FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

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Part 1: Fresh Towels

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Wow, I don't know what Glass added to the dryer load, but my pink nostrils pick up something pleasantly close to oranges as I pull the handle; I doubt the square sheets used actual fruit though. Needing some cleaner towels before we're able to shower tonight, I press the charcoal-gray ends of my arms against the refreshed rags, camping attire and my usual clothes randomly mixed in- They're still wet, great... I already hung up my boyfriend's buttoned coats to avoid accidentally shrinking his heat-sensitive items, but I wish the appliances worked well. Not wanting to call maintenance yet again, I- I mean it's free with the high rent, right? It's probably fine if I just call- No, it's Saturday- But they're open- Next cycle started. It's really tempting to dust in here again...

"Hey bean," I suddenly hear come from our living room, "I need to pick up some missing supplies before tomorrow; I won't be long." My focus is thankfully broken as my fluffy ears stay perked; Glass reminds me of his part-time teaching for a tech class on Sunday morning, so I enter the front hallway and close the laundry door behind me. Walking into the spacious living room, my glance shifts toward the currently topless, light-gray wolf cutely sitting on our couch. "Wanna join me?" My forest-green eyes meet his hazel ones, and I feel my brown tail start to shake from excitement; I can't help but find him handsome as he presses his strong arms through a short-sleeved tan coat, which remains unbuttoned as it meets his camo-green cargo shorts and darker belt. Glass asks the question again, so I unfortunately decline but offer a dinner date later; I just wanna relax right now.

The room having sufficient lighting from the curtains being open, I can see like usual that there's no mess to worry about walking on, so I make my way onto the sofa to lean against him, adjusting my forest-green gym shorts to get comfier; I opted not to cover my whitish front fur today, which also has the bonus of making the cuddling more sensual. "I really love you a lot, dear," I softly whisper to Glass, something we've mutually stated numerous times now yet still joyfully express. "You make me really happy," I continue with, rubbing his blue hair and similarly colored ears, "and I'm really proud of all the inspiring activities you're involved in." My active boyfriend replies with similar compliments before we strongly hug for a while; we later share a passionate kiss too...

A few minutes pass before Glass eventually has to stand up. "Heh, you're really cute, Mello!" While my cheeks feel warmer, he heads to his computer room to review newer work emails, so I smoothly brush down my dark-brown bangs and grab my phone off our crumb-free coffee table, impulsively checking the latest social media statuses of close friends: April got another coworker a while ago to help with café tasks, but she's also started a job search for a new position. There's a baking picture of Robin and Karen casually hanging out; reminds me that we need to cook the frozen crab cakes we have before they go too bad. Leo hasn't posted in a few days, but I remember that he and Alex were driving across the country to some convention; I don't remember the name.

Digitigrade footsteps appear in my peripheral vision, so I place my phone down to watch Glass head to the front door. "Call if you need anything!" I proactively offer to the tall wolf; I might be overly cautious, but I still get anxious a lot even with my meds, so I'd rather rule out any ambiguity. Glass responds in the affirmative then repeats his love again while leaving, his tinted ears wiggling.

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Part 2: Torn Jacket

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Reaching the bottom steps outside their apartment, Glass pulls down his buttoned shirt and walks out of the shade, his last protection from the bright, cloudless sky. While he's fairly used to the summer weather at this point, still wearing full clothing despite a lack of wind, he can't help but consider turning back to grab a drink as his shoeless feet feel a hotter pavement than normal; has climate change really been that more noticeable this year? Adjusting his sturdy shorts, which include more than enough pockets for his stuffed wallet, Android phone, and many keys, the wolf mentally shrugs and decisively makes a path toward the nearest crafting store; the scenic route he often takes to relax includes a greens-surrounded lake anyway, so he could always dip his feet in the relaxing water, he figures. He has Mello's credit card too if the park has any food stalls today.

