FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Faith woke in her room, kicked back the sheets, and rolled out of bed. She stumbled her way over to her computer and wiggled the mouse. The monitor clicked to life, static crackling on the front glass. The picture slowly became visible and she plonked herself down in her chair, rubbing at the corners of her eyes. The thread she had open from last night was still there, and she refreshed the page. A handful of posts were added and she scrolled through them, though they were nothing but meaningless banter.

She scrolled back up through the thread but there was nothing interesting the same as when she had checked it before going to bed. She tabbed over to check if any of the stories she was following had updated in the time that she had been asleep. None of them had, which wasn't a surprise but was still grossly disappointing. Leaning back in her chair, she stared up at the ceiling.

She was bored.

There was nothing new for her to read, and she couldn't be bothered to boot up her current MMO of choice. She dropped her head back down to the monitor and stared at the screen until it blanked and went to sleep. Frowning at the dim reflection of her face and messy hair, she reached out and wiggled the mouse again. She hated that patch of darker fur around her eyes. It made her look like she always had a mask on and she hated how large it was compared to the rest of her family. Her mother had called it stately, but she wasn't around anymore and Faith wouldn't call anything that evoked a robber's blindfold "stately."

A knock on the door pulled her away from the monitor and thoughts of her mother.

"Are you up yet, Ma'am?" asked Nestor from the other side of the door, his voice as pleasant as usual. "Your father has asked me to make sure that you are up by noon--he's worried about your sleep schedule. It's slipped rather far as of late, if I do say so myself. Will you come downstairs and have something to eat?"

Faith groaned and pushed away from the desk, kicking her feet in irritation. She didn't want to leave her room, but she was awfully hungry.

"Ma'am?" Nestor called.

"I'm up," Faith responded. She stood and picked her way over to her dresser and pulled a pair of pants off the top of the pile of clothes draped over the furniture. Hopping around on one foot to avoid falling over, she tugged them on and fastened the rear strap above the base of her tail.

"Will you be having something to eat?"

She stomped over and opened the door, glaring up at Nestor and his black and white striped face. "Yes, Nestor. Quit asking me." She stepped around the portly badger and headed downstairs, walking quickly to get away as fast as possible. She had no interest in sticking around and getting an earful about the state of her hair or her clothes. He had been getting particularly bad about that, and she suspected that it was because of her father. Apparently a "gap year" meant something different to him.

"Of course, ma'am," Nestor said, lumbering along after her. "Would you like me to make something for you?"

"No." She didn't have the time to waste. She was hungry and she didn't want to wait around. She was going to grab some cereal and then head back upstairs so that she could work on talking shit to random people on the internet. Maybe she could go back through her collection of anime and binge a series or two. She had been meaning to watch Love High again. She should probably check in with her guild in the Hyperdrive MMO, see if there was anything going on that required her attention.

Faith eventually made it to the kitchen, but not without Nestor following her all the way and blocking the doorway ominously while she pulled a box of sugar-coated cardboard out of the cabinets. She went about making her bowl of cereal while studiously ignoring him. He was going to bring up something that father wanted her to do--there was no doubt in her mind.

He struck when she was pouring the milk into the bowl of cereal.

"Ma'am," Nestor said apologetically, as though announcing a tragedy had taken place. "Your father has asked me to see that you spend a day outside."

"Okay," she said. She screwed the top back on the jug of milk and returned it to the fridge. Nestor visibly brightened.

"Excellent. Is there anywhere you had in mind? I hear that the park downtown has an excellent flower garden--though I suppose that if you wish only to look at flowers we have our own flower garden here." He brushed his jacket lapel and stuck out his chest. "I must say that the roses are doing especially well this spring--"

"Does it have to be today?"

"Ma'am?" Nestor's good mood evaporated, his chest deflating like a sad balloon left outside in the cold for too long.

"I have stuff that I want to do today," she said, avoiding looking at Nestor.

"Your father--"

"Should tell me in person that I need to go outside."

Nestor folded his hands together. It always surprised Faith how delicately he could move them.

"Ma'am," he said, adopting a clear hard tone that she had heard all too often as of late. "You know that your father is very busy these days, and as such has entrusted your well-being to me. I intend to follow through with that no matter how irritating that you might find it." His voice softened. "It's for your own good, ma'am. Your father's worried about you."

"Maybe he should try showing that some time," Faith said, glaring at her bowl of cereal.

"I understand that it's tough when he's away so often for work, but he is doing his best."

"He needs to do better." She stirred her soggy cereal and made a face. She would have to toss the bowl down the drain now and make a new one.

