FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

West of Asheville the Appalachians rise wild, cutting and jagged amidst luxuriant, thickly wooded forests, and on either side of the highway out that way -- headed to Tennessee up into the dismal stretches of the Virginian panhandle toward the coalfields of West Virginia -- they seem to gore the sky, great granite tusks from an unthinkable beast long dead in epochs unfathomable to man.

It always made James feel small, even someone like he, mountain--born and doomed to mountain--die... small, for the mountains are beautiful but they exact something from you when you see them. They demand a price -- a cost and an obeisance for gazing upon their grandeur. Older than you, more patient than you -- for you, as James was that day, are a mere tourist upon the Earth: their Earth. And they, unlike you, have learned to wait.

Yet here he was -- down the highway he drove, the comforting drone of his Wrangler's engine and the fresh Autumn air. It was not too cold, not yet, that precious frigidity of the highlands in the Fall. Past him, in a continuous blur, were the mountains, crowned and feathered with incandescence, like the lower slopes had burst aflame, phoenix--like, as a last gasp before the winter.

A few days ago he was in Florida, and it was still hot down there. First week of October and it was a totally different climate, different place, mentally and geographically... he hated it; he would never go back. The only reason he was there at all was because his grandmother, Mamaw, had died, at her age having had quite enough of the unpredictable North Carolina winters and moved from Durham to Saint Petersburg for more predictable Florida winters instead -- eight years later last Tuesday she was dead in her sleep, Papaw sleeping in death three years before her and waiting on her in Heaven. And that little house she lived in, with its ugly Norfolk Island pine out front, in was emptied by his relatives -- all his cousins, aunts, uncles, all to see this woman get buried in a state she was not born in.

But his family was always like that: rootless, shiftless, going wherever the wind took them.

Before he left Florida -- for good, he vowed -- he had the Wrangler looked at by a guy in Tampa who had an accent he heard nowhere else in Florida and

nowhere else for several states northward. He'd tuned his Jeep so it ran like he didn't believe, better than it had in years.

"Gonna take it out camping," James'd said to him, idle chatter.

"Better be careful up yonder," the mechanic said, tossing James his keys back, a skewed grin on his face. "Ain't tellin what yew find in em woods." And

then he grinned -- and James swore his teeth were way too sharp, like an animal's fangs...

He caught himself shuddering at the memory -- he was glad he was out of Florida, he was glad he was back in his state, even several hours from Charlotte he

was still, here, home.

This trip was to clear his head of the whole ordeal, and it was an ordeal, of being in Florida, seeing people in his family he never cared for, burying his

grandmother, the oppressive heat even in the midst of the Fall down there -- and that mechanic who had been so nice and excellent with his car until he'd

smiled with those awful, awful teeth... But enough of that shit, all of it -- he was here, he was going to have fun, and do what he loved doing most: hunting

for hidden things.

James had the look of a happy hippy, which he had, after all, cultivated with a full beard and moustache and long, near--straight, and near to his shoulders

dark brown hair tucked into a woolen cap for the weather. He was slender, he had mother's dark eyes and dark brown hair. For this trip he wore a flannel,

loose on him, and an undershirt, some jeans, and boots, nothing showy, only worn to get the job done.

The drive took him up, further and further into the mountains. The narrow road was bracketed by a thin gravel siding and past that the trees loomed. It was

old growth, trees that had been alive when his White ancestors came to these shores -- and the forest itself was far, far older than that. The Appalachian

slopes had been dark with forests since some dim antediluvian age... yet now it was sliced up, cut down, crisscrossed by roads and interstates. But these were

paltry ropes stretched across a slumbering giant -- and with asphalt dissolving into chunks into the gravel, grass growing through in tufts, it seemed the

ropes were fraying: the giant slept uneasy.

And here he was, driving up the slopes. The peaks above grew jagged, ancient rock finally worn to see the air. The trees loomed as ancient relics, remnants

from an unremembered past -- everything as the latest incarnation of an unbroken strand of life, things that had grown and crawled and ran on this land,

birthing and dying in eons long before humanity. The Sun itself, starting to wane in the late afternoon, seemed to wobble unsteady in the sky, and shine

too bright, then not bright enough...

... and then he would blink -- hard, twice -- and back to normal it came.

He shook his head -- driving fatigue, highway hypnosis, how long had he been on the road, anyway? Didn't matter -- he'd sleep good tonight.

The approach to where he was headed -- into Macon County through the town of Franklin, where an elderly great uncle of his had shot a man over a pittance

owed to him for moonshine -- was easy enough, and not soon after he was there, his destination: Nantahala National Forest.

As he slowed down and drove through the winding roads and hills to the campsite he was struck, as one is struck hard like a blow to the head, with the

unfolding and unending kaleidoscope of Autumnal colors, all around him, what he had seen from the road now achingly intense and vivid enveloping his

vision.

He checked in at the ranger station, and the woman he spoke with -- plump, glasses, called him honey -- had given him an odd look when he mentioned

which campsite he was headed to.

"Ain't nobody been up there for years and years," she said. "We had to shut it down on account of nobody was going up that way."

James furrowed his eyebrows at her, but he hid a smile. "Why? That don't seem right." But he knew full well why.

"People would come up there and say couldn't nobody get no--" And then she paused, and laughed to herself, shaking her head. "Couldn't nobody get no sleep,

they'd be tellin us they couldn't sleep and having bad dreams and all this... " She paused, and the hum and rattle of James' waiting Wrangler seemed

uncomfortably loud in the sudden silence.

James nodded at her. "Gotta say -- seems a little weird, but -- I'll be fine."

The woman tilted her head away, conceding the point. "You know how to get into contact with a ranger if ya have any trouble now."

"I do indeed."

Then with a final smile, she motioned off to the distant campsite: "Well lemme know how your night is, y'hear?"

"I will indeed, ma'am."

And with that, he drove on.

He made it at last to where he would be spending the night, the old campsite, that had been leveled off next to a creek. Overgrown now, reedy saplings as

tall as he was springing up in the shadows of the trees, but still with enough room to set up his tent.

As soon as he dropped out of his Wrangler, stretching, his muscles too taut from the long car ride... he breathed in the air. He had experienced it, like the

view, from a distance -- but now, looking about him, the rolling hills leading exquisitely to a mountain before him, the gentle babble of the creek, the

felt it, he felt the air actually clean his lungs.

"Alright--" he murmured with satisfaction.

It took him no time at all to fetch his tent, set down his thermos and his camera, and dig into the bear--proof canister which held his dinner, breakfast,

and lunch for the next day and a half -- all sandwiches, ham and mustard -- he would eat a quick snack before he could set up the tent and write in his

journal. He ate light when he was working, what he considered his real line of work -- why he was here.

The Sun was wavering, and its setting would start soon, the Autumn evening would be coming on and turn even colder, he would lose daylight, and he needed

to write.

He opened his journal, the pen in the spiral spine ready for him -- and turned to where he had left off.

The last time he had been able to take off work

-- call center, Wells Fargo, unglamorous but paid the bills and left him enough to travel and drink decently on -- he had gone to the other end of North

Carolina, in the Great Dismal Swamp, searching for ghosts there, and he had seen strange lights that seemed to float on the cypresses but nothing concrete,

nothing that he could turn in as proof of the paranormal or supernatural. This -- and magic and witchcraft and cryptids, spooks that went bump in the night,

so the cliché went -- he took on as articles of faith, but which others, outside of the fringes on the Internet, needed convincing.

So convince them, he would. He was determined to find something groundbreaking, shocking, incontrovertible -- if not this trip then another, and another, he

would never give up the search.

