FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Thick tangled vines with pulsating orange veins, red serrated leaves that cut like paper, and barbed thorns blocked my way. Yellow, viscid sap squirted out of any vine I managed to slice, but it was less cutting and more beating them into submission. Zoe was lousy as a knife, but even worse as a machete. A pair of fleece winter gloves were getting ruined, but at least did a marginal job of protecting my hands. In addition to fighting the vines, I had to climb over or squeeze under large tree roots that writhed along the ground. I was dirty, bleeding, sticky, sore and desperately hoping I wasn't going in circles. No wonder Sei'la had no intention of going through this.

"Do you think this hurts them?" Zoe wondered.

"I'm trying not to care." The vines weren't screaming or writhing, so that was a good sign. "They're hurting me plenty."

I crawled on my belly through a gap I had managed to hack open. Behind me dragged my bag lashed to my ankle with a belt. It was bad enough that I was constantly getting poked in the back, but the darkened, inaccessible place was a home to many creepy-crawlies. I had no clue which ones were dangerous and which weren't. I had a close encounter with a creature as long as my leg; a feathered, orange tiger-striped millipede thing with scorpion claws. I poked at it with Zoe's tip to encourage it to move away.

"Ow!" the scorpipede chirruped as it released a foul stench that rivaled my own. "Bad thorn! No like!" It turned away and left me with burning eyes that subsided after a few agonizing minutes.

The brier-hedge was also home to numerous clans of cockroach people. Hidden trap-doors periodically popped up and a cluster of antennae would poke out as they wondered who was making a mess of their neighborhood. Furious at the intrusion, their "warriors" crawled on the vines around me, threatening with raspy clicks and tossing pebbles. Occasionally one would get brave enough to run up and poke my hand or leg with a tiny weapon. I was growing annoyed with their aggression, but I felt it would be wrong to try and smash them like a pest. At least they scattered every time I started chopping with Zoe.

I made it to a reasonably clear patch next to a tree, taking the opportunity to hang Zoe and take a break. My arm was killing me and my off hand wasn't any good at swinging. I was getting so damn thirsty and the other side of this obstacle wasn't getting any closer. I opened up my bag and found the bottle of fruit I had packed earlier. The berries had mostly survived intact, but a few had busted open and green worms wiggled in the juice on the bottom. Nope. I still wasn't that desperate.

Ignoring the grains of grit and insults raining down on me from minuscule pests, I pulled out my phone and turned the once sleek device in my hands. Well, if it hurts me, it hurts me. I pushed the button to activate the screen. None of the weird modifications sticking out did anything strange or dangerous. It just displayed a normal screen that still had 100% charge and zero bars of service. The time showed 01:38, almost twelve hours since I arrived on Xog. Just how long is a day here? The big planet hadn't moved at all and the black sun only moved a few degrees. Assuming the red sun corresponds with the black one, it should remain hidden behind the planet for quite a while.

My weather app had an icon indicating an update. I opened it to find the layout of the app had been completely changed. Everything was haphazard with unrecognizable lettering randomly scattered about; bizarre squiggly characters were sloppily mixed with Latin-script and numbers. However there was a line with "87°F" and an image representing partly cloudy skies. Below were icons that showed rainy and stormy skies. Hopefully it doesn't rain something awful like acid or space slugs... or acid spitting space slugs. My phone must have found a usable connection to something in this alien world. I scrolled down to discover the radar map was functioning.

There was a red dot in the center of the map. Along one side was an expanse of blue and on the other a ridge of mountains. Scattered along the ridge were green blotches that suggested gathering rain. There were lines indicating random divisions between sections of the map plus names at key points, all of them in alien writing. Out of curiosity I touched Zoe's hilt to the phone, but the words remained illegible. Her magic must only work with spoken language. I expanded the map and on the other side of the mountains was another body of water. Zoomed out more to find it was the same body of water and a long serpentine line of mountains was an island. Kept going out. More water and more islands. I extended the map to the entire planet to find no continents, only islands wherever the mountains were higher than the water. Some chains of islands stretched for thousands of miles, others just singular peaks or small clusters. I rotated the planet and the opposite side was completely different. The vast ocean ended and there was only a massive single continent.

