FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Iris woke to bright yellow sunbeams stabbing into her eyes and sharp, shrill birdcalls stabbing her ears, but most of all she woke up surprised to be alive.

She could barely remember going to sleep. It was a jumble of images and feelings. Fear. The hug she shared with her father. Terror. The yelling voices all around her, drowned out by the sirens.

But now, there was quiet. There was peace.

The wolf leaned forward and unceremoniously bonked her snout into the plexiglass lid of her cryochamber. As she rubbed her snout, she looked past the glass and saw a forest stretching far far beyond. It was like a sea of deep green that waved about in the breeze. And the sky above was clear blue.

Iris had never seen so many trees or so clear a sky, not outside of pictures in history class.

The wolf thought she must still be asleep, and dreaming.

Then a moth landed on the plexiglass just in front of her. It was a luna moth, wings an iridescent green. And as Iris leaned forward, she could just see the way the feathery antennae flickered about. She had definitely not seen that in a history book. It was real. It had to be real.

Iris had made it.

She fumbled inside the cryochamber for the lever that would release the seal. It made the luna moth flutter away, but she didn't care. The lid popped off and Iris took a few shaky steps out.

The wolf was alone.

The small room contained her cryochamber, clearly out of place with its dull pitted metal against the lovingly lacquered wood floor. On three sides, the room had open windows, looking out over the sea of trees. On the fourth was a wall, or what looked like a tree trunk serving as a wall, as though a tree had grown straight through one side of the room, or that the room had simply been built against a tree.

Iris ran to one of the windows and held her head out, taking in deep breaths of the wonderful air. Scents of pine needles and ferns and a few wildflowers drifted up to her from the forest below. And she was sure there must be a river nearby because she smelled cool, clear water. She'd had so few opportunities to smell such delicious things before and here it all was, laid out before her, as if she could wander the forest for a year and never get her fill.

And if she had timed herself, she would have learned that she spent almost an hour hanging out the window and simply breathing. Only then did she start to ask more about where she was, and where everyone else was.

The room had only a single exit, which the wolf made her way towards. The door opened onto an aerial walkway clinging close to the trunk of a massive tree that swept far into the sky above her, towering above the forest and even the nearby hills. The room she had awakened in was truly just attached to the side of the trunk, and hers was not the only one: all along the tree were rooms and whole buildings seemingly built into the living bark, connected by a series of walkways and elevators. But for now, they all hung silent and empty. She could see no one else.

Iris stepped out onto the walkway. It was firm and steady underfoot and after overcoming a bit of vertigo, the wolf dashed across to the next room on the trunk.

It was an apartment. There was a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen. There was even a piping hot bowl of some kind of sweetened oatmeal sitting on a table.

"For me?" Iris asked to no one in particular.

"For you, slumberer," came the reply from all around her.

The wolf jumped and looked around, trying to find the source of the sound.

"I am the tree," the voice said. "I am the city. I welcome you back to the waking world."

Tentatively, Iris walked to the back wall of the apartment. Like the room she had awoken in, this had a wall that seemed to be part of the great tree trunk. She reached out, pulled her hand back, and then reached out again to touch the bark. "This tree?"

A few inches from her hand, the bark shifted and a large leaf unfolded on a thin stalk. The leaf went still for a moment, then curved until the tip of the leaf touched her shoulder. "Yes," said the voice, which seemed to rumble underneath the trunk.

"Wow." It was all Iris could think to say. She withdrew her hand slowly and the leaf retracted back into the trunk. "I'm sorry. This is all a bit much."

"I know," said the tree. "You have been through much. But you are safe now. And I will be here to answer all your questions, when you are ready to ask them. May I suggest breakfast first? You are likely quite hungry."

She was, now that she realized it. She scrambled back to the table and began shoving the oatmeal in her mouth as fast as she could. But within a few bites she slowed, she savored. There were fresh apple slices in the mix, and a sprinkle of cinnamon, and a dash of honey, just like her grandmama used to make. When the bowl was empty, she licked it clean and sighed.

She felt better with her belly full. And the tree was right. She did have so many questions. What to ask first? "How long was I asleep?"

"Close to three thousand years."

Three thousand? Iris shivered. "Did anyone survive?"

"Yes. A few like you survived in cryochambers, slumbering underground. A few more survived the cataclysm. When the world was destroyed, they focused on rebuilding it."

