FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

//: City of San Iadras, Gordon's Park Cemetery. It was nice up on the hill. It wasn't sacred ground like the rest of the privately owned cemetery. There were a couple of trees nearer the fence, looking good despite all the shade they caught from buildings. Grass was pretty green, and the paths were gravelled. And then there were the two dozen plots near the crest of the hill, a neat little row. The first fourteen were empty patches of grass marked out with a fence, marble covers over the other ten graves. Well. Seven of them. Three were just for show, because those brothers' remains were mixed up in a couple of tons of ash and medical waste somewhere. Dallas was up at the graves, laying out little plastic chess boards and setting up the cheap chess pieces according to the old games in his pad. Dakar and Orleans were fussing over a portable stove, awkwardly rearranging things with an almost obsessive compulsive flair, getting the pots of food lined up right by size, then contents, then how much heat they needed. Monaco, a beer in hand, pointed something out and they stood, scratching their heads in almost mirrored unison. "No, look, the instructions say-" "Yeah but look at it in German. It's different in German." "It was made in Japan, though," Denver complained, twisting over the cheap instructions. "Troy!" Jennifer smiled a little, laying on the grass beside him, having been watching too. He looked up at her sheepishly, staring at her hand, unsure if he should pick it up, kiss it. "Denver and Nagoya need me." "Go," she replied, leaning her head back and smiling. "I'll go and see how those, uhm, two are getting on with the cooking." "Dakar and Orleans," Troy replied. "That's Monaco with 'em." "How do you tell the difference?" Troy stared down the hill for a few moments. "Same way I can tell you from your sisters. They make me feel different when I look at them." "Like how?" "Turin always makes me feel worried about him. Dallas... sorry for him. Never quite know about Florence. Not when he's dragging around somebody. Bewildered, mostly. Happy about Orleans and Dakar, they still lean on each other like we all used to as kids." "Me?" she asked looking up at him uncertainly, swatting her tail against the turf. Troy dry swallowed. "Well my heart does a funny thing. Kinda, flips and thuds real fast. Sometimes my fur will feel all tingly, I'll be warm inside and I just want to stop and stare so I can remember what it's like holding your hand." She slipped her hand into his, squeezing his palm lightly. He stared at it. Lightly laced his fingers between hers after a moment. Looked up at her smile, wondering if his eyes could still lie. "Troy! Can you translate something for us?" And he let go of her hand. He shut his eyes tight, because her smile became sad. Sad, as she watched him get to his feet and walk away, turning his eyes from her. Sad, because she knew he still hurt. Walking wasn't enough, so he jogged down to his brothers, trying to hide everything that hurt, even the way his shoes pinched his feet. "Troy, which way around is this diagram?" Nagoya asked, drawling out his vowels like a true ozzie, pointing at the thin sheet of rice paper. Denver stuck his hands in his pockets, grumbled, "that's not how you use a freakin' pressure tank, there aught to be a bayonet lug in there..." He stared at the Japanese pictographs for a couple of seconds, realized he wasn't reading a damn thing, just reliving the way she'd shaken in his arms. Troy dry swallowed. "Uh." He pointed at the diagram. "it's, uhm. Don't operate near open flames, and, uh... not during storms..." Eventually they sorted through it, working in teams when Philadelphia showed up and read out the instructions in Hebrew with a chuckle at another bad machine translation. They staked out the lines, got the gas canister into the balloon. There was a brief argument over who should link their phone with it, Troy just keyed it in while the others were fighting, set up a link and switched the damn valve on so the blimp hovered up, then tossed his phone over to Denver so he could futz with the lamp settings. After awhile Denver got the lights on, making the little static blimp light up the hillside. The Guacamole was pretty good, and the flour tortillas one of Anne's friends handed him went well with it. He hung out by the portable stove, watching Dakar and Orleans pass back and forth bowls, tossing eggplant into the pans, take an occasional sip from one another's beers without noticing, because they kept getting shuffled on the little plastic table they had for a work surface. Jennifer didn't come to see. She sat far up the hillside, watching nothing in particular. Eventually she edged down towards the fence, helped unpack a cooler from Dallas and Florence's car. "You know I was going through Osaka's notes yesterday," Dakar offered after fishing out a beer from the cooler, handing it over to Troy. "He had some really fascinating