FSE

Furry search engine

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I stretched as well as an old wolf can, feeling my muscles trying to explain to me, yet again, that they all wanted to be laid tenderly, horizontally, upon the comfort of my bed, rather than more vertically in the office chair in front of my screens and keyboard. I have always loved my sleep, and these days, it seemed as if it were a companion more sought after than any other. Bah. There are still a good few things left for me to do, and I have this strange compulsion to do them, despite my lethargy. It was a question of where to start.

My mentor told of his wondrous room where everything lay before him, waiting to be placed into a story, marvelous adventures that needed only to be found and set free. My own workroom was a bit less inspired. Insufficient shelves for my books (which, I might add, is in no way a reason not to get more books); an astonishing number of DVDs yet to be viewed; attempts at organizing papers, leading to milk crates with hanging folders, the papers themselves in flat stacks atop them; pictures on the walls, including artwork from talented friends who have graced me with drawings over the years; several mailing boxes with ancient manuscripts begging for OCR software to raise them from the dead; and, in one corner of my desk, a never-diminishing pile of "current" papers and mail that once concealed a supply of prescription pills that I thought I'd not had filled. I went nearly two weeks without that scrip, when all the while it was right on my desk. I'll be able to start hiding my own Easter eggs soon.

Rousing myself from a slight doze there at the keyboard, I stood and stretched again, the usual bodily suspects making themselves heard with little pops and clicks of protest. My brain takes note of each one. "Thank you for calling the Age Registry Department. Your input is important to us. Please leave a message, detailing your particular complaint, and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Multiple and duplicate messages will be consolidated into a single complaint for ease in reporting to whatever medical specialist may be dealing with your particular issues." Naturally, all issues are given the same sort of attention that most customer service departments provide, which is "None At All."

Padding my way out of the workroom, I glanced about at the variety of Things To Be Done, giving myself credit for having put the wash into the dryer. Entropy was being particularly relentless lately, for whatever reason. I smiled and, with the great efficiency of well-practiced procrastination, returned to the task of looking for some inspiration. If the muse won't sing, I shall have to turn to singing bowls and tuned clay pots, or something like them.

Allow me to offer a tip to all creators of every kind: Share as much about your muses and inspirations as you wish, but keep their locations hidden. Only you should know exactly where your House of Wonder may be found, lest someone else find it as well. They may or may not steal anything, but they're almost certainly going to mess up your organizational system. As Heisenberg told us, one may not observe something without affecting it. Because of this, I'll simply tell you that I went to my Imaginarium and, in a space that may or may not actually be there, I entered the vault over which hung the sign, in someone else's beautiful script, which reads: Crypta Fabulis Inatus.

Carefully-fashioned shelves, row upon row of simple clay pots, different colors, patterns, sizes, shapes, each designed and brought forth by someone who needs his story told. They are entrusted to me until my death, when the unsung tales will be offered to someone else for the telling. Whoever that furson is will have his own space to hold them, his own way of seeing them, hearing them, bringing them forth. That's how it should be, although I do occasionally find it sobering to realize how many of them I've not even tapped yet, and how many that I may never tell. They'll be told, eventually, by me or by someone of no lesser quality, if I've anything to say about it. Something tells me I will. Meanwhile...

I gazed upon several pots with lids inverted, the sign that the story has been fashioned in one way and another, posted where others may read it, feel it, absorb it, appreciate the tale that wasn't told in life and now exists with a life of its own, at least for now. Each who hears the story will be affected by it in some way, large or small, and thus are all stories never-ending, as long as they continue being told.

A pot near my forepaw attracted my attention. I lifted the lid just a little, just enough, and I sniffed and listened carefully...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

He calls himself an attorney, because "lawyer" and "liar" sound too much alike. He doesn't put on much of a front, because he can't afford to. Being an honest attorney -- two words which rarely appear in any single sentence, much less next to one another -- brings about another form of oxymoron, "billable hours." Edison Scott, Esq., had an office that made even the most desperate clients wonder if they'd made the right choice. One hundred fifty years before, the building had been an infamous sweat shop making cheap gloves and purses; on a bad rainy day, you could still smell moldy leather scents that had invaded the old wooden frames of the structure. Over the decades of decaying real estate, the place had been chopped up into smaller and smaller bits of office space, and Edison had more law school student debt over his head than any three house mortgages combined. Even so, he'd never met a fur in true legal need that he could turn away, if for no other reason than because it was precisely those sorts of legal meat-grinders that had caused his father to commit suicide ten years ago, and he was double-damned if he was going to let something like that happen again...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I lowered the lid again. Yes, I remembered hearing a bit of this tale before, and I remembered the sensation that there might be more than one pot, more than one story here. I looked carefully at the pot, memorizing its shape, it's color, touching it with reverence, knowing that this tale needed to be told, that it might well be me telling it. Just not today. I want to be sure we're both ready to speak to Mr. Scott's needs.

