FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The unsubtle scraping of metal on metal and the streaming in of morning light stirred Martin from rest. He blinked his eyes blearily, pressing his hands down his face to clear the sleep from his eyes as quickly as possible. He sat up and looked to his left to see Namo, backlit as she was by standing in the sun after having pulled the floor-length curtains aside. She stood in the floor to ceiling window, gazing at the rear garden of Al-Kutami’s estate, wearing not a shred of clothing and humming a quiet, laconic melody. Martin in turn gazed at Namo’s rear garden, in a manner of speaking, admiring the shape of her wide hips, fuzzy rump, and ample, thighs, toned as they were by a life of travel. Her phylliform tawny tail flagged up, giving him a perfect view of the cleft of her cheeks.

The view was so entrancing, the man felt his loins stirring to life before he realized she was standing in front of the window, naked for the world to see, a guest in another man’s house in an area where fauns were considered second-class citizens. Martin lamented the cruelty of the world as his rational brain called out to the woman. “Good morning, cute butt,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

Namo turned around, her face nearly silhouetted by the bright morning light behind her. Still, the man could see her tender smile, brought into sharper relief as she stepped from the window and toward the bed across the room. As she sat on the bed, Martin noticed an emotion, or a series of emotions, hidden behind the smile. Uncertainty? Sadness? Anxiety? Martin supposed that the faun had reason to feel all of those things, if their pillow talk from the night before was any indication.

“Good mornin’,” the faun whispered. “Ya think my butt is cute?”

“I do. Have you seen it? Nobody would dare disagree.”

Namo stood from the bed and tried to look at her own ass, relatively unsuccessfully. She wagged her short tail and looked back at the man. “What’s so cute about it?” She seemed unconvinced.

“It’s got a nice shape, I guess,” the man said. Then, realizing his response could come across as unconvincing, he continued: “It just looks good! It’s not saggy, you’ve got just the right amount of muscle tone, and, uh, your fur is super soft.” The man sat up fully. “Never thought I’d be into that, but it is what it is,” he admitted, a bit embarrassed.

“You’re just flattening me, Maa’ko,” the woman said, before cuddling up to him on the bed and giving him a chaste kiss on the cheek.

Martin wasn’t sure if he misheard the woman. “I what?”

“You flatten me! You know, like, you make me feel all squished with love and stuff.”

The human blinked in incredulity. “Do… do you mean flatter?”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means telling someone what they want to hear, basically.” The man suppressed a laugh, if only because he knew English wasn’t her first language.

“Oh, is that what that word is…?” The woman trailed off, as if the realization caused the woman to call into question previous interactions where she had heard the word being used. She was interrupted from her thoughts by a gurgling coming from her stomach.

“Sounds like someone’s hungry,” Martin quipped. “Maybe we should see what’s for breakfast.” He stretched and yawned, kicking his feet over the side of the bed. “I should probably bathe though. I’m a mess, thanks to you.” He gave Namo a pinch on her floppy ear, and she laughed in response.

“Well, I happen to think it’s just as much your fault as it is mine!” the herbalist retorted. “You made a mess out of me, too, don’tcha know?”

About an hour later, Martin returned from his bath in the guest room’s en suite feeling like a new man. Though he had bathed scarcely a week ago in Espiritu, the public bathing facilities had been rudimentary at best; by contrast, Al-Kutami’s guest room spared no expense in providing a lavish hygienic environment. The quality of the soaps and shampoos and shaving supplies provided the opportunity for some much-needed grooming and metaphorical spirit-cleansing. Martin had even taken the opportunity to shave his beard. As he looked in the mirror and rubbed his smooth flesh, he idly hoped his newfound lover wouldn’t mind the change.

Martin returned to the bedroom to find his spare change of clothes cleaned and pressed; Ulysses must have had the man’s clothes laundered the previous night. The tramp had forgotten how vibrant red his favorite flannel was in the absence of caked on sweat, dust, and grime. His jeans similarly painted a much more vibrant blue than he remembered. The laundering wouldn’t do much to patch the holes in his shirt and jeans, but it did wonders to help the vagabond feel vaguely presentable.

After donning his outfit, Martin left the bedroom to enter the naturally illuminated corridor, where another faun manservant (faunservant? Martin wondered,) waited for Martin and Namo like a silent sentry, his nearly jet black fur and hair complimenting well the crisp burgundy suit he wore. The man, despite his poise, seemed relatively young, perhaps no older than ten or eleven years old; despite his relatively young age, Martin could tell from his stoic features that he was well practiced in the role of butler.

