FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

After reading this story, please rate it, so that others may find this series, thank you.

Disclaimer: The following will contain homosexual individuals and relationships and may be an interesting commentary on life, death, immortality, God, gods and various religions. No offense is intended and if you cannot handle it, please discontinue reading rather than blaming me. This is copyrighted to me (mewjen(at)ymail.com), so no using it without my permission and no stealing it (any profits must be shared). This is a work of fiction. Any likenesses to persons, places, and so on, real or imagined, living or dead is purely coincidental.

---

Act II - Part 1

AT the end of the universe, at the edge of time, when all matter has collapsed into photons, when consciousness is all that remains, the planes of existence begin to converge on one another. Those who choose to carry on their corporeal lives live in a pseudo-reality, and in this reality, newcomers flood the gates of this city of existence. One consciousness taking the form of a golden-eyed jackal can be found running through the crowded streets. Without knowing where he is going, he is drawn to one point.

JALLER found himself lying flat on the ground, with the solid body that had collided with his now resting on top of him. "Ow. What the hell hit me?" He opened his eyes to a blurred world. Pushing the furry mass off him, he shook his head several times. "An?" He stared at the unconscious jackal, disbelieving his own eyes.

ANUBIS woke to someone stroking his cheek. He inhaled the stranger's scent and held it in. It was a scent buried in his memory, a long forgotten bouquet. "Jaller."

THE arms wrapped around him squeezed him tightly. "Hard...to...breathe." He felt the arms relax, but a set of lips smothered his, before he could catch his breath. After a minute or two of struggling, Jaller was able to finally push Anubis off him, gasping, "Even...the dead...have to...breathe...An."

"Sorry, I forgot." Anubis's smirked showed he did not mean a word of it. He stood up and hoisted Jaller to his feet. He stood there, resting his arms around Jaller's waist. "Better?"

"What are you doing here?" Jaller asked in amazement at the sight of the jackal, still not sure if his eyes were playing tricks on him.

The wonder in Jaller's eyes confused Anubis for a moment. "How can you ask that? The planes of existence are finally coalescing!" His speech was filled with the glee of seeing his long-lost friend after such a ridiculously long time. "Where else would I be?"

"With your wife?" Jaller said. There was pain buried in his voice, pain for the loss, but not for the betrayal.

Anubis looked dejected for a moment, as he tried to push past the displeasing topic. "I did not have a choice then and you know it. She knew my choice. If she resents me for it, so be it. I love you, and we have waited a...a timeframe that no language can even conceive of, to be together again." The jackal placed his hand on Jaller's shoulder. "You are my husband."

"An. This cannot work." Jaller didn't pull away, but he still tried to lower his head, unable to look at his former friend.

However, Anubis forced their eyes to meet once more. "Why?" he asked with trepidation. "Did you.... Is there someone else?"

Jaller shook his head. "Not for a lack of trying. My heart is still yours." Jaller rested his head against the jackal's chest, needing the comfort, despite his words. "Were you always this tall?"

"Jaller," Anubis pressed, "why can't we be together?"

"Because you're a god and I'm the whore you bedded a long time ago." Jaller said it without a hint of humor, as though it was a simple harmless fact.

Anubis was flabbergasted. "You-are-not-Who-called-you-a-I-going-to-kick-you-just-"

Jaller silenced the rambling with a shift kiss.

"Why does it matter that I was a god in another life!" Anubis shouted.

"You still are," Jaller pointed out, returning his head to the jackal's soft chest.

"What difference is there between god and mortal now?" Anubis wrapped his arms around Jaller, giving him the love he so obviously needed. While at the same time, he was struggling to understand what was going on in the other's head. "We're just energy trapped in a dying universe. What difference was there then? I just survived something I should have stopped. I failed to protect you, and then I was forced even further away, so that the next order of beings could evolve. God is the title they forced on me. The powers came from studying instead of having a life."

"You have no idea what it is like to be down here." Jaller spoke into Anubis's chest, refusing to acknowledge his desires, forcing himself to remain on the path he knew. "Do you know how many demigods there are? Each with a different mother. Each allowed to cross the planes with their child. Allowed to escape the ridicule of the others. Except me." Jaller forced himself out of Anubis's grasp. He stood there, keeping his distance. "I was left to bare their torment for all eternity. Alone."

"You claimed me. That has to count for something." Anubis tried to force a smile, but failed. He tried to apologize, but Jaller cut him off.

"Yeah, I'm the male whore, who sold his soul for a night on top," Jaller said with more venom than he intended.

