FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Mingling Universes - Phantasm Springs

by Zmeydros

~Monday, 08/23/1993 - Ryan Singlais~

Late afternoon sunlight pooled in the meadow ahead of me, gilding the blades of grass. Just beyond, looming like a giant shrub, was an Appalachian peak that hid a legend. This legend bubbled up from inside and spilled out over its surface as a frigid creek. It wound its way between boulders, around fallen trees, and through bedrock.

Water from Phantasm Springs was the clearest and most refreshing on the planet. And, if you believed the folk tales, it could cure any disease.

I held my Sony microcassette recorder up just below my chin and punched the record button with my thumb. "Pennsylvania Haunts and Hollows: A Travel Journal of America's Most Beautiful State, Phantasm Springs Entry Number One." I stopped the recorder to clear my throat.

"It's four-thirty-seven in the afternoon and I can already see my destination. It's hard to believe the number one source of ghost sightings, cryptozoology shenanigans, and supposed UFO abductions in Pennsylvania is only an hour walk from the highway. You'd think that this would only draw more people, but numbers have fallen in the last two years since these reports started. Part of it's due to storms washing out sections of the trail and part of it's due to the fact that people claim they like to go out naked into the unknown when all they really want is to sit cozy on their couches and watch X-files while dunking their Dunkaroos."

Pausing the recording, I wiped sweat off my brow. "If you're reading this book with your feet up on your coffee table, relax. I'm not gonna call you out for steeping in your air-conditioned surroundings. It's ninety-five degrees out here and the humidity in these Appalachian valleys is murder. Even after all my summers outside scoping out places like Phantasm Springs, I'm still not used to drinking a half gallon of water in a couple hours. Man, I'm looking forward to meeting up with Phantasm Creek. If the water is as cold as they say, I'm going to roll in it."

As I went to put the recorder back into my pack, the wind whipped a branch right into my face and I dropped it. Just to the side of the crushed pebbles that made up the path and to the left of my recorder was what looked like a dead rat. I grimaced and tried to kick it further away from the path with my hiking boot, but it moved like fabric. When I leaned closer, I found it was a pair of white briefs that had gotten covered over by some leaf litter. Opening up my litter bag, I took a stick and stuck it into the offending garment. It was ripped in the back just under the hem like someone tried to give this person a wedgie and ended up just ripping his underpants.

Once I got it in my litter bag, I shook my head. Why would someone's briefs be just lying out here in the middle of nowhere? Did that guy just discard them after that extreme wedgie?

Maybe I'd keep these and tell Tom. To him ripped clothes lying out in the forest only had one explanation: werewolves. I chuckled at the thought unable to decide whether it was more amusing to feed his obsession or give him crap about it.

Trudging through that clearing with the sun sapping my morale, I tried to remind myself that it was all worth it. Every time I explored a place like this, the sheer beauty was ample payoff.

As I was about to leave the clearing, I turned around and pulled out my tripod. From this angle, the sun kissed meadow was broken up by a bleached fallen tree with its intact branches spreading out like a lateral lightning bolt. And it was flanked by a moss-covered fallen log: breathtaking.

After affixing my Minolta Maxxum 7000 into my tripod, I snapped a few shots. I couldn't wait till I got this roll developed. This chapter was gonna be the highlight of my book. Heck, I'd probably be able to do another gallery show.

With a calm smile pulling at my lips, I packed up my equipment and left the clearing.

I got a couple hundred feet into the woods before I found the first downed tree. The few leaves still clinging to it would look like maple leaves to most people at first glance, but the leaves had two points on either side of the center line instead of one: it was a poplar. One that had been downed in the storm a few weeks ago.

Speckles of sunlight shifted on the bark as a light breeze toyed with the towering trees that surrounded me while I walked toward the upturned roots. As I stepped into the gaping tear in the forest floor the fallen tree had left behind, I was kissed by cool moist air. Breathing a sigh of relief, I picked up the path on the other side of the tree.

The increased density of ferns and moss betrayed the presence of water as much as the chill in the air. In a few minutes of walking, the temperature had fallen at least five degrees. The sound of rapids provided explanation: Phantasm Creek! If the water was as cold as people said, there's no doubt it could cool the summer heat in this ravine.