algorithms going with genomes. Search routines to pick out safe parts of the sequence once it's digitally captured." Troy frowned a little, breaking the seal and flicking the lid off onto the work surface. "Safe?" Dakar nodded quickly, glancing up to take a spatula from Orleans. Orleans grimaced, shaking his empty hand, and Dakar stuck a beer into it. Orleans took a sip and handed it back, trading it in for his spatula. "Stuff parents can pass on to children with no possibility for a disease piggybacking." Dakar shrugged a little, scooping up some trash from the work surface to get them into a bag. "I'm kind of tempted to pick it up on the side," he said, biting his lip. "Could help make filtering out genetic diseases cheap enough for everyone to do it." "That'd be pretty good," Troy agreed, picking up his beer and swilling it around his mouth. Maybe it'd take the taste of her lips away. "Yeah, but first we have to automate germline alteration or getting a check for genetically spread diseases down to five or six nudies a pop isn't going to help," Orleans pointed out, taking one of the pans and upending it into a pot. "Hey, it's like ten grand now?" Dakar asked, reaching past Orleans to shake another of the pans on the stove. "And they don't even get everything, we could get this into the red cross and maybe the disadvantaged communities could just go with abortions for kids with it, or abstain. It'd still help up the health levels." "Yeah but a lot of the developing world's still Catholic," Orleans griped, and within a couple of moments Troy wasn't in the conversation at all anymore. Monaco crouched down in front of York's grave, set down his bottle of beer next to the chessboard for a minute. "Been thinking about York a lot, lately." Troy looked up. He didn't need to read York's epitaph. He knew it by heart. One of York's favourite sayings. A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy. Something Guy Fawkes, some ancient revolutionary, had said. "He was right," Monaco added, dropping his eyes to the board and moving a rook, then gently reaching out to rotate the knights to all face in one direction, to show which side would move next. "It's all so fucked up. Everything's so, so goddamn fucked up." Troy settled down onto the grass. Now and then the blimp got caught by a breeze, and the fuzzed edge of its light panned over his feet. "Feels that way," he agreed. "No, it really is," Monaco sighed. "The old Eurasian war fallout's everywhere up there, Troy. Designer viruses and corrosives that turn the goddamn fish into sludge in their ponds, let alone what the nukes did." Troy dipped his gaze to the grass. Monaco sat down beside him, almost collapsing, legs crossed, beer bottle held by its neck. "Nobody cares. Nobody listens. It's all just..." He shook his head. "Fucked up. There's treasures of art work rotting into nothing because there was a file photo taken before the wars and nobody wants to go into the deadzones for the originals." "Because people don't care?" Troy asked. "Yeah." Monaco grimaced, pulled down a swig of his beer. "Nobody listens. To each other. We don't say the things that matter, that, Goddamnit, here's something culturally important, we need to save it, or, no, victory wasn't worth that, we were wrong. We didn't fix anything." "We were wrong," Troy repeated, looking up at the blimp. Maybe I was wrong. She mentioned him. Right after introducing herself, hadn't she? Or was it afterward? "Don't go all psychologist on me, Troy," Monaco snapped. "I'm not, I'm just." He sighed, looking up at Monaco. "What do you mean by that? Wrong for what?" "Everything, I mean, now we all practice eugenics in our goddamn back yards. It's like we're saying the National Socialists were right, we did it again, we tortured people for no fucking reason and..." He clutched at his face for a minute, shook his head. "The UN moved in on Tajikistan last month, Troy. They were producing designer viruses and... and they condone everything that went on here." He grimaced at the lights downtown. "They don't give a shit because we pay more taxes and the Tri-Corp half way bought out the UN anyway." No Christmas lights up yet. The central American corporate preserve didn't have Thanksgiving to blend into one long holiday season. Troy looked down at the grass again, picked at it with a finger. Monaco looked at him. "You listening to me?" "Yup," Troy replied. "So why aren't you bitching at me to stop getting myself worked up over stuff I have no control over?" Troy looked up at Monaco. "Because I'm wondering... what happened. With you and Jennifer. I mean, did you guys date in college, or..." Monaco ground his teeth together, spat off to the side like one of the Georgian peasants he kept hiring to help him with his digs. "We fucked," he said. Took a sip of his beer. Like he hadn't said anything important. "My first time." Shrugged. "And hung out for a week or two after that, and, then she found some better guy." Monaco glared off at the