FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Starlight reaches down from the heavens and brushes the windswept grasses. Empty air has yet to dust morning's dew onto their bowing blades, and the light crawls along it, searching, seeking to grasp anything it can. It is only light, but its phantasmic fingers stretch, desperate, and caress the green, painting silver into its shimmer until those fingers, with a quiver of fear and a sigh of relief, tickle the restless ripples of a small, still pool at the base of a chuckling falls. The water giggles at the light's ineffectual touch, defying its need. White-silver glances off the surface and gasps out a pained flicker of ecstatic agony as restless fish are revealed, juxtaposed beneath the narcissist moon.

When you are starlight, you can touch anything that can be seen - what touches you?

A crimson tear thrashes at the light again as it dive-bombs the water's surface. Red threads through the depths, jellyfish tentacles unraveling and following the flow from the point of impact to the next stage of the falls, leaving in its wake a lie of permanence; a wound, stretching until it is unbearable, and then fading and leaving the bearer relieved at the absence, furious at the duration, and hollowed out by the loss of this proof of life.

Blue and dark as the sky above him, a figure watches that thread weave into nothing, ignoring both the starlight's anger at having its view eclipsed and the jealousy of the moon. His dull, yellow eyes are empty, and his lupine mouth is closed and devoid of life. An already-fading trace of scarlet paints its way from the corner of one eye to his damp, black nose, where another drop trembles, caught between gravity and the need to hold on to something... forever.

The wolf's face bends to the water, and the threat of falling is nullified by forced assimilation. There is no fall. The drop was never asked if it wanted to join its brother - but an uncaring entity acts, and thus a red ripple pulses its dying breath into infinity, and is dissolved. Its only prayer is that somewhere downstream, something will see it, and wonder if there was ever a story. But the story itself, and the life... are lost. Invisibly embedded on every molecule touched, amidst the eternity of other touches, forced to wonder whether or not it was here... and does a molecule's memory mean anything to a drop of blood that no longer exists?

Eyes closed but ears alert, the man-creature soundlessly sucks in water, his movements at once reverent and desperate. On the bank of the pool, his hands clutch a long, ebony blade. This is not merely ebony in color, but in composition. The edge is impossibly sharp for its ligneous origins and a resin polish laughs harder, and less sanely, than the surface of the pool. One ear twitches, and quite slowly, the head tilts upward and the eyes open.

Ahead of him, a particularly insistent gust of wind disrupts short, platinum hairs covering a pale and almost frightened face. Gray eyes blink quickly and the flesh around them visibly tenses. A human boy dressed in unceremonious black jeans and an iridescent, white tee shirt half-raises his hands in fear. His eyes do not change, except that within them is a spark - a desire to flee. Gray meets yellow, flint to amber; and forever, neither move.

That wind, that breath, gently caresses the wolf's fur, and in his periphery, the boy perceives the lean, corded musculature beneath the blue. From his lower position, he can see definition across every inch of the creature's body, but there is no bulk; nothing that a casual glance would reveal. And the boy can indeed see nearly every inch of that body, at least the part facing him. An unadorned, leather loincloth, a shoulder pad on his right arm, and a sheath with a hunting knife strapped to one thigh are among the few articles. A leather armlet is on his left forearm and a leather cord dangles a small, golden charm around his ankle. Beyond that, the legs, torso, arms, and head are completely revealed.

At the same time, the wolf watches his watcher. The boy is thin and small. A certain roundness to his shoulders indicates that only within the past year has he begun to truly grow, but the way he carries himself means that he is still very much a boy in body. The firmness to his gaze, though, is a man's. The wolf can almost see into the future - he knows where the lines around this boy's eyes will go, how his jaw will be set; he knows that the innocence and the beauty in the smooth, almost creamy softness to the boy's features are certain to pass, because someone has beaten this boy. His left biceps, briefly revealed in the dastardly wind, is as blue as the man-wolf's fur.

