Threads on a Tapestry

Story by Radical Gopher on SoFurry

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#1 of Patterns of the Grand Design


I wrote this story in one day, inspired by a dream I had. Here it is for you to enjoy. There is explicit sex involved, so of course it is only intended for ADULTS over 18.

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THREADS ON A TAPESTRY

"Sign here please," said the truck driver.

Victor Peabody adjusted his glasses and began reading through the delivery order. "One Persian tapestry, circa 9th century; two Queen Anne tables, circa 18th century and a brass telescope circa the 16th century." He looked at each item's shipping document, matching the serial numbers to those on the crates. "Looks good," he said, scrawling his name across the bottom of the e-page. He handed the computer clipboard to the driver who printed out a hard copy to give back to the middle-aged fox.

"There you go, sir. Enjoy!"

The driver closed the back of his hover-truck, hopped off the loading dock, climbed into the cab and smoothly floated away from the building.

Victor pushed a button on his control pad and a heavy steel door lowered itself into position, shutting off the noise of the outside world. He walked across the dock and grabbed a set of grav-handles which he attached to the crate holding the Queen Anne tables. Pressing a button, he took hold of one of the handles and effortlessly lifted the crate off the floor. He moved it over to the freight elevator, then repeated the process with the tapestry. The telescope box was small enough that he simply carried it himself.

The tables and telescope he delivered to the inspection room on sub-level three. The tapestry though had to go all the way down to sub-level ten, his department. The freight elevator doors opened and Victor carefully moved the crate through the storage room, past row upon row of hermetically sealed lockers. Once a painting, sculpture or tapestry was cleaned and examined by the museum, it was placed in stasis until needed for display. It was the fox's job to make sure each new item was properly cleaned and ready for inspection.

The fox-morph reached the preparation room and placed the crate on a large worktable. He carefully removed the frame and seals then slid the rolled up tapestry into position. The automated worktable took over from there, carefully rolling the fabric out, smoothing it flat and clamping it into position. Using the machine reduced the chance of any unwanted material, including his own copper-red fur, from getting on the tapestry. Victor brought the table up into a vertical position so he could get a good look at the image woven into the cloth. The scene depicted was a battle between a lion and a unicorn, the former in attack, the latter defending its foal. The fox had to admit, it was a beautifully preserved sample of the weaver's craft. He wondered if the two creatures were representative of other things. Good verses evil, perhaps? Whatever meanings lay behind the image one thing was certain, it definitely needed a good cleaning. Dr. Vasquez, the assistant curator, would have a fit if it weren't properly prepared for inspection.

The fox pressed another series of buttons, lowering the table and positioning the scrubber bar twelve inches above the cloth. The bar scanned the material, automatically determining the appropriate settings based on the age, delicacy and thickness of the tapestry. A soft green light began fanning its way from one side of the fabric to the other. Several years worth of dirt and dust gently evaporated, leaving the material itself untouched. Victor looked at his watch. The whole process would take about fifteen minutes, just enough time to get some coffee.

The todd sat in the break room, trying to relax. No food or drinks were ever allowed into the main storage or work rooms, so the employees had made a special effort to make the room particularly comfortable. Victor slowly stirred his drink, quietly thinking. Of late, he'd been feeling restless. His job, though rewarding, was pretty much at a dead end. Fur morphs, despite society's insistence to the contrary, were still subject to a glass ceiling, especially here at the museum. To top it off, Celia, his ex-wife had recently remarried. While that saved him from any further alimony payments, it still left a hole in his life he couldn't seem to fill. He disliked being alone in his small apartment and had been spending more and more time at work where he could easily distract himself. He silently wondered if he would ever meet the right kind of fur. He finished his coffee, checked his watch and went back to work, pushing the thoughts from his mind once more.