"They did a good job," the wolf said, staring out over the trees. Then a thought occurred to her. "There are others? Here?" She glanced down at herself. She had completely forgotten that she had been put into the cryochamber naked and she was still sitting there without a stitch of clothes on her.

"There are a few who help tend to the tree," the voice said. "But you are free to take as long as you need before you meet them."

"Oh, all right. But do you have any clothes?"

"I have many clothes. Do you want to wear them?"

Iris opened her mouth to respond and then closed it again without saying anything. She had been about to say that of course she needed clothes, but she could not think of any reason why she did at that moment. No one would see her. She didn't need to look prim and proper for her father. She shook her head. "Maybe later," she said.

"Whenever you wish."

Iris sighed and smiled. "Thank you."

"You are welcome."

After another long pause, as Iris relaxed, she asked, "Are there many other tree-cities like you?"

"No, I am the only one. This world was nearly destroyed once, so people have decided to let their impact on this planet be minimal. A few live here in the city. A few explore the ruins of the old cities, to find slumberers like you. But most have moved out into the stars, to build life anew."

"Oh," the wolf said as her mind's eye was filled with visions of space stations and Martian colonies. "Can I go see them? Sometime?"

"Whenever you wish."

The response made her quiver a little inside. She was unused to having such freedom. Up until the moment she been put on ice, everything had been decided for her. She'd barely been able to convince her father to let her go to college, and he had insisted on a business degree.

She felt a new question rising inside and was almost afraid to ask it. "Is my father here?"

There was a pause before the tree answered. "I have no records of your father being released from slumber. If you like, we can put you back into stasis until we have either found him or--"

"No! No. Please." And then Iris couldn't help herself. She started to laugh. "Ha ha ha. No, no." And she started to giggle and she giggled until she snorted and that only made her giggle harder. "I don't have to worry about him anymore."

She could do whatever she wanted now. He wasn't here to tell her no. Which left the question of what did she actually want. "Ice cream," she said suddenly. "Do you have ice cream?"

"Of course, although it may take a while to prepare it."

"I want chocolate chunk ice cream, with big fudgy pieces in it, and a caramel ribbon, and I want it served in a big bowl with sprinkles on top. Can you do all that?"

A moment of silence. "Yes. It will take approximately fifty minutes to prepare as I do not have chocolate chunk ice cream made."

"Worth it."

The wolf spent the intervening most of an hour exploring her new apartment and being assured by the tree that it was all hers, that there was no rent, and that she was free to stay there as long as she liked. She could even change the apartment to suit her tastes: the tree had merely opted for a default arrangement to begin with.

When the ice cream was finally ready and delivered into the apartment via a dumbwaiter, Iris dug in. She gave herself a brain freeze, but powered through it, so eager she was to relish the sweetened treats that her father never let her have except on the specialest of special occasions. Not even her birthdays had counted.

She was sure she was going to have a stomachache later. She didn't care.

"Do you have a TV or something?"

The floor-to-ceiling windows along the outer wall shifted to opaque and a screen popped up on them. Holographic controls shimmered into view in the center of the table for easy access. Iris gawked at the huge list of topics. It was going to take her longer than ever to determine what to watch. But then, she had all the time in the world now.

But before everything else, there was one topic that pulsed gently on the screen: "Welcome, new slumberer," it read. Feeling like an invitation had been offered, Iris settled in on the couch and clicked on the pulsing topic.

The screen flicked away to a picture of a cougar standing before a dusty red and brown mountain. "Welcome, new slumberer!" she said cheerily. "Can you believe it? I'm on Mars. I'm. Actually. On. Mars. That behind me? That's Ascraeus Mons. And I'm gonna climb it." The cougar adjusted her backpack and grinned at the camera. "If you have ever loved hiking. You have to check out Mars. I love you all. You'll do great."

The cougar disappeared, replaced a moment later by a hyena sitting in an academic room. He looked tired and had a large cup of something steaming in one hand. "Welcome, new slumberer. I am Okorie. And I appear to be the last native speaker of Igbo in the universe. So far, no one else has been found. I'm glad the historians have done so much work to find all records they could, but they really wanted a native speaker to help interpret them. It is hard work, but it is good work." The hyena took a long sip of his drink. "Remembering who we were is so important."