sky. "Blonde bastard. Lots of money. Looked almost Aryan," he laughed, heart not in it. Troy looked down at the grass again. He didn't want to see his brother's face. Think of Monaco's arms around her, too, along with Andy's, some blonde guy's, whoever else's. Maybe some of the patrons down at the club where she danced sometimes. Or what Monaco must be thinking. "Then what?" Monaco bowed his head, sniffled. "Got over her," he said, smiling. A little too broadly. He dragged himself to his feet, "Long over her. Found a prettier girl like she found a prettier guy. Good riddance," Monaco said, lifting his beer up for a sip "You don't mind... me and her? I can back off, maybe you two could..." He lifted his shoulder in a shrug. "No. I got on with my life," he said, smile forcing itself onto his face even harder. "I'm sure she did too." He shrugged, a little too casually. A little too loosely. Held up his beer. "Anyway. It's a party. You want another one?" Troy shook his head, not wanting to open his mouth. Not wanting to say a word because he couldn't believe what his brother had said, because maybe Troy'd say it too one day. Maybe he'd even say it tomorrow. Monaco stepped off into the light of the party, waving his empty beer bottle, while the edge of the blimp's light licked at Troy's toes. Troy shut his eyes and covered his face with his hands for a second, almost tasting the bile in the back of his throat. Troy sat and stared downhill, watching the circle of light cast by the blimp wave back and forth over his brothers, their girlfriends, Anne's friends. Jennifer. "Dallas?" Nadine was trooping up the hillside, She squinted at Troy where he sat in the dark. "Not Dallas," she sighed. Troy nodded to his side. "Have a seat. He'll be around eventually, he's still playing Houston." Nadine stepped over and settled down, flicking out her cat's tail, clawing at the ground beside her with her claws, letting them flick back into her fingertips before she got her hands dirty. She sighed a little. "I don't get how that works. The chess." "Well, you move the rooks straight along the rows, and the bishops go diagonally..." "No, I mean," she batted at her own ear, scraped her hand down along her hair. "With the graves." Troy rubbed his heel in the grass, he'd inadvertently kicked up a little dirt. "When Springfield died," he explained, "Toledo was still in the middle of a game with him. We were just little kids, Toledo kept making excuses for why he was crying. Stupid ones." Troy swallowed at the air. "We all did. But he was the only one with a half decent explanation. I can't finish my game with Springfield," Troy said, settling his hand over his stomach, trying to still the queasiness at the memory, trying not to frown, not to relive those tears. "So I took the board, and I finished the game with him." Nadine glanced back at the graves, not saying anything, tail tip wagging back and forth anxiously. "Then there were twenty-three of us. And when we were playing chess together, there'd be an odd mouse out, without a game partner." Troy took a deep breath, willing the tears not to come. "So we'd all trade places, rotating around the boards, as if Springfield was still there to play. We stopped after Kiev died, started again after Berlin." He wiped at an eye. "Nobody had to be alone when we were playing chess." "And, uh," he glanced back at the graves, "We didn't want them to be alone either." "I wish he'd told me that." Nadine stared at the ground, hard. "He cries at night sometimes, when I can get him to stay over. I don't know what to do about it." She scraped at the grass with a heel "He'll say a little then, but... I don't understand. He won't tell me more. Jennifer, Troy's girlfriend... you know Jennifer?" Troy straightened his back, nodding. "Yeah," he said. "I met her." "She says there's nothing you can do but be there." Nadine wiped at her nose a little. "I don't know. I just wanna hug Dallas and make it all go away for him. You guys have been through so much." Troy took a shaky breath, nodded a little. "Be there. It helps. You don't know much it helps." He looked up, then, hoping she wouldn't realize who he was. "What else'd Jennifer tell you?" "Wanted to know how me and Dallas made up after a fight." Nadine shifted a shoulder. "It's real easy, he doesn't let any start." She smiled tightly, eyes sad, folding her arms. "He's so sweet. I just don't know what he's thinking half the time." "You don't?" Troy asked, staring at his brother's girlfriend. "No. He took me stargazing once, pointed out all these stars I'll never remember the names of." She tipped her head back to look up at the sky, the few stars not overwhelmed by the city's light. "It's nice, and he'll be happy. But he never talks too much when he's unhappy. Like he's trying to spare my feelings or something." Troy smiled a little. "That's because he's scared. He wants to look perfect to you, Nadine," Troy offered. "But, uh. We ain't perfect." "But I love him because he's him, not because