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Flora and Fauna

_ Moonless, cloudless; air thick with damp. Silent but for an irritation of crickets itching in the miniature crevices of crusty earth. Movement. Reach out, brace, pull, rest, repeat, repeat, repeat. No thought, no desire, only the push of something even more elemental than instinct. Like attracting like, different seeking to hide itself, camouflage, blend, an urge too primal to understand the words that would describe the act. Reach out, brace, pull..._

His eyes opened. For a long moment, he lay perfectly still, barely breathing. His eyes blinked, moved, tried to remember where he was. After a moment, he sat up, looking around the darkened bedroom, the tattered rags of some bizarre dream still wrapped loosely around him. Through the open window, the faint hint of cricket chirping drowned in the whirlpool of air caught by the box fan and hurled back outside. Another box fan leaned backward against the far wall, trying to blow cooler air from the floor into the thick haze of humidity hanging like a raincloud waiting for nature's cue to drop its heavy burden upon the thirsty land.

The long, lean rabbit took a single deep breath, let it out slowly. The feeling was still with him, even if the dream was not. Three nights now. He wasn't exactly getting used to it, but the unfamiliarity of it was wearing off. An unwelcome visitor, creeping, slithering into his mind, leaving behind nothing he could identify.

He glanced at the clock. Sunrise would come too soon, and his alarm, and his daily work. He brushed sweat from his brow, his muzzle. Lying down again, he noticed that the pillow was damp. He smiled faintly at a phrase that his mother's friend used to say: "This heat is un-Christian." This summer was unhealthy, unnatural somehow. The weather was thick, and at night, it brought not relief but malevolence, slow and heavy, like something sitting on your chest. He flipped the pillow over to the side that was a little drier, lay down again, surrendering to the relentless, pointless heat.

Sleep, or its allowable facsimile, returned slowly.

* * * * *

Orange Bunny - his name, his description, his Self - stepped out of his house naked, an indulgence allowed by the privacy of this rural setting, and nearly a necessity in the growing heat. August was unkind this year, and Orange knew that it would only be hotter in the greenhouse. He wondered if the plants would survive, no matter how much he watered and tended to them. They were spared the direct sunlight, but even tropical plants had an upper limit to their tolerance for heat.

He walked the perimeter of the 20x45' greenhouse, making sure that the structure was secure, the shaded panes in place, and the defenses against small herbivores were in place. Trap-and-release was not as effective as killing traps, but he couldn't quite bring himself to killing something because it was hungry. We all have our needs...

The rabbit stopped, frowning at a small hole at the base of the greenhouse structure. It hadn't been here when he made his check several days ago. He wasn't sure what could have made such a hole in the wood, as it didn't appear to be gnawed so much as... for lack of a better word, melted. His small tail twitched nervously at the sight. He had used stump-rot solutions before, chemicals that more or less digested the cellulose of the wood; what he saw here was like that, although somehow more efficient, smoother. He bent for a closer look, cautioning himself against touching the remains of a viscous solution that remained around the edges of the hole. In the nearly non-existent grass near the greenhouse, a trail was clearly visible leading off into the lawn, perhaps even to the untamed wild grasses beyond, and still further to the woods.

The hair on the back of his neck prickled as something brushed by his nostrils. A scent, barely carrying on the still, thick air. Something that he could not identify clearly. Something that made the most ancient core of his mind cringe as it tried to reconcile signals that seemed diametrically opposed - the scent of sex, and the scent of death.

Orange stood up again, looking around at the isolation and feeling an utterly irrational urge to leave it, now, quickly, without a backward glance, perhaps even without clothes. He couldn't understand the feeling, the sensation of strangeness, and worse, the sensation of being the stranger. He shook his head gently, his long lop ears twitching, his nose wrinkling as if in defiance of what it had scented earlier. It's the heat, just the August heat. Enough to drive a fur mad.

He reached for the small towel that he kept in his coveralls, to wipe off the sweat from his brow, then realized that he didn't have either the towel or the coveralls. He laughed to himself, moved off around the rest of the perimeter, seeing nothing unusual, finally arriving at the main door to the greenhouse. Resting a forepaw on the makeshift rope handle to the door, Orange once more felt something wash over him, making him shiver in the thick summer air, making his balls curl up a little closer to his body, a throb in his sheath that confused signals of arousal and danger, completely unknowing of what caused the reaction. He breathed again, yanked open the door, and went in.

