FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 40: The Only One

The group paused one night on the edge of a place that Avi called The First. It was a clearing within the jungle, and standing in the center of it, in a circle, all facing inward, was a group of statues. The statues depicted very tall and slender wolves, all shemales, with their heads bowed and their paws folded on their breasts in an attitude of mourning. The statues were eerie in the moonlight and terribly sad. From the corners of their closed, slanted eyes dripped stone tears. Their lips were turned down at the corners, and their ears were back flat in their stone manes - which were, like the shemales Wynn had known, braided here and there with bones.

The statues were depictions of the first wolves to walk the earth, Avi explained to the group. Therefore, the effigies were called The First. She murmured something in the shemale tongue, and after touching her thumb to her heart, she told the group it was now safe to pass.

Wynn and Elele - and, perhaps, Inden - were the only ones who knew what Avi had said. In the shemale tongue, she had said a prayer, asking The First to forgive her for trespassing on sacred ground. But the fastest way was to go through and not around, so through the circle they went.

The statues were giant and the circle vast, containing at least sixty shemales, all bowing their heads to the earth and silently weeping. The ground there, unlike the rest of the jungle, was a richly dark blood-red that rolled beneath their feet in sharp contrast to the wet, black earth just outside the clearing. Hovering large above the palms, the moon shone full upon the circle of sorrow, casting long shadows within it and touching the heads of the melancholy shemales with pale fingers. The group passed through the eerie silence of that place, marveling that on this sacred ground, there were no chirruping insects, no animal growls. The world here was as silent as the statues.

"But why are they so sad?" whispered Elele, looking huffy that Avi had so unapologetically claimed shemales as the world's ancestors. She was walking at Inden's side, clinging in dread to his arm, as if she thought the statues would come alive and devour her.

Avi was leading the group as always, and from the front she answered, "Long time ago, the first wolf was born to shemales with only vagina. No penis. More wolves like the first were born, some with only penis and balls. Others were born with only vagina and teeny cock --"

"She means a clit," added Kilyan, amused.

"Yes," Avi confirmed. "And more of these strange wolves were born, until shemales became afraid and ran them from jungle. The strange wolves wandered the world in little groups and hated shemales for rejection. But their numbers only grew, and the first shemales knew that it was only a matter of time . . . before there weren't anymore shemales." Avi said the last part bitterly, and as if to escape the jungle, as if to put it behind her, she walked faster.

Wynn glared over her shoulder at Elele, cursing the little twit for upsetting her mother. She had hoped no one would ask Avi about the statues' obvious sorrow, for she already knew the story, had been told it many times by Roriana: "One upon a time, Wynn, shemales were the first, but their children turned on them, and the shemales were forced to withdraw further into the jungle, until they were the last."

Wynn had never believed it, that the shemales had been the first to walk upon the earth. She had credited Roriana's fairy tales to her bitter hatred of anything not shemale. Avi did not know it, but Roriana's mate Raxaras had been murdered by a pygmy. Wynn had overheard her grandmother talking to a friend about it. But in the middle of Roriana's grim tale, Wynn had been discovered by Ryo as she eavesdropped in the hall and had been sworn to secrecy.

Having heard the story of her other grandmother's death at the paw of a pygmy had further led Wynn to believe the story of The First to be a lie. The shemales couldn't have been the first: Roriana just hated the pygmies and wanted to seem better than them. But after hearing Nontikmah's story and seeing The First with her own eyes, Wynn had become a believer: she had never seen such red earth in her life.

According to the tales, the earth in the clearing was red because, once a year - on the very day it was said the first wars began - the statues cried blood. The spirits of The First were supposedly trapped within the stone, and with them, their sorrow. Wynn was relieved when her mother failed to mention this part: she didn't feel like having to deal with Elele's fear and disgust.

It took all night to pass beneath the statues and their impenetrable sorrow, and Wynn moved at Sylas' side, trying hard to keep her fur from standing on end. These were her mothers, the mothers of wolf kind. And they had foreseen the destruction, the chaos that would become the world. It was Wynn's firm belief that the statues were not only mourning the fate of the shemales but the fate of the world at large. The ancient shemales, it was said, were gifted with the Sight. According to legend, some had even gone blind from the horrible things they had foreseen. Thus, the eyes of the statues were shut against the world, blinded for eternity by its evil, its strife, its violence.

Passing beneath those statues with her fingers tangled in Sylas' fingers, it hit Wynn for the first time that very soon she would have the power to change things. Perhaps, under her reign as fox queen, The First would finally lift their heads and open their eyes, would finally stop their blood tears and rejoice.

