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by Gwynne Garfinkle

“There were no dog-eared pages, no underlines or annotations. Purple climbed inside and pulled the pages shut.”

This is the story of Purple and Green, two hedgehogs who were the best of friends. They rolled and played on the forest floor. The hedgehogs were spiny and guarded, but they knew how to reach each other. They feasted on berries and mushrooms, bright frogs and luminous snails, while they told each other the funniest and saddest and strangest stories they could think of. Some were stories they’d read in books, while others were anecdotes they’d heard from other hedgehogs or happenings from their own lives. Even calamities that had befallen them became fodder for their stories, offered up for each other’s enjoyment.

Then one morning, Purple found that Green had turned into a pine cone, armored and inanimate. Purple butted her head against Green, but instead of giggling or waddling in a circle or poking Purple with her snout, she wobbled and grew still once more. “Green, please speak to me,” Purple implored. “How did this happen? Did you will it so, or was it done to you? Are you under a spell?” Green didn’t reply. Purple couldn’t tell if Green had a heartbeat anymore, or a heart.

Purple sat with Green for a long time, waiting for the pine cone to come back to life. She told Green funny stories, but the pine cone didn’t laugh. She brought Green mushrooms and berries and the very best snails she could find and laid them where her feet used to be, but the pine cone made no move to eat them. Green’s silence and stillness became unbearable. Purple pushed Green hard with her paws and cried, “What is the matter with you?” Green wobbled, then grew motionless. Purple let out a snarl that turned into a sob.

At last Purple turned to walk away, but she turned back again and again, hoping Green would make some move to stop her. The pine cone didn’t seem to care. Green made no sign that she even noticed as Purple trudged away.

Purple wandered disconsolate through the forest, the vibrant green all around only reminding the hedgehog of her lost and silent friend. Birds chittered and sang arpeggios to each other. She was silent and alone, her eyes heavy with tears. Then an owl swooped down and tried to catch her in its talons, and Purple roused herself from her sorrow and ran as fast as she could. She crouched shivering and miserable under a thorny shrub until the owl winged away, hooting imperiously. The hedgehog worried that the owl might find Green, but she wasn’t near enough to warn her. Purple hoped that at least as a pine cone, Green would be safe from the owl’s predations.

The hedgehog crawled out from beneath the shrub and looked around. She had reached an unfamiliar part of the forest. Instead of leaves and fruit, the trees all sprouted books. Some of the trees, especially the smaller, younger ones, were sparsely leaved with volumes. The more massive trees were loaded with them.

Many books had fallen onto the ground. Beneath the larger trees, the forest floor was carpeted with volumes. Purple glanced at their covers as she walked over the books. Morocco leather bindings mingled with lurid paperback covers. She idly riffled the pages of one book after another. Some books appeared pristine, while others seemed to have been well-thumbed, even underlined and annotated. She wasn’t sure if these had been read on the ground or if intrepid readers had climbed trees to peruse them. She thought some of the books might contain stories that Green would enjoy, and then she remembered her loss afresh and began to cry. Her tears fell onto the book covers, and she dried them with her paws the best she could.

One book drew Purple’s attention. It was a paperback with green leaves and purple flowers on the cover. The hedgehog nosed it open. There were no dog-eared pages, no underlines or annotations. Purple climbed inside and pulled the pages shut. She wandered the forest of letters, black trees against an off-white sky. The words sheltered the hedgehog against the pine cone’s silence. Purple called Green’s name, and it echoed off the page.

The book held the hedgehog in its paper embrace, enveloped her in its clean and slightly musty smell. It rocked her to sleep. Stories sidled through her dreams, and she thought Green might be there too, flitting among the tales. First there was the story of a mother’s deep, winter-causing grief when her daughter was stolen away to the underworld; when the daughter returned, her mother’s rejoicings brought spring to the land. Next was the story of a lover transformed into a snake, then a fire, then a lion—biting and singeing his beloved as she held on—until at last, due to her determination, he turned back into himself, and not a wordless, eyeless tree.

Purple already knew these two stories, but the third was new to her. It was the tale of an inveterate reader who died before he could read the last chapters of a gripping novel and who spent his afterlife amid the book’s characters and situations, trying to figure out how it ended. He tried out tragic endings and happy ones, endings improbable and rote, until at last he happened upon the perfect ending, both unexpected and inevitable, and he was able to rest satisfied.

When Purple woke, she wandered deeper into the maze of words, towards the book’s heart, her own heart, the world’s heart. Green was part of that, whether the pine cone knew it or not. Purple became convinced that Green did still have a heart, whether or not she had a heartbeat. The book-forest was dotted with the small shrubs of the and and and but, the great towering trees of circumstance and loyalty, the bright flame-like flowers of grief and surprise. The words were beacons. The words were companions. The words were heartbeats, urging Purple on.

She kept thinking about the final story in her dream. She thought that Green would like that story, about the reader trying to find the ending to the book. I believe that Green is still alive, Purple thought. Even if she is silent and still, we are still alive, and our story may continue if I don’t give up.

At last the hedgehog came to a clearing and saw Green. Was she still a pine cone? Purple moved closer. Green stood alone in the empty space between one chapter and the next. Her spines—was Purple imagining?—no, it was true, her spines quivered ever so slightly. Green was a hedgehog again! She looked up at Purple. Something about Green’s eyes made Purple hang back, but all of Purple’s words rushed forth to say themselves. She told Green about the owl, and the forest of books, and the three stories. “But nothing seems real unless I can tell you about it,” Purple said. “Green, can you hear me? Are you yourself again?”

For a long moment she feared it was all for naught. Then Green waddled closer to her. “Yes, Purple, I can hear you,” she said, “and I am myself again, my friend.” She told Purple the story of her imprisonment in the form of a pine cone, able to hear but not reply, able to see her friend and the forest around her, but unable to be a part of any of it. She said she had turned into a pine cone twice in the past, before they became friends.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Purple asked.

“It was the one story I could never bring myself to tell you,” Green said. “I hoped it would never happen again. When it did, I heard you trying to reach me. I wanted to tell you not to go, but I couldn’t. It was a kind of death in life. Finally the spell ended, and I looked everywhere for you. I feared that you had given up on me and gone so far away that I would never find you.”

“I would never do that,” Purple said, reproaching herself for running from Green when her friend had needed her most.

“At last I came to the forest of books,” Green said. “I found this paperback and climbed inside. I got lost amid the shrubs of the and and and but, the great towering trees of circumstance and loyalty, and the bright flame-like flowers of grief and surprise. Finally I came to this empty space between chapters to rest, and you found me.”

Purple wept for joy. Her happiness was so intense, she felt it could bring spring to the land. Together the hedgehogs made their way out of the book and found their way home. After that, they frequently visited the forest of books, where they met other readers who ventured there. Purple and Green combed through many volumes on the forest floor in search of the most beautiful stories to share with one another. And when, in the course of time, Green became a pine cone again, Purple stayed by her side and told her stories as she waited for her friend to return to her once more.

 

* * *

Originally published in Lackington’s.

About the Author

Gwynne Garfinkle lives in Los Angeles. Her collection of short fiction and poetry, People Change, was published in 2018 by Aqueduct Press. Her work has appeared in such publications as Strange Horizons, Uncanny, Apex, Through the Gate, Dreams & Nightmares, Not One of Us, and The Cascadia Subduction Zone.

by Matt Dovey

“Choosing your own rune is… is the act of choosing who you want to be. It’s the moment of knowing yourself and defining yourself. Of finding your place in the world. But I don’t know who I am yet.”

Ursula lifted her snout to look at the mountain. The meadowed foothills she stood in were dotted with poppy and primrose and cranesbill and cowslip, an explosion of color and scent in the late spring sun, the long grass tickling her paws and her hind legs; above that the forested slopes, birch and rowan and willow and alder rising into needle-pines and gray firs; above that the snowline, ice and rock and brutal winds.

And above that, at the top, God; and with God, the answer Ursula had traveled so far for: what kind of bear am I meant to be?

She shouldered her bonesack and walked on.

* * *

There was a shuffling sound among the bracken, small but definite. Ursula hesitated, a dry branch held in her paws, her campfire half-built. Ambush wasn’t unheard of—so many bears sought God on the mountain that bonethieves couldn’t resist the chances to steal—but it had not been so large a sound, and she couldn’t smell another bear beneath the pine scent. It was something smaller, lurking in the dim light of the forest floor, behind the massive rough-barked firs that filled the slope.

“Hello?” she ventured, still holding motionless. “It’s quite all right. I’m building a fire, if you’d like to join me.”

A badger stepped out from the ferns, his snout twitching and cautious, a stout stick held warily in his paws. He eyed Ursula for a moment, weighing up the situation, and she gestured ever so gently to the fire she was building, trying to come across as safe, as friendly. As likeable.

He straightened and walked forward. He kept the stick before him, but Ursula understood. Bears could be dangerous.

Two more badgers followed him, one much smaller—”Oh, you’re a family!” said Ursula. “I’ll make a seat for you!”

She stood, turned, dashed back, dropping to four paws in her enthusiasm. She ran to where she’d seen a fallen log not twenty yards away by the river and hauled it back, her claws dug into its softened bark, dragging it and dropping it by the fire pit with a thud. She grinned at the family, proud of her resourcefulness—

The badgers cowered, the two behind the father with the stick, who tried to meet her eyes but couldn’t help glancing away for places to burrow and hide.

