FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Light.

It invaded her perception, the first since her old friend warmth awoke her so long ago. It filled her vision, rough and unfocused, and for a time the two sensations were all she knew.

She did not know how long, but eventually the light resolved, receded into a vast void of darkness. The form it took was imperfect, mottled with dark spots, deformed by arcing streams of golden fire, but instantly she knew this was the source of the warmth, her life.

Awe was soon interrupted by another new sensation: understanding. She began to see, but not with sight. A tiny ballad took place within her mind. At the center, a star within a sea of stars. Three other spheres courted it, each larger and father than the last. Ten tiny partners, too small to be graced with the perfection of the sphere, danced around them. The largest maintained six, the middle three, the smallest but one tiny deformed mass.

She was looking at the center of this structure. The name bubbled into her consciousness: Sun. But where was she?

What was she?

She learned as she felt. Long spine, four flexing feet, agile neck. A turquoise belly, scaled in geometric perfection made itself known as, for the first time in her existence, she looked away from the light. But the warmth did not stop there. Up her gaze shifted, to wings extended to capture the full irradiance of her creator. The delicate bone and vein of the appendage was awe inspiring, truly, though what lay behind it stole the scene, both in majesty of color and sheer size.

The tiny sphere in her imagination did little justice to the real thing; the blue-white monstrosity loomed before her, infinitely detailed in splotches of browns and whites and blues. A halo of atmosphere ringed the great mottled spheroid, heavenly distinction granted this most heavenly of bodies. Slowly it turned beneath her, as if purposely showing off its uniqueness to her.

More than simple reprieve from the darkness of space, or a feast for her new senses, the planet called to her with a strange longing, emotion she had never felt before in her limited existence.

Change, it seemed to call. Create.

More flashes of insight came. She saw ice melting, the thin halo of gas enslaved by its gravity expanding, trapping heat necessary for.. life. Life like her! Quadrupeds and bipeds and creatures large and small rushed through her head, the most powerful influx of thought yet.

What did it all mean?

Her wings flared once more, and with a single strong stroke of her powerful wings... she slowly began to rotate. The expected sensation of motion refused to come, and for a moment she thought.

Her wings flared with purpose, beat rapidly.. and nothing happened. The explanation seemed obvious to her now; there was no air to flap against! Her traverse continued, the slowly twisting sphere beneath her granting and receding vision of the marvelous planet that brought her to life.

Why would you do this?

She tried to direct the thought at the cold hued deity before her, to little avail. Another feeling washed over her; dismay. The mass needed to bring her out of orbit was tauntingly close, yet seemingly forever out of reach.

Her maw opened to curse her cruel benefactor, and everything blurred. Planet and sun spun through her field of view, fighting each other for her attention.

It took several rotations to realize what had happened. Mass came out of her mouth! She tried again, and her body was thrown into a new expression of kinematics. Harshly lit turquoise paw, body and tail chased themselves as if a single frozen structure, entertaining the dragoness as she thought about what to do.

It seemed so simple.. like a lot of things in her new perception. She knew not where this knowledge came from, perhaps from the planet, but it was filling her more quickly than she could realize. She had acquired momentum.. and the only way to remove it was the equal and opposite application of her mouth.

A shout was far too imprecise for her to measure; she tried snorting. The fine mist of what she somehow knew was oxygen blew precise, fine jets into the void around her.. and she found herself slowing.

A final huff of success and she was again motionless. Getting to the surface would be no small feat, and it wouldn't surprise her if she was a little short of breath! The passage of landscape beneath her was not just for show, nor was it a sign this massive world was alive. Rather, she was in motion! Moving fast, no doubt, to circle a planet so quickly.

Like her rotation, she needed to apply an opposite force. Finding the necessary orientation for such a thing was easy, though actually taking it was far less so. No less than ten nasal corrections were required before her mouth was finally directed prograde to her movement. She tensed her body, neck especially, and screamed.

This jet was longer, larger, sent a small vibration through her frame, but otherwise was barely noticeable; a slight dust among the black velvet sea of stars. Some nagging feeling at the back of her mind told her she needed to draw in breath, not just expel it, but her body refused to confirm the feeling, so she ignored it.