The path ahead had a bit of a slope to it, but I didn't mind the extra exertion. Regular encounters with mountainous terrain did wonders for my ass. I made a note to bring a hookup out here, I hadn't seen evidence of foot traffic since I went around that tree.

Sex outdoors was the best...well, not when it was over ninety degrees. I'd have to wait till fall unless this cooling trend continued.

A quarter of an hour later, I finally saw the source of the rushing noise and pulled out my microcassette recorder. "Phantasm Springs Trip, Entry Two: After being toyed with by the rushing of Phantasm Creek, I've finally spotted it. A gap in the trees to my left opens up to a boulder-festooned slope that drops down twenty feet to perfectly clear gushing rapids. The creek is cold enough that it's dropped the ravine's temperature by several degrees. All I can think about is how fantastic it's going to feel when I splash some of that water on my face."

I snapped some photos and then descended the slope. The rapids spilled into a shallow pool before filtering through a mesh of fallen rocks and branches on its way deeper into the valley. I stood on smooth rocks about half the size of a computer mouse and set up my tripod again. Moss was caked on the rocks of the slope opposite me with a sprinkling of ferns on dark reddish-brown patches of soil.

It took me six shots to get all the angles I wanted to try. Only then did I kneel down beside the shallow pool and soak my face and close-cropped hair with frigid spring water. Sweat from my brow had been threatening to make my eyes sting for the last half hour and this was the cure.

Once I'd shaken some of the water off and wiped my face with my shirt, I looked down. I was hard? Why? A flash of the first time I did stuff with a guy popped into my head and I quickly dismissed it. I glared at my erection. I was working, now was not the time to play.

I pulled out my microcassette recorder to distract myself. "Phantasm Springs Trip, Entry Three: It's five-oh-seven and I've had my first encounter with the waters of Phantasm Springs. Refreshed doesn't even begin to cover it. I think it's fifteen degrees cooler down here and the water, well, I have goosebumps. I'd be surprised if it's a degree over sixty. I don't know if it's the heat or something extraordinary about the water, but I want to dive in. I should have brought a swimsuit."

Ten minutes later, I had my shirt off and was working on undoing my belt when I realized what I was doing. Skinny dipping in a pool no deeper than my knees was laughable. Though the pool was clear, there was leaf litter, soil, and twigs trapped in the gaps between the rocks. I'd be filthy. I needed a deeper pool and a place a bit farther in. Yes, there was no evidence of people, but all I'd done is get past one fallen tree. It wasn't going to stop other explorers any more than it had stopped me. On top of that, the water was freaking cold!

As I put my shirt back on, I caught a glimpse of something, a human form that was more of an outline in space, an edge of glass refracting light with fuzzy edges. I blinked and it was gone. I decided that all the stories I'd listened to about this place were scampering in the back of my mind.

It only took five more minutes of walking before the path started to run alongside the creek. The heat and humidity were less suffocating and I found myself marveling at my surroundings. Little waterfalls, rapids, and shallow pools made for an endless cascade of gorgeous that mingled a network of tree roots clinging to the rocky banks on either side.

Then I found the second downed tree. The part facing the sky was sun-bleached and bark was flaking off of the sides. My only options were to climb through the thick branches or wade into the creek and try to go around on the other bank. If I tried to climb over the top, dried branches could break off in my hands and send me tumbling down. The other bank didn't look promising, so I took off my backpack and worked my way carefully through the branches.

My backpack got snagged on a branch, but a bit of tugging broke it free.

On the other side was a magnolia tree whose branches reached over the pool which had been dammed up by the fallen tree. I took a picture of its reflection and then communed with the wondrous water again. This pool looked to be up to my waist, but the water wasn't as clear due to some erosion from fallen trees on the slopes. I put my pack on and set out once again.