He paused, a fleeting moment, as he remembered that mechanic's face, his grin, those teeth.

Might he -- might he have been some sort of cryptid? Something that walked amongst the teeming crowd in Tampa unnoticed, in a masquerade with

humanity? And if so -- what was he? Normal enough to be a fucking mechanic, but--?

What if he didn't have to haunt strange and remote places to find what he was looking for? What if they were all around him, all around everyone,

and no one, least of all he, actually knew?

He hesitated -- he thought to make a note about it but shook his head to himself, not at the moment, he had to focus on where he was now.

Up here on this particular campsite was a popular urban legend which was based in fact: it was never used because campers would feel an unease when they

slept here, often reported nightmares and strange visions and a general feeling that they shouldn't be there at all, people quit going there to the point

that the office in Franklin ended up closing it, reopening only just two years ago from an unexpected budget boost.

That was the rumor anyway -- the woman at the ranger station had repeated it because she had probably heard it enough times. It seemed silly, not to say

actually theatrical, the stuff of campfire lore, and yet it was all true -- and seeing where James was now, a place almost palpably lonely and untouched...

James stayed his pen -- he glanced up and around him, seated where he was next to his tent. It was true, he felt like an intruder here, an interloper... he

had suspected the feeling -- that feeling of unbelonging, if such a word for such an abstract emotion even existed -- that others felt was a classic

symptom of being haunted, but he had only read it, academically, he had no experience with it.

Now he did.

He took a deep breath -- trying to stave off the creep, wordless, that he did not belong there... when his eyes drifted to the treeline, the old campsite

giving way to a wall of woods: dark and thick, shadows swallowing up the nearby creek. If he was the interloper, he was gonna see just what he was

interloping into.

In the early evening light the forest was already dusky, a place of silhouettes and near--stillness: there was the burble of the creek, the whooping wail of

the mourning dove, the rustle of an unseen animal on its blind path up the hills, into the mountains that now James could not see for the towering trees.

To accompany the feeling of -- how else to describe it, perhaps, wrongness, unwarranted and inchoate solitude, the feeling that he was

being watched, there was an odd fixation -- to stare back, to watch the shadows and the stillness in the forest.

For what, he did not know: but that was why he was out here, after all, to find out what. His camera with him, he began to walk.

He followed the old path, easy at first, but then higher -- how long, he couldn't be sure. The forest was all around him, massive hickory trees whose trunks

had fattened mightily over untold years and decades, the colors of the forest swirling around him, crunching underfoot and rattling where the bunches were

still affixed to branches high above. The sunlight, now dying fast, haloed the canopy above, rich red light pouring in shafts all the way down to the

forest floor.

He was flushed by the time he'd nearly reached the next crest, sweat trickling down his back and sticking his flannel to his skin, woolen cap hot on his

head, camera in hand. He huffed, breathing deep of the air, grinning at the dimming light. The eerie feeling was all around him, watched and watchful, but

now it made him smile, then grin, then laugh, at how immersively spooky these October woods were.

"That -- that's some good shit."

Dusk would be coming soon, and he was tired, still not altogether whole from the long trip here, there was no sense in freaking himself out so soon and so

suddenly. Eight years at this, at least seriously -- at twenty--seven he should have known better and have been a little more jaded, but the thrill was

always fresh.

Dusk was all around him now, lovely violent sky above, sunlight dimming to thin shafts through the darkening forest... with it came a flit of worry about

getting back down to the campsite before night fell at last. Yet as the thought hit him it was driven away: he smelled something. Something strange.

He inhaled deeply his nose -- and his mouth, he swore -- was assaulted by a plethora of smells, the acrid redolence of the Autumn season, all of it,

woodsmoke and crisp air and spices, the faint whiff of hazelnut and the juice of the pumpkin, what one tackily associates with the Samhain season in the

commercialized vivified zombie of the European's pagan roots.

He took in several breaths of it, hypnotized.

Where was the smell coming from?

... woodsmoke, burnt hickory, the poetic odor of the campfire, and spices, so many spices, that peppered the air -- dark smells, smells of the pagan, the

smells of the witch's coven and the Halloween ghost story.

The hill he was on, he saw now, was not quite a hill: its sides were too sharp, and it curved around in a most unnatural fashion, still clear even with a

hundred years of trees growing upon it.

He hustled up the final few steps, now with the sunset catching strange lights swooping up the far edge as he came to the crest, dropping down low to avoid

being seen by -- wait -- what was that?

There was a wide circular mound, the center hollowed out, and in the hollow there was...

... his eyes adjusted to the dark, where, blurry, becoming clearer, there looked to be in the very center of the lull a herd of deer around a smooth stone,

bonfire burning bright at its base.

Or, maybe, no, that wasn't it, it was a circle of people wearing animal masks.

But no -- not that, either.

What -- what was he seeing?

He focused on one of these not--deer, amongst his other five fellows, and saw how his muscles bunched and shifted in ways no animal should move... it rose,

standing up, and in the flickering firelight James saw it had hands -- four--fingered, thick and gnarled, and tipped in short, curving, sharpened

nails, not like a hand at all but a clawed hoof, surrounded by fur that crept up to its shoulders, which were shaggy with the same.

Almost upright did it lumber, proportions wrong for an deer and twice as wrong for a human -- limbs all the wrong lengths, bushy hoof--like feet where the

toned, muscled, furry legs terminated, below a small, tufted tail. Between the hirsute head and shoulders and the bestial bottom, was smooth,

human--like flesh, crisscrossed with veiny, sinewy muscles, a gymnast's body, were it a man. A muzzled face twisted down as it stood higher, crowned by --

yes, there was no mistaking it now -- by antlers, magnificently wide, like bone, or ivory, stretching from either side of his head.

In the firelight the beast cast a long, uncanny shadow, drawn out to monstrous proportions up the side of the hill, flickering and darting as the fire

popped and crackled.

"Oh--" James murmured into the night. "Oh -- oh my god--!"

For so how long -- for so, so long -- James had been chasing this.

This

.

Proof, empirical, impossible to disprove, that cryptids were real, that all the weirdness -- the ghosts, the unexplained events, the people who vanished

without a trace -- that it was real, that the world we lived in was a façade for something deeper and darker.

"Jesus--" he whispered. "Jesus -- Christ."

He watched them, he watched this -- this herd of creatures, not quite deer, but not quite human, yet something overlapping all three, something truly

monstrous, but neither twisted nor ugly but transcendent in a beauty so pure it was, like the strange way their bodies seemed to be made, a deformity, unto

itself.

For James, all the abnormal, the supernatural, paranormal, lived behind glass: visible only through a spotty video or blurry photograph, on the farthest

shore of a gulf dividing the world of the quotidian, the mundane.

This

was his world, this was his quest -- and here it was, here, he had succeeded.

He was watching it -- these strange creatures moving, moving rhythmically, around the fire, the bonfire that danced impious near the stone -- he was watching it happen for him, right in front of his eyes.

"Oh -- fuck--!"

This was it, this was his big break, nobody would ever laugh at him or question his sanity or think he was wasting his time, ever again.

Proof -- he had it!

All he had to do was take pictures, stalk these creatures close, but careful, so careful, not to disturb them, as they circled round their fire, sometimes

on all fours and sometimes upright, circling -- circling, circling, around the bonfire that was lit by the smooth stone.

He stood watching them, again, having taken only a few steps forward.

Round and round they went -- the six of them, silent, trotting and then walking upright in a rhythmic pattern that James detected at once... these were no

mere cryptids, no random weird animals, these seemed to be -- intelligent.

"Wha--?"

No sooner had he thought it, and said it, then the group of not--deer stopped -- stopped and rose, all of them, their hairy muzzles thrown back, bellowing

into the night.