The scents of the greenhouse hit him fully as he entered. The deep note of fresh soil and mulch struck first, followed by the greens of various vegetables, the high keening vanilla of some of the orchids, and the rust of rain gutters and old watering cans. The slow-turning ceiling fans, a dozen feet overhead, stirred the air enough to mix the scents, like large paddles in vats of chocolate, and almost as sticky. Orange welcomed the familiar odors, letting them calm him as they always did. This was the life he'd chosen for himself, and despite the occasional bit of loneliness, he was happy with it. Where else could he show up for work naked and not get fired?

He wiped sweat from his brow with one forepaw, picking up some general-purpose gardening tools with the other and started his daily rounds inside the greenhouse. He reviewed the troops, all present and correct, pulling stray bits of weed or helping the occasional garden pest to go to the Great Flower Bed in the Sky. (So okay, those little beasts, he didn't have as much trouble killing. With each, he murmured, "Go back to God," and sent them on their way.)

It was some little time later - mid-morning enough for Orange to consider going inside for a break - when he saw the flower.

Describing what he saw as a flower was like calling an orchid a posy. A tightly-wrapped bulb of petals about the size of his closed forepaw, the flower seemed preternaturally vivid, as if it actually glowed from within, its petals seeming to shimmer with the nacreous coloration of a pearlescent seashell. The petals themselves seemed delicate yet sturdy, like the membranous skin of a bat's wing. At the base of the bulb, twelve distinct tendrils connected the wood-like foundation on which the flower sat to the moist ground below.

"And just what might you be?" Orange murmured. "I certainly didn't plant you here. I don't even recognize..." He reached toward the bulb, his paw moving slowly and gently, as if to caress the petals. He refrained from actually touching it; some flower petals are sensitive enough that mere touch could damage them, and he didn't want to damage it. He blew against it, just a tiny puff of breath to see if the petals were as tightly wrapped as he suspected. They didn't move; they were heavy enough to resist his push of air. He pulled his paw back, smiling gently.

"Well, little enigma, I'll have to go online to see if there's anything like you on the Internet. I just can't imagine how you got in here." The bunny looked up at the skylight, looking for a hole through which some windblown seed might have fallen (with no wind for nights in a row?) and taken root in the soil (and grown this much in only a few days?) to become this beautiful flower...

His head jerked suddenly to the side, his eyes focusing swiftly. One of the tendrils had moved. He saw it move, shift, and stop. He saw...

Orange shook his head hard enough to make his ears rattle. Water, that's what he needed. Dehydration makes you see things. Plants moving. Thanks, John Wyndham, for making us all afraid of the triffids. He passed a slightly shaking paw over his forehead and, turning toward the door to the greenhouse, walked only a little faster than he would have ordinarily, taking himself into the house to get some water. The greenhouse could wait for a little while.

* * * * *

He spent more time on the Internet than he'd wanted to, and he'd still come up with nothing. His descriptions, key words, even botanical terms that he tried to apply to the flower, all came up with examples of everything that this flower was not - ordinary, simple, almost uninteresting. He was part of a few horticultural sites that would allow him to upload a photo of the plant, to get opinions from literally hundreds of growers all over the world. Surely someone had seen this type of plant before.

It was near enough to lunchtime to make him consider eating before going back out into the heat. Then again, he realized, he could snap the picture and upload it, then take a long lunch and probably even a nap while waiting for answers. It had already become habit to stay inside during the worst heat of each day; the joke about mad dogs and the English contained a grain of truth in it.

Orange stood, used a convenient dish towel to take another layer of sweat from his brow, and located his digital camera. It was fully charged (for a change), good to go. Okay - once more unto the heat, dear friends, once more.

Simply stepping into the direct sunlight felt like being slapped. Orange grunted, forced himself to the greenhouse and inside. One last chore, then...

He stopped, just inside the door. The smell struck him forcefully, overpowering everything else in the greenhouse. Deep, earthy... almost musky. His brain tried to understand the signals it was receiving, more than merely pheromonal, more like... primal. Ancient. Urgent. Stuck where he stood, Orange found himself weaving on his hindpaws, as if slightly intoxicated; his fur twitched and danced, his eyes glazed over slightly, and he shivered. He was barely aware that he had dropped the camera to the floor of the greenhouse as he staggered forward to answer a call that his mind could neither fathom nor in any way refuse.

Somewhere deep inside himself, Orange was still aware of the world, of what he was doing, yet he could not stop himself. There, the phalaenopsis he had been breeding so carefully, and there further away a bed of beautiful comfrey, and there the herbals and teas, and there... oh, there... he saw now, he didn't really understand it, but he saw that it was the flower, the strange exotic bloom that had called him. The bloom, still wrapped up in itself, yet grown to the size of his head. Orange stared at it, eschewing words like "impossible" or "unnatural" or "alien" in favor of words like "beautiful" and "sensual" and "desirable."