Soon enough, his routine walking brings him near the typical trail, a pleasant area for sightseeing where he also likes taking Mello for sudden picnics and occasional fishing trips; it's a large setting whose stone sidewalks are interspersed with straight bike-friendly lanes and slightly curved paths, the latter surrounded by plenty of leaf-covered trees that can sometimes make parts of the casual tourist spot seem like a maze that lasts for tens of minutes. Glass takes deep breaths and absorbs his natural surroundings, with this afternoon's surprising emptiness only being broken up by occasional leaves falling and the sound of a toppled can falling from a trash can; his black snout also smells some kind of putrid soda from the latter, so he hesitates to resolve the accidental litter.

While some trees offer brief periods of shade though, they're not enough to ultimately distract Glass from the increasing realization that he really needs some water, and he feels drops of sweat form on his gray forehead as he looks upward toward the open sky, a five-fingered paw being the only protection for his hazel eyes from the oppressive sunlight. Glass unlocks his phone to check the time, first being greeted with a background selfie of his blepping wolf self and ferret boyfriend: Seeing that it's only a bit after 3:00 PM, there's sadly no chance of it getting cooler anytime soon.

Craving the feeling of his fangs sinking into ice-cold water, Glass sighs with disappointment and a parched throat, returns his phone, then more quickly walks through some unmown grass to reach the lake; minutes pass until the only remaining plants are behind him. Now on a more straightened path again, he walks along the water, secretly hoping for a brush of wind to make his career-influenced endeavor a little less tiring, but no luck. He didn't note exactly when he left home, and at this point, the distracted hiker is determined to not take any more detours; the shopping district destination isn't far from here, he thinks. Gross sweat now reaching his thick tail, Glass remains focused and doesn't pay much attention to a pair of reddish mustelids verbally engaged on a bench.

"Marvin, I really think we need to call someone about this," Glass overhears a badger tiredly say. "That spill, whatever it was- It was moving... That's not normal. And I'm not walking back there."

Too worn out to really process their words, Glass keeps some distance and continues walking. From behind, he hears the distracted weasel respond: "Call who exactly? Are you sure it wasn't just some idiot kid dumping a science project?" The badger protests with reworded concerns, but Marven interrupts: "You really wanna risk a false report fine calling some EPA line over nothing?"

While the science nerd in him would ordinarily be intrigued, Glass keeps moving until the only noises he can hear are nature; he already has enough to deal with. No nearby water fountains either.

If the sun wasn't so particularly vicious, this would be a great time to capture some scenic video with one of his various miniature drones, Glass thinks to himself; it's not hard to get permission from the town, and he already has a license for things like local business photography. He imagines an aerial picture of Mello and him holding hands at the end of a pier, their respective browns and grays reflecting off the lake for a lovely shot... That sounds nice... Almost off the trail, Glass pulls out his phone to check the hourly weather when his right foot suddenly fails to feel the pavement.

An unusually cold breeze quickly spreads across the fluffy sole of that foot; it's not as painful as stepping into excessively packed snow, and may even be welcome under different circumstances, but Glass isn't able to dismiss the feeling after a brief stumble two attempted steps later. Managing to keep his balance with only his left leg in front of him, Glass immediately realizes that the cold sensation is coupled with something holding him down, some kind of poured glue? His gaze shifts-

"Aah!" Glass yelps out loud; some kind of green slime is holding onto him! "Get off!" He instinctively shakes his legs in an attempt to free the gelatinous gunk's grip on him, yet this just worsens his balance until the targeted wolf falls, his phone flying meters away into the grass while another palm at least manages to contact the smooth sidewalk to avoid any pain. The sun still limiting his vision, his right leg remains in a sit-up position while the rest of him is laid out, and his clothing feels undamaged albeit more wrinkled now... but there's still a firm grip on him as the unknown entity start to expand between his black-clawed toes until it transparently covers the longer components of his feet. "Urgh..." The feeling is almost like a comfortable massage, but there's no time to think about that; breathing much more rapidly, Glass desperately looks for anyone to no avail. Returning forward, the unhesitating slime has already engulfed the whole foot; Glass can only watch in disbelief and repeatedly blinks as the chilling captor turns totally opaque.