James' bowels turned to ice at the sound -- colder, colder than the night already, chill and gripping in the Appalachian October.

The camera was still in hand but he had yet to take any pictures, too distracted, too agitated, but at the sound they made he stifled a cry of fear, and

dropped it, to the ground -- the sound of the lens cracking rang out, a shattering echo.

The sound had been the most eldritch noise he had ever heard another animal in his entire life make -- it contained within it something so primally

mournful, sorrowful, grieving, an ineffable, cosmic sadness... a call, James realized, though he could not know why, to one recently passed on.

The mere vibrations it made in the air, perfumed with the smells of what he now realized was being burnt in the fire, the smells of Autumn that engorged

his nose and filled his head with strange and fleeting synesthesia -- the mere act of it hitting his ears made James want to cry, to mourn, to grieve with

these misshapen half--human things that he had, not minutes ago, just discovered.

James' breaths were heavy, his body immobile and paralyzed with fear, as he watched -- out from the crawling shadows of the centuries--old hickories a new

beast appeared, alike the others in visage but obviously older, shaggier, his movements were slow and patient -- in his mouth was carried an object, and

James strained to see what it was...

... a woven, complicated thing, of rustic craftsmanship, made of wood, a nest, nearly, of briars, and laden with a great pile of hazelnuts inside a small

hollow in the middle from which arose a single large antler--point, the whole of it wrapped with maple leaves.

This beast, the not--deer, held this thing, which the others bowed to, as though in a fetish--devotion -- and then, out of his mouth, dropped it into the

fire.

A great crackling hiss erupted, sparks flew from the embers of the fire, and out poured from it a vast cloud of dark, obscuring smoke, a pillar billowing

up into the starlit sky.

His hands shook -- and then his body shook, more than mere shiver from the cold -- something was wrong, James could feel it, something was very wrong, he was

suddenly and with no warning at all torn into by dread, a sensation that everything he saw, felt, smelt, was some wrenching nightmare that leered at him in

the waking world.

He tried to step back -- but his foot caught the fallen camera, and down he came, hard on his ass, to the ground.

He shouted out in pain, and like the sound of his lens breaking it echoed, over the sound of oncoming night, cutting into the final knell of a new, lowing

cry of the creatures some distance before him.

They stopped -- all of them, all six and their elder too, looked at him, turned their cervid faces and looked at him.

In the firelight, their eyeshine glowed ghoulishly, pairs of eyes fixed on him in the half--lit darkness.

Panic set in -- he remembered the time he was in Yellowstone, hunting Bigfoot, and there was a bear roaming near his tent and he was certain he was going to

be mauled, and the same fear, fight--or--flight, crashed into him.

He scrambled up -- and slipped again, faceplanting to the cold grass.

There was a noise behind him, all seven of them, a bugle that started, first with one, then another, then a third, by and by until all of them were making

the noise together -- a clarion, an announcement.

James rose, slowly, never more bewildered in his life -- his mind raced.

What were these things? Stags -- deer -- prehistoric creatures, evolved into more modern shapes? Hybrids, with humans -- somehow? And what he had

just witnessed... a ceremony, a ritual...

... and then the wind turned, a rattling breath through the canopy, and the dark smoke twisted and expanded, rushing toward him -- James was suddenly in thick

fog, fumes burning his eyes -- the shapes around him soon reduced to wraithlike figures, attenuated, ghostly.

He held up his shirtsleeve, trying to cover his face, but not before he swallowed a mouthful of smoke, burning down into his lungs, and he gave a rough

gasp, futile and sputtering. He hacked, the reflexive inhale burning his throat and sending him into a coughing fit, on his knees in the grass, eyes ablaze

-- he staggered to his feet, certain the ghostly figures in the clearing were all staring directly at him, animal eyes luminous in even through the smoke,

like spotlights fixed on him.

He stumbled away from the clearing and the stone and the fire and those things, and ran -- eyes burning so he could hardly see, ears hearing nothing but his

own hammering heartbeat and the rasp of his breath, every motion around him in this fearful blind delirium thinking the beasts were giving chase, looming,

out of the dark, in the smoke just behind him...

Eventually his terror spent itself, leaving him panting and drenched in cold sweat, aware of the dull ache of his muscles from the sudden expenditure. His

breath was loud in the cold, a desperate pant that seemed like it must be audible across the entire forest, one that he couldn't begin to control.

He looked about him.

There was nothing coming after him.

The shadows were just of trees, the rustling was just the wind.

A look over his shoulder saw no deer--people, the fire put out, the smoke vanished into the night -- where had it all gone?

No -- he was still coughing, that smoke was certainly in his lungs and had scorched them because he had breathed in too much... that, all of it, had been no

illusion, no drunk backwoods hayseeds dressed in animal masks.

That had been -- that had been--

He didn't know what it had been.

He hardly knew how he found the campsite again, and he was dazed and staggering in the aftermath -- flesh near crawling off his body in shivering tremors.

It was all he had in him to clamber in the driver's seat of his Wrangler, amidst the broken vagaries of trying to leave, to go to a hospital because he

could barely breathe, wheezing, straining, his lungs still feeling as though the peculiar smoke had blackened it.

There was a vain struggle for his key -- keys -- where were his keys?

But the strain was at least too much -- he collapsed onto the steering wheel, unconscious.

Unconscious -- but still able to dream.

The dream was fitful -- there he was alone, a dirt path, he could smell the fresh Autumn rain. And then he looked up -- there was his grandmother, newly

dead, turning to him in a hilly cemetery somewhere that the dirt path led to, mountains beyond it full of mist and fog. She was shaking her head -- slowly,

disapprovingly, knowingly, as if he, James, had failed her, had failed her as her grandson. Shapes loomed from the trees, tombstones shifting seamlessly

into forest, clawed hands and hooved feet in disarray, shapes neither human nor animal climbing from the forest to surround him. He wanted to cry out, to

demand what was happening, and ask where he was, but a dread welled up and roared inside his still--dreaming skull -- the faint unease when he was awake was

now all--consuming, it was so potent and drilling that he surely would die of it: the elk--creatures meeting his gaze finally, eyes brilliant yellow and

boring into his skull.

Lucidity came back to him, slowly, very slowly, fragmentary pieces of awakening, and James tore his way back to waking like surfacing from a lake, dreams

shattered into fragments of incoherent sensation.

It was still dark outside -- how many hours had he passed out for? And why--?

His drowsy thoughts were destroyed in his own head as he felt something between his legs, under his ass.

Something gelatinous. Something slimy.

He thought for a second that he'd eaten some bad food, as if the sandwiches he had picked had spoilt unaware to him, and he shit himself in the night -- he

dry--heaved in immediate revulsion, and he moved, gingerly, to open the driver's side door, too--aware of the liquescent mess in his underwear every time he

moved.

But then the smell hit him.

It was a heavy, numinously woodsy scent, blossoming thickly in the too--humid air inside his Jeep. It stirred the still--forming memories of last night, the

bizarre ritual on the hill, the... things -- the things he'd seen, fuller, more realized, than the paltry faintness of the scents through the air only some

hours ago.

His thighs were wet with the stuff, leaking in fluid trails from his ass, soaking through his underwear, and he unzipped his jeans to swipe his fingers

through it, and bring it to his nose, sniffing.

Rich -- amniotic -- musk, almost rancid, in its animal reek...

... before his sleep--fuzzy brain could catch up to what his body was doing he'd opened his mouth, tongue swiping across his slimy fingers. The flavor burst

over his tongue, a thousand times more potent, and he groaned, shoving his fingers in his mouth, his tongue laving over them in a needfulness he had never

felt before, as though he were a newborn discovering milk for the first time.