Nestor sighed. "I know that it's hard, ma'am, but please try to see this from your father's point of view. It's not healthy for you to stay cooped up in your room every single day staring at your computer. You need to get outside once in a while."

She could see just fine from her father's point of view--he thought that she was an unambitious failure. So what? She had spent the majority of her life doing whatever he wanted her to do, and now that she wanted to do her own thing he had a problem with it? That wasn't fair.

A sharp pain ran through her head and she screwed her eyes shut. She sucked in a breath, waiting for the pain to pass. She had been encountering these sudden headaches more and more recently, and that was part of the reason why she didn't want to go outside. Bright light would occasionally be a trigger, and sometimes the pain would last for days. The first time it had happened was during one of the rare occasions that she was eating dinner with her father, during an argument. She had actually blacked out for a moment, and came to in the arms of her father.

That had been the first time her father had hugged her since her mother's funeral.

"Another one of those migraines, ma'am?" Nestor asked, switching to all concern. He moved closer but kept a healthy distance.

"I'm fine," she spat, massaging her temples, keeping her eyes closed. That was the worst thing about it all--she was perfectly fine in all the aspects of an average early-twenties female ferret. Her father had scheduled many, many doctor's appointments after the migraines became more frequent, and even contacted doctors from out of state for their opinion. There had even been a month or two where she had gotten on a first name basis with the radiologists at the local hospital. No one had found anything. She just happened to get migraines and there was nothing she could do about it other than make her room as dark as possible and lie in bed.

It fucking sucked.

"Do you want me to help you back upstairs?" Nestor asked.

Faith cracked her eyes, staring at the blurry counter-top. The pain in her head had shifted, but it had also become more manageable.

"I said I'm fine," she said. Pushing away from the counter, she straightened and turned around. She was no longer hungry, only wanting to lie back down in her bed and hide under the covers. Taking a step forward, she stumbled and doubled over, dry-heaving.

Nestor was immediately by her side, wrapping a heavy arm around her shoulders. "I've got you, ma'am," he said. "Let's get you back up to your room. We can talk a walk outside when you're feeling better, hmm?"

She groaned, not willing to expend the energy to try and argue the point. Nestor practically picked her up and walked out of the kitchen.

"Don't worry about the dishes," he said. "I'll come back and clean them up."

The walk back was far nicer than it had any right being. Nestor was warm and soft, and she could feel the strength in his arm. She wanted to be held like this more, but by someone that she didn't see as family. She had even been dreaming of that lately--she blamed the fanfiction she had been bingeing.

Then Nestor was laying her down on her bed and she curled up fitfully, ashamed at essentially being carried all the way back to her room. She gave him a weak push and he backed off.

"I'll check back in with you at dinnertime," he said softly, and stepped out of the room. Closing the door, he waited a moment, then headed back down the hallway--all of which she could hear from the creaking of the floor under his weight.

Her head throbbed painfully and she grit her teeth. Despite the earlier drop in pain, it seemed like this migraine was here to stay.

She thought dark thoughts and wished for it all to go away.

***

The migraine eventually receded to a dull throbbing in the space right behind her eyes, and she managed to get out of bed and back to her computer. It probably wasn't the best thing for her to be looking at with the effects of the migraine still lingering, but she was fed up with lying on her bed. Besides, there might be something new for her to read or look at.

There wasn't.

She stared bleary-eyed at the monitor and decided to do something different for a change. She clicked back to the first page of the board and found the top thread had a real photo of some wolf superhero in all white. The text on the opening post read "whitewolfxphotographercam otp" and she rolled her eyes. It was just another troll trying to stir up shit by posting real people again. Capeshit, even. She clicked on the thread, already formulating the insult that she would post to the thread. Something involving "3d" and "cancer" would do nicely. The thread took some time to load and when it finally did she got her reason why--all the responses she could see had attached photos of that same wolf in different action poses. She had to admit that the photos did look rather nice--if you pretended that it was a cosplay instead of some narcissistic bitch pretending to be a good person.

She scrolled down, forgetting about the insult for the moment. She assumed that the wolf in the photos was "whitewolf," since they were white and also a wolf, but she had yet to see "photographercam." She assumed that was the photographer of the photos.

One of the posts read "how could one man be so lucky?" and she rolled her eyes. More of the following posts had similar comments and she started to think that it was all the same person dumping the photos. Maybe it was even the photographer themselves, trying in vain to advertise themselves in the worst possible way to a group of people that wanted absolutely nothing to do with them.

She got through about forty posts, all with images, before she realized that there hadn't been a single detractor among the bunch. She scrolled back up to the top of the page and typed out a hasty reply and posted it, then went back to searching for the hecklers that she knew had to be in the thread somewhere. This was a board for discussing fictional pairings, dammit, and she wasn't going to let these trolls get away with it.

