FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

You turn the old, hand drawn map to the side, checking every angle and comparing each landmark that you've followed. A round boulder juts from the ground right at a bend in the stream, just where like the drawing points to. As worn and as weathered as the map is, the signs are clear, dig right at the spot that's furthest from the water. Now you need only dig and the prize will be yours. It's a good thing you came prepared, bringing a thick jacket and a shoulder bag with plenty of spare tools. Today is the day that you finally claim your prize.

Many people have heard rumours of Lord Barrister's treasure, a secret possession so greatly prized that he had it hidden away before the division of his estate. Barrister had always been a recluse, an eccentric who cared more about his strange routines and constant musings on the occult than any immediate concerns, not even his steadily failing health. But while most think of them as mere stories, you know the truth. Even the old financier who first inherited the map dismissed the stories as rumours and pranks. He was eager to sell it to you for a very modest fee, barely more than the cost of the parchment it was drawn on.

You carefully fold the map and set it down safely with your bag. Though the weather is clear it was raining heavily the night before, enough that droplets of water fall from the trees above whenever the wind stirs. The ground is moist and heavy, but that's not enough to stop you. After clearing away the layer of leaves you strike the earth with your shovel and pull up a pile of thick, clay-like dirt. Even without the rain the stream would have kept the soil here damp. It's certainly not an ideal place to bury treasure.

Your shovel strikes something hard and flat before you even have time to doubt yourself. That's it! With a bit of brushing and some careful prying you pull the weathered box up from the earth. The box is flat and broad, carved from wood and bound with leather. There's no sign of a lock, just a simple latch. You need only flick the latch open and carefully lift the lid, though you're completely unprepared for what you might find.

Colour drains from your face as you look down into the open box. You've been had! There's nothing in the box except a folded letter, a handful of dessicated mealworms and a pile of small, dry bones. Most of the bones are hard to identify, but there's even a little skull from some sort of small mammal. It's a broad, flat skull with sharp teeth and a round hole for a nose. It's quite a morbid little thing.

Hopefully the letter will make up for the rest of it. It's an old, yellowy piece of paper covered in so much dust that it makes you sneeze as you open it. "Dearest Albert," the letter reads. "If you are reading this, then you must be delighted to know that I am well and truly dead. You always did despise me more than any other man dared to." You pause to scratch your itching nose as you read. The 'Albert' that the letter refers to was originally supposed to inherit the map but he died in an accident before he could receive it.

"While I was alive, I swore an oath not to use this power on any living man. But, to reiterate, I am dead." Your cheeks feel warm and flushed as you continue reading. Part of you feels as though you should stop but you can't bring yourself to put the letter down. "I no longer fear my passing, for I know that my death will bring new life - or at least a new life for you. But do not dismay! I have even included a first meal to ease your passage towards-" You have to stop reading for a moment as your vision loses focus. Your nose itches terribly and it only gets worse when you try to scratch. Sweat beads across your forehead as you're gripped by a feverish heat. Your cheeks and ears flush a bright red as you're struck by a wave of vertigo. Something is terribly wrong!

It's only then that you can feel the powder dusting your fingertips, all of it rubbed off from the letter. It must have been poisoned! Your fingertips are numb, throbbing with a dull ache as your nails thicken and darken to a deep, bruiselike shade. You frantically discard the letter and brush the dust off onto your jacket. Remembering the stream nearby, you rush over and try to wash yourself clean. But the cool, fresh water only makes your skin itch and prickle. A dull ache spreads through every joint in your hands as your palms start to swell into thick, round callouses.

You shout for help but the only answer is a muffled echo. It seems that Lord Barrister must have had his treasure buried out here to keep anyone from finding his victim. Your only choice is to retrace your steps, to find your way back down the stream and find a doctor. You just need to keep yourself going for a few hours, even with your blurry vision and aching body.

Though you don't want to touch the letter again you know that keeping a sample could help to identify the substance and cure you. You scoop the paper up with your shovel and set it back into the box, sealing it up tight and packing it with your map into your bag. Your muscles shudder and ache but your bag feels surprisingly light as you gain a wiry new strength. You stand yourself up and take a step forward, confident that you can make your way back even if the treasure wasn't what you'd hoped for.

You wipe the sweat from your forehead and focus on following the stream, even as your eyesight loses more focus. The leafy trees above look like blobs of green, and their trunks are vague, dark pillars. Everything more than a ten feet away is a complete blur. You have to focus on the glimmer of the water and the trickling sounds of the stream to keep your position as you shuffle forward step by step, fighting off the dizziness and vertigo.

