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The Art of Creation

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by anonymous

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March 2022

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I sighed, leaning back against my computer chair, lightly swivelling back and forth. I kicked at the footrest, though I didn’t really use it all that much. I didn’t know why I left it there.

My computer was set up in my bedroom, which gave me a little more privacy. Not much…but enough. I needed that bit of privacy, for I couldn’t be all that open about myself and my life, not in the grand scheme of things, the world around me.

The world, well… It didn’t seem all that kind to people like me. That was why I lost myself in fantasy, in stories, in movies, whatever I could get my hands on. It didn’t matter, really, even when I started creating my own worlds.

“I just can’t decide…”

I wished I was not so sluggish, like things were weighing me down. But I didn’t want to think about those, even as the walls felt like they were getting closer and closer, the bedroom closing in around me.

The computer screen beckoned, a white glow like a portal to another world.

But it wasn’t coming together as I’d wanted. I wanted to write an erotic story – just something fun, digging into a fetish of mine. It had all started when I saw a picture on FurAffinity of a red fox, dressed plainly in a loincloth as if he was from another time and place, the butt of a staff resting on the ground before him as his fingers curled around the smooth wood with a light grain to it. The picture was so clear in my mind’s eye, I couldn’t just set it aside, not then.

However, the problem was that I didn’t save the image, which was a problem. I kept searching and searching FurAffinity, a popular furry website for art and stories and more, but I just couldn’t find it. It stuck in my mind though, so…I thought I’d just create my own fox character, like others had.

Even that felt like an act of rebellion, a sense of unease in the pit of my stomach. Was I doing something I wasn’t supposed to do? My fingers twitched on the mouse and I shook my head.

No… Don’t think like that.

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It wasn’t worth it.

Making a character who was a fox mage, however… That would be worth it, very much so. And it would suit me too – my own character, even if I was not sure, not yet, whether the fox was me, or not. Maybe the character could be both, though they would definitely, absolutely be a bottom.

I grinned at the screen, though my smile was quick to slip from my lips. Yeah, that was right… He would be a bottom, the kind of fox that loved getting pounded, being used. And I’d put my favourite kinks in the story with him too: milking and mind breaking.

“Hm…”

I tapped out a few letters on the keyboard, running through the story idea. I could have him go into the forest, a cocky, brash fox mage who thought he knew more than he did, encountering tentacles… But what then? It was hard to plan a story, though it was a little easier as I went on, as if the story was telling itself to me, revealing itself. That was kind of a cool way to think about it.

After he went into the forest, the tentacles would drain the mana from him – that was the source of his magic – through his semen, forcing his seed from him. And then his body would be taken over by an ancient tree, entrapping him forever and making him a part of the tree.

Well… That was how the story was supposed to go, but something about it just didn’t feel right as I sat there, my lips pressed together. What was missing? I just didn’t know, as if the thought was lingering out of reach in my mind.

My head had been foggier those days, more so than I would have liked. I tried not to dwell on it.

The plot was written and everything was there, nearly done…but I thought back over the fox character and hesitated.

I’d designed him to be the best character I could think of, with pure white fur, blue eyes, a nice body too. I wanted him to be me, the ideal version of me – like a fursona. My earliest ‘sona was just like him, white like that, but I’d thought, after things happened, that he was too perfect. So, I tainted his fur and added colour to it.

As if the white fur was nothing more than a canvas to be painted, like how my life have been filled in for me too, by someone else’s paintbrush.

The white fox, however, had always been there, sleeping, curled up tightly, nose to tail, waiting for his fate. Even if his fate was to be milked of his seed and then to die in the forest, a subject of a fetish waiting to pounce.

Was that right? I pondered it, though I didn’t often like to linger in the minefield of my own thoughts. I never knew quite when I was going to hit something that sent me spiralling – and no one liked the darkness, no matter how much time they spent down there. They couldn’t. The grip on my soul, when I was there, was too tight, a monster’s claws raking through my clothes, catching in them, cutting into my skin.

A tight chest, a lack of breath.

The world around me swirling, spinning, pulling me down and down and down.

The weight, the heaviness, like nothing was ever going to change.

Who would ever willingly put themselves in such a situation? I trembled, the white glow of the computer screen comforting me a little at least. It didn’t pull me back to reality, but it pulled me back to the world I wanted to be in.

