FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The silhouetted figure in the doorway raised its arms towards Zera, pointing at her with what she guessed to be some kind of weapon. It took a wide stance, which her instinct and years of experience told her it was preparing for a fight. A nervous jitter formed in the pit of her stomach, even as she crouched low and splayed her claws, fanning out her wings to appear more threatening. Baring her teeth, the emerald-green dragon did her best to intimidate the aggressive stranger.

“Don’t fucking move!”

The figure, definitely a male, spoke loudly and with a hostile tone. As Zera watched, he took two slow steps into the moonlight, revealing his face- that of a human. His brow was furrowed in a glare that pierced right through her façade, and she clenched her teeth and dug her claws into the ground to avoid shaking in fear. The man seemed around average size for a human, about a head taller than her. He was fully clothed with some sort of covering on the top of his head, perched above two piercing blue eyes. Zera’s own keen eyes allowed her to notice that his two exposed forearms were noticeably different in appearance- one was smooth and hairless, glinting in the moonlight, while the other was pinker and covered in thin, wispy fur. She didn’t know a lot about humans, but this one didn’t look particularly strong. Zera should have been able to beat him easily in a fair fight. That is, if she had only been hatched with the same capacity for violence as her mother. As it stood, Zera was terrified of fighting, and the human’s unknown weapon and complete lack of visible fear meant she could barely meet his gaze.

The man spoke again. “If I even think you’re going to move, I’ll shoot you dead. That’s your first and only warning.” The human’s voice was smooth and level, and the way he threatened her life so easily almost sounded rehearsed. She wondered if he was alone- were there more humans inside the building? She knew they often lived in groups, unlike her kind who were mostly solitary and nomadic. Even if she somehow did beat this one, would others come to his aid?

“Kill me? With that little thing? It doesn’t even have a blade-not that you could ever pierce my scales with one, human!” Zera growled and did her best to sound threatening, but her high-pitched, wavering voice betrayed her panic, and she glanced nervously at the weapon in question.

The human actually laughed at this; a short sharp exhalation that served to humiliate her further. “Ha! You’ve never even seen a gun, have you, feral? Trust me, all I’ve to do is squeeze my finger and your brains will be splattered all over my front yard.”

Zera visibly shook at his words. “Y-you’re bluffing!”

The stranger slowly shook his head, his eyes never leaving hers. “Afraid not, darlin’. Sure, an ordinary gun probably wouldn’t do the job, you're right on that. This one here, however, is loaded up with bastic bullets. They’re designed to punch through four inches of Titanium-A armour- one of these’ll pop your skull like a fuckin balloon!” Zera was shaking uncontrollably now, the pit of fear in her stomach rising up to fill her whole body as her breaths became short and shallow.

He noticed her terror. “That’s right. So, for your own good, I’d suggest you back down.” Those last two words were delivered with such commanding emphasis that Zera immediately obeyed, lowering her wings and narrowing her stance as she straightened her legs. The dragon cast her head down at the grass in submission as she continued to shiver.

Zera’s voice was weak and timid as she cowered before the human. “Please don’t- I’m sorry…please don’t k-kill me!” She still couldn’t meet his gaze, as she saw his feet pacing towards her in the corner of her eye. “Please…” She felt the primal, frenzied fear of death overtake her as liquid ran down the inside of her hind legs. The shame of soiling herself like a hatchling, the shame of being humiliated once again, everything that had gone wrong that day and the oppressing fear combined and overwhelmed her as tears stung at her eyes. She shut them and fell miserably to the ground, quietly sobbing into the dirt as she waited for the human to make good on his threats. In the moments before her impending death, Zera could only think about one thing.

How had it all gone so wrong?

---

ONE DAY EARLIER

Zera had always hated the rain. An entire lifetime of living out in the wilds had never changed that. Back when she was only a hatchling, she used to cower beneath her mother’s ochre wings at the first sign of grey skies, who would always chastise her about being afraid to get wet. Zera never got over that feeling- the awful sensation of damp pouring over her scales, finding its way into every nook and cranny. The way it seemed to suck the heat out of her body and leave her a shivering mess, while her mother either shouted at her to grow up or, if she was in a particularly cruel mood, simply laugh at her pathetic excuse of a daughter.