Ursula lowered herself slowly to sit. She made a point of picking up smaller twigs to lay on the fire, the least threatening pieces she could find. “Sorry,” she said quietly. “I forget how I can come across. Please. Sit down.” She concentrated on building the fire, determinedly not looking at the badgers, not wanting to startle them, trying not to let their fear hurt her nor to berate herself for getting carried away and upsetting others. For letting her shyness get to her: for overcompensating for it.

If only she knew who she was, instead of pretending so poorly.

“Thank you,” said Father Badger from the log, and Ursula smiled at him, keeping her teeth covered. “Forgive us our caution. We… have never met a bear before.”

“I’m Ursula,” she said.

“My name is Patrick,” said Father Badger, “and this is my husband, Willem, and our new daughter Ann.”

“And how old are you, Ann?” Another careful smile, friendly not fearsome, benevolent not bearlike.

Ann shuffled a little and squirmed in closer to Willem, who put an arm around her.

“She is a little shy,” said Willem. “We only met her an hour ago.”

“She’s why we came up the mountain,” said Patrick, smiling at his daughter. “Willem and I came to ask God for a blessing, and we found Ann burrowed alone beneath a root.”

“God showed you to her?” said Ursula eagerly, forgetting her calm façade in her excitement. “Is she near?”

“We never saw God,” said Willem, “and now we have no need. God has delivered us our gift already.”

“Oh,” said Ursula. “I mean, I’m happy for you! I really am. I just…”

“You hoped she would be near?” finished Willem.

Ursula shrugged, not trusting herself to speak. She put the last branch on the fire and hooked a claw around the strap of her bonesack, bones rattling inside the plain leather.

She felt, rather than saw, the badgers tense.

“You’re a bonethief,” said Patrick, voice flat and accusatory.

“We were warned of your kind on the mountainside,” said Willem, pulling Ann in close.

“They’re not my kind,” said Ursula carefully. “I don’t do what they do.”

“You carry the bones,” said Patrick. His paw lay on the stout stick, though if she truly were a bonethief it’d do him no use. She admired him that bravery, that certainty in his actions.

“Not all bears that carry bones are bonethieves,” said Ursula. “There is so much more that can be done. Please. Let me show you.”

She reached into the bag and started pulling bones out, laying them on the floor, runes up. She spoke as she did, her voice low and even, trying to defuse the situation she had accidentally escalated again. “Every bone is from a family member. They’ve all passed down to me, bit by bit. This one here was Aunt Maud’s, this one Uncle Arthur’s, that there is my Great-Grandma’s right arm. Every bear carries four runes on their body—well, usually, by the end… anyway—four runes carved into their bones. One is carved on the left thigh bone at birth by one parent, another on the right thigh by the other when they consider their child has come of age.”

“How?” asked Willem, still cautious, but curious too.

“Bear claws are sharp,” Ursula said. “I would show you with mine, but I don’t want to scare Ann.” She tried a smile again, only a small one, tentative, but Ann responded in kind. “My parents cut through my flesh to carve their chosen rune on my bones. Their words hold me up everywhere I go, even this far from them. My father gave me HOME at birth and my mother gave me WATER. It helps me miss them less, as if they’re with me wherever I am.”

The bones were all laid out now, and Ursula began to choose from them. SUN, from Great-Great-Uncle Morris. WIND to cross it: Grandma Oak’s breastbone.

“The third,” she continued, “is given to us by God, shaped on our breastbone from the very moment of our conception. None of us ever know our breastbone rune. It’s only known when we pass our bones to our family.” She began to lay the bones before the fire pit. SLEEP, the next.

“And the fourth?” asked Patrick.

Ursula paused. She kept her voice flat when she answered, trying not to let any emotion into her answer. “The fourth we carve ourselves, on our right arm.” She chose WAKE from the pile, and put it in place:

A hot gust of air blew towards the campfire and it flared into life, awakening to a satisfying crackle. A gentle, sleepy warmth washed over Ursula, and she smiled to herself in satisfaction, then began putting bones back into the sack.

“I’m a bone poet,” she said. “The bonethieves only ever work towards violence and supremacy. All the bones they steal are only to help them steal more bones. They never think of all the better ways bones can be used.”

“How do you know what to choose?” asked Ann. Willem looked down at her in surprise.

“Well, the contraries must share something to bind the square together but have a tension that will give it power, and the neighbors should resonate in sound or form to amplify it, and the whole has to work to the purpose. I suppose I know what to choose because I know my bones well, what I’ve inherited and what might work.”

“No,” said Ann. “How do you choose what you carve on your own arm?”

“Oh.” Ursula picked a branch up, nudged at the fire with it, re-arranged the piled sticks to get them burning better. She mostly only knocked it over. “That’s… that’s what I want to ask God about.”

“Why?”

Ursula stared into the fire. How to express it? How to encapsulate the paralysis of choice, the fear of choosing wrong, the strange position of not knowing yourself?

“There is power in four,” she said, still staring. “Four bones combine into a poem of purpose. All of them interact and reinforce each other. I have to choose my own fourth rune carefully so that my purpose as a bear is strong. But how can I choose the fourth when only God knows what my third is?”

“So you go to ask,” said Willem.

Ursula nodded, feeling small, shrunken by her uncertainty, so unbearlike. “Choosing your own rune is… is the act of choosing who you want to be. It’s the moment of knowing yourself and defining yourself. Of finding your place in the world. But I don’t know who I am yet. Other bears just seem to know, but me… I try to be what I think other people need me to be, but it feels like everyone wants me to be something different, and every time I think I know which rune I should choose something changes my mind.”

“It is admirable that you worry so much about others,” said Willem. “Perhaps you should worry more about yourself, though. It sounds like this should be about you, not about the world.”

She prodded at the fire again. It felt—strange, to vocalize what had been churning and building in her head for so long. Stranger yet to be telling it to a badger cub. She looked up to smile at Ann, not a calming smile, but a real smile, a vulnerable smile, a—

Patrick had raised his stick, and was looking past Ursula. She turned, frowning, staring into the gloom of dusk that swam through the trees. There wasn’t—no, a glint—eyes reflecting flame—then a snarl, and Ursula’s fur bristled in alarm, and a sudden gust of icy wind extinguished the fire and knocked the badgers backwards.

Bone magic.

Bonethief.

“Run!” shouted Ursula to the badgers. She scooped up her bonesack and went to run too, but Ann was so small, and ran so slowly, too slowly, and Ursula realized the badgers would never escape.

She dropped her bonesack and began digging through it for bones. She only had to slow the bonethief enough for Patrick and Willem to get Ann underground, then she could run too. She couldn’t risk her bones. The bonethief ran forward on all fours, bones held in his jaws: he was a huge grizzly, bigger than Ursula, his fur matted with green-brown moss and sticky sap.

He pulled up at the sight of her bonesack—not in fear, she didn’t think, but in avarice.

“So,” he growled, low and fearsome, “you’ve been thieving round here for some time.”

Ursula drew herself up tall, her fur raised, trying to make herself seem confident and sure. “I have not. I’m no bonethief.”

“Quite the sack of bones you’ve got there for a bear traveling alone. Or are those little badgers your companions, and not just a snack you’re luring in?”

Ursula risked a glance back at them—Ann had stopped to watch, and was refusing to be pulled away—and it hurt her to worry they might believe him for even a moment. Surely they already knew her better! But she had to seem strong and bearlike now: she couldn’t show any concern for smaller creatures in front of this other bear.

She lifted her snout. “My family has entrusted them to me and my skill. I am a bone poet.” She said this with as much pride as she could in the hopes it would impress the bonethief, forge a connection between them and allow her to talk herself out of this without any conflict.

But it did not. He laughed, a deep roar, a bellow of mirth that shook needles loose from the pines. “A poet? What fresh scat is this?”

His mockery stung, but not just because she’d failed to impress him. No, it stung because she was proud to be a bone poet, she realized. She was proud of the things she could do. She was proud of the connections she could make between bones.

She was proud of the way Ann had looked at her as she explained. She was better than this thief.

“I’m more deserving of these bones than you’ll ever be.” Her voice now was angry, not by choice, not to elicit a response from him, but because she meant it.

The thief grinned back at her, exposing his fangs. “Doesn’t matter if you deserve them. Only matters if you’re strong enough to keep them from me.” His paws moved to his bones, and he began laying out his square.

Not enough time to think, only to react. Ursula grabbed bones from her sack almost without thought, going by touch and instinct, and laid them out in a square:

The soil beneath the bonethief fell away like melting snow and the exposed tree roots started to twist and writhe, a tangle of wood squirming with life. The bear stumbled and fell into the trap, snarling, swiping at the roots as his back legs sunk into the soft ground.

Willem was scrabbling at the earth, burrowing, as Patrick stood before Ann with his stick held out. It’d do no more than scratch the throat of the bonethief as he swallowed. His bravery brought her heart to her throat.

The bonethief roared. “Stupid sow! I’ll take all your bones! I’ll rip yours from your flesh!” He grasped at the roots, hauling himself out of the loose mud.

Ursula rifled through her bones again. She had to do something else to slow him down, so she could—

No. She had to do something to stop him. If he didn’t get her bones, he’d chase someone else’s. He’d eat other small mammals he came across, hurt other travelers. But she was a bone poet, and she could outthink him. She could stop him here.

