FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 2

As I finally start to regain consciousness the first thing I am made painfully aware of is the aching in my head. It is not so much the dull throb of a headache, nor is it responding to all the sounds coming to my ears, as loud as they all are. Which means it isn't a migraine either. Nor is it the piercing stabbing of a bump on the head or a cut. Instead it simply feels as if someone is constantly sticking needles into every part of my skull. It is like the sensation of every part of my head from the tip of my nose to the tips of my ears has fallen asleep for a really long time and are just now getting blood flow again, and not the pleasant, numbing kind of fallen asleep feeling either. Wait, that can't be right. I release a sound that seems to be somewhere between being a moan and a whining sound and although I know it must be mine, it sounds somehow alien to me as I force open my eyes to try and get a feel for my surroundings. At first I'm nearly blinded by all the white as my eyes try to constrict enough so that I can see clearly. Not bothering to move any part of my body I soon find myself not on the concrete ground near the school or in a bed in a hospital nor even in any civilized area at all. Instead I find myself staring out into an open forest, blanketed with snow that is more than willingly reflecting the already bright sunshine.

"About time you came around, I was starting to get bored." a moderately high pitched, almost child-like voice speaks seemingly from nowhere.

"Now, now," another voice similarly coming from nowhere responds, this one has a lot softer tone, almost water-like in it's flow, "no need to be so rude. One can hardly blame him considering all he's been through."

I raise my head to try and see if I can find the voice but all I see is a bunch of white snow and some trees.

"Hello?" I call out. "Where are you? I can't see you at all."

"Close your eyes," the soft voice speaks, "You'll be able to see us easier that way."

Having nothing better to really do I close my eyes and wait for someone to magically appear and tell me to open my eyes, but no such instruction, instead I only stare at the near blackness of my closed eyes.

"Okay, now what?"

"Visualize yourself walking through your mind,"_The higher pitched one begins, _"now walk towards your mind, feel around it for the deepest portions of it, that's where you'll find us"

Even though I am fairly certain that the act of doing so will accomplish nothing I follow the instructions and mentally picture myself walking down a large purple hallway, complete with a series of unmarked doors. Though I am not tempted to try and see where one of these doors lead I am impressed that I was able to visualize this so easily. As difficult it may be to try and head to anywhere in particular in a non-branching hallway to nowhere, I try to imagine myself walking towards the center of my head. Eventually I start to feel a slight tingling sensation in the back of my mind and see in the distance of the hallway a small light beginning to form but as soon as I take notice of it the hallway itself disappears and I find myself instead in a large, empty room. While standing there I find myself suddenly not alone as a small little fox walks into the room from the center. Its appearance is rather odd, almost looking like someone dipped it in some bright yellow paint. Yet the fox doesn't really seem to mind. It quickly sits down and stares at me with those bright yellow eyes, its matching colored tail moving playfully back and forth behind it. Even though I can only just barely make it out on the bright yellow fur I also notice that on the center of its forehead is a small, white symbol of some kind.

"Hi there," the little fox speaks cheerfully in the child-like tone from earlier.

I stand in confusion at what I'm seeing. Having been not expecting the slightest bit to be talking to a bright yellow fox in what must be somewhere in my own head I end up stuttering the first thing that came to my head.

"You're... yellow."

The little fox jumps up and down gleefully and spins a little bit, "You are correct! Guess what, I learned a new trick that I can do in here. Wanna see?"

Still trying to come to terms with my current situation I merely nod, or at least I assume the action I am doing is a nod since I haven't really felt like risking my sanity even more by checking to see what I look like in here. The little fox seems overjoyed at my apparent agreement and promptly bursts into flames, "Yay!" it laughs in a slightly higher pitched voice.

Suddenly faced with now a flaming fox that's jumping around just as normal (if normal can be used in this situation) I emit a sound that sounds somewhere between a 'meep' and a 'yip' and take a step back. The fox, on the other hand seems almost overjoyed at the prospect of being a living torch. Before I can react the fox then jumps at me but never even crosses half the distance before the flames dissolve and with it the fox, leaving not even ashes behind. After a moment of silence I finally get enough sense of mind to try and find out what just happened.

"Little fox?" I ask.

"Up here!" is the cheerful reply in that childlike tone, "though if I were to really be a Little Fox then I'd have to be asleep."

Tilting my head back I do see the small, bright yellow fox, still alive, but now is bouncing around on the ceiling just as it was on the ground.

"How can that be physically possible?"

"Simple really," the rather calm and flowing voice from earlier also adds, "When you are in a realm created and ruled by the imagination, what place do the laws of reality, physics included, really have?"