All of the pots waited patiently, knowing that someone would hear, someday. They are eager, but they are not insistent, hopeful but not demanding. Their shape and color, designs and markings, all are meant to attract me, to help me remember. Often, I will thank them all, simply for Being. They thank me too, even when I don't choose them, because they know that I will keep listening as best I can.

Another catches my eye. I wondered if perhaps it had moved just a little, to make me glance in its direction. I padded quietly over to it, and again, I lifted the lid just a bit, sniffing and listening...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

She turned, drawing up one knee onto the sofa and tucking the other under it, and smiled at me in that particular way: neither suggestive nor flirtatious, just kind and warm and open in a way which caused other people to trust her implicitly. After a sip of her drink, she said softly, "It's simple enough, Evie." She still held the cut-glass tumbler near her muzzle as if savoring the scent of the whiskey in it like oxygen through a lung patient's cannula. "Just get the paper and get out. He never even locks the safe. Surely that proves that he's no longer 'of sound mind and body,' eh?"

I studied the young female canine, wondering if I should use the word "bitch" clinically or figuratively. When the bank's got me by the short-and's, I don't always have much choice about my clients, but this one made me wonder if I'd feel better getting a full-body bikini waxing. Everything about her, from her clothing and posture to her home and furnishings, screamed gotta-have-the-best. I suppose that meant that I should have been flattered that she'd called upon my humble services, or maybe she had some idea that a shady job needed a shady gumshoe, maybe even a shadier vixen. Or maybe all those poor-little-rich-girl connections of hers had rolled downhill from City Hall far enough to splat onto my friend Maddie, and she was hoping both to scrape the job of off her hindpaws and maybe toss me a few bucks in the process. And what's a little B&E between friends? One letter past what I was really hoping for from my female colleague, but that's a story for another time and a different set of pawcuffs...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I lowered the lid again, chuckling softly. "Trying to sneak in more than one tale at a time, are we?" I asked, smiling. I felt sure that the container would, if it could, chuckle with me. I wonder if the brilliant Raymond C. had been offered this tidbit, and he had shied away from both the gumshoe and the female-to-female connections so blatantly hinted at. This story might be real, or it might be real only to someone who wanted the idea to have been so in her life, the story that she had wanted her life to be, if only she could have told it herself. The reality of any story, any life, is that it must somehow be lived, either in the world we all live in (what some call "consensus reality") or the one each individual lives in, privately, yet shares with the rest of the world. This is what writers, poets, graphic artists, musicians, and other creators do. That whole "where do you get your ideas from" thing is always something like this: Listening, sniffing, wondering, bringing about, from within or without. These many clay pots are not the only ones in the world, and they travel until they are fulfilled. Some pots are lured away or become impatient; I won't name names, but some few stories that sought me out went instead to other, more commercially successful furs. Mind you, I don't blame the stories. After all, a tale can only lay untold for so long. I hope they were told the way they wanted to be told after all. Some of these popularists are mere factories, these days. They don't treat a story very well, seems to me. Never mind all that... where were we?

Ah yes, the B&E story. Cheeky vixen. The design on that particular pot was nearly identical to that of another that I had seen recently. Now where... ah, here it is. Let me sniff, listen, remember...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Setting down the bottle and staring into the fire, I wondered, "How did a self-respecting cheetah like me get to this point?"

The fire was warm, the scotch was warmer, and that was good, because somewhere about a pawful of meters behind me was a body that was only going to get cooler. I didn't have a positive ID, but I knew who it had to be: It was the trusted bovine business partner of the rich old moose who owned this stately manor. The cervine hoofer had hired me to come down on some softpaw trying to pull a little blackmail on his daughter, and the guy's business was in bad enough shape that its stock was screaming like a wounded feral on the Serengeti, and half of Wall Street was the first wave of non-sapient hyenas. The blackmail was a gambling debt, and that had led me to the other high rollers, the back room games where chips came in the form stock certificates, and too many were getting passed from moose to bull through a conniving jaguar who made his money the old fashioned way: He cheated for it. Oh, there were a dozen ways to make a more convincing case to get control of the company back, but why not pin the job on the shamus tailor-made to fit the frame? Especially since I'd come back to this damned house to retrieve my gun, which my boss' daughter had seen fit to steal from my office this afternoon.

