FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"You live in the world, Damien. Spirit-child."

"What does that mea-!"

"in the world" "in the the world" "in the" "world in"

"in the world world" "in in the world" "world" "in the world"

"the world" "in the world, Damien" "in the" "Damien"

"Damien. Spirit-child" "child" "world, Damien"

"spirit-child" "spirit" "world, spirit"

Hundreds of Glens surround the boy, blocking out everything else that could possibly be. "What does that mean? I don't know what you mean!" He shouts and pants, the floor cold and indescribable underneath him. Glens' eyes are bigger than they should be and peer out at him. Glens' fingers stream down like starlight and touch his body. "Hey! Stop it!"

"What? Interesting!" "Interesting!"

"Interesting!" "What? Interesting!"

"Stop it! Get off me!" The hands retract, and Damien pants, hanging his tongue out. His body feels too... too warm, but his tongue oh, just feels so cool as he pulls it back in and swallows, and lolls it out again. That was nice. Remembering his dream, Damien reaches behind him, and panic immediately sets in. He can feel a tail. His tail. Long, white, graceful. He sucks his tongue back in his mouth and ignores the stifling heat.

"What ARE you?" "ARE you?" "WHAT are you?"

"I don't know!" he shouts, terrified as he looks at the fur crawling up his fingertips, his chest, his throat, stampeding like an army of grass.

The Glens are gigantic, and they all whip their black hair out of their faces and their bright blue eyes make him feel watched, and insignificant, and powerless, but so unique as to be hunted and used. "Stop it! Stop it, Glen! Stop it! I'm not magic, I'm not a wolf-man; I just want to see Siber again; I just want someone to hug!"

On the last word, all the Glens leave except one, and blackness falls in Damien's mind. "Spirit-child."

"Stop calling me that!" he demands, his gaze steely and his fists clenching. "I'm not a child anymore. Not since my father left and not since Tetra died!" He gasps, eyes widening with terror. Thunder crackles in the distance.

"It's what you are," Glen snaps coldly, though his eyes are bright. It's like he didn't intend to be cold; like he's honestly excited by this new specimen. "Look at you. You're undifferentiated. You're clay. You're... Damien, you're beautiful." He stops, and meets Damien's eyes with his sapphire ones. Everyone's eyes are precious but his. "Why be afraid when you're this beautiful?"

That's what Siber asked. "Because I'm alone. Don't... don't tell my mom what I said."

"You're mom's a bitch."

"Don't call her that!"

"It's what she is! She's a bitch, Damien. Didn't Siber tell you?"

"Yes, but... why would he... and how would you know that? This is a dream and it's all just made up! Don't call my mom a bitch! She's just lonely, like I am!" He turns around and crouches into a little ball of white fur, rounded ears poking out of the top of his head. Then, realizing what he looks like, he dances to a proud stance, and rights himself. Proud. Proud to be human, he turns his granite eyes on Glen over his shoulder, then stares out into the darkness. "Go. This is my dream. Go away."

"No. I need to study you." Arms wrap around Damien from behind, and he cannot resist them. The feel of flesh against his fur is damped, but the warmth is there just the same and the smooth, cool feeling of skin is familiar and makes Damien tuck his chin into his chest and curl up tighter, gravity shifting as he realizes

he is lying on his side, in Glen's arms on the floor of the dawn-lit cave. He startles, and writhes away, then jumps to his feet and checks all over his body for fur. Nothing. Nothing there. He's normal. A normal human boy with silver hair.

"Sorry if that was - yaawwwwwwn - uncalled for. You were muttering and twitching around, and I didn't want to wake you up 'cuz you were talking about being lonely, so..." He shrugs nonchalantly as he sits up, as though spooning young boys is an everyday occurrence. Damien suspects that it isn't, and purses his lips.

"You were spooning me." He really doesn't mind.

"And isn't spooning awesome?"

"I'm ten!" He kind of smiles a little bit.

"And I obviously don't plan on raping you or I would have by now! Jeez, Damien, you're a ridiculously emotionally battered child; if I'd wanted to have my way with you, I would have, and you would be sitting in my lap convincing yourself it was true love. Wait." Something in Damien's eyes makes Glen's suddenly flash with fury. "Did Siber rape you?" He bares his teeth and almost growls.

"No! No! He... he saved me." Siber had kept Damien in his lap and blown him dry.

"He molested you!"

"He had to dry me off!"

"That's why you've made pack with the wolf-men? Because one molested you and your broken little head rationalized it as the parental love your parents don't give you? Wake up, Damien. Wake up, spirit. You just doomed our town to be overrun." He seethes and starts advancing towards the boy, paws outstretched - paws...? "You TRAITOR!" Blue... cobalt blue, and when Damien looks back up, it's Siber, and he's nude and grabbing for Damien's shirt and starts shaking the little boy and shouting

"Wake up, Damien." Glen is shaking his shoulder. "It's a bad dream. Come on. We have to get moving. Faster we go, the better chance of saving Siber and Tatrix, and getting back to Tetra."