He returned to the preparation room just as the scrubber bar was being lifted from the table. He brought the table back to the vertical position again and examined the effect. It was startling. Threads of gold, silver and copper shown brilliantly in the light. The other colors appeared just as brilliant as if the tapestry had been woven yesterday. This worried the fox. Twelve centuries should have bleach some of the original color. Anything this vibrant might be a fake. He hoped that wasn't the case. The last time the museum had purchased a fake at least ten staff members had been fired.

Victor checked the scrubber readout to see how old the fabric was. According to the machine the threads and weave were all a perfect match for something made in the 9th century. The only things that didn't make sense were the pigments.

A small flashing light on the display caught the fox-morph's eye. The scrubber had been unable to properly clean one corner of the tapestry due to foreign object interference. Victor grabbed his work kit from underneath a nearby desk and went to have a closer look. He found a 2 inch wad of gum, maybe a century old, covering a part of the pattern work near the corner. Someone had apparently been using this beautiful piece of art as an ordinary carpet. The thought of people walking across the tapestry caused him to grimace in disgust.

He went to work with his kit, slowly applying a specially designed cleaning solution that would loosen the gum without harming the threads underneath. The fox worked for an hour, lifting the offending material one small piece at a time. It wasn't until he'd gotten all of the gum out that he finally realized what lay hidden underneath. Many Persian tapestries used border pattern such as stars and moons or various types of animals. The same was true here, with this one exception. There, woven neatly in the corner was the image of a lamp.

The todd hastily searched the rest of the tapestry, but found only the one image. It obviously wasn't a part of the overall design. He wondered if perhaps it was a weaver's mark, like an artist's signature on a painting. The fox-morph took out yet another bottle and gently brushed it's amber liquid across the corner. The dirt darkening the area quickly loosened. He blew on it, making sure there were no loose threads then took out a clean, specially treated cloth rag and dabbed it on the image.

Victor was suddenly knocked backward by an explosive flash. He landed painfully on his tail. A cloud of bluish-white smoke filled the room causing the fox to gag and sneeze violently. From within the cloud stepped a figure. The todd's mouth dropped open in shock and surprise. There before him stood the most beautiful anthrop-vixen he'd ever seen.

She was about six feet tall, soft, curvaceous and endowed with a firm, perfectly proportioned pair of breasts. Her fur was a deep sapphire blue. The flash of her muzzle, neck and torso were a lighter shade of powder blue. Her hair was a dark bluish-black, as was the fur on her hands, forearms and feet. She was dressed in a colorful, Middle-Eastern dancer's costume, the material of which was translucent and hid little. Priceless jewelry was draped all across her body. Her scent was of vanilla and strawberries; her eyes, the color of amethysts. They quickly focused on the todd, studying him silently for a moment.

"Well," she huffed, crossing her arms. "This is certainly unexpected." The todd thought her voice was like the soft tinkling of bells.

"Excuse me?" said Victor.

The blue-furred vixen put a finger to her chin. "And it talks too... Will wonders never cease?" She pirouetted, vanishing in a swish of smoke to reappear behind the fox-morph. She pinched him playfully on the rump, swirling away again even as he yelped and spun around.

"It's truly amazing," echoed the disembodied voice as it fluttered around the room. "You fall asleep for several hundred years and mankind goes and changes all the rules on you. Humans are so marvelously unpredictable."

"What? You think I'm human?"

She giggled, twirling out of a cloud of smoke so close to him that he could feel her breasts flattened against his back. "Silly boy... of course you aren't human. You're obviously some kind of construct." She wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder.

"I'm not a construct," Victor corrected. "I'm a Zorr, a naturally born fox-morph. My great, great, great, great grandparents were the constructs."

"I'm sure they were," she teased, ruffling the fur under his chin. She waltzed away when he reached up to take her hand.

He turned around looking for her but she had vanished again. "Well, I know who I am," he said, defiantly. "But you still haven't told me who you are."