The world with the white fox.

I hadn’t spent my life in one country. Back when my parents took me to a psychiatrist before leaving China, when I’d been heading, initially, to the US… Well, that hadn’t been a good time. Some parts of the world moved forward, but others regressed or stagnated.

They took me to see the psychiatrist…because I loved a man. Because, to the wider world, I was gay for that alone, for having a partner who was the same sex as me. But they wouldn’t say it like that: it was “homosexual” to them.

Before I heard it from them, I had not known just how much that word could hurt.

The doctor had a neutral face and listened more to my parents than me, though I think that was what was always meant to happen in that kind of situation. He nodded and smiled and made notes in the right places on his sheet of paper, his clipboard poised – and then turned to me.

I gave my statement, though the memory of it is fuzzy. A lot of things are blurry in my mind after everything, as if the memories aren’t real at all.

“I do not believe you are gay,” the doctor had said, sliding his gaze to my parents. “You probably have not seen tenderness from a woman.”

I curled a little tighter and deeper into myself at that, though it was not comfortable, not like the sleeping white fox, waiting for me. I retreated a little, became a little quieter, tried to be amenable.

I didn’t know why I was told to see a psychiatrist for simply loving a man. The world was changing and it was becoming more understood that love came in many forms. That was so simple to me to say and yet so hard for some people, people who cared for me, who were meant to care for me, to understand.

I think they tried their best. They did what they were “supposed” to do. That didn’t mean, however, that what they did was right in any way.

The two things conflicted with one another.

And I didn’t really think, anyway, that I could experience this supposed “feminine tenderness” – it sounded strange even to me back then, sitting in his office, listening to someone else talk about my life. I wanted to stay with my boyfriend and, well, that was that. I didn’t need to sit there and convince myself that I needed something different when I loved him, when I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.

But what about the white fox in my story? Was he missing something that I too could have had for myself? Not that I wanted to change my reality, not when it came to my love life, other than to be closer to the one I loved… But something else.

The white fox could be different. He didn’t have to be like me – not the real me. He could be an experimental version of me, the one that got to experience more, things I never could. He could even have a gentle girlfriend right there, right by his side, taking care of him and helping him where it counted. She would be her own creature too, of course, having passions and beliefs, but she would still be a vessel for me to experience something through another character.

With the fox having a girlfriend with him, even with the story I’d created, the plot changed. He wouldn’t die in the forest.

I worked a little more on the story, writing and re-writing the next paragraph. It had to be right.

I really liked a character from a game; her name was Lillia and she was a deer-taur. I guess you could say she made me “geek out” every time I saw her – but there will always be some characters that just appeal more than others, that are simply favourites. I think others called them “comfort characters.”

So, as I liked Lillia so much, I modelled a doe-taur girlfriend after her, though she was different – she had to be. Lillia would not have been the white fox’s girlfriend, his partner, so she had to be slighter, gentler, with a kind look in her eye.

And it kind of reflected things with me too, even though they were my characters and, honestly, I knew I could do whatever I wanted with them. Even then, I felt like there were unwritten rules that I “should” have known, something I “should” have been doing. A pressure that “should” have been listened to.

For the fox and the doe-taur, in the world I created, would have a forbidden relationship too – just like the relationship I had with my boyfriend. In their world, even though they were in a heterosexual relationship, relations between anthros and taurs, regardless of their species, would be taboo.

My parents would never approve of the relationship between my boyfriend and I. So, it was only fitting that the relationship between the fox and the pretty doe-taur was one that the anthros in their world would not approve of too.

Their world, however, was something I could control.

For them, it would be better. For they would have each other and the white fox would always have the sweet little doe-taur right there, right by his side.

I did muse over changing the fox’s species to be a horse instead after deciding on the doe-taur too – because a stallion’s genitals would be better-suited to a doe, in the furry and fantasy world. But that wasn’t the point of it and I gave up because it was different than them being the so-called “perfect” fit for each other. It was just because of love and no more than that, so a fox for the doe-taur were much better-placed for one another.

If I took away all their trials, they would never grow.