Even minutes feel like hours as you walk, struggling to keep your balance. The sensations that wrack your body feel increasingly strange, ranging from a deep pressure in your bowels, a lightening and loosening of your dry, soft skin, and even a steady swelling of your dripping, pinkish nose. Looking back at your thick, calloused palms and blunt, clawlike nails, you'd start to wonder if the dust on the letter was more than mere poison. The phrasing of the letter was so strange and you hadn't even finished reading it. Even in your state of shock and panic, you don't feel as if you're dying. To the contrary, you feel energetic and even more alive, just so long as you can keep your balance.

You find yourself sniffing at the air as you step and shuffle, struggling to keep your heels from pulling up in your boots. You keep stepping on the cuffs of your pants as well, as they keep sliding down lower on your waist. Even your jacket starts to drape down over your slender shoulders, making you pull your sleeves back if you want to see your hands. It's all so surreal that you'd think you were starting to hallucinate, especially as you see the glossy tufts of rich black fur sprouting up from between your thick, blunt fingers. You call for help every few minutes, though your throat feels scratchy and your voice gets coarser and quieter with every time you speak.

The most you can do is cling to your dreamlike sense of disbelief and just keep walking. You do everything you can to ignore the sensations that spread across your body, even the thick blanketing of oily fur that spreads down your shoulders and fluffs out in your armpits. Those itchy, prickly hairs soon cover your body, spreading down the curve of your belly, blanketing your groin, even sprouting up down around your stubby legs and feet. It gets even worse when it spreads up your neck, itching around your chin and fluffing out across your rounded, thickening ears. Soon your whole face is covered with fur, all of it black save for a thin white stripe drawn from the tip of your protruding nose up to your forehead.

Your clothes keep getting bigger and bigger as you trip and stumble with every step. You find it much easier to just kick your boots off and place your feet on the ground. Your toenails pleasantly scratch through the dirt, leaves and rocks as your calloused toes and broad, thick feet are moistened by the soil. You can still stand upright with your squat, fuzzy legs but it becomes more and more of a struggle. Your pants are a hinderance now, all clumped and bunched around your ankles, threatening to slip off if you let go of them for even a moment. Your shoulderbag weighs you down even more, making it very hard to balance. You only barely resist the temptation to put your hands on the ground to walk. But soon you feel a stiff pinching right above your buttocks as your loose skin draws out into a slender little nub, dusted with a crisscross of black and white fur.

Dizzy and disoriented, you don't even think to collect your boots as you leave them behind at the side of the stream. Your thoughts are focused only on the need to get back home and the desperate belief that you were simply hallucinating, that none of this was actually happening. Your ears prickle at the rustling leaves as you sniff at the breeze, picking up scents of distant flowers and grass, as well as stove fire, baked bread and hints of manure. You know that the smells are all coming from the town, but you come to realize that you still have miles to go. Your plump little nose has just gotten that much more sensitive, picking up on crisscrossing scents that feel both familiar and strange. The strongest scent of all also happens to be your own, a pungent, sulphurous smell that feels strangely comforting. You find yourself using your nose and ears more and more as your vision degrades, using the scents of leaves and bark and moist earth to find a deeper meaning to the vague, hazy blur of the forest around you.

It keeps getting harder for you to pretend that you're still human as you're left fumbling with your pants. You can't even grab properly with your fingers anymore, and your thumbs are just thick, inflexible nubs. Your long, blunt claws can hook around your belt but even then your pants just clump around your ankles. Realizing that you won't be able to walk much further if you're wrestling with them the whole time, you drop your pants into the mud and step free of them. It feels a bit refreshing to let breeze rustle your thick fur. Your shirt and jacket still work well enough, draping down past your knees like a smock, tented in the back by your wiggling tail.

As strong and dense as your new muscles are, your bag is weighing your shrinking body down too much. It's a struggle to keep walking even without getting tangled in your boots or pants. Your tail sways for balance but your back aches and your hips shudder. As much as you want to keep walking you have to stop there. Your bag slips from your shoulder and clatters on the ground. You're left panting for breath, your thick, pudgy tongue lolling from your mouth. You know that you still need to keep the box that you dug up but it takes you a moment to remember why. The letter had poison on it, and the poison needs to be identified to find a cure... And yet as you think deeper about the situation you start having to face the truth. This really is happening to you even if you don't want to believe it.

