FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 1

From the building's front door emerged the weirdest of sights, the strangest of beings. Without his knowledge, his life was about to change, and with it so would change history. His hometown would see him a hero, the city he saved would make him legend, his country wouldn't do anything in particular, and the world... wouldn't even know; Venezuela isn't THAT important a country anyways... Where I'm trying to get is that this individual was none other than me.

My name is Domingo Hernández. This name, while not embarrassing to me, I guess it's strange to pronounce for foreigners, so I call myself Ognimod. I am an exceptional creature, different from my peers... and the rest of the planet. I'm a fox of human height and anatomy, possessing human intelligence and knowledge, and observer of human traditions, customs and standards. In other words, an "anthropomorphic" fox. In _other_words, of much creepier connotations, a furry.

"Furry" is a term applied by certain people, whom I'd rather not describe at the time, to representations of animals in which they possess human traits. From Egyptian gods to protagonists in Aesop fables to cartoons, it's possible to extremely generalize and claim any humanized animal is a furry, which puts, say, Tom and Jerry in ugly predicaments into which, again, I don't wish to go deeper. Although at some point I'll have to, or half the events described here will prove incomprehensible.

How did an animal who walks on two feet, like me, end up in a society populated by "hairless apes"? No one knows, not even my family. There are very vague records of strange creatures who arrived at Venezuela during the Colony, but nothing else. My relatives constantly spoke to me of a "parallel universe", where everyone's a furry, and there's not a human in sight. My Spanish and Italian ancestors arrived from this universo to the humans' by means which were never known, when those who would be the "LaFontaine" equivalent of the Catholic Kings of the time sent them on a journey to discover other worlds. And they succeeded... in fact, they succeeded too much. They ran into human society Christ knows how, and I don't want to imagine to what extremes they went to survive, or worse -to preserve their genes.

Only said ancestors lived in this "Furriverse", and the rest of my family were all born here. Until I see such a place with my own eyes, I refuse to believe its existance.

...But I have no reason not to believe its existance, because I have proof of it living in my home, and it's as innocent as pure as the love it has for me... It's nothing other than my girlfriend Ivory's bright blue eyes. Believe me, if you don't know me, you have no idea of how linked my life is to hers...

Ivory is a little Pink squirrel, a bit shorter than I. I don't know her name, but her nickname honors her bushy, long, soft white tail. Whenever I think of her nickname, I think of her tail, and then I couldn't care less about what her real name is or isn't. Meeting her almost drove me to disgracing my family... and I'm afraid I will have to dedicate the rest of the current chapter to explain that, lest the part about coming out of a building's front door ends up useless.

It all began like this. First, I was born. Then I spent my childhood surrounded by Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons, which were my only contact with beings like me, if fictional. At the age of 10, we moved, and two years alter moving, my father, also a fox, began cheating on my mother with another woman (yes, it's exactly what you think), and they were soon separated. My mother (a lioness), my sister (another lioness) and I returned to Los Teques, where we used to live, but life wouldn't be the same. Now we were poor, surviving the circumstances, and my father took as much care as he Could that our life was more and more miserable.

It was around 2004 when I began taking my first stops with Internet culture, of which I understood nothing at the beginning. Since there was no Internet at my house, I had to visit my father-side grandparents' house, where there was. In one of said visits, about to walk up the street leading to their house, I thought I heard crying. Looking for its source, I realized it came from a lump sitting on the sidewalk. I sat next to it.

"Uh, hello... what's wrong?" I asked. The lump turned to me with a pair of big blue eyes.

It was Ivory, 12 years old back then, while I was 14. It was the greatest revelation of my life; a being, of the opposite sex, a humanizad animal like me, suffering like me, and paying attention to me. If nothing of this had happened for real, what I'm telling you could pass as an idiotic fantasy written by a talentless sourpuss. But it's the pure truth.

"I... have no home," she said. "I have no one. My parents... forced me to leave. And now here I am. This isn't my home... My friends, or anyone I know, they're not here... There's... these weird... people..." Eventually she could no longer contain her anxiety, which made her make those pauses between words as she huffed, trying to calm down. "I have no one!" And began to cry again, sinking her head between her knees.

"Humans?" I asked.

"Humans? That's their name?" she ansered. Suddenly, her eyes were a bit lit up. "Where are you from?"

"It's a long story, I..." And I got stuck there, stalled, looking into her eyes, which hypnotized me with every passing moment. She didn't say anything, perhaps because she was also looking into my eyes, perhaps because she was intrigued by someone looking into her eyes for so long, but surely because she was also surprised to see someone like her. Regaining some of my composure, I said, "Uhhhhhhh, ahh, um, gee... You say you have no home."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I'd rather not say." And I took her word for it -to this day, I've never asked her again why she left her home. Maybe I'll never know.

"I... think I know how you feel. I can try to help you..." But there, I stopped myself. My mother was going to skin me with her own claws if I even thought of telling her I wanted Ivory to live with me. She's not my natural predator for nothing. But, I started to improvise... yes... of course, why not? It was worth the risk... "How about... if... I take you to my grandparents' house? They don't live very far. I can visit you."

"Would they take me?"

"Well..." And I stopped myself again. My father-side grandparents, being relatives of my father, were waiting for anything my mother and her allies did, to cling to it and attack us, claiming 'so-and-so proves Blanca Suarez is a devil, and my son did well in leaving her!' I don't know what they would have made up if they'd learned I met a cute girl, human or not. I thought again... "I don't know if they'll take you. You... you don't mind going undetected there?"

"Why?"

"It's a long explanation... but don't worry, it'll work. You'll have a home."

"Are you sure?"

"I dunno, I just came up with it."

She thought about it for a bit. "Maybe it's not a bad idea..." she said at last.

She stood up. So did I, seeing she was up to my chest, and short

enough to (again, this all sounds like a story griten by someone with no social skills, but it's true) carry her in my arms. And that's what I did, answering to some sort of instinct, as if it was my duty. And I took her to my grandparents' home.

I don't remember how we arranged things between me and her so that they couldn't see her and she could obtain food, but we had to made up a lot of things on the spot to avoid being discovered. I do remember I arranged she'd sleep in an old, unoccupied room no one had entered in years. The bed was huge, and I'll never forget the delightful contented smile she had when diving onto it for the first time. During the time I spent visiting and relating to her, I slowly felt we had something... and she began to feel the same. Of how we did, the things we talked about, and what this did to my life, I'll explain in the next chapter, and in subsequent ones I'll talk of the huge adventure we had together, when a group of villains kidnapped us with sinister purposes, and... but I'm getting too ahead of myself. See you next time!