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Brown Coffee:

"A Fleeting Memoir about Fleeting Memory"-BeaverReturn

The scene creeps up on me as though I had just suddenly woken up from a long strand of daydreaming. The warm cup between my paws, the light song that fills the coffeehouse with soft brushed vocalizations, the resonating homeliness on a city spot infinitely familiar, it's so recognizable and yet as I sit here, waiting for you, I keep wondering to myself how exactly I got here.

Hidden within the cross-beams above, I let my ears drift to the song bird that sings out to me from the inside of a black box speaker: _What a difference a day makes, 24 little hours, brought the sun and the flowers, where they use to be rain. _

_ _ How true is this, I ponder, how many experiences can one face in a single day, in a single week, in a single month, in a single year, in a single hour, in a single minute, in a single second, in a single millisecond, in the span of an electron rotation, in the flash of a temporal freeze-frame, how many experiences can I find? In your office I hear the ticking of your metronome. It's a familiar sensation. Tick, Tock, how simple is its binary experience.

But what is an experience, if an experience is not remembered?

In this city there is so many coffee shops, so many restful abodes to sell me illusionary solitude. So many corners to sell me a home, an infinite array of boxes, and each one can hold so many memories. But it's within this box, this box at the edge of the entire range that I am most comfortable. I sip my coffee, drawing shapes in a pile of spilt sugar with a single paw-finger. I'm thinking of your office, I wonder if I can remember the taste of your lips.

When I was younger, I had once believed that the unfathomable stretch of this city's sanctuary was truly incessant. I had believed experience was like the universe, its edge immeasurable; my life was a vast open beach, and my memories were the footprints I had left behind. Now I sit in this coffee shop where I can quite easily measure the expanse of my city. I now know my city as only within the walls of this coffee-shop, anything else and I just can't--

"Go on." I hear you say as you listen intently, your tiger paws touching in the form of a triangle under your chin. Your majestic stripes, I can see them all, because you're nude save for the glasses you rest on the bridge of your feline nose. I can't help but eye you. Your masculine physique inspires insatiability within me. I try to remember the sounds, the tastes, the feeling of your large paw on my growing arousal; I try to remember the binding strings that would help me recollect all the times where the sounds of our heavy-panting would be sung in synchronized duet. But I can only focus on your lips. Your lips, and the sound of the ticking metronome in your office.

The sensation of your rough tongue kissing me is haunting and baffling. In my mind I can see it as a sketch on a piece of parchment. I am reaching for it but it's sailing through the air, blown out of my reach by a teasing wind. I sit back down at my table, sip my espresso and continue to wait within this peculiar coffeehouse wondering when you'll walk through those doors and come join me.

I had thought it was summer, but by the light flaking snow that falls into the coffeehouse, I discover my calendar is another aspect of my mind that needs correcting. The light flakes that fall on the table, slowly collect into one massive body. Other flakes fall in my coffee, instantly melting away. But then there are the flakes that fall onto my paw, individual and crystalline, I watch them only briefly before they melt into my fur.

"Watch out Dad!" Screams a young voice as a snowball comes towards my face. I duck away from it just in time and turn my head towards the direction the snowball came. The falling snow has grown heavier around me and I increasingly become more captivated by their ballerina dances. I can barely see the small cub in the distance. Amongst the spread of black trees in the park, through the haze of the thick white snow in my eyes, I only know the cub by his distant flapping red scarf. I race towards him but then the scarf unravels off his neck and floats away, he becomes completely invisible from my view.

My knees fall in the snow and I reach out to where I think the cub should be. Surprisingly, as my arms swing through the empty space in front of me I contact an invisible body, and I hug it tight into me. I hold him tight, praying that his vision will appear before me, but I do not see him, I only feel him.

"My Son!" I hold the boy, my voice trembling, "Come back my son."

"Mommy Help!" A small lion cub cries in my arms. I let go of him, falling backwards into the snow behind me. I try to be shocked when I don't see my son, but my confusion is too heavy. A middle-aged female lion comes running up. Her fiery eyes stare at me disapprovingly.

"I'm sorry, he's not well." I hear you say as you come up behind to lift me onto my feet. The lady scowls at us, but stays silent as she turns her back to us taking her son away from me.

