FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Not much time left. I can already feel the prickle of the moon's caress across my neck signaling my approaching change. At least here I can keep the Beast at bay a little while longer while I finish getting ready. I stash my backpack with a spare change of clothes in one of the drawers, and then fumble my fingers through my shirt pocket for the cellar's key. Finding nothing there, I feel a wave of panic heightened by the rush of this cursed night I've endured every month for the last year. I desperately hope that it's only a simple oversight, and I scurry my hands through every pocket of my pants searching for the brass shape that would quell my fears. Still nothing.

Every pocket is the same, and I scan my eyes across the wooden floor of the cabin, thinking I might have dropped it in my haste to head inside. I search every nook and cranny of the cabin as the low, dreadfully familiar heat across my body begins setting in. My thoughts grow hazy and unfocused for seconds at a time until I slap my face and shake off to regain my focus towards my single task. Find that key.

I throw open the drawer where I had stashed my backpack and fling open its contents to the ground with abandoned disregard for any sense of neatness. A few wrinkles wasn't going to kill anyone. Not finding this key might.

I scour through the extra clothes again and again, but am unable to find the object of my desire, growling in frustration as I hurl the empty backpack across the room. I bundle myself into a crouch, tucking my head between my knees as I fervently try to amass some semblance of calm, breathing in and out, in and then out once more to calm the Beast scrabbling up for purchase inside my mind. Maybe I dropped it on the path leading in from where I had parked the car.

I head outside into the cool of the autumn night and avert my eyes from the silvery gem of the night sky looming over me. Oh how she delights in my struggle, but I will not be bested by her today! The litter of fallen leaves makes it tough to distinguish much of anything out here, let alone the small shape cradling my salvation. The levies of my resolve faltered as the hunger set in, an insatiable craving through my body to give in to the animal coursing through my veins.

"The key, the key THE KEY! Where is it?" I scream just as the heat transitions to pain racking across my body once more. Now forced to the ground I can do little to hold back the onslaught of the moon's burn, heaving heavy breaths as the bones of my hands and feet start to crack like twigs. The squelching of my bones sliding across heated muscles makes me instantly nauseated. Hair thickens, then blossoms into scattered patches of fur. I tear at my clothes to bring momentary relief as my spine cracks and lengthens, thick claws the color the night sky erupting from underneath the bed of my fingernails.

I ask a force greater than myself to hear my plea and stop this tragic abomination of nature from rising forth, but the gods have turned a deaf ear to me tonight. With only myself to count on, I mount a desperate, last attempt to keep the Beast back, but I'm too far gone. The remainder of my humanity dissolves into the ancient ferocity of the wilds, and now complete I throw back my head and howl a triumphant, haunting song that crashes through the trees.

This night the Beast shall roam freely, and immersed in its comforting, dark cloak it will not be denied its nourishment.