The bonethief was free of the earth now, arranging his small clutch of stolen bones to send another blast of icy wind; she could see the runes from here, WIND and WILD and STRONG and ICE. She chose her bones with more care, though no less speed:

Her square burst with light, and even knowing it was coming it was all Ursula could do to shield her eyes, positioning herself to protect the badgers. The bonethief was less prepared—staring greedily at Ursula, at her bonesack—and the full flash of light blinded him. He yelped in agony, in surprise, as the sight was burned from his eyes. If she had done enough he would no longer be able to read the runes on bones. She doubted he could recognize them by touch.

But he, too, had finished his square: and he was closer to her this time, and the blast of wind gusted hard. With her paws raised to shield her eyes from her own blast, Ursula was unbalanced, and she was knocked backwards, down the slope, all her bones scattering in the chill wind, and she rolled and fell towards the river and into the river and knocked her head and—

* * *

Icy water splashed at Ursula’s snout. Slapped at it, even. She stirred, groggily, and opened her eyes to a salmon flopping on her face. She swiped at it unthinkingly, knocking it away, then groaned as she realized how hungry she was.

With an effort, she hauled herself from the river and shook the water from her fur. In the dim light of dusk it was difficult to tell how exactly far she had fallen down the mountain, but the ground around her sloped only gently, covered in tall grass and meadow flowers closed for the night.

She was as far from God as she had ever been, and she no longer had her bones. She no longer had her friends—oh, she hoped Patrick and Willem and Ann had gotten away! Surely they were small enough and quick enough to avoid a blinded bear?—and she was not sure she had hope, either. It had taken days to ascend the mountain before, when she had her bones to intuit the way and catch leaping salmon and all the other little helps her poems gave her. Could she do it again now? What if another bonethief found her? Even without her bonesack to steal, she could be killed for her own bones.

But what else? Go home, and never know who she was? Never know who she should be? Could be?

Ursula pulled herself to her paws, cold muscles rasping, and dragged herself up the slope.

Walking on all fours in her exhaustion, her head bowed, the sun long set, Ursula trudged through the forest, stumbling wearily into alders and birches, knocking some over with a creaking, snapping shock of sound, loud in the silence of the night, stirring birds from their sleep in a panic. She fell into an atavistic trance: cold, hungry, determined, focused only on the ascent, forgetting even why she climbed, lost wholly in her drive to get higher, higher, higher.

So it was that she became aware of the light only slowly.

The color of it was the first thing she noticed. It was too blue for dawn. As she lifted her head to look closer, she saw the strangeness of the shadows—flickering, oddly angled, moving with each tired step like a broken branch swaying in the wind.

And she looked up at last, and saw a sleek black bear walking beside her, smaller, lither, and glowing gently.

“Hello Ursula,” said God. “Would you like something to eat?” God gestured towards a clearing, where three salmon hung by a small, crackling fire that could not have been there a moment before. Had the clearing even been there?

Ursula lumbered forward and fell onto her haunches by the fire, snatching one of the salmon with a swipe and chewing it in silence, still lost in her animal exhaustion. God busied herself with the trees as Ursula ate, shaping branches with a touch and humming softly as she did, new leaves sprouting where her claws danced.

“Have I—” said Ursula, once she had eaten, warmed, returned to herself—”have I walked so long I am at the top?” She looked about at the trees, but they were still broad-leafed, of the low slopes.

God smiled up at a rowan; she reinvigorated one final branch with an upwards stroke, stretching on her hind legs, then sat down before Ursula. She exuded—contentment.

“No,” she said, her voice high and clear like birdsong at dawn. “I am rarely at the top. It’s so desolate up there, beautiful as it is. The point of the mountain is only to see how determined pilgrims are. Patrick and Willem could never have ascended above the snowline, but they climbed so far on such small legs. If they had that devotion in them, if they were so driven by love, then Ann could do no better than their care.”

Ursula’s throat tightened in fear for the badgers. “Did they—are they—”

“Yes,” said God, “they are fine. You did enough. Thank you.”

Tension flooded out of Ursula like meltwater. The thought had weighed heavy, but—but they were well. She hoped they would be happy together.

“I believe, by the way,” said God, “that these are yours.” She reached behind where she was sat—where there had been nothing but grass and fallen twigs a moment before—and produced Ursula’s bonesack, clearly full.

Ursula lurched forward with a gasp, snatching the bag quite before she could comprehend the rudeness of what she had done, and to whom she had done it.

“There are,” said God, “a few more bones in there than before. You will be a better keeper for them, I think.”

Ursula’s breath caught in a sudden clench of nervousness, and she lowered the bag. So long spent climbing the slope, anticipating this moment, and now she couldn’t get her words in order. There was so much to say, such an entwined web of emotion and expectation and duty and hope and thought and fear that she couldn’t possibly order it anymore, couldn’t untangle it to find the starting thread, couldn’t do more than hold the whole concept of what she needed in her head at once, complete and connected and indivisible.

But she had come all this way, and perhaps if she just started. “About bones—”

“I know,” said God. “Of course I know.” And she smiled again, and stood up and walked over and hugged Ursula tight. Her glow expanded to surround them both, and the contentment too.

She spoke in Ursula’s ear. “The rune on your breastbone doesn’t matter. You can complete your own poem without knowing. You don’t need to know who you are to choose who you want to be. You don’t need to let other people’s choices in your past define your future. It doesn’t matter what I wrote when I made you in the swirling potential of the Before, when the path to your existence and that rune was laid in the What Nexts—it only matters what you feel now.”

“But I need to finish the poem of my bones! If I don’t choose the right rune to complete the four, to complement the three I’ve got, my purpose won’t be as strong as it could be!”

“Ursula, you are not a poem, you are a bear,” God admonished. “You do not have to be a purpose—you are the purpose. You are who you are, not what you can offer.”

God released Ursula, held her shoulders in her paws, smiled at her through brimming tears and a face filled with pride. “The words you have on your bones already were only meant to get you this far, when you could decide for yourself whom you wanted to be.”

Ursula choked back a sob, but the dam burst anyway, and she cried into God’s shoulder. With relief, with possibility. With acceptance.

God held her there a long while, as the sun rose and the earth warmed and the flowers opened to the sky.

“What do you think you will choose, then?” asked God. “I will help carve it, as an honor to you, and as thanks for saving the badgers.”

Ursula looked at her bonesack, and thought of all the poems waiting in there, all the combinations and implications and things that could be. And now, with the new bones, there were so many more possibilities, so much still to see and learn. So much still unknown.

“I don’t know,” said Ursula. “I don’t know at all, yet.”

And for the first time, that answer gave her contentment.

 

* * *

Originally published in Sword and Sonnet.

About the Author

Matt Dovey is very tall, very English, and most likely drinking a cup of tea right now. He has a scar on his arm where his parents carved a rune into his humerus: apparently it was BISCUIT, and yes he would like another digestive, thank you for asking. He now lives in a quiet market town in rural England with his wife and three children, and still struggles to express his delight in this wonderful arrangement.

His surname rhymes with “Dopey” but any other similarities to the dwarf are purely coincidental. He has fiction out and forthcoming all over the place; you can keep up with it at mattdovey.com, or find him time-wasting on Twitter as @mattdoveywriter.

by Lucia Iglesias

“…most families have a fossil or two protruding from the stone walls of their parlors. Often framed, pressed under a pane, long-dead cephalopods in glass coffins.”

I stepped into the bath. The stone floor sloped, a gentle helix, spiraling me into the steaming pool. Water beaded the cavern walls, as if the entire bathing cave were strung with pearls. Stepping through veils of steam, I spiraled deeper into the pool.

At the center, I was waist-deep. As water seeped into my pelt, I felt like a lodestone, water drawn to me like iron filings, turning my fur black and dragging at my edges. Sinking in, I found the sloping path with my fingertips and sat on its rim, water right up to my chin. Steam hung above the pool in gossamer sheets, so thick I could only see one pool beyond mine.

I closed my eyes and rested my head on the slick stone, letting the water creep between the hairs on the back of my neck. The smell of sulfur was thick in my throat, the smell of silver and geysers and fire in the belly of the earth.

I was hungry. I had been hungry for six days. Nothing made it go away. Mushroom steaks, lichen cakes, chicory coffee by the potful, even a fine filet of chanterelle. There wasn’t a delicacy in the entire cave city that would still my stomach. I kept catching myself daydreaming about his fingers.

* * *

Grettir has starfish fingers. I once told him so when we were out tickling amethyst anemones in the tidepools of the subterranean sea. He didn’t like it, but it’s true. He has heavy hands, fingers long and tapered, golden skin that’s always dry. Hairless. When I take his hands in mine, he flinches, tickled by the thick fur bristling round my fingerpads.

Cunning starfish fingers. Out at the tidepools, I used to collect specimens for him to sketch: a bucket brimming with ivory barnacles, indolent snails, indigo mussels, prickly limpets, spindly sea stars, and anemones balled up like angry fists. In his sketches: every spine and armored shell realized in hard charcoal. Every line, every shadow, every highlight alive. I have never seen Grettir throw away a sketch. He doesn’t throw away so much as a line. Every stroke is heavy with intention.

