FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Zephyr Ziegler howls into the darkness as his body tumbles down the steep hill in the California chaparral. Dried grass and sharp branches graze his skin and cling to his dark fur on his fall down as Kyran, Kamala, Phoenix and Indigo follow after him, landing somewhere in the sightlessness at the edge of an overcrowded city. Zephyr pushes his exhausted body off the dirt road as they make their way through the shrub-lands and into the clearing.

At the furthermost point their weary eyes can see, the dull glow of Los Angeles beckons for them to turn away from the spot where they tore through a burning sky and become lost in the chaos of the hazy city in the distance.

"I don't know about you guys, but I don't feel any more dead than I usually do," Indigo says, thankful they felt like wearing tennis shoes.

"We're not dead, at least I don't think we are," Kyran says, sneezing away at the dust settling on his nose.

"Where's Aarden?" Phoenix is the first to ask, glancing back and yelling his name while searching behind the skeletal frames of the homes being built at the base of the hill.

"I thought he was behind us. Where are we?" Kamala asks, taking off her raincoat as she sweats in warm air that doesn't feel at all like September.

"I hate to be that guy, but when are we is the question we should be asking right now," Kyran says as he straightens his crooked frames to better see the skyline against a brown night.

"Kyran's right. We're in L.A., but it's definitely not the one I lived in, there's buildings missing in that skyline," Indigo observes.

"Aarden must've sent us back in time," Zephyr suggests, "although I don't think he meant to this time, so he must've overshot."

"How far back?" Kamala asks, looking at the cracked screen of her unresponsive cellphone as she squints for any sign of his signature green jacket.

"I don't think how back even matters if we can't find Aarden to help send us forward," Phoenix says, his heart starting to flutter in his chest as dread sets in, "he has to be here somewhere, we all landed in the same place, didn't we?"

"Whenever we are, it's before the invention of cellphones," Kamala says, tossing hers aside into the shrubbery.

"So, 2005?" Phoenix asks, his hands on his knees as nausea mixes with the sense of relief flowing in his chest. "I can live with that."

"Try 1985," Kyran says, blowing sawdust off the black and white of the news-day before their arrival.

"What are you talking about?" Kamala asks, snatching the newspaper from his hands and reading the headline twice over before believing it.

"July 25th, 1985," Kamala reads.

Indigo's head is flooded with everyone's thoughts as they fire simultaneously with the same series of questions.

"Well, my adaptation is back," Indigo says, tugging on their ears, "and stronger than ever."

"What's the last thing everyone remembers?" Kyran asks, flipping through the pages and skimming for anything that would suggest the events of this timeline deviate from the one they understand.

"I felt the life being drained from me by that rock, it even sliced into my hands," Phoenix says, licking the blood off his wound with his coarse tongue, "after that, I landed here, thirty years into the past."

"I saw Aarden destroy it," Indigo says, "he smashed it into pieces with the Zeitkanone."

"You must've been the last one standing to see it," Zephyr says. His knees weak, he sits at the end of a pile of wooden beams, his breaths heavy as he tries to process this new reality.

The approaching dawn of a day they should never see creeps into the horizon, and the team feels the burden of their non-existence weigh heavy on their shoulders.

"What are we going to do?" Kamala asks, looking out into the unfamiliar world from the same stack of wooden beams.

"We're lost somewhere thirty years in the past. What can we do?" Zephyr says.

"With no Aarden in sight, I don't think there's anything we can do until we find him," Phoenix says, sitting on the other end of the beams, lifting them both with his weight.

"What we can do is navigate through this together and find him," Kyran suggests, teleporting beside Phoenix.

"We're right back to where we started from, right? A good old search and rescue? As long as we stick together this time, maybe we can figure it out," Indigo says, sitting in the middle to balance them out.

The Zenith sit in stunned silence, catching their breaths as the pain they left behind settles onto their minds and bodies.

"Do you think Aarden is out there somewhere?" Phoenix asks, staring out into lights flickering like fireflies through his tears.

"I'm sure he is. He was lost once before until we found him, then he rescued us several times. He's out there somewhere, and I won't stop until he's right here beside us again," Zephyr says, the dawn breeze stinging his marred face.

"Then let's get to searching," Kamala says, holding Zephyr's hand as The Zenith wander into the unknown, holding onto one another as they navigate through the empty streets of a slumbering city and into the unfamiliar dawn.

END OF BOOK ONE