FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Don't we have enough fruit trees?" Adelaide asked Field. Peering out the screen door on the back porch, the pink bat could see the golden-furred harvest mouse flipping through a plant catalogue. They'd gotten it in the mail yesterday.

"I'm looking at flowers," Field explained. He was sitting on the wooden porch steps, in shorts and a t-shirt. It was mid-April, the warmest day of spring so far. Sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. On the news this morning, Fib the weathermouse had said it would be even warmer next week. In the 70's.

It was almost enough to make one forget there was a raging pandemic going on.

Almost.

"Really? What kind?" Adelaide opened the door and stepped through it. Letting it swing shut with a smack, she padded to the steps, the deck creaking faintly under her bare foot-paws. She sat down next to her mate. They'd finished supper an hour ago. The bat had gotten to watching something on her computer, and the mouse had ended up out here.

"Tulips," Field said, turning a page. "They have a twenty percent off pre-order 'early bird' special. Also, free shipping over a hundred. Obviously, I won't buy that much. But ... " Yet another page. "Thinking about maybe planting some in front of the house in the fall."

"Why wait 'til then?"

"Need to time it before the first frost. They require so many months of cold to start their life cycle."

"Makes sense." The bat nodded. "So, where in front?"

"Everywhere, I guess? Driveway, mailbox."

"Along the fence?"

"Mmhmm."

The bat tried to envision it. She nodded. "Could be nice! How long do they bloom for, though?" She stared out into the distance as they talked.

Their backyard was framed by farmland and patches of woods. After a middling, dreary winter, the world would soon be lush and verdant, warm with life and promise. Well, not the world. Nature. They weren't the same thing anymore, were they? Too much divergence.

"Two weeks," Field answered. "But there are three kinds. Early, mid, and late. If I mix them, I could get four to six weeks out of a display. I just can't decide if I want to do that," Field said, "or if I want to go for a big 'firework show' of everything blooming at once."

"You're the artist," Adelaide said.

"But it's your place, too. What do you think?" Field asked. Submissive by nature, he always wanted to defer to her.

"I told you. It'd look nice."

This didn't dissuade the mouse from fretting over would-be details. "Front fence would take about ... seventy-five bulbs? In a staggered row, side to side. Another twenty-five for the drive, less for the mailbox. Do we need some in front of the big shed, too? Hmm ... " He added up the prices in his head. "This is way too ambitious."

"Start with a few. If they bloom well next year, you can always plant more," Adelaide said simply. "You don't have to cover the whole yard all at once."

"But I do!" Field insisted manically. "Waiting a full year for these to flower is bad enough. Two years?" At this rate, who knew what state the world would be in by then? Or if there'd even be a world left?

He'd already been waiting a year ...

For the State Fair, for starters. He'd won first place for his applesauce last summer, and had, in his opinion, an even better sauce already entered this year. He was also entering cookies, caramel corn. A bunch of other categories, too. He'd waited all fall and winter for the chance to participate. And, now ...

Then there was the Indy 500. He'd waited impatiently for the time to come again, when engines would fire up and their roaring would fill the air. The last Sunday in May was the best day ever. The tradition, the pageantry, the spectacle and derring-do. He looked forward to the race more than he looked forward to his own birthday! But, then ...

The virus was probably going to shutter all that, and more.

A lot more.

The elections in November? He shuddered to think what effect it might have on those!

No, life was basically cancelled. They were all living in purgatory, now, just waiting to be shuffled off. He didn't know why the sun had bothered to come out today. It wasn't needed anymore.

Field sighed heavily, rubbing at his own legs.

"You alright?"

"Muscles cramping up ... "

"You're stressing yourself out," Adelaide said obviously. "It's tension, mousey."

"From thinking about flowers?" he asked.

"The flowers are a band-aid. You're using them to keep yourself from dealing with other things."

Field's whiskers twitched. He flipped to another page in the catalogue and asked, "What about these? Mango Charm. Like a pastel orange. Dreamsicle color. And this one ... Queen of Night. Looks black in the sunlight. But it's actually maroon up close."

"Very striking," Adelaide agreed. "Maybe you should pair them together?"

"I was thinking of planting this one," Field said, pointing to the black tulip, "with a white one, and make this whole checkered flag pattern? Since they bloom in mid-May. For the 500. But, uh ... I'm not convinced, even by next spring, that ... "

Adelaide scooted closer to him, their shoulders touching. She leaned her scoop-eared head against his.