The hyena disappeared and was now replaced with a weasel in a rather cramped-looking cockpit. "Hey, new slumberer--that's what I'm supposed to say, right? Oh wait--Welcome, new slumberer! Got it. Anyways, if you're like me, you're stunned by a new world and wondering what your place is in all of it. Well, I always wanted to travel, see the stars and now look at me!" The weasel spun the camera around and showed a panorama of Saturn's rings stretching in front of him. "I'm a modern-day trucker, taking shipments all over the galaxy. I'm going to try and see every planet out there. Whoop, gotta go!"

Iris paused the videos. "What are these?"

The tree answered. "Waking into a world so different can be challenging. The first slumberers started a tradition of recording messages of encouragement to help guide your steps and show you the possibilities of the future."

The wolf nodded and relaxed back into her chair, watching video after video of those who had awoken before her.

* * *

After a while, it became too much, and Iris needed a change. She skipped back to the menu and looked through the other viewing options. After the pulsing invitation to the welcome videos, the first broad topic was labeled "Old World" with a note stating that they were shows from Iris's time, although the archives were sadly incomplete. The second broad topic was "Old World reimagined" with either remakes or continuations of "Old World" shows whose stories had been left unfinished due to the cataclysm. Then there was "History," "Current Events," "Comedy," and so on.

And then Iris froze. Sandwiched in the list was an entire topic devoted to "Pornography." She flicked away from it on impulse, before her father could see what she'd been looking at.

But her father was gone.

"Y-you don't care what I watch, do you?" the wolf asked, tentatively.

"You are free to watch anything in my files."

"And you won't be... angry?"

A pause. "I might be angry if you watched a video of a wildfire and cheered the fire. But I will still protect you and accept you so long as you do not actually seek to cause harm to others."

"So, porn is all right then?" Iris asked, tentatively, chewing on her lip.

"It is a very popular choice with recently awoken slumberers," the tree informed her. "Would you like to see one of my favorites?"

The idea of a tree watching smut seemed almost hysterical to the wolf but she tried to hide it with a smile, a polite thank you, and a nod.

The screen shifted to show a video of what looked to be an artificial oak tree in a black room. One of the branches began to rustle and Iris watched as a fox emerged out onto the branch, her fur painted in browns and greens so that if she stood still she seemed to merge into the tree around her. She was also quite exquisitely naked and Iris shivered as she watched her breasts and sex come into and out of view around the many leaves of the oak.

It was a dance, Iris realized belatedly, like a slow and sinuous erotic ballet. Other painted forms dropped from the branches until there was a circle of women all dancing slowly, erotically, naked. They swayed as one, as if all rocked by the same strong breeze, but they caressed and teased over their forms independently of one another. Some mouths opened in silent moans.

The dance sped up, the forms writhed as they approached the trunk of the tree. Hands were on one another now, teasing and groping. A flicker of the screen, a bolt of lightning, and one of the women went rigid in ecstasy. Another bolt flashed by, and another woman peaked. Again and again it happened until the storm suddenly stopped, and the women all turned as one to face the tree and press against the trunk, the brown span of the fur along their back making them blend into the bark and become invisible, as the camera slowly panned out.

"Wow," was all Iris could think to say, her legs crossed beneath her.

* * *

Iris spent the rest of the day, and the next, and the next happily trawling through everything she could find in the pornography channel. The tree informed her that even if she watched every program one after the other, it would take her decades to finish it all. Iris didn't mind. She thought of it almost like a challenge.

Sure, the wolf had masturbated before, but discreetly and quickly. Now she masturbated openly, lewdly, giving full voice to her moans of pleasure. The tree provided meals with the appropriate nutrients and supplements for Iris's "self-exploration." There was also a bottle of lube.

Even after she had climaxed five times and was panting from near exhaustion, Iris kept playing the videos. There was still so much to them to explore. She even drifted off to sleep each night, splayed out on her new bed, watching yet another video. Each morning she was woken up to moans.

Iris also tried, each day, to watch a few more of the "Welcome, new slumberer" videos, but she struggled to get through more than a dozen a time, short though they were. The sheer number of options the world held for someone who had spent so long with no options threatened to overwhelm her. She needed to take things slowly.

But all the porn did have an additional effect: it got Iris thinking about the things she had wanted to do but knew her father would never have let her. So one morning, after a hot breakfast and a cup of tea, she asked about piercings.

"We have a full range of body modification options available," the tree said and popped up a display on another opaque window.

Iris happily scanned it, but before long her jaw dropped. "I can change species?"

"Modern gene therapy has progressed to the point where that is possible. Roughly three percent of slumberers opt for a full species shift, another six percent opt for a sex change. All changes are reversible with time, so many enjoy spending a month or two with a new body."

