FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Dixon had been studying the culture of a particular tribe of indigenous peoples for six years on and off. His visits typically consisted of a several-month stay, followed by a return to the university he worked at, where he compared his findings to old research and discussed his experience with colleagues who studied other native cultures. He’d yet to find concrete evidence of anything outstanding about the tribe he was invested in. However, each year, he had been barred from the village during a festival that outsiders weren’t permitted to experience. Those, he was certain, held customs otherwise known only in rumor. He ached to know how true those rumors were.

When Dixon visited the tribe again in February—the coolest month in those parts, but still warm by his standards—he was greeted with open arms the moment he stepped off the plane. Ipael, a young woman who had been learning Dixon’s his language from her tribe’s most fluent individual, greeted him in English. Her lingual skill had improved so much over the past three months that Dixon couldn’t help but greet her first and give her a celebratory hug. Tekel, the tribe’s most English-fluent individual, was male, which meant he was barred from culturally feminine activities. Having Ipael to help Dixon’s studies opened the female half of the culture up to him.

“How long is your stay?” asked Dixon’s male translator. He, Dixon, and Ipael were heading through the village center, offering greetings to the tribesfolk who cared for them.

“Three months, this time,” Dixon said. “I’ll be leaving around the start of summer.”

Dixon adjusted the straps of the pack on his back. It had been difficult, at first, for him to go for extended periods of time without modern amenities like plumbing and electricity, but he’d grown accustomed to it and knew now exactly what he needed to pack. A small solar panel was a must, as was a camping lantern and more notebooks than was reasonable for one person to carry.

“We have ready your...” The woman looked up at Tekel and asked him a question in their native language.

“Your hut,” Tekel said. “We have your hut ready.”

Dixon beamed at his translators. “Thank you very much. I’ve been looking forward to staying with your people since late last year. It’s a pleasure you’ll have me.”

---

The first month went as it always did. Dixon scrambled the first week to get back into the swing of things. He then began to ease the burden of his stay by fetching water with the children and carving animals with the warriors, who had learned almost immediately upon meeting him for the first time that he was useless to them for hunting itself. Dixon learned more about the women’s duties around the village, though was told sternly by Ipael that he shouldn’t participate, lest the men look down on him.

A month and a half into his stay, the preparations for the festival that time of year began. Dixon knew to pack his things and dreaded the thought of sleeping on the outskirts of the village for the four nights the festival took place.

Dixon was packing on the first day of the festival in preparation for leaving that night when Ipael stepped into his hut and greeted him.

“Yes?” he asked. “Are you my escort outside?”

Ipael frowned. Dixon scrambled for a few seconds, but managed to come up with a word with a similar meaning to “escort” in her native language.

She laughed. “No, no. I am here to tell you to come to village center at sunsink. You join this year.”

Dixon’s stomach did a flip. He was allowed to participate this year? He had gained the trust of the tribespeople enough for them to allow him into their special ceremonies? He could hardly believe it. This was the opportunity he’d been hoping for since he’d first come to the village.

In response to Dixon’s silence, Ipael laughed again. “Tekel will ‘escort’ you. He will teach you the...” She paused and uttered a word in her native language that Dixon knew meant something similar to ‘tradition,’ though the translation was imperfect.

“Thank… thank you,” he said after several silent seconds. “I’m honored I’m allowed to attend this year.”

Ipael smiled and exited the hut to go about her business.

Dixon unpacked his things and tried to decide if he should bring a notebook with him. He doubted the tribespeople would like him writing things down while their special festival was taking place. Though it killed him to record things the morning after, once the memories had time to change, he decided it was what had to be done to be respectful of the event he was being allowed to participate in. He was the first outsider to be welcomed so completely.

---

Near sunset, Tekel—his male translator—found him at the bank of the river and called him to come to the festival. Dixon tried to hide his excitement, but it must have showed, because Tekel gave him a smile—rare for him.

The village center was beautifully decorated. Dixon had always seen the lights from the outskirts, but he’d never seen one of the leaf-lanterns in person. They were constructed of dried leaves in vibrant reds and yellows, held together by what Dixon assumed was some sort of wax. What kept the flame inside from combusting the entire lantern, he didn’t know.

“This is incredible,” Dixon murmured. The eaves of every hut were adorned with the lanterns, which also circled the village center, where dancing and special feasts took place during events like weddings and after the birth of children. To his surprise, there were no children present among the adults and late adolescent villagers chatting while they set things up. Dixon asked Tekel about that.

“The festival is not for children,” Tekel said. “Some adults volunteer to take the children to the outskirts of the village and hold their own festival for them so they do not feel sad.”

The rumors about the festival being adult-only were true. Dixon wondered why that was.

“Come. Help.”