"I think I figured something out," I said.

"You have, Master?"

"Xog is not a planet."

"Really? What is it?"

"It's a moon," I explained. "The gravity feels normal, so it must be about the same size as Earth. That big pink planet is probably a gas giant that it orbits, and those smaller planets are other moons. I think Xog is tidal locked the same as the moon on Earth, which draws all the water to one side."

Zoe vibrated lightly in thought. "You're a pretty smart guy, Master. I don't know how that stuff works, but I guess that makes sense."

"It's the only thing that does make sense around here." I had a sudden ill feeling. I had spent my entire time surviving and no time considering my situation. How the hell am I going to get back to Earth? Was it a mistake to leave the cave where I arrived? No, the cave was far too hostile and I'd probably be dead already if I stayed there, but what if that was the only way back?

A cry came from over me: "Ummarican, are you down there?"

I peered up through the vines. "Yes, I'm right here!"

Sei'la hopped onto a branch high above and spotted me. "You've only made it that far?"

"How close am I?" I asked.

"Not even halfway yet."

"Crap."

"It's much worse at the mountain side so it should get easier."

I ran fingers through my crusty, filthy hair in frustration. "Okay."

She had something hanging over her shoulder that she pulled off. "I wasn't expecting to go out on the mountain so I didn't bring this with me. I had to go home to get it, but I think I can lower it down to you." Sei'la dangled from her tail to feed an object tied to twine down through the layers. Charea coiled around the alien's midsection to hang on. I had to chop my way through a few vines, but managed to grab what she was sending down. It was a large, bulbous gourd, or something similar to one. It had colorful decorations painted on the surface and a homespun rope tied around it to make a shoulder strap. It was heavy and a liquid sloshed inside. I untied it and popped a stopper off the end. Clear, cool water spilled onto my hand.

"Thank you!" I called out. "You're a lifesaver."

"Don't lose it." She gathered the twine into a ball before climbing back on the branch and bounding away.

I sat down and dumped some on my face, wiping away the dried feces and sticky sap before taking a mouthful. I gargled it and spit out the gritty, disgusting taste in my mouth before taking a drink. Damn, it was good. I was too thirsty to worry about microbes. If Montezuma existed in this world I'd deal with him later.

"That was nice of her." Zoe said.

"Yeah, I needed this." I reclined on the ground to try and relax and recover, turning my attention back to the phone. I scrolled through the contact list. The weather app was working, right? I have to try at least once to be sure. I attempted to call my best friend Harry. "No connection". That was too much to hope for. I typed a text message to my mother explaining due to being whisked off by demons to an alien world a million light-years away, I wasn't going to make it home for Christmas. "Unable to deliver" popped up. Just as well. She'd probably blame me for ruining the holidays.

"Sei'la is kinda pretty, isn't she?" Zoe asked.

I scrolled through the various apps on my phone, looking for any others that might be working. "She's certainly colorful."

"Do you like her like you like me?"

A generic "match three" game declared it needed a connection. "Why? Are you getting jealous?"

Her blade glowed briefly. "What? Of course not! Me, jealous? I don't ever get jealous! I'm just... wondering if you were thinking you might like to... "light her", that's all."

This caught me off guard and I laughed. "No! Zoe, she's a frog! Where did you get that idea?"

She forced a tense laugh. "Ha, ha! I don't know. I was just... I don't know."

I chuckled and shook my head. I suppose I have to add "possessiveness" to her list of traits. "You're the only girl I'm ever going to light."

Zoe glowed again. "Thank you, Master!" she said with a giggle. "It's... um, kinda dark down here. What if we, you know, do it right n—"

"No."

"Okay."