"New world, new you," Iris muttered. She had no interest in changing either her species or sex, but she continued scrolling through the various options. Even if she didn't go for a full body change, much could be altered. She could change her height to be as tall or short as she wanted (within basic physical tolerances), she could add or remove fat, she could increase or decrease the number of fingers she had. It was all a bit hard or her to process. But then she took another look at the porn still playing on the next screen over and made a number of selections.

"You will need to visit our clinic for these changes," the tree informed her.

"Will there be others there?" she asked, enjoying having her only companion be the patient and understanding tree.

"No. The clinic is run by me, but it contains a number of items that I cannot easily synthesize so for expediency, you should go there."

"Now?"

"Whenever you like."

Despite her eagerness, Iris told herself she should wait just a little, until at least past lunch, so she could ruminate on the changes she was proposing to herself. There was a mirror in the bathroom that was layered with a screen and the tree used it to show the wolf her reflection with the changes already made. What made the most sense to her? What felt right to her? Iris giggled again that she was able to make those decisions for herself.

After lunch, she stepped out onto the walkways beyond the apartment. The wind whipped gently against her and reminded her of her nakedness, but she persisted. Halfway along the walkway was a glass elevator that ran up the trunk of the tree. Iris stepped on and was swept high into the air. She kept glancing out, looking for other people, half wanting to see who else would live in such a fantastical place, and half hoping she would see no one. Ultimately it was the latter half that was satisfied. Whatever the tree did to separate her from the others living in the tree/city, she never saw a single sign of them.

Then the elevator stopped, pulling up into a sterile-looking room. Whereas the few other places Iris had been were primarily made of wood and glass, here everything had a sleek technological look of plastic and chrome. There were a variety of stations for different purposes, none of which the wolf could guess at, and she had to be led to the back of the room by blinking arrows in the floor.

The station she arrived at reminded her of a dentist chair, except exquisitely padded. As she sat in and it adjusted her position, she felt a moment of trepidation. "Will it hurt?"

"I will use an anesthetic," the tree said, its calm voice slightly hollow and distant in the sterile environment.

A pair of mechanical arms descended from above and Iris winced at the expectant prick of a needle. Instead though there was a light hum and her upper torso felt... tingly.

"Sonar aenesthetic deployed."

Sonar? Well of course they could dull pain with sonar. It was the future after all.

She felt nothing on her chest as another pair of arms descended and began working on her. Iris tried to stare at the ceiling and hum a half-remembered song and not think about what was happening.

"The first phase is complete. How do they feel?"

Complete? Iris thought they had barely started. She sat up as the arms retracted from her and looked down onto a much larger pair of breasts. It had been the one major thing about her body that she had always felt self-conscious about. She was healthy and fit, but she had always been rather flat-chested. Now she could see (and feel the weight of) her new breasts, several cup sizes up. She'd gone from feeling like she hardly had any breasts at all, to having breasts that were just a touch too big to hold in a given hand.

"You have been injected with a biomemetic fluid," the tree explained. "Over the next few days your body will assimilate the fluid and make it a part of itself. In the process you should notice some firming up of the new tissue. We can adjust softness levels afterwards."

The voice of the tree was reassuring, and it made Iris relax. "I'm ready for the next step."

The next step was something her father would never have approved of, which was half the reason Iris wanted to do it, to set herself apart as Not His. Two smaller arms descended, and even though she felt nothing, Iris still flinched and looked away as two needles came out and pierced her nipples, sliding in a good sized ring into place on each.

Without prompting the tree brought up a mirror so that Iris could see herself from the front better. She just smiled at it.

"You had expressed some hesitation about the third procedure. Are you sure you want to proceed?"

The wolf bit her lip a little. "You did say you could reverse it if it doesn't work out, right?"

"Of course."

"Then let's try it at least. I'm feeling... new."

A third and final set of arms descended these with what looked to be suction cups on the end, each of which latched onto a nipple. Iris wasn't sure she fully understood how it worked, if they were adding more nerves or increasing the signal speed of the nerves that were there, but the end result was supposed to be that her nipples were going to become much more sensitive.

"It's done," the tree said as the arms pulled away. "You should regain feeling in approximately one hour. I recommend a more relaxing day, as even with the best medical technology available, your body will still need to recover from the changes."

