FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Unseen, unfelt, the cavern still breathes. Wind rushes whispering giggles through its maw, then pushes itself back out. Somewhere in the depths of it, water drips and then pools, sucked from the very air into the stone and then into the lichens painting its walls. Mites and spiders crawl through the dank, warm atmosphere, adding their own metabolic rates to the overall system that exists - and this is important - that exists outside the experience of human beings.

Also of great importance are the mites. Many of them are dying, being preyed upon by other small insects, now that they are out of their natural habitat. Their natural habitat is fur, where they feast on dead skin and other debris. Out in a wide, open world of damp stone, though, they are defenseless and have nowhere to hide except the clumps of fur on which they had been too unlucky to be residing when those clumps were removed from their owners' bodies. Siber and Tatrix, notably, no longer are in the cave.

They are many miles away. Siber has flown them over the tops of the trees, despite all their trepidations and despite Tatrix's weight, and they now perch, completely motionless on tree branches, while emerald tears run down Tatrix's visage. Both of them know that Tetra is dead. It is hard to ignore. They cannot move, though, because they cannot afford to be seen. They cannot be seen, in fact, because every hint of sunlight has been blocked out around them. A sphere of Black encompasses the two men. They both know that the Black hunts by the movement of bodies and hearts.

The creatures surrounded the wolf-men when Tatrix felt his daughter die. It was a brief and short-lived mistake to let himself feel that much while hunting the Black. Like Siber, he has channeled the emotion into turning his tears - indicators of emotion - into an inorganic material the Black cannot understand or see. His heart and mind still feel the loss, even more so than they should, but they are compressed under layers of emotionless barriers so that instead of truly feeling them, he feels their potential. He feels the future of the sensation of loss that will come when - if - he escapes.

It burns away inside him while precious gems roll down his cheeks. Siber's countenance is likewise bleak. To not only be ambushed, but to be ambushed while attempting an ambush. The Black have been so quiet for so long, and they have never organized before. They were seeking Damien, he believes, and he and Tatrix have tracked and studied them to find their point of origin. It is nearly impossible to study the Black because they do not speak and they leave behind nothing, but decades of perusal of their habits and their appearances and disappearances have led Siber, and thus Tatrix, to this part of the forest, where suddenly, they are literally surrounded by Black who listen with every fiber of their being to know whether any animal is in their vicinity.

Luckily, Tatrix and Siber know how to breathe like plants.

Damien still does not. For the past five days, he has been under Glen's care. The man is sometimes difficult to read and seems to take the world as something between a joke and a cruel trick that's being played on him. He laughs at strange things and when he is frustrated, becomes bitter and seems to believe he is hiding his anger, even though he is not.

The boy's mother visits once.

"Damien."

"Hi, Mom. I..."

"Shut up. I'm sorry I said you lied."

"...thanks."

Glen's voice chimes in. "You're a real bitch, aren't you?"

"Fuck you and shut the fuck up; I'm talking to my son."

"You treat him like an animal and you always have." You treat him like an animal. "Get out of my house."

"What do you know about how I treat my son?"

"The same thing everyone else does now GET OUT OF MY HOUSE." His roar would impress Tatrix, if he were here. Damien knows. Damien watches and feels the voice like a jungle cat staking claim. His mother leaves, furious. She does not stay to collect her child.

The town does not... quite... question Glen's decision. Damien has not complained and his mother is as glued to her house as ever, slowly frittering away her parents' inheritance on cigarettes and magazines. He is given more strange looks than usual, and Damien's school's guidance counselor takes both of them aside, but Glen assures her the change is temporary, and Damien doesn't complain. He seems to welcome the change, actually, though he does get nervous when asked whether he misses his mother.

The boy spends the first two days unconscious. No one can pin down the cause of his nigh-comatose condition. Doctors are brought in - doctors who are unceremoniously cut off from examining the wolf-girl they came to see under the guise of caring for Damien - run tests, and determine that he is just resting, and the wound on his back must have been very serious. Apparently there is bruising and infection at the site, so he is given antibiotics to fight the greenish spread of envenomed veins. They don't work.

