[SNEAK PEEK]Warm Welcome
Fernier goes camping with her friends, and finds a weird meteor.
Art by ScalesAndSpirals
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Warm Welcome Commission for Fernier Featuring Katauni, Zera, and Jezzlen‘s characters 18+ SNEAK PEEK
Fernier groaned. Her eyes weren’t fully closed, and the blue glow seeped from them to give the room a bit of extra light. She was still a bit too hyped up to sleep, to her continuing frustration. She’d had too much fun drinking and chatting with the other girls by the campfire…
Fernier cursed Zera for convincing her to have a little bit of coffee to keep her going when she started to fade. She was definitely still going now…
The grey-furred worgen tossed and turned, and the bed creaked under her weight.
The thought occurred to her that it might snap in half if she stayed on it much longer… and that meant bye-bye security deposit. The last thing she wanted for the other girls was that financial burden to loom over their heads.
There was nothing else for it. She rolled out of bed, stripped it of its sheets, and hoisted the frame up onto its side so it could rest against the wall. The cabin floor would have to suffice.
The moonlight was shining directly into her room too… the frame would block at least a bit of it.
As she looked out into the darkness of the forest and the clear glassy sheen of the lake, she took a moment to stare at the almost-perfectly round moon; they’d arrived just in time to miss the full moon. The lupine side of her was a bit disappointed at that.
It was nice being far away from the normal light pollution of the city, though… the stars were gorgeous. They twinkled and shone and flew through the sky.
…Wait, flew?
One of those pinpricks of light was getting larger, and approaching fast.
A meteor…?
Fernier was almost glad she was awake to see this. Was there going to be a full-on shower?
She traced the trailing tail of light as it started to get exponentially bigger, pulled to top speed by gravity.
The meteor impacted just at the edge of the lake, sending a huge geyser of water and a gout of loamy dirt into the air. The sound of the crash was loud enough to make Fernier flinch and jump, her fur standing on end.
She lingered for a moment… listening out to see if the sound had made anyone else stir. It didn’t seem like it…
Her eyes no longer felt heavy. She was wide awake again.
“Damn… might as well head outside,” she muttered to herself. A walk and some fresh air might do her good. Plus… she could get a closer look at that cool space rock!
She slipped out into the night air. It was warm, and no one was about, so she took the liberty of heading out completely in the nude. Her thick belly and chest caught the moonlight and made her grey fur sparkle.
She padded her way down towards the lake, taking slow careful steps so her paws didn’t step on anything sharp or trip over loose roots.
She caught a glimpse of the meteor through the trees. Whatever moon-rock it was made from, it seemed to be catching the moonlight like a glittering diamond…
Though, as Fernier got closer, she realised that the light was coming from the meteor itself. It was glowing a deep, thick violet colour, pulsing to something resembling a heartbeat.
It appeared to almost be hollow, composed of a thin lattice of stone veins no thicker than a finger. If it had managed to survive entering the atmosphere, let alone the crash, it must have been a powerful alloy…
It wasn’t completely unscathed. It was in two pieces, and the purple glow was slowly weeping out like the yolk from a cracked egg. It oozed out onto the moist lake shore, bubbling and giving off steam as it did.
Even so, she stepped closer to get a better look at its pulsating glowing core. It bathed her in its light, and she could feel heat radiating off it from its fiery journey down. She kept a respectful distance so she didn’t get cooked, and stooped down low to stare at the glowing yolk.
She knew better than to touch it; she ignored her intrusive thoughts.
As she leaned in closer, she noticed something moving amidst the thick amniotic goo. Something small, limbless, and wriggling, moving like the silhouette of an eel in a dark lake.
Her heart skipped a beat. She pinched herself, checked that she was breathing, and confirmed that, yes, she was not dreaming.
The heat was dying down a little bit, so she leaned down to get a closer look.
The tip of the creature’s body burst through the thin skin that had formed around the yolk. It was a little slug-like thing, about the size and thickness of Fernier’s (admittedly huge) thumb. Its little tapered snout poked up towards the sky, as if it was trying to scent something, or see the stars itself.
It was weirdly cute, in a slimy creepy sort of way.
“Hi there, little guy…!” Fernier said with a big smile. She still wasn’t going to touch it, of course, but she felt like it might be worth protecting it from any local fauna…
She reared up and put her hands on her hips, looking down at it as it continued to slowly creep its way out of its container.
She could see others starting to emerge from inside the ‘egg’ as well… there was a few of them. A little colony, maybe?
These little ones were quite slow and sluggish. Fernier didn’t know it, but these were young ones, adolescent at best.
There was an older slug, one she didn’t notice. Bigger, not to mention faster. It had already slipped out, scouted ahead, and slipped up a nearby tree.
And as this big warm creature stood still and gawked at the meteor, this slug moved into position.
The same gravity that had pulled the slugs’ egg to earth pulled it down the same way, and it landed on top of Fernier’s head with a wet slap.
Fernier screamed sharply and stumbled backwards, her paw immediately surging to the top of her head to grasp and squeeze. It slurped free of her grasp and inched down the right side of her head.
“No… NO!” She barked, as if trying to chide a dog. But the purple slug kept moving, kept escaping her grasp with its glistening slick body. It buried its snout into her right ear, and its almost liquid body adapted and squished down.
“Angh… ghnngh…” Fernier tilted her head downwards to the right and tried to tug. She fell back against the tree, her legs quivering. The slug surged in deeper, plugging up her ear and forcing her to listen to the rush of blood, and the thick loud squelching as the slug continued through the canal towards its destination; her brain.
Her gropes got slower and more half hearted, until her paws fell by her side. She stared straight up at the sky, though she wasn’t looking at anything. She grunted and mumbled nonsense as the slug slipped into her cranium and slid along her brain, triggering synapses and reflexes at random. Her nipples grew erect, and her slit began to dribble. She giggled like she’d just heard a funny joke. Her nose twitched like she was about to sneeze. Her fists clenched and unclenched.
She slumped to the ground, clutching and scratching at her head, as if she could dislodge this foreign presence. Her eyelids were drooping, her gaze unfocused as her senses were hijacked.
Her brain was flooded with pleasure-chemicals, and she couldn’t even manage to groan out a ‘no’ as her body twitched and spasmed and filled with heat.
Eventually, the slug found its proper place inside her head, and she went still.
Her face was blank, her jaw hung loose.
Her synapses were tweaked, and her body obeyed the commands it was given.
The worgen-shell slowly and steadily got back upright, her movements precise and economical.
She looked down at the meteor, and the young things wriggling inside it.
The adult assumed they would be safer there than anywhere else. For now, the shell would need to return to a place where it would not arouse suspicion.
The slug sifted through the worgen-shell’s thoughts, and the worgen’s eye twitched as her jaw loosened into a moan.
With the route plotted, the slug began to pilot.
She turned back towards the cabin and began to walk, her steps stiff and slow, her arms raised up in front of her. Her body knew the way, and the brain only needed a few tweaks to bring her back there and slip off to sleep.
The slug rested too, nestled so perfectly inside the worgen’s head that she wouldn’t feel its presence. When she woke, she would know nothing.
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