Feed aggregator

FABP E2 Kofu Snippet 1 ---- Throwback! Two years ago, we interviewed @kofukitty and asked him about his experience in the Taiwanese and American furry fandoms. Check out our episode 2 to hear more! FABP E2: https://youtu.be/5lUg3_tqykU ---- #shorts #snippet

Swinging things back to the realm of “real-world animals” we have Do Not Pet: How To Become A Service Dog, a new one-shot comic from writer Joe Biel and illustrator Gerta Oparaku. “Ruby, a service dog who gave author Joe Biel mobility, health, and companionship through the most difficult years of their life, had many things to learn during her humble beginnings. This comic details the process for training a medical alert service dog, as well as other types of service dogs, the responsibility of their handlers for these lessons, and how these incredible dogs learn their skills.” This full-color comic is available now from Microcosm Publishing, and they have a preview too.

image c. 2022 Microcosm Publishing

Description: 2022 Wrap Up! Life Abroad and the Future of the Pod [FABP E27] ---- So we’re finally here. The end of 2022. As of this writing, we have 258 subs and over 11 K views on YouTube and 172 followers on Twitter. We’ve seen real and steady growth of this project ever since its inception in December 2020. And neither of us plan on stopping anytime soon. In this episode, Burger and I talked about updates in our lives, cons we’ve been to this year, and the future of the podcast. We hope you guys will enjoy the last FABP episode of 2022. Merry Christmas and happy New Year! ---- Timestamps: 00:00 Teaser 00:27 Intro 01:15 Reflecting on 2 years of podcasting 03:59 Podcast states 05:09 Burger’s updates 12:17 Michael’s updates 18:47 Furcon report: Kaohsiung Tea Party 23:40 Furcon report: FurMiT 26:55 Furcon report: Infurnity 39:36 Burger's favorite podcast moment in 2022 43:22 Michael's favorite podcast moment in 2022 47:32 Future plans and changes 53:32 Thank you guys!!! 55:38 Social Media Shoutout 57:45 Outro ---- Social Media: Our official Twitter: https://twitter.com/foxandburger Michael: https://twitter.com/foxnakh https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK9xoFQrxFTNPMjmXfUg2cg Burger: https://twitter.com/L1ghtningRunnerhttp://www.youtube.com/c/LightningRunner ---- Footage Credit: Other pictures and video provided by Pixabay and hosts' personal footage. Intro/Outro Music: Aioli by Andrew Langdon. ---- The Fox and Burger Podcast is one segment of our production house, Fox and Burger Productions. The podcast’s goal is twofold: 1, to know more about the Asian furry fandom; and 2, compare and contrast the Asian fandom with the Western one. If you have a guest that you would like to see on the show, please PM us! We will also take questions for our guests, so don’t miss this opportunity to know some amazing furs.

　　由PCD疊加小組所主辦的第二屆Furmily 獸迷力—夕陽的厚禮，於2022年12月17日，在新竹老爺酒店四樓會議廳舉辦。本次活動是主辦方首次與飯店業者合作，並且比第一屆起來，開放參與人數上限至150位，讓沒能參加到第一屆的獸迷們可以有機會參與。

　　本屆除了邀請人氣毛毛丹波做開場表演外，也安排山羊騎士為主講的講座、交換禮物、名片交流與祈願卡等，讓參加者可以輕鬆與他人互動。相較於獸無限、以茶會毛等大型活動，獸迷力以「家」為核心，同時保持著「悠閒交友、敘舊，以及可以輕鬆上手體驗的活動」的性質，不希望參加者要一直趕場跑眾多講座和活動，也讓許多參加者表示獸迷力的活動規劃上讓人放鬆愜意。

活動報到處。圖／藍風

官方活動的宣傳毛毛與開場主持人——薄荷糖。圖／藍風

由丹波進行活動開場。圖／藍風

現場熱情的獸迷與毛毛互動。圖／藍風

活動現場也提供主題攝影棚讓毛毛們可以拍照。圖／藍風

　　根據了解，主辦方本次會選擇以飯店為活動空間，主要是希望能找到讓參加者可以在優閒舒適的環境與高度親切感的氛圍下進行，在諸多挑選後便選擇新竹老爺酒店作為本次的活動場地。至於在2021年因疫情取消的活動與本次場地不同，主辦方表示因為2021年選擇的場地桃園翰品酒店因故不再營業，因此才換至本次的活動場地。