His mind went blank -- utterly, completely blank. There was nothing in his head, nothing rational -- for an instant, nothing human.

He did not know how he fell out of his Wrangler, how he crawled away from it, how he found himself facedown on the ground, ass in the air, legs tangled in

his sodden underwear, nearly clawing his skin in his eagerness.

His consciousness, robbed with the first thunderstrike of the taste, the first taste, of himself, returned, slowly, his surroundings melding back into his

awareness -- the forest, a newly appeared Moon shining down on him, strange prints all around his Jeep, hand and hoof, flattened into the grass... the airish

breezes that blew from nowhere...

... he found a messy tendril of slime from the furrow of his ass and slurped it up, moaning around his fingers, drooling as he rutted back against his other

hand, two fingers jammed to the knuckle in his slick, dripping ass.

There were -- he felt it, he felt it almost painfully -- bloated swells inside him, a pair aching glands just behind his asshole, like he'd grown new

prostates, and when he curled his fingers around their bulk and squeezed they splat hot musk squirting across his knuckles, drooling down his balls.

Some rational part of his mind telling him this wasn't normal, this was something serious and frankly terrible -- that he should leave, that he could still

get in his Wrangler, even with his ass squelching on the seat, a hospital, a doctor, he needed help -- he needed help...

He should leave.

He didn't want to.

Too consumed, too eaten, already, by his heat -- a piece of meat in the jaws of the forest.

Wonder, he remembered from his writings was part of terror, and part of terror, wonder. He licked his fingers again, he smelt his own blossoming odor,

again, and his terror at his own body, his own ­changed body, was matched, equalized, by a fascination... by wonder.

Immediately he thought of those inhuman, abhuman things in the woods.

A kinship. A sameness. No longer intruder -- guest? This -- felt right.

But why?

He had to stay. He had to go further.

James' whole body ached, that liquid -- musk, he understood -- rapidly pooling in his underwear, soaking through his pants so it looked like he'd

pissed himself. The reek was stronger, heavy spice, overripe blackberry, venison... his asshole was flushed and leaking, flesh burning hot.

His undershirt stuck to his skin, soaked dark by sweat, his flannel long since discarded in an action he did not remember.

He was going -- up, he thought, maybe, uphill nearly on all fours, hands clawing the undergrowth like he was just another one of those beasts he'd seen,

following the game trail that he hoped -- feared -- was not just a game trail.

His scent trail must have been miles long, announcing to every tree, every dead flower, every creature of the wood that his was a heat aching to be filled.

It wasn't long -- there was a crashing in the underbrush behind him, and James turned just in time to see one of the things burst onto the path, hands and

hooves tamping the dirt as it swung around to face him.

James groaned out, a pathetic noise, in relief. He wasn't going crazy, or if he was, the universe had gone crazy too -- he vacillated between knowing,

thinking, seeing, and a waking unconsciousness, an inexorable descent into bestial instinct.

One of the beasts had appeared before him, out of the hickories.

It snorted, breath billowing out in clouds of steam, chipped antlers a messy palmate branching covering most of its face, wild and asymmetrical. Its hands

were the same as the prints he'd seen: humanoid hands, for all that they went on all fours, nails dark and thick and shining, chartreuse with trampled

grass.

From the vantage of being so far away, before, James could not have appreciated the unholy beauty that was the creature itself, an imperfect admixture of

deer and man:

Its head was like that of a great buck, eyes aglow as they caught the moonlight, with those formidable, but oddly asymmetric, antlers to match -- what had

to have been near three yards across. He was near a head taller than James who was six feet already, shoulders and forearms shaggy with hoary, brownish

fur, messy with twigs and dirt. A tightly toned mass of leathery skin, near--human, in the way the muscles seemed to ripple with its slow, steady movement,

made up its abdomen, showing four small teats. It walked on bent legs, terminating in strong, black hooves. A breath of steam poured forth from its muzzle

into the night air.

But what glinted most luridly in the moonlight, and caught James' eye, was the thing's grotesque, erect phallus -- wholly animal and wholly monstrous,

swollen, sharp tip aimed at the ground, tip constantly dribbling watery slime.

For a moment -- just a moment -- his stomach revolted, all his senses returned to him, all the horror of the situation he was in hitting him clearly. The

grotesque drip of the beast's repulsive cock, so unnatural -- or all too natural -- it made him gag on nothing, the thought of desiring the beast

like something from the nightmare of some depraved degenerate, churning sickeningly in his stomach.

Some inner voice screamed at him that he was in danger -- of what sort he could not think or know -- and that he should run, he should tear away from this

awful monster who clearly had unwholesome, nauseating designs on him -- but he could not.

His mind became cloudy again, and the beast drew nearer. The swells inside him expelled a near--fountain of juices, matched with a near--painful pang inside

him, the winding of a muscle pulled too tight and just starting to yield.

All he wished to see, all he wished to feel, was that cock -- beautiful, sensual, perfectly designed cock, inside him, mounting him, destroying him, all to

pleasure this phantom--figure of bestial sex.

He craved it -- he craved this beast.

In a frenzy he tore off his sweat--soaked undershirt, loudly ripping the fabric -- he clawed off his jeans that were lined with flannel and soaked to the

thread with the musk he was producing, sticky down his hairy legs.

James was naked, naked as this beast was, he was a part of the forest, he was the very woods itself.

The beast inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring as it soaked up James' scent, and its cock twitched, slapping up across its underbelly, erupting in a gush of

rank precum as though it were pissing -- a seconds--long stream of fertile ooze splattering the ground.

Now James realized he was drooling: mouth agape, spit streaming into his beard. He was snuffling too, a wet sucking from his nose and mouth, trying to

catch the beast's scent over the overwhelming musk of his own heat -- mere seconds passed when, with a roar, the thing dove at him, knocking onto his back,

with its muzzle digging into his ass.

An animal bleat--scream of euphoria tore from James' throat as its tongue speared into his hole, leaving him panting, bleary--eyed, and whining -- he clenched

his anus around the creature's tongue, each motion sending a messy slurry of drool and juices squirting from his ass, soaking the long, tapered muzzle.

The creature grabbed his thighs, a guttural noise of dominance resonating in its throat as he opened wide his maw. James was being torn into, a broad

tongue folding over itself in greasy furls as the beast lapped up his reeking heat--scent. Its claws dug into the flesh of his thighs and he moaned,

shudders wracking his body. He mindlessly rutted back against its muzzle, mind awash in bestial pleasure, and when he opened his mouth what came out was an

animal paean, brother to the beast's own bellows.

Its head twisted slow, magnificent antlers asway, its eyes noctilucent in a stray shaft of moonlight, burning, brilliant green--yellow fire reflecting back

into James' vision as it voraciously, greedily, devoured the musk he was producing. And then it kept moving, dark again, the wet slurp of its motions clear

in the night, the twist of its tongue lapping deep in his ass, teasing out squirt after squirt of slimy musk from his convulsing body, the afterimage of

those gleaming eyes burned into his retina.

James shuddered, back arching, a dizzy explosion of pleasure from inside, ass squelching noisomely, panting like an animal. Heat swarmed over him, toes to

crown, like crashing waves of water, pleasure surging and ebbing. It wasn't until he tasted thick salt on his tongue he realized he'd cum, having sprayed a

load in a dribbling line up his chest, droplets tangled in his hair and in his beard, drooling down his cheek.

The beast pulled back, muzzle tethered with cords of slime back to James' ass, hanging so long in the chill air that when they snapped the impact was cold:

lines of icy fluid splattering back across the feverish flesh of his ass.