There was a moment of silence, then her voice rang out in peals of laughter. "Oh come now!" she mocked. "Don't tell me you've never heard of me before. Don't you read your own fables and legends? You rub the lamp and I appear."

"What lamp?"

She reappeared next to the tapestry and bent over into an erotic pose, her rump and tail held high, her finger pointing to the woven image of the lamp. "Why this one, dear boy," she said with sensuous smile.

"But that's a tapestry," Victor objected.

"Yes, it is," the vixen giggled, spinning away again to reappear sitting atop a nearby desk. "That was my 11th master's idea. He wanted to hide the lamp, but always be able to see it at a glance. He ordered me to turn my lamp into a spool of golden thread and weave it into a tapestry. He was a very clever man in some ways, too clever really."

"How so?"

"He was caught cheating at a game of chance. The other players objected by cutting off his head."

"Ouch," the fox winced.

"That's what he said, or would have if he could have," she replied, somersaulting off the desk and vanishing in a puff of smoke, only to reappear sitting on his shoulder.

"Ack!" the todd cried, suddenly overbalanced by the added weight.

"Sorry!" she giggled, vanishing again. An oversized beanbag chair suddenly materialized in front of Victor and he fell face first into it, unhurt. He rolled onto his back and she reappeared, sitting on his opposite shoulder. She was now about the size and weight of a doll. "Magic is sometimes like writing. Your brain works faster than your hands." She stood and twirled across his chest to sit, cross-legged on his stomach. "Any questions?"

Victor thought for a moment, "Okay, here's one... Why a vixen? I thought Genies were all a hundred feet tall and male."

She lay down on his stomach, her hands on her chin and looked up at him. "Silly boy. First of all I'm not a Genie, I'm a Djin. We're only called Genies in stories that were told by drunken Crusaders in the Middle-Ages. Second, I manifest based on an idealized version of my master's desires, female if it's a he, male if it's a she. What you see is your own dream girl, or in this case, vixen."

"How many other masters have you served?"

She counted on her fingers for a moment. "Fifteen masters and seven mistresses. You're master number sixteen, or should be... Wait a moment, let me check." She vanished and the todd suddenly felt something crawling around inside his shorts He felt a pair of tiny hands run themselves across his manhood sending a pleasurable shock through his body.

"Hey!"

She reappeared a moment later, a grin on her face. "Yup. Number sixteen."

"So you've been a female sixteen time?"

"Well, fourteen actually. Two of my masters were, shall we say, inclined in a different direction."

"You mean they were gay?"

"Whatever." she said with a bored yawn. "I found them totally lacking in imagination."

The todd smiled at her. "If I remember my stories correctly, you're here to grant me three wishes, right?"

She shrugged, spread her legs across Victor's stomach and pushed herself into a very sensuous position. "Well, if three is all you want..."

"Wait, wait... Are you saying the wishes are unlimited?"

The Djin nodded giving him a sly look. "As many as you want... As long as you can keep it up!"

"Any limitations?"

"Only three," she said. "I can't force other people to fall in love with you; I can't bring anyone back from the dead; and I can't kill anyone... Well except maybe lawyers!"

"That sounds pretty familiar."

"What can I say," she grinned. "Occasionally the stories get some things right."

"How soon can I make my first wish?" Victor asked.

"Anytime after I'm ready."

"Huh?"

The air swirled around the fox and he found the blue vixen once again her full size and snuggling next to him in the chair. "The laws of magic require that to cast a really big spell, I have to attract a large store of manna, what you call energy, into myself. The easiest way to do so is to draw upon the very act of creation as a source."

Victor looked at her, slightly confused. "What act of creation?"

"Sex!" she whispered hungrily. "Sex!"

"You mean you and I...?"

"Why do you think I manifest the way I do. It's all part of the equation." She reached across the chair and gently ruffled his hair. "The fun part, that is."

"When?"

"Why not right now?" she offered. "unless of course you're doing something more important; or are you afraid someone will see us?"

