FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

A Fox’s Dream

A month after that story, Raine, who by this point had become friends with Akandi, visited his house, which was directly above him. It wasn’t a bad room, with everything basic accounted for, but the smell of Akandi’s experiments and the sheer aura was enough to overwhelm Raine, despite of it not being so apparent outside. Because Raine was a mage himself, he could feel the distinctive aura of being pushed, like a barrier of sorts, as he walked through Akandi’s door, which was the reason why it wasn’t as smelly outside as it was inside.

Once inside, not only the suppressed smell started to attack Raine’s senses, he was surprised when he saw the furless cat person stark naked while doing some magical experiments. In Raine’s eyes, exposing that much skin, especially for a furless like him, could lead to painful burns. But when Raine tried to warn him, Akandi noticed him and immediately intensified the barrier, stopping Raine from entering.

“Sorry, Raine, but I can’t let you ruin my project,” said Akandi while slowly pouring down a liquid. “I’m almost done. Let me clean up for a minute and we’ll talk.”

“Why are you naked? Isn’t that kind of thing needs more protection for your body?”

“Wouldn’t want to contaminate my clothes, right? The properties in these chemicals could burn my clothes, but not my skin. It could also react badly with fur, so being a Sphynx helps a lot. You might be able to help if you cover that red hair of yours.”

“I’ll pass. The only thing I’m good with is fighting.”

“Fair enough.” After a rather anticlimactic glow, Akandi sighed and said, “Done.”

“Nothing’s happening.”

“I’ll explain to you what it does. For now, I’ll de-sanitize this place and get to you.”

Akandi did not need more than a minute to put things away, given how void his living room was. He then flicked his fingers, getting the things he worked on away and made his room fresh again. He then took the robe nearby and dressed in only that. Somehow, being a furless made him want to show the tattoos that he had decorated his body with, giving an impression that he was almost human.

“Okay. Is there a job that needs doing?” said Akandi.

“Uhmm…not really. I got those worked out already. I, uh...have a request.”

Raine pulled out a leather-bound book and gave it to Akandi. “Do you think you can edit it into something more…novel?”

“Is this the story I’ve been hearing about from you?” asked Akandi while flipping through the pages. “Your travelling journal?”

“It was an exotic place, so I couldn’t let myself forget how that place looked like. I mean, it’s like a paradise in the middle of this devastated world. I know I still remember it now, but sooner or later, I won’t remember a thing unless I open my journals. I don’t want it to be a dull, travelling journal. I want it to be amazing and full of exotic landscape. I hope you can help me with that. I don’t know anyone else in this town who can make it interesting.”

“I can help with that. But why me?”

“Who’s the one making short stories posted on the bulletin board, hmm? You think I didn’t notice?”

“Well…I guess I have a little interest in writing some shorts,” said Akandi while rubbing the back of his head. “But to be honest, writing a book seems so out of my league right now.”

“That’s why I only ask you to edit it. I’ll pay you some muns if you’re interested. I don’t want to publish it, only sharing it between friends and townspeople. They need entertainment more than ever now. Crops are dying due to drought, and this is a long summer. If it wasn’t for Alter, we might need to buy some food outside, and that will hurt the city coffer.”

“It’s hard if you’re the mayor, huh?” said Akandi with a sigh. “Alright. I’ll do it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Just don’t complain if it turns out to be bad.”

“I won’t. No one even care either. They just want the story.”

“At least that’s a relief. Oh, wait a minute.”

Akandi walked back to his house and took a flask, with spherical base. There was a chemical inside it, green in color. It looked docile.

“Tell the farmers to spray this whole flask on the soil before planting grains,” said Akandi. “It’s a growth formula I enhanced with earth-based magic to cut growth from three months to just two weeks. I can’t make some more, so these are the only ones I have. It might be enough to grow a two months food supply.”

“Wow, that’s…amazing. Do you think this will work?”

“I’ve tried it on different plants. Try it on one patch if you don’t believe me.”

“I’ll give you feedback later. Thanks!”

Waving goodbye to Akandi, Raine ran down the stairs and towards the fields, where the farmers were. Akandi looked at how the situation unfolded, and was amused with himself when the potion worked. However, he did not anticipate how good it was. The plot Raine sprayed with grew bigger plants that yielded too much crop, enough for five families of four. Raine was clearly so surprised he fell to the ground, speechless.