Dixon and Tekel looked over to Ipael. She was squatting down near a cooking contraption—a stove with a plate on top, sometimes with a lip, that was used for cooking “flat foods,” as Tekel called them. The stoves were too heavy for one person alone to move.

Dixon and his translator went over to her and helped her move the stove from her hut and into the village center. There were more groups moving stoves from their own huts and into the area.

He wanted to ask what the special festival food was, but kept silent. He had a gut feeling that it would be impolite to ask.

The sun set just before every adult—singles and couples—with the appropriate stove had dragged them into the village center. They all filled their stoves with coals through an opening in their base. The glow from the coals and the light from the lanterns cast shadows over the villagers that stretched away and into the darkness.

Dixon, Tekel, and Ipael sat around her stove. Tekel was without wife and Ipael’s husband had been one of the adults who had volunteered to babysit, so Ipael’s stove was the only one without a couple. Tekel explained that the festival feast was shared on stoves typically by couples and unmarried tribespeople.

Curiosity got the best of Dixon after ten or so minutes with nothing happening aside from chattering within the various groups.

“What’s the festival food?” he asked. He’d already gathered that the main part of the festival didn’t begin until dinner was served, but as much as he could tell, nobody had prepared any food.

“They will bring it,” Tekel murmured.

“They are late,” Ipael said.

“Who?” Dixon looked off into the darkness but could see nothing beyond the lanterns. Perhaps the village had sent out hunters who hadn’t had a successful hunt. He hated to think that he would be seen as bad luck, since this had coincided with his attending the festival.

Ipael put her finger to her lips, and Dixon obeyed the gesture and fell silent.

Another ten minutes passed. Another. The people began to murmur louder amongst themselves. Tekel and Ipael whispered in their native tongue and Dixon only caught bits and pieces of their conversation. Hunt. Bring. Take. Soon. Worry. Night.

Then came footsteps, and the crowd grew silent, all eyes and ears turned toward the northern part of the village. Path illuminated by torches, there came a village elder accompanied by two young hunters and a young woman. The three young members carried sacks on their backs, laden with… something. Dixon could tell it wasn’t meat.

The villagers cheered and stood in front of their stoves. They bounced up and down, danced, sang, and embraced each other. Ipael and Tekel stood, too. Tekel dragged Dixon onto his feet to celebrate, and Dixon cheered as well. He was happy that the hunters—and the young woman—had returned with the festival food. He would get to experience this yearly event for the first time.

The hunting party lowered their sacks to the ground and the villagers crowded around them with empty drinking pots. They scooped the contents of the bags into the pots until they were full, then scurried back to their stoves.

Dixon had no idea what was in the sacks, even when he stood in front of one of them with his own empty pot. The contents appeared to be a type of brown grain, not yet shucked, oblong and the size of a kidney bean. Dixon scooped handfuls of it—the texture was smooth—into his pot alongside Telkel and Ipael, and once their pots were full, the three retreated to their stove.

“I am happy,” Ipael gushed when they were back in front of their stove. Tekel said something to her in their native language and she giggled.

“What is this?” Dixon asked. He poured a handful of his pot’s contents into his hand and felt the grains. They seemed less and less like grains the more he examined their texture.

Tekel scrunched his brow and looked into his pot as though trying to find the words. Ipael watched him, because if he didn’t know, how could she?

“They are… ant pods,” Tekel said after a long pause.

“Ant… pods.” Dixon looked down at the things in his palm. What species of ant encapsulated themselves like this? Maybe they were beetle pupae and Tekel didn’t know the word for “beetle,” so he’d chosen the most similar-looking insect.

“They are only in spring,” Ipael said in such a rush that Dixon hardly understood her. “They are rare food.”

She took a pot of oil from behind her and drizzled it over the top of her stove’s cooking plate.

“They are very good fried,” Tekel said. “We wait so long for them.”

Dixon had eaten many bizarre foods while with the tribespeople, many of them insects and many of which he hadn’t enjoyed. It would be an understatement to say he was disappointed that the festival surrounded a rare food insect. Regardless, he would eat, and he would try to enjoy the festivities afterward.

The groups began to fry their pupae on their stoves. Dixon grew hopeful when the cooked pupae emitted a smell something like pork belly, and he was encouraged by how Ipael and Tekel squirmed in place in anticipation of the single-course meal.

The pupae fried and all the villagers scraped them into plates and ate. Dixon hesitated on his first bite, but, encouraged by his companions, dove in.

The flavor was unlike anything Dixon had ever experienced. It was simultaneously sweet and savory in a satisfying combination, though the crispness of the pupae’s outside in combination with the mush of the pupae’s inside detracted from the experience.

So, Dixon ate as much as the rest of them. The pupae seemed to make Dixon hungrier the more he ate, and he found himself, like many other villagers, going back to the hunters’ sacks and getting another potful of pupae to cook and enjoy. Ipael humored him, and she and Tekel ate with him until fullness finally kicked in and Dixon could eat no more.

