FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Hey everyone,

I didn't want to leave you hanging before the holidays, so I wrote this new chapter yesterday, I hope you will like it! I will post a journal for Christmas, but let me wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Even if he didn't manage to read it before I posted (which means there are lots of typos for sure), I want to thank my Gritou for everything!

The two furs stepped down the stairs, one golden brown, the other a lighter shade of the same color. They seemed to be different faces of the same coin, of almost same weight and height but with one clearly taller and less built. One was a canine, one was a feline, one from the Old World, the other from the New, one...

"I should stop here; I sound like an Harmony book1". Luca thought to himself accusing the heat for such a spur of purplish prose. At least he hadn't said it out loud!

In the time that it took for him to think all of that, they were already in the piazza, and a few meters away from the husky they had been waiting for. The canine had stopped in the middle of Piazza Trilussa, with a huge grin and wagging tail that showed how happy he was; strangely, he didn't seem to suffer too much il caldo2, but he hadn't been waiting under the sun for half a hour, so that was quite understandable.

"Ciao3!" Stanley greeted him, putting forward his paw for the customary handshake. The cougar beat Luca and grabbed the white paw with his own, purring his own greeting.

"Hello!" He said, releasing the paw to let his older companion do the same, stepping a bit to the side.

"Ciao Stanley." The lupo smiled, shaking the paw and twisting it to do the two grips that were popular among the young furs.

"Am I late? I thought we had agreed to meet at this hour..." The other canine asked in Italian, his ears flattening for the briefest of second before his cheerfulness made them come back to their standing positions.

"Don't worry, we both arrived early." The wolf quickly assured him, not wanting the playful husky to think otherwise. "You are right on time!"

"Okay! Glad I made it in time, there was no parking whatsoever!" Stanley snorted; probably he wasn't used to that kind of problem in his own Milan, and found that a pain in the ass. The lupine would for sure, if he had been in his shoes.

"Well, I came with the motorcycle, and Edward con i mezzi4, else we would have been in the same situation." He explained.

"Oh I see! What buses did you take to arrive here?" The husky asked to the cougar, curiosity oozing from him, even his head was tilted!

"I took the metro to Lepanto, then a bus. The trecie-tricen-trecen-" The puma spoke in a fluent Italian until the number, showing that he hadn't mastered the language yet. Not that it was a bad thing, or something to be shamed of; Luca was about to say that much, but the younger canine opened his muzzle first.

"Okay, I understand! If you like, we can switch to English, I have the First Certificate5 after all." The white and black fur proposed, his smile reaching his eyes and warming them up like a blue fire.

"Oh no, you don't have to!" The feline refused, his ears moving in embarrassment that Luca recognized from the months passed with Carlo. "I'm supposed to learn Italian, after all!"

"D'accordo6, but don't be shy and ask for repetition or translation!" The wolf agreed, balancing the deal with that clause. He knew how well the cougar knew Italian, so those instances should be rare and far between.

"Deal. Should we seal the agreement with a pawshake?" Edward joked, his ears being still now.

"Naaaah no need to!" The husky replied, sticking a bit of his long tongue out of his mouth.

The lupo hated to interrupt such merriment, but the sun had gained enough strength to be a huge bothered, meaning that they should get going instead of idly chatting under the roasting beams. They could do that while walking, with the buildings shielding them.

"Okay guys, we can start the tour, since Johanna won't come." He proposed, handing the sad news of the girl's absence to the newcomer.

"Oh, I know, she warned me with a text." The Milanese dog shrugged the announcement off, not looking particularly sad. Luca was beginning to think he was the only one who wanted the American girl on this trip!

"Wait, she warned you?" The lupine repeated, only understanding what the reply really meant, which made him curious.

"Yeah, she has my number, so she texted me." The other canine simply grinned, the answer giving space to more questions. That was plainly clear on his long muzzle, because the puma urged to clarify more.

"We have been talking, Stanley and I, and since Johanna was supposed to come with us today I gave him her number." The American waiter said, and his answer was very logical in the end. On one paw, the wolf was happy that the husky was making friends, it had been the premise of this visit after all; on the other paw, he was puzzled that Edward had given his girlfriend's number to another male so easily. Guess they were sure of their relationship, or maybe...

"I should take a course about not overthinking." He wondered to himself. What he said didn't mirror his thoughts, though.

"Glad she warned you, I didn't want you to sentirsi male7 for her absence!" The restorer exclaimed loudly.

"Oh yeah, it was nice of her! But I am sure there will be many more occasions to see her." Stanley winked to other two furs.

"Yeah, I am sure you will have fun with her!" The cougar replied, causing another burst of overthinking. Was he saying that innocently? Or was there a more naughty meaning? Or maybe he just expressed himself in the wrong way?

The lupine shook his head and got rid of those questions, who weren't really his concerns since it was a matter of those three.

"Okay, let's begin our giro8!" He shouted in his best guide voice, attracting the attention of some furs who were just passing by. "Our starting point is Trastevere, an area populate since the time of the Republic and the only one across the Tiber defended by the Aurelian Walls."