名片交流區可以彼此交流自己獨特的名片。圖／藍風

由山羊騎士主講《用攝影的觀點穿毛》的講座。圖／藍風

現場提供祈願卡讓獸迷們可以寫上自己的心願。圖／藍風

由於活動靠近聖誕節，故舉辦交換禮物活動讓獸迷們來一起同樂送幸福。圖／藍風

　　主辦方表示，本次活動實際到場人數共153人，當中有參加大合照的毛毛總共為69位，登錄參與本次活動的毛毛則高達80位。同時活動方也提供製作毛裝的工作室可以展示在官網上的機會，也提供想要擁有毛裝卻不知道如何開始的獸迷們，一個可以近距離與這些工作者們交流的機會。

本次共有69位毛毛參加大合照。圖／獸迷力官方提供

　　對於本次活動因為考量到活動品質有人數上限，有獸迷對於無法報名參加表示可惜，主辦方表示會再討論後規劃增加參加人數的可能性。在本次閉幕上也預告將在2023年12月辦理第三屆活動，主題為聖光的召喚，歡迎大家來一同共襄盛舉。

Merry Christmas! Recently we stumbled across a new Internet star known as Tito Lizzardo, an animated lizard singer who pals around with a sexy feline dancer named Catty Baby (aka Catty B). Virtual Humans (a site we also just discovered!) has this to say about them: “Tito is a lizard that likes to dress in his school jacket. Catty Baby is a cat that rocks her sporty looks every day. Their TikTok account is exploding with the couple’s dance moves next to the beach and the palm trees in Miami. Tito and Catty are a couple of artists doing remixes of famous Latin songs like ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ or ‘Hey DJ’. Their gang is completed with Juan Gato, Catty’s brother who is always wearing a Miami Heat shirt. All together they create amazing videos of their song remixes, targeting very young audiences with their cute, animalistic appeal.” Tito and crew first appeared in a series of short, at times rather risque dance videos on TikTok. Since then, they’ve released several much-more-family-friendly music videos on their YouTube channel. Who’s behind all this? We don’t know! But we’d love to meet them!

Image c. 2022 Tito Lizzardo

We’ll admit it: We don’t recall this artist. But maybe we should learn more! And now we can, thanks to The Sergio Toppi Gallery: Bestiary. “This collection of artwork from European comics master Sergio Toppi focuses on illustrations of beasts both real and imaginary, presented in Toppi’s inimitable pen-and-ink style. Sergio Toppi’s work has been hailed as an influence by such artistic masters as Sean Gordon Murphy and Walter Simonson.” Magnetic Press has preview pages for this hardcover edition. [And with that, we wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and a Blessed Solstice Season!]

image c. 2022 Magnetic Press

MOOBARKFLUFF! Click here to send us a comment or message about the show!

Moobarkfluff!  Taebyn tells us about why leaves change colors. Bearly give us a lesson in Geopolitics. We make some This or That choices. Bearly reads a new Christmas Story about Aliens. We tell bad jokes….so basically a regular episode! Join us, won't you for some obscure learning and a lot of fun! Moobarkfluff!

Merch at Redbubble

Merch at Bonfire

Support the show

Thanks to all our listeners and to our staff: Bearly Normal, Rayne Raccoon, Taebyn, Cheetaro, TickTock, and Ziggy the Meme Weasel.

You can send us a message on Telegram at BFFT Chat, or via email at: bearlyfurcasting@gmail.com

Bearly Furcasting S3E35 - Trees, History, and Mayhem!

The enduring bond of pets and humans is showcased in this new one-shot comic from It’s Alive. “Writer John Holland, along with artist Hernan Gonzalez, delivers a moving love letter to dogs in A Girl and Her Dog. Evie is ‘the girl’ and Max is ‘her dog’. In time-tossed bits and pieces, we see her life from age 15 to 84. Max is there for all the important moments of her life, even after his life has ended. Don’t miss this life-affirming tale, which speaks to the power of love, even in the face of death.” It’s available now in stores.

image c. 2022 It’s Alive

马来西亚兽展 FurUM 成功举行2022年活动

时隔三年，兽迷们在滨海湾金沙参加新加坡动漫展

Another artist we met at MidWest FurFest was Mal Hodgkin. They describe themselves and their work like this: “I like to create work of mostly animals and creatures and make them all the wrong colors! I’m inspired by psychedelic/70’s art, animation, old world illustration, and tattoo design.” You can definitely see those influences on their web site! What’s more, you can take home the results on t-shirts, hats, patches, and other goodies available through their Etsy store.

image c. 2022 by Mal Hodgkin

TigerTails Radio Season 14 Episode 22. Join the Discord Chat: https://discord.gg/SQ5QuRf For a full preview of events and for previous episodes, please visit http://www.tigertailsradio.co.uk. See website for full breakdown of song credits, which is usually updated shortly after the show. If you like what we do and wish to throw some pennies our way to support us, please consider sending a little tip our way. https://streamlabs.com/tigertailsradio/tip * Please note, tips are made to support TigerTails Radio and are assumed as made with good faith, so are therefore non-refundable. Thank you for your support and understanding.