Field blew out a breath. "We don't even have a rototill, so I'm going to have to dig all these by paw. And I still don't know what my hours at the orchard will be." October had, in the past, been his busiest month of the year.

Food production jobs were insulated from societal catastrophes. People needed to eat. He had uninterrupted work on his parents' farm, so they still had some measure of income, even if small. Adelaide had been employed at the town library, but it was shut down for the foreseeable future.

The orchard, Field's side job, was solely a summer/fall thing. He was sure he'd still be needed, regardless of contagion. They always had trouble finding staff. But he doubted it would be as busy. His hours would probably be down. And if they weren't, that just meant he'd be exposed to a lot more people and probably catch the virus before the vaccine came out.

Field, feeling a tightness in his chest, put a paw on his heart. He set the catalogue aside.

Adelaide said, voice gentle, "You got out of bed, like, five times last night."

"I couldn't sleep." He bit his lower lip with his buckteeth, both paws dropping to the steps. "I didn't realize I was waking you up ... I'm sorry."

"It's alright."

"Don't want to be a burden."

"You're not."

"But what if I was?"

After a pause, Adelaide asked, "Are you worried about getting sick?"

"I guess." It was a massive understatement, of course. The mouse was a hypochondriac under normal situations. These days? Every time his allergies acted up, he convinced himself he had the virus. He'd lost count of how many times he'd washed his paws since breakfast. Thirty, forty?

The bat nuzzled his neck with her snout. Shadows lengthened around them. The sun was on an evening trajectory, already beneath their shoulders.

Field took a deep, shaky breath before blurting, "I'm afraid of getting sick, and I'm even more afraid of you getting sick ... or me being the one who gets you sick, or ... " He shook his head, starting to stammer. "Or even worse." He couldn't bring himself to say the D-word. He felt faint at the very concept of it. Mice, being total prey, had very strong survival instincts.

Adelaide wrapped a pink wing-arm around him, holding him close.

"I'm scared," Field confessed.

She whispered against his cheek. "I know." She skipped a beat before insisting, "It's going to be okay, mousey. We'll get through this. Alright?"

"What if we don't?"

"Well ... one can't control everything in life. It's a baked-in part of the experience." Adelaide paused before insisting, "But you can't dwell on every negative uncertainty or you'll go insane."

Field closed his blue eyes, head resting on her shoulder. "Yeah ... " While they were on the topic of fears, he confessed, "At the store the other night, when I went to get our groceries?"

"Uh-huh?"

"I felt everyone was staring at me, giving me suspicious looks. The whole time, my fur was on end, and I felt my cheeks burning. I had trouble breathing. Like I was gonna have a panic attack? Of course, this made me think I had gotten the virus and my lungs were failing, which only made it worse ... "

"That's not like a panic attack. That is a panic attack," the bat said with alarm. "Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?"

"I didn't want to worry you," he insisted, echoing his 'I don't want to be a burden' refrain.

"You sure like to hoard up worry for yourself, don't you?" Adelaide said lightly, adding before he could deny it, "There are some jerks out there. That's a given. But you gotta have a little faith in people. Not everyone turns into a monster when the lights go off."

Field's eyes opened, whiskers twitching. "After the past four years, how can you think that?"

Adelaide withdrew her wing-arm as Field stood and hopped off the steps, pacing back and forth in the short grass.

"Can't you see it?" he asked, paws gesturing wildly. "They're already sowing the seeds!"

In addition to the news reporting, with no real evidence, that a bat was determined to be 'patient zero' for the virus, the President, in his press conference the other day, had said, 'I've heard, you know, that it's quite possible that rodents are super-spreaders of this thing.'

"Just like the Middle Ages," Field said, stopping and reeling his tail in, holding it in his paws. "And all the flu outbreaks from the past century."

The mouse felt a gnawing anxiety in the pit of his stomach, spreading outward, making his limbs tense again. He had to sit back down, where he tried stretching his legs, pulling each knee to his chest a few times.

He then continued, "The government is going to botch this. They already are. Especially this government. They'll need a scapegoat to shift the blame." His prehensile tail snaked in the grass, constricting around a clump of blades and picking them, whipping them into the warm breeze. "It's always us."