he's... some knight in shining armour. I just want to be happy with him." "There he is," Troy said, leaning to one side and pointing downhill. "See? Next to Dakar and Orleans, talking to Florence." She squinted down. "I think that's his shirt. How can you be sure?" Troy offered a smile to her, shuffling a little to get comfortable in the grass. "Just look at him. Ain't he the luckiest guy in the world? You can tell it's him." She got to her feet, dusting off the back of her jeans, running her hand over her tail to dislodge bits of grass. "Wanna walk me back, uhm?" The 'uhm' hung in the air, begging to be filled with a name. She didn't know which brother he was. He wasn't about to tell her, not right now. He got to his feet, picking up his long empty beer bottle, smiled. "Yeah, I'll, uh. I'll be along." He edged his way downhill after Nadine, picking his steps carefully so his shoes wouldn't pinch his feet. Dallas looked up and spotted her first, the look on his face was great. A smile, just a smile, without anything else dragging at him. He patted Florence's shoulder and rushed up to her, and Troy kept on walking past them as they embraced, fixing his eyes to the ground. "What's with you two?" grumbled an unfamiliar voice. The only one, so it'd be Tim. "He's my brother," replied Florence. "And you live with him, so you have to spend all your time with him when I'm around too?" Tim complained. "When do we get to be alone, Florence?" "He's my brother!" Florence grimaced. "I don't like being away from him, alright? Jesus." "Is that why you don't invite me back to your place? You sleeping with him or something?" Troy stopped, looking up with a kind of shocked blink. He found his teeth grinding into each other. What the hell had that prick said? "He's my brother you sick bastard," Florence snapped, tail out straight. He shook his arm out of Tim's grasp. "What the hell do you think I am, Tim?" "We've been going out for three weeks!" Tim yelled. "What are you, frigid?" Florence blinked, long and slow. "Just go." Tim reached out to him, "I didn't mean that." "Get your damn hands off my Whitneys and Shaw jacket and fuck off, Tim." Florence pushed past him, striding up the hill. Tim stood there, pink faced with the booze. Shook his head, and stalked down to the stove, yelled at Dakar to get him a fucking beer. With Philadelphia helping, it didn't take long to shove Tim into a cab and make him go home. "I mean I'm just the effeminate one, aren't I? That's all I am to him. The fur who he might be able to bang," Florence griped through his tears. "I mean I thought he was nice, but." He put his hand to his forehead. "God, I'm so embarrassed. I didn't mean for it to come out this way." Troy shrugged, settling back on the grass, a couple of fresh beers in hand. "Well it's not like we didn't know." Florence picked his head up, eyes wide with fear. "You do? Did Dallas? I didn't want to freak him out." Troy offered over one of the bottles, leaned back and pushed the bishop over a square on Kiev's grave. "It doesn't. He worries about you." Florence opened the bottle and shuffled back so he could move a rook with a little more care than Troy had. He wiped at his face with a handkerchief, blew his nose. "I'm such the goddamn stereotype, aren't I?" Troy cracked open his beer, swilled a little around in his mouth before swallowing. "It's easier that way." "No it's not," Florence sighed. "I spend all my money on clothes, try to impress. Try to see if there's somebody out there, but..." He frowned tearfully. "All they wanna do is fuck the goddamn furry." "You don't have to, you know," Troy said, offering a smile. "Being alone's not so bad, is it?" He leaned back and took one of the pawns, set it a square down. "Yeah it is." Florence wiped at his eyes. "I watch Dallas with Nadine and I know he's going to move out with her one day, and then I'm going to be even more alone. Nothing to do but stare at the walls and be afraid to go to sleep in case I dream something awful." Troy took another sip of his beer, set the bottle down between his leg and his tail so it wouldn't spill over. "When he's not at home, Troy, I'll wake up and the whole apartment will be dark, and I'll go and make myself a cup of coffee or something and just..." Florence's face twisted up miserably, he clutched a hand to his head. "I just want somebody strong there to hold me." "Come here," Troy whispered, putting his arms around Florence's shoulders. "We're out of there, Florence. They're just dreams now." "Hurtful dreams," Florence replied, shaking a little. Finally he hugged Troy back. "You don't think less of me, do you?" "No. You're my brother, Florence." Florence clutched Troy tight for a long moment, finally patted Troy's shoulders and drew back, picking up his beer. "Does Padre Munez know?" Troy shook his head. "Not so far as I can tell. I don't see him much anymore. But if he did, I bet it wouldn't stop him from telling you to sit down and eat lunch so you can grow up big and