Martin bid the man good morning, who responded with a cordial, professional, “good morning, Mister Halsted, sir.” His voice was rich and smooth, and the respectful bow of his head gave the man an impeccable aura of gentility. “It is my pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir. You may call me Husayn. When Ms. Ke’eponuunamo joins us I will direct you to the patio, where you may enjoy a complimentary breakfast on behalf of the Master Al-Kutami.”

“Thanks, Husayn,” the man said. Not wanting to simply stand in the hallway awkwardly, the man busied himself by inspecting the portraits and landscapes the adorned the walls of the corridor. Many of the faces bore vague resemblances to Al-Kutami, and even those where the name plate at the bottom didn’t indicate a shared surname Martin suspected were likely distant relatives in some fashion. However, after pacing the hall, Martin realized that, for all their artistry, he was not particularly interested in the portraitures of Al-Kutami’s dead family members, even the ones who wore strange military uniforms emblazoned with ribbons and badges every color of the rainbow.

He turned back to Husayn, deciding conversation might be a better use of his time than staring at paintings. “So, Husayn: how long have you been working for Mister Al-Kutami?”

Husayn turned to regard the man but otherwise didn’t move from his position. “Ten years sir, and five as his Assistant Head of Domestic Operations and Logistics. The Master recognized quite early in my life my organizational and interpersonal skills; it has been a privilege to hone them under his employ.”

“So you like working here, then?” Martin looked the young man in the eyes.

Husayn responded without so much as a microsecond’s hesitation or a twitch of the eye. “Master Al-Kutami provides for the needs of all of his staff beyond measure. We have want of naught. I humbly request you perish the thought of any contrived relationship to the contrary.”

“Fair enough, I was just wondering because—“

“Maa’ko! Ya cut your beard off!”

As Martin explained himself, Namo had stepped out of the adjacent guest suite, looking similarly refreshed, if still slightly damp in some of her longer-furred areas. Her traveling skirt and shawl had similarly been laundered, the yellows and cyans nearly electric with how brightly they glowed against her tawny fur, and how dingy her backpack looked in comparison. She walked over to Martin and rubbed his face, oohing and aahing over how smooth it was. However, upon noticing the butler before them, the woman stood up straighter. She gave a courteous bow and repeated the greeting she gave to Ulysses the previous night. “Kuubeno’oko A’snkepo! Ke’eponuunamo upuutebe Namo upuutebe so. Somoto’osn mokote te?”

“Good morning, Ms. Ke’eponuunamo,” the man replied, returning her bow with the immaculate grace of his genteel breeding. “Forgive me, but my knowledge of Kepmuun is rudimentary at best. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, ma’am.”

Namo’s ears drooped slightly, but she rallied. “Oh, okie doke then. Good mornin’, Husayn. It’s a pleasure to meetcha too. How are ya this mornin’?”

“Quite well, miss,” the man responded simply. He provided the same instructions that he had for Martin, and together the trio meandered toward the patio for breakfast.

Husayn led the pair through the sprawling manor, back down to the first floor, and to the rear of the building, into a huge, open floorplan room that could easily have served as a ballroom for a few dozen people, all the while deflecting Namo’s persistent questions about what it was like growing up as a faun among humans. A grand piano was situated near the corner, and the wood parquet stretched to more floor-to-ceiling windows with no fewer than three external doors leading to Al-Kutami’s rear garden. The morning’s natural light illuminated the patio; the sunlight likely served to cut the chill of the fall morning air.

The faun butler gestured toward a table situated near one of the exterior doors. Three places were set, and a human housekeeper attended to the final touches of the arrangement, placing a steaming kettle in the center of the table. When they approached the table, the young woman gave the trio a smile before departing wordlessly through another doorway that Martin presumed led to a kitchen.

“Please, dear guests, be seated. Master Al-Kutami will be with you shortly. Your breakfast is on its way.” He bowed, then turned and departed for the kitchen, leaving the pair to themselves as they sat at the table.

Though he fancied himself more of a coffee person, Martin began pouring himself a cup of tea: any caffeine was preferable to none, and the faint aroma of mint perked him up even before he had taken his first sip. “Some tea?” Martin asked the woman, who nodded her assent. However, as he began pouring Namo’s tea, he watched as her gaze drifted toward, and became transfixed by, the garden visible through the windows of the patio. Before the man had even finished pouring the cup, the woman stood from the table and exited the patio through the nearby door, a gust of chilly morning air sweeping into the ballroom and blowing shapes in the steam that flicked from the blue-rimmed porcelain teacups.

“Namo!” Martin called after her, before the door closed on its own. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she didn’t react, and so with a sigh Martin stood from his chair and followed her out the door. The woman had rushed down the steps, across the pristine lawn, and over to an almost perfectly cubical bush that was flowering despite the fact that it was nearly freezing outside.

