FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Highwoods, Colchester, yes she was familiar, intimately in fact. She knew the way past the train station. up that god awful wretched hill and where she might find sanctuary now she is among the Monstrus kind. As she headed towards her destination, she is hit by an oxymoron of an experience. On one hand she managed to grasp onto fragments of the life she now occupied, as each step in her new body became more and more intuitive. Conversely, she is also barraged by the memories of her time in Essex, memories that were becoming harder and harder to recall, details become more fuzzy, guesswork begins to fill the ever-increasing holes in recollection. But she tried her damnest to hold on, now that they were at risk of being lost these little moments she shared here with the Squirrel become priceless. All the ways they'd waste idle time at the bus stop or train station, the sensation of running her fingers through their paws, once a concession and now the feeling is all she could cling on to.

Despite this influx, in her current temporally challenge state, she managed to claw her way up North Hill and head to the pub that her love always used to drag her too: The Hounds of Tyre. More Mythical than A Local, but more A Local then a cursed and or living house. A pub for Monsters that has somehow managed to survive both a legislative assault from the Human government and a literal frontal assault from their patrons, how does this place still stand?

Actually a lot can be said about what still remains in this town, last Skúmálfar checked Colchester was deep in a culture war between Humans and Monsters, she hadn't seen many, if any, Humans pass her by on her walk. Wait what happened? Was there a mass exodus or something? Skúmálfar looks into the window of a café nearby, which had the news playing, news she notices being delivered by two Monsters mind something she had never seen before. She's also never seen news stories from Monster's perspective, they were being interviewed about their experience, instead of hiring a Human Expert that talks for them in the loudest way you could be wrong about literally everything.

The weather contained, and try and act shocked by this: The Weather. But also contained updates on Sun and UV values for the Alraunes, as well as wind speed to up to 20km in the sky for Avians and general flying Monsters and lastly river temperatures and tide news for the aquatics. That's right, it's an OAP utopia the weather report lasts TEN MINUTES. The over 60's demographic has never been so fed.

But these additions wasn't what caught Skúmálfar's attention, it was the point where the Weather announcer revealed the date of the report. The Elf's eyes widen as she swallows what feels like a boulder down her throat. She compared the date stated to the last one she could remember, the night she chased the Squirrel with rifle in hand, and the cold reality dawned on her: Five Years have passed since she lasted walked on this earth.

Could this be why everything is so Monster-y now? Did they fight Humanity? And god forbid, did they win? It was undeniable that Skúmálfar walked a Monsters world now, a slight panic took over her person, that is before she ran her hands down the side of her head and flattened these now massive ears of hers. Well against all odds this actually does work to her benefit, but she had better find out more information. After gawking outside for minutes now she finally made her way inside The Hounds of Tyre.

Once inside she make her way to the bar and is greeted by a Jiangshi, who she vaguely recognises from her time spent here in the past.

-Can I get a room for the night, please? Skúmálfar asks.

The Jiganshi looks her up and down with a sense of something perhaps resembling pity.

-Yeah, I can see you need it, is everything okay? The Jiganshi asks.

-Just a little bit of... Temporal desyncing, is about as much as I can explain it. The Elf replies, wiping sweat from her brow.

The Jiangshi starts tallying up on the cash register.

-Not the most unusual thing I've heard today, or even this hour. He replies. Okay that'll be a hundo Corona please.

He then gestures to his wrist as if to signal to Skúmálfar's. The Elf stood confused, lifts both their wrists to reveal nothing but the festival band she carries on her wrist. There's a slight pause where she swears the Jiangshi studies her band, as if he recognised it even. But he shakes his head a little as he clarifies.

-Oh if you're visiting we also accept Ten too. Explains Jiangshi, as if that could provide any comfort to someone in Skúmálfar's position.

She starts patting around her body in case there's anything that perhaps the Elf from earlier left on her person. As her hands move and pat all parts of her body, she notices on her neck piece, that's been keeping her translucent green shawl attached to her, the middle jewel has a chain of gold around its harness, which houses another jewel dangling at the end. This all seems to come off of the original neck piece, like it's detachable. The Jiangshi nods along to this revelation and goes to type in the register again.

-Yes Elven gold will work too ma'am, tho at a reduced value since we'll have to flog the thing. The Jiangshi explains as he snatches the Elven piece from her hand.