Welcome to Issue 16 of Zooscape!

Pain, survival, and love.  These are cornerstones of life, art, and yes, furry art.  Because furry art and fiction is, at the heart, no different from any other art or fiction.  It’s beauty that humans create to try to reckon and wrestle with the harshness of the universe.  Furry art just happens to dress up in a fancy fur coat with tails and ears, or maybe a shimmering cloak of scales, or even butterfly wings.  But beneath those squishy edges, the heart beats the same.

* * *

Death is the Referee by Katlina Sommerberg

Where Does It Hurt? by Amy Clare Fontaine

The Power of Volcanic Love by Carol Scheina

The Reunion by Kristen Hornung

The Pine Lesson by Ian Madison Keller

The Huli Jing of Chinatown by Wen Wen Yang

Funnel Dresses by Priya Sridhar

Entanglement Solved by Stephen R. Loftus-Mercer

* * *

If you want to learn more about the nature of furry fiction — if reading our stories hasn’t given you a clear enough picture, and you want it spelled out for you plainly — check out this essay by our editor in our sister magazine, Deep Sky Anchor:

* * *

Furry Fiction: The Squishy Edges and the Heart by Mary E. Lowd

* * *

And as always, if you want to support Zooscape, check out our Patreon.

by Stephen R. Loftus-Mercer

“Because each arm hosts an independent brain, I had to go on separate dates to win over each tentacle.”

“Follow me to the lab! I have something to show you!”

That giddiness, the light in those two over-large eyes, the quivering of all eight arms… I’d seen my lover like this only twice before. One of those inventions led to a Nobel prize; the other sold for life-changing money to a venture capital firm. I walked behind on my two legs, admiring the way my lover’s eight limbs pulled along, each independent yet in synch with the others. Our house included handholds everywhere, one of many accommodations for a joint human-cephalopod household.

As much as I loved the excited “come see what I built,” I dreaded the frequent depression that followed when the invention didn’t quite work, but I had learned early to endure difficulties in my relationship. Simply dating a cephalopod requires patience. Because each arm hosts an independent brain, I had to go on separate dates to win over each tentacle. It took three months before tentacle Delta (my lover’s naming scheme) finally decided I was better as a mate than as food and stopped trying to pull me into the chewing cavity.

Walking behind my lover now, I smiled, remembering that first night when we lay tangled in each other’s arms. We might still be there, blissed out, if my weight hadn’t cut off the blood flow to tentacle Theta and made it go numb. Cuddling on a couch is hard enough for two humans, with someone’s arm frequently pinned down wrong, but throw some extra limbs into the mix and pain is virtually certain every time. Ah, the things we do for love! All the numb arms are made up for by the shared time together – which this trip to the lab was clearly intended to be.

“Behold!”

I beheld… a couch. A two-human loveseat, to be precise. Microfiber with armrests at both ends. The couch itself was red, but the seat cushions were blue (left) and green (right) — each one 0xFF of its respective color, as if a kindergartener armed with only the primary color markers had drawn it. “What does it do?”

“It does not do anything. We are going to do something to it. Or, rather, on it.” Cephalopods do not have eyebrows, but the left eye ridge performed a reasonable facsimile thereof. “Look beside the couch. What do you see?”

“Um… pillows? All sorts of different shapes and solid colors. Honestly, babe, if you’re wanting to replace our current couch, this is a bit garish.”

“Don’t pass judgement yet. Now, I’ve had the computer running analysis for two weeks, and it has generated a list of instructions. I’m going to start it reading the instructions aloud, and you and I will follow along. Got it?”

My mother warned me when I got into this relationship: “Genius leads to madness,” she said. She said the eccentricities would build up and get me killed. There had indeed been some close calls with some of the inventions.

But that giddiness — I could not ever say no to those eyes. And, really, pillows seemed safe enough. “Ok. I’ll play your game.”

“Great! Computer, please play Couch Instruction Set nine seven two.”

The speakers played a dramatic fanfare chord and then settled into some calming flowing water overlaid with some light jazz. “Human, please remove your shoes and stand on the blue seat cushion.”

“Stand on the couch?”

“Just do what it says. Trust me!”

“Fine. There. Now what?”

“Computer, next instruction.”

“Cephalopod, please hand the yellow wedge pillow to the human.”

“Human, please place the yellow wedge between your legs.”