Zera’s mother used to shout about a lot of things. She would shout about Zera’s lack of hunting instinct, her poor flying skills, and most of all her complete inability to fight. From a young age, her mother had tried to train her to fight as other dragons do, claiming it was absolutely essential to be able to defend herself if she was to survive on her own.

“But I’m not alone, mother!” Zera had complained after one particularly hard sparring session.

Her mother gave her a harsh look. “Some day you will be, whelp. I won’t always be around to keep you alive!” Upon seeing Zera’s confusion, she continued. “Yes, that’s right- I’m not young anymore, you know! Eventually I’ll be nothing but another rotting corpse for the scavengers to pick at. But I’ll be damned if you haven’t learned everything I can teach you by then!” Before she could give her shocked reply, Zera felt the wind be knocked out of her as her mother delivered another quick swipe at her chest. “Again!”

Of course, Zera’s mother never knew how quickly those words would ring true. Just half a decade later, a few years after Zera reached adulthood, her mother picked up what seemed to be just another short illness- the kind which she had been getting increasingly frequently. Only this time she never recovered. Her mother began to waste away, growing weaker by the day. Eventually, she became too sick to hunt and spent all her time resting in the cave they were staying in at the time. Zera had to bring her mother food and water, which thanks to her poor survival skills was no easy task. For a week Zera gave all the food she could hunt to her mother, until she could no longer keep it down. The cave stayed cold from that point, since Zera was totally unable to produce a flame, and her mother couldn’t manage one in her weakened state.

The last time Zera’s mother spoke to her, it was only to express her disappointment in her daughter. With half-lidded eyes and a terrible rattle in her breath, she had summoned enough energy for one last insult. “Zera… sometimes, I’m glad your father never stayed to watch you grow up. He would be so… let down… by you …” Collapsing into coughs which racked her weak body, her mother closed her eyes and fell into sleep again.

Zera hadn’t even cried. She couldn’t. All she felt was numbness. Somehow, she knew those would be her mother’s last words to her. A final poignant reminder of all those years spent together, Zera’s entire life spent trying to please her mother- and failing, right to the very end. Zera hadn’t slept that night. She could only watch as her mother’s breathing became shallower and shallower until finally, just before dawn, she took one last shuddering breath and moved no more.

Zera stared at her mother’s body for a while, almost expecting her to gasp and wake to berate her again, but nothing ever came. As the first rays of sunlight broke over the horizon, Zera wordlessly crept to the cave entrance, stopping to take one final glance at her mother’s yellow scales, which glinted in the breaking dawn-light. She looked, in that moment, more content in death than she ever was in life. Without any more forethought or hesitation, Zera exited the cave and walked down the side of the hill and into the sunrise, leaving her mother’s body for the scavengers. It was what she would have wanted.

For almost full lunar cycle Zera had travelled the forests alone. She barely thought of her mother, of her old life up until that point, so focused was she on simply surviving. Hunting for animals and foraging for fruits took up almost all of her day, and the rest she spent sleeping in hastily-built nests or in small caves, always cold at night with no fire to warm her. But Zera never was a good hunter. Most of the time she scared her prey away before she could catch it. And she had always struggled to remember which fruits grew where, and when they were safe to eat. She wasn’t able to find enough food to stave off the ever-present hunger, and could feel herself getting weaker by the day, which in turn made it harder to hunt and fly to new foraging grounds.

Her mother was right again, of course. Zera would never survive out here alone.

One wet, stormy night, with her strength sapped and her will broken, she finally snapped. Tears ran freely down her face, mixing with the rain as she screamed her emotions to the sky. All the pain, all the anger, the hurt and the loss came crashing down on her at once, like the sheets of rain falling from the clouds above. As lightning crashed and wind whipped through the forest, Zera tore at a large trunk with her claws, leaving deep gouges in the wood. Some rational part of her mind told her to save her strength, but she was beyond reason by this point. Enraged at her misfortune, at her mother, and at herself, Zera continued to strike the tree with all her might, roaring in anguish until her voice was hoarse. Eventually, she had collapsed on the roots, her muscles worn out and her energy spent, too tired to even cry anymore, and passed into a deep and dreamless sleep.

