FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Okay, yeah, this was weird at first--and then alarming. The first member of a race to come through the portal to Earth is a huge, horse-sized gryphon--and you'd, well, expect him to be what you think a gryphon ought to be like, right? Proud, noble, arrogant and haughty, looking down on us 'mere mortals' just because we couldn't fly, that sort of thing. But... what happened was so totally different! _This gryphon comes through to see our scientists and security (non-hostile, weapons lowered) and... he steps through so delicately, so gently; he's all timid and super-shy. Head and body lowered in near-total submission, there's silence in the lab as he _ slowly _ sidles up to the first female scientist he sees... and then he chirps and bumps his head against her gently, wanting to be petted?! After a nod from security, the scientist does just that, rubbing and petting his head--and the poor big fellow sags, sighs with _relief, sits with lowered head as the bemused scientist pets away; all the while this poor gryphon starts chirruping softly in his birdlike language. Later, his words would be translated as the same thing over and over. "Thank you, thank you, thank you..."

A moment later, as the big male lay on his back submissively, wings spread flat on the floor, relishing in the touch of the scientist petting him, he trilled "Safe, all come, slow, gentle!" and then to our amazement, a smaller female gryphon timidly stepped through, followed by more, and more, and MORE gryphons--near 7,000 of them, their physical sizes ranging from large to extremely small and petit. Each and every one went submissive upon seeing us, and all eventually attached themselves to a single human; mostly female gryffs to male humans and vice versa, but there were a few outliers who chose humans of the same sex. Of course, we went through everything safely, putting them through a full medical check-up; checking for diseases that might be passed from them to us and us to them, and checking them all out physically. The Patriarch and his smaller Matriarch (now attached to the female scientist's husband) agreed all-too-readily. What we found... utterly disgusted us. Evidence of broken bones. Horrific welts. Bruises. Evidence of... activity... beneath their tails--even to the _ youngest _ of them all.

These gryphons all... had been horrifically abused and broken. Of course, we healed their wounds with our (to them) advanced medical practices--and when we did, each and every one we healed burst into tears, and loved us even more than they already did. We did our best to heal their minds, too--but what horrified us the most was that, whilst they were indeed fully sapient and intelligent, they actually chose to eschew their sapience and near-permanently act as animals, pets to humans. "Originally, that was what we were" the Patriarch explained to Sarah later as she and he cuddled together in their reinforced bed. "But when it was found we were sapient, the ones who made us to be companions forced us to become a slave-race; we obeyed them and did whatever they did not want to do--or they broke us, and we died."

Thus, even as it broke our hearts, many gryphons chose to simply remain as pets to humans; though a rare few did in the end reveal their sapience to their human owners, and those few were loved all the more. Poor things. It was like... these gryphons were "soft" gryphons, with literally all the sharp edges removed; their beaks chamfered, and talons carefully filed so as never to cause harm to anyone, especially small children. They were timid and shy, painfully so, but with enough time became fluffy, feathery companions who just wanted to lay with their heads in our laps or cuddle up with us in bed or on it and be petted, cooing softly.

Of course, we were utterly furious at what had been done to our companions--but we couldn't go through the portal on a roaring rampage of revenge... because the cruel race who'd made them had died out long ago, from a genetic illness of their own making; the sweet irony. All we could do... was give these gryphons the best lives possible; we shamelessly spoiled them, petting, preening, grooming, loving and doting on them; wiping away their tears when they cried, being far better 'owners' then their creators ever were. In turn, the gryphons near-proudly became the best pets and companions they could be for us, delighting in being professionally groomed and prepared for shows, and outright bragging when one showed off a brand-new collar, or other accessories, or boasting over which human gave him or her the best name!