“Cephalopod, please place arm Alpha lengthwise on the back of the couch. Then place the cyan round pillow upright between the blue and green seat cushions.”

“Human, please lean right and arch over the cyan pillow.”

It went on like this for several minutes: move a body part, add a pillow. I whispered to my lover, “It’s like some advanced game of Twister. And I don’t know where this is headed, but if we get much more tangled, maybe I should’ve started with fewer clothes?”

Chuckling. “Patience. You’ll understand in a moment.”

The computer intoned: “End of instructions.”

Now we were at rest with just the music playing in the background, my two arms and two legs threaded through my love’s eight appendages amid a nest of pillows. Our heads rested together such that we could whisper sweet nothings in each other’s ears. It was truly comfortable, and I lay there just basking in that wonderful sensation of being totally enveloped by another being.

After a couple minutes: “Do you notice anything?”

“Other than your breathing, and that little stroking thing Beta is doing on my ear? Not really.”

“How’s the blood flow in your arms? Any numbness?”

“It’s… oh!” I gasped. “You’ve done it! I thought you said the multiple parametric equations were too complex to be solved in our lifetimes?”

“I found a shortcut — a revolution in mathematical knot theory. And the shortcut doesn’t just help us. My program analyzes any species pairing and produces the necessary instruction set. Couples just have to supply the pillows.”

I snuggled closer. “This is your best invention yet.”

We rested there for hours on that amazing couch, dreaming our future together, all without either one of us losing feeling in any appendages. My lover had cracked the ancient problem. At long last, all couples would be able to cuddle without pain! Love wins!

 

* * *

About the Author

Stephen R. Loftus-Mercer is a computer scientist and writer based in Austin, TX. His stories have appeared previously in Analog Magazine. He may be contacted on Twitter @AristosM. Stephen wishes all new couples to know that they can stop scouring the Kama Sutra for answers because the secret your parents never told you really is “better pillows strategically placed”!

by Wen Wen Yang

“When they’d first built into the Wilderness, the humans had pasted wards across every threshold, stopping weaker spirits from entering the city.”

The legend is only partially true. I had already hidden away my fox-skin, already decided on Jack when he saw me naked in my human-skin. I am not the huli jing from San Francisco, whose fox-skin was stolen by a human man. One newspaper called it devotion that she returned nightly to her husband. She was devoted to her fox-skin as one is devoted to one’s hands.

Fox spirits capture the low hanging fruit. When these men come upon a naked woman in the wilderness, they would not hesitate to lie naked with her. I had hunted in Central Park but the police had started to notice the missing men.

Some spirits had lived in the Wilderness when it became Chinatown. When humans carved their way into the forest and turned trees into their homes, we determined some use for their village.

Some of us can walk upright and sit in human-skin for hours in service to those who cannot. I had learned to tolerate the confining sensation and the dizziness from having only two connections to the ground. My mother wanted us to pass as human, though she later moved into the Wilderness to be closer to her family.

I spoke unaccented English, staring at the mouths of the humans on the television and mimicking their movements. I brushed my hair into tight braids that looked nothing like a bushy tail.

I helped those in our apartment building who could not walk as humans. Madam Snake is too old to hunt rabbits. The ghosts want new clothes but cannot wait until the new year.

Jack knew me from the market. I admired his wide shoulders, his long sinewy arms as he unloaded his truck and set up his stall in the mornings. He has a hawk’s nose but when I asked how the view was from up there, he only laughed. I belatedly realized he thought I was joking about his height.

He opened my jars and inhaled the scents before deciding which to buy. I told him where I gathered the herbs and how I brewed the ointments for aching muscles.

I learned that he worked his land alone, that he considered it his because his grandfather had passed it down. I wondered if he knew how lucky he was that his grandfather had been able to buy land without intermediaries to sign contracts. He was never startled awake with the sound of gunfire from neighbors.

I did not tell him that the land before his grandfather’s time belonged to everyone, not just humans. The Wilderness that surrounded his farm was precious now, worth millions for its location to the city. It was one of the few places I could roam without my human-skin.

When they’d first built into the Wilderness, the humans had pasted wards across every threshold, stopping weaker spirits from entering the city. Some were weak or forgeries. Another fox spirit in our building, Raina, makes them for tourists and companies. But others were authentic, stronger than the signs of “No animals allowed.”

Walking under the new wards felt like my bones were trying to erupt from my skin. Shamans had blessed these papers, but the magic came from the ink, made from the burnt bones of spirits.

I had given Raina a small sample of my fox hair for her brushes, in exchange for training my stamina against the strongest wards. It took months before I could walk through her wards without crying out in pain.

