FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"And so," Silerion said as he was looking up into the sky, "by my own doing I will fix my mistake. I owe that to myself as well as them, don't I?" He smiled and felt the strain of knowing what he had done to cause this. It was a familiar feeling, one he would not miss. That was why he smiled. A sad smile: he knew what he had done just as well as when he was still doing it, but now, afterward, it didn't make any sense.

Now he had perspective from the outside. From somewhere better. He knew what he had done, and for once that guilt turned into resolve and determination.

What had taken a handful of afternoons to do in an easy mind took, this time, hardly one full day when fueled by a seething, rumbling frustration and anger. To be fair, when he had moved into Marlin's apartment the fox had been there to distract him - and since Eli chose to start moving his things back out while Marlin was off at work, that distraction was thankfully not there.

Not that he would indulge in it this time, that was. The thought crossed his mind a couple of times on his way to his house and back: he felt that if Marlin had returned while he was away, the wild dog would still willingly ignore him, pretend he wasn't there. Each time he returned he scanned the parking lot for that same beat-up old car, and held his breath when opening the door - only to let it out once he found that he was still on his own. Despite his feelings, that still brought some relief. He had never been one for conflict, and more than anything he wanted this to be over and done with.

All things considered, there really hadn't been that much for him to take. All of his clothes from the dresser; his favorite pots and pans including the couple of cast-iron things his mother had given him across a couple birthdays; the pressure cooker which Marlin had never used; various other kitchen utensils, cleaning supplies, stuff from the bathroom, his favorite pillow with the head-shaped indent on one side. A few little stuffed animals, a box of sex toys including the bottle of lube he had left here one time before he'd moved in... and then it was his computer and the few pieces of furniture he had brought that took the most time and effort, especially on his own.

Even now, lying on his bed and vaguely aware that the sunlight had disappeared from behind the window curtains across the room, his arms still stung a bit. The wild dog swallowed, sighed, adjusted how he lay. Good to be back in his own bed with his own pillow and his own blankets. They smelled of himself, and himself only - no bright, rich sting of fox, but just the same, no sharp spicy-sweet touch of hyena.

Lynn had been in his thoughts all day, too. When he had moved his soap and shampoo from the bathroom, he thought about her little bottle of the naturally-scented essential oil something-or-other, clary sage; his mind had wandered a bit as he hefted the box of toys in his arms, thinking back over the times she'd teased him and when she had popped up in his dreams; then with the furniture, when he wasn't struggling to lift it over the threshold or tilt it into his car, he'd remembered the first time the hyena had brought her over to her place and shown him around the house.

And, slowly, Eli started to piece together what he was going to say to her. He slept on it that night, relaxing with how he wouldn't have to get up for work the next morning... and woke up to two texts and a missed call from none other than Marlin. Those said what Eli had expected - "where are you" and "did I do something?" - and he elected to ignore them.

It hurt still, of course. Throughout the day he found that if he ever let his mind wander, it would just go back to Sunday at the nature preserve, with Lynn's words in his ears and him saying whatever came to his mind, feeling in the moment that it made sense and he knew what he was doing. That was the thing, though: when it happened, he did know what he was doing. It was the same thing he'd done for the past six years, this familiar, routine thing. Just something done without a thought, another part in a cycle that he had long since become accustomed to because nothing ever changed.

This time, though, something did, and it was her. In a way it calmed Eli to finally have everything figured out, though the nervousness, anxiety, and guilt still hung around his shoulders. In the case that she wouldn't accept his apology - entirely possible, and maybe even likely - he would be up in the air on his own, without a partner and without a place to live. He had started looking around to rent an apartment of his own in his breaks between moving back home, but...

That night he had to run by the grocery store to restock his empty fridge, putting another dent in his funds. Chili turned out to be his choice for the night, and he managed to get mostly caught up on one of his shows before bed until the time came. Normally Marlin would keep him up past then even despite Eli's complaints and requests otherwise, deflecting his "look, I need to get up for work tomorrow" with "come on, we were both at work all day and I want to spend more time with my boyfriend" and other things, but now that Eli was on his own again...