He stopped at the low, lipped table of mulched soil in which the plant had made a home. Inside some tiny fortress of self, Orange felt himself unable to stop or even understand what was happening. His body, as if told what to do, moved to climb onto the table, to keel in the dirt before the flower, to gaze down at it, and wait. Just... wait. Something was supposed to happen. He had to wait to see what it would be.

The bunny's body breathed normally, eyes hooded but open. Orange, as if separate from his body, felt only a rush of horror and repugnance. It was like something he read about once, something called "Locked-In Syndrome," when someone is fully aware yet can't move voluntarily. He thought that he might be able to force himself to move a finger, a toe, his tail, but he still wouldn't be able to get away from this... was it only a flower? Something had done this to him, some smell, something that the flower had produced, if only he could figure out how to block it, how to escape...

_ Eh. Neeg. Mah._

The sounds were there, not quite audible, at least not through the ears. Orange felt his body moving, leaning down toward the flower, his left forepaw in the dirt, his right moving toward the large mass of leathery-looking closed-up petals, as if to touch them. His fear redoubled; mentally, he was scrabbling against some unforgiving surface that would not let him gain a moment's purchase, no chance of getting away. He whimpered; his body did not recreate the sound. He cowered; his body stayed where it was. And as he watched his own paw move closer to the leaves of the flower, he saw it shudder briefly and unwrap itself in a single long, slithery motion.

_ Lee. Tull. Eh. Neeg. Mah._

The bunny's body shifted slightly, looking into the bowl made by the petals of the flower. A single stem stood upright in the center, about as big around as the rabbit's thumb, perhaps six inches in length, a tiny pearlescent drop of fluid at its tip. His forepaw moved slowly, a finger touching the fluid, transferring it from stem to pawpad. The paw moved upward, and Orange watched in creeping horror, as the mouth opened, the tongue extended, and the finger touched the tongue gently.

The drop seemed to spread and cover the tongue, not thickly but completely. There was a taste, a flavor there, sweet but not cloying, balanced by something darker, like cumin, yes cinnamon and cumin. Orange had used that combination in cooking a meal recently; he had been surprised by how well it had worked. It was familiar to him, something that he knew... and how could this... this thing know that? How did it make a flavor that the rabbit actually knew, could be comforted by...

_ Koo. Min. Seen. Na. Mohn._

The rabbit's body shifted again, reacting to being touched. No sudden moves, the body was too sweetly intoxicated to move too quickly, but a bit of surprise nonetheless as the plant's central stamen moved, pushed upward, bending, prehensile, curving toward the rabbit's body, toward his heat-distended balls. It paused, touching softly, moving with... curiosity? Sensing? Tasting?

_ Koo-min. Seen-na-mohn._

Orange could not make his body move, even as his mind screeched and railed against the alien probing of the strange plant's attentions. The stamen moved slowly, examining, sensing, exploring the soft fur-covered sack, and despite Orange's fear and revulsion, his traitorous body began to sprout an erection. The pink skin stretched, the organ swelling to its full size, as the thick stamen seemed to cup, support, even squeeze his balls gently, almost affectionately, before it began to explore the region a little further down.

Through the slightly glazed-over eyes, Orange could see that the bowl of the plant seemed to be producing a clear gelatinous substance. The scent from the plant became stronger, the cumin and cinnamon joined by something darker, muskier, and the rabbit's forepaw gently dipped down into the pooling substance, carrying it upward to his muzzle, tasting some of it, smearing more of it onto his face, as Orange screamed without voice, screamed and pleaded and begged in the silent greenhouse.

Another sensation took his attention away. The stamen probed his tailhole, again exploring, its tip producing another glob of its pearlescent goo. The rabbit's body remembered the taste, the feel of it, and despite Orange's incredible horror, the body let itself relax, open, admit, accept, take inside. There was almost no effort; the stamen was far smaller than the rabbit's lovers, and more nimble, moving without effort. Orange could feel it squirming, pushing, conforming itself to his entrails, expelling its fluid into him. His mind continued to scream, begging for it to stop, begging to be let go, begging to die.

_ No kill I._

The words formed thickly yet clearly in his mind. They weren't his. The self inside its body held its breath, looking around as if in an empty room that, somehow, has someone else there as well, someone who has just spoken.

_ No kill. I no kill. Not kill you._

He couldn't know anything about what was happening to him, but Orange's mind latched on to the only thing that it could. "Who...?" he tried.

_ Me._

"What... are you?"

_ Flower._

"You are ... the flower?"

_ I am the flower._

"How can you speak?"