"Aurelian walls? You mean, those medieval walls around the center of Rome?" The husky asked, curious about the topic. Luca was about to answer, but he saw that the cougar wanted to speak, so he let him do the explanation with a courteous nod of his head.

"Not medieval, they were built during the late Empire, when the risk of an invasion of the city became real." The feline just said, earning a nod from the guide that made him purr.

"Exactly. The Emperor Aurelianus saw the danger, and commanded to build the walls as fast a possible. They used material from buildings and even included pre-existing ones, like the second amphitheater of Rome." The wolf added some more information to what the other had said, eliciting some surprised exclamations.

"There was a second amphitheater in Rome, after the Colosseo?" The puma asked, his ears flicking for his lack of knowledge, though it wasn't surprised. Not many knew about that, after all.

"Yes, the Amphitheatrum Castrense. It was much smaller than the more famous Amphitheater Flavium, and was part of one of the Imperial palaces. As I said, what is left of it is part of the Walls of Rome." The lupo finished quickly to give details about the ruin, since it wasn't really part of the tour of the day.

"As I was saying, Trastevere was the only quartiere9 that was enclosed in the walls, and was heavily inhabited during the Dark ages, when Rome became a village of some forty thousands souls." The guide continues, pausing again because he saw an inquisitive light in the blue eyes of the husky.

"There were really so little people in Rome?" He asked, curious. Many were surprised when handed that piece of knowledge, expecting the city to have been quite populous for the whole length of its story. Luca just nodded to him.

"Wow, I can't believe Rome had less furs than Peoria back then!" The puma whistled, a sharp sound that was just shy to be troublesome for canines.

"Eeheheh, yes." The wolf chuckled, then motioned to the two young furs to begin moving. "There isn't much to see here in Trastevere, so we better cross the river to continue

"Why did you want to meet here then?" Stanley asked, though he did as asked and padded in the direction of the bridge, falling at the left of the lupo.

"Because it's a good starting point, and an even better finishing one, since there are lots of locali10." He explained, now being sandwiched between the dog and the big cat and herding them to a stop, since the semaphore was red for pedestrians.

"Oh yeah! You should try some of those; they are pretty nifty and lively!" The puma came to rescue him, adding some more of his first hand knowledge. "We can go to this orient-ish pub where you can smoke narghilé11!"

"Ohhhh fico12! We can go there!" The black and white furred canine exclaimed, excited to the exotic idea. By now it was time to cross the street, reaching the bridge and going over the murky green waters of the Tiber.

"We shall see." The wolf agreed, just glancing over the edge of the small bridge and peering under, speeding the pace because he wanted to cross the one other street separating the other end of the bridge and the buildings beyond.

"Please, can we go there? Please-please-please!" The dog whined, sounding much like an overeager puppy. The wolf didn't have the guts to deny him something, not with that display.

"Okay, we can go there, since you want it so much!" He agreed, shaking his head and sighing when they arrived in the shadowy, little streets typical of the historic center of Rome.

"It will be so much fun, they have so many flavors!" The cougar chuckled his own excitement for the idea. "And I know where we are going now!"

"Uhm, you do? Where are we going? I can't recognize the street!" Stanley lamented, but he didn't seem to be serious about his complain. Quite naturally, he couldn't know every street of Rome; after all he had just transferred there.

"Be patience, you will see in five minutes or so!" The lean lupine hushed him while laughing. He had got used to the canine's childish behavior, which never crossed the line between being funny and being annoying; probably the cougar had figured out the same, since he was laughing along him,

"You Italians want to speed up everything! You should learn to wait." Edward chuckled, his smile illuminating the entire street, or so it seemed to the wolf.

"Not every Italian, just the Milanesi!" The restorer pointed out, jabbing to the Northern in their group and to the never ending rivalry between their cities.

"We are not! Stop saying that!" The husky protested, pouting and flattening his ears. But it was just him playing along, since he was swift to stick out his tongue, showing them that his feelings were still whole. His tail, one of the major mood indicators for canines, had never stopped wagging, so the wolf had been sure he hadn't stepped too far.

"Seriously, you two could walk me in a dead end, for all I know. It is never clear with these tiny streets." The canine said in a more somber tone, maybe not wanting to keep the charade much longer, with the danger of boring the other two.

"It's not my fault if there isn't an historic center in Milan. You should have kept it whole, like here!" Luca observed. It was strange to him that some cities got rid of their past that easily, keeping only small parts of it. They turned left at a crossroad, after surpassing some other streets, all of the same width.

"And Edward here is not lamenting about that." He jabbed again, pointing to the model fur that was the puma.

"What I can say, I am fascinated by this old, old towns." He replied, and the wolf could see his eyes sparkle with that peculiar light furs had when coming to Rome. It was especially present in Americans, maybe because they couldn't resist the charm of thousands of years of story.

"Plus, you can watch the shops and the furs, and we have just started our tour, you shouldn't be bored already!" The wolf snickered at the other canine, enjoying this kind of harmless teasing a lot. He usually did the same with Ale, though the rottie wasn't easily bored. Most of the times, he teased him about Clara or how messy he could be at home.

