FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Hello again, everyone! Sorry for not delivering on more Seeker Kelly and Theia, I need to sit down and reboot the reboot. In the menatime; most of these Briin Expedition chapters have been done for a while. I'll be staggering them out over time.

Also; fair warning; this story isn't very vanilla. There's no violence, as always. But, there is a bit of transformation for a new character. There's nothing REALLY crazy in the traditional sense. But, if you've read the last stories you can probably guess what's going to happen.

***

Journal; J. Doom, Mission time: +221 kiloseconds

I've had some very interesting fixes in my life. But, I never thought I'd meet "the natives." They dropped us off in a hut, which I could probably cut my way out of faster than you can say "shicka shicka!" But I figure I might as well humor them, let them think we're prisoners or something.

Though, it was bad enough that they were brandishing carbon fibre spars from shuttle hulls at me. No clue how they got a hold of them, but it was slightly unnerving to think about. There are options I really don't want to consider, one of which may make it useful that I made a backup of myself on the ship... save the fact that it won't actually be me that survives, just an indistinguishably perfect carbon-copy to take my place and, hopefully realize where I've failed.

Okay, really want to get on another subject now. On those odd plants that snared us; this is really new to me. I get the feeling they hadn't grown so dense naturally. Not to mention those eh... attractive properties they seem to have had to be too good not to use for something deliberate by these villagers. I almost think they were some kind of perimeter defense. Though, I don't know how you'd repel invaders by, proverbially, screwing them to death.

On second thought, with the way this planet conducts itself, I almost feel like it makes sense. Like, what if some pleasure seeking whatsit with more arms than it has IQ shows up, how do you keep him out of your village?

Yes! Success! I. Must. Write. These. Journals. More. Often!

***

"This is a fine fix," Tan mumbled into the darkness, occasionally broken by slits of light through the dried thatch. The bizarrely meshed, extremely strong door that had so thoroughly confined them blasted open. A female wearing a full skirt and top painted with odd dyes stood outside the door, casting a long shadow inside. "Now it's a worse fix."

The woman scowled. "I can hear you, you know."

Julia looked up from her position in the corner and raised an eyebrow. "What did she just say?"

Tan was about to turn around and snap 'you just heard her!' when he realized the woman's words had gone through his Babel space. He revisited the entry that had been plopped in his implant.

"Tagalog," he idly tapped his synthetic neck.

"What?" Julia asked.

"She's speaking Tagalog."

"Wait," Julia squinted. "What are we speaking? We're tuned to M-Trade aren't we? Should we switch to Sagan Standard? Not sure they'd know a commerce lingo."

Tan shook his head. "I'll ask..." the woman turned angry, impatient eyes on him, making him nervous. "j-just a minute."

"Are you done talking?" the woman asked, stomping a jet-black spear against the branch on which the hut stood. "Because I have to take you to the Council. QuenSan isn't happy about your cat friend walking in on one of her... ceremonies." She rolled her eyes.

"She wants us to leave with her," Tan said. "Let's go."

Suit suddenly woke up. "Ceremonies?" he asked as Julia rose, looking about in confusion.

The woman froze. "Who the hell is that?" her spear shot across the door, barring their exit, before she brandished it toward the open door, looking around fearfully. "There were only two of you here when I last checked."

"It's my friends... uh," Tan paused. "Sorry, but you know Trade? My friend back here doesn't know Tagalog."

"It's okay," she said in the clipped, Mandarin-derived syllables of Trade. "I learned when I arrived here." She was still slightly tense, and most definitely confused. "Now, who is your friend's... whatever it is?" She jerked the spear to drive home her proverbial point.

"It's Suit," Julia said. "Consider him a guiding spirit if you want," she said, speaking with slick speed. "He's virtually the same, disembodied and far too chatty."

"I see," she didn't sound wholly convinced. "Doesn't matter. I was told you must see the Confederacy," she chose a different word for her 'council' in this language. Julia wondered why. Was this somehow not your everyday council? Whatever that even meant. "Come with me." She turned out of the hut and nimbly balanced her way down a narrow branch.