Chuckling, Akandi returned to the comfort of his home and towards a room he made into his personal study. Pulling out a mage-light reading lamp and a chair, he put the journal on the desk, getting ready to read it. Before he did, though, he also pulled out a mechanical contraption Narati only described as a record player. He claimed he found one from a disused pre-war broadcast station on their way home. He salvaged the parts and took some surviving black discs he claimed to be able to play songs, almost like a music box, except it’s purely mechanical instead of magical-based.

Akandi did what Narati showed him, and upon the needle striking the ridged surface of the black disc, it started a song, which surprised Akandi. But then, he quickly pull away the needle, since the song was too upbeat for a reading session. He looked for some other, and found one that seemed to be a mellow one, and he was right.

Sighing, he relaxed himself after putting a note about asking Narati on the things he found, including some he salvaged from magitechs. He then opened the first page, which was the same thing he heard from last night. He skipped everything that Raine had already said, but started at Alter’s revelation to be sure he did not skip anything.

The story in the journal were compiled into this:

I was speechless, surprised, and even bewildered! I knew this world is mad from the day I was raised in that shelter, and everyone needed to find a way to survive. But, in all my life, I’ve never met such surprise. I knew many people out there were like this, and yet again, it was my first time, and I was caught unaware.

_ I suddenly dawned to me that ‘Alter’ could not be a gal’s name. It sounded too aggressive to be one. The boy should’ve called himself ‘Alteria’ if he wanted to blend in as a girl. But, man, that was one hell of a revelation! Alter himself also thought so, too, especially when he realized that I noticed the bulge in his rather tight underwear._

_ He blushed and looked away from me. I know this sounded awkward but he did look like a girl, even up close and with short wild hair. I looked towards him, telling him that it’s alright and I could keep it secret, and he darted off, blood still soaking him. I knew he was going to the river to wash himself off, but I knew that was not the only thing that made him do that._

_ That flash fire…was it a different kind of ability? I did not just blind like a flash magic, but it burned the leader’s eyes. It seemed so bizarre, yet not surprising. I’m not that well-versed in magic, after all. Taking on Alter’s suggestions, I cut the bandits’ heads and put it in a leather pouch. It seemed morbid, but it was the best way to do it without burdening me (why didn’t we hire a carriage if the bounty was per head?)_

_ I found Alter bathing, and this time he wasn’t scared on showing that he was a male. A hybrid from top to bottom, he had a dark skin and dark chocolate hair. His hair was kept wild, possibly to cover the part where a human’s ears should be He had a pair of fox ears and a big fluffy tail a fox had. What made me curious was that his legs were digitigrades, and his hands were similarly covered with fur. I mean, I knew some hybrids, but that kind of hybrid is quite rare for me._

_ He seemed to lose his cheerfulness, so I tried to cheer him up by talking about his reason to be in drag and his magic. Alter then told me about his confused gender. He sometimes thought that he should be a girl, but he was also well-aware that he was a boy. Having a feminine body and feminine face did not help him at all. But he had no idea that he could use magic, and he claimed to be a werefox._

_ Somehow, I did not understand what he was on about, but I assured him that if it was bothering him, I wouldn’t tell. He just smiled at me and said that he was glad to have told me about it. In the end, we finished cleaning ourselves and took the bounty, which was a whole lot of junks for Nara and Asterios to play. Well, Asterios just gonna melt them down anyway. Nara…well, I hope he don’t blow his house one day. I’ll put the things in his workshop for him later, when he come back from his job._

_ We did not have anything engaging for the next two weeks. Alter started to become more comfortable in Diamondback’s Nest and apparently closer to me, both because of our private conversation and because he opted to be my roommate for the time being. And that was it. On the night of the third day of the second week, we both dreamed the same dream about a nine-tailed fox telling us to go east, to find out about our heritage or something. I didn’t think that was important since, well…I liked vixens (the only beast race I’d ever date), and it could have been my dirty dream. But it felt so real! The fox in that dream seemed to be talking to me, yet also not me. It was like it was a shared dream of sorts._

_ While I was pondering about it, Alter woke up and told me of a strangest dream over a cup of milk. We were so surprised and confused to know that it was_ indeed a shared dream, and that message wasn’t directed to me, but to Alter. The fox didn’t understand what it meant, and we both decided that we needed a professional to interpret it.