He awakens and has the two conversations already mentioned. Once awake, he discovers his only difficulty - standing - stems from a lack of food, which Glen is quick to remedy with lavish, rich meals. Damien scarfs them down like the growing boy he should be, and Glen smiles. The boy sleeps under a blanket on Glen's couch, his still-short stature fitting relatively comfortably there. If Damien had remained unaware of the humans scouring the forests where he had walked and learned, his life would have been peaceful. As it was, he worried, and his strained face made Glen anxious to get them to the cave and find these wolf-men. They would know why a child would be found staring at a brook that had been choked seemingly overnight by vegetation that had killed the Black.

On the fifth day, they leave. Glen seems cheerier than usual. He has also had several cups of coffee, making that less baffling. He rummages through his garage for a bit, then tosses Damien an assault rifle. The boy barely catches it. "...what?"

"The Black are after you, Damien! Spirit-boy," he quips, chuckling. "Wow I love your name. Anyway! If the Black are after you and the wolf-men are after you, we need protection! So strap that to your back and throw it to me if I tell you to." Glen grins cheerily and hefts a huge backpack onto his shoulders, then buckles it around his middle. It has at least three days of food, water, and soda in it, as well as a tent and two sleeping bags. He casually flicks a twenty-pound iron rod out of a corner of the garage to himself and catches it with a flourish. The iron sings as its owner grasps it. "Also this. The wolf-men use our technology, but don't actually seem to like it. They'll respect us more and won't be as tempted to use magic on us if we don't use guns."

"Magic...?"

"Do they teach you nothing in schools? Come on, let's go."

Damien couldn't believe his ears. Magic? He had been taught magic? Was that... was that what had saved Tetra? She has still not awakened, even now, though Glen seems to believe she will live. He is not sure how. He talks constantly about how a Black spear is acidic, toxic, and incurable. Also went through her chest. So it has to be magic, but why would the wolf-men cast magic to cure her, not tell Damien, and then leave her body?

They get more than one odd stare as they traipse towards the woods, but Damien pushes their pace. He wants to find Siber again. Why was he left? Why had he been abandoned? He worries he'll be ignored because of Glen, but he likes the man's presence. He's confident and cheerful, even if he's strange, and he seems to know what he's doing.

They reach the edge of the forest before they start talking. Glen has been chattering incessantly about biology, of course - he tends to do that even at normal social gatherings - but that hardly counts as conversation. Damien finally asks, "Why do you have a gun?"

"Guns," he is swiftly corrected, "and lots of them. I don't know much about them, but I do know that we live on the outskirts, and so like most adults, I keep weapons around. The Black strike without warning, when they decide to, and the wolf-men have no real reason to hit us, but they might just want to take it to expand their land, or something."

"Why did we leave Tetra behind?" he suddenly asks, and pales under the dappled sunlight through the thick canopy licking his limbs.

"Don't worry. She's behind locked doors, and I left her food and water and a note in case she wakes up. No one should bother her."

Should. "Okay..." He shrugs his shoulders in turn uncomfortably, and winces as the gun touches part of his back. "What do you think is wrong with my back?"

"I don't know." The trees loom unimposingly overhead, happy to blot out the harsh, morning glare. The birds are nonchalant as they flutter about and warble their melodic warnings and courtship calls. "The doctors who came by are idiots. You don't have an infection. It looks like your blood vessels are hardening. It's not really so bad; it's just near the skin, and your body can grow out new ones whenever it wants. It's only concerning because it might metastasize or something, or dig deeper. There's not really anything to do but surgically remove it, though, and honestly..." He stops, very clearly trying to come up with a convincing lie. "Honestly, I don't think it's a problem."

"Yes you do."

Glen is taken aback. Most people are by Damien's bluntness when he is confused or solemn, which is his usual mode of being. Especially these last few days, all of the playfulness he has learned from Tetra has faded to a bitter memory. Children should not have bitter memories. "Well... it might be."

"It is."

"If it gets to the point that you can't stand up straight or sit down without it hurting, then we'll worry, okay?" He gives the boy a look, calculating. Damien is far older than Glen first estimated, but also far younger. Maybe... what was Siber trying to do with him?

