Alone

Story by LeviCoyote on SoFurry

, , , , , , , ,

Following a disappointing evening with a nameless young badger, the nameless swift fox tries to find an answer to the loneliness he feels, but his efforts are not successful.

I've begun setting a few of my stories in Canada, the prairies specifically. This is one of them.


I

The swift fox couldn't remember the name of the young badger lad on his knees before him, yet he was good at his task and that was what mattered. It wasn't exactly a match made in heaven. There was enough of an age difference between him, middle-aged, relatively successful, and reckoning with the final years of the prime of his life before that long and slow descent, and the youthful badger who wasn't quite halfway through his degree in the computer sciences or whatever they called that field these days, to raise more than a few brows if anyone had been watching (which would have been on its own exhilarating, and the curtains were wide open although the room was dark), but they'd matched on Scruff and they'd talked, and they both knew what they wanted, so here they were.

They'd skipped the dinner and date formalities. They weren't in the mood for that. Their needs were far more primal. The badger showed up quietly at his doorstep at ten minutes to 11:00pm, the fox ushered him inside, and they got started.

The room was pitch black save for the yellow-orange glow of the streetlights coming in through the windows, casting rectangles of light and darkness on the floor, across the badger's muzzle, and coming to an end at the fox's creamy stomach fur framed by the black stripes of his shirt. Only his unbuttoned shirt remained on him, the rest discarded into a hasty pile on the floor at the badger's side to give the kid easier access to work the fox's shaft.

And damn was he doing a good job. The badger's snuffling nose found all the perfect spots and his tongue– Now, that was something else. The fox muffled a whimper as the badger's tongue graced the tip of his dark red, quivering shaft. His feet flexed and curled as he was serviced so wonderfully.

But the badger just kept going and the fox couldn't hold it in anymore. “A-ah!" The fox gasped, and let out a very (to him) unflattering yelp as the badger hit home and greedily took in his entire length, and squirmed as he took the fox's unyielding scrotum into his hands. The badger just grunted, and gave him a knowing smile through the glint of his eyes, and with a rush of passion and excruciating pleasure, the fox was spent.

He sat back against the cushions, breathing hard, the pungent scent of his emission burning in his nostrils.

The badger and wiped his mouth. His enormous scrotum swung heavy beneath his thick sheath, and the fox wanted to reach out and take hold of it. But the badger was too good, and had drained him too well. “Thanks for a good time," the badger kid said.

“You wanna glass of water?" The fox slurred. “Or I could…" He brushed the end of the badger's sheath with the back of his hand. He ached to run his fingers through this fur, to feel the plumpness of the badger respond to his caresses.

“Nah, I'm good," the badger said. He reached for his pants and slipped them on. “Hope it was what you wanted, uh…" His voice trailed off. “Swifts always taste good."

The fox pushed himself up. He was still on display, starting to ache as the badger's saliva cooled and dried. “You sure you need to go? Kinda late. I got a spare bedroom you can use."

“I should get going," the badger said. He pulled his shirt over his head. “S'not really my thing." He glanced at the fox's length. “I can let myself out. Lock behind me?"

“Yeah. Yeah sure," the fox whispered.

The door clicked shut behind him. The fox stared at it for a long minute. The stillness, so recently and briefly broken, reclaimed the room with vehemence. He couldn't even hear his own breathing. He groaned as he lowered himself back onto the cushions.

II

Few came to this place.

Cut into the endless golden landscape of the prairie were the badlands–gashes and gullies and ravines cut into soil and rock by water and time. There were many such places if one knew where to look, some popular and some not, all vastly different yet exactly the same.

About an hour from town, down dusty roads without a name, was this place. The prairie stretched beyond the horizon in all directions, but just past a short and barely noticeable rise to the west, the grass gave way to a bowl of otherwordly barrenness. As if struck by blight, the grass came to a sudden stop. In place of greenery and life was a desolation of grey soil topped by perfectly round red boulders which filled the bowl.

The bowl joined with a system of coulees which etched patterns into the prairie for about three kilometres. When the snow melted or the rains came, water would fill the bowl and turn the soil into a slimy mess that hardened like concrete. One learned not to dare the coulees for several days after a rainfall. Many were the prairie-dwellers who could share their first time. It only took once. Thick mud seeping through clothes, fur weighed down and glued, and drains plugged from the many showers it took to clean up wasn't something most wanted to experience twice.