"It's Saturday," the fox said. "I'm the only one working down here on Saturdays."

"All the better," the Djin responded. She suddenly sat up and straddled the middle-aged fox. "Now, before we start I should have enough magic to give you a gift." She spread her arms wide and closed her eyes. Two bluish-white spheres of manna coalesced in her hands. She brought them together forming a single sphere which she lowered and pressed into Victor's chest. Fire shot through his body and his back arched. He felt as if his flesh were melting away. There was a blinding flash and the pain faded.

He looked up to see the vixen holding a mirror, smiling. What he saw looking back at him was a twenty-one year old version of himself. His face was thinner and his muscle tone had been restored to the days when he was a college athlete.

"Wow! That's one hell of a gift! Thank-you!"

The vixen chuckled. "You don't have to thank me. If the truth be told, it was more of a gift for me than you, though you do benefit from it. I find young men so much more energetic and viral."

"It's still appreciated. Is the effect permanent?"

"Yes," she said, "but it's something I can only do once for each of my masters, so don't ask."

"Why's that?" the todd asked.

"Well, rejuvenating people right and left tends to piss off the Grim Reaper. Believe me, that's one bastard you don't want to have mad at you."

"You mean there's really a Grim Reaper?"

Her laughter echoed long and loud throughout the room. The fox-morph thought the sound was beautiful. "Silly boy... Here you are, about to make the beast with two backs with a real live Djin and you don't believe in the Grim Reaper?"

Victor shrugged. "Hey, at least I'm learning."

"Yes you are," she smiled, leaning over to kiss him full on the mouth. She pulled away briefly to gaze into his eyes. "Let's start with lesson one."

There was a bluish-white flare of magic as the todd's clothes vanished, only to reappear several feet away, freshly cleaned, pressed and folded. He looked up at the Djin. "You didn't have to go to all that trouble."

She smiled at his small display of concern for her. "Don't worry about it," she said coyly. "I never do things by halves." Her own costume vanished except for the jewelry. Leaning forward, she rubbed herself against the todd and began kissing him in earnest, twining her tongue around his and breathing warmly into his mouth.

Victor inhaled her scent and tasted her breath. It was like vanilla and strawberries and it made his senses whirl. He could feel his manhood growing, sliding out of his sheath and up along the Djin's velvet rump.

"Someone's eager to make magic," she chuckled, turning around so she could lick at his growing staff while holding it tightly in both her hands. Not to be out done, the todd began lapping gently at her sex, dipping his tongue in as deeply as possible, sliding it along her walls and up against her nub. Again his senses were overwhelmed by the taste of vanilla and strawberries

The vixen shuddered, squirming with pleasure, and smiled. For once, here was someone as eager to please her as she was to please him. She flicked her tongue around the head of his penis, drinking up the pre cum that leaked from the tip. She lowered her head, taking his rod deep into her throat. She squeezed at it with her throat muscles, even as she massaged his testicles, feeling them tighten in her fingertips. She quickly traced a pattern of blue light across his manhood with her fingers.

Victor groaned. He felt as if he were about to explode in the Djin's mouth, but nothing happened. He reached a peak, but could not find the release his body desired. He panted heavily. "What... What are... you... doing?" he gasped, kneading his fingers across the vixen's ass, grasping at it and squeezing it as if doing so would trigger his own climax.

The Djin murred with pleasure at the attention she was getting. "Just working a little magic so we get the maximum effect." She continued suckling at the todd's shaft, deep throating him time and time again, bringing him to the brink only to suspend his climax with a touch of her fingers.

The fox was having a hard time concentrating. With each near orgasm the sensation in his loins grew, first from a pressure, then to an ache, then burning and finally to a sharp stabbing of pins and needles into his manhood. It was like fire and ice,. It felt equally good and bad. He needed release, He wanted release desperately.