The entire experience took longer than she expected; it seemed as though the world refused to cease turning, despite her best oral efforts, but a close look seemed to reassure her that, bit by bit, it seemed to slow.

Fifteen minutes. The term was thoroughly unknown to her, but she somehow felt the increment pass. The world stood still before her, the bright white of a continent stretching across the horizons, matted in the unruly fur of rock, fir, and bright blue frozen segments that may have once been water.

Soon, it began to rise. Sensation tickled her ears for the first time.. a faint whisper, high and vacant. For a moment she thought the planet was finally reaching out to her, but the linear increase in intensity, as well as the variation with the small, but detectable pressure on her body, soon put that notion to rest. It had birthed her, taught her about existence.. why would it give no more? Why did she have this desire to communicate, to speak, if her creator had no mouth?

The wind took on a fierce intensity, and the world grew around her, mercilessly swallowing the darkness that had been her home since she could remember. A faint glow caught her eye, an iridescence that grew in orchestration with the profound wind, tipping her paws with ruby streaks, turning turquoise into an orange nearly as magnificent as the sun.

It was warmth more intense and satisfying than any she had experienced, and she drank it in without hesitation, spreading her wings to catch every joule she could. The entirety of her being bathed in the sweet heat of reentry, lit so bright the air around her crackled and hissed. Five minutes passed of unadulterated absorption before her velocity began its final synch with the planet, and her wings took on the supportive load of flight. Her pallor returned, and with it, awe at the new visage.

It was like nothing she had seen before in her hour and twenty three minutes of consciousness. Now precariously close to the surface of the great ball, she could feel her body under its influence. Unlike the stillness of space, this place was full of activity, all at once overwhelming to her immature senses. For the first time, she felt the cool, void air on her skin. The gentle sound of wind seemed to her as though the loudest, most wonderful thing she had yet experienced, though after a few minutes of flight she found it barely noticeable. A shame.

Through motion her body began to reveal its purpose. Before she had considered it merely an arbitration of form, a byproduct of whatever had first given her life, but now she saw. The delicate structures of bone and flesh, perfect for wresting the wind toward the purpose of flight. Flexible neck and tail to angle her body, survey the surroundings.. Moving around in the blanket of atmosphere felt much more natural, if such a thing could even be said concerning her, since she failed to see anyone like her on the surface.

There wasn't much of anything, to be honest. Frozen elements coated the brown-black jutting of rock and soil that spread in fractal patterns throughout her line of sight. Distant series of enormous pushed up earth, mountains, she suddenly remembered, and soft, smooth valleys stood as larger landmarks, but other than that the world seemed as profoundly desolate as the blackness in which she was born.

Gazing upon the flesh of the world, she felt the sensation once again. A desire, an instinct as natural as the fluttering of her wings, the focusing of her eyes.

Life.

The planet begged for life, and its desire resonated through her. Fragments of memory flashed through her mind, as if she had lived them herself. She saw an endless plain, though colored green instead of cold white. The green was not from the ground, instead the color came from fleshy buds of all shapes and sizes; some with thick, brown stalks culminating in a puff, others sticking flat blade after blade out of the very earth. A deep blue streaked from green mountains.. liquid water. This place seemed familiar.. she tried to focus on it.

Pain. The novel sensation flashed through her, this warmth of a ferocious intensity she had never imagined. Dizziness came next, and the loss of control. Her body completed the descent from space, shattering the subzero ground with an incredible thunk.

The impact was nothing; the feeling proved to be little more than another novel sensation that her nubile mind hungrily experienced. The dragoness carefully removed herself from the shattered ground, careful not to disturb the fascinating pattern of circles and streaks; her first imprint on this world.

The terrain in her mind was beautiful, if uncomfortable to think about. How could she make such a thing possible?

"What can I do? I don't.." Vision changed. White and delicate, symbols began to coat the sky, bleeding line after line into the landscape. She found they could be read.