* * *

To distract myself, I dipped my face in the quicksilver water, watching the ripples melt lazily away as I shook sparklets from my eyelashes. Underwater, I ran my fingers down my arms, combing out the fur with my fingernails. Then I did my legs, my belly, my back. It felt good to get my fingers in my fur, combing through the knots. Sometimes it feels like I’m a sack of skin stitched too tight to my bones. Hot water and a good combing can loosen the seams.

I rubbed my back against the stone for a good scratch and felt my fur catch. When I cursed and wrenched away, I felt several hairs ripping from my skin. With my fingers, I traced back over the place and found a spine rippling the smooth stone. A fossil. A helix of lithified bone. Ammonite.

* * *

All he’s been sketching lately: spiraling shells locked in stone. Not uncommon in the cave city—most families have a fossil or two protruding from the stone walls of their parlors. Often framed, pressed under a pane, long-dead cephalopods in glass coffins. But Grettir likes the undomesticated specimens: ammonite on alley walls, or in the southern subcaverns still untouched by urban sprawl.

I watch his cunning fingers speak the specimens to life in charcoal and light. A language only he speaks—language of lines, loops, ellipses, sickle moons, sweet ratios—a symphony in black and white.

He gives his nub of charcoal to me so he can brush his hands clean and hold the picture up to the light. He angles it so the rays skating down a nearby sky-shaft skim softly over the page. It’s perfect. The ammonite on the page: alive in light and shadow. The ammonite on the wall: dead. Entombed in echoing stone. He holds the drawing out to me, fingers fanning off the page until he holds it between pinky and thumb.

“For you,” he says, his voice settling like dust on the cavern hush.

* * *

I pushed off the wall and stood up. Fed by springs boiling up through the earth’s veins, the pools never cooled, and I could already feel a film of sweat hot on my forehead. My stomach growled.

Angrily, I shook the water from my pelt, spinning so the spray pinwheeled out around me. I clamped my hands over my belly, crushing it silent, even as static electricity spooked the hairs around my fingerpads. The fur on my stomach stood up, dark spindles shivering in the steam.

This six-day-old hunger.

* * *

“For you,” he says again, holding out the picture to me. “You’ve had a hard week.”

I look down at my left hand, the half-healed crescent where my sister bit down to the bone. Six days tender. Red ridges wrinkling my fur. It’s hard looking after her, half-grown but all wild, nothing like I was at that age. As if the bear in our blood weren’t thinned with human, as if our forebear bore her, not our six-generations-great grandmother.

My sister, with her white pelt and our father’s blue-black eyes. All I want is to gather her up in my arms and tell her sister-secrets. But whenever I try, she shakes me off and paces the edges of the parlor. She hasn’t been allowed out since the biting.

“Trade you,” Grettir says, nodding at the nub of charcoal sticking out of my right hand. He holds the drawing out so that they almost touch, the charcoal and his index finger. That cunning finger, long and tapered, skin thin and golden, blue veins pale and fine as candyfloss beneath the surface.

I bow my head over our hands—his extended finger, the charcoal stick, thick and crisp—as if for a kiss.

I can’t help myself.

I take a bite.

 

* * *

About the Author

Lucia Iglesias holds a B.A. from Brown University and is pursuing her MFA in Fiction at the University of Kansas. Home is Oakland or Iceland, depending on the time of year, and she is a friend of cats everywhere. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Shimmer, Liquid Imagination, Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, The Bronzeville Bee, and other publications.

by Stella B. James

“Four years have passed now, and no one has come to claim her. I doubt anyone would believe a little girl has survived in these mountains within the dragon’s lair.”

From the mouth of my cave, I can see the destruction; thick pillars of smoke, almost black in color. I can hear the cries of many people, men and women alike. The villages are being pillaged, the castle under siege. I lay my head back down with a snort and close my eyes. Those silly humans have nothing better to do than allow their greed to consume them.

I hear her panting before I can spot her, and a man warning her to fall back. They are more foolish than the humans down below. Who would dare enter my dwelling? I haven’t bothered them in decades, why do they test me? I sit up on my haunches and give myself a shake, my wings spreading out behind me.

An aged woman falls to her knees at the mouth of the cave, clutching something to her chest. A man follows, a soldier from the look of his bloodied armor. I eye them with curiosity. It doesn’t seem like they have come to challenge me. But they couldn’t expect to seek refuge here either. What could have made them desperate enough to climb my mountain?

“Dragon.” The woman gasps out the word, her breathing still labored, but it isn’t spoken out of fear. No, it almost sounds like a plea. I straighten and glare down at her, letting a small stream of smoke dispel from my nostrils. She bows her head as the man wrenches her back to him, his hands clasping at her shoulders.

“It isn’t safe here,” he warns in a harsh whisper. I shake my head and chuckle in amusement. It isn’t safe anywhere at the moment.

“I have come to ask you a favor!” the woman cries out to me, ignoring her male companion. I cock my head to the side. Now this is interesting. I’ve been demanded my riches, my magic, even my death. But never asked. I nod my head once and she continues, “The princess is all that has survived. You must protect her. She’ll be our last hope.”

My eyes survey the mouth of the cave, but I see no woman, or girl. I’m not sure how old this princess is supposed to be. The woman seems to understand my confusion. With outstretched arms, she places a bundled up cloth in between us. I eye it for a moment, and then glance back at the woman. I’m tempted to set her on fire for whatever trick she is trying to play. But then the bundle moves.

It wriggles this way and that until a little hand snakes out. The cloth falls away, revealing a tiny face and wide eyes the color of emeralds. The princess is but an infant. Smooth skin, soft flesh, and dark, wispy curls. How am I to protect such a scrawny creature? She has no fur to warm her, no scales or teeth to defend her. She doesn’t even have wings to make her grand escapes.

The woman takes in my wide eyed caution and bows her head again with a barely audible please escaping her. I glance back down at the little creature, who simply waves her hands in the air as spit bubbles raspberry out of her mouth. With a grimace, I move my head down to inspect closer. The woman falls back on her bottom, the soldier having left her to jump in front of the swaddled youngling.

“You won’t harm her!” he shrieks, brandishing his sword. I snarl down at him, letting him have a good look at my pointed teeth.

“Do others know you are here?” My voice comes out on a growl, and he takes a step back. The woman moves in front of him and shakes her head.

“No one saw us. I’m sure of it.” Her hands clasp together in front of her, offering me her silent prayers. I close my eyes and sigh out in defeat.

“Flee from here and never return. I will keep the princess safe.”

The soldier casts a worried glance towards the princess, and then back to me.

“And if they come for her?”

“They would be foolish to come here. But if such an event were to occur, I’d make sure they’d learn not to make the same mistake twice.”

He nods his head at my answer and takes the woman by the hand. She allows him to drag her away, but before they are out of sight, she turns her wary eyes to me.

“Her name is Esmerelda.”

They disappear and that is when the tiny being decides to cry. I scrunch my eyes and flatten my ears best I can. I scoop her up in one claw and bring her closer. Her crying stops once she spots me, and her eyes shimmer with the remaining unshed tears. Her eyes are more beautiful than any jewel in my possession.

She wriggles herself free of the blankets and falls onto all fours. I snort in amusement as I watch her crawl in her clumsy way, much like a newborn dragon would. I don’t know anything about humans or the way they grow. I know their hatred, their greed, and their violence. I know their screams, their terror, and their taste. But she is none of those things. She is still pure.

Her green eyes take me in, and she gurgles out some made up language I can’t understand before her face breaks out into a smile. She reaches out to touch me, and I bring my snout close to her hand. My little princess is brave, that or completely foolish. Perhaps a little of both, but only time will tell.

“Oh, Esmerelda, what have I gotten myself into?”

* * *

She does this nearly every day. Her fingers grasp the lower branches, her feet find the rounded knobs. She pulls and pushes, grunts and gasps. She is getting faster now, her hands and feet having memorized the way. Her favorite branch sits thick and proud, swooping down where it meets the trunk.

She sits on the branch and scoots herself sideways toward the middle. I pretend to busy myself with my inner musings, but I’m aware of her every movement. Once she finds that perfect flat space of the branch, she moves to a crouch, and spreads her arms.

I hear her whisper, a small promise under her breath. I can do this. And in one swift movement, she pushes off from the branch. Her body sails into the air before bringing her back down. She doesn’t have the sense to scream. My brave little fool fears nothing. I stretch out my wing to catch her, and she rolls into my side.

She grips my scales and climbs up to my back, her hands and feet having memorized this as well. She climbs to the top of my head and peeks over until her head is level with my eye. She bares her teeth at me and growls. I let loose my own growl, but she simply sticks her tongue out and slides down my snout. She balances herself on the very end, her legs dangling on either side, and sets her chin on my scales.

“When will I fly?” Another daily habit. Oh, how she wishes to fly. She loves my wings. Even after I have set her in the furs of her bed, I will wake up to find her curled up in the soft leather of my wings.

“When you grow wings.”

She sighs, a small pout forming. “And when will that happen?”

“Maybe never. Not all dragons have wings.”

She sits up, steadying herself by leaning forward on her small hands. “You said the same thing about scales and fire breathing.”

I chuckle softly. She is quite inquisitive. “And it’s true.”

She slumps back down, the disappointment evident in her expression. “I make for a lousy dragon.”

“You’re the most beautiful there ever was.” And this is the truest statement I’ve ever spoken. Her hair is like midnight, her eyes shine in their emerald glory, and her spirit is wild and stubborn. She is more dragon than I at times. And she is mine. For the moment, my mind whispers.

