FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Dante released a surge of phermones at the precise instant that the car stopped in front of the police precinct like a bottle of decanting wine. Now his smell was permanently imprinted; smoke, motor oil, wax, musk, and an after-inhalation of chloryphyll. At least the smell of fear did not include a release of urine.

"I'll be here for a few hours at least. You may go, bolli-san."

"Are you sure? Anything I can do to help?" Chero was skeptical, but Dante insisted. "Hey! I was zuken [1]. Let me make it up to you for last night."

The mouse intensified his piercing scrutiny. When Dante's ears lowered, Chero withdrew his gaze. He made a flick with his finger and the two went inside.

The next hour Dante looked around the station at the officers while Chero filled out paperwork.

The new uniforms on the officers and police staff were better than he remembered when he was a cub. The tasers and arm-cuffs [2] were a scuffed matte finish instead of the glittering new ones worn in the promenades at the city center and the governor's den, but at least the staff looked alert instead of fatigued. Maybe just the hope for a sliver of the promised federal funds from the Z-89 bill just passed was why the officers held their heads up higher than he expected them to.

"You're needed."

Dante's tail thrashed with all his surprise at Chero's soundless approach.

"If you want to help, I need an extra pair of arms," Chero said. He held several folders under his folded cloak. "You have to sign some things first."

Dante followed.

At her small cubicle, Bol-Caregiver-Yon-Sovika [3] spread out and above her station like a black and white umbrella. The skunk was a native, Dante could tell, because the white of her fur was tinged yellow from years of inhalation and ingestion of the local landscape.

"You'll have to read this statement with me," she said over her amethyst colored spectacles. "This is a confidentiality agreement. It is illegal to discuss any information from this precinct with anyone other than an approved caregiver and yourselves. Are we clear?"

"Yes Yon-sam [4], but...what are we talking about?"

"Just sign it," Chero said. "You said you wanted to help."

Dante looked between the skunk and the mouse but neither of them would speak. So Bol-Sovika read him a statement with proper inflection and glancing at him every sentence to see that he was still paying attention. The information he was about to have access to was being used in open- and ongoing case files for the precinct and several others with overlapping branch divisions. There were the standard legal threats for disclosure and not-so standard requests that Dante had little to no knowledge of.

"...You the herefore aforementioned agree to the terms of this release? Yana-Arcter?"

Dante nodded.

"You have to say it," Bol-Sovika corrected.

Dante read the statement again. "...I, Arcter-de-Dante [5], swear to adhere to all rules and terms of this disclosure agreement."

Shoving a pen in his hand, Bol-Sovika waited until the last character was signed before tearing off a yellow-carbon copy for Dante and keeping the original in a folder promptly put into a locked cabinet.

At last, she smiled. "Thank you," she said. "This is extremely difficult and I speak on behalf of the department when I say how much I appreciate you coming to help your friend. I hope you find what you are looking for."

The panther looked for any clue as to what he had just gotten himself into. Even the door to the office he followed Chero and the case manager into gave no hints.

Instead of another small cubicle, there was a hallway of cabinets at chest-height that spanned a room like a libary. Dante coughed at a blast of yellow dust from a draft as Bol-Sovika led them to a seating area with pads of paper and smaller lamps.

"I'm sorry we can't speed up the process, but I assure you that I'll be on your case daily," she said to the mouse. "The office closes at four. Please keep the files in order. Holler if you need anything."

The small bells Bol-Sovika's sari were the only sound that echoed after they were left alone. Chero then coughed and poured himself water from a courtesy jug on the counter.

"Okay, I signed," Dante said. "What are we here for?" Clack! "What was that?"

Chero sipped from his cup without looking up. "We're locked in until we ask to leave," he said. He opened a drawer, grabbed an armload of brown folders and threw them down on the table between them. "Get cozy, we're going to be visiting here often," he said.

The panther opened a folder. In it were three faded yellowed pages and a picture on the corner. Name: Yesk-de-Sood, DOB, Day 7, Orchital [6], age 10, missing since- "Oh!" Dante exclaimed. "Missing person's reports! That's what these are, aren't they?"