The path rose up the bank and I was soon thirty feet above the creek frowning like a spurned lover. Then I reached an impasse that made me take out my recorder. "Phantasm Springs Trip, Entry Four: It's five-thirty-eight and I'm staring at my only way to continue the path. Ahead of me are about six fallen trees, a mess I don't think I can traverse and I didn't bring climbing gear to go up the side of the ravine. The only way forward? A pine tree that has made a bridge to the other side of the ravine. It looks like another trail I don't see on the map is on that side. Wish me luck because I'm the sort of person that thinks crossing a heavily-weathered log thirty feet above rocky outcroppings is a good idea."

My heart sped up as I snapped photos. It was a long way down.

The bark of the pine tree was completely stripped from weather. When I set my left foot on it, I noticed it was uneven. I swallowed and put my right foot in front of my left. After a brief look down, I picked up my pace.

About two-thirds of the way I stepped too far off center and my left arm slapped my leg as I tried to balance. I yelped in terror and bent my knees in an attempt to straddle the tree. My center of gravity wasn't over the center of the tree and I landed on the trunk askew trying to use my legs to grab the trunk. But I slid counterclockwise. Grabbing the base of a broken-off branch, I stopped myself from sliding off and falling to my doom.

After getting myself into a safe position on top of the trunk, I gave the tree a big hug. Convincing myself to try to get to the other side was awful. Part of me just wanted to stay there and wait for someone to come rescue me. Due to all my time in gymnastics and martial arts, I'd never struggled with balance. But here I was like a toddler who thought he'd found a tree that was sad and needed a bear hug.

Fog that had condensed into a human shape stood just at the end of the log. I could have sworn it was looking down at me. Then I saw it kneel and beckon me, but something was wrong with it, there were wisps of fog trailing behind it like a tail and the more I looked at it, the more my eyes strained. It made no sense, my mind didn't play tricks like this. Looking away, I forced myself to reinstate normal levels of skepticism. When I looked back a the spot the fog-form had been, it was empty.

I crawled until I was on the other side. When I pulled out the recorder, I tried a few times to recount the event, but just stammered like an idiot. It was too soon to try to talk about it, I still felt too much like an absolute putz. Some adventurer I was.

To prove to myself I still had physical panache, I ran down the path dodging rocks and occasional branches. The sound of waterfalls greeted my ears as the path met back up with the creek. I crossed a rickety wooden bridge and followed the creek on a bend to the west and fell to my knees.

Phantasm Springs was too much to take in. Beams of evening sunshine that broke through the trees made rainbows on every step of the tiered waterfall which ended in a pool so deep I thought I was staring into the world's largest sapphire.

The waterfall dropped at least ten feet, but the water hit so many jutting rocks on the way down that it didn't splash heavily when it hit the pool. Just to make sure I was as close to the source as one could get, I found my way up the side of the far slope and found the spot where the water exited the mountain.

It was practically spraying out of a giant crack in the exposed rock wall and landing in a wide shallow pool above the waterfall. I finished off my roll of film and half of the next capturing the surrounding area, the pool, the source and the waterfall that connected the pool to the creek. Every angle, every good composition, and every bit of splendor I could squeeze out of this spring made it onto 35mm film.

After the work was done, I hurriedly started stripping. The pool below the falls was easily deeper than my six feet of height and I'd earned a nice naked soak in the clearest water I'd ever seen. Even if I could only stand the cold for a minute, I had to try. No one was around to care that I didn't bring a swimsuit.

As I was stuffing my shirt into my backpack I bumped my recorder. I sighed. My work wasn't done. Without my shirt and standing under a gnarled eastern hemlock tree that leaned over the south side of the pool, I started an entry.

"Phantasm Springs Trip: Entry Five:" I skipped a number because I still had to do one about the tree trunk crossing. "It's six twenty on the dot and I've just finished taking dozens of images of Phantasm Springs. I kept having to wipe mist from the waterfall off my lens and sometimes I swore the mist was just kinda sitting in the air making vague humanoid shapes that obscured what I was trying to photograph. Maybe those shapes were what people thought were--What?" I gulped, the nature of my book was about to change.

"S-so, there's a figure at the edge of the pool that looks vaguely human. Um, it might be a...a trick of the light? I'm going to see if changing my angle of observation dissipates the illusion." I walked clockwise around the edge of the pool keeping my eyes on the figure.