Julia and Tan followed wordlessly in single file. As they cleared a large tree jutting up from across their view, an otherworldly scene unfolded. Ahead of them, branches formed a switchback that spiraled downward into a depression centered on a huge object. The nose of a massive, metal space vehicle, almost as big as the Kaze Maru in width, jutted out from the center of the village. It dwarfed the small pavilions and pools of flowers that dominated the terrain, sitting like a tarnished metal temple in the distance amidst it's many tiny attendants.

"Welcome to New New Pacific," she said, gesturing toward the lichen-laden, aged hull of the ship. The words that inspired the name could barely be deciphered from the tarnished, dulling metal of the hull. Though, the A at the end appeared to have been lost to the ages. Julia recognized the old ship from her internal look-up systems. Pacifica, lost, whereabouts unknown. Branches had grown around the construct, insistently encircling it. They seemed undaunted by its metal hull, pressing on as if it were just another rival tree in the forest.

Atop the massive, tiered decks of the dead craft sat a conical hut. It was obtrusively natural against the soulless metal of the hull, slowly being returned to earth by a coating of prolific lichen and creeper vines. "Our members of the Confederacy gather there. That's where we're going."

As they hopped their way down the switchback, toward the massive structure, Tan saw ghosts of civilization all around him. Sheets of gold heat shielding were used to cap hay bedding. Plexiglass covers to fabbing bays provided secure sky-lights. Patches from sleeper crews' suits adorned the occasional onlooker's sash. It was bizarre.

They reached the base of the nose, a great metal hill before them. It was set with ladders and stairs made of raw wood. They climbed in a wavering path toward the beaded, curtained fringe surrounding the hovel's stratospheric roof. As they ascended, Tan looked back from the top of the steps toward the dazzlingly distant huddle of people, structures and green plumes of leaves far below.

"Come," the woman said, parting part of the heavy curtain of reeds and coarse cloth with an insistent clatter. "I don't feel like wasting time." As they walked into the darkness of the hut - tinted blue by the bleached and dyed fabric forming the ceiling - the woman took up a post just inside. "Go on," she said as they looked back. "They're down there. Don't make me do all the work for you."

Both of them lowered their gaze and saw a number of odd figures hunched around a small, ethereal fire, giving off pleasant smelling smoke. "The falling stars did fortell your visit," one figure mumbled. "Sit."

Silence. Julia and Tan both waited for the other to break it and take the risk of messing up the situation.

"Is there any chance we can do something besides take instructions?" Tan asked.

"Talk," the figure said.

"I suppose that counts," Julia said. "What do you want to know?" She attempted to maintain something like a carefree, bubbly tone.

Julia and Tan both looked back as the girl translated in Tagalog, yelling down to them.

"Let me," Tan said.

She scowled. "Fine," she hissed. "But I'll be listening - making sure you're keeping things correct."

"What do we want to know?" a massive wall of a figure growled. His shadow was imposingly, superhumanly large. "From whence do you come? Why do you descend from the trees and intrude upon the personal rites of my siblings' Unchanged?"

Tan whispered what the creature had said back to Julia. He inwardly groaned, this was so Spartan, so old-fashioned. To think he actually needed to 'translate' himself.

"We're visitors, yes," Julia conceded. Tan began a rolling, verbal translation for the others. It took massive concentration from his meatbrain. "We've come to study and catalog. We seek only to understand." Truthful so far. "We mean you no harm." We hope.

"Relax, child," a skinny man said. "My compatriots were wary. We've forgotten the ways of war so long ago. My people were temporarily worried that the Reclaimers had come to rectify the wonderful mistake that brought us here."

"What is here?" Julia asked via Tan.

"We are in the domain of the elder gods below, so positioned so that they may look sunward into light and find us easily." He paused to drag from a small pipe. "They are our keepers. We take what we most need and thus find it never in short supply." Tan was beginning to wonder if that smoke was getting to the man's brain.

"I'm not sure I understand," Tan said, preempting anything worse he might have said had he let his thoughts sit.

"No matter," the first said. "I will show you." He rose with spry agility and bounded down a tunnel, past small bulbs that glowed softly like fireflies on the wall. The skinny man rose with great effort, then stumbled his way down the stairs.