The next morning she woke shivering, having slept out in the rain and the cold. Scolding herself again for her foolishness, Zera rose and noticed the damage inflicted on the tree. The trunk was torn to shreds, with deep claw marks biting into the solid wood. Had it been an animal rather than a tree, there would have been practically nothing left. Zera had struggled to believe she was capable of such violence. Her own loss of control frightened her. That forceful outburst had left her exhausted, and Zera came to the chill realisation that -barring some sort of miracle -she would soon die out here. Her mother had often lectured her about how much energy a dragon needed to survive and grow. She understood now the purpose of those lectures.

A few days later while examining her reflection in the surface of a still pond, Zera had found herself emaciated, her muscles wasting and her green scales losing their lustre. Leaning towards the water, even her eyes looked cloudy and unfocused. A cold dread settled in the pit of her stomach as reality set in. The concept of death was one relatively new to the dragon, but having watched her own mother waste away just a cycle ago Zera knew how slow and painful it could be. It came as a shock, then, to see herself beginning to go down the same path.

That day, she failed to catch even a small animal to eat. The dragon had stalked a lone rabbit in a nearby clearing, but when she attempted to pounce on it her hind legs gave way, and Zera received a mouthful of dirt instead. Tired and aching, she couldn’t summon the will to get up, instead opting to sleep right there in the open despite it still being daylight. Perhaps, Zera thought, if she slept more she could conserve her strength until… until what? The dragon realised that she had still been holding onto some kind of hope in the back of her mind. Hope that she would find more food, that she would improve her hunting ability, that her own action or that of someone else would save her from a slow and agonising demise by starvation. Zera knew that hope was false. It didn’t stop some part of her from refusing to accept it, to hope and fight on to the bitter end. The dragon guessed that was her basic survival instinct at work. Keep going, it said. Keep going one day at a time.

So, she decided to do just that. After she slept, of course.

Zera soon fell into a light doze, waking from her restless sleep to find the sky already darkened by night -save for a subtle orange glow in the direction she had been travelling in. The dragon stood, examining the circle of cloudless sky visible from the clearing. The moon was almost at its zenith, meaning the sun couldn’t still be setting. A distant fire, perhaps? Fully awake now, Zera ignored the hunger pangs gnawing at her gut and decided to investigate. She moved slowly back into the treeline, picking her way through the undergrowth. Her night vision was not as good as it used to be, and the dragon took some time to find a path through the dense foliage in this area of the forest.

After walking for only a short time, the trees began to thin out again. This time, however, there was no clearing. Instead the ground appeared to drop away into nothing, with a short grassy verge before the cliff edge. Slipping between two trees and onto the verge, Zera froze in shock when she saw what lay on the horizon -the source of the mysterious glow.

Perhaps three days walk beyond the base of the cliff, the forest came to an abrupt end. Flat plains of cleared land spread out for a great distance, right up to the edge of The Thing. Zera hardly had the words to describe it. Great towers struck out towards the sky, dozens of them, defying logic and gravity as they reached to the heavens. The tallest in the centre looked as if it rose higher that Zera had ever flown before. The towers were covered in the most outlandish colours; with bright blues, incandescent pinks, warm oranges and almost every other imaginable hue glowing in the night. The light they emitted was the source of the glow in the sky, Zera realised, and the dragon was dumbfounded at how something could be made to illuminate the darkness brighter than the greatest of fires.

Spreading out from the colossal towers, smaller constructions rose, their size seeming to decrease as they got further from the centre. These too were lit, not as spectacularly as the larger structures but enough that they twinkled in the dark, like a reflection of the stars above. Between all these structures, and seemingly connecting them together, was a huge complex of lines; it looked not unlike the veins of a leaf, or a gigantic spiderweb. Zera stood awestruck. It seemed utterly impossible that such a Thing could be built. Its scale was incomprehensible.

The dragon had seen old constructions before, of course. The land was dotted with ancient ruins from the world that came before. Old dwellings, fallen towers and pathways worn away to almost nothing. But those were centuries old, according to her mother. Those that created them were long gone, their civilisation destroyed and burned to ash -or so the stories told. What Zera was looking at now was something entirely different.

It finally occurred to her that this was a City.