Back at the bottom of the thread with nothing to show for it, she refreshed the page to find a couple more image posts as well as a reply to her own post.

"Jealous?" it read, along with an image of a particularly resplendent White Wolf giving a playful smirk to the camera while in the middle of tying up a particularly large hippo in a luchador mask.

A spark of anger ignited in her stomach and she started typing out a reply. She wasn't jealous--how could she be jealous of some bitch and her boyfriend that couldn't even be bothered to be in the same photo as her? Faith bet he was ugly as fuck and White Wolf was only using him for the pictures.

After posting, she angrily refreshed the page every couple of seconds, waiting for the reply she knew was coming. These kinds of people couldn't leave well enough alone and they needed to get the fuck off her board.

Some minutes and multiple posts later, she got her reply. "U mad? Bet u cry into ur daki every night imagining that u had a girl that was actually real."

Faith immediately started writing her reply. "I AM a girl retard, so I definitely don't do that. I have yet to even see this 'photographercam' and I bet he's just some disgusting 'nice guy' that White Wolf is using--which I applaud, because that's all IRL guys are worth. You need to stop spamming this off-topic shit and gtfo."

Another couple of posts had appeared in the time while she was writing her own and it seemed that the thread was finally capturing the attention of other real members of the board, though the mods were still nowhere to be seen.

The next reply came quicker than the last, but it turned out to be a simple "tits or gtfo" that was most likely not the OP, since it didn't have any accompanying image. The next couple replies were in the same vein and she went back to the other thread she was keeping an eye on, only to find that it still hadn't gotten a single new post.

She went back to the troll thread, refreshed, and found a new reply waiting for her. "Ur so mad," it read, "I bet u do cry urself to sleep every night hugging ur daki."

Her head throbbed and she narrowed her eyes. She probably shouldn't continue to respond, but whoever was on the other end of these posts couldn't get away with this. Where the fuck where those mods? She started writing out another post.

Many angry posts later there was a knock on the door. "Miss Faith?" Nestor asked. "Are you feeling any better?"

"I'm fine," she said through clenched teeth, typing out another reply. The keys clacked under her angry finger strokes and her head pulsed to her heartbeat. It didn't hurt as much as it did earlier, but she definitely wasn't feeling back to normal. She paused, hands hovering over the keyboard. Maybe she shouldn't have spent--she checked the clock in the bottom corner of the screen--the past two hours arguing with some asshole on the internet.

"I see." There was some shuffling and creaking of the floor from beyond her door. "If you are feeling better, then your father wishes to have dinner with you."

"I'm busy," Faith said automatically, and resumed her typing. Of course this happened to be one of the few days that her father managed to make it home in time for dinner--albeit a late one. It was nearly eight according to her computer.

"I know that you've had a rather rough day, ma'am." The floor creaked again. "But I believe the last time you ate together with your father was last month. He's missed you, ma'am."

She scoffed. He didn't miss her, he missed what she used to be. Why should she torture herself to try and fit into that constrictive vision? She was tired of trying to please him when he would always comment on how she used to be.

"Aren't you hungry, ma'am?" Nestor asked, trying a different tactic. Faith paused again in the middle of typing out a slur and looked over at her closed door. She could imagine the look on his face, that dour look he always got when he was trying to get her to do something that he believed would be good for her.

Her stomach growled and she winced at the empty pangs it gave her immediately after. She was pretty hungry--she hadn't had anything to eat for the entire day.

"I guess I'm a little hungry," she said, turning back to her computer monitor. The cursor blinked in the middle of her half-written reply and she no longer knew what she wanted to say. She could just get something to eat later, after her father had left--but there was always the chance of running into him while getting something to eat and she didn't have the energy for that conversation. Plus, if she ate with her father that would be proper food, something hot and cooked, unlike the microwaved meal she was thinking of eating later. She puffed out her cheeks. Nestor had probably made something delicious like he always had whenever he was trying to coax her out of her room and into the company of her father.

"Good," Nestor said. "I've made something special for the occasion." She could hear the excitement in his voice and couldn't help but feel uplifted herself. "I managed to find some excellent Parmesan in the local market yesterday and made a lovely chicken Alfredo with sun dried tomatoes for tonight."

Faith found her mouth watering. That did sound very nice--and it wasn't just because she hadn't eaten all day. Nestor's cooking was something worth braving a conversation with her father for, especially when he sounded that excited about it.