_ Learning you. Language. Brain. Keh-me-culz._

Chemicals? Orange thought. He didn't have the science to explain it, but he got the general idea. Or maybe it was the plant using that explanation by taking it from his own mind. His own...

"You're in my head?"

_ No. In your tayulhul._

Orange's sharp wit returned long enough to acknowledge that the flower seemed to be quite a literalist. And with that tiny bit of familiarity returned to him, he also acknowledged that the stamen had thickened somewhat over the past minute or so, and it continued to wiggle quite purposefully inside him. In other circumstances, it would be quite a welcome pleasure.

_ Pleh-zhur. Yes. Want you to be pleh-zhur._

Another message seemed to enter his brain, as Orange felt the thickened stamen pull back and push into him again. He was fully erect now, and his cock jerked slightly with the familiar sensation of being leisurely penetrated. It had been a little while now, and he was not surprised when he felt the first beads of pre-cum stand out on his tip. The forepaw dipped again into the flower's bowl and took the gelatinous liquid there to apply to his stiff, pink length. Orange sighed, both his mind and his body sighed with the touch of the fluid to his shaft. It seemed to spread of its own volition, coating his cock, flowing down to his twitching balls, cooling him slightly from the oppressive heat of the greenhouse.

As he rubbed himself slowly, the rabbit leaned forward, letting a few drops of pre-cum fall into the bowl of the flower. He felt more than heard something like a moan from the flower. Its leaves twitched, and around the wood-like base of the bowl, the tendrils quivered, flexed, flicked out of the dirt, and began slowly to extend themselves outward.

_ Pleasure. You call this pleasure. Yes. I understand. We understand us better now._

"I don't know how..." Orange formed the words, realizing that his body was no longer so far from him. "You are learning me. Learning from me."

_ Yes. I did not want to frighten you. I had no way for you to understand me clearly. I realized that you recognized scent._

"You overpowered me."

_ To learn from you._

The stamen thickened further, pushed harder, as if recognizing Orange's responses. He found himself more connected now, and in so realizing, he found that the tendrils from the base of the plant had been busy. His arms and legs were held, comfortably but firmly, the tendrils coating his fur with the soothing gelatinous fluid wherever it touched. He felt the fluid moving slowly, like a million miniature masseurs across his fur, coating him, cooling him, helping him relax.

The rabbit found himself on the verge of being unable to speak yet again. The stamen had more than tripled in thickness, pushing deeply into him with smooth, eager thrusts. Two tendrils had wrapped themselves around his cock, moving in perfect rhythm with the stamen's powerful stroking. Two more tendrils had come up to his face, moving slowly to caress his cheeks gently, affectionately. Orange moved his tongue toward one of them, and it obliged him by giving a few more drops of the fluid to his thirsting mouth before swelling slowly to a size that the rabbit's hungry throat was more used to.

In only moments, Orange found himself reeling from the magnificent sexual assault on his body. The combination of thick, limber organs impaling him from above and below, and the slick, perfectly timed tugs upon his cock was driving him to the edge, to the edge, and finally over...

_ Give your pleasure to me._

Orange groaned, nearly screaming as his cock jetted forth rope after rope of thick cum, every drop of it caught in the wide-open bowl of the flower's quivering petals. His seed seemed to be absorbed directly into the petals, and he heard a cry of ecstasy, of surprise, of deepest pleasure. He felt himself being filled, throat and entrails, pumped more full than any previous lover had even attempted, and every drop seemed to cry out his name, to thank him, to want him, to hold him in more than just the physical.

After a long, tremulous moment, his body shuddering like the final tintinnabulation of a great bell, Orange felt himself falling in slow motion, vaguely realizing that he was being set down tenderly upon the table, his head near the flower. The tendrils, themselves occasionally experiencing a shudder of still-felt pleasure, withdrew their tight hold, instead laying themselves across the rabbit's chest, belly, and legs, as a spent lover might do. The stamen, its tip still dripping slightly with its discharge, moved to caress the rabbit's lips in a final kiss. Orange's tongue lapped at it, as if to ensure that he was as full and coated inside as he was outside.

_ Pleasure._

"Yes," Orange panted softly, his body his own again, his mind awash in the most soothing afterglow of his life. "Pleasure."

After a pause, the flower asked, What is this phrase... pillow talk?

The rabbit laughed. "The conversation we have between our sessions of pleasure."

_ Then... there will be more?_

"I'd be a poor gardener if I didn't take the best care of you that I could."

_ We take care of each other._

Orange nodded. "Yes." He sniffed the air to find whiffs of cumin and cinnamon again, and realized that he hadn't had any lunch. He also realized that he didn't give a damn.

Commission for Orange Bunny (FurAffinity) February 2013