Still able to feel the captive foot at least, despite the shivering sensation, Glass acts impulsively and kicks at the spherical shape that's now visually replaced where his foot was, only to immediately regret it as the sentient ooze doesn't express any sort of noise, instead now locking both feet together as if some magnetic interaction was instantaneously triggered. Glass curses to himself, wiggling his tall body left and right to try something, anything really- Wait, his phone! "Where..." He grips his fists and quickly remembers it's been tossed somewhere, so that's not a feasible option; not like it's ever reliable with voice commands from a distance either. Now what?!

"H-help!" Glass shouts out loud, desperately hoping that the badger and weasel aren't too far. Frantically looking back at his firmly covered feet, a numbness starts to set in as the slime tingles its way around his adjacent ankles. "Somebody get over he-" Faster than he can process, his upright ears catch a crackling noise and his eyelids close in response to a broken piece of the slime speedily leaping onto his face- "Mmph!" The substance completely covers his face and scarily makes it impossible to breathe; Glass falls back and hurriedly tears at the goo with both hands to no effect. All while the cold slime simultaneously moves to surround his legs and fluffy head, feeling a faster pulse in his neck, he initially struggles to inhale any oxygen until some holes appear on an area in front of his nostrils; Glass doesn't stop to consider why the slime would make such an accommodation, still trying to get the icy sensation off of him, and eventually tries to calm down.

He can breathe, Glass relievedly realizes, and he's worried about messing with that unexpected adjustment, so his next thought is to wait still until someone else happens upon the scene... As the canine experiment gathers his undignified composure, only wiggling a bit to position his gradually numbing tail toward a side for comfort, he starts feeling an opposite warming at the initial points of contact that he thought had previously lost any nervous function, and it's... strangely comfortable, like a hot bath where softened bars of soap mix into physically stressed fur. While his torso at this point feels chillingly surrounded, and his legs are now getting the reduced feeling, those contrast with the strangely calm pressing motions that the slime is making against his warmed feet; Glass tries to relax and go with the flow, no doubt currently looking like some alien creature from the outside, as he swears that the rising temperature is starting to shift around, a full yet still captive feeling returning to his right foot, then returning to his left. While he still can't move the feet, there's the same number of claws, though something about the shape feels a bit off.

Throughout the next minutes, remaining parts of his body succumb to the slime, the final bouts of coldness now seeming like a pleasant contrast to the sun; Glass can't tell if the weather's changed. The massaging feeling causing some sort of physical adjustment becomes more noticeable when it reaches closer to fur beneath his coat, where the muscles in his legs feel a stronger physique, and his previously swishy tail now starts to feel like extra hair is dangling off the bottom of it. Glass is surprised to still feel any clothes atop him, although the slime does seem to gently stab holes through the fabric when trying to reach tighter areas of fur. What he isn't ready for is some uncomfortable stretching of where his fingers connect with his palms, or the muscular changes across his torso that repeatedly cause him to silently yelp before being soothed by more massaging. When it comes to his head, the ooze hasn't seemed to move past the numbness stage, almost like it's strangely aware of the more sensitive pain that physical contortions would cause there; the only upward feeling is with his increasingly ticklish nostrils, hopefully still part of his black snout.

Minutes pass until suddenly, Glass presently entranced with the unusual comfort that the shifting motions are coupled with, an electric sting injects itself through his entire body at once: his ears, his heavier chin, his sharpened claws, his stronger chest, his large tail, everything really! What was previously therapeutic is now a massive jolt; no longer thinking of breathing concerns, Glass is surprised to find his limbs able to move as he vigorously shakes the slime off, which unexpectedly seems to flee on its own. His eyes still closed, Glass makes some noises and finds himself able to talk again, although he wiggles off a bit of torn cotton; the fabric was undoubtedly ripped up some.

