FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Daylight shines down through rustling branches, filling the forest with warm, tinted light. The trees here feel truly ancient, untouched by loggers' axes or seasonal fires. Looking up toward the distant branches makes you feel tiny by comparison. This part of the national park finds a perfect balance between untamed wilderness and the safety of civilization. You soon find a quiet bench just on the edge of the main path. There's a small stream and a footbridge nearby that give the place a nice, rustic sort of quality. It's the perfect place to relax and eat your lunch before starting on the trip home.

You're halfway through eating your sandwich when you start to feel a strange anxiety deep in your chest. The perpetual twitter of songbirds falls to hushed silence, leaving only the rustling of leaves in the warm breeze. Is some sort of predator nearby? You're just about to stand up from the bench when a raucous screeching sound from right behind you makes you yell with surprise and spin back around to face it. A raven's call! A large raven silently perches right behind where you were sitting. It's quite a handsome bird, covered in shimmering coat of black feathers that ruffle with the silently stirring breeze. You remembered ravens being large birds, but not this large. It's at least twice the size of any typical crow. Your ears are still ringing from the loud shriek as the raven gazes up at you curiously.

You stare back at the bird as it shuffles down to perch right where you were sitting. The raven seems to be staring at the half-eaten sandwich in your hand. Perhaps it's hungry? Deciding to indulge the bird's appetite, you rip off a bit of crust and hold it down in front of the raven's thick, wedge-shaped beak. "Hey there, guy..." You speak in a relaxed singsong as if you were talking to someone's pet. "Are you hungry?" The raven blinks at the sandwich as you offer it, the bird's cold black eye flashing white for a moment. There's a long pause before it finally opens its beak. "No..." The raven mutters his response in a low, guttural voice. He sounds like a middle aged man

That simple word catches you completely by surprise. While you'd heard that ravens can learn to mimic human speech like parrots, that word made an alarming amount of sense in context. "What was that?" You stare back at the bird, wondering if he might say anything else. He blinks again, barely moving. The random word must have been a surreal coincidence. You try offering the scrap of food again. "Come on, bird. You want the food, don't you? That's why you came here, right?" You find yourself wishing that he would keep talking to you. Realizing that it's just a normal raven is almost a letdown after that sudden outburst.

The raven's feathers bristle and fluff out all at once. It's as if he's suddenly inflated himself with rage. "No! I mean no as in 'No I don't want your food, you simpering lack-wit!' But that sure didn't stop you!" Nothing could have prepared you for that sudden outburst. The raven's words spill out at you in a torrent of impeccably pronounced vitriol. "You... You mawkish, mindless, mouth-breather of a man." The birds above end their strange silence as they cry out all at once. The forest fills with the calls of crows and jays, chickadees and indolent-sounding songbirds. You're quite taken aback by the raven's furious tirade, leaving you struggling to get a word in edgewise. "Food!? You think I'm here to beg? To supplicate myself before your five-fingered hands? Such arrogance!"

The raven trembles with unfathomable fury, finally leaving you with a chance to speak. The birds overhead fall quiet again, leaving the place with an air of judgemental silence. It's hard to think of what to say to the poor creature even if you can get over the shock of realizing that this animal is so intelligent. You can barely understand why it's so mad at you to begin with, unless it's some sort of misguided reaction to perceived racism. Or would it be species-ism? You decide to clear your throat and speak as calmly as possible. "I... I'm not underestimating you." You speak slowly and calmly, not wanting to give him any more reason to be upset. "I'm sorry. I just meant to be polite, to share, since I had extra food." It feels strange to be justifying yourself to a bird. The raven's expression is typically avian in its coldness, but you can notice his feathers starting to flatten and deflate. Perhaps he's pleased? "Maybe I can help? I mean... I know it must get tiresome being misunderstood, being treated like that. Like a... Dumb bird. But you're clever. I can understand that." You pause, failing to realize your mistake.

The raven twitches slightly, as if you've somehow struck a nerve. One of his feet raises slowly up into the air, pointing at you as he stands on one foot. The clawed toes of his scaly feet trace invisible shapes in the air. "Clever, yes. I am certainly clever." His voice has a cruel and aristocratic tone that lacks the aimless rage it had before. "And you, you're a human person. Humans are pretty clever. So maybe you can answer a question." You nod slowly. If it helped the raven to calm down, you suppose that one question couldn't hurt. Something about his tone makes you more ill-at-ease than the screamed insults. He was perfectly calm to begin with, simply feigning anger to see how you respond. It's like a killdeer pretending to be wounded to distract predators. He's been gauging you this whole time!

"Tell me, then." The raven continues the strange movements with his toes as he talks. It's rather distracting. "How is a human like a bird? I'm quite curious. Maybe a clever man like you can teach me." He stops talking to let you respond but part of you doesn't want to answer. No matter what you say, he'll just find a way to make you seem arrogant and self-important. "Well.." Mentioning the bird's ability to speak seemed too obvious. He'd probably just berate you for singling him out over other birds. You look down at your right hand and wiggle your fingers. "We both have hands... Sort of... Well, you have your feet. Those are more like hands than what a lot of animals have." The raven nods, bobbing his head slowly. Did you say what he wanted to hear?