Skúmálfar hypothesises that perhaps this is a typical Elven feature of their attire, knowing their gold and precious stones can fetch such a high value, well were better to hide such expensive trinkets then in plain sight, to be given away in situations such as these.

-Okay that'll net you a single room for a few months just upstairs. Announces the Jiangshi.

-Whoa whoa, I just wanted it for the night. Explains Skúmálfar.

-Yeah? You got somewhere to be going back to after this? The corpses asks, as his eyes run up and down Skúmálfar.

I mean... Harsh, but fair. It'll give her time to get the bearings on her surroundings and plan her next move at least. The Jiangshi also hands her what looks like a phone.

-I imagine you'll need this, I took the liberty of adding this perk of the room for you. He explains. For people new to this realm to get up to speed and that.

The language is still so foreign to her, "Realm" like she's in a high fantasy story, despite being handed a Smartphone. The dissonance is disorienting, but she had better get used to it. She takes the phone as well as her key and proceeds to walk up the stairs. Her journey down the hallways and proceeding up other stairs to her floor seems to defy logic, her path would imply the building is much vaster and larger than the 2 floor outside would imply. Whatever sorcery this was, she eventually got to her room, she unlocks the door and proceeds to flump onto her new bed. While there is much to do, she has gained all the time in the world to do it. As she hasn't gotten to be off her feet since she exited the cabin, she elects now is the time to gather her strength, as she climbs under the sheets of her bed and lays her head onto the pillow. In her exhaustion, she doesn't find it difficult for her eyelids to collapse under their weight, as she drifts off to sleep.

...

-WHAT THE FUCK!? The Elf cries to the ceiling

Despite being so out of energy she can't keep her eyes open, sleep does not come to her. Somehow, her conciseness is entangled to this world. Luckily she had the phone, which comes with its own browser, tho she had to learn all the new Normals for websites designed for Monsters. What's the universal search engine, forums, social medias? It was like the first time she used a '98 PC on dial-up internet all over again, or accessing the Commercial Arcane Network on her first Opal device... Wait what? Only one of things happened right? Ugh, battling with two histories in one timeline is chaotic to say the least.

After finding the most commonly used one: 'Dallar, formally WDHS or "What Did Heimdall See?" She's ready to type something in. It feels weird to do so, but she has to just... Look up herself. Like it's so abstract, she doesn't know what to type in a search engine. I guess just throw in the question "Do Elves Sleep?"

...ssiiiiigghh "-5e"

The answer is: No, parenthesis, kind of. Elves do not lose sleep as in, losing consciousness. But they still need to preserve and regain energy like most things do as they sleep. Elves will achieve this with Relaxing but like... Actively. Like being awake but like... Passively. Elves can't just read a book for 6 hours, it's almost using too much brain space to be truly relaxing. They just need to... Be (but not a lot). For example, Skúmálfar searching the net, despite her body not doing anything active, is not achieving this relaxing state. Even sitting laying in bed but y'know... Comprehending mortality or that kind of thing, nah it doesn't count. Elves typically have designed pastimes for this period of time, from meditative practices or honest to god media that is designed not to cross the relaxing threshold in the form of book, movies, sounds and the like that is just abstract things, that come together when experienced in this relaxed state.

This is quite frankly: Terrible news to Skúmálfar. The night had always been a great ally to her and an essential tool to maintaining her delusional world view. Those 8 hours of sleep she didn't need to think, she could post-pone the arrival of self-awareness and guilt without much effort like she needs to during the day. Without that break, these thoughts over the course of the sleepless night sneak into her consciousness with unrelenting momentum. She keeps recalling how bad she treated The Squirrel during their time together, she now recalls the night where she beheld them, in terror, at the barrel of her rifle not with righteousness, but with horror. The damn of neurosis had been breeched and it was hours of hours of feeling like someone dragging their nails on the chalkboard. This empathy shit fucking suuuuuucks.

This continues as she tries in vain to stay idle to regain stamina, but her mind goes back to that night again, growing more vivid by the minute. She can feel the grass tickle her ankles, she can remember the feeling of the trigger on her fingers, the wind blowing past her elven ears... Wait, yes yes yes, she remembers how hard it was to even wield a rifle with her long nails scraping past the trigger handle constantly. Was that always so? Wait, she was a Human then? But that's silly she's always been an elf, in fact she can remember vividly her partner admitting it was that combo of being a Monster and Human-kind of that attracted her to them. They were weaning themselves of dating Humans for a time. Yeah... Right? Was that it?