Damien swallows, gasps, and breathes hard, starting to roll and sit up. "I... Is it real this time...?" he wonders aloud.

Glen smirks gently and looks down at him for a moment while he finishes packing up. "Dream within a dream? Those suck. Except for that movie about it - that was pretty dang cool."

"I... was a wolf-man... I think... and then..." He blushes, not wanting to admit what his mind had made him think of.

Glen laughs heartily. "Iiiiii have no interest in your subconscious sexcapades, little spirit. You're interesting and your name is cool as hell and the more I think about it the more you seem like a solution to the world's problems because your head got knocked kinda sideways by your bitch of a mom - oh, sorry, slipped out - but as much of you as I want to investigate, I'm pretty sure your sexuality is off-limits to someone without a PhD in the area and not related to you. Come on - let's go."

Damien waits a moment for his arousal to subdue itself. Too many thoughts whirl through his head to comprehend, so he finally just shrinks from them all and follows Glen's instructions, packing up camp and hoisting the tremendous gun again. They have breakfast, then head back down the mountain, and Damien asks, "So... how will we find them?"

"Why, I found them last night. Weren't you listening?"

"You what?" The boy's eyes go wide, and he starts to furrow his brow at Glen's insouciant grin. "Hey, don't laugh!"

"Ha! While I was dancing. I was seeking through the forest, trying to find them, and found a dark spot. The Black has them completely surrounded, and just haven't attacked, yet. We'll find them."

Damien nods, uncertain, and continues following. Glen's step is sure and unfaltering. He chatters incessantly about the wolf-men. He talks about combat with them, about the history of which continents or countries have belonged to which side for how long, about rare moments of cooperation, and the split when wolf-men developed magic and human beings developed technology, and some of the inventions that rely on combinations of both. He talks about wolfman biology, how they actually aren't terribly far removed from human beings - there was a split, he says, at roughly when the highest form of mammalian intelligence was something that looked like a lemur. That seems like a pretty significantly long amount of time to Damien, but Glen insists that even if the species aren't sexually compatible, they're similar enough that the reason for the war is incomprehensible. But it's a war, and neither side has shown signs of wanting it to end. So the Black remain.

"So why are there only two species, then?" Damien asks, as they meander through sunlight that dapples their features with gentle, featherlight touches of warmth. "Why not three, or a dozen?"

Glen shrugs. "It's pretty amazing to me that there are two at all, actually. All animals are very territorial, so if one saw another that offered competition, they should eradicate them. The fossil record points out that the two species, since they were both very intelligent and highly adaptable, simply found different biological niches, very early on. The territorialism came when they became advanced enough to expand across the world. And of course, I'm sure you know there were dragons, but they were eradicated pretty early on; sort of an evolutionary version of drawing aggro. They expanded to too many places too quickly, before really having a chance to be established, and the life forms that were already dominant there outcompeted them pretty handily." He sighs. "It was a huge loss, in my opinion; one that still doesn't make sense, entirely. I wish I could have met one."

Damien struggles with wording his next question, and his ears flush brightly. "Um... so... like... I heard that happened with lions and tigers, and then... tigons... or ligers..." He was thinking of Tetra, he realized. Oh.

The older man stops moving, and laughs out loud. "Hah! Wow. No. It's been millions of years since we diverged from them. We've sequenced the genomes - they have a different number of chromosomes, their sex chromosomes are different, and..." He sighs, obviously choosing not to share something with Damien. "Don't worry. We have plenty of evidence that doesn't work."

"Okay."

A kind smirk forms itself on Glen's face, though he doesn't look behind him. "You, ah. Really like that girl, huh?"

Damien turns flaming red. "I...! No! I... she's a friend. I never thought of her that way." Until this morning. After dreaming of Siber.

"Uh-huh. Suuuuure ya didn't," Glen chuckles, and turns a well-meaning grin on the boy. "Well, what was she like?"

The spirit-boy blinks. He doesn't care? "She's... playful... and she's kinda confusing. It's like she's studying me." Like everyone else does. "But she's a lot of fun. She made me play with her when I was feeling upset, and it felt good."

Glen can tell the boy is more articulate than this usually, and continues urging him to talk. After a few more prompts, Damien is smiling and sharing about his time with the three lupine folk. He actually waxes relatively eloquent about them, and seems to have learned years of information in a very short time, especially about plant life. He scratches at his back now and then while they walk, but never once complains about the scar there. They chat back and forth amiably, once the boy has been loosened up like this, and the conversation takes them well into lunch time.

They set out bread, jerky, cheese, and apples alongside more traditional sandwiches, and Damien smirks a boyish smirk. "Did you read a lot of fantasy books?"