"No, it's not a trick of the light. Maybe I'm delirious from dehydration or something. The figure is clearer now, like a light shadow suspended in space. It has a tail and horns and a horse-like head and rather large breasts. I think her scaled belly area is lighter than the rest of her? This has to be the same figure I saw earlier. Same height, same way about her. She's going for a naked dip in the pool. Oh shit!" I backed up against the trunk of the eastern hemlock.

"S-she's beckoning me to join her. I think it's time to get out of here." I turned away from her and ran toward my backpack. After pulling out my shirt, I stuffed my recorder into a side pocket. It felt like I was forgetting something, breaking an important promise, turning my back on some desperate need I couldn't name.

As I picked up my pack, I heard a voice, more like an echoing whisper of static. "Please, touch the water. You'll see I mean you no harm."

Tears filled my vision and then fell down my cheeks. A yearning beyond words blasted through my mind. When I turned, I saw she was only ten feet from me waiting with her hands clenched against each other. Her pointy ears were drooping with worry. At least, that was my guess. I'd never had to interpret the expressions of a horse-dragon-thing before. No, I knew exactly what she was feeling because...I didn't know why.

And the longer I looked at her, the more I wanted to touch her, to be inside her. I shook my head at the thought, but it was relentless, growing.

I put my hand in the water. It stung from the cold, but then it felt cool, the perfect temperature. I didn't know if the sensation could even be described as temperature. It was probably what holding the snow on a TV between channels in your hands felt like.

"Our universes are being consolidated. Our other selves died so we must intertwine instead."

"Intertwine? What do you mean?" I asked.

She reached down and started to rub her pussy. I gasped and thrust my hips uncontrollably getting harder than I'd ever been in seconds.

"You already know. You're just resisting your instincts. Stop." She put a finger inside herself and I fell onto my side unable to fully interpret the sensation of being spread open.

"Wait!" I called out.

She stopped.

"What was that?"

"That yearning? Feeling my flesh as your own? It's time for your causal path and mine to merge. Fighting it will lead to a fractured existence." Her hand brushed her breast.

I yelped in pleasure. "Wh-what will happen when we merge?"

"We will share in all things." She brought her nipple up to her snout and suckled on it.

"FUCK!" I cried out feeling as though she was teasing my tender flesh. When she let up, I asked, "Do breasts always feel like that?"

She grinned. "Yours do." She dug her fingers into them until it almost hurt.

My mouth flew open as I cried out. She went on to rub them, heft them, blow her hot breath across those big erect nipples, lick them, suckle them. They started to feel like my breasts. I could feel their weight, the way the scaled skin stretched under her caress. A fuzzy rush of bliss pervaded my whole body almost reaching the point of no return twice.

Her love of teetering at the edge of her pleasurable abyss was more than a match for mine. There was no release for either of us before her hands made their way back down her soft belly.

I could feel her fingertips and blunt claws as if they were trailing down my own belly, which was strange because I didn't have any extra weight and she did. The way her added padding yielded to her fingertips was luxurious, sensual. Rapt by this supernatural experience, I found myself unable to speak. Anticipation pervaded every inch of me as I saw her reach for that broad clit at the front of her pussy.

"This is what your clit feels like." She stroked it in little circles.

Pre beaded at the end of my shaft leaving a wet spot on my rugged jeans. I moaned and rubbed desperately at my clothed length.

This made her cry out and work herself harder testing the limits of what my mind could process. Just as we were about to cum, she stopped.

I whined in complaint.

She rubbed at her thick equine pussy lips. "This is what your labia feel like."

My breath came out mixed with a groan, I could feel how wet she was, I was? We needed a...no, she needed something inside her. Every muscle I had was tense from the sensory onslaught. A suffocating pleasure had me. This time I got so close to the edge of orgasm that my cheeks started to burn and my cock tingled ferociously. But she didn't bring us over the edge!

She spread her pussy open and brought the tip of her tail up to it. "And this is how it feels to fuck your tail."

I couldn't be abandoned just outside the door to ecstasy again. This endless teasing had to stop. I forced myself to speak, to plead. "Don't! I don't think I can take anymore. I'm gonna sprain something."