When they had passed at last out of the clearing, the others watched in silence as Avi knelt on the edge of the red earth, and after folding herself over to the ground, she kissed it. Wynn knew what her mother was doing: Avi was thanking the statues for letting them pass unharmed. When Avi stood again, there was a somber sort of sorrow in her face, and looking at her mother, Wynn felt as if Avi could have been one of those statues standing so eerie in the first pale rays of dawn.

Wanting to comfort her mother, Wynn stepped forward and took Avi's paw. She looked down at Avi and whispered in the shemale tongue what Avi had whispered to her only days before, "There is always tomorrow for sorrow."

Avi smiled. It was an old shemale saying, which meant that one should always wait until tomorrow to grieve - and when tomorrow came, one would have to wait again, until in the end, one never wound up grieving at all.

The group moved on as sunlight, growing steadily stronger, reached down through the trees. Avi led them again, and Wynn knew her mother was moving very quickly in order to put as much distance between The First and herself as possible. No one else seemed to understand Avi's terror, but Wynn did: for a shemale to remain in that sacred place for too long could mean never leaving it. The sorrow was infectious for a shemale who visited The First, and in most cases, deadly.

By high noon, when it became too hot to travel, they stumbled upon another clearing, this one very small and shadowy. Stone statues were here also, but none were quite as gigantic as The First. In fact, these statues were no taller than Avi. They stood over small mounds of rocks - grave markers - with their heads bowed and stone wings spread. Most of the graves had long grown over with tall grass. A few very old graves toward the center were covered in tiny white blossoms. Among these older graves was a considerably newer one: the grave-marking rocks at the head of it were not so worn and scattered, and what was more, the statue standing guard over the departed was considerably polished and lacking in cracks compared to the others.

Wynn's throat tightened when she saw the grave: it was, of course, Roriana's. She had come there with her mother when she was very young. She had been a part of Roriana's howling funeral procession as the shemales bore their queen through the jungle, bound in bandages and covered in cloth. Roriana had been laid in a special wicker box for the ceremony with bamboo poles for the bearers, and because the group had avoided the clearing of The First, it had taken them many days to finally reach the burial site. On the way there, they did the usual rituals: each night was spent around a fire sharing happy memories of the departed queen, in the light of the moon, they anointed the body, and when they finally reached the gravesite, there was much singing as Roriana was settled among her royal brethren at last. Wynn had clung to her mother's paw as the coffin was lowered with rope, tears in her eyes, not understanding. And when they returned home, Avi was crowned queen of the jungle.

Avi halted, as if she had not meant to lead them to the shemale burial site. It was getting hot, and they were going to have to stop soon to rest, but as if she'd rather collapse from heatstroke, Avi lifted her chin and marched on with wet eyes. Kilyan stumbled after her, calling her name. The others followed, looking miserable and strained, but Keeno remained behind.

Keeno waited until the last back had disappeared into the trees, then swallowing hard, he removed the warrior talisman from his upper arm and placed it on what he could only assume was Roriana's grave.

"I know this isn't nearly enough for the pain I've caused you," Keeno said as his fingers gently laid the talisman in place, "but I don't have anything else I could give. Knowing you, you'd throw my apologies back in my face. Or slap me," he added as an afterthought and laughed. He stood. "Don't worry, Rori. Wynn already punched me pretty hard. You'd be proud of her." He smiled as he thought fondly of Wynn, one paw holding his spear and the other limp at his side. "Sometimes I look at that kid, and I don't see Kilyan in her at all. I don't see Avi either. I couldn't figure it out, who she took after. Then I remembered you, and how wild, how tough you were. But underneath it all, you were just so soft. She's just like you, Rori. I see it more and more everyday. Yeah . . . you'd be real proud."

Keeno smiled, and wiping away a tear, he hurried to catch up with the others.

When the group settled again, it was Kilyan's decision. Avi had walked very quickly, blinded by tears as she tried with all her strength to put what distance she could between herself and the shemale gravesite. Eventually, she became so desperate that she broke into a wild run. The others had not been able to keep up. It was finally Kilyan who caught Avi by the tail. She whirled upon him, a light in her eyes that would have made a braver male cower, but Kilyan wrestled her into his grasp. They bickered and fought, but Avi was soon crying in his arms. He sank to the grass with her, holding her and kissing her mane, as the others set up camp around them.

Avi had cried herself to sleep by the time the rest of the group was sitting around a small fire. They shared a meal, supping on Keeno's catch of the morning and what fruit Inden and Elele had gathered. Everyone ate in a grim silence, for the once merry mood had been completely broken by Avi's as-of-yet unexplained outburst. They hardly spoke to each other except to ask Wynn for seconds, and Wynn, dismally confused by her mother's obvious pain, would fill the offered plate (which was really a big leaf) and pass it back.