“Namo, you can’t just—“

The woman gasped. “Look at this, Maa’ko! I’ve never seen anything like this!” Her back was turned to the man as she pored over the plant’s spiny leaves. “Ouch, careful though,” she said, shaking her hand free of the spiny leaves. “Look at these flowers! They’re amazing!”

Martin walked up beside the woman, shivering in the brisk morning wind that coursed through the garden. Namo carefully grasped a branch of the deep green shrub. Spiny, warping leaves about six centimeters long each alternated from the stem. Clusters containing dozens of tiny white flowers emerged at several points along the branch, each with four symmetrical petals tipped in a subtle mauve. Four tiny stalks projected from the center of the flowers, each tipped in a dusting of yellow. “Are those the stamens? Where are the pistils?”

Namo practically jumped for joy when Martin guessed the terms correctly. “Yes! You got it! I’m so darn proud o’ya! Ya even noticed that this is a male flower only!” She let go of the branch.

“Wait, male flower only? What do you mean?”

“Hold on, hold on,” Namo said, faking exasperation. She walked slightly deeper into the garden, inspecting the nearby shrubs that, to Martin’s eye, all looked identical. Three shrubs down, Namo stopped and called the man over. “I found it!”

Martin approached her, seeing the same white flowers on the same spiny branches as before. “Found what? It looks—“ The man cut himself off when he spotted a few subtle differences between these flowers and the last. For one, The clusters of flowers were much smaller in number: instead of dozens, this plant had half as many flowers per cluster, if that. In addition, while the flowers had the same number and arrangement of petals, they almost lacked the mauve tinge to the tip of each petal. But most importantly, in the center of each of these flowers sat a small, green, oblong structure. “Ah, so these must be the flowers with the female parts?”

“That’s right! This plant must be one of those plants that have separate flower types on different plants! It’s always so cool to see that, ‘cause it ain’t super common, don’tcha know? I’m glad I got to show ya!” She paused to itch her scalp on top of her head.

“I see you’ve made yourselves quite at home!”

The satiny voice from behind the pair nearly caused them both to jump out of their skin. Martin whirled around, preparing an apology to Mr. Al-Kutami for setting foot in his garden.

“Are you enjoying the self-guided tour of the Al-Kutami Estate Botanical Gardens?” The man, wearing a rich burgundy waistcoat and black slacks similar to the three men who had bailed Martin and Namo out of prison the previous night, gestured broadly to the garden around them, clearly proud of the work his groundskeepers put in to making the place look pristine even as winter loomed closer each day. “Ah, enjoying the European holly? You know, this plant was extremely common back on Earth—to the point where it grew in a lot of places people didn’t want it—a bit of a weed, to some. But there are very few places where the climate is suitable here on Penelopeia. Funny how that works, isn’t it? It reads to me like an allegory for the way we engage with the world. Humans, I mean.”

The man paused, as if allowing the profundity of his metaphor to sink in. Namo took the opportunity to interject. “I could spend days out here, just looking at all the plants! Everything looks so new to me!”

“Is that so? There’s probably a good reason for that: all of these plants were handpicked by my gardeners and yours truly from species brought to our planet from Earth, before the Collapse. Several of them are rare, endangered on Penelopeia, even.”

“Wow! Rare plants, growing in this garden? You’re so lucky!”

Al-Kutami shook his head dismissively. “Luck, my dear, has nothing to do with it. I am happy to give you a tour before our business is concluded, but please, I believe we have matters to discuss, and breakfast is waiting. So, if you’ll follow me?”

The man turned around and began walking back to the manor, expositing about some plant or another. Martin watched as Namo, in a smooth motion, produced her clippers from her pack and clipped one of the flower-laden branches from the holly plant, shoving it gingerly into her pack.

The man had a thought to scold the woman for her behavior, but stilled his tongue. Who was he to chastise the faun, considering he had scraped together a living relieving others of their precious belongings? Al-Kutami would never know, anyway. And so Martin merely smiled and shook his head as they followed the magnate back to his manor.

Unsurprisingly, seemingly no expense was spared in preparing their breakfast meal. An exquisite stew of egg and tomato in personal bowls greeted the travelers as they took their seats, accompanied by sides of freshly baked, piping hot pancake-shaped pieces of bread and, for Martin and Al-Kutami, several slices of some variety of sausage and a second bowl of steaming sliced oranges garnished with olives. Namo’s sausage had been substituted for a wider variety of greens, which caused the woman to all but salivate as the rich, spicy aroma wafted around them. In the center, a small boat of honey and melted butter completed the ensemble. Martin could say with certainty that never had he been invited to such a lavish meal. It was all he could do to keep from drooling onto his plate as the odors of cumin, garlic, and other spices unfamiliar to the man surrounded him.