"Hmm..." The raven croaks. "You're almost right." The raven reaches his foot up higher and clutches the air, squeezing tighter and tighter. There's something terrible about his pose that's hard to rationalize. The way his toes clench makes you think of an ancient priest squeezing out the final beats of bleeding heart for a summer sacrifice. The forest rustles with quiet anticipation. "But your hands are nothing like mine." There's a heavy, throbbing pressure deep inside your chest. The air feels heavy and uncomfortably humid as you breathe it but the breeze against your skin is no hotter than it was before. It's not like any sensation you've felt outside of a fever-dream. Is this some kind of magic spell?

A shudder passes though each of your fingers, first on your right hand and then on your left. You can only gape with disbelief as your sandwich tumbles out of your grip, spreading meat and lettuce out on the gravel between your feet. Your joints crack and swell as soft flesh spreads and ripples up between them, filling the spaces between your fingers until you can no longer move them on their own. Your thumbs both dwindle to mere stubs of flesh. "There we go!" The raven stands on both his feet as he casually fluffs his wings back to his side. "I wonder what else you might have said..." The raven struggles to keep himself from gloating too much as he watches your fear and apprehension.

You hold the flipper-like nubs of your hands up defensively as you protest. This feels so wrong, so impossible, and yet its clearly happening. You can't even feel a trace of fingers in your hand anymore, just fused, slender bones under the drooping flesh of your naked wingtip. "You were going to compare our voices, weren't you?" You shake your head in protest. "No! I wasn't. I was just trying to help. I didn't mean th-hhhh..." You sputter and wheeze as a warm tremor passes across the inside of your throat. "I didnnnn-" Air slips out of your mouth and nostrils without carrying any of the words you so desperately wanted to say.

The raven clicks his beak derisively. "Oh don't you lie to me. I know you would have said. All the humans say that. 'Ohh, waah, birds can speak too.' It's such a hopelessly poor answer. Everyone knows that birds don't really talk" Your neck stretches and thins out, leaving loose and sagging skin in its wake. The front of your throat prickles and swells, vibrating heavily in your neck as you try to talk. You gasp as you hear yourself trying to speak, hearing only the shrill cries of a bird. Your voice is harsh and jeering, not quite like a crow. You clamp your mouth shut out of shame, simply shaking your head in protest. It's too late to ask anyone for help even if there was somebody nearby to ask. The normally busy trail is completely empty. Maybe the raven will stop if you cooperate? It's the only chance you have. Even the thought of running away causes a twinge of painful anxiety in your chest. The raven's spell is clearly keeping you here.

The pressure that began in your chest throbs through your entire body. Your heartbeat thuds in your ringing ears as your vision blurs. "Let me give you my own answer shall I? Since you seem quite incapable of continuing yours." You still shake your head in protest, not knowing how else to respond without being able to speak. "It's about all the ways that you're exactly like a bird." He pauses for a moment as he appraises you with his beady black eye. "That beak of yours, for example." Your nostrils whistle with each shallow breath that passes through your dry, hardened sinus. "Such a useful beak it is." Your teeth draw back into your receding gums, leaving little more than a fleshy mass against your flexible human tongue. You try to reach up and cover mouth without thinking, bumping the nub of your wingtip against your hardening lip. Your growing beak feels almost like a fingernail, glossy and thick as it fuses with your skull behind the roof of your mouth. Your beak is surprisingly sensitive, aching residually from bumping against your wingtip.

There's a dull thud as you clamp your beak shut. You almost resent how natural it feels to have it as part of your face. You glare down at the gloating raven, finding that you can understand a bit more about his expression without understanding how. There's something about the bob of his neck and the curve of his tail feathers as he talks. "Ah, I do like that beak, though it's not half as handsome as mine." He clicks his wedge-shaped beak for emphasis. "Your feathers though? Absolutely gorgeous. I'll grant you that." Your skin prickles in a wave from your cheeks down your neck. Small bumps form, followed by slender quills as tufts of pale grey down fluff out over every part of you from your head down to your knees.

"Let's look at that fine, slender face of yours..." Your skull smooths back, reshaping to conform to his every word. Your vision blurs even more as your eyes spread apart in your skull, leaving more room for your smooth beak. "Those eyes..." You blink, feeling a tugging at the corner of your eyelids as they grow their flexible membrane that pulls up to protect them when you start to blink. Though your mind reels from the spread perspective you can still look straight ahead without much issue. The dizziness lasts for only a few moments before your brain adjusts. Your brain seems to be adjusting in a more literal sense as well, flattening with your forehead to give your face a streamlined shape.

The raven doesn't stop talking. He seems enjoy your apprehension, quickly finding some new way to poke and prod as soon as he notices that you're resisting less. "And those wonderful ears..." His words ring in your ears as you feel the cartilage drooping and tucking back. There's a loud pop as your hearing clears, suddenly more sensitive than it had ever been before. Your mind reels as your thoughts wrap around these powerful senses. It's like a blessing in disguise.