"I must inform my kin of the new visitors," the wall of muscle said. He leapt up to the curtained wall of the hut and disappeared in another flying leap. Tan caught a glance of snow-white fur, glinting in the waning sun, before he flew out of sight.

The woman followed behind Julia and Tan as they followed after the elders.

"Who the hell are these people?" Tan asked, sub-vocalizing over their network.

"Not sure," Julia replied. "Maybe elders. But, did you see how that thin guy moved?"

Suit suddenly chimed in. "Some LIDAR scans I performed showed evidence of aging far in excess of his athletic ability. I, too, find this most perplexing."

Sunlight washed over them as they pushed through a thick curtain of cloth. The two elders had retreated down a huge branch, reaching out from a great tree and ending in a massive knothole, surrounded by a thicket of heavily decorated branches. The spry man was goading on the slower one, who continued to take his time.

"Do you think there's any difference between those two age-wise?" Tan asked.

"Possibly," Suit said. "Though there is obvious evidence in the manner with which they locomote, I have yet to gather enough data to say anything conclusive." The pair pressed on, following the elders as they made their way into the thicket.

As they were bathed in shadow, Julia was the first to adjust, and the first to gasp. A massive bromeliad housed the enormous bulk of a leather-skinned, amorphous collection of gently rippling flesh. A head topped with two inquisitive eyestalks regarded them.

"Who?" The creature purred from some unseen source. "Who do you bring to my counsel now, Enaki?"

"These are unknown newcomers," the slow one rasped. "They stumbled upon our countermeasures. You made a wise decision in suggesting them placed." Julia smiled inwardly; she'd been correct about those creatures.

"It is not quite as I intended," the creature drawled. "It is obvious these ones don't come from Below." The stalks twisted to regard Suit's khaki, fractaled surface.

"Yes, yes" the spry one said. "THIS is our quandary, you see. Where else could they have come from?"

"You heard them yourself, Cinui," Enaki mumbled. "They are pilgrims, knowledge seekers from far away. Perhaps the arcane nether from whence we came."

"Yes," the creature seemed to test the word, as if in thought. "The young white-fur mentioned this in passing. How they'd carelessly greeted him during his Bonding with his female source. He was very possessive when he spoke of her, how odd that he so quickly adopts your gender."

Tan raised an eyebrow, next thing you know, a flying pig would soar into the room.

The gigantic, white-furred creature landed outside, making the water in the bromilliad gently slosh. The creature inside became suddenly excited, perhaps startled by the intrusion.

"I return with word," the creature said. "My brothers say that some mutes from far away found these ones out in the distant planes a while ago. They tasted them and called them alien. They are most definitely not Shaped nor children of the Shapers."

"We surmised as much" Sinui mused. "Is that not right, bright-skin?" He asked toward Tan. Startled by the attention suddenly turned on him, Tan dumbly nodded. "See, the young man gives his word."

"As if it is needed," Enaki said. Bells and cheers sounded from outside. "Ah!" The man growled spitefully. "I've nearly forgotten in the commotion! It is the day of Inle's ascension!"

"Yes!" Sinui growled. "How foolish of me!" his contorted frown vanished as he hurriedly pointed outside. "Let us make haste!" Every member of the council retreated out of the thicket at widly variant speeds. Enaki was last to go, shambling away after the others.

Julia went to follow, but was stopped by the creature's bellowing voice. "Stay," it said. "That I may divine your purpose." Julia and Tan froze. "Do not worry, young waywards. I seek only to speak."

"The others tell me of far off enclaves of ur-humans," the creature began. "So called 'Colonies.' Is this from whence you hail?"

Julia weighed the possibilities of her answer. What was she affecting here? Who was this creature and what was its agenda? "Yes," she said at length. "I'm from the original enclave, Earth."

The creature's ectoplasmic eyestalks rose with excitement as its eyes focused on her. "Ur... Urth. Intriguing." A feeler rose from the water, blindly regarding her before submerging. "To feel the makeup of an original... These ones aren't such, so far as I know. They came here in sky ships long ago. Many others came before in a similar manner. All from very different places."

"There are others?" Julia interrupted, mirroring the creature's own excitement.