At last the vixen turned around excitedly, moving her hips so his rod was poised to plunge into her dripping sex. "Now," she whispered. "Now I trade thee power for life. Now you will have that which you desire most."

She drove herself onto his shaft, taking him in with one swift movement. Her walls stretched to fit him. They clutched at him pulling him once more to the brink, causing him to shudder fiercely with anticipation. The Djin continued to push herself down and was suddenly surprised as something solid began swelling within her, A knot grew at the base of his shaft. It stretched her, and she found herself unable to move, locked together with her master. In all her years she had never felt anything like it.

Victor's manhood grow within her, driving her closer and closer to a brink she had rarely crossed before. She gasped in both pleasure and surprise, riding the wave to its crest and over. She heard the todd whimpering beneath her and she released her spells. His eyes rolled back into his head; the sensation of ecstasy and release overwhelming everything else.

The air around them filled with a blue glow which the Vixen drank in. The energy merged with her, heightening her senses and expanding her awareness beyond levels that mere mortals could understand. She took it all in, nothing escaped her. Nothing could. She finally collapsed sated, lying exhausted atop her lover, locked together with him for several long, silent minutes.

The todd slowly stirred, opening his eyes and dimly focusing on the incredible beauty of the vixen who lay atop him. Never! Never in his life had he felt anything so complete, anything so compelling. The emptiness he'd felt earlier had vanished, borne away on a cloud of blue, velvet fur. He wrapped his arms around the vixen, drew her tightly against him and kissed her on the forehead. She smiled warmly, sensing the feelings that emanated from him.

"So... How did you like it?" she whispered

"It was wonderful," he murmured dreamily, "so wonderful... I wish you were my mate."

"WHAT! NO! WAIT!, YOU CAN'T..." The Djin's words were cut off as the room pulsed with a fiery blue surge of energy. The wish, a half-formed thought in Victor's mind held more than enough sincerity for it to be granted. Streams of energy flayed around the room and the fox passed out.

He opened his eyes again several minutes later, vaguely aware that something had changed. He looked around, pulling himself out of the oversized beanbag chair. He spotted the vixen sitting across the room at his desk. She was wearing his shirt over her naked, blue fur. Her arms were crossed and her tail thrashed slowly back and forth. The tapestry still hung from the table, but now its colors were dulled by centuries.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" the vixen asked

"I... Uh... Did I make a wish?"

"Did you make a wish? DID YOU MAKE A WISH?" She stood and slowly advanced on the fox as he picked up his pants and struggled into them, balancing on one foot.

"For TWO thousand, SEVEN hundred and FIFTY-THREE years I've wielded power that no mortal could ever dream of possessing themselves, save through me. I have made men kings, built them empires, granted them the treasures of the Pharos, and always; ALWAYS, they craved more. YOU, you upstart little construct. What do you do? Do you ask for POWER, or FAME, or GLORY?"

Her face suddenly softened, glowing with a warmth that made her even more beautiful. She put her arms across his shoulders and stared deeply into his eyes. "No..." she said soothingly. "You asked for me!" She leaned into him and kissed him, slowly and deeply. Victor tenderly wrapped his arms around the vixen They stayed that way for several minutes before finally separating. "Thank-you." she whispered softly.

The todd looked at her, drinking in her beauty. "What happens now?"

"I'm not sure." she said. "I'm still technically a Djin, though in this semi-mortal state I can only wield the most minor of spells. Naturally I'll be hanging out with you for the next sixty or so years, depending on how long you decide to live. Then I'll revert to my true form."

"Is that so bad a fate, living with me as a semi-mortal?"

She looked into his eyes tenderly. "No... not as long as I know I'm loved. It gives me a chance to experience life from a new perspective. I might even try having kits with you, that is, if you want to."

"That would be wonderful."

"Besides," she asserted, "It's much better this way."

"It is?"

"Yes," she smiled coquettishly. "This way, I won't drain a year of your life every time we make love."

"WHAT!"

The End