...that still happened, basically. During the last three episodes the wild dog received four texts and two calls all from the fox, each message reading basically the same as what he had gotten the previous night but now with sad emotes thrown in. Maybe it wasn't right for Eli to ignore him like this, but he felt like he needed time to cool down and clear his thoughts on the subject.

Just like with Lynn. Still he was building up the confidence, the strength, to go through with it. He had trouble sleeping that night, not for anything in particular other than he just couldn't turn his brain off. When his phone vibrated on his nightstand near midnight, Eli reached over, turned it to silent, and rolled back over.

Sunday morning it was the doorbell that woke him up. Odd, of course: he hadn't ordered anything, and this had never really been a neighborhood with door-to-door solicitors of any type. Sighing, the wild dog pulled himself out of bed, tossed on his pants, and trudged down the hall to peer carefully out the window... and saw that same beat-up car sitting there by his curb. So he sighed, rolled his eyes, and padded over into the kitchen for breakfast. The doorbell rang another three times while he ate, and then when he settled onto the couch to finish up his marathon, he even heard the knob of the back door jiggling a bit.

That part wasn't new, either. Just part of the cycle. Eli sighed again and turned the volume up a little higher, this time not even caring if Marlin could hear from outside. Hell,_the wild dog thought, _let him hear. Let him know I'm here and I know about him. Let him know I'm ignoring him. What they'd had that morning was basically a break up, and if the fox didn't understand that, then...

Then I'll just have to make it clear. That time will come.

Eventually it stopped, though, and a moment later Eli heard the slam of a car door and rumble of the engine - and he let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. The stress and shaking remained for a while longer, and his mind kept on bringing him back to those familiar, awful places. The heavy guilt, swirling disappointment, grinding frustration, this time all directed towards Marlin instead of himself.

A welcome change, really. His day was slow and tough, just as each one had been since Lynn had turned her back on him, but Eli still managed to bring himself through it. Last night's chili had just gotten better overnight, and for dinner he mixed it with chips and cheese and poured it over rice in the way that his old elementary school always made Frito pie. Marlin would make fun of him for putting rice in it, and though it did annoy Eli, he never cared enough to do anything about it other than eat it away from the fox so he wouldn't have to deal with it.

Now, that seemed like both a silly thing to get upset over as well as a stupid thing to bring up in the first place. A lot of his annoyances with Marlin had started to feel like that. The wild dog retreated to bed early night that after half an hour of struggling to enjoy any of his favorite video games, then rolled back and forth for another forty minutes, squeezed out an uninspired orgasm from his paw that really felt like he'd just strained his arm again, rolled around for another twenty, and then somewhere along the way finally drifted off to sleep.

Another dream woke him up later, though, sometime just before two in the morning. What it was about escaped him as soon as his eyes opened, but his heart pounded in his chest, his throat scratched with each gulp, and he felt unsafe. Scared. Worried.

He felt so much in that moment, and once again he turned to his side and looked out across the empty bed. His phone screen squeezed tears out of his eyes after he reached over for it, thumb mindlessly bringing him to Lynn's little chat icon still pinned to the top of his list. Last online: 11:46 PM. She would be finished with her finals now.

The wild dog swallowed again, licked his dry lips, sat up a little straighter, tapped on her icon to bring it up in full. Just for a moment there he pretended that it was him she smiled at, ears perked and sharp teeth bright. Three stripes beneath her right eye and two for her left; two industrial bar piercings in her left ear and three ring piercings, two silver and one gold, in her right. It made her rumble and shiver when he ran his lips over those piercings, and sometimes her ear would flick and nearly make him sneeze.

~elijasdfgh [1:52 AM]: There's something I need to say to you

So he waited for a moment, paws shaking, watching the Sent icon in the corner. It remained like that, just as Lynn's last seen_time stayed the same. Eli sighed again, slowly started in on his apology, and then stopped. He read over it his little sentence and a half, read over it again... thumbed over to the _delete key and held it down until nothing remained.