Four years have passed now, and no one has come to claim her. I doubt anyone would believe a little girl has survived in these mountains within the dragon’s lair. I don’t know if anyone would recognize her for who she truly is. Or that she would recognize them as one of her kind. I dread the day when she stumbles into the world of humans.

* * *

It takes her another three years before she accepts that she is indeed a different kind of dragon. One devoid of scales, wings, and breath of fire. She is no less fierce for it. She lets her nails grow long to have claws like me. She grinds flowers and berries into clay, smearing the concoction along her face and arms to match my coloring. She bares her teeth and growls when angry. Her temper is as hot as the fire that flows from my mouth.

She wears the pelts of animals I have killed as her dinner. She still cannot bring herself to kill them, though she knows we rely on them for sustenance. Neither the wild nor the dragon she has grown to know could ever erase the purity of her soul. Her secret sweet loving nature only I am privileged to witness.

Her imagination has grown wild these days. She discovered the castle in the distance for the first time this morning. “What is that?” she asks, pointing to her true home.

“It’s called a castle.”

“Like the place in your stories?” I nod my head, turning back for the cave. She sprawls out on my back, her eyes studying the clouds above us. “Does a princess live there, like in the stories?”

The hope in her voice stills my heart. Do I tell her the truth?  “I wouldn’t know, Esme.” Yes, I am a true coward. But she is still too young, I tell myself. It makes me feel a little better.

“Maybe we should check. She might need saving.”

I sigh out and shake my head at her as if she has exasperated me. “She wouldn’t want us to save her.”

“Why not? We’re plenty strong.”

We stop at the mouth of the cave and I feel her slide off my back. She walks around to face me, her fists planted on her hips.

“And we’re dragons. Humans fear dragons. Humans save other humans.”

“Well, can’t dragons save humans too?”

“If there is a dire need to,” I say. She nods once at this, seeming pleased, and strolls into the cave. She makes me proud, and I find myself murmuring aloud, “Sometimes, we can even love them.”

* * *

The year passed by in a blur, but Esme’s curiosity only grew. I had ingrained in her the dangers humans could pose since she had come to me. Oh, but my stubborn little fool just can’t help herself at this traveling party that passes near our mountain. They are not from these lands if they brave coming this close to my lair.

Esme has seen plenty horses in her eight years of life, but never the tamed ones. She watches them, fascination in her eyes as they pass by in a steady trot. She ducks down further at the voices of the men, and I am relieved she has heeded my warnings. She looks bored until the party stops, and a woman steps out of the coach.

The woman is dressed in fine clothes, her dress a dark scarlet. Her hair is pinned up, but she takes this moment to let it down. Esme touches her own hair, her fingers barely able to pass through the snarled ends. The woman laughs, and it sounds like a rain shower of small bells. I am also almost as enchanted by this woman as Esme seems to be.

The woman speaks to the men a moment longer before climbing back into the coach. They crowd together, passing some type of drink between them, before setting off once more. Esme stays hidden in the grass long after they have left. I notice her restlessness later that night, and the way her hand constantly strokes over her wild tangles.

* * *

The tree she once tried to fly from is now her quiet place, the place where she daydreams. She stares at the castle and imagines what lays behind those magnificent walls. If only she knew that she is of that castle, having been born behind those very walls. I haven’t the heart to tell her the truth of what dwells there now. Knowledge of an enemy king who cut down her family would dash her fairy tale musings.

She demands to know more about humans, especially the ones we saw. “What is the one with the long fur called?”

I stall, not wanting to reveal the truth to her, but I am also her only teacher. I cannot lie. “That was a woman. A human female.”

“I have long fur on my head.”

I nod my head and watch her as she weaves flowers together in a sort of crown. If only she knew of the true crown that awaits her. “Because you are also a female.”

Her fingers continue working the small stems, bending and twisting. Her eyebrows furrow together as she mulls over my words. “And she did not have scales.” I let out a noncommittal sound of agreement. “Or wings.”

“And?”

She looks up at me, her emeralds sparking with their realization. “She is just like me.” The words cut through me. She has finally realized what she truly is. Will she learn to fear me now?

My next question weighs heavy on my tongue, but I must ask. “Do you think you’re human too?” She smiles as she holds up her completed crown, and I lower my head to the ground. She places it on the tip of my ear and stands back to admire her handiwork.

“No, I think you were wrong. She is just another pitiful dragon, like me.” The relief is overwhelming, and a small guilty part of me knows I should correct her. But perhaps she doesn’t wish to be human. Her soul is wholly dragon. I nuzzle her cheek and close my eyes.

“No, Esme, you are truly one of a kind.”

* * *

Esme ventured closer to the castle as she neared her ninth year of life. She became bolder in her investigations. She still believes she is a dragon, but humans are her newest obsession. She studies them from afar, as she doesn’t trust them yet. I hope she never trusts them.

* * *

She was picking berries the day they found her. The men shouted to one another, about the wildling they stumbled across. They asked her name. She answered honestly. Her greatest teacher forgot to teach her the value of a lie. It didn’t take long for them to put the pieces together. The lost princess, they gasped. I wish I could say I was there to witness this, but I only found out through hushed rumors.

Her shrieking is what alerted me. My Esme never cried out in fear. My heart pounded, the fire in my chest raged, and I charged down the mountain. But they had her on horseback, galloping away, and if I attacked them, she would perish with them. I would have to bide my time.

* * *

They have her placed in the tallest tower. I peek into her window, the moonlight aiding me in spotting her. Her skin is a creamy white, her hair smooth as it fans out against her pillow. She looks just like the princesses I told her about. She has found her rightful place.

I turn to leave her, knowing that despite the heartache it will cause me, this is what is best for her. But she somehow spots me in the darkness. I hear her sniffles and turn around. She leans out as far as she can to touch me, and I place my snout close to her hand, just as when we first met.

“They washed away my scales,” she whimpers out.

“The smoothness suits you.”

She holds her hands out and hangs her head. “They cut my claws.”

“You won’t need to fight here.”

She looks back up at me, and fists a chunk of her hair. “They tamed my fur.”

I can’t help the chuckle that escapes me. My insistent little fool. “Then make it wild again.”

Her hands fall in front of her, her fists clenched into tiny balls. “I look like the humans.”

My heart stalls, then thunders in my ears. It is time. She must know the truth, and I’d rather her hear it from me. “That, my child, is because you are one.” The tears that stream down her face are silent and slow. They glisten in the moonlight, leaving fresh paths along her cleaned cheeks.

“Did you steal me?” The fear in those words break my heart. Does she think I am evil? Have the humans already filled her head?

“I saved you.”

She raises her knee, as if to climb out of the window. I back away, but it doesn’t stop her. With both knees on the ledge, her hands grasping at the sides of her window, she pleads, “Then save me again. I want to go home.” She will be the death of me.

“Esme, this is your home.” I nuzzle her cheek before whipping away into the night.

She calls out to me in the darkness, but I don’t turn back. As much as I want to tear off the top of that tower and scoop her up, I know I can’t. It is like the old woman said. She very well may be the kingdom’s last hope.

* * *

Nine years have passed. Nine long, lonely years. I tried to leave this place, to make a new home for myself. But what if, I ask myself, what if Esme comes back? No, this is home until the day she takes her last breath. I haven’t seen her since our last goodbye at the castle. I wonder what she looks like now.

I’ve heard stories, stories of her beauty and her strength. I’ve heard grumblings of her stubborn nature and her refusal to stay indoors. I’ve heard the whispers, of her obsession with dragons and wildflowers. I often sit by her tree and stare at her castle. It doesn’t sound like she has changed one bit, but there is nothing to indicate that she misses me. Has she forgotten me?

“Dragon!” I hear a female’s voice bellow out, echoing against the walls of my cave. It sounds angry and fierce. No one has risked challenging me in a long time. What woman would dare come here? Unless…

A tall, lithe woman, clad in armor meets me in the middle of my cave. Her hair sways behind her like a thick inky waterfall as she marches closer to me. She takes in the interior, her eyes studying the walls and the markings Esme long ago carved in as a child. Eyes that flash with their emerald glint. Esme.

“Why have you come, dressed as a warrior?”

“I have come to kill you!” It comes out as a roar, much like mine when in battle.

“Is that so?” I am goading her, but I long to hear more of her voice.

“Yes. My Coronation Day is next week, and if I am to prove to be a reliable ruler, I must slay you.” Her voice is nothing like the woman we saw on the road when she was merely eight. No soft tinkling sound for my little one. Her voice comes out in a raspy hard edge, commanding and strong.

It appears the kingdom wishes to rid itself of its resident dragon. I wonder, what threat I could possibly pose these days? I’d never attack the castle now that Esme resides there. Or perhaps they fear I’ll come back for her. “Is that what they told you?”

“Yes.”

I tap my claw on the floor, as if deep in thought, and smirk as her eyes study the movement. I wonder if she misses her own claws, or even remembers them. “Wouldn’t your blood alone prove you a reliable ruler?”

She huffs out, and I imagine real smoke would come out if she were as dragon as she once believed herself to be. She thrusts her sword in my face, her eyes glaring up into mine. I rest my chin on the ground and huff back, letting the warm steam wash over her.