"I will take first watch with Keeno," Kilyan said quietly as supper came to an end, and Wynn could tell just by looking at her father that he was trying to pretend nothing had happened. "Inden and Sylas, you have second watch. We'll only stay here an hour or so . . . I don't think Avi could stand staying here much longer." Kilyan swallowed hard and didn't meet anyone's eye.

No one questioned Kilyan. Keeno went in search of a better rock he could sit on and started rolling one toward the fire. The others set to work building nests for the night, and even Elele held her complaints behind her teeth for fear of the tension so heavy on the air. Avi, meanwhile, was asleep near the fire, her small body slightly curled on a bed of leaves that Kilyan had packed for her.

Rubbing the back of his neck, Kilyan wandered some distance away. With her jaw standing out hard, Wynn went to her father.

"What's wrong with my mother?" Wynn demanded of her father's back. She knew if Kilyan refused to tell her that she would fly at him. She was sick, suddenly, of everyone lying to her. Eleu had convinced her of Avi's death in order to keep her from the village, and everyone else had lied to her about her father and Nontikmah. She was sick of those protecting lies. So sick. She was surprised when Kilyan answered in a low voice,

"Your brother was back in that graveyard."

Wynn stood stung.

Kilyan didn't say anymore. He went to the fire and sat beside Keeno.

Wynn turned. Her father was murmuring with Keeno in a low voice, probably telling his best friend what he had just told Wynn. Keeno's face was dark and sympathetic, and he clapped a comforting paw on Kilyan's shoulder.

Wynn felt feverish suddenly, as if there was a scream welling up inside and she must let it out or explode. She saw Inden glance at her in concern as he helped Elele gather leaves, and she avoided his eye. No, she wasn't his to comfort anymore. She couldn't fall into his arms. . . . Sylas. He drew her gaze like a magnet, and she realized he had done it on purpose, through some telepathic will. He was kneeling in the nest he had built for her, and with a sad frown, he remained there, watching. But he didn't bother going to her. He seemed to know what she would do before she did it: she suddenly turned and walked quick into the trees.

"Just like her mother," Kilyan said wearily. He rose to go after Wynn, but Sylas said, "I'll talk to her, sir."

Kilyan hesitated, but seeing the earnest expression on the fox king's face, he nodded and sat again at Keeno's side. His green eyes followed Sylas as the young male moved after Wynn.

Sylas paused on the edge of the trees, and lifting his paw, he ordered, "Aside." The trees and bushes moved aside at once, pulling back their branches, and in the process, collapsing the spider webs that had hung suspended between them. With his path now clear, Sylas could see Wynn in the distance. She had heard the trees groaning as they pulled back and had twisted around, but seeing Sylas standing there, she turned and went faster.

Sylas pushed his mane back from his eyes and walked slowly after Wynn. The scalp beneath his fur was still red with scratches and bruised from his imprisonment, but his fur was clean now. He had bathed in one of the little lakes the group came across in their travels, had watched out of the corner of his eye as Wynn bathed her shapely body, as her long, rippling curls spilled back to reveal her high breasts. She had seen him watching and had tauntingly splashed him. He had pulled her to him by the paw, and after smiling at each other, they kissed.

It was in that tender moment that Sylas firmly believed Wynn was the only one. Plenty of wolves said that, plenty of wolves believed that, but few wolves lived that. No, instead there were several "only ones," husbands and wives who came and went one after another until a wolf had lived with several "only ones" before moving on to the next marriage. But looking at Wynn's back as he moved after her through the trees, Sylas knew it was different for him. Wynn would always be the only one. Perhaps he had known that since they were children. She would laugh at him if he told her. He was well aware she hadn't felt the same.

Wynn, Sylas called into her mind, why are you running from me? Stop it. It's hurting my feelings.

Hearing this, Wynn laughed aloud. She eventually stopped near a cluster of rocks, breathless and miserable. She watched as Sylas calmly approached and felt guilty for the sudden rush of lust she felt when looking at his young, hard body: she had just learned that her brother had been murdered, but her body, as ever, was on fire for that boy. She touched a slender paw to a nearby tree, her curls falling in her eyes as Sylas stopped before her at last. He rested his foot against one of the rocks, and putting his elbow on his knee, he regarded Wynn. Many of the rocks were smooth and rose to Wynn's waist, but a few barely reached her knee. They were covered in thick sheaths of flowered moss, and the smell was dizzying.

Sylas touched Wynn's face when she avoided his gaze. "What's going on? Who was back in that graveyard? Your grandmother?"

Wynn nodded breathlessly, her eyes on the ground. "And my brother."

"Oh, god. Please, don't tell me . . ."