"You make me sound like Lucifer. I wasn't even a god then. Besides we are as good as married." Anubis tried to move closer, but Jaller backed away.

"It's not enough. It's not enough for you to have taken me with you. Not enough for them to let me live my death in peace. I was an idiot in life to think that they would ever grow to tolerate us. I followed you everywhere trying to find somewhere in this infinity that I could live and take solace in my memories of you. But that place doesn't exist. Not then. And not now!" Jaller moved closer to Anubis, but stood his ground, showing resolve, as he fixed the jackal with his unwavering gaze. "We cannot be together, because I can barely survive now. I am too tired of the pain to want more. Just go. At least with her you will not have to go through what I did."

Jaller turned to walk away, but Anubis grabbed his arm and spun him around. He easily pulled out of Anubis's hold, but after a quick glance at the jackal, he froze. The look of sheer determination on Anubis's face was something he had never seen.

"Okay, since you are done," the jackal said resolutely. "I have a few points of contention with your reasoning. Firstly, I am not the pathetic jackal I once was, so if you think I am going to let you walk away just like that. You. Are. Wrong. I am sorry that they treated you like crap. They died. They came here. There is nothing I could have done to prevent that. I should have threatened to pop them out of existence, but now I'll just skip the threat."

The sound of something fragile breaking alerted Jaller to the fact that he and Anubis were not alone. Looking around, as to avoid the jackal's gaze, he noticed that a crowd had built up around them. And with Anubis's last statement ringing clear, every single member of that crowd, some he recognized as his abusers, were trying to get away as fast and as quietly as possible.

When the street was cleared, Anubis continued. "When we were young, I clung to your bravery, to your strength. You made each day possible, and I don't think you ever realized it. You do not have to be strong now. Let me be the one to get us through this, this time. I am not afraid of them or the other so-called 'gods.' I cannot undo your pain. I cannot take you away from this place. But I can make sure they never hurt you again, whether we are together or not."

"Look around, An!" Jaller shouted, being more animated than any other time since he entered this world. "You have already proven them right. You are using your powers to scare them. You're just another god trying to control us lowers."

Anubis avoided shouting, even as Jaller's accusations pierced him. "I am not trying to force you. I am trying to convince you. And I don't need my powers to stop them. They can't hurt me."

Jaller scoffed at this.

"Not because I am a god, but because I don't care about them. They can't make me feel ashamed, and they cannot make me feel the pain they inflict. You are the only thing that matters to me. I love you. I have loved you longer than most of them have existed. I accepted becoming a god, because it meant I could protect you. I killed you." Anubis's eyes watered, but he refused to cry. "I abandoned my duty, and I killed you and everyone we knew. I abandoned you at the gates, because I was told I could not enter. I abandoned you at your graduation, because I was a coward, and you spent a year alone, because I couldn't say I love you. I have abandoned you so many times. Each time hurting me just as much as it did you. I can't let you go, I can't abandon you once more, but I can't make you stay." He fell to his knees, placing himself at Jaller's mercy. "I love you, and I want a chance to be with you."

"How many times do I have to tell you to GET UP!"

When Jaller spun around, this time he recognized Ra walking towards the pair. He didn't even think, he just let his temper flare at the falcon that caused his pain. "You look older than I remember. Did you forget to wear sunscreen while you were up there?"

Ra looked almost horrified at the gull of the lower daring to even speak in his presence. Ra blinked and found his son in front of the lower, protecting it.

It took Jaller's brain longer to realize that Anubis had moved than to reason why he had moved. Moving closer to the jackal, he whispered his apology. "Sorry."

"It's okay. Just proves you are the Jaller I knew and have been fighting for," was the jackal's hushed response.

Jaller smiled as he realized that though their roles were reversed, the core of their relationship, the reasons he had fallen in love with Anubis were the same. Regardless of time, regardless of the pain he had suffered through, their love was constant and more than empty feelings to be washed away by time. He stood on the tips of his toes to lean over Anubis's shoulder and kiss his cheek.

Anubis could have sworn he felt his heart beating in his throat, when Jaller kissed him. He was back. They were back. Everything was the way it was supposed to be. Jaller was beside him and was going to stay beside him. Suddenly, his father wasn't so intimidating.

Ra's horror became anger upon seeing the lower acting as if it were equal to his son. Upon witnessing the kiss, "Get. Away. From. Him. NOW."

Anubis's response was curt and just as powerful. "No."