Its head rose, breath steaming in the air, and leaned forward, gnarled hands pressing hot across James' stomach, chest, shoulders, until it was on top of

him, cords of drool spilling over its dark lips and winding through its matted, frothy fur, spilling in syrupy lines across James' face, pouring into his

open mouth.

He panted, arching up -- pinned by the creature's immense weight -- and pressed his mouth to the great beast's muzzle, a feral kiss, his own musk mixed with

the sharper, acrid taste of its saliva.

His hand came to near one of beast's eyes, pressing tenderly against its face -- the kiss, the exchange of tongues between the two, slowed, becoming less

insistent, less hurried... James' breathing became less labored, his lips cherishing the taste, however putrid, of his newfound lover. They twisted around

each other, the beast's tongue lapping over his shoulder, James' lips dragging through dirty fur, inhaling deep the dense odor of the fur.

But this space of time -- what James could feel was actually turning into malformed, hideous love -- was not to last. The smell, the taste -- it was too

irresistible, and a need inside him rose, violent, immediate.

The weight of its cock bore down on him, unsheathed against his bare belly, burning hot against the chill air.

James moaned into the creature's mouth, his tongue deep into its muzzle as he rocked up against it, hands reaching for its slimy length.

It was slick, nearly slipping from his hands, but he grasped it at last, its heat like a burning brand pressed against him, red--hot. With a powerful

vibration, a cry of perfect pleasure from the beast, out spurt a single gush, a wash of watery ooze, so potent its fumes almost hurt to inhale, acrid and

pungent. Yellowish pre splashed up James' stomach and chest, matted his hair to his skin and poured in rivers over his sides.

At once he broke off the kiss -- his ass ached, his hole clenching then throwing itself open, each convulsion in his rectum blasting his musk--juices -- he

cried out to the beast, futilely wordless but utterly enslaved: he needed it in him -- he needed to be bred.

He nudged the beast back, sliding up slightly that they could make eye contact -- what passed for eye contact in the half darkness. He groaned out his wish,

he presented himself like an animal, lifted his legs into the air, ready to be taken.

The beast bellowed out a call of triumph, grabbing him roughly, near--throwing him over to get a better aim for its cock to James' hole -- now he was sobbing

into the forest floor, a torrid volcanism of unrestrained emotions.

The beast entered him, spearing him like the piece of meat that, in his plummeting depravity, he was so desirous of becoming.

And then -- everything went white, his whole being now a blinding synesthesia of pleasure, so intense that for an instant he was certain that he would die

this way.

His internal muscles spasmed uncontrollably, slurping, sucking, hungrily on the beast's cock. Each spasmodic clench sent a squirt of juice spraying down

the beast's length, easing the way for more to push inside. It was a pillar inside him, inhumanly thick, but it slipped into his heat--soaked guts with ease

-- the shaft filled him, slid frighteningly deep inside him.

Even then his body was simply too small a vessel: the final length of its cock remained outside, steaming in the chill air, as it ground its cockhead

against some internal barrier within him. The creature thrust, breath like a bellows across his shoulders and neck, drool splattering down his back.

Tears streaked his cheeks, his nose was snotty, his spit spilled over his lips -- there, face--down on the ground, twigs stuck in his beard, grass in his

mouth, petrichor and the dusty taste of crushed dead leaves dimmed the overwhelming reek of their mating -- there, second by second, was James becoming

less, still less, a human.

His very flesh reshaped itself as the beast fucked him, animal drives taken on a life of their own: he could feel, a transporting euphoria, the as--yet

shallow transformation sunk down to his bones.

The heat, his heat, twisted inside him like a living thing, the coils of a snake churning in his guts, heartbeat bounding under his skin -- he sobbed into

the churned--up carpet of grass and leaves even as he kept rutting back against the beast's shaft, desperate for more, for all of it, beating his hips back

against its stomach, meeting each brutal thrust with one of his own.

Something like an old muscle ache, a newfound locus of pain, throbbed inside him, and each of the beast's thrusts rammed against it, against some twisted

knot of muscle inside him, an exquisite agony that brought fresh tears to his eyes, a rippling pleasure radiating out afterward.

And then -- the beast stopped.

In his consumed rapture he had not noticed the open flood of semen that had erupted into him, had not heard the victorious trumpet from the creature's

muzzle -- but he did feel, and felt miserably, with bleakest sorrow, the thing withdraw, the slurping sound of the cock leaving his ass final proof that the

mating was over, that his ass had been used for its prime, sole purpose.

James groaned -- loud, a cry of despair.

The withdrawal of the beast's cock had left an insistent, obtrusive need that pained him -- an imagined wound inside his guts that throbbed, vicious,

incessant. His asshole was clenching, pulsing, as though there were a primitive consciousness attached to it, starving, famished, consumed with lust, even

as he writhed on the ground.

He had been taken, but it was not enough.

He was not sated.

He had been fucked -- but not bred.

James' body sang with a fever that the beast's semen, dripping slow from his abused asshole, stoked as though it were a raging flame, burning him, melting

him, remaking his very flesh -- he watched, eyes wet, lungs sucking in air, as dark fur burned up across his forearms, prickling as it grew through his

skin.

His balls bloomed with the same hair, and his penis stood at attention yet again, lengthening, slimming, tapering, taking on -- although he could not see it

-- a hue of deeper red, scarlet, moist and slippery.

An abrupt, brief, but excruciating agony made his hands, and then his feet, seizure, nails shifting under his skin, the clear keratin growing thicker,

cloudy--dark -- the old growth snapped off, leaving him with ragged--edged claws, as above and so below, hands and feet, obsidian, near--radiant in the

darkness.The hair across his thighs and ass grew with the same bloom, new fur pushing up from his sodden skin, already tangled in tufts down the backs of

his thighs -- a new tail, bursting from a descended coccyx, skin dripping messily where it emerged, appeared just above his anus.

All of this to his amazement, cries of swept joy emanating out of him, his ability to use language, human language, annihilated with his first rutting.

But a seizing cramp attacked his stomach, his bowels, and he curled into a fetal position, the cries of happiness morphing, as he was, into cries of

bewilderment.

He could feel -- things inside him opening, shifting, new passages forming, the whole of his design becoming freshly anew.

The image of the beast's cock invaded his brain, filled his vision in violent hallucination, so strong, so large, so virile, so -- fertile.

Again he cried out, weak, a susurrus in the still Autumn night, his vocal cords strained now, strange now, he sounded -- different, he sounded -- in his

quiet supplication to nothing, like one of the beasts.

Hearing himself this way let the fever break and in its wake, singing in his veins, every heartbeat, came the need to breed.

Where had the beast gone? He needed him -- he needed that dick, he needed that power, this new emptiness in his new organs filled, to the brim, with

life--giving fluid.

On all fours he dropped, and he began to crawl.

Maybe, maybe the monster would come back, maybe it would fuck him again, and he sniffed the air, helpless, trying to detect where it could have gone.

Perhaps it was with his herd -- the whole herd could take him, then, one after the other. And if not them -- some hiker, human cock too small, too puny,

disgusting in its inferior design but it would do, anything, anything at all, to fill the aching emptiness inside him.

He could not say how long or how far he went, a dazed shamble on all fours, bashing near--blind against trees, whining and bleating, the moonlight his only

guide.

James was desperate, the heat in his ass at an intense peak, its constant drool of musk sopping his new fur -- his breathing became labored as his despair

grew and grew.

He could not take it anymore -- thick tears came to his face as the musk began to flow in larger and larger amounts, his arousal, his heat, controlling

everything he did...