"Genius," Chero said flatly.

Dante shook his head. "But...what are we looking for? You don't have a family-name. But your name isn't common though, is it?"

Already Chero was opening folders, glancing at them and putting them aside. "My name is just a glove, I may have had a different one back then, " he said.

Dante was flabberghasted. "What?! Are we supposed to look through every single one?" He looked around and the enormity of the room appeared. "There must be thousands of files here!"

Chero slammed a folder flat in front of him and looked up with a sneer. "I don't have access to the digital databases, this is the best we can do for now," he said.

"Isn't there a better way?" The panther opened a folder and there was a photograph of a young badger, eight years old. The next one, nothing.

Chero squinted and peered into a space only he could see. He took out a piece of paper, made several notes, then slid it across the table. "These are some years we can look through. Atmadae [7] probably filed a report about this time. That's a good place to start as any."

So they looked.

Folder after folder opened and Dante built his pile higher and higher. All of them were faded and some had tears and curled corners where the carbon copies had not been protected from sunlight or from the gears of the cabinets. Some of the names were smudged and the print had run gray as the paper corroded. All of them were of children.

When he had finished, Chero had another stack ready to go and moved the empty files back to their original locations. Hardened with determination, Chero grabbed another stack and resumed the position.

It took over two hours to find the rodent children missing for the first year Chero had listed, and another hour to find the white mice.

There was a knock. "We're closing in fifteen minutes," Bol-Sovika called. "You can come back tomorrow. Close up and sign out."

Chero looked over the three white mice they had found as a draft blew another cloud of dust across their pictures.

"We didn't even get through a third of the year," Dante groaned.

Chero passed the photographs to the panther. "Look at these. Do any of them look like me?"

The panther held the pictures under the lamp light and scanned them. "This one sort of...no, wait...no, the eyes are different. The shape of the ears too, not right."

The mouse shrugged and picked up his cloak "If we start early tomorrow, we can finish that at least," he said. "Let's feed you."

***

The trip back to the hotel was silent. Dante looked over twice at Chero's paws to make sure they weren't reaching up for him, but they remained politely folded in his lap. No sudden movements.

Chero's fur reflected the same gray as the cloudy skies above them that promised rain for the season. They ate in near silence and Chero stayed in the bath for over an hour that night before he shared the bed again to listen to the radio.

Dante finally caught his attention and Chero gave a small smile. "I forgive you," he said. "Please don't be so quiet, you make me nervous. I like to hear you talk, I do. Can you sing?"

The panther shook his head. "Atma [8] said I was born tone-deaf."

The mouse still smiled and settled into a bathrobe with the television on. "I bet you would sound nice if you practiced," he mused.

Sleep was coming and Dante glanced over several times to catch Chero's eye but failed. At last, he made the direct approach.

"What is it bolli-san? Did you want the computer?"

Dante shook his head. "Chero-san...what happened? How did you get separated from your family? Were they part of a syndicate?" [9]

Chero giggled and shook his head. "If they were, I would have rememebered and I wouldn't be here. I think they're very average as far as families go."

He laughed again and refocused on the television, but never answered the question.

***

Three more days of searching from morning until closing came with the first rainy days of winter. Once Chero sat down and began, there was no stopping him except for meals and for latrine breaks. He rarely spoke and kept his focus on what was in front of him.

On the second day, he looked up at Dante with a quizzical look. "Don't you have a job?" he asked.

Dante shrugged. "Not until the weekend. Fortunes don't matter until everyone else gets pay-day."

"So where do you live? Where do you sleep?"

"My seats fold down and I've got a sleeping bag," Dante answered. "Cost me a weekend, but it's kept me warm for months."

Chero tapped his claws and pursed his lips. "You need an allowance," he decided. "If you're going to help, I can't worry about feeding you when I'm not around."

Here was where Dante bristled. "I can feed myself," he said. "Did it long before you came in, will do it long after."

"Oh...of course. How silly of me." Chero returned to work for the rest of the afternoon.