It all happens so fast: There's no sticky feeling across his body anymore, so Glass opens his eyes to see the now hair-covered and smaller-than-expected ooze quickly inch away while sparkling. Glass shouts in its direction, but it continues to slide across the clean pavement, its outer shine rapidly brightening to the point where one couldn't tell whether it was even green to begin with; that's not helped by a tragic insult to injury: The hot sun's position apparently never changed. Trying to stand results in a quick fall from an unexpected shift in balance; Glass can only watch as the hairy and distant slime, if that's even what it is now, suddenly vanishes with no explanation.

Still not hearing anyone around him, he sits there dumbfounded for a while, physically taking in the familiar heat while directing his vision toward a distant hill where the path ends. Glass still has an identically shaped snout in front of him, he can tell that much, although he's lived with it for so long that his mind filters out the colors from a first-person perspective. Wanting his phone, Glass starts to stretch before attempting to stand again, soon being startled by the two arms he sees in front of him: They're the same size as his, but they feel a little strong- Wait, feel?! He signals his hands to form fists and then open again, the touches of ten claws meeting his palms- These are his! But the colors are different than his usual gray: The wrists start with a darker color, spreading down his replaced hands until their long fingers transition to a lighter blue. As he moves his head, Glass can't help but visually process that his shoulders and sides have the same dark shade of gray.

Next looking downward, Glass feels an amused relief that his shorts aren't fully shredded at least. Looking past those partially torn clothes shows a similar leg and foot pattern, though much of his body still has the lighter gray that he remembers; even his inner digitigrade toes have a cute blue. He has to think more about this... I mean, it seems like a pleasant look so far, he admits to himself. Shaking his head, Glass also focuses his gaze onto random bits of blue that match his darker hair, but the shapes don't make sense; what are those- Oh, those are stripes! Glass has blue stripes! When he's comfortable enough, he pushes around his significantly more damaged shirt to notice that he now has different fur on his front; it's similar to Mello, except while the ferret's chest and stomach have a whitish color, Glass's stomach area differs in color by matching near his fingertips.

Trying to stand once more, Glass succeeds this time, perhaps after slowly accepting his new reality. Spotting his phone, he walks over while rubbing his hands along various areas of his face, feeling the darker blue fluff that now surrounds most of his head; his bangs were also curiously untouched. It's not until he really starts to feel around his fangs and the general shape of his head that he's able to accurately label his new form: "Aah, I'm a hyena!" Glass grins; that's an adorable species!

Explaining things to Mello, well, to anyone really, might be difficult; Glass seems willing to at least try living with his new physical form for a while, but how will his part-time students react? How does updating legal identification work? Will some paranormal department take him in?! Quickly realizing that he's been abruptly forced into a socially inconvenient situation, Glass gets off the path, kneels onto the grass, then snatches his phone, seeing in the black screen reflection that his eyes are orange now, which... actually, that's a really cool color for him, he tells himself...

But he still needs to call someone! Glass shakes his multicolored head and unlocks his phone like normal, only to be unexpectedly greeted with a background picture he's not used to: It's Mello and him in the same couples pose as earlier, but- Wait, how is he a hyena in this picture too? Yeah, Mello still looks exactly the same as... twenty minutes ago according to his phone's clock, but there's no wolf in this picture, instead a cute hyena who looks just like him. Is he imagining things?

Still processing the changes, Glass hurriedly dials Mello. "Come on, boof, pick up..." Glass says while the phone keeps ringing. He feels his large tail shake and looks back to see stripes there too.

Glass has scattered thoughts until he hears his boyfriend's voice: "Hey dear, is everything alright?"

In his increasingly excited and giggling state, Glass starts rambling to Mello about his weird walk, how he collided with some sort of supernatural trash that somehow turned him into a hyena, how-

"W-wait Glass, slow down," Mello calmly replies with. "What do you mean you're a hyena now?"

First taking deep breaths, Glass calmly rephrases that his species somehow changed, that the slime-

"No, I mean, what do you mean you're one now?" ...What? "Glass, you've always been a hyena..."