Moving her tail and hand away from her sex, she said, "And I thought you were an adventurer."

I glared at her.

"I guess you could just wait until our entanglement is forced upon you like a coward being chased by inevitability." Her confident smirk was too similar to the one I often wore.

"Take that back!" I demanded.

"Make me!" She dove under the water. I could barely make out her translucent form. I secretly wished I could see her more clearly.

I was horny and angry and curious and I needed her in a way I couldn't put words to. She'd hit all my buttons as if she'd been in my head my whole life. If I didn't see where this went, I'd die from staying this hard."Damn it!" I exclaimed and went to work getting my jeans off.

I dove into the water after her. Just as I started to get goosebumps, that static warmth seeped into my body. I caught her by the tail and tried to pull her to the surface. She wrapped her tail around my wrist and held me under. Air quickly became a bigger concern than my hardon and I struggled to get free. But her tail wouldn't let go.

Great, my legacy, drowned by a water spirit because I was a fool.

*Forget that this is water, breathe,* she thought at me.

*Fuck you!* I thought back as a fire raged in my lungs.

*Why did I have to get someone so desensitized toward magic?* her question sounded more like lament in my head. *Breathe, you stubborn ass!*

I didn't have a choice, the burning in my lungs reached a point where my body took over. As I thought about why I'd never bothered to write a will, I pulled in a lungful of spring water. Only it wasn't water. It was a vibration, a song, a thousand voices saying 'yes.' This was the good stuff, mountain dew with a kilogram of caffeine per serving.

Grabbing her tail, I pulled us to the shallow area where I'd entered the pool. When we surfaced, our mouths met. At first, I couldn't tell whose tongue I was controlling or whether I had a dragon-horse muzzle, or whether it was my breasts pressing against her pecs.

Then the sensory chaos fell into spontaneous order. My own sensations had a different tint than hers. I used this clarity to suckle her breasts, rub two fingers at her entrance, and then tease her clit.

Instinct won over foreplay when I bent her over and tugged her tail up out of the way. She cried out, "Yes!" as I shoved inside. I'd never been inside such a plump and muscular cunt and I blushed over my full body as I tumbled toward orgasm.

We came the moment she used those muscles to massage my cock, but the need was ever-present, panting in our ears. I was still filling her with my seed when I started thrusting again. That thrusting was soon cut short by her see-through form joining with mine at our crotches. The tints of our sensations in that area began blending.

We came from our pussy as her hips fully overlapped mine. Feeling both a cock and a clit, I shivered. Moving our tail to our pussy, we shoved it inside. I could feel my own scales enter me as I grabbed her breasts and pulled her up. We weren't whole yet. The need had only grown.

She resisted as scales spread up my belly and sides. They were light green on the front and a darker green on the sides which was broken up by deep green spots that formed a pattern I'd only seen before in an aquarium on a leopard shark. They were beautiful.

*Wait, I want to give you something before we finish.* Her hands were working my shaft while she whispered something to the air.

With my knees buckling, I groaned. What she was doing felt so strange, so good! My balls hung lower and lower between my thighs until they were the size of large kumquats. I gasped as a sheath formed and my erection thickened. The head became flat like a horse's while a flare bloomed around the edge. As two sets of knots formed at the base, I cried out in ecstasy and thrust my hips. My shaft was now a deep, nearly black, shade of green.

*Do you like it?* She asked.

I couldn't answer, my new equipment was surging as my flare and knots engorged from my orgasm. The stretching of my cock flesh, the formation of the flare and knots, the sensations had combined exponentially. Even suspended in water, I could feel the new weight of my shaft as it lurched releasing my spunk to the water. I could feel reverberations of my pleasure resonating in her mind along. And her pride in creating the kinky erotic art that now adorned our loins.

Once we recovered, I said, *Isn't it a bit big?*

*Nonsense. We're part horse, after all.*

*And the two knots?*

*Why have one when you can have two?* She chuckled.

My mind tickled at the feeling of her chuckle as she let me pull her ephemeral upper body toward mine. Her comment left me with a giddy smile. If the tables were turned, I would have said the same thing.