With renewed vigor I continued hacking and worming through, pleased to find it was getting easier. The thick and gnarled vines were giving way to younger and thinner ones. This particular species of plant must only be able to live along the transition between the jungle and the mountain, slowly creeping in as the outermost trees fell. Having little to do other than exhaust myself, my mind started to consider the world around me. Discovering I was on a moon encouraged me to puzzle out more.

"Zoe, I've been wondering about something," I said.

"What is it, Master?"

'So you've been telling me everything is female, right?" I was going to assume she actually knew the difference and I waved her at a couple of angry roaches. "Like these annoying little guys, male or female?"

"Female, of course," Zoe confirmed. "They're all pregnant."

"Really?"

"Yeah, can't you see the eggs?"

I leaned in and focused on one of them. It was carrying a club the size of a matchstick and wearing a cape made from a blue leaf. I could see a pinpoint light blinking on the chest indicating the presence of a microscopic tag. Its antennae shot up in alarm when it realized it had my attention, turning to flee. Sure enough there were small pink bulbs attached to the underside of its abdomen.

"Have you seen any male creatures?" I asked.

"Sure," Zoe said.

"Oh? Which ones?"

"You."

I rolled my eyes. "I mean besides me, Zoe. Are any of the animals or monsters or whatever you've seen male?"

She considered for a moment. "I wasn't really thinking about it but I don't remember any. The floating glowie dust bugs don't seem to be either and the plants mostly look like both."

"The sky plankton might divide like bacteria or protozoa, and the plants can self-pollinate, but how does everything else do it? They wouldn't be female if they didn't need a male, right? So where are the males?"

"That's a good question."

I set Zoe down and massaged my overworked, numb hand. "Maybe life here is like ants or bees where almost all of them are females. These cockroaches might hide the males underground." That didn't seem right to me though. Most creatures I've seen appeared to be living independently and the roaches were functioning more like a tribe or village than a hive. Not to mention a hive would only have a single breeding queen. If they only had a few males those would be some busy bugs if all the females were pregnant simultaneously.

"Does it matter if you don't know?" Zoe asked.

I sighed. There was no reason it had to follow any logic I was aware of. "Not really. I'm just trying to figure this place out. You said you've been here before, right?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Is there anything you can tell me about this place? Anything at all you remember?"

"I'm not any good at remembering stuff, especially that long ago. It might not even be the same as it used to be, so maybe it wouldn't help anyway. Besides, I was so young I don't think I was even able to talk yet. Some of this feels familiar, but most of it is weird."

It struck me as odd that there was a time when she couldn't talk. Was she forged as she is or was she a baby sword at one time? "Just how old are you?" I asked. A rude thing to ask a woman, but she didn't scoff or bristle.

"Um... I donno, Master. Most of the time I'm in my scabbard so I don't know what's happening. All I know is that I'm very old. And, y'know, time isn't the same everywhere you go. Like, some places a year is the same as a day someplace else."

I suppose that must be true. Xog has two suns and their orbit in relation to each other would be massive. The "Goldilocks zone" for life in its solar system should be billions of miles further out than Earth is. It might take decades, or even centuries on Earth for one year to pass on Xog.

A touch of cool breeze managed to reach me, carrying the sweet aroma of decayed leaves. I lost my thought and listened for a moment.

"I can hear a waterfall."

"Oh, yeah! I can hear it too."

"I think we're almost there, Zoe."

I pressed forward and the vines continued to thin. I had to chop less and could crawl instead of slithering on my belly. The last thorny tendril snagged my shirt in one final attempt to injure me as I exited the brier hedge. Behind me rose a victorious thrill of clicks from the roach people, having managed to drive out the intruder.

"That probably would have been easier if I was sharpened."

With dismay I glanced back at the baggage tied to my ankle, recalling there was a sharpening stone in the bottom. "Aw, Zoe, why didn't you remi—" but the complaint died as I stood up. The jungle demanded my attention.