Each day of hours upon hours of searching for information weighed heavily. In a thousand files, Dante only found one with a black stamp marking the case closed. Dante was relieved until he saw a newer added attachment to the back of the file to clarify the meaning of the stamp. It was a death certificate.

The next two nights were the same as the first. Dante asked what happened and Chero changed the subject.

On the third day, about an hour after lunch time, Chero stopped moving. He held the open folder on his finger tips and tilted his head down toward it.

Dante was moving through folders with automatic precision that he did not notice the clouds outside darkening and the rain hitting the window in icy sheets. When he looked up, the room was nearly completely dark with Chero's face lit up with the yellow lamp like a death mask.

The first wrinkle appeared at his eye, then the second, and then at his cheeks and his teeth. He squinted and his mouth opened as if to cry out, but no sound came. So slowly, so tenderly, he brought the papers to his face and kept them there.

The panther moved out of the way just in time. First one lamp was thrown across the room and then the other. Chero shieked in short bursts, thrashing his paws down for more power to release the primal sounds inside. He grabbed a chair and threw it across the room splintering it to pieces and then another with a tornado of yellow dust circling him in the now near-darkness of the room lit only by the gray skies.

There was a bone-chilling splintering sound as the table cracked until Chero's fists. Another crunching strike and the table buckled and split down the middle.

Flash. Bang. Blinding from up above, Dante thought that a spirit had come down on them summoned by the ritual destruction he had witnessed!

Bol-Sovika came rushing in. Under the harsh overhead lights, the monsters were gone. All that was left behind was a white body that had seemed to shrink into a pale boulder with knees and tail curled in and weeping into his chest.

She was too stunned by the destruction to say anything for a long moment. She looked to Dante for answers, but the panther was still pressed flat against a cabinet with his paws bracing at full width and his claws anchored. How feeble the attempt had been.

There was the sound of weeping that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Chero rocked back and forth clutching papers to his body like a metronome at the epicenter of the chorus.

The mouse looked up fearfully. He sniffled and tried to wipe his eyes as quickly as possible. Not once did he take the papers from his chest.

Bol-Sovika should have been furious, and afraid at the very least. Perhaps she was. So instead of speaking as a professional, she knelt down and held her paws to him like a grandmother.

Uncertain, unsure, unwilling, Chero shakily reached out to grab her. She steadied him as he stood trembling and hunched over wet from a damp chill from the inside. "I am so...so very sorry Yon-sam...please forgive me...I'll pay for all of the damages, I swear. Please believe me...I'm so sorry...."

The skunk's eyes darted back to the folder he held. She extended her arms to take the crumpled mass stained with tears and yellow dust that looked like a still-born fetus. Reluctant and ashamed, Chero passed it to her.

She peeled open the mass and pushed her glasses up her muzzle to look more closely. She was surprised. She was about to walk away when the panther finally found his voice again.

"Wait!" he said. "What is that? I...Hey! What's in there? It's him, isn't it?" He looked at Chero, who still hung his head down to the floor. "What does it say?!" Bol-Sovika hesitated, but the panther pressed. "I signed the form, I can look!"

She shook her head. "No, it's not the disclosure protocol," she said and she passed the folder to him.

Dante opened the folder. What he saw he did not recognize, but the moment he understood, he stared.

***

[1] slang term for an inconsiderate person. Origin, from the Fishers.

[2] arm-cuffs instead of "hand-cuffs" because not all Species have the same extensions of fingers and palms.

[3] Dilectica has contextual meaning for positions in industry and institutions. Caregiver can mean nurse, counselor, assistant, or any similar positions with the primary function of caring for others. Here, it means 'case-worker'. Also, the first time a person is introduced professionally, their full title is given. Afterwards the professional title and their family name can be used in reference.

[4] sam -professional honorific suffix for females. Pronounced saam.

[5] The family name is given first followed by the personal name.

[6] the tenth month of the year.

[7] phrase meaning "my parents", "my family", or "my relations".

[8] atma -"mother" "mom"

[9] organized crime institutions. Depending on the place in the world, they are either accepted as part of daily living or rejected.