope man, “Henderson, I don't care about the goddamn money. You are putting your daughter in more danger than you fucking know without my help."

“You're fired, Rosalie. I thought I made that clear."

Rosalie can't help me and now the girl is getting closer, and she's coming up to me with her hand out and she's still just as scared as I am—

And she touches me. She screams.

I didn't mean to.

The envelope man takes her and dives away. The woman screams, too. The man with the gun—he pulls it off from his shoulder.

“It's still fuckin' wild!"

“God, shoot it!"

The rope falls from Rosalie's hand. It's her eyes I see last. She's scared, too.

“Go!"

I run.

I don't know how to tell you the way I run. As fast as I can? Fast as the wind?

I don't know how fast wind is.

I never thought about this moment before, and yet I've got some sort of idea of how it should go. I should feel free all of a sudden. The earth should feel like it stretches forever before me, and like the whole world is mine to roam. I do feel some of that, but mostly I feel like no matter where I go or what happens to me, anything would be better than turning ar