Her eyes narrow, and her head tilts slightly. “Tell me, dragon, do I know you?” My heart sinks as her question confirms my worst fears. She doesn’t remember. Do I look that different? She hasn’t changed. Still so full of questions.

“Do you?”

“I’ve dreamt of you. I made you flower crowns and rode your back. I curled up to sleep within your wings and kissed your scales.”

I close my eyes, secretly delighting in the memories. Those puny humans couldn’t taint her dragon soul, though I imagined they tried. “Maybe you did know me, once upon a time.” I open my eyes and watch her take in my lair with renewed wonder.

“Why do I feel such hatred for you? I look at you and feel betrayed.” Her eyes glimmer up at me, more beautiful than my memories served.

I nod my head, remembering the way I abandoned her. Of course, she would hate me. “If you hate me, then you should kill me.”

She takes a shuddering breath, the tip of her sword pressing in between my eyes. Her bottom lip trembles, and she stills it with her teeth. “I don’t,” she whispers out, dropping her sword. “Not really. Deep inside, I feel we are one and the same.”

My heart swells. She is still mine, even after all these years. My precious little fool.

“What bothers you?” I ask as a  whimper escapes her.

She hugs herself and shakes her head, her eyes meeting mine. “I’ve only wanted to be fearsome, and I can’t even slay the mighty dragon to prove my worth.”

I straighten and bow my head in reverence. “You are the most fearsome being that has ever entered this cave.” And I mean it. Even when she was a wriggling little thing, all swaddled up in blood stained cloth, she scared me.

She sighs and leans on her sword. “I wish I didn’t have to kill you.”

“Do you want to rule the kingdom?”

She shakes her head in denial, not even giving it a second thought.

I nod my head and lift her chin with my claw. “Tell me, Esme, what it is you truly desire.”

She doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t fear me at all, though I could slice her in half if I chose to. Instead, she huffs out in an indignant way and juts out her chin. “You’ll think I’m silly.”

“I promise not to laugh.”

She closes her own eyes now and a sad smile barely lifts the corners of her lips. “I wish to fly. Then I could fly away from here and be free.”

I rumble out my approval and flatten myself to the ground.

“Climb on, my little dragon, and let me be your wings.”

 

* * *

About the Author

Stella B. James is a Southern girl who appreciates strong coffee and losing herself in fantastical daydreams. When she isn’t writing, she can be found reading romance novels of any genre, drinking prosecco while watching whatever she has left over on her DVR, or talking herself out of buying yet another black dress. She has published several short stories with various publications that you can find on her website, www.stellabjames.com. Check out her Instagram @stellabjames, where she shares her writing and inner musings.

Graphic Universe presents Monkey & Robot, a new hardcover graphic novel by Peter Catalanotto. “Monkey and Robot are friends—the best kind. They simply belong together, and it never matters that silly Monkey is furry, or that gentle Robot can rust. What matters is their sharing: movies and popcorn, games of hide-and-seek, a fish tank for… a hippopotamus? Joining the ranks of such noteworthy pairs as Bert and Ernie, Frog and Toad, and Henry and Mudge, Monkey & Robot celebrates friendship in this chapter book of four charming tales that are ideal for young readers.” It’s available now from Simon & Schuster.

image c. 2020 Graphic Universe

A usual roundup, followed by a fun interview with artists Taga and Pobaro.

This episode is sponsored by Twin Tail Creations. Use coupon codes REDWOLF or BLUEFOX to save 15% on silicone products during checkout.

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Link Roundup:

• Sonic film gets good reviews
• 37 furries at ski weekend
• Netflix tweets shirtless Beastars
• Telegram’s twitter is trash
• EU switching off WhatsApp to Signal, then something else…
  • Article 1
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• Awoo comic writer going to FWA
• Jif peanut butter joins Gif debate
• Beastars Legosi voice actor reads a copy pasta
• “Is she knottable” Twitter debacle over Beastars line
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• KQED: A Secret Weapon of the Progressive Left: Furries
• Smithsonian open access
• Buzzfeed: 15 facts about furries
• Patreon terms don’t allow non human depicted sexual content
• Lo-Fi Hip Hop girl finished studying
• Confused driver films ANE
• Sorry you’re a furry from Netflix art
• NYC Sex Museum
• Furries at marti gras

News:

• Baboons on the Loose
• Deer Hit and Run
• Fake 100’s
• One Man Police Department
• Australian man guilty of using cellphone while riding horse because he didn’t have a hands-free device
• Italian man denied Swiss citizenship for not knowing bears and wolves shared enclosure at zoo: reports

[Live] Apple Taurplay

CNN: FBI announces charges

New FBI arrests are putting the heat on Atomwaffen Division. They’re a group with a dream: White supremacy through violent terrorism.

This is the “but not that!” clause you always get from free-speech defenders. Supposedly, neo-nazis just hold opinions you should tolerate, but you never get a good reason why. In truth, if you leave them alone they WILL hurt people. This group is tied to 5 murders.

Now add hundreds of swatting incidents, as announced by the FBI. “Swatting” is a terror tactic of falsely reporting a crisis to send a SWAT team crashing through a victim’s door. It gets people shot by mistake. Their international conspiracy targeted a US Cabinet official under Secret Service protection, journalists who reported about hate groups, and a vape shop. They did it for power, revenge, and a day off from school. (Really).

Doing terrorism to avoid homework sounds like the plot of a whole comedy movie about racist boneheads. For now, laugh at the dopes with me, a cartoon dog.

They’re more evil than geniuses, but they know furries reject nazis. They know tough guys fear being yiffed into oblivion with a Furry Apocalypse. They’re the type raised on easily-abused tech platforms with a mix of moldy old bigotry, ironic memes, and anime. Of course they know nazifurs. FBI evidence confirms it.

Breaking: Former Atomwaffen Division leader arrested for swatting conspiracy. Click below for court docs. @FBIWFO https://t.co/Ej1siMwAYo

— U.S. Attorney EDVA (@EDVAnews) February 26, 2020

The Atomwaffen Division leader was John Cameron Denton, alias “Rape”. (That’s con-badge-ready.) He’s a Texas man who took control after the 2017 arrest of founder Brandon Russell. Denton made propaganda art to spread fear, and it looks effective to gain recruits — if your life goals involve joining a prison gang, and you’re OK with art criticism in the form of a shiv in your liver.

In 2018, Denton’s Atomwaffen propaganda showed up in a Dogpatch Press report. There was an event in New Jersey being infested with nazifurs, and they spread it to target a black furry for harassment. Why? He asked them to grow up. Really. (The story was taken down to let some people move away from hate.)

Nazifurs threatened me for the story. Meanwhile a major reveal by ProPublica led to Atomwaffen Division swatting their office and a writer’s home. There was no sign of deeper ties at the time, but new evidence puts nazifur activity right inside the conspiracy.

fella got some judges and journalists, too, was picking his victims from Shodan so he could watch the cops do the actual swatting and share it with his friends and co-conspirators on a secret internet nazi IRC channel called #.graveyard

— Neural Culture (@neuralculture) February 26, 2020

Inside the Atomwaffen Division swatting conspiracy chat logs.

IRC is old chat tech but still active. Some neo-nazis favor it with a belief that young antifascists won’t be familiar with it and they can stay obscure without censorship. It’s also insecure so usernames can be stolen, or channels taken over if one server goes down. A techie fur I consulted called it a terrible idea.

IRC logs appear in the FBI document as excerpts without mentioning furry at all — so let me point out where it is!

The swatting IRC logs are from November and December, 2018. At least 7 members are in it. Two of the most active were from outside the US.

Leader John Denton (“Rape”) was led to IRC by someone named “Lion”. There he used voice conferencing (Mumble) to avoid leaving written documents. (It’s a practice in Nazifur activity too, like when Foxler organized a chat group to do false hotel room booking to ruin a con.)

Two members discuss getting a fursona for Denton (“Rape”) as a snow leopard. As the group propaganda artist, he would know furry art. (It’s interesting that alt-right figure Milo had one of those, although this was a year before his Midwest Furfest trolling.)

Confirmation of using Furaffinity on 12/7/18.

This was 6 months after the site banned hate group activity. It was 3 weeks after a furry interview with Jello Biafra (who wrote the “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” song they discuss). It was during the week of a video of Jello saying Nazi Furs Fuck Off. They’re in the middle of the furry discourse.

Saevyl may be a sergal or at least he shares an erotic body pillow of one:

Saevyl’s link: Kadd Dakimakura Cover – Adult Naked.

“Cuddle up with the Shigu Army’s tactician and one of Rain’s companions Kadd as featured in Vilous Green Chapter Episode 2: Dark Clouds of the Shigu! Pillow not included, this 160cm pillow cover comes with graphic male Sergal genitalia accurate with the universe!”

Saevyl was invited to swatting conference calls on Mumble, where the sergal link was shared on 11/18/18. Denton was very close to Zheme and used voice to have him pass invites. It was a henchman arrangement that brought nazifur discourse inside.

Zheme also uses Zeem/Zim (probably the cartoon) while Saevyl cites this anime:

“Siege Culture” refers to neo-nazi book author James Mason — who joined them at times on IRC.