"Wow!" Zoe breathed.

Trees with the footprint of a warehouse stood all around. Their bark with deep fissures that a person could nestle comfortably between ridges. Orange-spotted mushrooms big enough to stand under grew in clumps at the base of the trees and gave way to wide fluted purple fungus growing on the trunks like awnings. The trees towered straight up a thousand feet before branching out near the top like pillars of a massive arched cathedral. Leaves large enough to cover swimming pools blocked most of the sunlight, aside the occasional beams where glowing sky plankton danced. Thousands of long, gossamer tendrils dangled from the canopy and swayed in the gentle breeze, each ending with a randomly colored light, resembling organic fiber-optic lines. Miles of vines as thick as my chest with dagger-length thorns twisted up the trees, reaching up for the sunlight above, some drooping down from the topmost branches in long, looping coils. Creatures of various sizes and colors flew and jumped among the branches, too high up to make out what they were. An animal started to scream, encouraging others to join in the chorus, building to a deafening crescendo before fading away.

A light cloud of mist covered the ground, swirling and flowing like it had a life of its own. Gangly pink palm tree creatures tottered over me. A different variety of skylicker that lacked a shell, not needing the support within the protection of the jungle. A dragonfly/lizard the size of a buzzard darted around the towering creatures, hunting for prey. Large, dead leaves near my feet rustled and a blue and white speckled worm ten feet long squirmed out from under. It nosed around blindly before finding another pile of leaves to crawl under. A crab with a body the size of a mastiff and carried by six long, spindly legs glided by like a gigantic daddy long legs. One of its feet brushed a naked skylicker, which reacted by swiftly collapsing and withdrawing itself under the ground. The crab carried on, climbing the trunk of a tree to begin eating one of the huge fungal awnings, using four small claws attached to its head.

"This place is pretty," Zoe said.

"Yeah. I don't see Sei'la anywhere, but the water sounds like it's that way." I said, pointing into the jungle. I slung the luggage on my back and started toward the sound. The ground was spongy with multicolored moss and broken up by massive, exposed roots that I had to scramble over or under. I disturbed small creatures wherever I walked. I caught glimpses of beetles with glass-clear carapaces, furless rodents with rocky skin, a slug that imitated a mushroom cap, and a two-legged reptile with bug eyes and a bright feather tail. I worked my way around a huge tree to discover the waterfall.

Except it wasn't a waterfall.

Water that was falling, but it wasn't coming from a stream or river. There was a great gnarled tree with pristine white bark and from the canopy water cascaded down, the leaves funneling it to fall in numerous spouts. This "fountain tree" created a different ecosystem around it. The constant deluge had washed away the soil down to stone and the tree was in the center of a reservoir. Around its trunk was a dense cluster of oysters the size of billiard tables. Their shells slightly open and a dancing mass of small, white-tipped tentacles poked through. Patches of long crimson reeds grew in clumps throughout the reservoir. Various colored and shaped porous structures encircled the reservoir, some a few feet tall and some towering. They appeared much like sea sponges.

The air was thick with a heavy haze of humidity, and the roar of the water called to me. A green six-legged deer with a rhinoceros horn protruding from its nose was drinking at the water's edge. It picked its head up with four cocked ears trained on me as I approached. It stomped a hoof before turning to flee. Small, near useless wings on its back assisted as it ran. I dropped my baggage and Sei'la's gourd at the shore before kicking off my loafers. Luminous squiggly fish-creatures darted away at my intrusion as I sloshed into the shallow water, clothes, Zoe and all. I stepped under one of the columns of water. It was colder than I had expected, but a pleasant shock after being hot and sweaty for so long. I stripped off my shirt and let the steady downpour pelt my sore and weary body. A misty swirl of green darkened the reservoir around my legs and drifted away in streaks.

"Soooo nice!" Zoe cooed.

