Rum and Coke: Three Short Stories from a Furry Convention
### Preface I spend a lot of my time thinking and writing about the furry fandom. It's something that's near and dear to me, and I would have been a much different person in life without it, and I don't think that would've been for the better, either....
Post-op images
Saturday is for mechanics. Sunday is for terror. Monday is for acceptance. Tuesday is for purging. Wednesday is for anxiety. Thursday is for sleep. * * * When I am asleep The world changes around me. In spring, I am changed. * * * I'm no good at...
Reading
All readings are the same. They all begin the same way, with stepping off to some sim, known or unknown, where she would arrive a good hour early. There, she would wait or walk or drink her coffee or tea. Would it be a bookshop this time? Would it be a...
Opportunity paralysis
## Rena Hatch — 2368 I thought it would be different. I thought it would be cleaner, maybe. Cleaner, or far more grimy, all exposed pipes and puddles of unexplained liquids pooling in dark corners while the brittle lighting of shitty fluorescents...
Motes Played — Chapter 2
# Motes — 2362 Motes played. Tonight, she played hard. It was a Big Motes night. It was a human night. It was a grown up night. It was a night for hovering somewhere between twenty and twenty-five. It was a night for standing as tall as Beholden,...
Beneath her coat was a whole identity
Beneath her coat was a whole identity: A subtle form of ideas under soft fur, A constantly shifting mass of meaning... And somehow, she pulled it off. She would go for days without shedding a thing, And then, as if a bottle rolling off a...
Every Angel is Terrifying
I take the bus to the edge of Sawtooth, basically as close as I can get to the highway on local transit. Beyond here it's all industrial. All warehouses and junkyards and hulking, silent buildings painted gray or beige, or not painted at all. Machine...
Prophecies
## Slow Hours — 2401 To step into The Bean Cycle was to be immediately assailed by sound. There was, as to be expected, the clink of glasses and muted howl of steam wands bringing milk up to temperature, but mixed in was the clatter and clicking...
Limerent Object (parts 1-5)
# 1 I wrap emotions in the cool embrace of jargon to soften sharp edges and take the sting out of ones I feel too keenly. It's why I got into this field. It's why I studied what I did. Of course I care for my clients, and of course I love what I do,...
Gigs
_Well, shit._ Winter trudged heavily through the piles of dead leaves lining the gutter, the lynx's broad paws crunching through them. There was a sidewalk, but this wasn't a mood for sidewalks. This wasn't a mood for keeping clean, staying out of the...
Growth
Used to be you and I daily would walk through the fields out back of the house and talk for hours, spilling words and emotions. These walks were our daily devotions to each other over the years. The fields, dotted with ponds, were our space. We...
Shared Moment
## Ioan Balan — 2326 There comes a point in every relationship, Ioan supposed, when the thing stops feeling new and starts feeling like routine. Ey even looked it up one point, shortly after ey and May Then My Name Die With Me and gone on a brief dive...