That existential dread of beasthood almost overwhelms you as you lift your tail behind your back and hunch down for comfort. Trying to call out again, you can barely raise your voice above a strange, hoarse chirp. Nobody would even understand what you meant to say. Your body keeps dwindling and shrinking even as you stop to take a rest, and while your muscles have recovered you find that you can't even lift up your shoulderbag anymore. Even pushing it proves to be fruitless, like trying to move a wheelless cart on your own. The best you can manage is to tug the bag open and drag the box out on its own.

Your striped tail fluffs over the back of your shoulder as you slump down, defeated. There's nothing recognizably human about you, and no matter what you try to do you keep shrinking and shrinking. Your long fur puffs out as your body dwindles inside it, taking on more natural proportions. You must have known what you were becoming for quite a while, even if you didn't want to admit it to yourself. Holding your thick, flat paws up, you recognize every bit of yourself, from your recognizable shape to your powerful scent. You even start to feel the tugging of urges at the back of your mind, to dig and burrow, to forage, even to rear up on your forepaws at signs of danger. Your scent could also prove to be a weapon, as your two powerful glands tremble under your tail. The thought of releasing your spray is strangely tempting with how agitated you feel, though you know that you should only do it as a last resort.

Even knowing that you're a skunk, it's hard to give up your possessions, even knowing that you won't have much of a use for them. You spend some time rummaging through your bag as you try to adjust to a smaller and smaller perspective. Your shirt and jacket soon feel more like a big fabric tent, large enough that you can easily stuff your entire body down either sleeve. Your bag has even more room, and it even feels somewhat denlike. You manage to find a comfortable spot between some of your spare tools as you delve in deeper, and it doesn't take long to break into the stash of food that you packed for your trip. The big chunk of cheese proves especially appetizing, though you quickly start to feel indigestion from it. You also have a few delicious apples and a loaf of bread that's bigger than you are. You packed enough to give yourself a solid lunch, but with your new body you can live comfortably for weeks.

Though your mind and memories are still intact, it's hard to resist both your physical needs and the spontaneous desires and instincts that you have as a skunk. Even though you know that a fox wouldn't dare attack you, the scent of a pair of them poking around leaves you trembling with fear. Knowing what's outside, the safety and comfort that comes from your shoulderbag den proves to be too hard to give up. Days soon pass, as part of you wonders whether the effects of the dust will wear off, or if you're really going to be in this form for the rest of your life.

You spend your time adjusting and learning, teaching yourself the things that a skunk would normally learn as a kit. You spend more and more time heading out of your den, search and exploring, finding your way around. The distant scents of human civilization still call to you whenever the breeze turns the right way but you're left wondering how you could ever find your way back without being chased away by brooms. Instead of dwelling at what you can't do, you find it better to focus on keeping yourself healthy, comfortable and well fed.

After finishing off the reserves of food in your pack, you even come to appreciate the dried mealworms that were left behind as a final insult. They're bland but quite satisfying to crunch on. Before long you manage to start catching worms and grubs of your own, using your thick claws to dig through the ground and stir up all the squirming treats under the soil. You learn to be increasingly fearless as you realize how reluctant the other animals in the forest are to get in your way. Even adult bears act shy when you're around. You might worry about hawks or owls but none of them seem to be around this part of the forest. In fact, you're soon free to spend every night foraging freely and there's rarely a day that you go hungry.

As time goes on and the seasons begin to turn you human memories start to feel like strange dreams and fantasies. There's even a day when humans come walking by, collecting your old bag and discarded clothes. You want to go out and greet them but you only find yourself hiding, paralyzed with fear, completely unable to approach knowing what they might do. You're still comfortable as you fend for yourself and dig a new den of your own, but the situation wears on you. You catch yourself wondering if you were ever human to begin with, or if you were just a skunk with strange ideas and an uncommon imagination.

Though part of you still regrets your decision to hunt for that unknown treasure and mourns your lost humanity, you also feel comfortable as you are now, in ways that you wouldn't have been able to imagine as a human. Though the strange powder in the letter was clearly meant as a curse, there's a lot of good that's come from it as well. You have food, safety and security, enough time to explore and rest as much as you can possibly want. As time passes and the seasons keep turning, you'd even find a family, a mate and kits of your own. More than any point when you were human, you feel at home.