FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

_ _

"People underestimate the stars and the connectedness they bring between spirit and matter. More often than not, when lost, we seek solitude in staring into the darkness hoping something speaks back to us, usually through a feeling, a thought or a rare occurrence of a shooting star." Nikki Rowe

My mother used to tell me that she could see a whole universe in my eyes when I was a baby. That she would hold me on her lap when I was a child and tell me stories about the stars, about the planets, about the world beyond ours, and then my face would light up under the vigilant moonlight. She believed that one day I would leave home and go find and name each light that shone in the sky.

She was doubly wrong. It was the universe who came to me, and it was not in my eyes, but his.

* * * * *

My name is Christopher, but my friends call me Chris. Thus, everyone calls me Christopher.

It's not as if people didn't like me. They tried. Some of them were popular at Coalfell's High. They tried to befriend me, asked me to seat with them in the cafeteria, invited me to some of the "parties", if you consider that there can be such a thing in our small town. They honestly cared about me for a while, I'm sure; but after a few months of silent nods and an empty gaze of absentness, I would have gotten pretty tired of myself, too. Eventually, they stopped trying. I'd like to think they forgot me shortly after that.

Unavoidably, my parting from the most popular group grabbed the attention of those that hadn't been as lucky as me. I didn't look for it either, but it just came to me in the form of a raccoon dressed in goth clothes and an indiscreet vixen with one of those ridiculously loud voices. She was called Laura, and he was called Robin. She spent her nights watching terrible anime that made her cry and he cried him to sleep listening to his music. She liked the fact that I looked like a "perfect_uke_", and he loved how I kissed him back on Halloween after my sixteenth birthday. For me it was like kissing a frog and watching it jump away. However, it seems that the situation got pretty tense between Laura and Robin for some reason and they decided to forget me too. I didn't even notice until I realized I hadn't seen them for half a year.

My mother got another thing wrong. She believed I would leave, but she did first. I was so young then that I can vaguely remember it: more like another person's story, like the memory of a memory. My aunt was the one that had it worse, since both had been raised and spent most of their lives together. I remember hugging her as she cried, and she kept repeating that everything was going to be alright. Never quite knew if she was talking to me or to herself.

After my mother's death, things changed in some aspects. I officially started living in my aunt's house, which was actually right next to my mother's, so it wasn't much of a deal. The house where I had lived until then was rented to the few tourists that would visit Coalfell and it kind of started competing with the town's rural house. I would still sleep there whenever the house was empty, and it became my second favorite hideout. The silence of the white walls, now bare and unfamiliar, and the echo of memories too early to remember were comforting and seemed to create a protective field around me that separated me further from the rest of the world.

I still don't really understand why I was like that. My aunt would say that I seemed to live in a different world. I was supposed to be there: my body was there, at least, and I looked certainly quite alive, but my mind seemed to be far away, as if I were absent from daily life. I'd listen to that with a gentle smile and nod silently, which would drive my aunt crazier still. But I knew she was totally right: it seemed as if there was nothing in Coalfell, or in the whole world, that could grab my attention or raise my interest.

Except the stars.

Each night I'd go to Miss Torrine's library and climb the stairs to the second floor under the vigilant, always grumpy glare of the old weasel. It wasn't as if she could complain; opening a library in a town as small as Coalfell had not been one of her cleverest ideas, and in my opinion she ought to thank me for visiting so regularly. I'd usually ignore the large shelves full of books (they were interesting, but I had probably read most of them by then) and head straight to the observatory. I called it like that in my mind, even though technically it was just a small balcony with just enough space for a hammock and a telescope.

No one but me went to that place, so it had obviously become my favorite hideout. I'd take a blanket and some food and then spent the whole evening gazing at the stars through the old telescope. Coalfell's natural cold and the silence of the starry night would transport me further, to a different state of mind in which I was suddenly part of something, something that somehow made perfect sense. I could spend hours looking at the stars, without getting bored. I read the names of most of them, I learned about their ages and their stories. My aunt would say I was too obsessed with the things that were in the skies to pay attention to what happened on the ground, and I'd simply shrug, as usual.

My perfect routine went like this: wake up, go to school, home for lunch, to school again and then to the library and to the stars. The weekends were harder, because I wouldn't have anything to do until the sky turned black, and even having classes to distract me seemed like a good alternative. But in the end, I was happy with my calm, absent-minded everyday habits, and no one could have got me out of my cycle, no matter what they told me.