"Fine," she said, trying not to sound too enthusiastic. Getting out of her chair, she locked her computer and went over to open the door. She hoped that he wouldn't bother her too much about sprucing up for dinner--she could see the disappointment in his eyes about the state of her dress. He would have to deal with it. She was inside her own home, so she was going to make herself as comfy as possible. If her father took issue with that, then he would have to deal with it too.

"Right," Nestor said, spinning around on his heel and lumbering off down the hallway. "Your father is already at the table. Feel free to join him and I'll bring out the food as soon as I can."

She pulled a face, but walked out of her room anyways. She knew that there had to be a catch. Nestor would obviously wait until the last possible moment to bring out the food, in order to give her father some time to have a "discussion" with her. Pausing, she was tempted to stay upstairs and wait it out, maybe even skip the dinner altogether and come down after to grab a plate of leftovers.

Then the creamy scent of Nestor's white sauce caressed her nose and she was dragged forwards. That damn butler and his impossibly good cooking. It should be illegal for her father to use that against her.

She made her way down the stairs and back towards the main dinning room. Her father always preferred to eat there, even when it was just him. Faith suspected that it made him feel important and powerful to eat at that big table. Granted, it was a very nice table--imposing, heavy, and ancient--though she herself found it a pain.

Entering through the open double doors, she spotted her father sitting at the end of the table reading a newspaper. She sat down in the closest seat to her, which happened to at the other end from him. She didn't take the end seat--she didn't want to be facing him. It was enough that he got to see and talk to her.

Her father turned a page, giving no indication that he had noticed her enter the room. She played with a fork. Maybe she would get lucky and he would read until Nestor brought the food out. He folded the newspaper and placed it on the table.

"Faith," he began, voice commanding but reaching for something to say at the same time. He fell silent, eyeing the old t-shirt she was wearing. She stared back, daring him to say something about her appearance.

He looked like he had come straight from the office, given his jacket to Nestor for hanging, and sat down at the table. She was certain that was exactly what he had done, considering the slightly-frumpled state of his button-down shirt and weary face. His tiredness went beyond a simple look--the fur around his nose was graying, and the "mask" around his eyes had faded significantly compared to what she remembered of it only a few years ago. He sighed and seemed to shrink in his chair, ears drooping, placing an elbow on the table.

"How are you?" he asked awkwardly.

"I'm fine," she replied, turning to bore a hole in the wall with her eyes. This conversation was going to end up like all the others and she wanted to skip directly to the awkward silence at the end. Where was Nestor and that chicken?

"Anything going on?"

"No."

She heard him run a finger along the crease of the newspaper. "Nestor's told me that you had another migraine today," he said. She rolled her eyes.

"I'm obviously over it now," she said.

"When was the last one?"

"I don't know, maybe a week ago?"

"They seem to be happening with more and more frequency, don't you think?"

"Maybe," she said, toying with a fork. "But I'm fine, remember? They never found anything that could explain it."

"I'm worried about you."

Faith had to fight making a disgusted face. If he cared about her then why did he spend all his time at work? She knew she was being petty but she could feel the beginnings of another migraine coming on.

"I think if you took some time to go outside and take a break from that computer in your room--"

"No," she said reflexively. She glared at the door to the kitchen. Nestor had better hurry his stripy ass up with that dinner. She was regretting letting herself be convinced into sitting down with her father at the table to eat. She should have known that he would immediately start complaining about her computer use.

"Faith," her father said, voice hardening. "You cannot stay cooped up inside your all day every day. It's not healthy, and you need to start putting some serious thought into your future."

She rolled her eyes, then squeezed them shut when a tang of pain shot through her head. Reaching up to massage her temples, she hissed and lowered her head.

"I am putting my foot down this time," he said. "I have a feeling that these headaches of yours are being aggravated by the amount of time you spend sitting down and staring at that monitor. Nestor's told me that he's caught you multiple times in the past week staying up all night doing whatever it is you're doing on there."

"They are not from being on the computer all the time," she said, cracking an eye to glare at him.

"It wouldn't hurt to try--"

"Yes it would, I have to be online for most of the day to make sure that I'll be there for my guild. And I talk to my friends all the time, I can't just bail on them."

Her father raised an eyebrow. "Your friends?"

"Yes, my friends."

"Then why not ask them to hang out at the mall, or the park?"

Faith shook her head and found that to be a bad idea when her head started throbbing. "You don't understand," she said through clenched teeth. "They don't even live in the same state as us. How many times do I have to tell you this? One of them is even on the other side of the planet. I can't just ask them if they wouldn't mind popping down to the mall to talk. Especially when I can just message them."

"If they're real friends, then they won't mind missing you for a day or two."

"But I'll miss so much."

