FSE

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formerly SoFurry search engine

The day had been long and it was raining outside.

Owen yawned and considered the cloudy, humid night through the misty window with tired eyes. He then walked to the kitchen, heated a cup of chocolate in the microwave and returned to the living room. Sitting in his favorite couch, the ermine grabbed the laptop with his other paw and got comfortable. He'd left the tab with the story he wanted to read open a few minutes earlier.

It had been a long time since the last story he'd read. Lately, he'd been focusing more on writing stuff - and there was nothing wrong with that, but it also meant he had no idea what the stories other people were posting nowadays looked like. A friend of his had suggested he read that one and Owen had been about to decline. In the end, it had been his friend's enthusiasm that had pushed him just enough to agree.

The ermine took a sip of the chocolate and began reading.

The first feeling he got from the text was positive, but in a strangely unusual way. As he kept reading, the feeling only intensified. He shifted in the couch, making sure he wouldn't spill his chocolate, and frowned. It wasn't a worry frown or an anger frown, but a curiosity frown.

He couldn't recall ever reading a story in which words seemed to be so... perfectly placed. It could have been merely a subjective idea, of course, but the more he read, the less he could shake off the feeling that every word was placed exactly where it should be, that he would have used the very same expressions, paced the story progression with that exact rhythm.

It wasn't often that one found a writer who so obviously resembled his own style. Which was a good thing, contrary to what many other people might believe - he had a way of writing that mirrored the way he expected a story to be read, and as such, when a story was presented that way, it made things easier for him. Obviously, that didn't mean he disliked authors who used a radically different style! Sometimes a bit of opposition made reading more interesting, after all.

But that style... it was comfy. Like the hot chocolate in his paw.

He kept reading.

The plot wasn't particularly deep or innovative, but that wasn't what Owen usually went looking for when reading a story.

It was about an author who'd been hypnotized to forget every single story he'd written so that he'd read them for the first time and enjoy them like one of his readers. It was a cute concept, albeit a bit farfetched in Owen's opinion - how could someone forget such a massive chunk of information and leave no trace behind?

If he considered the stories he'd written, they must take about a fourth of the storage room in his brain. What would he do with all that free space after being forced to forget? How could someone simply not see the huge paw print left behind? He shook his head, trying to get rid of the persistent metaphors.

But all things considered, the plot was just like the style - comfy. It was a nice idea to entertain, an author being made to read his own stuff without knowing he'd written it before. A sweet way to override the standards a writer would subject themself to and all that stuff.

Well, one could dream.

The story wasn't particularly complex in that there weren't any dialogues or thoughts. Just a bunch of descriptive text from the beginning to the end, following the main character's night as he prepared to read the stories he had written unawares. He then began to realize how comfortable he felt with the words and the style used, and enjoyed the story far more than he would have had he judged the story knowing it was yours.

Owen used to think he thrived in dialogue and thoughts - they were an easy way to make stories feel more dynamic, after all - so he could easily see why the protagonist would think a story without any character interacting was something he couldn't have possibly written. He would have arrived to the exact same realization, had he been hypnotized to forget.

Suspicion and possibility began brewing inside him.

And just like that, Owen broke the pristine brick of descriptive text and abruptly reached the end of the story - where the author's name was neatly specified - just to make sure he wasn't wrong.

"Wait a second."

• Written by Owen -