Mason is an advisor to Atomwaffen Division, a paramilitary neo-Nazi terrorist organization … During a court case related to Atomwaffen, the prosecutor stated that James Mason “may well represent the most violent, revolutionary and potentially terroristic expression of right-wing extremism current today.” – Wikipedia

Will we learn more about nazifurs mingling with terrorists? It could happen by tracing names published on the FBI’s news release. At the least, this makes an absurd and scary reminder of how deeply furries have saturated into all corners of culture. Keep watch for what might creep inside.

Correction: Denton is one member who works on the art with others as mentioned here.

A TL;DR for those who may still be confused:

The FBI’s court document has chat logs from an IRC channel where AWD organized swatting. The FBI doesn’t talk about the furry parts, so this article points them out, with extra comments about how most furries oppose nazis.

Denton, leader of AWD, used a member “Zheme” to invite others in to avoid leaving written evidence. Zheme invited Saevyl. They discussed furry art, furries mobilizing against nazis, Denton’s awareness of it, and wishing nazifurs could get tolerated. Saevyl linked furry porn (a body pillow.)

They are familiar enough with furry activity to be closely connected, like wanting snow leopard fursona art for Denton and using Furaffinity, the 100% furry art website. They rub shoulders with nazifurs and Saevyl probably is one.

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, please follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon. Want to get involved? Share news on these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for anything — or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. 

The other day I stepped outside the elevator to find one standing just outside, peering through the windows. I could see the poor creature was in distress, trying to comprehend what was happening. I tapped the glass to get its attention. The poor thing immediately reached for its reality escape device! (I think they call them “phones”.)

I wanted to learn more about humans, so I went outside and followed it. A few streets away the creature entered a building. Inside it were hundreds of humans sitting in tiny square rooms with big screens in front of them. Then it hit me. This must be the natural habitat of these mysterious creatures! I immediately understood why they always look as if they’ve discovered a distant land when they see us. These poor beings live their life in captivity. What struck with me most is that they seem completely fine with it. It makes me wonder what they could achieve if we freed them.

 

 

Article by Rythm as published in NordicFuzzCon’s “What the Fuzz?!” 2020, Issue #4

The entry Humans, The Strangest of Creatures appears first in FurryFandom.Es.

full vids here! - https://www.vimeo.com/draggetshow Xander, Draggor & Pepper Coyote watch & react to the ninth democratic debate! for all things Dragget Show -- www.draggetshow.com support us on Patreon! -- www.patreon.com/draggetshow all of our audio podcasts at @the-dragget-show You can also find us on iTunes & wherever you find podcasts! Dragget Show telegram chat: telegram.me/draggetshow Furries Watch Dem Debate #10: w/ Pepper Coyote, Xander the Blue & Draggor! - full vids here! - https://www.vimeo.com/draggetsh…

Boldly Going Forward is a charity anthology benefiting the ALS Association. Recently released by Goal Publications, it features stories from eight authors all surrounding space and exploring the great unknown. Full Disclosure: I am one of the authors featured in this book. However, I will not be letting any bias get in the way of my reviews, nor will I be offering much more than a synopsis for the story I wrote in order to be fair.Now without further ado, let’s talk about the stories and then get into what kind of reader this book would be a good fit for.Somewhere Over The Ocean - Mary E. LowdOnce again Mary shows off her prowess when exploring a sci-fi universe. This story shows a world where all life lives underwater getting its first visitors from space. It is brief but powerful prose; a perfect story to start the anthology.For The Greater Good - TJ Minde A classic case of a holodeck, in this case called the Sim, is what sparks this story to life. It’s fun to see a sci-fi story still get to take place in somewhat of a medieval setting through use of the Sim. It also was an interesting examination of what the world might be like with that kind of technology.This was definitely a good read, watch out for a twist ending!Shooting For The Star - SofoxCan you imagine searching for a new planet to call your home? What if you had volunteered for the task without any real choice in the matter? If you lived on a comfortable starship your entire life, would you actually want to leave? Sofox’s story takes a look at all of these questions as a generation ship is finally to the most important part of its mission. Being able to tackle so many themes in such a strong manner, all of it in a short story no less, is quite impressive! It’s always wonderful to see a story packing so many emotions and deep thoughts to consider within its pages. A New Star - Linnea CappsWe’ve all seen stories of aliens invading Earth, but what happens when the humans are the invaders? This story looks at what happens to the tribes of cats inhabiting a planet and the different ways they adjust to these new invaders.It wouldn’t be fair for me to rate my own story as I obviously quite enjoy it, but I hope anyone that picks up the anthology enjoys reading it as much as I did writing it!The First Stand - Jaden DrakusCould you potentially wage literal war against the one you love? This story looks at Colt, one of the last pilots possibly available after a massive surprise attack against their space station. There’s a serious possibility the only reason he was among the surviving crew was a strange mission they were sent on before the attack, potentially arranged by his boyfriend who’s fighting for the other side.This story does a fantastic job of putting you into the cockpit for a thrilling space battle all while Colt has to tackle some very tough emotional decisions. Overall a strong story that was a joy to read!The Dunes of Henereth - Thomas “Faux” SteeleWhat happens when a war hero lives so long no one even remembers to pay their pension? Ilex, an immortal, still needs to eat even if he’s lived more years than most can count as he finds himself in a desert to make enough credits so he can return to the colder home he desires. Getting to learn bits and pieces about the sentient life living on this planet and seeing how Ilex is able to discover more than the corporate backed soldiers before him have is an interesting ride with a satisfying, but slightly abrupt ending. Distress Signal - Nenekiri BookwyrmA clockwork dragon sent on a mission through the stars? It’s not as unlikely as you think. This story follows Rimor as he tries to save the doctor that saved his life after a major accident years ago. While we don’t really learn details about the accident itself, we do see how it affects his current life through isolation and an inability to do things he was once able in the past.I can say for certain the end surprised me in a very pleasant way. This was a fun read, and I would love to see more adventures like Rimor’s across the written cosmos. Fastest Route - Sonriah ThaiseImagine racing through space on a ship so fast the g-forces could literally knock you out. Now imagine piloting that ship with a noisy politician as your cargo, trying to get him to an important meeting. This is what Amaka is set to do in this story.The story, while short, manages to cover a lot of what must be a complicated political battle going on in the universe while delivering a great story. An excellent way to finish off the anthology.---Of course this book already gets my recommendation for its profits being for a cause worthy enough to support all on its own. However, the stories more than make for a good purchase either way. This anthology is good for any fans of sci-fi that like the idea of exploring several different cultures and what exploration means to them. This anthology will leave your imagination drifting through the cosmos in the best of ways.

Today we chat to Erkhyan, a fur all the way from Madagascar. We talk about Malagasy culture and the world's perception of Madagascar as a country. Follow Erkhyan on Twitter! https://twitter.com/Erkhyan Find his work here! https://www.furaffinity.net/user/erkhyan/ and https://www.furaffinity.net/user/darhan Find us on Twitter: @South-Afrifur, https://twitter.com/southafrifur, on Tumblr, http://south-afrifur.tumblr.com/, and on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/southafrifur Also, for more local news, check out the Zafur forums! http://forum.zafur.co.za/

2017's "Night in the Woods" shows us a furry mirror of our current economy, with barriers to work, crumbling infrastructure and small minded small towns. How do you stop a cult of capitalists? Feed them to their god. The thumbnail art was generously provided by Toxoglossa: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/toxoglossa Music by ShojinPa https://shojinpa.bandcamp.com/releases Doodles by: Kaylyn Gerenz https://kaylyngerenz.weebly.com/past-work Merch, Sweet Tees and stuff: http://www.culturallyfd.com https://teespring.com/stores/culturally-fd-merchandise Support Culturally F'd: https://www.patreon.com/culturallyfd Plus a Newsletter: http://tinyurl.com/gsz8us7 Listen in on TEMPO TALKS with Tempe O'Kun https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIPk-itLl1jPyIK2c7mK-LpbvfDNqfcSW Check out Tempe O'Kun's books "Sixes Wild" and "Windfall" here: http://furplanet.com/shop/?affillink=YOUTU2907 Here's a playlist of his other Culturally F'd videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIPk-itLl1jPS7tnT4hdJwBI-CeLF8Kb_

The 2020 American election year has a high-stakes power struggle. But The Worst Year Ever podcast isn’t just staying in the studio to report about it. They’re going out in real life to visit as many different groups as possible and show solidarity. They even got up close and personal with furries!

This must-hear podcast comes from Robert, Katy, and Cody (who also do Some More News, Behind The Bastards and more, with over 340,000 Twitter followers lumped together.) They make top quality media backed by research, wit, and dedication to truth. That’s how the fandom was introduced here.

Until now, outsiders have seen glimpses of a furry fandom struggle with far-right groups. It ties to happenings around the country. But few have gone all the way down our rabbithole to learn unique background that no mainstream media has covered. I had never heard some of this.

How The Furries Fought The Nazis and Won — by The Worst Year Ever

• Part 1 — A look at the background of nazifurs and the Midwest Furfest 2014 chemical attack. (47 minutes)
• Part 2 — Fandom responses, a big shoutout to Dogpatch Press at 4:00, and a visit to MFF 2019. (36 minutes)

It’s more than fluffy cheerful stuff every member knows or the drama of one conflict. It goes deeper into what the fandom means to members and why they’re so protective about it. It shows what “furry politics” even means: a disregarded subculture on the fringes defining how it runs on its own terms. Now many outsiders can say they never knew it before, but they’re allies.