"What are the Black?" Damien asks.

Again, the man is silent for a while. They continue walking towards the mountains and the land under their feet rises. Damien struggles to hear it, but with the sounds of their burdens, he can't. Instead, he says, "Siber wouldn't tell me, either. He just ignored me when I asked."

"The Black..." Glen starts, and lets it drift into silence. He listens hard to the world around him, and watches warily. He looks at his feet, ashamed. It's like there is a shared hatred, fear, and... mortification, of the Black. "The Black are... a... manifestation... of war," he stutters, seeming to have trouble even talking about it. "They... were invented to try to alleviate the pressures of war. To make war too damaging to both sides for it to continue," he gets out in a rush, before breathing deeply for a few moments, letting the cool forest air caress and soothe his lungs. "Centuries ago. Everyone shares the guilt for them. Everyone who has ever been involved in the war. They hunt by and feed on strong emotion, and there's a lot of emotion in war, so if you have ever fought, you have fed them. You can't hunt them, because they're better at hunting. You can't eradicate them, because they just seem to show up. There are no known nesting zones. They're faster than anyone can believe. None of the studies done on them can be replicated more than about two thirds of the time. We bred an ephemeral hate engine, basically, and the wars just continued, with higher casualty rates on both sides."

The news rolls over Damien in sickly waves. "So... who made them?"

Glen shakes his head. "Those records were destroyed. It's mostly accepted that it was an effort by peace groups from both sides - peace groups that have since been hunted down and disbanded because of the damage they did. The facts were undeniable, though. The Black seemed uninterested in large cities - we posit they don't understand unnatural environments, and stay out of them. But in warzones, where the rawest and most basic emotions are on display every single moment, they proliferate like rabbits. They die if you hurt them badly enough, but their bodies evaporate. We can't study them, and we can't stop them. Now... please. I don't want to talk about them anymore."

"Okay..." Damien whispers, staring at his elder. The man's pale face is drawn tight with the effort to suppress his disgust and his anguish. It is wax that has dried being pulled, and the boy does not want to stress it any further. "Sorry."

"It's natural to ask. Everyone learns some day. Usually there are people who are trained to talk about it."

"Oh." That explains why Siber avoided the subject. He isn't very good at talking about things. "One more question?"

Glen sighs out of his nose, but nods stiffly. He tries to loosen up and relax. Is he afraid? "Sure."

"If they're in the woods... why do people even go in the wilderness anymore?"

"Well, because they usually don't feed on individuals or small groups. There are some places that are forbidden grounds, now, because of particularly bloodthirsty Black, but for the most part, it takes a war party to attract their attention." He coughs, and attempts to smile. "I can personally assure you that even sex isn't enough to bring them out."

Damien at first just feels his eartips redden, before he realizes Glen is smiling. He stares back, remembering that upward curvature. He used to do that, five days ago. Maybe... he could try...

Glen's smile broadens when he sees a little ghost of one flicker across the boy's face. They continue on their way for several hours, then pause for lunch in a little glade, next to the brook. Damien realizes he is famished and scarfs down two whole sandwiches before considering that there might be a limited number. Glen just laughs while the boy blushes again and encourages him to eat more. "I think they wore off on you, the way you eat! And besides, I packed a ton, since you were asleep for so long. It can take a while for the body to recover from anything that knocks it out that long."

Now and then, Glen climbs a tree to make sure they're still walking the right direction. Nothing seems to impede them. It is as though the forest is opening for them, letting them through to this hideout of Siber's. Damien is eager to move as fast as he can, though with each passing hour, he is more and more uncertain that they're going the right way. Siber took him here so fast. How can they possibly be taking this long? He supposes flight seems to take a shorter time, because of how brilliant it is, and shrugs it off for later consideration.

The boy tries to find the Black, even though he knows that is foolish. The Black can't be hunted, even though Siber and Tatrix were tracking them. The Black can't be studied, but Glen knows where some of the more violent ones live. The Black are faster than anyone can believe, but Tetra killed one and from the way Glen holds his staff, Tatrix and Siber aren't the only ones who are used to killing them. It's not a staff, of course. It's a digging stick. Also magic exists... Damien begins to wonder how much all these people conjecture at, while still knowing more and not telling him everything. As long as they don't leave him, though... As long as he has someone he might be able to hold, he will trust them.