"What could you possibly miss that you couldn't catch up later on?"

"It's not the same," she said, burying her head in her arms. "I don't understand what you don't get about that. They could discuss important guild stuff while I'm away, or I could miss a conversation that I'd want to take part in."

"If they can hold meetings that would be that important not to miss without notifying you in advance that's their problem."

She rolled her eyes. "This isn't some stuffy company of yours, father. Things happen all the time that can require meetings like that. I need to be there for them."

Her father let out a breath. "It isn't healthy to base your entire life around this 'guild' of yours. Have you even met them in person?"

"I met a couple at college."

"And the others?"

"Why do you care about that? They're my friends and I want to hang out with them." Faith shook her head, still face-down in her arms. "If I went to the mall every day instead I'm sure you would be saying the same thing about me needing to find something else to do and not waste my time."

"At least you would be going outside. When was the last time you left the house?"

"I don't know," she groaned, "a week ago? Why don't you ask Nestor, I'm sure he knows."

"I want you to tell me."

"I just did."

A quiet fell over the table, and Faith wished for Nestor to interrupt with dinner. Her head throbbed and there was a needle-like pain behind her eyes. She took a shuddering breath and did her best to ignore the pain. Where the hell was he?

Her father shifted in his chair. "I'm trying to help you," he said.

"If you want to help me then leave me alone," she groaned, not caring for the conversation anymore. If Nestor took any longer she would get up, barge into the kitchen, and take whatever she could get her hands on back up to her room to eat in peace and quiet.

"I have tried being hands off, and it has become clear that you want nothing more than to laze around your room for the indefinite future."

"So?"

A sigh. "You are a young woman now, with your own future to take. I cannot allow you to stay here for the rest of your life, and you need to be thinking about what your next steps should be."

"I told you that I'm going to go back to college and finish my degree." The pain was lessening, and she breathed deeply. Now if only Nestor would bring out that damn dinner.

"Do you have a plan?"

"No." The pain came rushing back and she screwed up her face. She was done with this conversation. The moment her head stopped feeling like it was being crushed between two anvils she was going straight back up to her room and venting about this "talk" in the guild chat.

"Well then," her father said with an air of finality, "I think you need to come up with one."

"Or what?"

"Or I'm taking away your computer."

Faith's head shot up and she glared at him. "You are not doing that," she said, the pain in her head forgotten. "That's my computer."

"Which I paid for, after you convinced me that it was required for the degree that you wanted to take." Her father met her wild glare with a stern expression. She knew that expression--it was the one he used when he had made up his mind. There was nothing she could do now to change it, short of actually doing what he wanted her to do.

She scowled, the pain behind her eyes making itself known once again. There was no way she was going to give up her computer. There was also no way that she would make a plan that would satisfy her father. She had essentially flunked out of the game dev program at her college, and nothing else interested her--there was no way she would ever consider going into business like her father wanted. She was fine the way things were. Why couldn't he see that?

"You are not taking my computer," she said, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. That was her entire life. She would do anything to stop that from happening. Her head throbbed, her brain feeling like it was being squeezed tighter than it ever had been before. Then it felt like something gave way and she let out a breath, eyes widening. She felt the pain and pressure vanish like someone had pulled the plug on a bath--like congested sinuses that she didn't know she had suddenly unclogging themselves.

Her father frowned, that look of his softening. Confusion crept across his face.

"I must," he said, "if that is what is best for you." She wouldn't realize it until later but her father hadn't used his mouth to say those words.

"It isn't," she said firmly, a huge weight lifted off her shoulders now that the pain was gone. She felt like she could think properly for the first time that day.

Her father grew more confused. "Then what? If it is causing your headaches then you can't keep using it like you are."

"It isn't. I'm perfectly fine now." She felt better than that--she felt alive for the first time in recent memory. Her heart pounded away in her chest and her mind raced. Where had all this energy come from? She didn't want it to stop.

"But you still need to make a plan," her father said, sounding unsure. His eyes lost their focus, and a part of her wondered if that could be a problem before being swept aside by the high she was riding.

"I will make a plan," she said, trying to sound as convincing as possible. "You don't need to take away my computer."

"Good." Her father sat, looking lost. She had never seen him look like that, not even at her mother's funeral.

She blinked, and a blanket of fatigue crashed over her. She had to hold onto the table to stop from flopping over in her chair. Breathing like she had just ran the length of the house, she wondered where all that energy had gone.

Her father said nothing more, that strange lost look disappearing from his face. Nestor brought the food out shortly after. They ate in silence. She would have to figure out what that was, and if she could do it again--but without feeling like her head was going to explode.