So, I finished the draft of that story plot, but that one was not for me to write. I had a lot of work to get down in my further studies and there were certain times of the year that were busier than others for me. I read over it, again and again, worrying and fretting, trying to change all these little details – details that, later, in hindsight, I’d finally see were not all that important to me. But it was better to dig into those and to worry about those than the things that were the most pressing in my life.

At least I was getting away from my parents, in a way, though their lack of approval weighed heavy on me, like a cape around my shoulders, fastened tightly at the neck. Such an article of clothing should have been comfortable but, with everything they had laid on me, expecting me to carry it and surpass all expectations, it dug into my neck, cutting off my airflow. The cape was not really there, not really on my body, but I could still feel it, the choking force, how it cut viciously into me.

It wanted to weigh me down. It wanted to put me back in my place. It wanted me to do what I was supposed to do.

But I could never do that.

I’d commissioned a few furry authors to write stories for me, as English was my second language and my studies took priority, and sent it to Amethyst Mare at eleven at night, March the twenty-second, the year twenty-twenty-two. It would take some time for me to realise how poignant that moment was, but, as it was, the night was quiet back then.

Just me. Not peaceful, but just me.

A strange sense of ease settled over me as I sat there, a picture of Lillia on the screen, though I’d only had that tab open in my internet browser for a quick reference. I’d need a proper image reference of them both soon, but maybe they would fit better in a picture, a piece of artwork. They fit better in a scene, where something was happening, than in static poses on a character reference sheet.

In a story too, they could come alive.

Yet that ease did not feel like it belonged there, resting uncomfortably on my skin. I ached to brush it off, to get back to what I was familiar with, the sense of unrest, of never being settled and calm in myself. But that was hard when I didn’t quite know what was wrong, how I needed to get better. Everyone, doctors, my parents and more, all had very strong opinions and ideas about what I needed to do to get better and most of them involved not being the person I was.

I couldn’t reconcile that.

So, that was why the story was important, even as I got up and fetched and drink and busied myself with normal, little, mundane tasks that grounded me in the world again. Like the ancient tree, I had to sink my roots down into the ground and come back to reality again, though I hoped I wouldn’t be the one draining anyone of anything.

In the story, the fox wouldn’t have to die in the forest, not even for something as fanciful as a fetish. With the doe-taur’s help, he would not die there – and they could be happy.

Together.

That happiness was hard for me to find for myself. I felt like I’d got close with my boyfriend, but a flicker of something like nerves – kind of excitement – bubbled in my chest, fluttering up against the cage of my ribs like something trying to get out. Maybe if they found happiness in my commissioned story, they would be able to go forward in a way that I doubted I could, even though I was going to try.

They could make their own money, study what they wanted, the doe-taur helping the fox every step of the way. In doing so, even though it was simplistic way of looking at it, the fox would be able to break the chains of his parents and, finally, both find and experience true freedom.

I slept fitfully that night, no better than usual. Which is to say, I slept, but not well. I woke sometimes more tired than I’d been when I went to bed, but that was normal too for someone with my condition. Only, I could not afford the remedy that they said I needed, the isolation from my partner that, apparently, was the cure.

Even I knew it was ridiculous, though sometimes they made me doubt myself. I hated those times.

There was no cure for me, when I did not have the ailment the doctors said I had, homosexuality. It was not an illness, though the irony of them treating it like a curse.

Maybe there would be a curse in the story too. Maybe that was the ancient tree. I’d work it out after the writer responded.

The next day, they did, going through the motions I expected from them, asking questions and ensuring all the details were right. But they didn’t quite know what I’d asked of them and, at that time, they were not supposed to.

That was okay too.

I breathed slightly more easily, distracted by my story world while I tried to sit down to breakfast on March the twenty-third. And that was how Alyssa was born, named by the author, marking her birthday with the communication between Amethyst Mare and myself.

I’d find a way to give the fox and the doe-taur everything I did not have for myself.

And maybe, as an allegory, their story could reflect mine, one day. Troubles and trials, difficulties untold. Yet, their relationship prevailing through it all, always with each other to rely on.

That was all I wanted. And that was okay. I’d have to keep telling myself that, again and again, against all the outside forces and the dark voices inside my head too, all the voices that said otherwise.

Over and over again.

I’d tell them “no,” over and over again.

In the art of creation, there proved to be healing too.