Another resident, Joro, walked underneath it and said it made her exoskeleton itch. Her glamour shimmered and you could almost see the markings on her abdomen underneath.

I learned to unclench my fists and teeth, to speak without a hint of distress. Eventually, I could walk into any store or restaurant and be served.

“I want to help,” I told Raina one night when the news showed private schools putting wards at their entrances. I couldn’t imagine a child trying to learn while the wards’ magic whipped and burned them.

She returned the brush made with my hairs and gave me a pot of ink. I did not ask her what she had used to make the ink, but I knew others in the building had given up a piece of themselves too. Nightly, I walked our city wearing a glamour Joro had created and added a stroke to render the wards’ magic impotent.

One vengeful ghost had escaped the cemetery’s wards, crossed the bridge and chased her husband out the window of their apartment. The humans thought grief had driven him to leap from the same window and land in the courtyard where they had found his wife’s broken body.

* * *

One spring day, I noticed a bandage around Jack’s wrist. Could he not smell the infection? I asked how he had hurt himself. He had been placing barbed wire around his property. “A coyote got to the chickens.”

I wondered if the pup was injured.

I offered a bit of honey balm. He accepted it, and I watched him discard his bloody bandage.

My mother had taught us to bring our bandages home, to burn them on the stove.

I smeared the honey balm onto his wound, wrapped his hand with clean gauze.

He joked that if he knew he could get my attention with a scratch, he would have hurt himself earlier. I imitated a succubus’s laughter. That evening, as we closed our stalls, he came and asked me to dinner. We exchanged numbers, and I suggested he should try again next week.

Raina was grinding her inks that evening in the basement laundry room and fuming when I told her I had turned him down.

“You call him right now. I can wash the bottles myself.” She had her empty bottles soaking in the sink beside me.

“I don’t know if I want him yet.” I was washing my new jars, then her bottles. If I washed her bottles first, the jars would be tinged with ink and my creams would be murky.

She tested the ink with a clean brush on scrap paper. “Cheap gray ink,” she muttered and continued to grind.

“Who is that for?”

She shrugged. “Came in through the website, fireproofing. As long as it isn’t dragonfire, mine should work.”

“Aren’t there fire resistant stuff?”

“Some like science, some like magic.” She chuckled. “It’s better than the one that asked for a love potion.”

I grimaced, wrinkling my nose. “What did you give them?”

“A bottle of colored saltwater to sprinkle whenever they were kind to someone else. I told them it attracts love to them.”

Many footsteps cascaded down the stairs. Joro in her white silk robe nodded to us as she gathered her laundry from the clothesline hanging overhead. In the building, she didn’t wear the glamour that made her appear human, hiding her extra legs and eyes.

“Joro,” Raina sang her name. “Tell Miss Picky here how you decide on your next human.”

Joro smiled and said in a husky voice, “If they’re there, I want them.” One elegant eyebrow rose. “You aren’t mating for life, my dear.”

* * *

For dinner, Jack selected a vegetarian restaurant. Across the street, I saw another restaurant with taxidermied heads of wolves and lions at the entrance.

When he asked about my family, I did not tell him about the family who lived in the Wilderness. I had blended in so well, no one had asked to see my papers to prove my residence. I knew mothers who lost children to trophy hunters.

He laughed with me when I told him my mother didn’t use my own creams. Instead, she asked me to buy her a particular face cream and send it to her because no stores near her stocked it. I didn’t mention she was a smuggler for those who wanted what the city offered without risking their lives.

He had dreams of a large family, because the world had given him every sign that he would never lose his home. I did not tell him about my cubs, who had thrived in the Wilderness. They had decided to leave the humans behind entirely.

That evening, he walked me home, holding my hand. As we passed the large piles of trash for pickup, he drew me close to him, an arm around my waist. He smelled of my ointment for aching muscles.

I did not invite him into the building. I could see curtains fluttering in the windows. “Nosy neighbors.” I nodded to the first floor. We exchanged a chaste kiss, and I retreated inside.

Joro caught up with me by the time I was on the stairs.

“My dear, those muscular arms, those brooding eyes.” Leave it to the Woman Spider to admire arms and eyes.

“And you wore that!” She tsked. Our resident seamstress always wanted us to be in our best form. Her glamours could make Bigfoot look like a babushka, but her pride was in her clothing which, along with Raina’s faux wards, I sold at my stall. Spider silk, silkworm silk, the humans couldn’t tell the difference.

“If you’d like me to introduce you,” I offered.

“Only once you’re done with him.” She grinned, fangs flashing. “I don’t intend to give him back.”

* * *

Before the next date, I cleaned my apartment of anything that would reveal me. No pictures of family, and I even cleared my internet history of spirit forums.