Skúmálfar is cognizant of what's happening here, she understands her history as The Huntsman is slowly being erased, edited and replaced with a new one, in order to accommodate her new Elven heritage. Skúmálfar despite fighting to maintain her old history is letting the defences fall somewhat, it is horrifying, but considering this never ending guilt she's currently wrestling with perhaps this new history will alleviate it somewhat.

Well... Until she realises, if she's remembering that night as an Elf then all the awful stuff she did likely still occurred in this new history. Hahaha of fucking fantastic, the horror of being violated temporally, but with zero benefits. Great, amazing, no notes. But she tries to remember as much as she can to ascertain if her memories are identical, like what parts had changed. Well her history was still being reconstructed but something stands out, their relationship was well... Just that a relationship. But in this new history it was something else to Skúmálfar: An affair.

This brushes on what she's been afraid to do this whole time: To search up her name on 'Dallar. She wanted to play ignorant but this was the first instance of understanding she does have a new history to uncover and recall. She is terrified by what she could find out. In fact, she didn't need to go online for this, she was handed documents with her belongings earlier by that Elf. Included was documents which summed up her life, she just chose "I did not see it" until now, but she can feign ignorance no longer.

The strikes come blow by blow, each one more devastating than the last. She has a family, she made a family, she was a mother, she was an arranged wife to nobility, she was over 100 years old, she was wed relatively early for an Elven life-span, her life wasn't truly hers. Was this violation? Or was this entrance to nobility done with consent? You can have the facts, but her own opinions on them are nowhere to be found. She feels sick. She dashes to the toilet in her room and throws up. Least people who have had physical transplants can try and rip them off, what do you do when that is your timeline? There's nothing to grasp at, it's everything. You're a stranger to your body, memories and place in the world.

But there's something in that, she went back to thinking about her beloved. She remembers craving love and affection, something the life she was shoved into didn't allow. The chaos of that Monster was the first time she felt these basic feelings. But unfortunately, that wasn't enough to unlearn all the grott and poison the Elven kingdom had instilled in her. Hence, everything that happened, god damn. It's starting to all fall together and it's all just worse than it was before.

She remembers leaving, breaking out of her families abode. She departed from the Elven Realm entirely. She remembers ending up in Colchester somehow. Marrying into a wealthy family, she had stockpiled some of her fortune into a Human currency, even having an account. With this she manages to find a house to buy and move in, on the very same night she decided it, with a little help from offering triple the price. It was a little flat in Witham, just a bus ride away, it wasn't much, but anything would do.

She lands on a specific memory, finding herself at the big appliance store in Colchester town trying to brainstorm what she would need to get through tonight. She plans to pay for it with an family heirloom but that didn't solve her current issue. Growing up in the Elven realm she has no idea what any of these appliances she's looking at are. The Monster who was standing beside her intervenes.

-oh you uh, need help with that ma'am?

It was them, in a dried out grey denim jacket, their black leather shorts and big bushy tail which took up the entire lane they were in. She finally remembers their name: Butters.

On that, Skúmálfar crashing into 5 in the morning with an unreal migraine. Her attempt at regaining stamina through idle being had failed spectacularly! She was lethargic and, even moving her arms to get herself standing, lagged behind spectacularly. So this is life now? Great! She had better look into sleeping pills until she could get a hang of this relay time thing. She slowly meanders downstairs, she was thinking she would just... Exist for the time being. Clearly her flux in being, was still syncing up to the rest of the world, so better to take it easy she reckons. She wanted to walk the whole day, why? She doesn't know, maybe in vain hope she was hoping to bump into Butters, the only person from her life she would kill to see right now. Do they even still live in Essex anymore? If they're asking then they deffo know they don't, but it's the only thing she can cling onto right now. She meanders downstairs and just as she wonders how she's going to pay for food, the pub staff informs her that her 5 years of the room is all inclusive. I guess they gave her the best service, otherwise that 5 years could be a decade long instead on economical? Well it was the right move anyways, she has a quick breakfast bap and walks out to face the new world, well the world isn't new at all. The new context of which she exists within makes more sense, one where she is Skúmálfar.