“Shakshouka with feta, merguez, and orange and olive salad. The honey and butter are for the baghrir. Please, enjoy.” Al-Kutami poured tea for himself as Martin pondered how best to consume the novel assortment of dishes before him. Namo, however, exhibited no such apprehension: she immediately dipped her bread—the baghrir, Martin presumed—into her shakshouka, swirling it in the egg-and-tomato stew before tearing a soggy piece off and eating it. Her shoulders relaxed in an telltale sign of elation before her ears flagged. “Ooh! Fpify!” She said, her words muffled from the food in her mouth.

Martin swallowed. Spicy foods tended not to agree with him, but he couldn’t refuse the food in good conscience, especially with how delicious it looked. Nothing else but to dig in and pace himself with tea and ice water. He took a bite of the stew and was immediately awash with an assortment of flavors, familiar in some ways and foreign in others: savory, sweet, and something he couldn’t put his fingers on. After swallowing, he caught the first hint of the other flavor: spice. The piquancy built up, slow at first, but the pain became too much to handle as he exhaled forcefully, then grabbed his tea. The warm beverage didn’t do much to cut the spiciness, but the mint flavor was nonetheless refreshing.

“So, Martin, I suppose I will cut to the chase,” Al-Kutami said, dabbing his mustache with a cloth napkin that matched the deep red color of his vest. “Have you given my offer some consideration? Slept on it, as it were? You’re a free man—I’ve seen to it that your record has been expunged—so rest assured that we can enter this agreement as equal parties.”

Martin gulped down some tea, hoping that the painful heat that flooded his mouth would abate before he needed to respond, without wanting to look too awkward. Thankfully Al-Kutami showed patience, perhaps with the understanding that the palette of flavors presented by this dish may have been unfamiliar to the provincial man.

He cleared his throat and wiped his mouth on the napkin. “Yeah, I did. It’s tempting, sir, really. But a lot doesn’t make sense. If you know where she is, why haven’t you just found her? And what can I do that you can’t? I’m just one of her former students—nobody important. You clearly have the financial means to purchase any number of detectives, or bounty hunters, or whatever you need. So why me? Why us?” He finished, glancing over at a blissed-out Namo enjoying the orange salad.

Al-Kutami swallowed another bite. “Ah, but you see, if it were a simple matter of fiscal expense, good sir, the problem would have been resolved months ago. I am afraid it is not so simple. The answer to your question is thus: Helene is trapped in a cell, of sorts, but imagine the key is not a physical object, but tied to oneself, an individual. I suspect that you and your fellow apprentice—Davin, you said?—are the keys to unlocking this cell.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Martin said, shaking his head. “I don’t understand why she would do that in the first place, let alone how it would even work.”

“You don’t need to understand, Mister Halsted; the world turns regardless of our understanding of it. You need only understand that my sources point to you being the key—quite literally—to saving Helene.” Al-Kutami chuckled. “No pressure.”

Martin thought on the man’s words. Part of him was incredulous at the thought. Setting aside the technical aspect of how someone’s body could be used as a key, why would Helene do such a thing? Surely she had numerous other colleagues she could trust, chief among them Al-Kutami, her own godson, perhaps?

He knew there was only one real answer here. Al-Kutami was willing to help him travel safely to meet his master. That meant a lower risk of getting caught by Afzal, and a lower risk of getting arrested for some other draconian, speciesist infraction by overzealous cops, whether here in Fort Sarmiento or elsewhere along the way to New Kenai.

That just left getting Namo’s buy-in. The man glanced at his traveling companion, who had scarcely had a moment where her cheeks weren’t stuffed with food. She glanced back to Martin and swallowed heavily. “So ya promise that ya ain’t gonna try and kidnap her or nothin’?” Namo asked, when she was ready.

“Of course, Miss Namo. I promise. You can rest assured that I have no intentions of foul play. I know we just met, but I can’t stress enough that I just want to ensure the safety of my dear friend. And speaking of dear friends, perhaps I can sweeten the deal for you. You said you’re from Jeju, correct?”

Namo paused, her spoon halfway between the orange salad and her mouth before the magnate asked her the question. “Y-yeah, why?”

“Would you like to know what happened to your village?”

Namo set her spoon down, the chopped oranges spilling across her plate. “W-what do ya mean by that?”

“We find Helene, you’ll get your answers.” The man sat back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, and intertwined his fingers over his crossed knee. Al-Kutami’s trump card played, Martin understood now that, as he had suggested, the wealth the tycoon controlled had not been won through luck and miracle, but through strategy and agency.

Martin and Namo shared eye contact. Martin had a hundred questions for Namo, but the steel-sharp look she gave him told the vagabond that she only had one for Al-Kutami:

“So when do we leave?”