Then, digging up all those little bits and pieces, he tapped the Send something else menu, hovered over Voice message, and cleared his throat before hitting it.

~ ~ ~

"Hey."

Lynn's footpaws pounded the pavement as she ran, each step vibrating with a near-impalpable shock - that was quite important with how often she went running, to be able to ride the rhythm of the pace and roll with the steps instead of letting the impact jar her legs and hips. She gritted her teeth to keep her mouth shut, pulling in ragged breaths through her nose and letting them out through those teeth in a tight, stiff rhythm. Discipline, control, willpower; all of these were key. Her throat stung and her thighs and lower back burned, yet still she went on, heart pounding for a hundred different reasons. She reached over to her other shoulder to turn the volume of her phone up two steps.

"I broke up with Marlin - he hasn't understood the message yet so I'm gonna make it clear after this - and moved out a few days ago."

With the approaching end of summer came cooler days, especially in the mornings. Now the sweat that dripped beneath her fur and dampened her shirt came from exertion alone instead of the relentless gaze of the sun, right now still half-hidden behind the trees across the road. The hyena had intentionally deviated from her normal route again today, wanting to take some time to herself with her last final behind her. All that remained was to wait.

Through her earbuds Eli sighed. He sounded tired. "I'm sorry all of this happened. I know you don't need to hear any explanations, and I know you probably don't even want to, or any of this at all, but... it just feels like something I should do. Something you should know."

She slowed to a brisk jog in that moment, both to turn a corner as well as to lift her water bottle to her lips and take a brief sip. Also important not to chug too much at once, which she had done a few times in the past. Summer made that part particularly hard. Lynn watched as a car ambled down the street from ahead, then felt the slight breeze when it passed her.

"I feel, just... awful about what happened, about the things I said and did. I haven't been doing well this past week - but this isn't about me. I know that. I couldn't communicate right, and I... I fucked up because of a misunderstanding."

Lynn pressed her lips together, cool morning air coming in hot and dry. She nearly coughed but held it back, then pushed it down with another sip of water. It felt like it was about time to replace her phone holder - this would be the third time she'd had to push it back up - but that could wait another day or two. Keep going.

"...No, that's... that's not right. Not a misunderstanding. It was my fault. You've... done a lot of great things for me, Lynn, and you've changed my life and... and how I view myself in ways that I never really thought would happen. I'm sorry for what I did and what happened because of it."

She swallowed, then coughed, then swallowed again. The stinging in her throat turned to a scratchy pain, too sharp for an ache; she just sipped at her water again. All of the ice had already melted; one of her ears flicked as another car passed by, the whoosh_clearly audible beneath the voice message. _Come on. Keep going.

"I was... afraid, I guess. Of a lot of things. I know you've been where I was, that day. You told me that. I listened. It hurt to hear those things had happened to someone I care about, but I realized... it helped me realize where I was, and what I was doing. Not all at once, but over time. That's where my regret comes from, mostly. It just took too long. I took too long."

Her dorm was still in her name until the fall semester started in a handful of weeks, but Lynn had gone ahead and moved her few belongings out of it. Just three medium-sized cardboard boxes of things, then her clothes and bedsheets. Of course the first thing she had done upon returning from her last exam was dump all of her papers and everything else into the trash. Not the notebooks, though; those were still important. At least two of them had phone numbers written by boys when she wasn't looking.

"It's just, like... now that it's over and done with, I can't believe that I did what I did. You know? It sounds stupid. It sounds awful. It's what everyone's been telling me since high school, and I just... it took me this long to understand. That's where the rest of the regret starts. It feels awful."

An uneven block of the sidewalk caught her by surprise and interrupted her pace, nearly tossing her off the curb and into the street. Lynn cursed beneath her breath, grinding her teeth together as she made her way back into place. Surprised I haven't gotten hurt yet with how much this happens. Just keep going.

"But..." Another sigh. The silence went on so long that Lynn nearly thought the message ended there. "...It's... you. You changed my perspective, on so much. It sounds - silly, and stupid, but I... I guess I started thinking of you kind of... as... my partner. Not consciously, I think, but... I looked forward to seeing you, and hugging you, and hearing your voice, and making you laugh, and holding your paw. I still do. I'd daydreamed about you more in two weeks than I have about Marlin in six years. You're just... always there, always on my mind. I just..."