Atmospheric Analysis: Complete

Composition: Within Tolerance

Sea level pressure: Nominal (1.5 kg/m^3)

Mean Temperature: Insufficient (-118 C)

Mean Gravity: Nominal (0.63g)

Mean Irradiance: Nominal (873 W/m^2)

_ _

Course of Action: Raise temperature to sublimate atmosphere. Develop greenhouse effect.

Estimated time to completion: 10.62 million years

_ _

Suddenly a heat assailed her, only slightly less intense than the one she felt during deorbit. The ground around her immediately began to smoke, and she felt the surface start to melt. A tiny sphere of black ground appeared around her, widening as if alive, recoiling from her warmth. Within minutes the air around her was completely opaque, a slowly swirling vortex of gas and vapor. She did not quite understand how she was generating this heat, but it didn't matter. Change was occurring, and it was good.

--

A billion suns passed over her head, ten million years ticked away within it. The very first thing the experience of measured time taught her was that it was profoundly meaningless.

She spent her time in the most idle of ways, introspection, dotted by the occasional flight or run, when she felt the desire to. A curious thing, that, considering there was no place in particular to run or fly to.

It had taken her only the first million years to become comfortable with her existence here. The planet was sick of the arbitrariness in which it existed, so it birthed her. It told her so, every day, revealing her some small piece of its knowledge, tracking her efforts, showing glimpses of that green paradise it so desired.

Slowly, but surely, her constant heating began to change the face of the planet. The once black sky had grown into a color similar to that of her hide, a deep hue of turquoise significantly more appealing to her instinct than she imagined. The white surface faded to the rich hues of the planet; brown, gray, white, even touches of color where rarer elements broke the surface.

It was still rather desolate, but now liquid water flowed freely over the surface, the foremost requirement for life. It proved good sense to start constructing the basic elements of life early; it proved no easy feat to accomplish.

Weaving the basic organic structures into tapestries of atoms proved easy enough for her burgeoning skills, but as if in object defiance to the deterministic celestial bodies, trapped in the same careless waltz of gravity, the very same creations seemed to behave in countless different ways. It took inordinate amounts of time and effort, but eventually, imperceptible to all but her eyes, she witnessed the barest of components mix, build and grow.

The sun which nourished her also shared its bounty with life, though at great cost. The same energy that maintained also destroyed, ripping through molecules of promising specimens time and time again.

But for every million that met a grisly fate, one survived. Even she did not expect them to live, the code of their very being shorn and disfigured, but it did. Not only that, it changed!

The molecules of its primitive, cellular being became different, combined in a way unknown to even her. It was a simple mechanism, but one with implications even she and her great wisdom could not have predicted. Every change split the life she created in two, and while many times the division was seemingly inconsequential, or even hazardous, the new species thrived, even gained dominance over the others. Her pool, once devoid of all but her few special creations, now swarmed with an impressive diversity.

It was at that point they began to leave. It started simply, as most things, a barely perceptible dusting of green on the crest of the pool edge, but within a month or formed a thick, mossy ring several meters around. The first winter subdued the proactive species entirely, pushing it back into the controlled waters of its home, but it only seemed to become more insistent. Just before winter of the second year a great stretch of beach was under its control. It had even reached the ocean, though the low temperatures proved effective in diminishing its reproductive rate

Within a decade the brown earth was green with life, as far as she could see from the pool. The inclement seasons always asserted their dominion over the fragile life forms, though what ground they continually attempted to deny them time and again blossomed with the desperate flourish of growth.

But it was only the beginning. One spring, as the snow began to fade, she discovered the ground was not as lifeless as she assumed it should be. An orange scruff had lived, thrived even, as the green moss died. She naively assumed this new strain would completely overthrow the green dominion that had persisted for the last decade, but its new resistance came at a cost. The cost of virility! It spread nearly four times more slowly than its less hardy cousin, condemning it to life in the lesser habitable regions of the world.

Life proved a significantly more interesting process to watch change than her terraforming efforts ever were. Within the mere span of a million years the fragmented structures she had cobbled together surmounted the greatest obstacles her world had to offer, expanding and diversifying into countless species. Where once rays of sun and the harsh climes of the long season had decimated their fragile tissues, now they bent them to their own will.