I had asked the forums if anyone knew of the Wilderness by his farm, and there hadn’t been any attacks on us recently. They didn’t like the barbed wire but it at least wasn’t electrified.

When he texted, I asked him to pick me up. Joro decided she would open the door for him and led him to my apartment. When I opened my door, she was still appreciating his body with her eight eyes behind the glamour.

“Oh, damn, you’re early.” I made myself breathless, flushed. I stepped aside, and he stepped in without a word like a puppet pulled on a string.

Joro winked at me as I shut the door. She had loaned me the robe, white and smooth against my skin. My hair was damp as if I’d just jumped out of the shower. His jaw was still loose, and I wondered if the effect was too much.

“We could stay in,” I managed and he nodded. I’d never seen a man disrobe so quickly. No wonder the Woman Spider never starved for mates and meals.

I remember the strength in his hands. These hands had plastered wards across his stall. These hands had held mine as if he were cradling a hatchling.

Afterwards, he had one arm draped across my body as if we had been lovers for years. Once seduced, would he remove the wards? Would he share his land with the demons who had lived there before his grandfather’s time? Could I invite my mother and friends to visit the space between the Wilderness and the city? Could I introduce him to my cubs?

I heard his phone buzz from his pants. He ignored it, but it buzzed again a few seconds later. Puzzled, he climbed out of the bed and found the phone.

“Sorry, I’m just going to reply.”

“Is it work?” I asked, trying to memorize the strain on his legs, the crease of his spine.

“No, a couple buddies are going on a hunt this weekend.”

Goosebumps erupted across my arms.

“Deer?” I kept my voice light, careless.

“There’s a beast in the forest, luring men with a baby’s cries. They say it’ll eat our hearts and livers. But if we eat it, we will be immune to poison.”

My body went cold.

I muttered something and retrieved my phone from my nightstand. I texted the building a distress signal and put my phone down as he climbed back into bed.

“Are you cold?” He rubbed my arms and the callouses scratched my skin. I burrowed into his warmth, willing my heart to stop pounding.

I should have poisoned his jars.

I acted surprised when someone started knocking on my door a few minutes later. We dressed, and I answered to two small children and a woman.

“Oh my darling, could you watch the little one?” She bounced a toddler on her hip. “The big one’s gotten into the cabinet, and I think he’s swallowed the whole bottle.”

“Of course.” I gathered the toddler from her.

Jack had made it to the door and stopped in his tracks when he saw the child in my arms.

“Oh, you have company!” the mother said and reached for her child. “I don’t want to–”

“Don’t be silly. Go to the doctor.” I smiled, rubbing the toddler’s back. “I’ll be here.”

The mother and her son creaked their way down the stairs.

I had some satisfaction in causing Jack’s loss for words. “Raincheck?”

He looked at his watch and grimaced. “We could still make the fair’s last concert.”

I shook my head. “She might be gone for hours.” I pressed a quick, dismissive kiss to his cheek. “Go. Enjoy the fair.”

* * *

After he left, I removed the toddler’s glamour and tucked a heating pad around the sack of spider’s eggs. I texted Joro, and she returned.

“I hope that was enough,” she said. “Jiao wanted to break a pipe in the basement, but I think they just wanted a swimming pool.”

Joro’s neighbor, a shark person, was able to spin seasilk, and the quality rivaled Joro’s silk. They also had been asking for a swimming pool since the YMCA had put up wards.

“I’m very glad you didn’t flood the basement.” Raina would have had all our heads if her inks and papers were ruined.

Joro pressed one hand to my knee. “Was he such a bad lover, my darling? People that are pretty may not think of another’s pleasure.”

I snorted. “I wouldn’t have asked for an exit plan if it was that.” I held out my phone to the forum page where I’d warned other users of a hunt. “He’s going to hunt fox spirits.”

Joro blinked her many eyes.

“And his surprise second date was going to the fair.”

I had leased a stall once during the yearly fair. Captured spirits headlined a freakshow with wards wrapped around their metal collars. That year’s main attraction was a sky serpent, crashing lightning and fire against the blackened top of the tank. In the next town, audio feedback from a band’s sound check had fractured the glass just enough for the serpent to escape.

Joro seethed. “I should have fed him to my children,” she said, nodding at her bundle of eggs. She squeezed my knee.

“Don’t worry,” I reassured her. “I did not give him my heart and he gave me what I wanted.”

Joro drew me in for a hug. “I’ll see you in six months then? Do you think you’ll be able to come back?”

That morning we had watched the news of bills going through Congress to track everyone passing through to the Wilderness and sending beasts back to “where they came from.”