strong." "But it's such a damn sin." Florence scratched at an ear, blew his nose again. "So's a mouse marrying a human being. It's kind of bestiality, y'know. But he's still coming to the wedding, even if he won't officiate it." Troy sipped from his beer and set it down carefully. "The Padre's a good guy." Florence glanced back at the row of graves, lifting up a hand to bite at the sides of his fingernails. Slouched down, tapped the neck of his beer bottle before taking another gulp. His breathing evened out after a minute. "I'm gay, Troy." Troy smiled a little, patted his brother on the shoulder. "I know." Saigon leaned over and made a move on the chessboard laying on Houston's grave. He didn't say anything until after he'd finished turning the knights. He didn't have to say anything, he just had to lift his beer bottle and take a long swig, come over to sit down next to Troy. Troy knew that uncertain flick of the tail. "You okay, Saigon?" "I don't know if it's going to work out, Troy. Anne does," he said, shrugging a little. "I don't. The rest of the world's not like the research station." Troy nodded a little. He leaned over, shifting a piece over Berlin's grave. "What do you mean?" "We didn't have to go anywhere for weeks, sometimes. We could just stay there and concentrate on work. Anne with her low temp hydroponics, me with the robots and keeping the IT infrastructure up." Saigon shrugged helplessly. "Easy to know what you're doing. What's expected of you," Troy offered. Saigon nodded, scratched at his back where he aught to have a couple of kidneys his own, but didn't. He took another sip from his bottle, looked up. "I mean what if we don't work out later on, when things are different?" "You're having doubts?" "A couple. I mean, I was looking at the statistics." Saigon rubbed at his arm, slouched his shoulders. "Humans and furries get more divorces than other cross-ethnic groups by a margin of like twenty percent. Don't wanna be that twenty percent." "Marriage isn't gambling," Troy said, looking down the row of graves where Boston was folding up one of the finished chess games. "You think she's going to cheat on you?" Saigon sipped at his beer quietly. "It hurts to think about the possibility." Troy glanced back down the hillside, where Dakar and Orleans were packing away the food. "Well. We've gotten hurt a lot in our lives." Troy spotted her, then. Easy to spot, thanks to her pretty red hair. "Do you love her?" he asked his brother with a forced on smile. Saigon nodded quickly, more by reflex than anything else. "She makes me feel like I'm bleeding internally," he joked. "Warm and numb inside," Troy added with a smirk. "Yeah." She looked like she was smiling. He couldn't tell from here, obviously, but he thought she might be. He desperately wanted her to be. She flicked her hair back, making the red tresses sway a little. "So what hurt would you bear to know Anne's smiling?" "I'd go down like Springfield if I had to," Saigon replied, glancing back at Springfield's grave. Springfield who spent his last words asking if Dallas was going to be okay. Who died while they stripped out his organs to save Dallas's life. Died trying not to scream while they made York cut him open and leave him to bleed to death. "You'd really do that?" Saigon nodded quietly. "She's there for me, Troy. I want to be there for her too." Troy looked down at his shoes. Lifted his beer for a sip, wishing it had more alcohol in it. He shrugged a little, scratched his ear awkwardly. "Sounds like you've already made your decision." Saigon nodded a little, shifted one of the pieces on Osaka's grave. "Checkmate," he whispered. He looked up briefly. "Guess I have, even if I am afraid." With that he started clearing the bored. "What about you, Troy? You look troubled." "A little." "Wanna talk about it?" "I think we just did." Denver had switched off the blimp, was packing it away with Philadelphia, so Troy couldn't quite make her out in the dark. Her green eyes caught the city lights, sparkled a little. She didn't even turn to look at him, but her voice was soft and gentle. "You don't talk about them too often," she said, glancing between the graves. Troy moved up to stand beside her. "Hurts to." She glanced away, down at her shoulder. "It's alright." She straightened slowly, reaching to her face for a moment. "I was just wondering about Houston's epitaph. I always thought it went the clock struck one." Troy shut his eyes tightly for a second. "When we got out of the labs, we were put in an orphanage. Catholic one, and the Padre, he taught Houston the rhyme. And, Houston said, that's not right father. It struck three of us." She perked up her ears a little, glanced at the three graves next to Houston's. Springfield, Kiev and Berlin. "When he died, he hadn't told us what he wanted, he hadn't made a will or anything." Troy licked his lips. "So we used his e-mail signature. Hickory Dickory Dock. The Mice ran up the clock. The clock struck three, but twenty one