FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

I'm not sure why I'm surprised at the room, given how many other things have surprised me already by being contrary to expectation. But with everything else, the first surprising thing about the room is that it's painted a dull beige color. On top of that it's extremely simple and generic, about what you'd expect from a cheap motel room or something. But there is only one bed, implying that despite the number of people supposedly living in this place everyone gets their own room. Beyond that, standard dresser, nightstand, closet and nothing else.

"Don't worry about the color. They'll ask you in a week or two what color you would like your room to be and then they'll fix it right up one night when you're on mission. This is the generic package that we offer to all newbies. This is yours for as long as you want it to be. If you want to add furniture or change out what's here you are more than free to do so and they'll take care of installing it for you once you've paid from the wages they give us. In case you were wondering the two week delay is the result that some find sleeping alone too difficult and move over to more shared quarters. This facility is designed to be able to hold one hundred people but there's never really any more than fifty here at any one time. So there's never really any shortage of rooms. At any rate, drop your mid uniform on the bed for now and we'll go get you something to eat. And then I'll probably go and give you your spell book."

"My spell book," I reiterate, choosing to take time and slow the pace down a bit by hanging the uniform up in the closet rather than blindly obeying and tossing it on the bed. Before leaving I cast a glance at the bed, wondering if it'll feel differently than normal. After all I am now covered in fur and will be losing that fur over time. Will it feel much warmer now and get colder as I regain myself?

"Yes, everyone gets one. Well, you get one for free. If you destroy it you have to pay quite a bit of money to get them to send you another. But considering that none of us have ever used magic before coming here and we don't really have the time to devote months of training to learning how to cast spells it is sort of a necessity for everyone to have a copy of all the spells that we can perform. It is a really big sucker I'll tell you that. I think it's on the order of about two thousand pages thick, give or take. And you are more than free to write on it all you want. There is no real power in the books. It's basically like one giant instruction manual for how to cast any and all spells that you may ever have a need to use."

"Well then is it a lot of memorization? I don't think I could memorize a two thousand page book," I comment, heading back to the door as she hands me a key with a number on it. Once out I turn around and look up and see the number on top of the door. Well I guess I can at least know which room is mine easily enough.

"Not quite. You'll probably only ever use a small fraction of what's there. And not as much is verbal as you may thing. We have a few spell labs that you'll have to spend some time in every day for at least the first few weeks that you can use to practice the spells you see in there. Use that as much as you need to, it's been warded so that no amount of magic you can produce can do any damage to the surroundings. Once you've used it a few times and get the feel for how to use magic you'll get the hang of things

I shrug and allow myself to be led once again, choosing to let my eyes wander. It is almost a rather start realization of just how difficult it is here. Reflecting on it, at least ninety percent of all the people I've seen were at least significantly bestial in appearance. Implying either they have only just recently had to release themselves to their animal state and/or have already succumbed that much that there's little left to their humanity. Which makes the one human looking individual all the more striking. In a land of freaks, the mundane stand out like a sore thumb. And yet no one else seems to be paying him any mind, implying that their presence is nothing new. On top of that he seems to be treated just like anyone else is in this place. And yet, I could not detect the slightest bit of animality in him. But for the time being I just file that off in the back of my head. There are far more urgent matters to attend to. Foremost among them is getting food. As we enter the cafeteria I'm greeted by a squat little thing, doesn't even look like it was ever human. And I suppose it is entirely possible that it isn't.

"Open up," the thing garbles, a low croak in their mouth as they hop up to be able to get to a better height to see. I open my mouth and find it can open up a lot wider than I would have thought possible and I suddenly find a hand reaching into my mouth, feeling along the teeth and gums.

"Okay good. Good teeth. Will give good food right away," the thing chirps before hopping down and disappearing behind a counter. "Every mouth different. Different needs. Different wants. Good mouth. Wants good food. Healthy food. Tasty food. I give. Make full. Make happy. You trust. Come back later I give different food. You see. Still good."

I blink at the thing, trying to make sense of it all. And before I know it there is a tray being somehow placed on the top of the counter and various items that look like food seem to appear on it, floating out of nowhere it seems. But then again, in a place full of magic, it probably makes sense for a chef to not need to have their hands physically making the food at any given time. After a few more items are put onto it the tray seems to float over to me, resting just above where I could grab it, and the moment my arms touch the bottom of the tray it lowers and then I feel its full weight, as if some part of me can tell when there is no more magic being put to work on the item. The cafeteria itself is about what I'd expect from such a place. A lot of standard tables strewn about a fairly large room; a bunch of fairly simple chairs lying around all the tables, though it is clear that they are all designed with the tailed in mind. And given this place an almost disgustingly colorful display of yellows, oranges and greens.

I find a table myself rather than having Siren lead me to one and sit down. Siren apparently was waiting for her own tray of food anyway. Still not feeling exactly hungry just yet I take a moment to look at what food I was given. A large cup of some dark liquid or other. Doesn't have any fizz coming off it so probably not some sort of soda. Probably a kind of juice and hopefully not one of those protein shakes that always taste awful. Then again, I was told things will taste differently with this mouth. Curious I stick my muzzle up to it and stick my tongue out and into the liquid to see what it is. Yup, just juice. Seems to be a sort of mix between cranberry juice and apple juice. The food portion seems to be one large plate with all of the food all mixed together. Understandably enough a large portion of the food seems to be comprised of some form of meat though from what animal I cannot say. I am somewhat surprised by the amount of vegetable matter in this. I can pick out some celery, tomatoes, carrots and some others diced small enough and disguised enough by the sauce on the pasta surrounding it all that I cannot tell.