“I won’t be microchipped like a dog,” Raina had said before leaving to work in her studio.

“I think I’ll stay.” I held Joro’s hand in mine. “Maybe the cub can play with your brood before they leave the nest.”

* * *

After that night, I leased my stall to another vendor, telling the neighbors I needed to care for a sick relative outside of the city. I had no desire for Jack to see my expanding body.

Each day, I smeared every ward on the Lower East Side with ash and pig’s blood. I rode the subway, then the train as far north as they could take me, defacing wards as I went. I crossed paths with demons seeking to eat a holy man for immortality and tree spirits eager to water their roots with human blood.

Through smugglers, I passed a message to my mother, along with gifts for her and my aunts. I gave her several jars of face cream. It had become too dangerous to try to see her, but I reassured her that Joro and Raina treated me like a porcelain doll.

Two new moons later, I had my son.

He has his father’s shoulders, but we share the same fur. His is dark, soft as shadows. I’ve seen him sit in the inbetween-skin, pulling on his fox-skin and watching his reflection in the mirror. His human features melted into pointed ears and a bushy tail.

Jagged tufts of white fur circle his right foreleg. He had wandered out of my sight for a moment in Central Park and a trap caught him. We’d managed to escape before the humans came, but this paw is weaker than the others.

Each trap steals an acre of our safety while the humans hide behind their wards.

In four months, he decides if he wants to venture into the Wilderness or start training to pass as human. Raina and Joro could provide him with convincing papers and glamours, train him to withstand and desecrate the wards.

In four months, I will return to the market.

* * *

The legend would have you believe an invader of our home could seduce a fox spirit into hiding her true nature. In one legend, when he found her fox-skin, she abandoned him and their child.

The legend ends with the human’s forgiveness because the huli jing is his son’s mother. Imagine! She is saved from the hunter’s killing, the taxidermist’s beheading and the furrier’s skinning, because she has given him her child. A child who will never wear their fox-skin and never hunt between the moving shadows of a forest, is that a fox spirit lost without bloodshed?

I do not seek forgiveness.

I dream of walking into the market in human-skin again and tearing the wards down. The panicked humans will gape as the Wilderness sweeps in like a thunderstorm over the horizon. I will find Jack by his scent. My son will meet his father. I will ask him if he would eat his son’s flesh.

 

* * *

About the Author

Wen Wen Yang is a first generation Chinese American, raised in the Bronx, New York. She graduated from Barnard College, Columbia University with a degree in English, Creative Writing. Her work can be found in Fantasy Magazine, the Fit for the Gods anthology and more. Wen Wen currently lives in Texas. She tweets @muteddragon, and updates wenwenwrites.com.

by Ian Madison Keller

“When Espen finished reciting the words to the spell, the sprig fell back to the table, lifeless and looking no different, and Espen sat back with a frown, canting one ear back. He was sure he’d cast the spell properly.”

Espen approached the librarian with trepidation. His hooves clicked softly on the wooden floor, despite his best efforts to walk quietly. The squirrel librarian sat bent over a book behind her desk, her fluffy brown tail curled behind her head, but she looked up and smiled at him as he approached.

“How can I help you?”

Espen ran a hand through his forelock nervously. “I have a question about elementals.”

One of the librarian’s dark eyebrows rose, but she merely nodded her head for him to continue.

“We learned how to speak to them last week in class. I’ve been trying to practice on the elemental I found, but I can’t get it to respond.” With this Espen reached into his bag, pulled out his most prized possession, and set it on the desk in front of her. It was a small sprig of pine of a type not found in his southern homeland of Avoirdupois, which was why he had originally picked it up when he’d stumbled across it as a young colt. He’d immediately felt the magic radiating from it, although he hadn’t had a word for it at the time. In a way it had led him here, leaving home to study magic at Dunwasser College.

The librarian leaned over her desk to peer at the twig, her black nose twitching. After a moment, she sat back up and shook her head. “I’d wager to say it’s not talking to you because it’s not an elemental.”

“It’s not?” Espen stared down at the stick in shock. “Then what is it?”

Her tail jerked and twitched behind her as she thought for a moment. “I’m not sure,” the squirrel woman said finally, “but I have some ideas where you can start looking.” She stood up and gestured for Espen to follow her.

They wove their way through the stacks, only passing one other student, an upper-level fox student in red robes. She was studying fire magic, while Espen’s plain brown robes with the yellow bands indicated he was a first year studying earth magic. Eventually the librarian stopped in front of a large bookcase.

“Here you go,” the squirrel said, gesturing at the books.

Espen stared at the giant bookcase in despair. “All these?”