Well... at least the scotch was a decent single-malt.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I let the cover fall back softly, quietly, with another warm smile. This tale was more like the stories of old, the golden age of the popular detective story. The cheetah was known to me in life, and I never had the chance to tell him how much I would enjoy turning him into a fine Marlowe-esque gumshoe for his entertainment. For that same reason, I thought perhaps I should wait a while longer, to be sure that I could give the story the full attention and development it needed and deserved. It's not quite time for this one. Soon, my dear cheetah. Soon.

A moment's pause to consider. Perhaps one or more of my readers would be able to guide me to the proper pot for a new story. I've always hesitated to ask. Some felt the slightest bit obligated to come up with something, and some very few wanted to take advantage of my good nature. That bunny, for instance, the one who commissioned me and never paid for the story that I told for him. There was a revenge story that blossomed in my mind, not long after the sleight, but that story was not here, because it didn't deserve to be. I might yet write it, one dark and stormy night, but revenge is a tortuous, poisonous basis for a story, and it would not serve me well if I wrote only for spite. The stories here would, rightly, be angry with me for passing them by in favor of so low a motive. Some might leave before their time, and it would be my fault. Don't risk losing your stories, dear ones; that way lies living death.

A soft sigh escaped me. "Forgive me," I said to the many pots around me. "I've been neglectful of you for some time, listening less often, telling even less than that. I've been encouraged by some to retire, to rest on what laurels I may have accumulated over my years. Enough, they tell me; let yourself relax into reading and videos and listening to music. Give yourself over to the waning years. There is no such thing has 'having a purpose,' and even if there were, surely you have fulfilled it over the past four decades and change. You'll be happier. We'll be happier for you."

I shook my head. "These are the people who say that accepting my age is to accept decrepitude, to stop my anxieties by releasing expectations. That is not me, my friends. I cannot accept the idea that life exists only to exist. There is richness, as my storytelling has told me, perhaps has told others. My time is not yet done, despite the years, despite the occasional failing of memory, despite the insecurity. You have come to me, hoping, wanting, waiting, and you've been very good to me for so long. I can't give up now. Bear with me, I ask you."

Shifting, more sensation than sound, like getting comfortable and inviting me to do the same. I fancy that I'd heard the words endless wonder, although that's more likely to have been my own mental warehouse of video trivia. No matter; I sprinkle their stories with a bit of my own, and they don't mind. Perhaps we are telling us after all.

Another jar. Envelop me, my friend, tell me...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I had found this, this something that I didn't fully understand, but it intrigued me more than anything I'd ever encountered before.

I don't usually go wandering about Bondi Beach; it's pretty touristy these days, although most tourists are pretty good about it, so far anyway. Some tourists are crappy, but that's true anywhere, not just in Sydney. No, it's usually the crowds I don't much care for. If it's cold and windy enough, maybe July say, no one goes walking as much in the morning gray. That was when I found it.

I didn't have the feeling that it washed up onto shore or summat, just that it was there. Like it was expecting to be found. No, more like it was expecting me. Small, fit easily in my palm, flat, roundish, smooth, a place on one surface that was almost worn, like a place where my thumb belonged... say, you know those "worry stones," ever seen one of those? Like that, sort of, a place where my thumb naturally sought out and rubbed it, and when it did, it purred. No, not like a sound, more like a feeling. It liked the feel of my thumb pad there, not rough, not hard, just a gentle rubbing, and I got the feeling at the base of my skull, no the base of my brain, like this sense of something -- someone -- being very happy to be with me. So happy that he wanted to tell me things, tell me stories, and show me dreams, and I could imagine anything that I wanted. Fantasy, of course, nothing more than the overworked brain of a student reading law who needs less caffeine and more time away from dusty books, but it was a nice dream. I decided that I would appreciate the fantasy and, in keeping with that, I decided that the stone, the He within it, must have a name. I fancied that he gave me one that I couldn't pronounce, and that it was all part of the fable of mystery that I was weaving.

It wasn't until he began teaching me his language that I came to understand what his name truly meant...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A remarkable intrigue! I can sense the complexities already. What stays my paw? That fear I had described a little earlier? The tiredness seeping into my bones? An unwillingness to dedicate myself to the task of listening, really listening to you? Not yet, perhaps. I'm sorry, friend, but not yet.

Somewhere at the corner of my vision, something like movement, that feeling of something shifting. I turned toward the direction that seemed to be the area where love stories gathered, waiting to be told. I liked this area, if only because I want to believe in love, always. No matter how many times it had left me, how many of my lovers had changed in ways that excluded me, how much I seem to be without what I need so much, I still want to believe. I chose one that I believed was at random, and sniffed softly...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

You growl loudly in frustration, "Why don't they make shirts in sizes for muscle furs like me?!"