... from the corner of his vision he saw a solitary white pine amidst the thick growth of older, larger trees -- there was a burst of activity in his febrile

brain, a solution, ingenious and awful.

He approached it still on all fours, and leaned into it, ass--first -- his hole clenched and opened and he shuddered at the touch, the rough flaky bark

scraping his assflesh, the very touch so sensitive and delicate that sparks flew up in his mind's eye.

Yes -- yes, this was what he needed to do.

James took his rear end, his new tail up, and moved it, up and down, down and up, against the shaggy bark of the pine tree, letting it scrape roughly

against his fertile, drippy ass.

Faster and faster he did it, harder, harder, pressing into the trunk so that his cheeks were splayed and near wrapped around it, more and more, the

sensation of feeling so exultant he did not last long. His first orgasm in his new, evolved form, built and then erupted, spraying cum that started as

normally human and ended, in mere seconds, as yellowish, in tandem with a new slow churn of musk out of his hole.

The tree was marked -- he would come back to it later. Others would follow.

A lassitude overtook him and he stumbled forward, crashing to the ground, where he lay in a post--orgasmic cloud for -- for how long?

He knew so little, his sense of time was nonexistent.

It was night when he set out, and it was still night when he rose, slowly, very slowly, and continued his blind journey to find the rest of the herd, and

night yet still, when he emerged out of the densest heart of those woods, and into the clearing.

The way was guarded with two boulders, the ground underneath toothy with rocks, spidery lines of lichen along innumerable cracks. And as if the tableau had

been waiting for him all along, there were two of the deer monsters in the clearing, bleating and hollering at each other.

The pair of deer were at opposite ends of the clearing, their hands and hooves at the ready on rock. Their argument -- or so it seemed -- was concluded by

the first giving a loud grunt, answered by a repeated, concurring noise from the second.

And then -- the way of nature, the way of the woods, the way of all animals this way -- they charged towards each other, antlers lowered.

They met with a crash, bodies rebounding from the force of the impact, and they shifted and swung around, met again with a crash -- horns locked together.

They bellowed, awful, primal, as they fought, one angling its head down, the other angling up, sending their antlers in a stalemated scrape together.

And now one snarled, straining forward, a clawed hand raised in bestial supremacy, shoving, and like that the two rose into their hind legs, hands clasped

together as they butted heads, breath wheezing through their throats so that their whole bodies became wreathed in fog.

James was mesmerized by them -- their gorgeous, relentless masculinity, the strength that was so raw and naked and displayed with such savage disdain for

modesty and inhibition.

He breathed a cloudy vapor that fumed from his mouth in increasing puffs.

He could not look away -- swelling in his chest, an attraction, a desire, so ferocious it felt as though his heart would be rent asunder, a gory disaster in

his chest cavity.

The both of them were half--hard, the swell of their knobbled cockheads jutting from their sheaths, wobbling, jostling, powerfully, wetly, with every stray

movement of their bodies.

James wanted them -- he wanted them both, to be mated to them in the mystic forest tradition that was stark and nameless and eternal as the mountains

themselves.

Without thinking he let out a long groan, digging his fingers into his anus, meeting a fresh dose of musk to dribble over his knuckles, and he arched his

back, spearing himself in an obsessive desire -- too hard, his vision whiting, blurring, a camera out of focus, around the edges. His own shuddering cry was

indistinguishable from the bugling roars of the fighting beasts.

One of the creatures twisted, distracted by the display, and the other took advantage, hooves shifting under the flurry of churned up grass -- they toppled,

the one on top bellowing triumphant.

James' eyes slid back to the pair, body trembling, shaking, with a carnal lust that waxed grotesque in a slow burning across his skin, in his body.

Before they had even settled James was lurching forward, crawling on his hands and knees, desperate, anxious, to feel their strength, to become joined with

them -- his asshole clenched, wet ooze spilling down the back of his balls, before it opened wide like a hungry mouth.

They were still fighting, antlers scraping with an ear--shattering din, but they fell deaf on James' ears: too focused, too ravenous, for anything but their

cocks, drawn up tight against their bodies, so fat and heavy and fertile, the taut flesh of their balls rippling with each impact.

He tumbled into them, sprawling them sideways across the trampled grass, green smears across their fur and his skin alike -- their fingers brushed his flank

and he moaned, eyes rolling back into his head simply from the touch: he moved into it, bearing down, guiding the clawed fingers to his ass, moist and

hungry.

They were both unsheathing, their beautiful, bestial cocks leaving slimy smears where they smacked against his thighs and belly, and finally -- finally --

one of them jerked up, the victor after all, spearing into him effortlessly. The stretch of his aching flesh was so right James went boneless, dead weight

sinking down onto the length of cock until he was pressed against its fat sheath, the whole of it still stiffening and lengthening inside him, the heavy

drag turning into a sharper, fuller motion as the beast pulled him back, thrusting hard into him, snarling and bleating against his neck.

The loser ground against his front, cock dribbling up his stomach, and James gave it a glassy--eyed stare, mouth slack, hands loosely circling its shaft,

tugging it needfully to a full erection as its challenger pounded into his aching hole.

The penis lengthened, longer, fuller, but it did not seem to come forth all the way -- and shortly he discovered way. It chubbed, merely halfway, and from

it poured a steady stream of acrid, near--clear yellowish fluid that, in the moonlight, nearly sparkled. It splashed onto James' face, on his neck, then

down his back -- the scent was noisome, a hideously aromatic acridity, a near--physical force...

... and James relished it.

He was being marked -- he was becoming a part of their tribe, true family, true kin.

Even as he stank of the thing's piss, James bowed forward, pressing his lips to its muzzle, breath puffing out in bursts with each thrust, the other

monster swallowing down his sounds as it began to kiss back, its tongue, thick, welcoming, lapped into his panting, drooling mouth, hips jerking under

James as it began thrusting against his hands.

The other beast snarled, twisting James' head around, breaking the kiss, and shoved its muzzle into his face, tongue lapping from cheek to jaw before it,

too, plunged its tongue into his panting mouth.

And now the first beast rutted, the wet slap of its balls meeting his ass, musk spilling down onto the lap of the second beast below them, coating its

unsheathing cock as James pumped it up and down, reeking bursts of animal pre gushing from the tip, splattering in an oily film across his belly and chest.

The beast ground against him, snarling more -- and like before, James was simply too small... the final inches of the beast's unsheathed cock ground between

his cheeks, the knobbled tip rammed deep into his guts.

But this time James ground back, bearing down on the shaft, aiming for the twisted knot of muscle deep inside him. The beast's frenzied thrusts rammed

against it again and again, spittle flecking his shoulders, gurgling streams of pre flooding down his ass, erupting in gushes as he tried desperately to

take, entirely, the beast's cock.

James saw stars -- above him the moonlight seemed to bend and waver in his vision, he was transported; he was no longer a part of this world or this

existence -- it was though he was dead.

In this limitless moment, he could not feel, erupting, branching, out of his head, pure bone, his own set of antlers -- could not see them gleam uncanny in

the shafts of light from the Moon, and could not, also, see his two companion beasts pause in their respect ministrations to nuzzle at them, to bellow deep

and proud that their new member had attained physical parity to them at last.

The growth of his antlers, devoid of the fresh velvet that would make him closer to a true deer in the wild, but still dripping with blood from his abraded

scalp, the skin hanging off in small clumps, at last stopped -- and they were magnificent, a pointed, spiked symphony of ivory.

The sight of him like this made the creatures' lust all the worse, and the one fucking him found itself in a paroxysm of newfound pleasure, as within James

himself, a new passage had opened up, now violated, the beast's cockhead rammed straight up into his very core, bidding him open further -- its dick slammed

between his cheeks, bloated sheath flesh pressed in against his asshole.