I had hips now and my waist was gaining a bit of extra weight, her weight. A pussy and breasts were more than enough to offset the dent she'd make to my fitness.

We now had breasts and our hands were fondling them. They were a bit smaller than they'd been on her, probably because of my lack of body fat. But, I liked them. They were on the large side, but not as unmanageable as hers had been. Were these my thoughts? Hers?

*Don't worry, soon there will be no difference.*

The back of her head was touching my nose and I hesitated for a moment.

*Just give in. Let us become one.*

*Am I about to die?*

I felt her wince. *I'm scared too, but I couldn't think of a better person to pair my existence with. Now that I can see inside your mind, I know we are a perfect match. Look into me, see for yourself.*

The moment she said it, I could do it. In her head was my life story, but from a slanted perspective. She'd been teased for being so sexual as a teen. In school, she cheated on tests to prove it could be done. Whenever she heard of a new place or a new experience to be had, she couldn't ignore it.

And both our sisters had died at almost the same time in our lives. We'd both grieved poorly and alienated our friends.

We didn't sort ourselves out till college and we both confided in our best friends that we wanted to experience having the sexual equipment we didn't have.

The difference is that she'd used magic to explore that and I hadn't. Because I didn't even know there was magic in the world.

Magic...she was going to give me prowess in something I'd never even given a second thought. If I merged with her, I'd be able to change my shape at will, resist spells by modifying my scaly skin, be a frickin' badass!

Nothing separated us more than what made me jealous of her. We both sought a scintillating life full of new experiences, but she'd outdone me. I had something she wanted just as bad, however. She was browsing through all my time in nature and I was getting this soft fluffy joy from her over it. We'd go backpacking the moment we could plan a trip.

I put her head on like a mask, only my face pushed out into a muzzle and horns grew on my head. A forest green mane spilled down my back until it made it a third of the way down my tail. We were complete, I was complete. There was no her and me. Only me.

My breasts were squeezed between my arms as I thrust my cock between my hands and tailed my pussy to get off one more time. The smooth-but-textured sensation of my scales being dipped into my snatch as my tail writhed from the pleasure was almost too much. I grabbed at my twin knots as they started to swell and cried out between gritted teeth as I thrust wildly against my grasp. My pussy tugged at my tail as it came making me squirm in the water's embrace. I felt my flare surge wider and a heavy pumping up my shaft. Then as my essence spilled out, something spilled in.

Hot breaths puffed out of my big nostrils as I felt the static that had soaked into me resolve into bliss and power. Getting off is how I focused to collect magical energies. I was a sex mage and well-endowed dragon herm.

I was also a human adventurer who was as at home in the woods as shi was in a coffee shop writing writing hir next book. But boy were my books going to change.

In afterglow, I drifted in the lazy current of the pool. My mind was wonderfully empty and my scaly lips held a smile. Eventually, I used my tail to help me swim to shore, I popped out of the water and got all my stuff together. I left my clothes in my pack because I wouldn't need them until I crossed that log.

It took a few minutes of walking to get used to my new four-toed digitigrade clawed feet, but then it was like I'd always had them. My tail even coordinated its movements with my gait.

I cooed at the light breeze on my naked scales as I stood looking past that dangerous log crossing to the bottom of the ravine. The fear that part of me had felt was unwarranted, I decided as I took my first few steps onto the log. With my tail counterbalancing my motions, this was now a cakewalk! Grinning, I started to run.

Once on the other side, I thrust my fist into the air, whooped, and then roared.

Now it was time to go back to my old form. This was something every person that met their other could do, something I had to do if I wanted to integrate into the part of society not yet touched by the convergence. With deep breaths and focus, my breasts shrank back into my chest, my tail receded, my ears and muzzle shortened, my ankles cracked, and my scales gave way to skin.

My genitals made it back to human proportions and appearance, but I kept the pussy. After waiting so long to know what both felt like, I wasn't gonna take that away.

I pulled at reality, my hands flashed green, red, and yellow. I touched my temple and closed my eyes. A new purpose had been inherited. Something that would give me a lot to write about, document. There were so many people ready to meet their other selves: people who had yet to become whole. It was time for someone to speed things up.