FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

I noticed the footprint the other day. It wasn't like any I had seen around here before, and piqued my curiosity, the print having crushed some of the underbrush down into the mud very clearly. I started paying a little more attention each time I went out, and a few days later I found another. Then another. Then another, then a whole track over the next week. I got the strong idea that there was something in this forest that I had never seen before - that maybe none of us had ever seen before.

I shared with my mate about the odd footprints than next evening, but he wasn't impressed. He let me know there was probably some perfectly normal creature making the footprints I had found - despite my insistence on the full track I had found with a wholly unreasonable gait - and that I would be wasting my time if I continued trying to figure out what was in our forest.

I didn't listen.

But nor was I successful. After that talk, weeks went by without any sign of a creature that I couldn't identify was wandering though the giant expanse of trees we called home. Needless to say, I was getting frustrated. Had I really been seeing things? No, that couldn't have been it, I had traced those footprints with my own hooves just to feel them out; I had even tried smelling them, at one point thinking there was a scent there I didn't recognize.

So if the creature was real, was fate just playing with me? Had it moved on? Or died? Or maybe I hadn't been careful earlier and it was on to me, now hiding itself better? Whatever the reason, I wasn't finding any signs of it at all.

I'm not sure if it was a blessing or a curse that I was seeing less of my mate, too. He would be gone for days at a time. On one hand, I would generally just be happier with him around, and he generally knew how to keep me sane. On the other hand, there was no way I could talk to him about my creature, the newfound frustrations of not seeing it sure to earn the "I told you so" response...

He had been gone for almost two weeks when the stalemate was broken. I was just out on one of my normal trails when I heard - not saw - something new. I froze, ears at attention, as I listened to the completely foreign sound. It was faint, far away, but it was surely vocalizations of some sort. The more I listened, the more I learned - the creature had a two-toned voice, and its vocalizations were incredibly well-structured, even more so than the songs of the birds of the forest. I realized only after the fact that the birds had actually been silent for a while before I heard the creature, and didn't start singing again until well after I stupidly let the sound of the creature fade.

As silently as I could, I tried tracking down where the sound had come from. I didn't find anything that day, but when I went looking the next day I found tracks again. Imagine my surprise when I found not one but two sets of the long footprints going alongside that stream! I hadn't been hearing a creature with a two-tone cry; I had been hearing two creatures conversing! The discovery excited and also terrified me.

Another two days went by without any sign of my mate when I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of a loud roar - not the roar of a waterfall, or a falling tree, or a rock slide, but a clearly animalistic roar that I had never heard before. I didn't sleep for the rest of the night, the balance between excitement and terror shifting noticeably more toward the latter. It hadn't been a friendly-sounding roar; I wasn't sure now if I really wanted to actually encounter my creature.

I did anyway the next day.

I was just having lunch out on one of my trails when I heard an odd snap, the sound of a twig nearby being broken. I ceased eating and tensed up, looking around anxiously as my ears kept listening. And kept hearing similar small sounds somewhat nearby. Then one of those vocalizations, coming closer. I was petrified to say the least, even more so when I finally saw one of the creatures between the trees ahead. Then another. Then another. A whole pack of them, walking upright on two legs (that explained the odd gait pattern in their prints) soon filed out from between the trees...

Still as I was, they initially didn't notice me. But then one in the middle stopped, looking my direction, and a few moments later cried out, getting the attention of all of them. I'm not sure if it was a moment or an eternity, but both they and I were still as we stared at each other. Then the one that cried out raised something that made an unnatural snapping sound and a bright flash of light.

I turned and bolted, running from another snapping sound as the whole group of them started hooping and hollering. If they were trying to blind me in advance of attacking me, I wasn't going to let them as I galloped away faster than I think I've ever run, horn catching a few low branches along the way and giving me quite the neck-ache by the time night fell and I realized how exhausted I was.

My mate surprised me a few minutes later, also a bit out of breath but nowhere near myself in that manner. I didn't get a chance to share my experience with him before his own horn nearly gouged my neck as he hurriedly huddled beneath me, his own memory from the previous day flooding my mind.

He had been drinking at the base of a waterfall when he straightened up and turned, only to see the same group I had seen today nearly surrounding him. They looked even more dangerous around him, most of them with their teeth showing - the sharpness of the chompers was particularly visible on the one with the fluffy wagging tail and the one with a giant tan mane around his entire head. My mate panicked and started trying to splash his way across the stream, feeling one of the creatures lunge forward and pluck one of the translucent hairs from his gorgeous tail as he fled. He had hid under a fallen tree since then, only coming out when he heard me running past him about an hour ago.

I very easily decided against my own "I told you so" moment, and also against sharing my own traumatic experience today - he could tell from my own running that I had a similar experience, and I figured he didn't need to experience a second encounter with the creatures - I think sharing his own experience was an apology already. He rested there for a while, necking and nuzzling comfortingly, before leaving that forest for good.