Few came to this place, and that was what the swift fox wanted. To be alone with the locusts and rattlesnakes the only creatures to keep him company. He listened for their warning rattle as he descended into the rocks. Like most life-forms in the area, they avoided the intense heat of the long summer days, choosing instead to hide in the shadows of the rocks and in small crannies in the ground.

But the only sound was the eternal rushing of the wind.

The fox ambled toward the coulees, sometimes with eyes open when near a stand of cacti, but mostly with eyes shut, guided by his instincts into his next step. He had come often enough and knew the way. He cut into the eroded cliffs with their stripes of red and brown and white and traced a dry creek into the scar.

He soon came to his place, a slab of rock surrounded by clumps of prairie grass about a quarter of the way up the cliff, where it sloped gently. Proteced from the fierce afternoon sun by a nearby overhang, in midsummer mornings the sun bathed it with heat and light.

He stripped off his clothes, wadded them up, and nestled them in the grass. The wind's invisible fingers slid across his body, finding their way through his fur and pricking his skin. They stroked alongside his scrotum and up and across his sheath, sneaked beneath his tail and, joining together, cupped him. His nose wrinkled. It tickled.

The sun had already begun to warm his exposed body. The warmth felt good. He brushed himself off, brushed a hand across the rock to clean it, and stretched out on his back with his arms at his side. The rock, already warm from the morning, welcomed him.

The wind continued its greeting. It waved through the fur on chest, soothed his neck, and encouraged his jaw to relax, his eyes to close. At his groin, it gave him a delicate pleasure, and he moaned with happiness.

Already the sun had begun to melt away at the stresses in his temples, his shoulders, his feet. The rock, too, encouraged his back to let go of its worries and be at peace.

Evict the stress of a toxic workplace. Dispel the tensions of the family's inheritance fight. Repel the dark thoughts of a thousand sleepless lonely nights.

The wind continued its exploration of his body. Its warm hands pushed down on his groin, its nose huffed at the base of his shaft. The fox elicited a groan, which transitioned quickly to a whimper when a sudden and sharp cold pierced the tip of his sheath. He slid his claws down his side and at his groin, and lazily joined the wind in its movements.

He moaned again and shifted his body toward the sun's heat as the wind joined its fingers with his and together they stroked the sensitive skin there. The wind swirled around and over him, licked the fox's emerging length with its warm tongue, and empowered by the sun, pressed him into the rock. It whispered tantalizing thoughts which made his heart speed and ears flush. It asked why he had taken so long.

The wind straddled over him, blocking the sun with its body and giving the fox an unexpected but not unpleasant chill, and filled the fox's nostrils with his musk, the smell of a hailstorm and whirlwind.

“Uhn," he moaned again and whimpered. He traced behind his scrotum with a claw, arching into the wind's mouth and trying hard, so hard, to get a better whiff of what the wind hung teasingly above him.

A growing heat and mounting pressure built at the base of his shaft. Close, he was so close. The wind was telling him, chiding him for never coming even though he was alone–

A drop fell from the wind, onto the fox's waiting tongue. It was cold, and sharp, and earthy. The musk of the wind was overpowering.

And then another drop, at his feet. And another. And another.

The wind teased him with one more blast.

And then it began to rain.

III

The water massaged the swift fox's scalp and kneaded his neck. It plugged his nose and made him splutter. He should move, but he didn't want to.

How long had he been lying here, unwilling to move away from the unending cascade of water? Five minutes? Ten? Fifty? Time had lost its sense of meaning. The heat took away his fight. The water took away his strength. So now he lay here, motionless.

He was long since clean. All the mud was washed out, and he had thoroughly scoured between the pads of his feet for any bits of stubborn gravel. What hadn't been washed away was still in a small pile at his ankle.

When he rebuilt this washroom, he deliberately made the walk-in shower so large a person could lie down in it. There was no specific reason for it. He simply liked the way it looked. And besides, too much of the washroom was already useless. Until now it had never occurred to him to take advantage of this. Every strange choice had a future justification.

He sighed. The water felt good, and he could afford the bill. Why not see where perhaps the water might take him.

The water embraced the touch-starved fox. It wiped his hot, burning eyes, and mingling with his tears it swirled down the drain.