Back to consciousness James returned -- his eyes rolled back in his head, wildly fucking himself on the beast's cock, gasping at fur and flesh below him,

determined, his own cravings screaming at him, lost in the sensation, clawed hands on his hips and shoulders, a muzzle pressing against his lips at the

same time another laved across his chest, lapping and nipping at his nipples.

Another seconds--long gush of watery preseed, spraying up across his chest, trickled between them as the victor fucked him, the steady crack of each thrust

a drumbeat in James' head, counterpart to the racing hum that was his heartbeat.

James bleated, bellowing out a cry -- an animal noise, his throat warped already, unable to make cogent human sounds.

He sobbed, he convulsed around the beast's cock, spilling his paltry load across the fur of the beast below him, clenching to add friction, make each

driving thrust hit him with the force of a blow, the clenching throat deep inside him savoring each spurt of feral precome until his belly began to gurgle

nearly sloshing with each motion.

The two beasts grunted at each other -- an understanding, a communication -- and the second monster lurched forward, cock a burning brand from hips to

chest... in a smooth motion it jerked back, sliding through James' loose fist until the tip was under his balls, and his next jerk backwards buried the both

of their cocks in him.

James tipped his head back, a scream that would not bear sound, hands clenching, digging into the fur below him so hard he probably broke skin.

His heat--engorged asshole was so yielding, swallowing up the twin cocks -- the stretch unimaginable, but to his altered body so easy, two wrist--thick cocks

swallowed up inside him to the sheath even as the beasts squabbled and fought, James between them thinking only of the both of them breeding him, taking

him again and again.

The beast below him bellowed in triumph, its bleat echoing in James' ears, its cock throbbing inside him.

The clearing was filled with the wet slap of their sheaths kissing his gaping asshole, again and again, body stretched beyond what would be breaking for

anyone else -- syrupy lines of their yellowed pre and his own musk--juices smeared under them, drawing out on each withdrawal only to splatter across his

haunches when they slammed back inside, knobbled cockheads jamming into the clenching tunnel inside him. His asshole was not merely just a second mouth,

but hungry, suckling, second throat: swallowing and swallowing, drinking down the beasts' fertile precum and only letting a thin stream spill back out from

his guts.

They used him -- he allowed them the privilege, the right. He was aware, subtly, the faintest sensation, as a fly upon the skin, of his teats opening, a

slow dribble of milk dripping onto the ground -- then two more, then two more again, until the ground below him was rich with the liquescent cream of

his... yes, that was what it was, his maternal offerings.

James' eyes rolled back into his skull, whuffing and drooling as he convulsed, asshole clamping and squirting around their cocks as they hammered inside

him, again and again, tongues lapped at his skin, drooling down his shoulders, across his chest, teeth existing as points of pressure against his

overheated skin, fur thickening down the back of his neck. Froth built between them, ooze, grimy bubbles speckling their fur, soaking down to their skin as

they mated as feral animals.

The victor in the duel before orgasmed first, thrusts becoming short slaps, its knobbled cockhead never quite pulling from his devouring hole -- James' ass

-- as it ground its sheath, each sharp thrust jolting James forward.

The beast bellowed, its body tensing, cock twitching and shifting inside him just before it erupted, shooting with such power that it stung -- hot,

impossibly potent bursts of feral semen burst inside him, gurgling inside his aching womb, swallowed and held safe in its destination. The beast came and

came, unloading explosively until the pressure ached, an ocean of thick stag issue inside him. The beast finally pulled back, a single squirt of its load

escaping with it, gushing in an opaque yellow--white rope down the twin shafts lodged inside him.

The second beast, cock sliding through his stretched passages made its final few thrusts, churning the load already spilling inside him before it came with

its own roar, hosing down the walls of his womb with its bestial load until it churned and sloshed, gurgling inside with each fresh pump, flesh aching and

stretched.

His clenching new cervix hungrily drank down its issue as it pulled back, only smears left on its shaft as it spilled out, the final dribbles grey--yellow

in the moonlight, spilling across its underbelly as its cock slipped between James' thighs. He was splattered with pre, oozing from his gaping ass and

churned into thick froth, but his body swallowed their loads hungrily, issue a heavy wet weight deep inside him, sloshing and gurgling nearly with each

breath.

James slumped forward, heat for the first time ebbing -- not sated, not yet, but its fire guttering for the first time since he'd woke. His milk did not

cease its flow, but slowed, at last.

His body was trembling, exhausted, and he fell -- not into sleep, precisely, but a restless kind of waking dream, aware of his body sprawled on the matted

grass, of the deer--beasts who bred him leaving, and then, slowly, of luminous eyes appearing at the edges of the clearing: the herd coming to him, drawing

ranks around him.

He must have dreamed the watching, glimmering, gemstone--luminious eyes, because he opened his own eyes when he woke -- perhaps it was just the

sounds of their approach: the clatter of hooves on stone and fallen leaves, the softer tread on grass, the soft, paper--leather sound of their clawed hands

curling over rocks, trees, as they gathered around him, ringing the clearing... seven, yes, a small number, an endangered species.

When he woke the Moon was almost directly overhead, turning the clearing into a study in light and shadow, the very faintest tinge of color, grey at the

edges.

And standing before him, slowly emerging from the shadows, was the final beast he'd seen in the ritual: the one holding the wreath. His horns, lit by the

moonlight, seemed to curl into existence, revealed as distinct from the thicket of crisscrossing branches behind his head: the yellow--brown bone nearly

ivory in the moonlight, and slowly unfolding into the light.

The eldest of the beasts; the ancient patriarch of this tribe of animal beasts, an elk of Pliocene proportions, so vast had James stood on two legs -- had

he still found it natural to stand on two legs -- his head would have been level with its own, horns cracking the sky, blotting out stars and cutting the

Moon into two crescents.

When he'd seen the old stag before, in the ritual, it had seemed alien, almost deformed in its white--furred gait -- now it seemed simply nigh--divine, the

ascendantly paramount of the herd, the eldest, the master, the one who demanded service, the one who needed not fights or bellows to prove himself.

James was eager -- eager, so eagar, his anus afire -- to serve him.

The beast's cock was vaster yet still than the animal lengths that hung from the herd around him: the size of James' leg, even the thin tapered tip fatter

than his fist. James swayed, everything else whirling around him as he sunk forward, beneath the grand beast's bulk, lapping at the filthy fur around its

unsheathing cock, sucking down mouthfuls of gritty old musk. It was so heavy, so hard, a treetrunk when it twitched and slapped against his side, nearly

enough to send him sprawling on the ground.

And sprawl on the ground he did: hands planted in the muddy mess he'd made in his last mating, hooves spread wide, grinding his ass back against the length

of its cock, overwhelmed mind thinking only of the heat spanning from his tail to his shoulders and needing it sunk inside him, needing his body speared

through by that, the utter pinnacle of these stag--things' warped masculinity, that grand stag's erect length a profane natural god in its own right,

speaking of some neolithic fertility ritual: the act itself, fucking, mating, mother to a new species into the world.

His nipples swelled, bloated grotesquely -- a torrent of milk spilled out, onto the ground, out of him, out of James, future mother to a new race, fresh

progeny.

His ass was grossly distended, a thick ring of heat--engorged flesh, supple and oozing as he rutted against the beast's underbelly, knocking its shaft

against his puffy flesh and sliding up until he captured the tip between his cheeks -- its watery pre flooding across his back and licking down his sides,

pouring like rain to the ground below. Even then it was a struggle, the tapered cockhead scraping through his ring, spreading flesh in thick slabs, so

solid James nearly didn't have the strength in his heat--weakened limbs to push himself backwards.

