Chasing Cryptids
Hey all -- this is my first furry work. I'm very new to the fandom, and I'm not sure if I'll stick with it, but... despite that, writing this piece -- even though it's short and simple -- was very cathartic, and I enjoyed it a lot. I hope that some of you have as simple a palate as I do!
"It's cold, Cat."
It wasn't, really. The southwest desert--having escaped the unforgiving gaze of the sun for the night--had cooled, yes, but it wasn't cold. Cold was reserved for snowy slopes, for deep forests, for mountain ranges with peaks snarled and stretching towards the sky.
"Yeah, right. Make as many excuses as ya want: I can see you shakin'."
Catalina snorted, not so much in humor as it was in exhaustion. Sonora was, unfortunately, an astute rabbit--which often winded up being a major pain in Catalina's behind.
"Jackalope."
Catalina's fur bristled. So soon? They had just arrived.
"You see one?" she asked, her voice a low, gravelly growl.
"What? No, don't be stupid." Sonora chuckled into her paw--a paw too fluffed, too elusive of those razor-sharp nails Catalina knew all too well. "Jacks don't show up for just anyone, y'know! Gotta wait 'em out for a little bit first. Gotta show 'em that'cha mean business."
Catalina stared at her.
"I mean, uh." Sonora moved that same paw to the back of her head, and her raucous laughter softened into awkward giggles. "I said it 'cuz you were callin' me a rabbit again."
"I didn't say any such thing," said Catalina.
"You were thinkin' it, though!"
She thought about deflecting her claim, but she knew it to be futile: Sonora was eerily skilled at picking up on wandering thoughts. Catalina often wondered if those long, green antlers of hers were honed onto some sort of mind-reading frequency.
Sonora rolled her eyes. "Calm down, buddy. It ain't like I can sense your brainwaves or whatever--I ain't, like, an alien."
Catalina huffed. "You sure?"
Sonora paused for a second, mulling it over longer than Catalina had expected. "Well, I mean, I guess it's possible. It ain't like I remember bein' born." She hummed. "You know, I've read reports about alien abductions, and a lot of them mention that aliens question desert folk about the jackalope fairly frequently."
If an alien ever were to abduct Catalina and question her about the jackalope, she'd have a novel's worth of information to share. She'd tell them that they were loud, crude, and a bit mean. She'd tell them that their diet consisted solely of burgers and burritos. She would probably beg them to abduct one of them instead of a stray coyote, because--god--that would be all the jackalope would talk about for weeks.
Sonora's eyes--the same soft, sage green of her antlers, hooves, and claws--flitted back to meet Catalina's.
"You wouldn't miss me?" she asked.
Catalina hummed.
"What the heck!" Sonora's lips curled back, revealing the wicked canines that rivaled Catalina's own. "If you're gonna be a jerk, you can head home! I can hunt by myself, thanks."
"I have all the stuff," Catalina said, gesturing to the backpack thrown over her shoulder. "Binoculars, cameras, knives. Beer."
Sonora's nose wrinkled. "It's five A.M., Cat."
"I figured we could drink it later."
"After the sun comes up and it starts boilin'?"
Catalina shrugged. "I don't know. Later."
Sonora maintained eye contact for a handful of seconds, before she snorted and turned away. Her fluffy tail twitched, involuntarily.
"We've got cryptids to catch," she said, and took off into the barely-sunlit horizon. Catalina followed, her tail wagging against the desert wind.
As soon as the sun mustered the courage to show its face, the air began sweltering with terrible, terrible heat. Catalina was used to it, as a native desert coyote: her paws were tough enough to withstand the blazing sand, and her light pelt helped her stay cool.
On the other hand, Sonora--though shorter than Catalina--was two times heavier than her, both in terms of weight and fur. Her brown coat was the only part of her that looked like it belonged at home in the desert.
"I'm fine," Sonora wheezed. She didn't sound fine. "It's not the heat, it's just... all this walking."
"We can go back to the car if you want a break," Catalina suggested.
Sonora waved a paw in front of her face. "Nah, nah! I'm good! Besides, we're almost to the top. Don't wanna give up halfway through--that would be lame."
Catalina licked her lips, but didn't pry.
The lonely mountain they had decided to scale was a good look-out post, Sonora had claimed at the start of their trek. Jackalopes were shy creatures and wouldn't show themselves to strangers--especially when one of those strangers was a coyote.