And that was when he came.

* * * * *

It happened in a night that was so much like any other that it seems ridiculous in retrospective. The air was cold and crisp, the trademark of the summer nights in Coalfell. I was alone in the observatory, as usual, but I wasn't using the telescope anymore. After having been trying to find the same star for at least forty-five minutes, I had gotten so frustrated that I had simply decided to spend the rest of the night gazing at the stars. Not lenses of any type: just them, my eyes and the quietness of the night.

It was still ten o'clock, so I had at least another two hours before old Miss Torrine came yelling at me and saying that the place was no guest house, so I'd better move my ass out of the building. The cranky woman... I always wondered why she'd always be mad at everyone, even the only one that visited her library out of pleasure. No wonder she was so lonely. I took some chocolate popcorn out of the bag I was holding and put them in my mouth. Some crumbs fell into the blanket, but I didn't mind and just kept looking at the stars. The sky was extremely clear that night, as if the calm wind had wiped all the clouds that usually covered our town. A rarity.

At first I thought it was a squirrel. The library was close to the forests that surrounded the upper part of Coalfell, so it wasn't unusual to hear animals from time to time. I had gotten used to them after a few nights and I tended to ignore them, just as I ignored then the strange noise that came from below the balcony. However, after a few seconds listening to the dragging and pulling sound, I concluded that if it was a squirrel, it had to be the biggest squirrel I had ever seen by a long shot. I stood up, curious, and looked down from the balcony, squinting in order to see through the dark.

I was so surprised that I almost screamed. If I weren't being totally honest, I'd say I stepped back, shook my head and looked again to find out what I'd seen had just been my imagination running wild; that's definitely what I wanted then. However, I just kept staring at the moving form that was climbing the wall, which belonged to something clearly bigger than a squirrel; maybe even bigger than me. I gasped, and it heard me; when it turned its head to look at me the light reflected on its eyes it looked...

...it looked intelligent.

"What are you doing?" I asked, in an attempt to regain my lost dignity, or convince myself that I wasn't having an hallucination. "That's dangerous! You might fall!"

It was certainly a dangerous fall, but not something that worrying; I was far more worried about the whatever-it-was getting closer to me. In any case, it didn't seem as if it had noticed my words. The weird being climbing the wall just shook its head, looked back to the wall and kept ascending. I couldn't make out what it was in the dark, but it had shown no signs of understanding me.

For a few seconds, I asked myself what exactly I was supposed to do in that situation. I could always tell Miss Torrine that there was something climbing the wall of her library; she would very likely grab a broom and hit the strange creature until it fell to the floor, unconscious. However, that might have been too much for the creature -and for me- and, more importantly, I had seen something rational in those eyes. Or had I? It was difficult to tell at that moment, and I was already starting to think I had imagined it.

The creature was faster than I thought at climbing. In the time it took me to take a decision, it had already closed the distance between us, and I could see its... paws? hanging onto the edge of the balcony. I had moved backwards until my back was touching the door to the library, and I was seriously considering calling Miss Torrine, when the creature jumped to the balcony with one last impulse. Then, it sat there, on the edge, gasping and trying to regain its breath, as if the effort had been too much for it. This allowed me to take a closer look.

The darkness had played with my eyes, and as I could see now, the creature in front of me was not too different from me. It wasn't a cat as me, obviously, but its features looked kind of similar, even though I thought I didn't know any species that resembled what it looked like. It had a long tail, longer than mine and seemingly more powerful, and it was also a bit taller and thinner. Its fur was jet black, as mine, but had many white spots here and there... although it would have been more accurate to describe them as dots, since they were so small.

Also, he was naked. Completely naked. From head to toe, there was not a single piece of clothing covering his body. That, at least, could solve the question of the gender.

"What the..." I started, feeling too shocked to even think of embarrassment or any social convention.

The words made the strange creature raise his head and look towards me. He had eyes so black that they seemed to pierce right through me. He got down from the edge of the balcony and walked towards me, slowly. Those dark eyes sparkled with curiosity, as he got closer. I would have liked to run away, but my back was already pressing firmly against the door, and my brain had forgotten what doors were or how they worked anyway. He got so close to me that I could even hear his breathing, getting more and more excited the closer it got.