Iris boarded the elevator back to her apartment, and on the trip down she held her arms cross under her chest, feeling the new weight there and smiling. Back home--because yes, she already started to think of it as home--she decided to watch things that were more formal and perhaps even boring than the porn she had been consuming since her arrival. She opted for a ten hour movie titled "The Old History of the New World" which basically gave her a history lesson of everything that had happened since she had been put on ice.

Iris was happy at least that the producers had decided to elide over most of the death and destruction of the cataclysm. They didn't show her videos of cities burning and people dying. They skipped over most of that and to the survivors, roughly twenty thousand, who began to rebuild with what bits of tech they could find still working. The survivors built the first new city. They began reseeding forests and cleaning the oceans. For hundreds of years the unofficial motto of the city was "repair, repair, repair." And then once Earth was fixed, they began setting out into the stars. The documentary showed the first Martian colonies, then the Martian terraforming project. Then the Venusian colonies, and the Venusian terraforming. Then interstellar travel, meeting with alien cultures, space stations.

And back on Earth there was the tree, growing from a single seedling, a techno-biological marvel. And from the tree, groups of explorers went out, searching for the slumberers, the name given to those, like Iris.

It ended on a bittersweet note: "We have never repeated the mistakes that lead to the great cataclysm, but only because we have always remembered how dear a price we paid for them."

Iris had intended to shift back to porn-watching mode after the documentary, but it didn't seem as important then. There was one thought she couldn't get rid of: for all that she had hated the way her father had controlled her life, he had made sure she had a cryogenic pod to keep her safe. And it was quite likely he had never found a second one for himself.

"Guilt and sadness are natural reactions," the tree's voice came without prompting.

It shook Iris out of her funk and she hadn't realized that she'd barely moved from her spot for an hour after the credits had rolled. She laughed weakly. "I suppose most 'slumberers' get that?"

"Approximately 99.2% do."

"You've been at this a long time. You must have good advice you can give."

"Your sadness is unique to you. Platitudes can only go so far. What I will say is that the people who built me did so in the belief that you, no matter who you are, deserve a chance at a new and wonderful life. They could have simply left, but instead they worked hard for many generations to create this place for you. I have led thousands of slumberers into the new world. And I agree that all of them, you included, deserve that chance."

Iris smiled softly. She wandered over to bed and collapsed under the sheets. And in doing so, she found her arms draping over her new chest and enjoying the new, comforting feel of it. It was a new world. It was a new her. She was going to take the chance she was offered.

* * *

Iris woke up with a new sense of purpose. She had spent her first days on the tree in a mostly hedonistic daze, but now she wanted to explore more purposefully. She thought that so many had worked so hard to build this wonderful place, the least she could do was try. She reached back to all the things she had enjoyed growing up or in school. She tried cooking once again, asking the tree for ingredients and a recipe rather than a finished meal like she was usually offered. She asked for a sketchbook, then an easel, then an even bigger easel.

And all the while she explored her sexuality. It felt to the wolf that she was crashing headlong through puberty again, so intense were her feelings, and that wasn't just the increased neural sensitivity. But she was thoughtful about this too. No longer did she set the videos to play on random. Now she watched some of her favorites, ticked off the keywords that she liked best, and started diving down into the things that tickled her fancy the most.

She realized early in the process that she had very little interest in videos that showed sex between two people. Instead, she liked seeing videos of women alone, pleasuring themselves. But that quickly became women being pleasured by machines or being stimulated by AIs, or any manner of other objects. Iris glanced at one of her recent paintings, which depicted the landscape of trees out beyond her window, and an idea began to take root.

"How big of a thing can you make?" she asked the tree.

"Quite large. What did you have in mind?"

"A greenhouse, full of plants."

"I already have those. I can bring one down if you like."

"Not yet. I want you to put something in particular into it. Hang on. I'll draw it." It actually took her many hours to draw it, but the tree was patient. It waited and listened as Iris sketched out the thing she wanted the tree to construct, and how it would operate. By the time she was done, it was so late that she hopped right into bed, hands between her thighs, rubbing over her damp labia as she drifted off to intricate fantasies.

The next morning she requested to be taken to a changing room so she could pick out an outfit. She specifically requested something with lots and lots of sexy clothes. The tree obliged and carried her by elevator to a room that she was sure she would have been far too embarrassed to ever enter prior to her deep freeze.