"Okay, okay, I will shut my muzzle, geez! Are we there yet?" The husky changed the subject, looking around to catch whatever interesting view he could find.

"We are.... There!" The wolf answered him, finishing the phrase just when the street widened in the open space of a piazza. It didn't have a precise form, just a rectangular one with wavy sides, and in the middle of it stood a great iron statue in the shape of a monk. They reached it, seeing that his hood covered his canine features of his inclined head, hovering mournfully over the piazza.

"Oh, I know where we are! This is Campo Dei Fiori!" The husky exclaimed, excited for his recognition of the place.

"Yeah, you are right. Who does the statue represent?" The wolf asked in his best professor voice. It was much like his assistant voice, but with some more authority, or so he hoped.

"I know that too! It's Giordano Bruno, who was burned here in this piazza for heresy!" Stanley answered once again, and he was clearly happy that he knew that. His tail was just a blur behind him for how quickly he was wagging it.

"Who was he?" The puma asked. "I don't think I heard about him."

"He was a monk and a philosopher. His ideas were against the Church's teachings, so he was burned." Stanley explained him, and the lupine let him do that. He just wanted to add a bit more.

"Before you ask, even if it was after Martin Luther, Bruno still identified himself as a Catholic. That's why he didn't join the Protestants." He deemed that it was the moment to throw some tour information in the mix. "Some said that his ghost still haunts the piazza."

"His ghost? Wow!" Edward expressed his surprise, looking around as if to catch the monk patrolling the piazza in his black robes.

"I'm sure he doesn't, not with the crowd that haunts Campo Dei Fiori!" The husky exclaimed, and he was quite right after all, since even at that hour there was many people, mostly youngish furs and foreign ones, chatting and laughing and being loud.

"I am sure he moved to his neighbor. See that palace down there, in the other plaza?" Luca pointed his paw to the direction of a stately palace, just two hundred meters or so. "It's Palazzo Farnese, the seat of Queen Christine of Sweden when she came into exile in Rome."

"Oh. Was here overthrown?" The cougar asked, curious, his ears flicking a bit.

"Voluntary exile. She was nuts for Classical times, and to get away from her royal duties and just immerge herself in her studies, she converted to Catholicism and came to Rome." He told her story briefly, leaving the husky still puzzled by his previous statement.

"She was also famous for being quite... manly, and that her spirit she still inhabits the palace, with her horrid looks. Maybe Bruno just went to live with her." He chuckled, not quite proud of what he said. But the other two laughed with him, so he wasn't that worried about that.

"Poor ghosts of Rome! They must despise how crowded the city has become." Stanley joked, ensuing some more laughter.

"Eehehhe, yeah! By the way, see those patterns of bricks on the façade of Palazzo Farnese?" The wolf continued, wanting to say something before passing to the next place in their tour.

"Yeah, they aren't quite the same. How so?" The other canine asked, his ears perked as if to ear the answer better.

"Do you know that, Edward?" He turned toward the feline, giving him the chance to sport some of his own knowledge to impress them.

"Uhm, I don't think I do... Did the restorers make a mistake?" The cougar tried out, but he didn't seem sure.

"What? Are you blaming us?" The lupine said in shocked hurt, not entirely fake. He knew that they could do some errors, yes, but not something that crass and terrible!

"Me? No! I'm sorry, I was just guessing. Sorry!" The waiter boy apologized quite convincingly, that much that Luca didn't have the heart to hold a grudge over that.

"It's okay. In fact, they were discovered by restorers, when they peeled out the paint." He began to say, stopping his ears from flicking too much and give the worst impression to the other two. He wasn't a dog to blame someone for a slip, after all. "They were made by the builders, to show their mastery and mark what team built which section, knowing that it would be eventually covered."

"Ooooooh interesting!" Stanley said, a bit oblivious to what had happened, or so it seemed to Luca. "So they didn't repaint to show that, right?"

"Yep, you are right, congrats!" The wolf cheered him, making the dog smile even more.

"Really congrats! And I am learning so much today, and we are just at the beginning!" Edward praised the restorer, looking at him with warm eyes.

"Uhm, yeah, only the beginning!" Luca replied shyly, blushing a bit at the compliment. Things were going nicely so far, he just hoped that they would keep like that; he was sure they would. "Let's go on with our tour."

Translation:

1) Series of Erotic romances for ladies.

2) The heat.

3) I was quite amused that "Ciao" is used as "Goodbye" in English, while it's mostly used as a greeting. I wanted to point that out

4) Vehicles. In Italy it also means the public system of transportation.

5) One of the diplomas issued by Cambridge testifying the level of knowledge of English for foreign people.

6) Agreed, or okay.

7) Feeling bad about something.

8) Tour, visit in this context.

9) Neighborhood.

10) In this context it means "pubs, discos".

11) Also know as a waterpipe, Persian way to smoke tobacco. Here's an article about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookah

12) Ohhhh cool!