Zera knew very little about the other inhabitants of their world. Dragons were the only intelligent creatures she had ever spoken to before. Even then she had only known her mother, and they had a few chance encounters with strangers in the past. But her mother had told her other tales, stories of the great Cities that dotted the world, of the strange and varied peoples who lived there. The Two-legs had abandoned nature, left behind the nomadic ways of hunting and foraging for food; instead choosing to settle and build their homes of metal, stone and glass. Her mother scoffed at the idea.

“Those creatures are weak and stupid. To abandon nature is to prove yourself unworthy of survival in this world.”

Zera had listened closely -it wasn’t often her mother talked of the wider world beyond their forests and mountains. “Have you ever seen them, mother? Did you meet the Two-legs?”

Her mother had reacted unexpectedly. She broke her gaze, swallowing and looking distant for a moment, before quickly regaining her composure. “Those creatures may be weak, Zera, but they are also cunning and dangerous. If you ever see one of their Cities, you should -no, you must fly the other way.

Zera was crestfallen. “But… but why, mother? I want to meet a Two-legs!”

Anger flashed across her mother’s snout then as she bared her teeth, causing Zera to whimper in fear. “Because I have told you so! The Cities are cursed and unnatural, no place for a dragon to be!”

But Zera had always remained curious. She had long wondered about the Two-legs, and in her more naive days had still secretly hoped to meet one someday. It was a few years later that she almost got her wish. One day, as she walked with her mother up a high mountain ridge, the older dragon had frozen in place, shocked by something, before quickly flattening herself to the ground.

“Zera! Get down!” her mother hissed.

The younger dragon had swiftly obeyed, laying on her belly and peering over the cliff-edge before she noticed the source of her mother’s fear. Some distance below them, making their way through the mountain-pass, was a group of five Two-legs. As far up as the dragons were, Zera could still make out details of the creatures below her. They all were covered in different forms of of coloured clothing, aside from their heads which remained bare. Four of the group were light-skinned and hairless, save for a tuft of fur on the top of their scalps. The fifth was darker skinned and seemed completely hairless. Each had carried a bag on its back, containing who knows what.

“Zera! Away from the edge, lest they spot us!”

Shuffling away from the edge, Zera whispered back. “Why, mother? They don’t look strong; they could never hurt us. What are they, anyway?”

Her mother, surprisingly, didn’t cut her daughter off or tell her to be silent. Instead she answered, her voice hushed and worried. “Those are humans, Zera. Some of the worst of the Two-legs. They may not look dangerous, but I promise you this: a group of Two-legs can be as powerful as any dragon.”

“But mother, didn’t you say they were weak before?”

“Yes Zera, they are. But they can create weapons which compensate for their weakness. Which can kill a dragon even from afar. We need to stay hidden until they pass. Understand?”

Zera just gulped and nodded. The ‘humans’ had moved on, and Zera never saw another Two-legs again.

Now, as the dragon stood by the cliff-edge gazing at the beautiful sight before her, she was struck by a realisation. According to her mother, the Two-Legs never had to hunt or forage to survive. So, they must have invented some way to create their own food -certainly, after seeing the impossible constructions before her, such a task seemed trivial in comparison.

With some trepidation, Zera realised she had a choice to make.

She could stay out here in the wilds. Turn her back on the City, as her mother had warned her to do all those years ago. Keep fighting for survival out here, getting weaker and weaker until her body gave out.

Or…

She could take a leap of faith. Risk whatever these Two-Legs might do to her for a chance at survival. Head towards the City and try to live among the Two-Legs, however difficult that may be. The alternative was an almost certain death, long and drawn-out like her mother’s.

Zera remembered the glimmer of hope that her mind had been holding onto. The hope for some kind of miracle, something to save her from her fate. Zera now realised, this City was that miracle. Only, it would take too long to reach it on foot.

Stepping towards the cliff-edge, the green dragoness stretched out her wings. Zera reckoned she had enough energy left for one last flight, one final push to salvation. Leaping off the verge with all her strength, the dragon plummeted for just a moment before her wings caught the air. With a few strong beats, she corrected herself, and began to glide off into the night. Towards the great City on the horizon.

Zera only hoped she would make it.