FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Her name is pronounced Jee-ar-eeh-en

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A voice emanated from the mountains. It was a droning and humming voice, deep and warm and tired. No one else lived around to hear the voice, just Giarien. If the forest creatures could hear it, they did not give any signs of this outwardly. Perhaps she was the only living being audience to it. If only she could speak back to the voice, this she wished. O voice, why do you sound like your life is being taken from you piece by piece?

Sometimes the voice talked about nature and beauty, and how it wished it was free from its earthen prison that was the mountain. How if only it could roam the forests as it once used to and listen to birds sing. Giarien wished she could seek it out and free it, but the mountain was a treacherous place. Monsters roamed, poisonous plants grew, and as much as she pitied the voice, she did not want to die.

On other days the voice was angry. A quiet anger. It would calmly calculate for hours what it would do for revenge once it escaped, who it it would torture and kill, and then after some time it would become apologetic. So sorry, so sorry, what could come over me to say such awful things! To this Giarien would think, 'The mountain, apparently, has come over you.'

So sorry, so sorry...

And this would also go on for hours. Sometimes it drove Giarien crazy to listen to the voice. She couldn't turn it off when it spoke. It was always there, the mountain prisoner. She couldn't hate it when it was quiet. When it was quiet, she felt like it had been defeated. Like it had given up on seeing the outside again. Like it had lost hope.

When it was quiet for too long, Giarien would whisper to herself or sing. She felt empty without noise. She would sometimes idly repeat what she had heard the voice say, or she would talk to the voice as if it could hear, or just make unintelligible sounds to cram into the silence. Noise until she was all outta air, a pause as she inhaled, and then noise again.

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The voice had been silent. Giarien hadn't heard its utterances for a week now. It had grown quieter and then cut off entirely. Perhaps it had escaped and ran into a far off land. She felt a bit like she had been abandoned. The voice had left her to her lonesome. Then she heard the faintest of sounds. The voice. "I'm... No air. No air."

So the voice was suffocating in the mountains! Well what could Giarien do? She was just one dragon-woman after all; the mountain was too dangerous for one like her. "No air. No air." Her heart trembled at the resignation in the voice. It was all she could do not to weep for the voice that had kept her company for years as she lived gathering herbs and tending to a garden in her forest.

The voice drawled. "If only... If only I could see the sun one last time." It was slow and quiet. "If only that delightful burn could endow my eyes. One last breath of air, greet me with kindness. One breath... Two days... If I talk it won't last so long, stupid me..." And the voice became silent.

Two days before it would be forced to succumb to death. Throwing caution to the wind, Giarien packed a bag of things, tossed on a cloak, and exited her solitary forest cabin. She headed to the mountain.