Cherry Cordial Chaos
The Christmas season had come and gone, with all of its effects. Cooks recovered from massive feasts, along with their recipients. Roads backed up with impatient drivers and inebriated in-laws. After-Christmas clearance sales, massive return lines, piles of forgotten trash, and for a certain catox, a nice, tidy set of gifts.
Ark stretched his lithe, yet toned body upwards, thin arms reaching up as they grasped each other, pulling the spine taught and puffing the chest out while he emits a light growl, having gotten up from a rare sleep-in, only to be awakened by an alert on his email client that he had a job to finish today. Sitting in his large, black leather chair, he stopped his stretch and adjusted his chair, looking over the contents of his inbox.
"Okay, let's see...Amazon2, Twitter, there's my client today, and oh!"
The strange creature exclaimed after noticing a single word within a certain subject line.
"Winter...eeeee!"
He quickly opened the email, reading its contents to himself, sipping a small espresso-laced chocolate drink
.
"Gone for a few more days...finished research and presentation...finalizing report, package should be there today...see you soon."
A shiver of joy ran up the back, hair standing up on end as pure anticipation crept over the furred creature. The boyfriend of his, a grey wolf, was a government contractor, specializing in chemistry, a very talented wolf capable of turning any situation into a much more stable and workable one. Ever since the two met, things have only grown, due in part to a high level of respect held for each other, and constant teasing and enticement, seductive natures melding to create playful competition with each other.
As for the cat-fox hybrid, Ark, he was a freelance IT professional, performing services for the highest bidder. After a few years of turning operating systems into Swiss cheese, he became notorious for high quality diagnostics, testing, and response to critical security issues. This said, he could spend most of his time at home, and with his loved one, whenever he wasn't out for some other job. It was much like a military deployment, although it was normally for a week or so, rather than a few months or a year, and he could tag along many times if he wasn't working on a critical issue that required hardware access. But still he missed his sweetheart, every day he was gone.
As his mind dropped back into his current issue at hand, he took another sip of the hot beverage, the white muzzle meeting with silver metal, steam slipping between the two as a "Slurp!" was heard. A tufted ear twitched as he moved his keyboard closer, hit the power button for the home audio system, and pulled up a terminal.
"Alrighty, Samba issues within an application server, and issues with the maintenance schedule, here goes nothing!"
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After a few hours of typing and bashing about the remote system, he fixed the issue and called up the small financial company.
"Yep, some odd file structure issue made SMB go bonkers, and there was a conflict in the update and backup, so I pushed the backups to Saturday around lunch, and then updates on Sunday morning, and the system reboots and checks itself Monday, and is up before dawn...yep, just send the payment according to the invoice...sure, Visa is fine...alrighty, thanks for using Alsea Productions, and have a nice day."
Hanging up the phone ended his work day, the thick legs extending out to push from the chair and rise up, 5 foot and 8 inches of polymorphic muscle, bone, and fur stretching once more in nothing more than a pair of black shorts. Looking outside to the massive magnolia tree, he saw the shadow directly above the ancient spire, telling him it was lunch time.
After a quick salmon stir-fry and fresh brown rice, the athletic-minded hybrid was tempted to go run, but a surprising knock came from the door. Slipping on a simple tee-shirt, he scurried from the kitchen and through the open grand room to the front door, an otter postal worker at the door.
"'lo thar! Gotta lil' box, a padded envelope, and sum plain mail; just gimme a RF-scan and that'll doit!"
A simple palm wave over the worker's control system confirmed the proper owner, and the arms accepted the mail, and a grey and white tail wagging showed a great deal of anticipation from the catox, fluffed up and ready to twitch.
"Hey, you think you can come check my son's tablet-thingy later? He's having trouble running Unreal 2020 on it. Keeps sayin' he needs parental permission, but he's sev'nteen, it should let him."
"I'll check it out on Wednesday, I've got some housework to do upstairs, and my man is comin' in tomorrow."
"Great! Tell him I said heya! 'Till later, man!"
With a quick nod and a closing of the door, the brown eyes scanned over the mail, nothing but a new OS toolkit and statements confirming his last clients of the year were satisfied with the solutions implemented. His eyes fell on the box, knowing exactly whom it was from. A purple flash in his eyes and a claw drawing across the tape opened up the cube, revealing a few small gifts from his love. He had already gotten a few games, books, and new running gear from friends and parties, but he always loved what little goodies Winter sent, thanks to knowing just what the catox liked.
Inside sat some dry ice, a new set of headphones, and a dark red box. Picking it up, it read "Queen Anne Limited Cordial Cherries" with a subtitle "A specially blended cherry cordial candy with dark chocolate, real cherries, and an extra-smooth filling. This is one of only 250 boxes with rare 'Hypra Cherries' a unique tasting fruit with a euphoric finish." Not bad, considering they were only recently found in a recent underground exploration and determined to be safe to consume. The catox also observed the headphones, small in-ear buds with a minute wireless connector.
"Excellent. I've needed these...nya? A note..."
The catox peeled a small note from the side of the box, checking it.
"Heya, found these while I was in New Chicago, I hope you like 'em! Love, Winter ^^"
This was certainly a treat, sweet chocolates from a sweet boyfriend. He slit the wrapper and slipped one into his muzzle, biting down on it, the creamy chocolate giving way to an even creamier center, the sweet, yet tart Hypra cherries kicking in as he closed his eyes in bliss, savoring every unique hit of flavor until it all slid down the gullet.
"Oh gods! These are amazing!"
The catox seems drawn to the sweets, going for another, and another, and another, until all ten were consumed.
"Myaaaaaaa......he sure knows how to keep me sated."
The thick paws finally move forward after leaning on the kitchen counter, going to wash up the dishes and bound up to the master bedroom upstairs...
...unknowing to the cat-fox that certain changes were going into effect, modifying a few key genetic bonds, and accelerating them to catch up to the current age of the creature. Twenty-two years of growth, ready to be slammed into the body at any point in time...what will happen? How will this affect Ark? Keep your eyes peeled for the sweet finale to Cherry Cordial Chaos!