"Yes," the creature droned. "Below the canopy, within the branches of the grandest of trees, there is a spiraling city of creatures not so much unlike you, o' peculiar chimera. They are old. But, these ones are young. They have yet to fully settle this place, but they have adapted well."

"What do you mean 'adapt?' Julia asked.

The creature curled up. "You will see in due time," she commented. "But, for now, I must prepare to show you the answer to your question. Perhaps that is how you will best learn."

***

chapter seven: RAMIFICATIONS

***

Inle had had an exciting day indeed. Wreaths of fruit, praise, adoring glances of the girls he'd known since his arrival. This was a good village and he now knew why they'd grown so strong. He'd been left in their care by the judgment of Father, resplendently towering in his strength and long-lived in his wisdom. He had chosen well. He knew this especially well now.

But, Inle had never expected to Ascend. From what he knew of it, it was an odd honor. The few others of such status were free to travel, capped with their odd appendages and encouraged to mingle with and forage from their surroundings as the native, higher species did. He was not entirely sure if it was a Human's place to become part of this ecosystem. But, part of him knew why; they must contribute as well as reap. Inle was especially in a position to know, being born from Father, who knew these ecosystems well.

Though, Mother had brought up some fair members of the other gender, apparently skilled in her craft. They were free of all signs of the intrusive technology that had marred their predecessor's gene fingerprints and made it so hard for either Mother or Father to produce their respective offspring.

Inle had studied them intently, always curious of their origins. He knew now that, like the other Ascended, he would make the journey downward to find a Messenger that Father had had prepared for him. But he would venture further, perhaps, to find Father and understand him, now at full maturity.

Now, especially, as he was paraded down the branch leading to the ceremonial berth of the village's Guardian. It bowed under their weight, creaking in protest as the multitude took him to the creature. After much fanfare and encouraging cheers, they left him in the dark space, lit only by the sulfur-green light of glow-pods. Through their shadow-laden glow, he saw the profiles of two others.

"What is this?" He asked nervously, his voice cracking with sudden tension. "Who are you?" His gaze flicked between them, noting how they marred the solitude of this event.

"They are trustworthy," the creature said, much to his surprise. He turned to face the creature, who seemed suddenly much less a mute and more the being he'd known, but not expected, it to be. "Observers who do not know our ways." She paused. "Perhaps I shall have them leave?"

Inle wasn't so hasty. Observers, hmm. "Let them stay until we begin." For what little Inle knew, he knew this rite should have been private. All the same, they clearly had no understanding of this ceremony. It was said that, were outsiders present, they would invite their own deaths in the night by vengeful spirit.

The creature turned to the others, one undoubtedly human, but sheathed in some places with odd, unnatural coverings with tiny holes occasionally punctuating them. The other looked like she was native, furred with an unnatural form all-round. However, she also had the stance and complete form of a human. It was an odd pair.

"To this young traveler from below, I'm bestowing an honor and perpetuating my own kind," the creature said, seeming to explain to them. She turned back to him. "You'll receive my spawn unto you, which will change you into something akin to the messenger-seekers, but more a compliment of them. You will be a traveler-seeker, free to enrich my spawn's stores of others' essence and thus, gift the village and, very indirectly, Father, with a great harvest. You are a member of the great wheel, not merely one spoke, but many more, gendered though you may be."

He thought over her words and reached no conclusion. "I'm... scared," he admitted.

"Do not be frightened," the creature said. "You'll feel no pain. In fact; it will be quite the opposite. Perhaps too much of the opposite for you to handle. We will both be drained by the act, but not broken. I assure you."

He smiled and nodded.

"I think we should go," the man said. "Julia says she's heard enough." Julia... what sort of a name was that? It was much too long of a name. "Thank you," he finished in a pious tone.

"Your graciousness will be remembered," the creature commented. "I will have the elders hear your case. Now be dismissed. I must attend to this young one."

The man turned just before he exited. "Can... would it be possible to," something about archiving, "this. It would be strictly for..." then he used a weird world. Like scionce, sconce, science. Yes, science. "It would be strictly for the sake of knowledge."