“Good, yes?” Ipael asked.

“Good,” Dixon agreed.

The villagers began to move their stoves back into their homes. Dixon and Tekel helped Ipael with hers once the embers had begun to cool. Once all the stoves were indoors, the village square was dimmer than before. However, Dixon found that his eyes adjusted to the light of the lanterns and stars more than they’d adjusted to the light of the stoves.

The village center, lit by moonlight and candles, took on a different tone than when the stoves had been present. Couples and singles entered the area and began to dance, and musicians grabbed their instruments and began to play on the outskirts. Tekel dragged Dixon into the dance space—to his extreme surprise—and the two of them danced while Ipael found a dance partner in another woman whose husband was on child watch.

Something shifted less than a half hour into the festivities. Dixon felt it first in his stomach, and then in the air. The temperature rose just above his skin and he stuttered in his dancing amid a wave of nausea that hit him from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.

Tekel caught him, laughed, and spun him around. It didn’t help Dixon’s nausea.

“It is your first time,” Tekel said. “You should drink. It will feel different.”

Tekel led Dixon off to the side, to the front of Ipael’s hut where there were jars of water to drink. The pair drank, and the water did make Dixon feel better. Or, as Tekel had said, it made him feel different. The heat flushed low into his gut and shifted into a feeling that Dixon recognized as acute arousal. His cock throbbed and he bent over and gasped. What the hell?

Beside him, Tekel laughed. When Dixon looked over to him, his eyes were drawn to his lap, where he noticed Tekel was in a similar state of arousal. He swallowed the excess saliva in his mouth.

“This is normal,” Tekel said. “This is the point of the festival. It is the best time of year for love.”

Dixon shuddered. It felt like something in his stomach was writhing—sticking to the insides of it and squirming against him. Worse was that the sensation made his cock harder.

“I—”

Tekel hushed Dixon before he could say much of anything. “It is harder to be unmarried this time of year, but those unpaired often group up or go alone.”

Dixon looked around but couldn’t find Ipael. He assumed she’d retreated into her hut, but couldn’t hear her in the home behind him. He wondered if she was one of the people “going alone” to stay faithful to her husband. “Go alone” was the most obvious euphemism he’d ever heard.

“All sorts pair up.”

Dixon realized Tekel was closer—too close. They were sitting hip-to-hip. Tekel’s warmth made the heat in Dixon’s belly worse, but he couldn’t bring himself to pull away. He’d never thought of Tekel this way and didn’t want to, but the squirming—god, the squirming. It was unbearable and made his cock leak precum in his pants. He could smell the sweat on himself as he overheated and wondered if Tekel could, too.

Tekel started to wrap an arm around Dixon’s waist. He managed to mumble a “no” and scoot away, catching a glance of the hurt expression on Tekel’s face.

Fuck. He wanted to experiment, but he also didn’t want to. What kind of person would he be if he let some… insect cause him to fuck someone he considered a dear friend and nothing more?

“I—I can’t,” Dixon stuttered. The squirming was gradually working its way lower, the arousal it caused intensifying with each bit of him it touched. He couldn’t—not with Tekel, at the very least—though he wanted to. Dear god, did he want to. His cock throbbed in his pants and he wasn’t sure he could stand. He might topple over.

“I have to go,” Dixon managed to say. He stood and leaned against the exterior wall of Ipael’s hut for balance. The squirming seemed encouraged to move lower when Dixon stood. He clenched his teeth and his knees trembled.

Tekel stood and gave Dixon a shoulder to lean on, which he took. “Are you sure you do not want help?” the tribesman asked. “I can escort you to your hut. I would be happy to.”

Dixon shook his head and leaned away from Tekel once he found the ability to stand on his own. “No, really, I—I have to get going. I mean I should go. I can’t—” He gasped and wrapped an arm around his own midsection. Oh, god. He couldn’t take this. His cock was harder than it had ever been and he was aching for touch. If he stayed any longer, Tekel would convince him, and he didn’t want that. He couldn’t have that. Not with Tekel—or anyone in the tribe, for that matter. It would ruin the dynamic of his research.

Tekel tried to convince him again, but Dixon was deaf to his words. He stumbled out of the illuminated village center, into the darkness of the narrower streets between huts. Inside those huts, he could hear the lovemaking of those tribespeople who had slipped away to—to enjoy the sick pleasure that the insects inside their bodies were providing.

He stumbled in the darkness while his eyes adjusted to the moon and starlight, but eventually found himself in his hut, slipping on loose sheets of papers and circumventing stacks of notebooks, water bottles, and rations.

Dixon flopped onto his sleeping bag on his back and unzipped his pants in a flurry of motion. His hand was wrapped around his cock before he realized he’d moved it, and in the next instant, he was a mess of moaning and writhing while he worked his hand over the length of his cock.