James shoved himself desperately backwards, nearly hanging limp from the spire of its cock, the grand beast's hooves unmoving around him -- his elder legs

were like unto pillars fixing the ground to the sky, so magnificent and perfect and masculine was this creature's form.

The broken ring of James' ass smeared onto the length of its cock, twinges of pain breaking through even the euphoric hunger of heat.

Each burst of pre felt like it was pissing inside him: long, shuddering gushes of watery slime pouring inside him, pressure growing until it squirted from

his asshole and painted their respective haunches, the shaggy fur of the beast's underbelly hanging down in long tassels, soaked to James' skin, wiping

back and forth to coat him fully in its own precum.

James had a hungry mouth inside him that the elder beast battered against, the muscle blooming open like a flower in an obscenely wet gush, the fertile

issue from his prior suitors drooling out around the patriach's shaft, oozing in grimy tendrils to the ground.

His muscles gaped around its cockhead, wetly suckling like a babe from a teat. Each flex of its cock rippled through his body, its urethra flexing open

like a kiss against the deepest recesses of his being, bidding his new teats, having sprouted from his flesh, to pour out milk, yet more milk, heavy cream,

deliciously aromatic of wood, grass, fresh verdure in the dead of Autumn.

James' womb ached from the sheer volume of the patriarch's gift, wetly gurgling and churning with each new blast of pre, bursting inside him and gushing

out around the patriarch beast's cock: watery fluid streaming in burning rivers down his insides, building up in sloshing reservoirs and erupting from his

ass in messy runnels, splattering the ground beneath with his milk, and churning into tarry mud as he forced himself back on the grand stag's cock, his new

uterus nearly filled completely by the beast's solid cockflesh.

He arched against the beast, taking on a new obsession, until the beast finally rutted back against him, implacable flesh boring deep inside him, gushes of

pre gurgling inside him and pouring back out, upwelling around his achingly used body.

James groaned, nearly collapsing bonelessly from the single thrust. The beast bellowed, head tipped up as if to drink from the Moon overhead, and its cock

convulsed, each pulse nearly painful as its tissue swelled and receded inside him.

The first gush was nearly a half--second later, a scalding rush of heat inside him burning his core. James panted, a feral whine bleating from his mouth,

stuttered and trembling as the beast filled him with its issue. His body gurgled, drinking muscles overwhelmed, rubbery and aching against the implacable

pillar of the beast's cock. Seed filled him in pulses, flesh bloating and distending as his womb was filled beyond capacity, his body appearing nearly

pregnant already before his hungry cervix stretched and parted, a solid gush of grimy off--white cum erupting from his ass and splattering across the

beast's haunches, each new gush inside him met after seconds by a eruption between their bodies, the patriarch's load already so much more than all three

of the other beasts combined, sluicing down his furred legs and webbing in messy tendrils between them, and still the beast's ejaculation went on and on

until the ground beneath them was churned and sloppy, soil rich and dark with the beast's excess.

The final pulses kicked deep directly inside James' womb, and, exhausted, he slumped, nigh--gelatinous, off the beast's cock, falling to a pile into the

rich mud below -- a wet slurp echoed from inside him as he fell to the ground, ass gaping, cervix deep inside him slowly pursing closed, a messy noise of

semen squirting across his inner walls until his aching uterus slowly sealed shut in a final frothy gush of bestial cum, sticking the fur of his tail to

his ass cheeks. His asshole followed seconds later, a pair of painful slabs as they ground against each other, musk still squirting across his cheeks,

forming runnels through the mass of come coating his lower body, new fur matted flat to his skin.

He was dimly aware of hooves on the ground next to him, a thick layer of semen flooding over top the churned--up mud, and of hands, claws, grasping his

sides and arms, slowly shifting his delirium--stricken body.

His eyes slipped closed, only catching snatches of beast--like faces lit by moonlight in flickers as he was jolted, before he was finally laid down in a

pile of fall leaves, which became nearly glued to his bare skin as he stirred, approaching sleep.

A furry body curled around him, muscles strong against his aching flesh, and as its warmth soaked into his bones James slipped fully into sleep.

Ambiently, in the night, he heard more noises, and felt bodies shift around him.

Inquisitive claws dragged around his flushed ass, peeling away crusted layers of semen, pushing inside his hole, James groaned aloud, twisting to the side

to give the beast better access, groaning in his half--slumber as the beasts lapped at his ass, coaxing fresh musk even as he dreamed.

The lapse in time became complete -- it was no longer a matter of waking, dreaming, and breeding, but an impenetrable surreality that he was disallowed,

forever, for the rest of his mortal life, from comprehending.

The days passed in a haze -- he would wake, crusted with issue, skin tacky and fur matted, and presented himself to more deer, the precious: mounted a

half--dozen times, each cock feeding the hunger inside him, even though he knew by now he was thoroughly bred.

He was filled until it drooled down his thighs, fed bark and berries on platters of leaves, munched them on his omnivorous human teeth -- the same actions,

the same cycle, went on until dusk, and then again, repeated and permuted, day after day for a full week, perhaps, before the haze of his heat

even began to ebb.

The breeding had taken, he knew even before he began to show -- his purpose, his mutation, his change, for the good of an endangered and deleteriously small

herd.

He would be a mother.

It was like a second heart inside him, a pulsing core of new life: a new fawn for the herd, the first in a time that would remain, for humans, for the

world that James had forcibly abandoned, immemorial, for the semen of the patriarch dwarfed and embarrassed -- if such a thing could be possible -- the seed

of the other herd, and so it was that he was impregnated, immediately, impossibly, with the last of whom his musk--laden rear had craved.

How many seasons had the creatures held that ritual, baying up at some feral god? Waiting for him -- for someone like him, for James. This was the

inescapable, the complete, the utter truth: his arrival -- fate or chance, it was inevitable, inexorable either way.

He was always going to end up like this, somehow.

He chased after the beasts, the cryptids, the unknown, and eventually the unknown caught him -- and now he was amongst them.

Now, soon, he would be heavy with child, or rather fawn -- it would quicken in the night as the Autumn drew on to Winter, it would rouse him from his

slumber.

Sleepily, in the nightvision that had possessed his eyes with his evolution, he would grip his hands over his stretched belly, bigger by the day knowing

that the fawn of the patriarch that had bred him was nestled there, that it would come out of his musk--slicked ass and be unsteady on its feet before he

would lick it with his still--human tongue, and love it, as his own, daughter or son.

And he would bellow, softly, to not the wake the other slumbering members of the herd -- how perfect, how happy he was, his belly bulging and swollen with a

new a life inside him.

Some mornings he would awake, sick and weak -- he would vomit, and cry out, but the herd was there, to lick him, to bring him obscure herbs to calm his

upset stomach as the fawn grew and grew inside his belly, bigger, bigger every day.

There would be months to go, he knew, before Spring, before he could birth this beautiful new creation to the world and raise it with love -- then, he knew,

somehow, would come the heat, once more, the craving and the need and the expulsions of his delicious, spiced, meaty musly... he would be ready for the herd,

bred over and over again until it took.

He would beckon with an animal bugle from his ever--human lips the patriarch, the eldest and the wisest and the greyest, as new mate, as new companion, and

be rewarded with thick, rich, delicious, ever--fertile seed, inside him, his body now built to keep it all, and swell with progeny, season after season

after season.

Here he was, his new life, his new family -- as his human had been, going where the mysterious wind had taken them, so too had taken him... and he would never

leave it.

He was nature -- he was a part of a herd of uncharted, unknowable creatures.

He was the nature he had always been seeking.