FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

So it's been a while huh ^.^'' Uni's kept me very busy this term. (Plus trying to find work experience and whatnot hasn't exactly been fruitful or easy.) Uh... I don't really know what to say right now O.O To be honest, I'd almost completed this chapter a few months ago but at the time the original ending bugged me and I wanted to add a little bit more and originally I didn't know how to go about it. Anyway I finally bit the bullet and rewrote the last few bits. I've kind of forgotten what happens after this so the chapter is a bit short. Anyway I hope you all enjoy it (if you still remember what the hell's happening. God knows I barely still do :P )

College Life 10

"Well?" The lioness stared directly at her mother. After Leo and Diego had left both herself and Teresa had returned to their seats and sat in silence. One was hoping the other would remain quiet on the whole matter; the other demanded an explanation. Luca was the latter.

"What's there to talk about, Luca?!" The badger replied with frustration, "You know as well as I do what the church says about that kind of thing. You know what the Bible says. You know full well what God thinks about the whole thing so you can take your "well?" because you don't need to hear an answer to it."

"No, mammy, I think you'll find I do. That's your grandson that you decided needed to leave-"

"He said he was going to stay with Paddy!" The aged woman interrupted. She didn't want to talk about this. Her own grandson a homosexual? His behaviour towards the priest was bad enough without adding insult to injury. She shot a glance towards Luca. This had to be her fault, she probably didn't take him to church or ensure that he respected the authority of the priests or bishops. She probably tried t comfort Leo when he "came out" to her, probably tried to convince him that he was "born that way" and didn't think to educate him on the importance of God's will for procreation.

"I can't believe you. 19 years and you still don't know your own grandchild... When has he ever been organised enough to arrange to go to a friend's house more than about an hour in advance.

"Well, he-"

"No, he lied, Mammy. Do you know why he lied? It's because he didn't want to hurt your feelings. He didn't want you to feel the guilt of throwing your own mourning grandson into the street because of your own petty prejudices."

"What prejudices Luca? You know as well as I do that that's wrong!"

"What's wrong about it? What's so 'wrong' with him that you were happy to throw him out of the house? I mean let's face it, that's basically what you just did regardless of whether or not he said he was going to Paddy's. That grandson of yours was the only one of us who had the gall to stand up to someone who had the audacity to use their authority to insult one of the dearest members of our family. He buried his grandfather all by himself. Let's not forget that his boyfriend was the only reason that we were able to communicate with daddy for the first time in years... And you... you wanted them gone because they shared a kiss?"

"Now Luca you look her-" Teresa started as she stood up to make a move towards her daughter

"NO!" Luca roared causing all blood to leave the badger's face in a mixture of surprise and terror. "I'm done. I'm done with you and I'm done with this piece of shit religion that even dares to say that it teaches love. Thank you mammy, thank you for showing me what it means to be a true 'loving' Emmanuelite and thank you for helping me to lose what little faith I had left in this religion." Luca stormed out of the living room and made her way to her and Stu's room, making doubly sure that she had locked the door behind her.

"Is everything okay hun?" Stu broached the question before deciding to rephrase it after a withering look from his wife. "I'm sorry, stupid question... uh..." he sighed. What did he want to ask her? It was quite clear from the roar, which had caused a vibration in the walls as far up the corridor as their room, that things had not gone well between mother and daughter. He had offered to come support her against his mother in law but Luca had wanted to say her piece by herself. He moved over on the bed and patted the space where he had been. The lioness hesitated before walking slowly towards the bed and sitting down next to the wolf. He put an arm around her and pulled her close. "I'm sorry, hun. Is there anything you want to say or would you just like to go to sleep now?"

"I just want to go to sleep" She sniffed. She could feel her eyes starting to well up with tears; sad angry tears. The two of them got into their pyjamas and crawled into bed together. Stu wrapped his arms around his lioness and pulled her close.

"Hey, even if you didn't get the message through your mother's clearly thick skull, I'm proud of you for trying and I know Leo would feel the same right now. You're an amazing woman Luca, that's why I married you, but first and foremost you're an amazing mother. Now get some sleep"

She smiled to herself and nuzzled her wolf.

"I love you Stu."

"I love you too Luca. But now it's sleepy time." She nodded and rolled over. As she drifted off to sleep she couldn't help but think how cute it was that her husband still called it 'sleepy time' at his age.