"They won't show themselves to their own kind?" Catalina asked.
"Wh--huh?"
"Jackalopes. You're a jackalope. Why wouldn't they recognize that and show up?"
"Oh, uh." Sonora wiped a stripe of dust off of her fur. "I dunno. I don't exactly look like your traditional jackalope, ya feel me?"
"A lopalope," Catalina suggested with a nod at Sonora's long, fluffy ears.
"Yeah, there's that. And there's my green antlers and hooves and stuff." She stamped her feet in rhythm to her words. "One incarnation of the jackalope is said to have the hooves of an antelope and the tail of a quail, but I haven't read accounts of one with just antlers and hooves."
"You know there's at least one," said Catalina. "Those other jackalopes sound too gaudy, anyway. Not your type."
Sonora raised a brow. "Oh? And what would my 'type' be, huh?"
"I don't know." Catalina felt her tail start to waggle, softly. "Not gaudy."
Sonora blew a terse stream of air from between her teeth and sped up to pass Catalina, moving with more vigor than Catalina had seen since they began the ascent.
Eventually, the two reached the end of the hiking trail. The mountain wasn't so much a "mountain" as it was a "hill," Catalina realized: it was a lot more intimidating from the base than it was impressive from the top.
Before Catalina could set the backpack down, Sonora was already rifling through the pockets.
"Catch," she said, tossing a pair of binoculars into Catalina's paws. "Oh, nice! Guess you can thank your cat-like reflexes for that, eh?"
"If you get upset being called a rabbit, imagine how I feel about being called a cat."
"Yeah, I'm sure it tears you up." Sonora managed to find a pair of her own, then zipped up the pack and turned to face the cliff-side. "All righty: let's set up shop here. I'm sure one'll show its face eventually, right?"
Catalina hoped, for Sonora's sake, that one did.
As they settled onto the dusty ground, Sonora whipped her binoculars up to her eyes. She went absolutely silent--a rarity for her. Catalina didn't know if she appreciated or resented the opportunity to witness it.
Catalina tried to peer out of her binoculars as well--but the blooms of sunshine along the sand were too bright to look directly at. So, instead of searching for new cryptids, she let her gaze settle on the one she had already been lucky enough to find.
Once the western-drawn sun smattered the sky with scarlet and cinnabar, Sonora rose to her hooves and broke the silence.
"I'm done."
Twelve hours of hunting--nothing. No wampuses, no thunderbirds, and only one jackalope.
Catalina stretched her arms and released a long, whining yawn. "Ah. Finally."
Sonora frowned. "If this is boring to you, you could've left at any time."
"You drove us here," Catalina said.
"The point still stands."
"I didn't say it was boring. Nor did I think it." She scratched lazily behind her ear. "You know I'm telling the truth."
Sonora scowled, but didn't say anything further. Neither did Catalina--not for a while.
"You don't have to keep looking for them, you know."
"Huh?"
"They might not be out here," Catalina continued. "You can spend as many weekends out here as you want--you could camp out here. You could live out here. But there's a possibility that you'll never find them."
"They're out here. Don't be ridiculous," Sonora said.
"You shouldn't spend your time trying to prove yourself to those who will never appreciate it. You deserve more out of life than that. You deserve people who love you."
Sonora was quiet. Catalina could hear the wind whistling through the arms of the saguaro.
"...Like I do," said Catalina.
A few moments passed. Catalina couldn't read the expression on Sonora's face--she didn't share Sonora's gift of perception. She so often wished she did.
Eventually, though, Sonora settled back into her spot next to Catalina. She was closer than she was before--her whiskers tickled Catalina's own.
"I love you, too," Sonora whispered.
Catalina's heart swelled.
After beers were broken into and sunset turned to nightfall--long after Sonora decided to fall asleep and Catalina decided to give her a piggy-back ride to the car--Catalina swore she saw something.
Among the vast canvas of swirling stars, something stuck out as odd: a strange, V-shaped cluster of lights. Not just lights, but a form--a craft--one that blocked out the moonbeams and plunged the desert into darkness.
But the object moved quickly across the sky, and before Catalina could figure out if she wanted to wake up Sonora, it was gone--lights extinguished.
In retrospect, it was probably good she wasn't awake. Military flares and taxidermy tricks aren't impressive to those who already know their secrets.