The breeze continues, whispering into the world while the fountain giggles quietly at itself and the starlight tries to find a voice. Eyes meet eyes from a distance farther than space, and the darkness makes a gentle suggestion. The boy briefly considers taking the advice, but the wolf rejects it. Slowly, amber still fossilized in his skull, he stands, nods, turns, and walks away. The boy watches, uncertain, needing, and alone, and lets him go.

"Good morning, Mom."

"Fuck you. Where the fuck were you last night?"

Damien smoothly sets his glass of milk on the table and brings his mother her coffee. "I saw a wolf-man."

"And you still got all yer innards in ya? The hell you saw a wolf-man. Where's my breakfast?"

"Right here." He hands her a plate. "I'm headed to school. I love you."

"Fuck you." She sips her coffee and doesn't watch him leave.

The wind and the moonlight love Damien. They love his steely gaze; they love his shimmering, buzz-cut hair; they love his pale, waxen arms. They toss the charcoal color of his jacket to the skies above when he throws it to them; they whip his shirt with an immutable frenzy when it catches in a tree. They kiss his tears from his face; they rip his frustrated screams away and scatter them to midnight-blue ears, which have already perked at the smell.

With a snapping, militant flick of his arm, Siber snatches the jacket from the wind's grasp and holds it, defying the elements as they howl for a toy. Walking against them, he approaches the boy and soundlessly holds the garment out to him.

Damien looks up and stifles his tears. He takes the jacket and tosses it away again. Without a word, Siber grabs it out of the air and proffers it yet again. "You are cold."

Through his teeth, Damien whispers, "You're warm." He throws himself at the wolf, who dodges and neatly tosses the boy to the ground, then drops the jacket over him. As Damien reaches to tear the garment off, he hears a wet spattering on the cloth and feels a liquid warmth spill through to his skin. It burns like a branding iron, and he screams and kicks off the rest, then stands and sprints to the nearby pool. Along the way, dark shapes cross his vision, but a sound like the splintering of a tree follows behind him, and he watches the shapes collapse, one by one, to the ground.

By the time he falls to the water and flips onto his back, he can hear the agonized shrieks of the grasses as the same wetness that blackens the water underneath him even as his own blood adds to the flow, creating a mosaic story that will never be interpreted. Siber kneels over him, watching him gasp as the water leeches out the venom. Their eyes meet, and then Siber grabs Damien by the throat.

With an unbreakable grip and his ever-present, silent expression, the wolf drags Damien downstream. Eyes wide and holding lightly to the non-threatening grip, Damien tries to look behind him to feel where he's going, but all he has to go by is the freezing water constricting his lungs. The stars stroke him with their fingers, but giggle while they do, playing across his smooth, bare chest and dancing about the soaked surface of his jeans.

Finally, Damien can feel that the water is deeper, here, and has only enough time to register this before he is plunged beneath the surface. Immediately, he thrashes and quakes, the cold invading his senses, electrifying his nerves and demanding he surface. The wolf's grip is firm, but still, it isn't threatening, even while it holds him still. Somehow, it transmits a sense of calm, and even though he knows he might drown, he ceases his frenzied movements and takes time to look around in the pure, clear water.

In his immediate field of vision is the corded arm that keeps him steady. It is not thick, but it is like steel, and Damien can see each individual hair that comprises his insulating coat; he watches them wave in the current like grass in a gentle summer breeze. Through the rippling surface of the river, he looks up and sees the envious moon, and its bitter cohort of stars. The water distorts them, smiling to itself as it does, placidly disrupting their singular goals. Smooth stones - blush, ochre, taupe, granite - clatter in little percussion solos, the sound waves rippling more clearly to him through the liquid medium. A single, small fish all of the colors of copper gapes in awe at him from a cranny in the bank. All around him, Damien can feel this calm and perpetual movement; it loves him.

But he needs air, and even if the air loves him, the river will have nothing to do with it. He watches the bubbles of that air flee his nose as his fear grows. Will he be allowed to live? The wolf-men were not known for their kindness to humans in the first place... was he going to die for being frustrated with his mother?