Leo's eyes opened slowly to a new world of complete blur. But almost as soon as he had discovered this world it started revert taking on the characteristics of the surroundings that he knew so well, or so he thought. He found himself waking up to the scene of a church roof as well as the sound of a certain tiger's quiet breathing next to his ear. But there was another sound that he couldn't quite place as his eyes managed to finally adjust themselves to the scene at hand and then it struck him, the sounds he heard were the quiet mutterings of one or two people in prayer in the pews below. Suddenly he was wide awake, it was morning and the mass would be taking place soon and yet the two of them were still wrapped up cosily in the priest's vestments.

"Diego" The wolf whispered into his tiger's ear but to no avail. "Oi, sleepyhead!" He hissed as he gently shook the feline's brawny arm. The stripy orange cat woke with a start and Leo had to put a finger over the tiger's mouth to make sure he didn't make too much of a commotion before he took stock of his surroundings. "We need to get this back to the vestry before the priest comes in to give the mass."

As a consequence of having a very active member of the parish for a grandmother, Leo had been acquainted with the ins and outs of the church building from a young age and quickly formulated a plan to get the priestly garb back to its resting place before a wardrobe disaster occurred. Leo strode up the central nave, deliberately trying to accentuate his footsteps in the hope of drawing any attention towards himself rather than Diego who was quietly slipping out the front door and round the side of the church with the priest's vestments.

The vestry was located at the back of the church to the side of the main altar. The plan was for Leo to grab the key from a hook at the back of the main altar, open up the vestry and then open a door to the back of the Church for Diego to come in. It was going swimmingly until he opened the door and walked into the vestry coming face to face with the young priest.

"Hello Mr. Agito, it's a surprise to see you here this morning. Are you delivering a message for your grandmother? Do you need to bring some of the Host back to her?"

"Uh," Leo racked his brains thinking for any excuse to make his way into the backroom to let Diego in. He quickly adopted a thoughtful but frustrated look in a feeble attempt to look like he was trying to remember some hypothetical message or task that his grandmother had set him. "Gheez, I literally only walked a hundred meters and I've already forgotten what she asked me to- Wait. Of course. She left her phone in the backroom and needed me to grab it for her."

"Oh, okay, I didn't realise that she had a phone." The priest said with a smile. Obviously his grandmother's inability to come to grips with modern technology was something that the priest had already become aware of.

"Yeah, we got it for her recently but you know how it is. It's when you first have it and you're not used to it that it's easiest to put it down somewhere and forget about it." He gave a weak smile and side stepped the priest to get to the backroom. Opening the door to the outside world, he saw a shivering Diego proffering the vestments to him. Quickly grabbing them, he closed the door quietly and moved to place them on a seat adjacent to the door.

"Are those my vestments?" Came a voice directly behind Leo. The wolf seized up and cringed. Rumbled!

"Yes, Father I'm really sorry. It's just that-"

"Before you go on, let your friend in, it must be freezing out there this morning." Leo gave the priest a look of surprise before opening the door and ushering in Diego. The priest was right, a blast of cold air followed the tiger in sending a quick shiver down both Leo and the priest's bodies. "You may continue"

"Well Father. This is Diego, he's my boyfriend." The priest nodded in response as if such a turn of events was no surprise to him. "Yesterday we shared a quick kiss in the presence of my grandmother while some priest was criticising equal marriage on the Emmanuelite television channel. Needless to say she quickly requested that we left the house for-" he gestured towards the priest "- religious opinions. Anyway, I knew the church doors would still be open at the time so we slept here overnight and kind of used your vestments as a blanket for the two of us."

The priest remained silent for a few moments. Nodding to himself as he came to terms with the situation.

"I have to admit, I am slightly disappointed" He said solemnly.

"We're very sorry Father, we hoped to have them back here before you arrived so that it wouldn't be a problem. What you don't know can't hurt you, you know?" Diego said, eager to make sure that it didn't seem like Leo was the sole responsible culprit for what was going on.