"Prey?" Adelaide clarified.

Field nodded.

"Does that include us bug-eaters?"

"You know what I mean," he said sullenly.

There were certain species who'd always been atop the social pecking order. Species with natural strength or charisma, species society felt it couldn't function without. Mice and bats weren't in that group.

It was Adelaide's turn to nod. She did know. But she hated seeing him like this. Mental health was just as important as physical health, and they were only two weeks into a likely year-long situation. She couldn't have him breaking down this early on.

"Field," Adelaide said firmly.

"What?"

"Look at me."

He did, settling on her plum-purple eyes.

"We're going to get through this," the bat repeated with a warm, fanged smile. "Together."

"Stop it," he said lamely.

"Stop what?" Adelaide touched her nose to his. She loved feeling his whiskers brushing her cheeks. "Mm?"

"Those things are even more contagious than the virus."

"Smiles?"

"Yeah ... " Just like that, Field smiled, too. "See what you made me do?!"

"I guess I'm 'patient zero' after all," Adelaide joked.

Field looped his tail around her.

"You feel better?"

"A little. For now. But tomorrow?"

"Try pacing yourself. You think too far ahead. You don't always have to think about a year or a month or even a week from now. It's okay to take it a day at a time. Small bites."

"Sounds like you're describing nibbles," Field said.

"Should come naturally to a mouse," Adelaide teased.

Field, smiling even wider, picked up the seed catalogue again. He began flipping through the pages. "Tulips aren't as symbolic as orchids, but ... this one reminds me of you. Of us." He showed her one of the varieties he'd circled with a pen. "Isn't it pretty?"

"World Peace?"

"Yeah, they could've come up with a more descriptive name, but ... no, the colors! Our colors," he stressed. "Pink petals edged with gold."

"We should sue for copyright infringement."

"Heh ... " Field smiled.

"It is lovely, though. Would really 'pop' when you passed it."

"I know! They're more expensive, so we can't get a whole bunch, but I thought they'd look nice out front. Maybe around the mailbox?"

"Sounds good to me. You know bats can't dig," Adelaide said, of her lack of proper paws. "I'll just toss you the bulbs as you need 'em."

"Just hope I'm this enthusiastic when it comes time to plant them." Field's whiskers twitched. His smile faded. Six months 'til planting? A year 'til they bloomed? So much could happen in that time. Most of it bad, right?

He almost got sucked into the 'worst case scenario' vortex again when he remembered Adelaide's suggestion. He took a slow breath and repeated it aloud like a mantra. "Small bites. One day at a time. I can do this. We'll get through it!"

"That's the spirit!" Adelaide said. She leaned in and lowered her voice to add, "Though if you're really that desperate for 'two lips,' I know where you can find some in bloom."

The mouse blinked in innocent confusion.

A fanged grin spread across the bat's bubblegum muzzle.

"Oh!" Field finally exclaimed, eyes widening. "Oh ... "

"Mm-hmm."

Field's ears turned an excitable shade of pink. "Your garden always did have the prettiest flower," he murmured.

"Must be because you pollinate it so well." Tilting her head, Adelaide went in for an appetite-whetting kiss.

Field gave it to her, turning his body so he could better hug her.

Their muzzles smacked apart.

"It's such a nice evening," Adelaide breathed, nipping at his chin. "Wanna go for a little stroll?"

"I don't think I'll be able to keep my social distance from you if we do," Field replied, sucking on her cheek.

"Guess we'll have to live with the consequences," Adelaide replied. Pulling back, she stood and hooked her long, bendy thumb around his golden wrist. She pulled him up, too, peppering his face with a barrage of tiny kisses.

"Mm," the mouse went, sighing through the nose.

The bat licked at the mouse's lips with her long, wily tongue. "You good with that?"

"Uh-huh."

The bat giggled. "Thought you might be." She proceeded to lead her mate across the backyard to a cluster of old, thick trees. One of the benefits to country living was the ability to be make love outdoors.

Maneuvering to the far side of a smooth, chalky sycamore, Adelaide released Field's arm and slid her shorts down. Panties, next. No ceremony or striptease. She just wanted them off as soon as possible.