Suddenly, Damien perceives the wolf's face impose itself between him and the stars, and the muzzle breaks the surface, then presses itself insistently against his lips. When his confusion forbids them to open, a tongue snakes its way between them and forces them apart. Black lips seal with pink ones, and Damien feels air pushed into his mouth. It begins to escape his nose, and so he pinches that closed, before Siber's fingers wrap solidly around his own. Though heat is being sucked from his body and his heart is slowing, fresh air, slightly flavored with the smell of the wolf, fills his lungs, and the muzzle retreats again, allowing Damien another long moment to observe, and to feel.

The process is repeated, over and over again, even while Damien's body begins to numb, even when he can no longer feel his fingers at all, even while his feet, nose, and ears (which have been reveling in the pacifying sounds of the river's simple thoughts) cease to tell him where they are. He can feel the cold most in his bare chest, where that broad surface radiates heat it will never recover, but... he trusts the wolf-man. He has no reason to trust the wolf-man. That species has killed more human beings possibly than even other human beings have. But Siber has no interest in killing him, so Damien waits in the water, weightless, comforted by the umbilical tie of the hand around his throat.

That hand, he knows, can feel every breath that Siber pushes into his throat, and every beat of his ever-slowing heart. It holds him to the outside world; it holds him within this dreamland of swirling noises and unbelievable colors and clarity; but most importantly, it holds him.

Eventually, his whole body numb and beginning to ask for sleep, Damien is unaware that Siber has changed grips and is carrying him cradled to his chest away from the water. The wolf sits down against a nearby outcropping of gentle, gray stone and sits Damien in his lap, wrapping his arms around him, holding his face in the crook of the boy's neck, and breathing warmly across his chest.

Finally, Damien begins shivering. The water is soaking into the wolf's fur as much as the wind is sucking it from his skin. His teeth chatter and he presses himself against Siber's warmth, helping hold the arms tighter. "Why?" he whispers as soon as he can control his voice. Siber doesn't answer. Instead, he focuses his entire mind on returning warmth to the organism he has just subjected to a much kinder element than had tried to touch him at first.

For a while, they sit there in silence. Damien is unaware that behind them lie the bodies of those who tried to kill him. He is unaware anything tried to kill him. He is unaware that the wound on his back has been healed and left only a white, circular scar. He is only aware of the steady, flowing pulses of warmth that beat against his back and that wash over his body, and the fur that traps the heat between him and this strange creature.

After a time, the wolf calmly unbuttons Damien's jeans and pats his thighs with his paws. Damien understands the signal, hesitates in a brief question, and upon feeling a furred nod against the back of his head, unzips his fly and with a flush of red to his cheeks, turns to look nervously at the wolf for encouragement. Siber nods yet again and moments later, the still-soaking article is discarded and Damien is curled even tighter against his protector's body. Another series of taps, more insistent as a response fails to be generated, leads to the removal of the last article of clothing and the rise of another, deeper flush. Siber doesn't seem to care, though; he aims his warm breath lower, and the silver hairs it reaches dry that much faster. It is only a few minutes until the boy is again free of the freezing water; and then, Siber lets him go with a push to get him up on his feet.

"You will be warm long enough to get home." Standing in the wind in nothing but his skin, the boy suddenly realizes the words are true. Despite the celestial breath, despite the night, despite the cold, he is warm. As though waking up, he feels at his back for the wound, and looks frantically for his jacket.

"That was..." he trails off, then swallows. "That was an expensive jacket." His voice is soft and pure, and doesn't waver. It is like feathers falling slowly out of a pillow.

"You will have it all back. Go home. Trust." Nothing else is said, and with a longing, final glance, Damien makes his way back to his house, bare to the world, and shivering his fear and his embarrassment out into the obliging breeze. He walks with confidence, and with warmth, until he finds his bed.

Still against the rock, Siber leans his head back and stares up at that ugly moon. A dark, amber drop of liquid forms at the corner of one eye and leaks out while he breathes deeply once, exhales fully once, and stands. In seconds, he is gone, and the scene, unchanged save for clothing, corpses, and an amber tear, resumes its stillness.