A grin. "Yes, and I happened to enjoy them all. I enjoy a fine repast," he pronounces, putting on prim and proper airs, and Damien giggles. It's a sound Glen hasn't heard, yet, and it warms his heart.

Immediately, three Black sweep into the area. Damien rolls out of the way on instinct and leaps towards a tree, climbing it as though his fingernails were claws. He's able to observe as Glen twists himself towards his staff, suffering only a tiny scratch beside his eye, and crushes the helmet of one Black as he rises to his feet. The pile of cloth falls, empty, dropping a sword as it crumples. The other two are not like human fighters. They don't stalk, or wait, or judge. They fly in again, a spear and an axe whipping through the air, but Glen is faster. He steps backward and hurls the digging stick out at full length in a great arc, breaking the spear's haft and crushing the clawed gauntlets holding it. The Black axe man ducks underneath and continues forward, but Glen sidesteps and slams the full weight of the stick into it, smashing it into a tree. The other launches forward with its hooked, metal claws, but stands no chance and is pummeled into the ground dismissively.

"We're close," Glen states, emotionlessly casting the cloth away and trying to settle an eating space again. "And apparently, that means we can't laugh. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Damien says, his eyes glazed back over to his usual, withdrawn state. He hops out of the tree, landing lightly. "I'm sorry I ran."

"It was the right thing to do."

"Yeah."

Both Siber's anger and his hunger have been growing. It has been over a week. He and Tatrix have been here, crouched in tree limbs, surrounded by Black, for a week, breathing like plants. Unable to be angry, unable to feel sorrow, unable to laugh or even breathe the way they want to, they have waited, hoping for something to distract the Black. Underneath untold layers of frozen heartlessness, though, Siber's anger has been growing, and he is nearly done with waiting.

He has not used his magic in a long time. He has not needed to. He tries not to lean on something the humans do not have, so that it does not become a crutch that may be kicked out from under him if something were to ever take it away. But three Black hear something giggle and flee from the prison, and Siber knows not to hesitate.

His wings vibrate as though mechanized, and a shell of sound ripples out from him. Upon feeling it, Tatrix amplifies the sound, and in a sphere, the world rips apart around them. The Black on the outer rim of their cage have time to retreat, as time seems to move in slow motion and blinding sunlight rushes into a new space in the canopy to illuminate Siber's black, wooden sword. Ligneous cracks perforate the soundscape, and in a moment, a pile of black cloth and rusted metal surround the two wolfmen. Anyone watching would have seen only flashes of blue and white within the gold-lit Black, until it all collapsed around them.

They waver where they stand. "More will come," the smaller one breathes.

"Wipe your face. And your cheeks. And your shoulders. Damien is near."

He does, and the auric streaks stick to themselves and land, quickly dissolving into nothing as magic no longer holds them together. He looks at his friend. "You, too."

"No." Tatrix's face is a mask of emerald. His entire body, from his eyes down, is streaked with the stuff. He looks like a golem, composed of fur and gems. "Not until we find my daughter. And Siber... Damien is coming."

"Yes...?"

"And Glen."

"Glen..."

"Who dated your wife before you married her."

The dark blue wolf blinks, utter shock painted on his face. He casually stabs behind him with his sword, impaling a Black that sensed the emotion. "...what?"

"You married Teva after her combat service. Remember that she said she had found love there. Love that looked exactly like you. Love that gave her the comfort you could not." Tatrix's features attempt to be impassive, but can't remain that way. Regret cracks through.

"Yes, and I forgave her, and then Glen and I slept together at every clash for the next year. What is your point?" He knows what the point is.

"She miscarried eight months after you married her."

"We made love out of wedlock and Glen is my best friend among the entire human species," he snaps angrily, and both of them take a few moments to dispatch Black that appear. "He and I spun entire battalions out of one another's way!"

"Why do you think he found you? And you weren't able to be with her during that time."

"We found one another when we were teenagers! _ You know that! And they _assigned me because I was the only one qualified! I saved a goddamn CITY STATE! And I did every single FUCKING THING a person could do so I could be there when my wife gave birth to my first-born son!" The next several minutes are spent in combat, and the heap of thin corpses grows.

"I assigned you. There was no miscarriage. There was only Damien."

"Siber?" A pale face is seen through the foliage. The boy has been listening, as they taught him, to everything. Sounds of combat are heard behind him as Glen fights off the Black attracted to Damien's sudden even greater bewilderment. Silence falls. A Black sword plunges through Damien's chest. Siber's draconic wings flutter and snap, breaking the remaining Black out of existence with the force of the blast and rendering himself a limp pile of fur from the effort.

The two remaining adults hover around the boy, approaching with desperate slowness as he gags and looks down at the sword embedded in him and the warm, trembling, whimpering crimson soaking his shirt. "Mom will be so angry..."

Tatrix swallows, and reaches out an uncertain paw. "Breathe... like a plant, Damien..."