I look at the speaker and find myself staring at another painted individual, this one a deep orange. His appearance is a lot more civilized than the yellow fox is, wearing long, orange robes that cover most of his body and sleeves that come up to half way up his arm. The rest of his arm does not look even remotely human. Long, orange fur adorns the skin of his arm and at the end where the hand would be is a large canine paw. Though the robe prevents me from easily seeing them my guess is that this orange fox's feet are similarly fashioned. His face is very fox-like as well, though the forehead seems pushed upwards by a noticeable amount. Adorning the space between the fox's rather large ears is what I would imagine is the same symbol as the fox above us has in almost the same spot. His eyes, however, stand out the most. Whereas the rest of his appearance gives the sense that if bipedal, intelligent fox things were possible that he would be believable as being a living example of one; his eyes do not. It is not so much that his eyes are hollow or blank but that it doesn't even get that far. His eyes seem to be of the sort that if one were to shine a light through them they would find nothing. He notices my looking at him and spreads his arms wide and spins in a slow circle; I spot a very noticeable tent in the back of his robe where his tail must be.

"So what do you think?" He asks.

Not really even thinking about my response it just comes out of my mouth, "the eyes need work."

"I know, I'll eventually get it right."

I am tempted to try and give an encouraging word but am distracted by both the ceiling fox and the fact my head is starting to swim with the sensation that several dozen voices are all trying to whisper into my head at a volume just below what I can make out as well as some really strange feeling that almost feels like a concentrated heat source at several different parts of my head, each one my mind is assigning for whatever reason the direction and distance to each signal. When I try and focus on the one coming in my general direction I get the odd mental image of a lot of multi-colored bar codes all wrapped around each other into a spheroid shape. The strangest thing about it is that it doesn't really seem like something that'd be impossible to decipher.

"Can you get down from there?" the Orange fox asks the Yellow one on the ceiling.

"Fine, fine, I'll be right down," the Yellow fox responds dismissively before beginning to dig a hole in the ceiling.

The parts of the ceiling that the yellow one digs up don't actually fall to the ground. In fact it instead just flies down a small bit from being pushed down from the digging fox but then "falls" back to the ceiling, as if gravity were reversed up there. After it disappears in the hole it creates in the ceiling, the ground in one part of this room starts to push up and sure enough out comes the little yellow fox, having somehow gotten to below the floor instead of above the ceiling.

"Are you all right?" the orange fox asks after turning back towards me, "you seem rather distracted."

"I finished running the diagnostic," a new, more feminine voice sounds from somewhere.

I turn to look at the source of the voice and find myself staring at yet another one of these painted foxes, this one painted a sky blue. I'm almost starting to wonder if in this place I'm painted green but still refuse to check. Her appearance is much more like the yellow fox but larger. The main distinguishing feature about her that the other two, in particular the yellow one is that she has wings of some sort. Except where one would normally expect to either see the feathers of a bird-like wing or the membrane of a bat-like wing there are several rigid tails; each about as thick as a normal fist. Her forehead also is raised in the same manner as the orange fox's as well as having the same marking in the center of it. Her size, though, is larger than the other two, being about as big as a small horse. The pounding in my head is now considerably stronger, and the one signal that was coming closer before is rather close now, just outside of seeing distance; or so some part of my mind tells me.

"Those wings look really weird," I blurt out without even thinking about it.

"Hello, Blue Cheese Lady!" the little yellow fox shouts before leaping at some unknown object.

"I told you before not to call me that. As for the wings I felt like trying something new."

"Blue Cheese Lady?" I inquire towards the orange one who seems the most apt at explaining things of the bunch.

"It's a joke on Yellow's part. You see while you were unconscious he was as he always is when bored and got on Blue's nerves. Eventually she got tired of this and buried him in cheese. That only made things worse since he found it hilarious and started calling her Blue Cheese Lady. Eventually she claimed that something felt off and left to go run a diagnostic. And that brings us to the present." He turns and addresses the blue fox, "So what did you find out?"

"Well before I get to that I think someone here needs to open their eyes seeing as we have company."

"What?" I ask, caught off guard.

"Well it would be rude of you to have your eyes closed when you are clearly awake when there is someone that has come to talk with you."

"Oh. Right," I remark quickly and try and force open my eyes again to the blinding light.

Strangely, as I strain to get my eyes used to the light again I find that I haven't actually left the room. I am seeing in what I assume is the real world but at the same time another part of me is still standing in that big room with the painted foxes. I'm almost assured of my apparent insanity as my eyes start to regain focus what I find in front of me is nothing short of the largest fox I have ever seen staring at me with some sort of curious expression on its face.