The creature hummed its interest. "Should the elders know, they could grow angered. But, you have my blessing and that should be enough. Do as you will." With her remark, a small white globe suspended by no visible means zipped in and planted itself in a corner.

"This will be it," he said. "Julia wants you to just ignore it. If you want us to destroy the..." measurement. Footage? You cannot destroy a measurement! "... just tell us." He bowed and hastily exited.

The creature turned to him as the duo exited. "Are you ready to accept this burden?" Silence encapsulated them as the footsteps of the exiting pair grew faint.

"I must... but I am also prepared," he said.

"Let us hope so," she said. "First, descend into this water."

"Must I get my clothes wet?"

"No," she said, offhandedly. "Remove them."

Somehow he wasn't surprised by the decree, seeing where those extra appendages originated from on the others. His garments would merely get in the way. He dropped the ceremonial cloth around his waist and stepped from the branch onto the bromiliad's waxy, woody surface.

"good," the creature said, encouraging. "Lay down, young one, I'll do you no harm."

He reclined on the curving wall of the plant's moisture-fat surface. Only his head remained above the gentle, rippling veil of the pure water within.

The creature made its advance. Myriad tube-feet skillfully climbed his legs, making no haste but, at the same time, sparing no excess delay. The creature reared upward as it advanced, revealing an underside ringed with suckers, feelers and scillia of all sizes and lengths, centering around a single pucker.

The pucker slowly extended outward, disgorging a pink tube no wider than his finger. "Do not be alarmed by what I do now. No harm will come to you," she assured. "But it may be very... otherworldly. Trust me and try to stay still."

As the tube reached downward, it disgorged a questing tongue that made deftly for his opening. Its narrow, lubricated form slipped easily and harmlessly into him, twisting gently as it quested deeper into his confines.

"Now," she said. "You must enter me." He shivered as she descended downward. The pucker reached down to swallow his tip, then suck his length completely into its confines. His view dissapeared beneath her as she lowered onto him. She gyrated over him as fleshy contact slithered over his entire maleness. It grew lubricated, the movement coming more easily with every slow pass she applied to his skin.

She reared upward again, drawing away from him with a wet slurp. He shimmered with honey-colored juices. "Now, you are pure," she said. "You're assured no disease from this meeting, should any of those ghosts from your past you call 'disease' have come back."

He shivered as she hovered over him. "Relax," she urged. "Now the true test begins."

The tongue stirred in him, making him arch upward as contact seemed to spread through every inner inch of his length, and deeper. It twisted within him, coiling back and fourth as it gently pushed further into him.

The tube descended in the wake of the gyrating, fleshy tongue exploring him. It unfurled, like a tiny flower, and pressed hard around the tongue, gripping his tip. Just as the searching appendage within him felt it could fill no more, it gently throbbed.

The movement traveled from his tip to his inner reaches, resisting his hardened flesh and tickling his nerves with unexpected pleasure. It grew in intensity until the tongue began to visibly pulsate. It rhythmically fattened and constricted, gently growing within him.

The creature shrugged over him as another questing feeler descended, it split from its tip into a fan of sensitive flesh. The creature wordlessly allowed it to descend until it gripped down at the base of his head, over a patch of his most sensitive flesh.

An intense flash of pleasure, followed by revelation he could barely described, overcame him. The joint-feeling spread from his maleness outward into a galaxy of new feelings. He felt as if he were two beads at either end of a string, libel to break. He began to grasp the care that had to be taken in this ceremony- how delicately it had to be conducted.

"Do you feel it?" The creature asked. It spoke more eagerly, almost harshly as he failed to respond. "Do you feel it?" she pressed.

"Y-yes," he said. "What is it?"

"To put it simply," the creature's speech marched out of it, as if labored. However, the words themselves did not waver. "It is your destiny, my child.

"Your new, eternal partner," she cooed. "Now let yourself relax into it. Do what comes naturally."

As the tongue throbbed in him and, amidst the odd, alien and still-indecipherable stimuli, he felt he wouldn't be able to stop himself from doing just that. Milky fluid sprayed lightly around the tongue, which suddenly became more focused.