I shouldn't be grinning, especially when you can see me in the mirror, if you weren't so preoccupied with your own musculature. It's not vanity, or at the least, it's not merely vanity. You're proud of who you are and what you are, and you've worked long and hard to get here. I'm proud of you too, you amazing mass of studmuffin you.

Padding softly up behind you, I wrap my arms around your middle (luckily for me, you taper a bit toward the waist, as your upper body had grown large enough that I can't quite embrace you fully) and hug you, pressing my cheek to your back. "We were planning for this, my lovely. We have all along."

I feel you sigh, inhaling something around a cubic meter-and-a-half of air, letting it spill out with a sound of loss and disappointment. "I really liked this shirt," you say. I'd never accuse you of whining, but only of loving what you love... and that, praise the gods, includes me. I feel you inspecting the sleeves and the area around the shoulder. I'd heard the flatulent rip of fabric from the next room. You can hardly help yourself and, if I'm honest, I'm glad that you don't. You do so appreciate the admiration, lovely liger... that's why it's not mere vanity.

Releasing you, I turn you to look at me. You still blush when you look at me, not out of shame or even attraction, just because you worry about our budget. I reach up to caress your cheek, your close-kept mane that looks so much like your father's. I begin unbuttoning your shirt -- a pleasant occupation at any time, if I'm honest -- and I keep that reassuring smile on my muzzle. "You knew this shirt was getting a little tight weeks ago, Lionor. So did I." I pull the remnants of the shirt off of you, still awestruck, both at your physical presence and the fact that it's me you chose to be with you this way. "I'm going to keep what's left of this shirt, to see if I can match the color and pattern. Meanwhile..."

From one of my own dresser drawers -- my feeble attempt at keeping a surprise from you -- I produce an impressive quantity of fabric, properly constructed and still fresh in its plastic wrappings. I pass it over to you, warmed by seeing you smile.

"You take such good care of me," you tell me, leaning in to kiss me tenderly.

"Your work starts here," I say, patting your eight-pack and moving my paw slowly up to your equally chiseled pecs. "My work is to help us realize all the rest of this." I indicate our house, our nearby café, our world that we are building together.

"Heavy lifting," you grin at me.

"Only kind." I press the packaged shirt up against you. "See if this one fits..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I chuckled softly, appreciating the glimpse at such a fine couple. The love story is always one of my great weaknesses, and it might be about time for me to find out if I can still write one. These two make a particularly strong and intriguing case. A ripped liger, his lover (husband?), a house, a nearby café? Perhaps they own it, or one of them is the secret chef behind its success. Success comes in all sizes. A title for them, possibly... That one just might work. I could try it.

There is a saying that you always find something you're looking for in the last place you look. Sometimes, I look in one or two other places after I find it, just to make sure that I really found it after all, or maybe to figure out why the thing wasn't in those other locations in the first place. So I went to one more of the pots, one with a fierce-seeming exterior, and cautiously lifted the lid...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"I take no pleasure in seeing another half-breed on the street," she said with care in her voice.

"Right," I said. "Fine. Ya got me. Before you ask, Daddy was the fox and Momma was the Husky, and that was a long damn time ago, and I'm sick of having to argue about it."

"I'm not looking for a fight," she said, her voice again soft and careful. "I'm trying to help."

"Then what's this 'half-breed' crap about?"

"Do you prefer another descriptor?"

"Why does it matter?"

"Because you're an individual, an intelligent being, and you deserve to take advantage of whatever this broken system can offer."

"A meal in one paw and a whip in the other?"

"No," she said. "A meal... but, to use a cliché popular in my religion, no room at the inn." She looked into my eyes, this small but somehow commanding Shiba Inu in a nun's habit, and despite my desire to yank my gaze from her, she held it closely. "The meal-and-whip system was created by the full-bloods to salve their conscience while enslaving others not like them. So use it, young fosky. It will help to get a room for you until you can get back on your hindpaws. And more than that, it will qualify you to get work here. You've worked construction, if I'm any judge, and we're trying to add a dormitory. The state and the diocese provide funds, for those they condescendingly separate with their labels. Use it. That's what it's there for."

I looked at her for a moment. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I'm exhausted from having to deal with lying bishops and professed religious politicians violating the only law of any religion worth keeping, including mine."

"Which is?"

"God is love. The rest is, as you say, crap." She looked up at me again. "Now, young fosky... how about that meal?"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"You," I said aloud, taking the pot gently into my forepaws. "I think it's your turn. And the rest of you..."

Heart in my throat, I spoke the truth.

"I'll return. Just as soon as I can. You'll be heard."

We believe you, came the silent collective whisper. You believe you, too, and we'll wait.

In my workroom, I set the pot carefully on my desk. I turned back to the computer, to work, to dream, to listen, to feel, to believe...

...one more time...