"Then I won't." Wynn jerked her cheek free of those comforting fingers and walked some distance away. She didn't know where she was going or why she was taking all of her anger and frustration out on Sylas, but he seemed to understand. She was glad when he didn't question her further but came up behind and instead hugged her tight.

They stood that way for a long time, Sylas just holding Wynn, and she knew he was doing exactly what she needed him to do - not because he had read it in her mind but because he always knew what she needed.

"Tell me why," Wynn whispered. "What happened to you? Why were you imprisoned there!" She turned in his arms and looked up at him with wide eyes.

Sylas felt a warm surge in his heart to see the raw fear and concern in Wynn's face: he had never dreamed in all his years that she could come to care for him so much. "After my mother . . . you know," he said, looking down at Wynn, "I banished her from our home. I got lonely and I missed you and . . . it was time for the Claiming . . . so I went after you."

Wynn's expression softened, and feeling embarrassed, Sylas turned away.

"I went to the jungle," went on the fox king, his back to Wynn. "I didn't know you had gone to the summer village with your father. I figured you had gone home with your mother, so I went there. You see, I had spent my life watching over you, but the magic doesn't work the way you'd expect. In a pool of water, I would scry you - but I could only see you, not your surroundings, not where you were. Sometimes I saw you with Kilyan, but I figured he had come to visit you. Other times, I saw you with Inden . . . and I assumed he lived with you in the shemale village. So to the jungle, I went.

"I camped out on the shore. I never even saw the pygmies coming. They crept up on me in the night, and they had done their homework because they knew to use gold chains. I think their spies might have seen me casting spells down on the beach. I walked across the water to get there, see?" he said, glancing over his shoulder at Wynn.

"So they knew they were dealing with a creature of magic. They knocked me out as I was sleeping and took me. After that, I remained with them for months, fully convinced that the whole thing was a dream. They tortured me for information, and I tapped into powers I never even knew I had. I started seeing into the future. I saw your father's return, and the return of your uncle - but I didn't see you. They told me you were dead and I believed them, so I told them everything, that I had come to marry you and take you away, that I had dreamed of nothing else for years. Well, their prince didn't like that. He smacked me a good one and said he would kill me before I married you."

Sylas laughed bitterly, and Wynn bit her lip when the mention of Eleu sent a shock of painful adrenaline to her chest.

"I never came in contact with Avi once. She never saw me. They kept me locked up in that tiny hut all the time. And I never gave my name, so your mother couldn't have guessed it was me they had. For the longest time . . . I didn't even know she was there. It was all a dream. I thought I was still unconscious from that blow to the head. For months, I was like that, in and out, half-alive and half-dead. I thought . . . I thought I'd never see you again."

Wynn stood behind Sylas and was stricken by the emotion in his voice. She came to him and hugged his neck. He dropped his face into her mane, then very slowly, he kissed her ear. Wynn could feel the heat rising in her sex, the little throbbing that was beginning. She clung tight to Sylas and shivered when his kisses grew more fervent, traveling down her cheek to her neck, then to her cleavage. With a glazed lust in his eye, he suddenly sat her on one of the high rocks, and still burying kisses in her neck, he massaged her breasts.

Wynn couldn't stop shaking, couldn't stop whimpering and moaning. No paws had ever felt so good on her body - and it was not because Sylas was especially skilled but because she wanted him so badly. He closed his lips over her nipple, and then he was sucking it, pulling and smacking. Her shivering moans grew shrill when his tongue traced her nipple until it was glossy. Then those lips came again, pulling - always insistently pulling - and his other paw pressed between her thighs and found her sex.

Wynn held Sylas' head as he suckled her and whispered his name. He sucked deeply and so hungrily that her tit rose against his face. His fingering became more fervent, and she squirmed on the rock, her shapely body twisting against the pleasure that had overwhelmed her so completely. Sylas sucked her so wetly, he fingered her so deeply that her fingers curled hard in his mane.

"S-Sylas . . . oh, god . . ."

Sylas' lips found Wynn's, and he kissed her so deeply that she leaned back. Their tongues moved against each other, urgently caressing as Sylas spread Wynn's legs wider and prepared to enter. He pulled her hips closer and smiled behind the kiss when her nails pinched the tight muscles of his back.

"We're going to make a beautiful little fox prince," he whispered playfully.

"Why not a princess?"

"Your wish is my command, your highness."

Wynn's head fell back and she cried out as the fox king's hot, throbbing shaft filled her. Her thighs clung tight to him, she clung to his neck, and their hot breath hit each other as together they whispered and moaned. She licked his lips and pushed them open with her tongue, and they were groaning through a kiss when she realized it: Sylas was now and forever . . . the only one.