The dominion of plants, first and foremost of her creations, served as intrepid explorers of the world, fertilizing it with their presence, subtly transmuting the atmosphere for those who came later. Beautifiers, growers, the firmament of her new empire, their fantastic colors and ingenious collection of solar radiation cemented her respect instantaneously, for while others came and went, they stood at life's very gate, supporting all else with their bountiful resource.

Second to emerge from the microscopic void, animals, quickly built their reputation in ingenuity, cunning, and intellect. Creatures big and small, of two, four, six, eight limbs proliferated upon the newly greened world, under constant pressure from the elements, food, and each other. It was through them that she first witnessed the pure brutality of being. The planet, she saw, cared little for those who could not adapt to its many climes. While the strong and adaptable found their way, proved themselves worthy of the world's gifts, countless insufficient species fell in vain attempt.

It was in this group she began to see herself reflected, if only just. Creatures in her very image evolved out of the turmoil of the great machine of life she had started, and for the briefest of moments she considered her long work complete.

Yet her hopes were dashed as simply as those of so many insufficient species. She saw no true awareness in the eyes she looked into, no indication that they understood her gestures or speech. The form had complexified greatly, but they remained as insensitive to the world as the first beleaguered cell that had coalesced in that pool so long ago.

She found herself on her favorite peak, staring down at the world she had built. It was beautiful, truly, a unique jewel of existence in an infinite sea of desolate perfection..

But it was yet imperfect. Thoughts clouded the troubled goddess. She had created creatures like herself, yet at the same time completely different. Perhaps something more was required.

It was clear to her now that simply being alive did not assure the development of this special awareness that she alone appeared to have. It must have been a gift from her planet. Was it a gift she could share?

Millennia had passed since she last examined her microscopic handiwork, and the forms it had taken now were far different than anything she knew. Staring at the ling, but finite helix that served as blueprint to the drakes form, she knew there was no other was than systemic permutation. Luckily, time was the one thing she had in abundance.

---

The organization she found within that tiny mess of molecules astounded her. In only a hundred years she grasped the major sections of its code, in another fifty she had found the algorithms for brain size and complexity. After that it was simply a matter of population isolation, breeding and, as always, time.

Gene interaction was far from predictable, though the organization suggested otherwise. As their intellect developed so also did their form. Rough scutes thinned into glossy, flexible scales. The muzzle shortened somewhat, as well as the neck, shifting mass into the brain. Vertebrae shortened and muscle adjusted, turning quadruped into biped. Social behavior began to change as well. Familial groups became the foundation of their interaction, rather than packs.

All in all the development came as steadily and predictably as always. That is, until the four hundred and sixty ninth generation.

A young male, fresh into maturity, showed interest in her the way none other of his people had ever done. It began innocently enough, with the simple mimicking of her mannerisms and her speech. It was the first time she heard any ambiance of language from any but her own mouth, and he proved most adept at it, though he did not understand the meaning behind it.

At least she thought he didn't, until one fateful day.

"Hello." His paw waved loosely toward her, violet eyes met her own. He carried himself with a notable precision and stiffness, more upright than the others of his kind had ever done. Some perception of personal space kept him before her, instead of sniffing or licking at some part of her body. Certainly something was strange about this dragan.

"Hello Adam. Good hunting today?"

"Good hunting, yes!" The repetition was toned such that he seemed to acknowledge, rather than simply repeat. She had not heard this kind of intonation before..

"So, Adam.. Who are you? "

Usually she let him go through the motions of conversation, but today she was curious. He was learning after all, was it too much of a stretch to think he might actually understand?

"I.. am Adam?"

He searched her eyes for meaning, obviously unsatisfied with her reaction.

"Is that all? Who are you? "

He was getting agitated now. The telltale threshing of his muscular tail through the air, the way his stout claws split the sun warmed grass under his feet.. She knew he was close to simply running away, as he had so many times before. But he didn't.

"I am.. like you. Yes?" He saved his best line for last. "Who are you?"