It is evening by the time they reach the mountains, and full night before they have climbed to the cave. Damien has had to lead them at that point, since he knows the way. A fire is dead inside the entrance. Its cold ashes make Damien shiver as he remembers the first time he came here. "This is the right one," he confirms when Glen queries, and continues staring at the black coals.

"They haven't been here in a while."

"I know."

"Looks like..." Glen pauses as he runs his fingers through the ashes. "Five days," he mutters, casting his gaze around the cave. The darkness does not give way, though, not even to a flashlight. It remains cold and silent, not offering the repast of familiarity while its regular occupants are away.

"How do you know? Aren't you a scientist?"

"Yep." He doesn't expound. "We'll camp here tonight, I guess, and hope they come back. I hate to say it, Damien, but..." He sighs almost longingly as he stands to look out at the chilly, star-speckled night. "The Black may have them. If Tetra is Tatrix's daughter, and she died... he would have attracted their attention. I'm amazed they didn't slaughter you, with that shout you gave."

"I didn't feel anything." His gaze is as motionless as the stone as he turns and contemplates the forest below them.

"...nothing?"

"NOTHING."

There is deathly quiet in the shade of night. "...oh."

The man and the boy stand at the mouth of the cave. Damien still has the rifle strapped to his back, and Glen holds his pole like a walking stick. The wind tries to tickle Damien's hair, but he's having none of it. Glen's black mane dances in it, though. He closes his eyes and breathes deep of the fresh air, almost seeming a part of the night. Damien, though, stands outside of it, a silver stamp on an otherwise unbroken landscape.

"You live in the world, Damien," Glen murmurs.

The boy shifts his feet and crosses his arms. "Siber said that to me. What does it mean?"

The question that answers him seems to freeze the world. "Can't you hear the mountain?"

His argent hair suddenly leaps in excitement at another gust of laughing wind. It howls gleefully through the granite slopes and ruffles that fuzz, loosening Damien's stance until he slips into the scenery. He looks up at Glen with a new light in his eyes. "What do you mean?" He knows. He's asking anyway.

"Be quiet, and listen."

Both of them go still. Their lungs move, but are silent. Their hearts beat, but the drums are muted and become distant. Damien casts his awareness into his feet. The granite shimmers with sound. It rumbles and growls with the movement of tectonic plates and the swirling of lava miles underneath him. It speaks in ponderous thoughts that have been eons in the making, and at the same time hears every last movement made on its surface.

"Yes," the boy finally whispers, at first feeling as though those words are the only thing in the world, when they invade his senses. "I hear it."

"Siber taught you well," Glen lilts, his lips curling gently and his eyes sparkling with the starlight. They almost seem to touch it as it touches them. "I can't listen as well as you can. I can dance, though, which from the way you move, they tried to teach you. I need to practice tonight, but I can teach you tomorrow."

With no more warning than that, he dances. He dances out of his shirt somehow without the pole seeming to leave the dance. He dances on the edge of the cliff that drops in a petrified howl down the mountain, without looking, or seeming to. Truth be told, his sparkling eyes seem to sweep the starscape, scanning deep into infinity and sounding the distance while he whips himself through spins with his staff, a night breeze caught in a body. Damien sits and watches, stunned and quiet. Glen dances on in strange, pseudo-tribal contortions. He weaves the moonlight with his pole and bare, ivory chest and gracile fingers. He stretches and balances like a sapling, or a grove of them, and finally bows to the universe. "Come on. Let's go to sleep. We'll find him tomorrow."

Curious, Damien stands and silently hugs his new mentor. With half-glazed eyes, Glen holds him with one arm. A thin sheen of sweat is a different welcome than an overheated pad of musky fur, but no less of one, for the boy. Without comment, they turn, unpack, and make camp in the welcoming hearth of a stony stronghold. After a healthy dinner by a blazing, cheerily content fire, they unfurl their sleeping bags and rest, lulled by the heartbeat of the world.