It was then when I noticed that he was actually sniffling, and his eyes were fixed on the bag of chocolate popcorn I held in my paw. I had clenched my fist so hard that probably I had smashed all the popcorn, but the creature was looking at the bag as if it contained the most delicious treat in the world.

"H-hey..." I managed to say, but right before I finished, the weird creature grabbed the bag with his paws and sank its muzzle in it. He let out some moans of pleasure as he ate the chocolate popcorn without using his paws, and I watched, astonished, as the snack I had brought for that night quickly disappeared.

When he finished eating the popcorn, he looked up and looked at me... smiling. It was not the usual smile. His lips were not curving and his muzzle remained closed, but I could see the happiness in his eyes.

That... was already too strange.

"O...kay..." I said, carefully. The creature didn't look too dangerous; and even if it was, his diet didn't seem to consist of cats like me but chocolate popcorn, so at least that was one less thing to worry about. "This is... weird," I concluded after a few seconds. "And I guess you can't understand me. Can you?" I asked, feeling increasingly curious about the strange visitor.

He tilted his head, looking at me; the delighted sparkle in his eyes was still there. Then he opened his mouth... and let out a noise. I can't describe it much better than that, it was just a childish noise, as a kid trying to learn how to speak properly. Putting it into words isn't really helpful, but I guess it was something like a "ngaaaah" or a "uuuhh" or something in between. Not helpful, as I said.

Now that the initial shock had disappeared, and that I wasn't feeling afraid anymore, it all looked like some kind of joke. I ignored the creature for a few seconds and looked down from the balcony again, hoping to find the friends of the visitor, who probably had pushed him to do that as some kind of trial. However, I couldn't see anyone near the library. I turned to look at the naked creature, who was still looking at me, with a funny expression. He still had some chocolate on his muzzle and nose, and a curious look in his eyes.

"Who are you?" I asked, feeling a bit angry at that moment. "Where are your clothes?"

But again, the visitor just stared at me, clueless, as if all the words I was saying made no sense to him. This time, he tried making a new noise: "kah", or at least that's what it sounded like to me. He seemed to find it pretty funny, but I was getting increasingly annoyed.

I placed myself in front of him and even though he was taller than me, I glared at him furiously.

"Okay, look. I don't know who you are. I don't know what kind of joke you think this is. But it. Isn't. Funny," I said, with a serious tone. "And I've had enough of this. Take your clothes, put them on, and just get out of here."

Again, the creature just kept looking at me, with an innocent joy shining deep into his back eyes. It didn't matter what I said; that guy wouldn't understand me.

"Alright," I said, with an exasperated sigh. "This is it. If you're not leaving, then I'm not going to stay here watching you fool around."

I took the blanket from the hammock and opened the door, closing it behind me and leaving the mysterious visitor in the balcony. I went quickly through the shelves full of books and walked down the staircase that led to the lower floor, trying not to think of the creature that probably still stood in the observatory, with that weird expression of happiness in his face.

It's funny; whenever I read stories, I would always think that a character believing what they just saw was a hallucination or a dream was silly. The difference between what you see and what you dream is pretty clear, I'd always say to myself. However, at that point, there was nothing I wished more than believing all that had happened in the balcony wasn't real.

"Leaving so soon?" Miss Torrine said when I walked through the room, passing in front of the counter where she always spent the whole day. Damn, that woman was never happy. She would have also complained if I were to leave too late.

"Yeah," I answered, trying my best to be polite. I shouldn't think of the creature in the observatory. "I'm feeling tired today. See you tomorrow, Miss Torrine."

"Goodbye, weird kid."

I contained a sigh. Everything was normal. Miss Torrine was as grumpy as usual, the library was just as empty. Just me and the old woman. There was nothing to worry about.

I walked towards the door, feeling a bit relieved and thinking of how well I was going to sleep that night, after I had a big mug of hot chocolate.

"What in the blazes of the goddamn hell," I heard Miss Torrine say behind me. "Why is that fellow naked as the day he was born?"

I turned slowly.

The strange visitor was there, at the bottom of the stairs, looking at me with what I thought was a sparkle of pride in his eyes. His jet black fur seemed even shinier in the lights of the room, and the white dots even more noticeable. His tail moved back and forth calmly, as if the fact that he was naked didn't matter to him at all.

Miss Torrine was practically glaring at him, eyes wide open and an expression that ranged from surprise to amusement.

"Uh," was all I managed to say. What was I supposed to do? It was not my fault that the naked guy had followed me until there... right?