"It's about time we got a break." I ran my fingers over my scalp and slime oozed down my face. As the filth ran off my skin I could see how red my arms had become and the crisscrossed cuts I received from the brier patch. I was going to be feeling that later. Water alone wasn't going to get us clean enough. After a thorough rise I returned to my baggage, finding a bar of soap in my toiletries pouch. I cleaned Zoe first and set her to dry on a pile of stones that stood beside a tall pulsating sponge creature.

"Thank you, Master!"

"No problem," I said as I started on her sheath, scrubbing it with soap and sloshing it in the water. It gave me a moment to examine it better. The tracking arrow on it was a curiosity. It didn't turn in place like a mechanical dial, but appeared to reform itself to indicate in which direction she was. There were some flakes on the scabbard that suggested at one time it had been elaborately painted, but that had long since worn off, leaving rough, raw wood. At the bottom end of it was a brass cap that rattled loosely, but didn't appear to be in danger of coming apart. Shaking her scabbard off, I set it next to Zoe to dry on the stones. The uniformity of the stones caught my attention as being off. They weren't a random pile of rocks, they were deliberately shaped and stacked like bricks.

"Check this out," I said as I ran my hand over the purple algae-stained stones. "This looks like part of a retaining wall or something." It was heavily worn and crumbling, many of the stones out of place and had fallen into the shallow water, but it definitely wasn't naturally occurring. There were more sections of wall all around the reservoir, overtaken by sponges and foliage. Much of it collapsed completely and allowed the water outside of the boundaries. I pushed some tall, reddish reeds aside to get a better look and was startled to find a large, severed head.

"Oh, shit!" I recoiled.

"What's wrong?"

I used Zoe to nudge the reeds aside again. Half-submerged in the water was a head made of stone with a mosaic of green tiles affixed to the face like snake skin. The face was terribly weathered with age, but still recognizable as a grotesque reptilian with four angry eyes. One of the eyes had a red jewel sparkling in the socket.

"It's part of a sculpture," I realized. The rest of the figure was still standing, but so enveloped by sponges that I didn't notice it was a statue. There was one arm protruding from the plush coating, the hand had been broken off. Encircling the reservoir were seven more suspiciously body-shaped sponge creatures evenly spaced out, but the one standing over me appeared to be the largest.

"Whoa!" Zoe said. "He must have been a really important guy."

"That's a man?"

"Yeah. Well, male at least."

I took in my surroundings anew, picking out more unusual formations. Bits of crumbling wall jutting between trees. Large heaps of loam that was atypical for a jungle floor, suggesting where buildings once stood before collapsing and being overtaken by vegetation. Unnaturally smooth, straight patches between mounds may have been roads a millennia ago.

"We're in the middle of an ancient ruin," I realized.

The tree might have been the centerpiece of a fountain in a town square, or possibly just grew up in the middle, tapping into the underground spring that previously sustained the village. There was something unsettling about being in the remnants of a place that had once thrived, but had fallen and become forgotten.

"I wonder where everyone went?" Zoe said.

"I don't know."

The sponge covered statues reminded me of the frozen bodies of ancient Pompeii. Had an equal catastrophe happened here and buried this civilization? Was this fountain once a religious site? Am I disrespecting a lost people by bathing here? Not that I believed in ghosts or curses, but not so long ago I didn't believe in aliens, monsters, magic, or demons so my concept of what could be real was expanding exponentially.

I expect Sei'la wouldn't have led me there if it was dangerous. At least I hoped she wouldn't. Which made me wonder where she had gotten to. Perhaps she was allowing me some time for privacy. Before something else crazy happens I should probably use the time wisely. I put Zoe back on the wall and arranged my toiletries. No more delays. Time to get clean. I began to strip the rest of my clothes off and the sword snickered when I started to lower my underwear.

"What? You've already seen me naked."

"Yeah, but... I didn't get a chance to enjoy it before."

I sighed and pulled my shorts up. "Okay. It's bedtime for you."

"Aw..." Zoe moaned in disappointment as I slid her into the scabbard.