It held various kinds of lace and leather and latex and far more besides. She hadn't realized all the changing notions of what counted as sexy in the intervening millennia, although a lot had stayed the same. (Apparently there had been a century where feathers had been the biggest thing in erotica.) She tried on several outfits simply by touching them as she looked into a mirror, and the mirror would display what she would look like wearing it. She found herself initially gravitating to things with lots of straps, things to get your fingers under, things to pull and tug, but then she gravitated towards something smooth and full body, like a wetsuit. But the neoprene wetsuits were more functional than sexy and the latex didn't have the right elasticity.

"Can you make me a new outfit too?" she asked.

"Of course."

"I want something like this," she said, holding up the latex suit. "But I want it to have some more stretch to it."

For the first time, the tree built what she asked right in front of her, creating the polymers one at a time. When it was done, Iris tried it on and smiled. It was black, deeper than even her own fur. And when she tried pulling at one of the holes where her hand came through, it yielded like a rubber band.

"Excellent."

She returned to the apartment and spent a few hours getting used to the feeling of the suit. Her heart was fluttering at lunch, but she ate and waited for her stomach to calm down before she asked the tree to take her to the greenhouse.

The greenhouse was even prettier than she had imagined. She had expected a little thing, with a couple of pots here and there with the occasional half-tended plants growing out of them. She should not have underestimated the tree. The whole greenhouse was filled nearly to the brim and overflowing with more types of plants than Iris could name. There was hardly room to walk between the aisles and every surface was covered in flower pots and soil beds. Even the ceiling wasn't spared, and she constantly had to duck around collections of hanging mosses.

And then she saw it, right there at the back of the greenhouse, exactly as she had described it. It looked like a gigantic flower, with leafy petals and was as broad across as Iris was tall. The base of the flower sprouted in thick vines that had seemingly overgrown the spot intended for them, wrapping around nearby pots and table legs.

There was still time to back out, but Iris took a deep breath and persisted on.

Up close she was pleased to get a sweet smell coming from the immense flower. She hadn't specified a smell, but the tree had come up with something that had a faint touch of cherry blossoms.

The wolf reached out and ran a finger along one of the oversized petals of the plant. It curled at her touch and seemed to respond to her strokes with strokes of its own, massaging the tip of a petal against her wrist. It had a surprising amount of strength to it.

There was a slight creaking sound and Iris looked down to see a vine uncoiling itself from a nearby table leg. A moment later, the wolf felt a shiver run up her spine as a different vine touched her thigh, beginning to wrap around it. There was a slightly alien way to how it moved as if different parts of the same vine were operating independently. The overall effect was to coil around her.

Iris's breath was shaky as more and more vines slipped away from the plant and started to wrap around her. There was not much order or sense to the way they moved. They just grabbed whatever was closest. And this meant at one point in time touched her shoulder and started trying to coil around her torso diagonally like a bandolier. They did seem to recognize her face and head were different and outside of a few exploratory strokes over her muzzle and ears, they stayed away.

Before long, so many of the vines had wrapped her up that it was hard for her to move. One leg was fixed in place, the other only able to wiggle below the knee. One arm had been pinned to her side, and the other was held out towards the plant itself.

Then she felt herself being drawn forward, unable to resist the power of so many vines all at once. She nearly fell forward against the massive flower, except that the vines held her weight until she could be gently lowered against the feather-soft petals. As they had before when she first touched them, the petals responded by curling up, enfolding her in their embrace.

If Iris hadn't designed the plant, she might have felt afraid, like being trapped by a gigantic venus fly trap, as the petals began to block out the light and hold her body tightly inside the bud. She could do little more than wriggle as the vines became more animated, loosening their coils to now probe and explore over her form. Knowing what was to come, Iris's attention had already started drifting to her breasts and sex. She stifled a small groan each time the vines brushed over her chest, stimulating her new nerves.

The vines began to poke and probe at her body, staying away from her head still. Eventually they found the holes to the latex suit she wore and began to infiltrate, sliding in at her wrists, ankles, and neck. The sensation of them moving under the suit made the wolf squirm more. The elasticity of the rubber meant it accommodated the vines but pressed them tight against her fur, so as they moved they felt like worms or snakes gliding right over her form. And there were a dozen of them trying to enter the suit simultaneously.