Field, pulse quickening, fumbled with his belt and let his own shorts collect around his ankles. He then pushed his boxer-briefs halfway down his thighs. With a little wriggle, they fell the rest of the way. Finally, he raised his arms and tossed his shirt aside.

Adelaide shed her own top. Her pink breasts jiggled from gravity's pull. "Come 'ere," she ordered once both of them were fully naked.

Field didn't need to be told twice. His erection, quickly leaving his sheath behind, pulsed and bobbled upright.

The bat blanketed her wing-arms around his warm, butterscotch body.

Bending his knees, Field lowered his head to kiss her breasts. Kisses soon became suckles, his mouth covering each nipple in equal turn.

"Mmm ... "

Ultimately, the mouse dropped down. All the way down. To the ground. To his knees.

"Good boy," Adelaide praised. She didn't even have to ask. Lifting a leg, she draped it over his shoulder. The other, shifting to a wider angle, remained planted on the ground.

Tilting his muzzle upward, Field licked at her sex. Easy access. Slow, lazy licks, in between the folds, drifting ever upward, closer and closer to her clitoris each time.

The bat chittered.

Finally, Field passed his smooth, wet tongue directly over the delicate bud.

"Hah! Ah ... "

He felt the bat's heel dig into his back. Her elongated thumbs hooked into his shoulders.

Field swirled his muscle around and against her clit, not letting up this time.

"Oh!" Her expression scrunched up, fangs jutting fully. She came, wetting his face with her nectar.

After a drunken moment, Field lifted his head and panted against her soft, heaving belly.

Lazily slumped against the sycamore, she caressed his head and shoulders with her wings.

"Adelaide," the mouse finally said, pleadingly.

"Go ahead," she offered, removing her leg from his shoulder so he could stand up.

Field stood and leaned into Adelaide's breasts, pinning her in place with his weight. His furless, pink paws extended downward to grab at the bat's stubby-tailed rump. He pulled at her, wanting her off the ground.

She hooked one leg around his waist, and then the other.

The mouse, with a final, close-quarters wriggle, lined himself up and pushed into her. Slow and easy, inch by inch. All the way. The pleasure was immediate. He settled to a momentary hilt.

Adelaide kissed at his forehead, hugging him with every part of her body. Legs, wings, sex.

After savoring the sensation, Field pulled back to his tip and thrust back in, more firmly than before. With little wait, he repeated the motion. Again. Then again. Up and into her, as deeply as he could go. His big, fuzzy balls audibly slapped against her pouting vulva.

"Mmf," the bat went, from the heated force of the collisions. Her eyes squeezed shut.

The setting sun glowing on his naked, undulating backside, Field humped his mate with abandon. Her slick, familiar passage, so perfectly snug, rippled around his wet, sliding penis.

"That's it ... oh, that's it!" Adelaide moaned with encouragement. "I'm close ... "

The mouse squeaked! His loins tingled, the feeling spreading. He was close, too. Closer than close. He was there! Field gave a series of suddenly erratic thrusts before hilting inside her. His breath shook. Eyes rolled back.

"Ah ... ah, AH!" she cried.

"Ohhhh ... " Field huffed as he filled her with his seed, shivering hotly with each pulse, whiskers stiff and tail whipping. He gave her everything. As he always did. As he always would.

Adelaide was flushed to the point of melting, her sex besieged with sharp, muscular spasms. Her second orgasm was even better than the first.

Hugging and nuzzling her neck, the mouse passionately breathed, "I love you."

"I love you, too," the bat whispered back, directly into one of his dishy, blushing ears.

By the time the mouse was able to breathe without his maw hanging dumbly open, he'd started to get limp. He pulled out of the bat. A mess dripped to the earth in his absence.

"I got the clothes," Field offered, collecting their shed attire. He clutched the pile to his chest. Still naked, they casually walked back to the house. It was cooler than before. The sun had set while their attentions had been diverted. It was twilight, now. The first frogs of the season could be heard from the banks of a nearby pond.

When they entered the house, Adelaide kissed the mouse's cheek. "I'll start the shower," she said warmly.

"Okay." He beamed at her. "I'll be right there."

The bat moved off, pink hips swaying like a tulip in the breeze.

Field didn't know how the current crisis would end. The future was so horribly uncertain. But he did know one thing ...

"I'm definitely planting some World Peace," the mouse said to himself, putting their clothes in the washer before scurrying to join the bat.