Speaking of mingling politics, outsiders and furries…

Sen. Bernie Sanders is in Richmond today rallying supporters to turn their ballots in as soon as possible.

"Furries 4 Bernie" seen outside, before the event
(@nananastia / KQED) pic.twitter.com/p46SLzkm3w

— KQED News (@KQEDnews) February 17, 2020

The rally was in my neighborhood and that’s my fursuit. KQED is my local public radio (as in, not ad or ratings driven.) The reporter who took the photo was astonished about all the animal-people sharing it. That led to a 90 minute interview a few days later.

Skaifox art: Bearnie Sanders

Over coffee, we talked about furries and political organizing. Not about “furry political opinions” so much as talking about how furry is a grassroots subculture that makes its own media and organizes without outside investment.

There was a comparison to how the punk or rave scene has power to bring people out, help raise awareness or register them to vote. Punkvoter was active for organizing punk fans during the Bush II years. Rave people have a group called Space Cat Voters, “a loose-knit outfit promoting democratic participation and a progressive slate of candidates and causes on the local and state levels.”

Those help voters get registered. But do furries even do that? And why not? If health issues get attention at cons, this seems like a great opportunity to reach inactive young people. Mere registering can’t be accused of bias.

The story by KQED’s reporter will come out soon, in print for ahead of the March 3 Super Tuesday primaries. Meanwhile, how about fursuit canvassing? Let people get cute photos and tell them about healthcare policy!

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, please follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon. Want to get involved? Share news on these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for anything — or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. 

A chill roundup followed by a discussion about NFC’s fursuiting policy after the break. Normally only our Patrons get the post-show recording but we’re making an exception and left it in this episode because it included many call-ins relating to the NFC topic. Thanks so much everyone!

Download MP3

Link Roundup:

• Behind the scenes update video of our studio
• Cuddling is good for you who knew
• Half Life Alyx Release Date
• Anthrocon hosting student art competition
• Your Dentist can tell if you sucked a dick
• FA back up after a DDOS
• Awesome fursuit music video
• Beastars almost on Netflix!
  • Collider Article
  • Benjamin’s Tweet
  • Anime News Network Article
  • Netflix Tweet
• Twitch streamer dude gets kicked out of NFC
• Staples is opening podcast studios
• Boy Scouts files for bankruptcy protection
• More red wolves!
• Parody news website’s article about hunters with furries
• Murrsuiters on Valentine’s Day episode of Extreme Love
• @atta_boy writes about a photoshoot his fursuit was in
  • Tweet 1
  • Tweet 2
• Telegram updates
• Trump asked a lot of questions about badgers
• News article about Fur-Tha-More
• Shoutout to Marks Barks for raising money for ALS
• Live Action Lilo and Stitch announced
• Sinkhole near AC is still around
  • Article 1
  • Article 2
• Peta beats up a car with bad fursuits

[Live] Furginity Lost

It’s February, and in honor of Black History Month we would like to feature some of the black authors that are members of the Furry Writers’ Guild. Today we’ll be sharing an interview done with PJ Wolf! He’s soon to be featured in the NSFW anthology “Give Yourself A Hand” and has written many other stories. Without further ado, let’s get to the interview.

—

FWG: Tell the guild and our readers a bit about yourself.

PJ Wolf: Ah, hello everyone! I’m PJ Wolf and I’m actually a bit nervous to be doing this because, well, impostor syndrome is real and I’m dealing with it right now. Moving on, I’ve been in the fandom for a while, and have been toying around with ideas in various formats and hoping to put out a novel at some point. I don’t exactly know when or if I’ll get there, but until then, the words do demand I write them. And so I shall.

FWG: What is your favorite work that you have written?

PJ Wolf: I think it’s actually a tie between Secret and Swap Meat, both of which can be found on my SoFurry and FA pages. Secret because I know I absolutely nailed the character voice for the main character and narrator of the story, and he was so fun to inhabit, and Swap Meat because that story got me into RAWR (which was a fantastic experience that if you have the ability and wherewithal to go to, I highly recommend it) and also I took a negative reaction to something and made it into what I think is a pretty solid story.

FWG: What do you think makes a good story?

PJ Wolf: Characters. Characters, characters, characters. A half-done character will probably ruin a story for me, a character that’s a blank slate doesn’t have me intrigued.

FWG: How long have you been in the guild, and what changes have you seen with regards to how writing is handled since joining?

PJ Wolf: I don’t know! It has been a while and I honestly forget how long it’s been since I’ve joined. But if we’re talking in general, it’s been extremely gratifying to have such a helpful community that is writing-focused and also incredibly interested in helping out one another get better.

FWG: What does Black History mean to you?

PJ Wolf: I think it means perseverance in the face of great odds. My ancestors were rounded up from Africa, put onto crowded ships where some died due to starvation and disease, and sold off as slaves. And even though they lost their individual cultural history, they created one with one another in similar straits. Black accomplishment is often defined by what folks have had to overcome in order to be seen as people, and just about every Black child has heard their parents tell them that they have to work twice as hard for half the credit. Even so, Black folks have indelibly put their mark on history, and recognizing the specific achievements of Black folks this month, I hope, leads to our society being more whole.

FWG: Do you feel that your Blackness has affected your writing?

PJ Wolf: Yes, in ways great and small, in ways that I may not even be fully aware of. We all take ourselves into our creative works, since they are a method of self expression, and I think some of the stories that I want to tell are absolutely affected by my being Black.

FWG: Do you feel like the issues that affect the outside world affect your writing within the fandom or not?

PJ Wolf: I would be hard pressed to find a way that it wouldn’t.

FWG: Do you have favorite Black authors and has their literature affected your writing in the fandom?

PJ Wolf: I’m ashamed to say no, I don’t have a favorite Black author. If it’s one area of fiction that I’ve been neglecting, it’s that put out by Black writers.

FWG: If you could convince everyone to read a single book, what would it be?

PJ Wolf: Kismet, by Watts Martin. The world feels so alive, and particularly the politics in it. A (to my eyes) libertarian dystopia where if you don’t like the rules where you live, you can (assuming you have the money, natch) move somewhere else down a system of space borne platforms called the River that is supported by the openly more progressive and sustaining Ceres Ring that provides the water everybody else uses to live on? I would hate to live there, but I have read that book several times over and love it every time. I even actively hate one of the supporting characters’ political philosophies but I count it as a point in Kismet’s favor because it’s so fully developed.

FWG: Any last words for our readers and guild members?

PJ Wolf: It’s okay to not write everyday. But nor should you allow yourself to only write during ideal conditions. Sometimes you gotta force things, and even one word is one more word toward your goal, regardless of whether that word survives edits.

—

You can find PJ Wolf’s writing on both his SoFurry page and Fur Affinity page. He can also be followed on Twitter @pyrostinger. 

We hope you found this interview exciting and informative as we hope to feature more black authors this month! If you are a black member of the Furry Writers’ Guild and would like to be featured, please contact our public relations officer here. Until next time, may your words flow like water.

Tri-Galactic Trek features ten short stories that are re-imaginings of a certain episodic science fiction television franchise. The diverse furry crew of the Initiative travels though space on scientific and diplomatic missions, seeking out first contact with new species and opportunities to explore and advance their own knowledge of their universe. Now all their adventures are collected into a single volume for the reader’s enjoyment. Lowd’s Tri-Galactic Trek is equal parts love story to the original material and wildly original interpretation through a fully furry lens. It is an homage, both faithfully recognizable and delightfully original, and should appeal to any furry scifi reader, but most especially to those who are fans of the original material. Somehow each character is clearly identifiable and yet brilliantly translated into a furry counterpart. The plots are familiar and yet creatively shifted so as to be new and exciting, and the whole world has a unified, fully developed feeling that makes it a solid, independent entity in its own right. Though all the stories/episodes are well written and beautifully translated, a few that really stood out as spectacular to me were: "Fact and Myth," "Rapscallions," and "Encounter at Hoppalong." All the stories are expertly threaded together, referencing one another just enough to give continuity and a sense of a longer timeline. The only quibble I had with the whole collection was the story "Mewly" which felt incomplete and more like an opening scene than a full episode. Though the story’s resolution is mentioned in a later installment, the abrupt ending was jarring enough that I would have liked it to be its own complete episode. I highly recommend Tri-Galactic Trek to any furry reader, any fan of science fiction or of Lowd’s other works, but most especially to all the furry trekkies out there, for whom I believe this book is an absolute must read.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Hb7AVLzvg&t=1557s Xander, Draggor & Pepper Coyote watch & react to the ninth democratic debate! for all things Dragget Show -- www.draggetshow.com support us on Patreon! -- www.patreon.com/draggetshow all of our audio podcasts at @the-dragget-show You can also find us on iTunes & wherever you find podcasts! Dragget Show telegram chat: telegram.me/draggetshow Furries Watch Dem Debate #9: SLUGFEST!! The Roast Of Bloomberg - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Hb7AVLzvg&t=155…

for all things Dragget Show -- www.draggetshow.com support us on Patreon! -- www.patreon.com/thedraggetshow all of our audio podcasts at @the-dragget-show You can also find us on iTunes & wherever you find podcasts! Dragget Show telegram chat: telegram.me/draggetshow #228 Fur Squared 2020 LIVE! - Chris's Dog With Mayo - for all things Dragget Show -- www.draggetshow.co…