Iris bit her lip. She could feel one of the vines at her neck start to press down under the latex, nudging up against one of her newly enlarged breasts. She let out the breath as it moved on, dipping between the two. But a moment later a different vine prodded a breast and began to slither its way up it. Iris gasped out and shivered as it touched her nipple. She whined out, her arms prevented from moving to either protect her breasts or encourage the pleasurable contact. She could do nothing as the insistent movement made the tip of the vine drag back and forth across her nipple, exploring, before it continued on, the length of the vine sliding slowly over the sensitive skin.

Another vine took the same approach at her other nipple, but this one moved to pass over the top of her nipple and in so doing, looped itself through the ring there. It turned slightly in its progress, and tweaked the ring. Iris started panting. She had no idea it was possible for two singular spots on her body to feel so damn good. But the neural augment had worked well. If those vines had moved a little faster, if they had spent a few seconds more teasing her breasts, she would have climaxed on the spot.

She felt a third vine probing at her hips, making its way to her sex. It caressed along her labia and folded briefly against her clit before trying to delve into her sex itself. But the moment it did, it seemed to shiver and retract, pulling all the way out of her. It was replaced by a much larger vine, one that felt slippery to Iris. It quickly returned to the same spot and eased its way back into her sex. The feeling of the vine pressing in made Iris want to bear down onto it and push it in faster, but the vine was as slow and steady as it had always been, and once it filled her, it stopped and simply didn't move, no matter how much the wolf squirmed and clenched and tried to grind her hips.

The one major vine at her hips had smaller tendrils that started brushing along sensitive spots of her body near her sex. Some teased around her clit and some traced along her labia, all working in the same herky-jerky fashion that meant she couldn't predict where the next caress would come from. Iris felt a needy whine grow in her throat. She clenched tight on the vine, and then again and again. She was getting so close now. She could feel the orgasm building within her, held at bay by her simple inability to make the vines go any faster.

A new vine prodded gently at her mouth. Iris ran a tongue over her lips to wet them before opening. The vine gently slipped into her maw and held itself inside her muzzle. Iris had designed this vine to be different, like the flower giving her a deep and passionate french kiss. It would occasionally retract and caress along her muzzle and lips before sliding back into her muzzle.

The vines at her breasts began to slide from side to side, slipping over her nipples again and again. The newly sensitive neurons made Iris feel like her chest was on fire. She strained against the bonds and moaned as loud as she could against the vine gagging her muzzle. She tried to hold out her chest and to swing it back and forth to make the rubbing move faster, but it was useless.

The wolf's eyes went wide as the vines at her breasts suddenly changed course. They twisted and doubled back, but since they were wrapped around or through the rings, they tugged hard on both of them. She squealed in delight into the gagging vine. Her whole body shook. She was hovering right on the edge of climax. She just needed a little more stimulation.

And it came in the form of one last stroke along her clit.

The orgasm was so powerful that the vines strained and creaked as they tried to hold her in place as her hips thrust forward powerfully. Stars burst before her vision from the lack of oxygen before she remembered to breathe again. She cooed and groaned and squeaked as the vines at her sex and breasts retracted.

But the other vines stayed in place, holding her.

Iris smiled softly to herself. Given the plan she had laid out for the tree to build into the plant, she expected at least five more orgasms before she was finally set free.

* * *

Iris was walking bow-legged when everything was over. She stumbled into bed and sighed in exquisite delight before sleep claimed her.

On the next day she finally cleaned up and swapped out her suit for walking around in the buff once more. But she was a bit more business-like in her manner. She ate a quick breakfast and then sat back, lifting her head slightly to address the tree. "Can you show me a list of major sex toy companies currently running?"

An impressive list came up on the screen. "Perhaps you could provide some additional specifications to reduce the size of the list?"

"Yes, I want the sort of companies that specialize in full sensory experiences, not just dildos and handcuffs."

That shortened the list considerably and from there, Iris found a short list of a dozen that provided "full-scale fantasies" similar in nature to her plant. She even found a few that had various "tentacle" fantasies.

Iris dictated a letter of introduction, describing the device she had created and getting the tree to include the various specs she had designed for it, but she hesitated before sending it to these companies. She didn't know quite why.

The tree, sensing her feeling, grew a small leaf from the top of the table, which curled and brushed comfortingly over Iris's wrist.

"I've only been out a few days," the wolf said. "Am I ready to make plans for my future? I barely know what the world... well, the galaxy, is like."

"You are exploring possibilities, and you may continue to explore possibilities for as long as you like. And if you need, you may always come back here."

"Thank you." Iris sat back and cleared her throat. "Tree, I'm ready to record my 'Welcome, new slumberer,' message."