"You know, this is no brothel. If you're dating this boy, you could just have used your mother's house," complained Miss Torrine. Somehow, she didn't sound too angry, which was unusual for her; her tone was rather amused instead, as if she was watching something immensely funny.

"I'm not dating him!" I replied, however. "He just appeared out of nowhere when I was up there, with no clothes... I think some of the guys from the high school might be involved in this."

The creature let out something that sounded like laughter. A weird, childish laughter. Miss Torrine and I turned to look at him, then looked at each other again.

"Sure, that must be it," the woman said, smiling. "Look, if you take him out of the building right now, put some clothes on him and promise me to be more careful from now on, I won't tell anyone."

"Tell anyone what?" I asked, without understanding. Then, the answer came to my mind: of course, she didn't believe me.

"Don't make me ask twice, kid, I think I'm being far too generous," the old weasel said, her smile fading a bit on her face. Patience was not Miss Torrine's greatest virtue, and I could see how quickly she was running out of it. I wouldn't like to be there when it had fully disappeared. "Now take your friend and leave."

I let out a long sigh to express my discontent, the only freedom of expression that I could allow myself at the moment, and turned back to the door, walking towards the exit. If the creature followed me, as it had done so far, then I wouldn't have to worry about 'taking him' out with me. And if he didn't, then he would be Miss Torrine's problem. To be honest, I had enough of the naked creature by then and just wanted to get rid of it. If my aunt saw me with that weird thing...

...well, maybe she might have thought I finally had a reason for being so absent.

I chuckled to myself as I left the library, without looking back. At least, I wasn't taking it too dramatically. Instead, I decided to walk slow and calmly. In many other stories, the main character would have started running by then, quickly followed by their persecutor in a useless, pointless chase. My dignity prevented me from doing that. After all, I had already fallen into the stereotype of doubting the reality of what I had seen. Things would get too predictable if I made another mistake.

The creature was following me. I could hear his footsteps in the gravel road. I wondered if his foot paws didn't hurt when he stepped on the ground full of pebbles. He didn't seem to notice, however.

I tried to analyze my situation. I wondered if I had been mistaken about the naked creature from the beginning. Obviously, he didn't understand my language (and I was seriously starting to doubt he had the ability to speak at all) and he didn't seem to be fully aware of what he was doing. Of course, it could still be a joke and the creature could be pretending, but he had to be a great actor if he was playing it so cool after all that had happened. His smile hadn't got any wider when Miss Torrine had mentioned we could be boyfriends. And he was still completely naked out in the cold of the night, walking barefoot on the gravel. Besides, my reaction hadn't been too... funny for anyone to keep fooling around. If it was a joke, he would have given up by now.

But he hadn't. He was still walking behind me, without speaking, naked as the day he was born.

There was still something that bugged me. Miss Torrine had not freaked out as much as I thought she would when he had appeared. That meant... maybe she was behind the appearance of the strange guy. However, as much as I would have liked to solve the question so easily, I had to shake my head and discard that possibility. Miss Torrine would have never played a trick. I even doubted she had a sense of humor anymore.

Then what? What could explain the appearance of that strange guy (whose species I still couldn't quite recognize) in the library?

There were stories, of course. Stories about the people that got lost in the woods, about those who were born in the forest and never made it into society. But those had always been old wives' tales, things that would only be said with a tone of mockery and superiority when you were talking to newcomers in the town. If someone had got lost in the large forests that surrounded Coalfell (which was quite unlikely) and they had never found his way back, it just meant they were kind of clumsy, for it was easy to go down to the main road, just following the mountain slope. And even if that had happened, how could someone had been born from lost travelers in the forest? The stories were too morbid to be believed.

One thing was for sure: I couldn't just walk into the main street followed by a naked person. It would have raised too many questions and brought too many curious people close (and I highly preferred to be as unnoticed as I could) so, instead of taking the regular path that would have gone across the main street of the town, I chose to go back home following the less busy path, that went around the town to my house at the other side.

I stopped and glanced behind thoughtfully. The creature looked back at me, as elated as he had been when he had eaten my chocolate popcorn. Maybe I shouldn't have fed him.

"You're going to follow me home, right?" I asked, already expecting the silent stare, the non-existent answer. "Oh, alright. I guess I'll do what she said and put some clothes on you. But after that, you're not my problem."

The weird creature just stared at me with those big, happy eyes. I let out a sigh and kept walking.