You start to look like a fat fledgeling with your thick downy coat before your outer quills start to form. They start weave a tight and unbroken layer of feathers to cover the soft down, glittering with a gorgeous blue. You've seen feathers like that before. The the sort of brilliant blue feathers that you often see chasing small songbirds away from backyard feeders. A blue jay! The raven hops down onto the ground with a single flap of his wings. You toy with the thought of kicking or stepping on him as he gets close, but the idea fills you with inexplicable fear and apprehension. Instead you start to feel oddly ashamed about your body. You're far too large, so terribly large. It's disturbing and unnatural, enough to give you vertigo as you peer down at the raven.

Your shirt drapes down from your slender shoulders as the cotton fabric prickles uncomfortably against your feathers. It's especially bad under your arms as the thick quills of your wings start to form. Your pants hang loose around your hips, feeling as though they're just on the verge of slipping off. Trusting in the strength of his hold over you, the raven seems perfectly comfortable even as he stands next to your feet. "And just look at those toes of yours, so useful for so many things..." You feel your heels drawing up out of your shoes, causing them to slip off effortlessly. Your toes thicken and spread as they touch the ground. They spread out like fingers on a hand with your ankle drawing back further and further. Your toes spread out even further as they smooth over with soft scales, leaving you clenching the gravel. The dark grey scales spread up to your knees, leaving your calves slender and twiglike. You blink down at the raven as you grab the dirt and grit with your bear feet. You're far less afraid than you were before, though you aren't sure why. You're clearly growing accustomed to it.

The human parts of your body feel strange and wrong now, your straight and featherless rump, your naked wings and heavy bones. It's strange to think of the raven as helping you now, but you can't help it. "Most humans tend to struggle a bit more when they feel my magic spreading into their body. They love their disgusting bodies so much that they'll do almost anything to hold onto them. Why are you so eager to give in?" He lets out a soft croak that vibrates the feathers on his neck. "That will just make you an even better bird, won't it? Shall I fix" You aren't sure whether to nod or shake your head. At this point you have to give in though. At least you'll be normal as a blue jay, not some kind of partially human monster. The raven snaps with one of his toes, completing the spell.

Your chest throbs as you double forward, muscles spreading tight over each breast as your keelbone bulges out between your ribs. Your pants tumble off of your hips as the world spins around you, trees spreading further and further away as you feel yourself rushing down toward the ground. Your pants slip down from your feathered hips. The prickling that spreads down from your wrist is quite comforting as your thick wing feathers catch the air with each flick of movement. You move your wings tentatively as you gradually remember the natural movement for flying, drawing up and circling out, pushing the air behind you. It's silly that you had forgotten something so obvious.

The sound of a jeering jay-call rumbles in your throat as you open your beak with surprise. The birds around the forest all cry out once again in their own ways in response. Were those birds people before too? Or were they just birds? It's impossible for you to tell. You realize that after a few more minutes it will be impossible for people to tell with you either. The world looms around you as you peer at the forest with beady black eyes. Everything around you feels as though it's growing. It feels as though your falling through the air, though your feet never leave the ground. Your shirt sags down over you like a blanket as you tug your wings carefully out of your sleeves. You're soon left looking at the raven face-to-face, barely three feet tall. You leave your clothing behind as soon as you're small enough to fit through the neck of the garment.

You twitch your featherless tail and take a few cautious steps. You still feel awkwardly heavy even as you shrink down to a more natural size. It comes as a relief when your bones hollow out, crackling and trembling from your head to your tail as you find it gradually getting easier to move. You bend forward, finding your proper avian posture. It's a relief to feel your long tail feathers prickle out from your rump, folding and fanning effortlessly. There's a strangely pleasant sense of finality as you realize that you're a blue jay in your entirety. You take a step and a few hops, limbering up as if your walking out after a long car ride.

The massive raven stands on the edge of the bench, his toes gripping around the gap in the wood. "You can come up if you want. Put those wings of yours to good use." His voice sounds more sympathetic. Even with all of his teasing insults, he certainly seems to prefer you this way. It feels less like a punishment and more like he decided to correct a mistake with your body. Flying proves to be quite effortless as you hop up onto the bench and leave your backpack and your clothing. You almost think of pecking at the remains of your sandwich but something about that idea feels strange and uncomfortable. It reminds you of a life that you shouldn't go back to.

The raven mutters a strange bit of advice before he leaves. "The ending to your sad story is a hopeful one nonetheless." He brushes you with the tips of his huge wing feathers. "You have a new life to live, after all. You'll be safe... As safe as any bird can hope to be. I can actually keep that promise." He hops up and flies up into the air. You leap after him but he's a much more experienced flier. You flap your wings with the strength of every muscle in your chest but you quickly grow exhausted. There's no way you can keep up. "Oh and one last thing!" He yells back at you as you settle down on a nearby branch, your chest and wings numb from exertion. "Don't expect me to change you back!" Your toes wrap securely around your branch as it sways in the breeze. You can only wonder where your wings might take you.