She was at a loss for the very words she had unwittingly taught him. With a single sentence he had overturned everything she assumed about him. No longer was this the parroting of a simple mind, the masquerade of intellect. He was like her.

From then on her special dragan rarely left her side. His skill with speech seemed to improve by the day, and his curiosity grew to match. She taught him everything he thought to ask, without hesitation. It started simply; how best to hunt certain kinds of animals, why the ocean's waters tasted different than the river, what rain was, but within a few years it became more abstract. Soon she found herself explaining the oscillations of the sun and moons, the finer details of biology. She answered everything she could, but there was some knowledge unknown even to her..

--

"You don't know why?" She knew he was watching her, but with equal intent she watched his hands flow across the meticulously ground piece of wood, spreading rich colors of ground plant and clay into an image. Her image.

"My why.. is you. That is all I know." His finger paused, prompting her to meet his concerned gaze.

"You speak in riddles. Answer me straight." His multi colored paws flew out, gesturing to her world. "Why did you do this? Why.. am I me?"

"It is as I said. I'm sorry."

Adam frowned, and made a final, careful stroke before setting the picture before her. "No, Goddess, I'm sorry. I.. I need some time to think."

Where she might have considered a thousand years sufficient 'time to think,' the dragan usually took no more than a few hours. She spent them inspecting his rendering. It was beautiful, an excellent representation in both color and form. Come to think of it, she could never remember him drawing anything else. Curious..

A most unusual idea came into her head. Perhaps she could help Adam after all.

--

"Have you tamed your thoughts?" Adam's face looked even more melancholy in the light of the setting sun.

"No.. It all seems so.. meaningless. The world turns, time passes, and everything grows old. But what would you know about that?"

"I have borne witness to more expanses of meaninglessness than you could ever hope to imagine. More time than should be possible. I may be ageless, but what does that mean? I shall simply watch the world grow old, and in the end I shall be as alone as when I was born."

She could feel him tremble under the weight of her words. "Goddess, I.."

"Is that not the root of all your concerns? Would having a definite purpose really subdue your lamentation? Or is it being alone that saddens you?"

Adam wiped a tear from his snout. "You're right, Goddess.. you always are.."

"Then why haven't you found a mate?"

"There are none that would have me." He said flatly.

"Nonsense. There are at least fifteen eligible females of your species. I'm sure-"

"They may have my form, but they are not like me.."

She was getting worried. "But Adam, there are none like you."

He met her gaze for the first time. "You are.."

It took her a second to realize what he meant. "You want to.. mate with me?"

A flush of pheromones, rich with fear and arousal radiated from him. His voice was as soft as the cliffside wind. "Yes."

"But.. our bodies are different. I do not walk on two legs, nor do-"

"You are beautiful." Adam pulled her head close, hugging it gently to his torso. She could feel the electricity of his mind all too close, and she let herself drink it in. The impulses she felt were more complex and intoxicating than any creature she had explored before. All at once his excitement, arousal, elation and worry flooded her serenity of sense. Adam let her go, sliding back onto his haunches with an unsure expression on his face.

She knew what arousal felt like; the instinctual desire to meld bodies, to feel the sweet pleasure of penetration, but there was something more in this.. less familiar, yet equally raw. Respect, care.. love.

It washed over endless millennia of gently reassuring purpose like a great tsunami, throwing her body into a great, shivering weakness.

"Goddess, are you okay?" She felt her chest expand and contract as the unfamiliar experience of panting seized her body. A heat in her loins stoked her breath, demanding satiation.

"I understand now.. I will be your mate." Conversation lost all purpose from that point on. Tails met and entwined, snouts danced against each other, and two unique souls became one.

--

The next fifty years were the greatest of her existence. From her womb came children in Adam's image, in form and mind. They grew, learned and prospered, and for a time the world was perfect.

But change, once started, could never stop. Once savior, bringer of life, it began to take the form of inevitability. Her virile, brilliant male was not immune to the ravages of time as she was, and she slowly watched him grow old and weak. The children came into their own, and she cared for them, but no soul could replace Adam's.