"You are choosing to defy me?" At his son's shrug of dismissal, there was the sound of three distant thunderclaps. "You betrayed me once. What makes you think you will survive a second betrayal."

"Osiris gave me a choice," Anubis retorted. "I kept the only duty that ever mattered to me, protecting Jaller. Besides, I am the one you are least angry with for that."

"I will not let you consort with him," Ra said through his gritted beak.

"You don't have a say in who I love," Anubis replied, trying to maintain control of himself.

"I am your father," Ra demanded.

"In name only, Dad."

The power in the air was palpable. Each side was letting their emotions slip through the edges of their control. Jaller never felt anything like it. His mind was torn between running away out of terror and staying so still that he simply ceased to exist. He felt something squeeze his hand. He looked down and found that his jackal had reached behind himself, just to comfort him. He went to squeeze the hand back, but the hand was torn from his grasp, as Anubis disappeared.

"Still finding this funny," Ra said, approaching Jaller.

Jaller for his part was trying not to show how utterly terrified he was of being alone with Ra. "W-W-Where did you send him?" he asked meekly.

"Oh, he will catch up with us soon enough," Ra said calmly, probably not as threateningly as Jaller took it. "However, he will not return before we have time for a little chat."

"Hurting me won't win him over," Jaller retorted, failing to sound braver than he felt.

"Why would I harm you, when you are going to do exactly what I want?" Ra spoke with complete confidence, smiling down at Jaller.

"I will do what I want and I love him." Jaller pushed pass his fear and stepped closer to the bird.

"But you do not want him," Ra said offhandedly.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jaller asked, his temper flaring at Ra's attitude.

"Leave my son alone and you cannot hurt him."

"As An said, you do not get a say in our relationship."

"I will not let you destroy my son." Ra was dead serious, his gaze firm and piercing.

"You're the only one trying to destroy him," Jaller retorted.

The thunderclaps returned, only much closer. "Watch it."

"I can't." Jaller took a long moment to collect himself. "You sent your own son away just to demand that I leave him, and you think I'm the problem. You know what. I may not have been there for him these past eons, but I spent fifteen years trying to support him, to make up for the fact that you were never there. You hurt him then, and you've done nothing else. What have you done to earn the title of father over him? My parents abandoned me when I told them I loved him, even now they refuse to even look at me. You walked in one day and took control of his life. Why! To save him? I will admit that was a bad day for everyone and you were there for him when I couldn't be, but instead of giving him a choice to follow you, you enforced your will. I hated you when I was alive for what you did, but in my death, I thought I could trust you to protect him, but you tried to kill off everything that made him the man I love. Why even pretend to think of him as your son and not just as some puppet? Why can't you just leave him be? He is fully capable of finding his own happiness, something you could care less about."

"You do not get to lecture me," Ra stated, his fury laced into each word, as he fought to control his actions. "You know nothing of this universe. You have no idea what I did to protect my son. I kept track of his life. I made sure he was safe and well cared for. The only thing I failed to do was protect him from your corruption."

"My corruption?" Jaller asked incredulously. "I was five years old when I befriended him. It took us fifteen years for my first kiss-"

"And subsequently your first breeding of my son," Ra interjected.

"Seriously? Did you watch or something?"

"You should not have kissed him. You should never have let yourself fall in love with him."

"You'd rather I never met him?" Jaller asked, fully conscious of what that meant.

Ra took a moment, before he turned away, unwilling to vocalize his concession.

"You are aware I care about him, right?" Jaller said after a while.

Ra made to answer, but at that moment, Anubis came crashing into him and Jaller from a portal ten feet above the ground.

"That was assholic, Dad," Anubis said, getting up several feet away from the other two. He walked over to Jaller, whose legs were caught under Ra's chest and helped him to his feet.

"Are you okay?" he asked, once Jaller was standing.

"Yeah, I guess," Jaller answered, still slightly in shock from the jackal's sudden entrance.

Anubis hugged Jaller, before he move to Ra, who was still on the ground.

"Dead yet?" Anubis asked stoically, standing over the falcon.

Ra grunted indignantly in response, before his son helped him up.

"Oh yeah, nice mirror-maze," Anubis said, just before the deafening sound of cracking glass enveloped the area, as huge plates of mirror-like energy began falling from the sky in jagged shards, each shard exploding upon contact with the surrounding buildings, leaving the ground shaking.

Jaller was frozen in terror as one of the more massive shards shattered a mere two feet above his head, leaving him no time to protect himself from the rain of glass.