"That was a bit silly of me." I joke, but you do not smile.

You take me over to a bench, we sit down, and you nuzzle your head into the crook of my neck. You are weeping, and I feel terrible. With a paw finger I guide your lips to mine and I kiss you, putting every last bit of my love in my kiss in hopes it'll stop you from being so upset. But you break the kiss early and I turn away to look at the snow collected on the arm rest of the park bench. I drop my paw-finger and begin to trace a pattern through it. I doodle some more circles, drawing shapes in the sugar spilt on my coffee table. I then sip my cappuccino, wondering when you will join me.

"I love you." I remember saying to you on that park bench during that winter day.

"I would like to remind you that my relationship to you--" Sitting on the longue chair in your office, I look towards you. Your back is to me, you're observing the snowy park scene outside your office window, "--is strictly a professional one." Turning away from the park scene outside, you sit down at your office desk, a few steps away from me, "And has always been a professional one." From behind the lens of your glasses you look up at me, there's a deep hurt in your vibrant eyes. You always got annoyed at how easily I could read you through your eyes. You always tried to throw me surprise birthday parties, but I'd always catch you because your eyes always gave you away, "You have to try your best to try and acknowledge the difference between actual memories, and supplemented memories enacted as a counter-defense by your brain due to your mental instability."

I'm looking at you, and I can't help but feel hurt, betrayed, but then I realize I'm not sure who I should be mad at. It's either your lying, or I'm lying, but each result is unfavorable all the same. Silence grows between us, because it seems neither of us can find anything to say, and soon only the sound of the metronome fills the room. It's back and forth tune indiscriminatingly continuous as it pursues both worlds of tick and worlds of tock.

Alone at the coffee shop, I sip my latte again. I shake my head and suddenly the metronome stops ticking.

I taste your lips against my own. I can feel the realness of your flesh as I explore it with an open palm. I remember the feeling of every bit of your back as I surfed my loving touch over the soft and striped fur there. I remember the taste of your behind as I delicately and playfully nipped at it. I remember the sound you use to emit when I did it, and how it use to embarrass you so. I remember nights, young nights, were high energies would erotically charge us for entire evening. And I remember old nights, where fatigue would reduce us to acts of gentle fondling before we drifted off into sleep. But I also remember other old nights, where we proved to each other we weren't ready for death just yet.

Alone at the coffee shop, I turn to stare at the unmoving entrance door.

I remember every technique you enjoyed when I gave you oral pleasure. I remember the sound of every moan, and I remember every trick I would have to do to make you sing every last one of them. I remember holding out genitals together, kissing and rubbing, till we splat our sticky messes onto each other's bellies. I remember fighting over who got to play clean up. I remember settling for a clean-up in the shower, only to go at it again. I remember that you are my lover, I remember it all.

Alone at the coffee shop, I take my last sip of my tea.

But most importantly, I can remember our final night together. When we knew we were too tired to go on. I remember giving you one last, simple, beautiful kiss as we crawled into bed together. I remember holding you, I remember getting tired, but I also remember that when the darkness started to come that I wasn't scared, because in my last beautiful moment of life, I remember you were always there beside me. I remember dying with you by my side.

"You remember dying? Interesting." Picking up a pen, you jot something down in your notepad.

"No--I..." I lean back into the lounge chair behind me, "...I guess I don't remember that."

I look down and see that there are bits of coffee grind stuck in the bottom of my cup. I do feel more awake, there is most certainly caffeine in my blood and on my tongue lingers a brief kiss of hazelnut flavour, but I suddenly just can't remember drinking coffee. Such a simple memory, and yet in an instant I had dropped it. I stare at my cup like I'm a gleaner trying to pick up the remains of a harvest that happened long ago. I'm starving within a wheat field long reaped, trying to bite at whatever bits and oats I can hold onto. But the more I keep walking the fields the more I realize that there is nothing left. My coffee is gone, everything is gone-

"Hey mister did your friend ever show up?" A young gazelle in a brown apron approaches me grabs my cup and places it into a bin that he holds off his hip.

"I--Was I meeting a friend?" My brow furrows in contemplation as I watch my cup leave my table.

"I dunno, I guess I thought you said you were meeting a friend. Maybe I'm confusing you with someone else."