_ To be honest, if magic wasn’t so prevalent in this world, we might not be able to take that shared dream seriously, and could only thought of it as a great coincidence. But of course, what we experienced wasn’t something a mage could solve. Instead, we went to a self-made spirit medium. I was so surprised that she wasn’t a fraud, but a real deal. Upon entering her shop, she told us about the dream we shared, and offered help interpreting it. We were both surprised by it, and without any doubt, followed her into her ‘dream recorder’, which was an empty room with no furniture in it except a spherical crystal, which was shining brightly, as if welcoming us._

_ “Touch it,” she said. We weren’t sure if it was safe, but both of us nodded to each other and touched it. The whole room suddenly became vast. It was as if I’m once again trapped in the maze that trapped Asterios for years, but it wasn’t. The room projected an illusion of sorts to the white-painted wall, and it was the dream we experienced. We could clearly see the nine-tailed fox, but instead of standing still, it was moving around._

_ The ‘spirit medium’ (I don’t think she’s a medium. She was more like a shaman to me) said to us that we needed to follow this dream’s instruction and ‘go east’. We tried to ask her about it, given that she was the professional. However, all she could give us was a hint, and that was ‘to follow the instructions in the dream’. We didn’t know where to start, and she had no idea, either, though she offered us some herbs to use in the journey. Alter, already excited for travel, quickly ran out of the shop to pack his things. I sighed and stayed to talk with her for her input about this, since the dream was clearly not intended for me. All she said was to accompany Alter, since I was his ‘designated bodyguard’. It felt weird, but somehow, I must help Alter._

_ Alter himself seemed so excited to start, but as an experienced traveler with a lot of responsibilities, I told him to wait, especially since no one’s gonna run the Wanderers if I’m gone like that. Luckily for me, Karkas had employed many people for management in case he was too busy in jobs. It was a relief in my part. Despite of his appearance, he had thought about everything from the start. I was surprised._

_ The next thing we did, however, was to make sure where our destination was. Going east was easy, but where it was being something we didn’t know. Knowing that aimlessly going east would not solve things, we decided that the dream would help again, and it did, albeit in a subtle way._

_ The dream only gave us the scenery, but not actual location. It was almost as if we would be led into a wild goose chase (not sure if geese are worth chasing) into a non-existent place. Another visit to the dream catcher, however, made use able to at least know where it was, though vaguely._

_ It was Alter who somehow remembered the scenery of his childhood, even if it wasn’t clear for him. I told him how he could have forgotten despite of only 16 years old, and Alter did not take it lightly. He wasn’t angry, but of course he wasn’t going to let an old guy like me commented on how he forgot his childhood home. Alter’s a nice kid, but he could also be direct in his way to prove a point. He argued that he, like me, was a traveler before joining the Wanderers in hope to find his missing parents, who disappeared from his life when he was 10. He told me about his life to the point where I needed to stop him to focus on the task at hand._

_ Alter assumed that the dream wasn’t just a message from a random fox, but came from his parent. Of course, knowing Alter, he forgot about his argument and became excited to start travelling. The dream catcher gave us a small sphere (gave? Oh, no. She’s still running a store. I ended up buying one for 50 muns. A good deal) with the ‘dream scenery’ in it. Felt weird, but for me, it’s an experience I had never knew._

_ _ Akandi stopped reading there while resting his eyes, while also knowing that Raine jumped to a later date on the next entry. He knew the dream catcher mentioned in the journal. She ran a small store selling charms and wards to scare off spirits. While it seemed to be pagan, only a mage with a knowledge of types of magic, like a former Collective, would know that those charms and wards were in fact used to ward off evil spirits instead of superstitions. The dream catcher was appropriate to be described as a shaman in the journal, as shamans were in fact spirit mages who drew mana from spiritual particles in the air. It wasn’t an old, almost forgotten tradition. Akandi knew some people who prefer taking in spiritual particles instead of drinking mana potion.

It would be nice if they were just being mages. For Akandi, most of his projects required a high amount of mana, and he needed to drink those mana potions to stay optimal. Otherwise, it would start tapping into his life force and sap his life away, which could shorten his life. Somehow, it was called ‘ether’, despite of ether being an entirely different thing.

Akandi planned to meet with the spirit mage to talk about his project, after finishing the journal for the day. He started it as a request from Raine, but now he was interested by how the whole story unfolded. But, seeing how the journal mentioned her was worth considering. He could read it later if he wanted to.

But first, his immediate curiosity must be sated.