His death took a part of her with him, some intangible security that had protected her from the true abyssal nature of living. Suddenly the years began to take their toll on the Goddess. Her people prospered, the will and hand of thousands turning open land into home, farm, workshop. Culture, art, philosophy and science blossomed in the new civilization, but these developments no longer held the excitement they once did.

Adam's painting of her became the only tie holding her to this new kingdom, but even that was consumed by day after day of wear. When it fell to tatters, she simply left.

She returned to the great crater, source of the heat that began this long, meaningless journey. The ground became liquid under her once again, and she allowed herself to slip deep into the world. Sleep came long before the earth ceased to glow.

--

"They actually did it? Goddess, no.." A voice carried by forces other than sound greeted her consciousness.

"You're about as far north as you can get at the crater, so I thought I'd let you know. If you're lucky you might make it. Fucking bastards don't care the entire dragan race is about to go extinct."

Her eyes snapped open. There was no time to be gentle with her earthen tomb. She vibrated with great intensity, and the rock around her cracked and split. Her turquoise form burst through the surface, into an immense cacophony of sensation. The air hummed with a thousand different electric languages, housing a hundred different languages. One word struck a chord in her head like no other, forcing her attention, her action.

Nuclear.

Her thoughts, her will was summarily supplanted by a strange control. Two hundred signals burned bright across the sky, calling her with a ferocious fervor. She felt heat in her body, and she began to move, flying faster than ever before without even a flap of her wings. The rudiment of some unknown process worked within her, interfacing with each signal and changing it.

She could only watch as she broke the bonds of the atmosphere and the sky faded to black. The planet became a sphere once again, though only just, bringing back memories of long ago. The feeling of enormous energies now surged toward her, great and terrible machinations of the very species she had worked so long to create.

The Goddess felt little more than a subtle sense of relief. She'd had quite enough of existence.

--

"Well, what's this all about?"

The Secretary of Defense was as pale as a ghost. Joel had never seen the resilient drake in such a state before.

"As I'm sure you're aware, Mr. President, three days ago every nuclear weapon fired by us and the Aukers mysteriously redirected themselves to a location in the upper reaches of the thermosphere."

"Indeed."

"Well, as of 0200 yesterday, we have discovered the force behind this event."

Sliding doors slowly parted, bearing the weight of tens of tons of stainless steel. Within was a white room, coated floor to ceiling in instrumentation. In the center..

"My Goddess.." He stopped as soon as he saw the lifeless form in the center of the room.

"You're not wrong about that." The Secretary turned to the only other dragan in the room, a tiny drake with stereotypically thick spectacles. "Play it for him."

"Y-yes sir!" Several seconds of frenzied typing could be heard, followed by the dimming of the room lights.

Two strange creatures appeared on the screen, staring into whatever device had taken the images. They looked similar to apes, though quite devoid of hair, standing upright as a dragan did.

"Well Mark, the download's started. Uhh, why a dragon?"

"Only model I could get my hands on. Everything, and everybody is gone by now. Are you sure we shouldn't have gone with them?"

Both individuals appeared highly distraught, but even more disturbing was the fact that they were speaking in the language of the Goddess.

"Humanity is dead, Mark. No vessel capable of carrying people can accelerate faster than the goo."

There was a long, unsettling pause. "But.. the military is leading a convoy out of the system. They say they can-"

The picture vibrated as the one human slammed his fists on the table. "Jupiter is gone, Mark. Nobody can fight against that kind of mass. This bot right here? This is our only legacy."

The one ape, 'Mark,' turned away and began to pace. This continued for a few minutes before a soft beep pierced the silence.

For a haunting second, both stared directly at the lens, as if boring into the President's very soul.

"Well, let's go. Mankind isn't going to save itself." The unnamed ape did something off screen, and the video went dark.

Joel was at a loss for words. "Is this.. real?"

The scientist spoke up. "As real as it gets, sir. This, uhh, Goddess, is just an extremely advanced machine. It's got more data in its head than all the computers on the entire planet."

"Do the Aukers know?"

"We salvaged the body just before they did, sir."

"They need to know. Everybody needs to know."

The secretary started to object, but Joel cut him off.

"This is bigger than any of us."