* * * * *

He followed me home indeed.

Fortunately, I had already foreseen it and instead of taking him to my aunt's house, I walked until we reached the empty, cold house in which I lived with my mother before. It was still not the best of options, for I knew my aunt could glance through the window at any moment and see me standing in the street with a naked unknown creature. I guessed she would be cooking dinner at that time, but just to be sure, I decided not to spend more time than necessary at sight.

"Look," I told the weird boy. "I'm going in and bringing some clothes. You stay here. Heeeeere," I added slowly, drawing an imaginary circle around him with one of my feet and then pointing to the ground, trying to reinforce my words.

Surprisingly, it worked. He stared at his feet and then at the invisible line I had drawn, as if it was there indeed. I smiled, feeling a bit relieved, and went into my mother's house.

It didn't take me much to come out again, carrying some of my old clothes. I wasn't sure if they would fit the strange boy well; after all, he was a bit taller than me, and also thinner. I had chosen a thermic t-shirt, a purple hoody and some jeans that I had stopped wearing some time ago. It wasn't much, but it was the only thing that I had that I could give to him without raising my aunt's suspicion.

I left them in the ground and then waited, patiently. The creature kept staring at me, as usual. It was then when I realize that, obviously, he didn't know how to put those clothes on. I let out an exasperated sigh.

"You're like a starry Mowgli, you know that?"

I wondered exactly where that guy had come from, and how exactly he had managed to stay alive until then, without being spotted. The nights were too cold from time to time and I had heard the stories of those who had frozen to death when sleeping carelessly in the woods.

But this boy... he didn't even know how to speak. To tell the truth, I wasn't even sure that he belonged to any real species; I preferred to think I would have known if that was the case. The only thing I knew was that I couldn't let him naked like that.

As I helped him to put the clothes on, I realized with a bit of alarm that I was starting to worry, to wonder, to think about him and his origins. I wasn't sure if what frightened me was the prospect of caring about anything after having been so much time without caring, or the fact that the something_was in fact a _someone. I stopped for a few seconds, my paws still keeping hold of the hoody, as I thought about this.

Surprisingly, the creature took the hoody from my hands and put it on, over the t-shirt that he was already wearing. The soft movement took me out of my thoughts, and I wondered if he had learned how the process was by watching me. Maybe he wasn't such a useless boy after all.

"Alright," I mentioned after I had helped him put the trousers on, which wasn't as embarrassing as I thought it would. "That's all I can do for you. Now please... leave."

The creature stared at me with those big, black eyes. They were deep as the endless sky, and wise as the oldest tale. But there was no understanding in there.

And he had chocolate on his muzzle.

"Wait." I caressed his muzzle softly, removing the chocolate with a finger and cleaning my paw in my coat afterwards. I had been afraid that touching him might make him disappear, proving a dream, an illusion; but he remained there, slightly warm and definitely solid. "Okay, now leave. Leeeeeeeave," I repeated slowly, pointing around us.

He seemed to understand, for a second, but he didn't turn back or walk away. I waited, patiently, until I couldn't help but let out another exasperated sigh. It was like speaking with a wall, but the wall was definitely more likely to answer me.

I couldn't wait anymore. I turned my back to him and walked to the door of my aunt's house forcing myself not to look back. Maybe that way he'd understand. I took the keys out of my pocket, opened the door and closed it behind me. Then, I climbed the stairs to the second floor, and said hi to my aunt as dispassionately as always (so she wouldn't think anything strange had happened that day).

When I looked through the window, looking for the weird boy whose species I couldn't recognize, he had already disappeared.

* * * * *

I didn't tell my aunt about him, or anyone. I could have. But for some reason, I just felt I wanted to forget about him and keep with my day-to-day routine. Nowadays, when I look back in time, I sometimes think if what really kept me from telling my aunt was the fear of him vanishing, fading away, once I had made him public. He was my secret, and for some reason, I might have thought that revealing him might have erased him. Then, when these thoughts come to my mind and flutter for a while, I stop and contain a bitter smile.

Of course I didn't want to keep him there. I had only known him for a few hours, and he had already proven to be a real nuisance. Why would I ever want him to stay? Then, I just wanted to never see him again; my stars and lonely habits were enough to keep me alive for the moment, thanks.

But things changed. And even though the first appearance of the weird boy had been quite spectacular, the funny thing is I never saw it coming.