{"sf1_id":322949,"sf2_id":"J1O5zkgm","title":"Reality","author":"Faora","words":660,"posted_at":"2012-01-04T07:41:00.000Z","tags":["No-Yiff","Otter","Psychological","Short"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/322949-reality","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/J1O5zkgm","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/0d/88/0d88a1c8-d74f-4f99-9198-b3b68d012a52","description":"#7 of Fae's Flash Fiction","content":"So, a piece of Flash-Fiction here.\u0026nbsp; \"But Fae!\" some watchers might cry (cause really, who's gonna notice a clean upload but them?\u0026nbsp; Heh heh), \"What about Fae's Christmas Music-Themed Special 2011?\u0026nbsp; You promised five, and delivered _four_!\"\n\nFirstly, I can count!\u0026nbsp; Really high, too!\u0026nbsp; Like... up to ten!\u0026nbsp; B... uh, _secondly_, I was making an editing pass of The Special Two (the missing 2011 Christmas story) just prior to upload when I suffered a power surge.\u0026nbsp; It shut my computer down, but I was saving at the time, and the file was completely corrupted.\u0026nbsp; Don't scream at me about backups; I don't backup my furry pr0n until I've uploaded it.\u0026nbsp; This is a system I will be changing.\n\nSo I lost the last story, and I have to rewrite it.\u0026nbsp; I've been taking a break (busy dragon has been way too busy!) and frustration feeds procrastination.\u0026nbsp; So instead, here!\u0026nbsp; Have yourselves some flash fiction goodness!\u0026nbsp; The Special Two will come in time, I promise!\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\n\u0026nbsp;- Fae\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\n**Reality**\n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\n\u0026nbsp;Rain pounded against the window.\u0026nbsp; Thunder rolled through the hills.\u0026nbsp; Lightning split the blackened sky.\u0026nbsp; Wind howled.\u0026nbsp; Trees groaned.\u0026nbsp; Beneath the forces of nature, small figures scurried for cover, for safety, for security.\n\nExcept they didn't.\u0026nbsp; But they _did_.\n\nA lone otter sat at his desk.\u0026nbsp; He stared at the page before him.\u0026nbsp; There was no state to his dress; sun shone over every inch of him through the window at his side.\u0026nbsp; Artifical, computer-generated light lit his tired face as he stared at the open document before him.\u0026nbsp; Storm scene.\u0026nbsp; Nature's wrath.\u0026nbsp; Pitiful little creatures as they fought to protect themselves.\u0026nbsp; They weren't real.\u0026nbsp; They were just figments of a writer's mind.\u0026nbsp; They didn't scurry anywhere, because they didn't truly exist.\n\nNot until they did.\n\nThe otter's paws shifted over the keyboard.\u0026nbsp; Letters arrayed themselves in pleasing patterns, born in flickers of digital luminescence.\u0026nbsp; They created.\u0026nbsp; They shaped.\u0026nbsp; They were magic and science and the divine.\u0026nbsp; The otter was God of his own little world.\u0026nbsp; Everything came into being in his own image.\u0026nbsp;\n\nExcept it didn't.\n\nA million voices screamed in his head.\u0026nbsp; Millions of stories to be told.\u0026nbsp; Millions of contradictions twisted his image of the world this way and that as the sun drew long across the real sky.\u0026nbsp; Was it the real sky?\u0026nbsp; What was real?\u0026nbsp; To the otter, time itself became as an abstraction. \u0026nbsp;His fingers danced and the digital lights before him wove creation before his eyes.\u0026nbsp; Blue skies grew brighter.\u0026nbsp; Then darker.\u0026nbsp; Violet.\u0026nbsp; Pinkish.\u0026nbsp; Navy blue.\u0026nbsp; Black.\u0026nbsp; Stars.\u0026nbsp; Still, he wrote.\n\nExcept he didn't.\n\nWriting was a tangible thing.\u0026nbsp; It was a physical thing.\u0026nbsp; What played out for the otter was neither tangible nor physical.\u0026nbsp; It was compulsive and emotional, indescribable and impossible.\u0026nbsp; Some people wrote.\u0026nbsp; He simply spilled his mind completely across the page.\u0026nbsp; He opened himself through his fingertips, and the innermost depths of his mental self took control of the keyboard.\u0026nbsp; All the infinite majesty and all the deepest terror spread before his eyes in perfectly ordered chaos.\n\nUntil it stopped.\n\nReality failed him.\u0026nbsp; Growling stomach.\u0026nbsp; Dry tongue.\u0026nbsp; Drooping eyelids.\u0026nbsp; Lack of caffeine.\u0026nbsp; Lack of alcohol.\u0026nbsp; Probable absence of personal hygiene.\u0026nbsp; How long had he been at that desk?\u0026nbsp; Was it the whole day, as his eyes saw?\u0026nbsp; Or was it the years that played out in his mind, alongside the little figures whose lives were tugged this way and that by his whims?\u0026nbsp; Was it a period of a dozen hours or so?\u0026nbsp; Or was it an era of turmoil that threatened to ruin civilization as he knew it?\n\nCoffee.\u0026nbsp; Clarity.\u0026nbsp; Focus.\n\nThe otter returned to the desk and frowned at his words.\u0026nbsp; He folded his arms as he studied them closely.\u0026nbsp; Each character was scrutinized by the harshest glare.\u0026nbsp; Each sentence was mercilessly scanned.\u0026nbsp; Declarations of insufficiency and inadequacy flitted through the otter's mind.\u0026nbsp; Tracts of land vanished.\u0026nbsp; Lives ended.\u0026nbsp; Reality bent and broke.\n\nCtrl-A.\u0026nbsp; Del.\u0026nbsp; Sigh.\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"Fae\\'s Flash Fiction","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/309289-the-bond.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/594648-pressure.json"}}