"Yea maybe." A feel a spark in the back of my mind, the gazelle suddenly reminds me of something, "Say did we ever play football together back in college?"

"No, I don't think so. I'm not too sure."

"Yea your name is uh, it's George Revel. And you were the quarterback." I snap my fingers beside my head; it seems to help me remember.

"Yea, that's true. I mean, I did play football and all that. I'm not too sure if I remember you though. It was just a couple of years and yet It seems so long ago now--it's a bit funny, isn't it?"

I laugh, "Yea..."

I can't help but laugh again and the gazelle can't stop from joining me. I shake his hand, and we say goodbye and I make my way out of the coffee shop. As I open the door, a tiger in a suit bumps me on the shoulder. For a second, I thought perhaps that he might have had recognized me, but then again it could of been a trick of my imagination. All the same he raises a paw to shake mine,

"Hi, good day to you!" He says, his face lighting up.

"Yea, good day." I say back, a little awkwardly.

"I--" He drops his eyes, behind his glasses I see glints of tears in his eyes, "I came here to see a friend but I was running a bit late. It looks like he got tired of waiting for me. I guess, it's for the best, things between us were getting pretty difficult, you know, and uh--well, I guess I just wanted to say goodbye."

"Well, I visit this coffee shop often, describe him to me and if I see him I can tell him goodbye for you!" I grin, but the handsome tiger just looks me in the eyes and shakes his head,

"That won't be necessary. Say, you don't want to sit for a coffee do you?" Hopeful orbs gaze at me, his fantastical eyes were instantly readable and I could tell------that he really needed a friend. Leading him to the table I previously sat at we both order a coffee. And when it arrives, I promise myself this coffee I won't forget. This coffee I won't forget.

--

** It was a rainy day today and I really felt like I was in a recessive kind of mood all day. I tried to get stuff done but I just couldn't escape my head. It seemed my body was completely complacent in just lying down, listening to the rain, and getting lost in meditative thoughts. An off day for sure. I guess everyone can have one every once and a while, I just always hate feeling like I'm being lazy.**

** To counteract this feeling of slothness, I felt like I had to encourage myself to write, just to do something, just to make sure that I did accomplish SOMETHING today. I'm actually happy I did this because after an extended bout of lying on my bed and thinking to the sound of the rain I was really given the chance to pull out something deep from within the boundaries of my mind. I had always felt challenged in writing something thematically concerned with ambiguous fleeting memory, and I think when I laid down, forced my mind away from everything else, that I was finally able to commit to the constructing this story from within the mentality of my own sheer void.** ** It was a good exercise for me. Often when I don't write for the furry fandom I feel a stronger need to monitor my accessibility. What I mean, the more I write away from the fandom, the less experimentally inclined I feel. I think every artist has their sanctuary, and I'm starting to realize that furry is most certainly mine. It's that age old expression of having a venue where you can truly be yourself. I mean I already have the surrealist edge of hybrid-human-animal sex, why not go with that avenue? It just scares me, the stigma behind our fandom would have a lot of people coughing "bullshit" on my attachment to the fandom in favour of the much more controversial story associated with the stigma of our fandom. But then again, it's not like I'm overly exposed around here anyways! Haha.**

** Giving references out, the lyrics I used are pulled from Dinah Washington's "What a Difference a Day Makes." which helped me really get out of a snit on how I was going to start this piece (hence why I felt inclined to include her song). For images concerned with the story I used Nancy Standlee's "Good Coffee" (2012), which is strange because I try to avoid using current artwork when I *ahem* steal images, but 1) I could not find the original 1900's painting of coffee I had in mind and 2) when I saw the collage I thought it so wonderfully fit my story that the two become outstandingly complimentary. I mean cosmopolitan coffee shop and memory scraps....seems like what I just wrote now doesn't it? Either way, I encourage you to check out the full piece because it is ABSOULETELY wonderful.**

** That's all I have to say for now! Thanks for reading my written-in-a-day short. Please drop me a comment and show the love. If not, rate, stars, favourites, watches...donations? Any kind of love makes me a happy beaver! I'm going to lie in my bed and listen to...Erik Satie (I guess)...until I feel it appropriate enough for me to fall asleep.**