Well at least my food looks normal for the most part. I was half dreading coming here and finding that the only food they felt deigned to offer me was like a dead mouse or something. But then again, thinking on it that would probably not be something they'd do. The attitude I've seen thus far seems to imply something akin to "Yeah we know you'll end up failing the task eventually, but we'll help you resist it nonetheless." Giving me food fit for an animal would be quite contrary to that extent. Given a dead mouse to eat it would be a challenge to my own humanity, to eat and surrender a bit of myself or to refuse and starve to death. Though I suppose they could have just chopped up the rat and that's what the meat is. I immediately take a fork and stab a bit of meat and put it into my mouth. Cow. Thank god, though oh so delicious. I never knew cow could taste so good. I close my eyes partly and just rub the bit I had grabbed around on my tongue, savoring it as much as I can. As such I don't see when Siren decides to sit down across from me.

"The celery is for the texture in case you were wondering," she states plainly, waking me out of my stupor. "It probably won't taste that good by itself. Your body can't actually handle celery. Well neither can a human's, really. But yours won't even really try to break it down, while a human's will just really suck at it. But it is a good source of fiber and as a more carnivorous species your mouth will probably start craving something to gnaw on if you don't get something at least a little crunchy in every meal."

"And the carrots and stuff?" I ask, wondering if they're just for show too. Though looking at her dish, though appetizing to my current eyes is also appalling. It's like a shredded meat chili but the meat wasn't really cooked all that thoroughly, giving it a very red and wet appearance.

"Oh, you can digest those just fine. Else Ivan would not have given you them. That imp can tell exactly what a body needs by feeling the teeth. Your species must be more of an omnivorous sort, able to eat both animal and vegetable though you still look like an animal preferred level. Me on the other hand. I'm an obligate. I can't really handle anything that isn't meat or protein. Can make for rather boring food long run as it means basically just meat and beans and fish for me every single meal. But I got used to it eventually."

"I see," I comment sheepishly, only now realizing that in that regard I probably have come out ahead of many. I can only imagine how hard it'd be to really thrive and not resist when you have to eat grass or something. But the taste of the meat was not enough and it is there, so I lower my fork down to my plate and begin to get another bit, trying to stay at least somewhat restrained about it the entire time. The last thing I want to ever do, appearance or otherwise is to be compared to eating like a dog.

I choose to eat mostly in silence, listening to what Siren has to say when she does say something but not really making much conversation. My attention is more about my surroundings, watching the people watch me, trying to get a feel for what they are thinking of when they look at me as well as what kind of person they may be. About half way into the meal I see a large, lizard-like individual with huge muscles begin to walk towards me. I guess that's what is likely meant for heavy equipment?

"So, is this Tulip?" They ask. From the tone I cannot tell if male or female, though I am leaning male considering the build.

"Rose, actually," I comment before going back to my food, keeping a wary eye on them.

"Red rose, makes sense I guess. Got it," they reply, grabbing a nearby chair and sitting in it backwards, resting their hands on the back of the chair. "Shouldn't be too hard for me to remember. Anyway, I'm Hammer, I'm to be your team leader."

"Um, hi," I respond, offering my hand to shake and half dreading that he'll end up crushing it in his own hands. Thankfully it doesn't but I can even tell the very start difference between us even in that one aspect. His hands are a lot bigger than mine, almost twice the size, but with very blunted and thick fingers while mine seem to be rather delicate. I'm hoping that that has more to do with the body than the sex.

"So Rose," he continues, "if I may be so bold would you be able to tell me what elements they put you as? Given your appearance I'm guessing you're probably not designed to be in the thick of it as I am. So it'd be a good idea to get a feel for what uses you have so I know how best to strategize our team to complement each other the most."

"That doctor said fire and healing," I sigh, knowing how embarrassing it must be to be effectively saying I have not much offensive use to anyone, especially to someone built like a tank.

"Hmm, all right. I'll see what I can come up with for you. I'll probably have you in the back, then. It would help me a lot if when you work on spells you can get really good at some long range spells. That way I can have you pot shotting as much as possible and just have people rotate to you for healing. But even still you will need to be able to defend yourself if you did have to go toe to toe with someone, so I expect to see you at combat training in an hour. Understood?"

"Yeah, sure thing," I mumble, but rationalize to myself that even if it is nice just lounging around I would need to learn how to fight and how to kill if I wanted to have any chance of staying alive. The rest of the meal is pretty uneventful. A few others came to chat me up a bit, to get to know the new person a bit more and thankfully none of the male ones tried to hit on me again. Not sure how I would have managed if that was a reoccurring thing I had to deal with. I do find that I have to pretty much pin my ears to my head a lot of the time. And breathe through my mouth almost exclusively. My ears want to explore, to trace each and every sound going on and my nose wants to memorize each scent, find out who it belongs to and what I should do about them and as I know these are not good things to allow to happen I try to deprive both of any attention.