He closed his eyes, but felt nothing. Peeking open his right eye, he found the few remaining fragments disappearing as they settled on the ground. His legs gave out, and he collapsed to his knees, breathing hard, as his heart raced.

ANUBIS was beside him when his mind finally caught up with his body. The jackal and falcon were shouting at each other, as Anubis held him.

"Oh, don't try that again!" the jackal shouted, "You just have a problem with your son being in a relationship with a man."

"I do not!" Ra retorted.

"I'm sick of this, Dad!" Anubis sighed. "You refuse to acknowledge who I am. You refuse to acknowledge the damage you've done with your I-can-fix-him attitude. If you cannot accept me then leave me alone. I am tired of being your son. You have been ashamed of me since I was born. You threw me out without giving me a chance. Then you took the only family I had away from me. You obviously don't need me. And I do not need you. So just let me be the embarrassing joke Zeus makes when you and he are getting drunk. I want Jaller. You can take everything else."

Ra growled out is frustration. He made to speak, but stopped himself. He stared at his son for a long time, before he let out a deep sigh. "Fine."

"What?" Anubis said in surprise.

"I said, 'Fine,'" Ra repeated. "I spent centuries trying to find someone who could tolerate you. So from now on, it is solely your decision." The falcon turned and just before he started to leave, "I tried to save you pain, but I will still be there for you."

"Hey!" Anubis shouted, as his father left. When Ra stopped, he continued, "Give it back."

The falcon turned back and let the golden pendant fall from his hand, hanging by the chain looped through his fingers.

Jaller, who had been silently lucid for the latter part of their conversation, immediately reach for his neck to find Anubis's family crest gone. He tried to speak, but his voice caught, as he watched the pendant shimmer, knowing Ra would never let him keep it, despite the fact that it was the only connection he had to a time when he was happy.

Ra's eyes were defiant as he refused Anubis's request. "You should learn to hold on to things better."

"I gave it to him." Anubis stood up, leaving Jaller on the ground, as he approached his father.

"It was not for you to give, but to remember," Ra said cryptically.

"You don't understand," Anubis stated calmly. "It was all I had. I want him to have it."

"No." Ra's voice was hushed, as he struggled to refuse his son.

"Please." There was a pleading tone in Anubis's voice. "It belongs to him."

"I will not let him wear the crest of my family," Ra said, despite the look of hurt on his son's face.

"If you want me to be a part of your family, then he will be too," Anubis said, trying to cover up the pain caused by his father's refusal to accept his relationship with Jaller.

"Maybe," Ra said vaguely. "But not like this."

Anubis remained quiet for several minutes, while he thought, until his defiant streak got the better of him. "Then marry us."

"What!"

Jaller was just as surprised as Ra.

"I want you to marry us...bindingly," Anubis stated.

"I do not approve of this...relationship. I know what will happen. Why would I consent to your matrimony?" The gold pendant swung to-and-fro rapidly as Ra gestured with almost comic exaggeration.

Anubis turned to Jaller, making eye contact before he replied to Ra. "Because I have never asked you for anything. Because you're my father and I'm your son and it is the least you can do, before we part our separate ways."

Ra's mind hung on his son's last words, as his planned reply came out weak and muddled. "You are already married and I do not allow polygamy. It would not be fair to any of you."

"By your laws, an unconsummated marriage is not binding, therefore technically not a marriage." Anubis answered calmly, showing no signs of regret.

"You never...." Ra was shocked. "How could you not...?" Anubis turned back to him, and he knew it was the truth.

Ra stood there, staring at his son.

"We will need to discuss this with your mother," Ra said finally. "She will probably want a ceremony this time." He paused, and then quickly added, "I am going to leave now. I need...We need some time. We will make formal arrangements later."

Ra vanished without another word.

Anubis turned to Jaller, trying to comprehend what just occurred, repeating it in his head, as he stared at Jaller, whose look shared his disbelief. "My mother.... Wait. Who is my mother?"

---

Clarifications about time: Time-references in Act II are going to be potentially confusing. I am describing characters who have now lived a timespan that orders on infinity. My vivid imagination can only handle this in abstraction. Two year is probably not two years, but as long as you think of it as the effect of two years that is all that matters.

Author's Note: I am hoping Ra's character is coming out correcting. I ended up rewriting the entire ending from when Ra enters, trying to find the right balance for him for what is to come.

Thank you for reading for chapter. While you are here, please rate and/or comment. Your feedback is the only gauge I have for making this story better.

As a warning, the next chapter may be a week late, or I may release it early. External events are going to be cropping up, and I have yet to figure out how to schedule everything.