escaped, with minor injury. He used to love singing it." Her arm slipped around his side, she pulled herself close. "What happened to him, Troy?" "Tuberculosis." Troy found his arm going around her back. "I sat by his bedside for about three months. They wouldn't let him leave the country, so I had to learn Japanese to get any sense out of the doctors." He smiled shakily, ignoring the way it made his tears bunch up over his cheek and seep through his fur. "We couldn't get any of our medical records from when we were kids that might have helped explain what was going on." "He tried cheering me up with relativity paradoxes, stuff like how relativistic distortion can make a pit that's five meters across, relatively two inches wide when distorted, but you can still fall in anyway. Or not. Being the paradox." Something felt stuck in his throat. "He was explaining one, and, he started coughing up blood. And he didn't stop. And then the doctors came in, and took him away for surgery." She touched his face, gently ran the side of her thumb over his wet eyelids to dry them. "Life support was expensive, and there wasn't a fund to help us, back then. And, we've never had that much money. We ran out." Troy swallowed, but it wouldn't go away. "And the clock struck four." "Ten now," she whispered a little sadly. "Doesn't rhyme that way, though." She dropped her hand to his shoulder. Squeezed. "You don't have to tell me this Troy. It hurts you." "It's okay." Troy shrugged a little. "You can know this stuff, Jennifer. I mean. You've always been there for me." Her hand slipped to his chest, and she stepped in close to him, settling her face on his shoulder. "Troy. I just want you to know, even if... even if things get fucked up between us, I'm here for you. I'm always going to be here for you, no matter what's happening. If you just need to talk to someone, I will be there. If you need me to sit with you after one of your nightmares, I'll do that too." Her voice quavered for a moment. "If... if you still want me, I'll be there. I'm sorry I hurt you." "It's okay," he whispered, looking down at her hair. Where someone else had kissed her. where he still wanted to. "No it's not." He smiled a little, acid in his throat. "Maybe not, but I still love you," he replied gently, settling his arms around her. He shut his eyes, pushed his snout into her hair, breathed her in. "Even if I hurt you sometimes?" she asked, rubbing her ear into his shoulder slowly. "You make the hurt go away too, you know." She wept, then, quietly. She lifted her head and pushed her nose into his ear so she could whisper. "I'm sorry I did that to you. I can't... I won't lie to you, Troy. I won't make promises I can't keep. But I need you in my life, Troy. I don't want to hurt you... but I need you." "I need you too, Jen," he whispered, snuffling at her hair. "I don't know what I'd do without your smile." "Is it pretty again?" She asked with a wheeze. "Never stopped being anything but." He reached up to guide her face away for a second, then back to his, letting his lips tangle up with hers, because her lips were soft, and it didn't matter who she'd kissed because right now, this second, he was kissing her. And it'd hurt later when he thought about it, but it was okay right now, because he loved her. Needed her. Wanted her. There was a bright flare of light accompanied by a tone. Troy blinked. "Hey, uh. Saw you guys and, uhm." Denver shrugged, tail lashing side to side, held out Troy's phone. "I thought you might want it. Uhm, your phone," he offered, smiling awkwardly. Troy reached out and took it while Jennifer straightened herself up, tried to look prim and proper and as though she wasn't held together with fragile little threads. "Thanks," Troy said. Denver bounced uneasily on his toes. "Yeah, uh. Some of Anne's friends are going drinking and, uh." He nodded back towards the park gates, with his thumb. "Me and Philadelphia and Monaco are, uh, gonna." He dry swallowed, "Uh." Troy smiled a little. "Go have fun." "See you tomorrow," Denver offered with a quick smile before bouncing off, tail sweeping back and forth. Jennifer curled her arms around Troy, set her head on his shoulder again. He glanced down at the phone. There they stood in the picture, kissing each other. His black fur next to her sandy yellow. "We make a cute couple," she whispered softly. "I like the way I look in your arms." He put his arms around her, touched his snout to her muzzle. "I like the way you feel there. But I think I need a walk." She pulled back uncertainly, took a breath. "I don't blame you if you still need a little space." "Not want I meant." Her hand looked empty. So he took it, squeezed it tight. "Wanna take that walk with me?" "Where?" "Wherever." "Let me just take these stupid shoes off. They've been hurting my feet all day," she complained, looking down at her feet. "Mine too," Troy whispered with a smile. Jennifer smiled too. And so they walked barefoot, leaving weird prints in the grass together.