Tiny, pulsing divots began to travel up its length, toward the creature hovering over him. "Half your essence," she declared. "And your first sacriment. A necessary one. Now it can relay you. You are part of the great cycle now." He tingled with elation, what he had hoped for as a Chosen.

She shivered as she widened around more emerging feelers. Nubbed feelers spiraled down the throbbing tongue, twisting over his length. They milked and squeezed him with focused curiosity, even as two lobes descended around them. The masses of flesh moved with deliberateness, warily descending toward his sensitive reaches.

They slowly unfurled downward, expanding into two massive, fleshy, flat tongues. On one side, they were a featureless purple, glistening with their lack of exposure to the outside world. On their other side, however, life itself seemed to writhe in anticipation.

A pink mat of long feelers, stubby, wet suckers and eagerly curling tongues covered the inner sides of the appendages. As they spread wide in search of him, the source of every odd apparatus attempting to mate with him appeared. It sat between the tongues, a fat and wet pucker, twitching around the throbbing tongue still struggling to anchor him.

The puckering tube lowered its fat lips down to his tip in a gentle kiss.

"Yes," she crooned. "Yours, my child."

Inle had a lucid thought amidst the tumolt, his mind locked together a response to the creature. "Is it mine?"

"You belong to each other." As she spoke, the fat lips of the tube widened and sucked down onto him. Even as it pulled a spongy interior tight around his tip, he realized the elder creature's opening had distended downward to allow the contact.

"Hold on," she seemed to say as much to him as to herself. "I can't keep this up much longer."

The tiny, tentacle-like tongues surrounding Inle's length whipped around him, squeezing amongst the others and pulling the great surfaces to which they were fixed into contact with his skin. The two halves zipped downward from his tip to his base, slowly closing his sensitive places off from the outside world. He felt the sensation from both sides. The nerves along his erect length sang with the attention they received, even as he felt his own maleness through the groping grasps of the feelers. Suckers latched down and engorged protuberances massaged his tingling skin.

"It... Begins." she said each word as if they were each their own sentence. Moments later, she lowered onto him. Tentacles and tube-feet gripped reassuringly over his limbs as she muttered gentle encouragements.

Deprived of any visual sense of the event, he began to feel not only the tongue, ever deeper within him, but his own interior as it felt to the appendages. His eyes screwed shut with sudden euphoria. Two spots of ball-lightning arced together, Briin's two moons rose in a double eclipse, two tiny, bright stars as one.

Life pressed against him, consuming him, becoming him. Then, a retreat. He felt new, twisting, agile things retreating in a forest of contact from her. He felt a burden lifted.

"Is... is it over?" he stuttered.

"Yes... my... child." She barely managed to utter each word within the space of a human breath.

"What's..." he paused. "What's happened to you?"

"Not well. Not quite as I planned." He tried to open his eyes, but he didn't have the strength. His body didn't respond, still in the fits of pleasure. It took his best will to ignore the two sides of contact swimming up and down his length, slowly unifying and, mysteriously, dulling.

He couldn't rise onto his feet, even though he now fought his fugue to do so. "Don't struggle," she gasped. "It is merging fluids. The final step. I have cast it free and it must find a new pillar upon which to glean."

"Me," he said. He'd expected the creature, but would have never guessed that this was how it survived on him. "What about you? Will you be okay?"

"I must rest, I fear I have so little of these transactions left within me. But I will see you again, child."

She sat silent. Having lost his last thread into reality, Inle felt himself losing consciousness.

***

As he awoke from cold dreams of dark embrace and origin, reptilian, invertibrate calmness, he heard voices.

"Inle," Sanwe Chun's voice was like lotus flowers, beautiful. "Inle, you're awake! Thank the Gods Below!" He opened his eyes and saw her face among many staring at him. In a flash of fright he realized he was still nude, then noticed the silky contact of a sheet. It was especially noticeable along a new space where his loins had once been. Bulbous, he could make out the thing bulging from the sheets as he lifted his head to look.

"The boy has survived!" Enaki lethargically mumbled. "One gift and one curse."

"One curse?" Inle stammered, still weak.

Sinui frowned for the first time Inle had ever seen and delivered the news.

Their village's Guardian had died in the wake of her delivery of his Ascendance.