"Oh, I'm not disappointed that you used them, or that you didn't return them on time. On the contrary, I'm a bit disappointed you returned them at all." He said with a chuckle causing Diego and Leo to share a look of confusion. He leaned in close to the two of them before continuing. "You see, if they hadn't been returned I could have reported them as stolen to the local bishop and the Church would have supplied me with new vestments; some that actually fit me. You've seen the size of them already, they completely swamp me. It's sometimes an effort just to get from the altar to the pulpit and back again."

The wolf and the tiger could still scarcely believe what they were hearing. It was certainly true, the garb was clearly about 4 sizes too big for the goat, but the fact that he was neither scalding them for their sexuality nor the fact that they had borrowed his robes made this whole thing slightly suspicious.

"You haven't called the gardaí have you?" Leo asked. This wasn't a ploy to keep them talking while the police made their way here to apprehend them was it?

"No. There's no need. The robes have sadly been returned, they served a better purpose than they probably do on the altar each day anyway."

"And you don't care that we're...." Leo gestured back and forth between himself and Diego, not sure of the vernacular that the priest was used to hearing in this situation.

"That you're gay? Of course not. I mean, I probably should care, but a certain someone recently advised me that sometimes I have to remember that I have to serve a pastoral role not just a spiritual one. It's evident to me that the two of you care for each other very much and to be honest, despite how zealous your grandmother may be, I wouldn't have expected her to do something like this. If you guys want to stick around for the Mass then I could go talk to her with you afterwards."

The two accepted his offering. They didn't really have much to lose besides an hour of their time and in reality, they both knew that they weren't likely to spend it on anything more worthwhile. So they sat through the mass together waiting for the inevitable confrontation that would never come.

Teresa was sat in her chair reading the newspaper. There was an article about the gay marriage legislation in New York and what it meant for the LGBT community over there. She scoffed to herself and was about to skip over it before changing her mind at the last minute. It couldn't do too much harm to give it a quick skim read, after all, she had read plenty of more pointless articles before.

As her eyes quickly scanned over the article she realised that what she was reading wasn't meant as an attack on religion nor was it an attempt by homosexuals to rub everybody's faces in their new found "rights". No this article was profoundly different. It explained the plight of the LGBT community, the discrimination and the pain that they faced. Teresa shook her head, everything she had ever been taught was telling her not to care, telling her that these people deserved what they had coming, telling her that they were immoral and warranted whatever religious condemnation they had hurled at them.

And yet as she read about the thousands of LGBT children that had been made homeless, about the people who had been beaten or driven to suicide because of their sexuality she found it hard not to care. She remembered how on the Emmanuelite Channel they always talked about gays having an agenda. Trying to make themselves seem normal so they could gain rights which were fundamentally never meant for them. It has all seemed so easy to listen to. Gays and the rest of the LGBT community seemed like some kind of "other" like they weren't part of the same society that everyone else live in every day of their lives. But as she read she started to realise. These were people with real lives: one lion wanted to study law at Harvard university, an ox wanted to become an architect and design something to rival Gaudi himself, that bear had just had a viola audition for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. And finally there was a wolf. He was 18 years old and wanted to study medicine at Cornell university but during the summer he had been caught with his boyfriend by a group of kids his age on the outskirts of his hometown in Texas. His boyfriend had escaped with permanent brain damage, he hadn't been so lucky.

Teresa had given up skim reading and had started to read the whole article from start to finish. Was it because the wolf had reminded her so much of Leo, or was it the fact that she saw herself reflected in the parents that had turned their backs on their own children? There was a loud thud and the ink started to run on a tiny spot on the page where a tear had rolled down Teresa's cheek and fallen onto the article below. She found herself asking what she had become after all these years. How had she let other people dictate how she thought and how she saw other human beings?

She was roused by a knock at the door. Making her way up the corridor she stopped in front of a mirror to quickly wipe her eyes and face. Carrying on up the corridor, she opened the door and stopped when she saw who was outside. A goat, a tiger and a familiar wolf stood in front of her. The goat was about to speak but decided against it as Teresa started to tremble and tears rolled down her aged face.

The wolf standing in front of her wasn't some abomination, or some creature hell-bent on subverting society; he was her grandson, nothing more, nothing less. And as this realisation spread throughout her she pulled her grandson into a tight hug.

"Leo, I'm sorry. I-I don't know what came over me. I'm sorry"

Leo wrapped his arms around his grandmother and held her close as her small frame wept against his.

"It's okay nana. I'm sorry too."