Keep going.

"I forgot what it was like to be happy in a relationship. Marlin was all I knew, and I was so used to it that I just thought, that's the way it's supposed to be. It literally never occurred to me that something was wrong. And then there was you, and... and I remembered, all of a sudden. I still remember when I really realized it - I was lying in bed, looking up at the ceiling, and you were there in my head, and I just... you made me feel so, so good. Just... amazing. It'd been so long since I felt that, that I forgot what it felt like. I forgot what..."

He paused there, sighed again, gulped, and didn't continue for a moment. Lynn gritted her teeth even harder and doubled down, pushing her run to just short of a sprint. Her footpaws pressed against the cool cement, carried her weight, and pushed her back up, again and again and again; the rhythmic pain in her thighs and now the backs of her legs as well pulled her forward. Come on. Don't stop.

"...no, you don't want to hear any of this. I fucked up, and that's that. You don't have to give me a second chance. That's fine. You deserve someone who can... who can make you feel great, Lynn. Someone who can listen to you, and talk to you, and who doesn't lie to you, and I hope you find them. God, that - that sounds like I'm trying to guilt you, doesn't it? Marlin used to do that to me. I didn't mean it like that. I... thought a little bit about what I wanted to say, before this, but now I'm just... saying whatever's there. I'm... just..."

Yet another sigh - or was that a yawn? He had sent this a little bit after two in the morning, and as far as Lynn knew, he had work today. Which reminded her: today she should be hearing back from somewhere she had applied to last week, somewhere around here, local. Hardly a twelve minutes' drive from her brother's house. She had taken time off from her current job to deal with exams, and was riding out the last of her PTO this week. If it doesn't work out, well, that's just another fuckin' bump in the road, isn't it? Ride over it and head on. Barrel forward.

And keep going.

"....God. You've given me - so much insight and advice, and a whole new perspective on... everything, just about. Myself. My relationships. My friendships. What I'm doing with my life, where I'm going... what I want. Who I want." This time Eli chuckled, a dry, sad sound. It startled Lynn. "You... you saw it before I did, didn't you? Probably from that first day in the music shop. You surprised me, and I saw you, and I had trouble speaking right. I couldn't think straight. And you grinned, and I just felt..."

Her chest felt full and tight, as though she'd gone out wearing a binder today. Still she pushed through, deliberately drawing out her breaths, still maintaining her pattern from before. Gradually, though, she let her pace slow back to the original.

"...I'm sorry. That's..."_Between his words she heard a soft intake of breath, followed by a shaky exhalation, and then another. Was he on the verge of crying? Her chest felt a little bit tighter, suddenly. _"That's all. Lynn, I... I miss you. And..."

Keep going!

Eli's voice broke.

"I love you."

The hyena dragged to a stop far too quickly, nearly pitching herself forward over the curb of her own doing. Chest heaving, throat dry, muscles burning, she scrambled to an unsteady walk and from there to a stop, pawpads tingling and legs suddenly wanting to give out from beneath her. With a shaky paw she reached over, slid her phone out of the holder, unlocked the screen, thumbed back through the message-

"-ss you. And... I love you." "And... I love you." "I love you."

Panting through parted lips, the hyena braced her paws against her knees and squeezed her eyes shut. With the end of the voice message, a couple of seconds passed before her phone quietly started her music back up.

_You could- you could tell me no _

_You could- you could ask me why _

_And I, oh, I would still tell you _

After a moment catching her breath she straightened back up, downed the rest of her water, and turned to start her walk back home. There were a few things she needed to take care of, now, with a good, cool shower being the first among them. Still, though, her heart beat heavily in her chest, and even with her legs aching and her throat burning, for some reason she still wanted to run, to get back there quicker.

Tell you, tell you that I-

I

love

_you. _

~ ~ ~

~stripesandhypes [8:31 AM]: [Voice (0:03)]