There was something about this that was more intense than masturbation had ever been. The instant he touched his cock, the squirming feeling inside of him became more aggressive in working its way through his system. It crawled lower and lower inside him, every inch of movement making his cock leak more.

Was it hot? It was hot. It was too hot. Though Dixon hated to stop, his body was overheating and he felt like he might pass out if he didn’t get somehow cooler. He stripped off his boots and the rest of his clothing and underwear followed.

That was better. That was so much better. Dixon flopped back onto his sleeping bag and wrapped his hand around his cock again. Without his clothing he had more freedom to squirm in pleasure, every part of him shivering with each twist and writhe of the insects low in his stomach.

They worked lower. And lower. And lower.

Dixon shivered and forced himself still. He had to use the restroom—bad—but he didn’t want to stop. His fogged mind tried to convince him that he needed to get up even if it meant he’d have to put off this mind-numbing pleasure.

Dixon didn’t have a chance to get up. The squirming moved lower and he felt something leaking from him. He clenched his teeth and reached his hand back around to his ass to—to what? He didn’t know, but when he brought his hand back, he found it covered in a clear fluid that was very much not what he was expecting.

Then there was the squirming again. Something slithered out of his ass. The sensation of its slimy hide dragging past his asshole sent a jolt of pleasure up his spine. Dixon found himself gasping for breath, every muscle in his body quivering and waiting for more.

And there was so much more. Dixon stroked his cock furiously as the insects inside him slithered out, dragging waves of pleasure with the emergence of each new larva. They coated his skin with a substance that made it tingle. Their writhing worked it into his pores and made the pleasure sink bone deep.

The emergence of the larvae was first a slow trickle—maybe one or two inch-long, pearlescent creatures writhing out of him—but then they started to gush from him. Dozens of them crowded their exit at once, spreading Dixon’s ass wide while they struggled to get out of his body. Their secretions numbed whatever pain there would have been, replacing it instead with that tingling that soaked his nerve endings and made thinking impossible.

Dixon came. His hand stilled on his cock and he came while a clump of larvae worked their way out of him. He came and couldn’t stop coming. The pleasure didn’t ebb. It instead intensified each time a new group of larvae worked their way out of his stretched ass and joined the pool of writhing insects forming beneath him. Even when his balls were empty, orgasm assaulted him until he lost his senses to the pleasure and degenerated into a moaning mess on the floor of his hut.

He didn’t know how long he was lying there. It could have been three seconds, three minutes, or three hours when the pleasure finally started to ebb and the last few worms squirmed free from his insides. His senses wandered back to him, finding their way through the fog of hormones clouding Dixon’s mind and rousing him ever so gently.

Then his senses slammed back into him. Dixon gasped, bolted upright, and looked down at the puddle of larvae between his legs. None attempted to slink away, but the puddle and its secretions was in motion. The insects climbed over each other on rotation. The ones at the edges stretched their heads out before they ducked the entirety of their maggot-like bodies back into the pile and went back on the search for whatever it was they were seeking.

Dixon swallowed and pressed his soft cock into the mass of worms beneath him. They clamored onto it. The worms dipped their heads beneath his foreskin, and a few adventurers poked their heads into his pisshole before they retreated. Dixon shivered in pleasure, but to his disappointment, the larvae decided, as a group, that his cock wasn’t what they wanted, and they went back on the hunt for something else.

Dixon extracted himself from the insects he’d birthed, got dressed, and transferred the larvae into a canvas bag. His hands got covered in their secretions and he lost most of his manual dexterity.

He didn’t know why, but he was compelled to keep the larvae safe—to protect them—and they couldn’t be safe in the dry confines of his hut.

His flashlight escorted him out of the village and into a nearby forest, where he found his way to a fallen tree trunk with his wriggling bag. Ever so carefully, he poured the contents of the bag onto the decomposing wood, and then he watched each larva find its way through the surface layer of the log and deeper into its rotten center, until each of his young was out of sight.

Dixon shuddered and made his way back to the village. By the time he got there, it was early morning and the residents were awake and beginning their daily routines. They acted as though nothing were amiss—as though it were a normal day—and Dixon wondered if he was the only one who’d had such an intense experience with the larvae.

He ran into Tekel near the village center, where there was no trace of the bags of “ant pods” that had been brought in last night.

“Did you enjoy it?” Tekel asked. A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth.

“I—” Dixon swallowed and looked from Tekel, to the ground, and back again.

“There are three more night in the festival. Learn to enjoy it while it lasts.”

Three more nights. There were three more nights of the festival. For three more nights, Dixon would participate in this strange tradition with the tribespeople, and for those three nights, he would have this experience that left him exhausted, every bit of vitality drained from him by the worms.

Dear god, he was going to enjoy the next three nights.