The librarian shrugged. “’Plant’ is a pretty broad thing to be searching for, without something else to narrow it down. Library closes at dusk. Good luck in your search, young horse.” With that she turned and left.

Espen scanned the titles on the shelves, shaking his head. This was going to take forever. He chose a book, mostly at random, and carried it over to the closest table. He gave up after three pages. The author assumed that the reader had a lot more magical knowledge than Espen had. He returned the book to the shelf and picked another one.

This time instead of picking at random, he carefully read the titles. He found a volume about how to use magic to better grow plants and took it over to the table.

The book’s title had given him a much better idea about how to figure out what his sprig was. He knew grapevines could be regrown from a cutting, so perhaps other plants could be as well. After it was regrown, it would be quicker than a tail snap to identify what it was. It was almost dusk by the time he was ready. He had found a spell in the book that did exactly what he needed, but with his limited knowledge of magic it had taken a while to untangle the spell. As a first-year student, he was only allowed to check out books from the front, beginner-level shelves, or else he would just take this book back to his room to try the spell there.

Espen took the stick out of his pocket and set it on the table. Then he held one hand over the stick, using the other to keep track of his place in the spell, and began repeating the words while channeling his magic out through his palm. The stick jumped, dancing as the magic hit it. When Espen finished reciting the words to the spell, the sprig fell back to the table, lifeless and looking no different, and Espen sat back with a frown, canting one ear back. He was sure he’d cast the spell properly.

Then the stick shivered and began to grow. And grow. Espen let out a little neigh of dismay, snatching the library book from the table and jumping backwards. His chair fell over with a loud clatter. He clutched the book to his chest as he watched the twig, grown enough that it now looked more like a branch. The branch twisted, and more branches began sprouting from it, curving and bending into knots. What looked like eyes made of tree sap formed inside the branches and stared at Espen.

A head-shape began to form from the branches around the eye sockets. The eyes widened and moved apart, and a horse’s long muzzle grew. Ears like his own sprouted from its head, made of leaves and wood. A mane of pine needles sprang up along a neck, stopping at a few inches long, identical to Espen’s short, flat-shaved roached mane. A body began to form from the mass, pushing out from the back of the fake horse head.

Ever so slowly, Espen managed to get his legs working and backed up, away from the branch thing, until his back hit a bookshelf. His nostrils flared and his tail swished, knocking books from the shelves behind him. His instinct was to run, but the branch thing was on the table between him and the only way out.

A moment later, the twisting branches had settled into a shape. A horse identical to Espen now sat on the edge of the table. The mane, tail, and fur of the creature were made of pine needles. Its eyes were amber tree sap. The creature had even made a crude replica of Espen’s school robes from bark. Espen and the creature were staring at each other in shock when the squirrel librarian appeared in the aisle behind the creature.

“What is this racket? This is a library! I’m going to have to ask you to—” The squirrel librarian’s words cut off as the wooden Espen turned its head to look at her. Her mouth dropped open into a gasping ‘O’ of surprise. With a chitter of fear, she turned tail and ran. Her long bushy tail waved like a flag of surrender as she fled back the way she’d come.

Espen’s eyes widened. He began to call out after her, but the creature’s form shuddered and the words died in his throat. The wood creaked softly as the long horse tail became bigger and bushier, and the long horse muzzle shrank away, turning into the shorter, thinner squirrel muzzle. All traces of Espen were gone, and now the thing looked exactly like the squirrel librarian, down to the style of robes, height, and fur-length, albeit made entirely of bark and pine needles.

The wooden monster looked at him with its amber eyes and jumped down from the table. It crouched and then sprang towards Espen with claws outstretched and mouth open to show wicked looking incisors.

Fear made all the spells he’d been learning fly from his head, and muscle memory took over. Still clutching the book to his chest, Espen turned his torso and lifted a leg sideways. He snapped his leg out in a kick, and his hoof caught the wooden squirrel square in the chest. The creature flew backwards, landing on its back, but it used the momentum to roll under the table before springing to its feet on the other side. It turned around and made a very squirrel-like leap to the top of the closest bookshelf. Then it was gone, running away across the top of the shelves.

This was it. He was going to get kicked out. He couldn’t go home; his parents had vehemently opposed him studying magic, and he’d had to run away in order to attend Dunwasser. He knew there was no way his parents would let him come back.

By the time Espen found the strength to move, the creature was long gone. He wandered the aisles for a few moments, trying to catch sight of it, but the spaces between the ceiling and the bookshelves was cast in shadow by the low table lamps. When he returned to the front lobby area, he realized he was still clutching the book about growing plants with magic. He ducked back behind a shelf, out of sight of the squirrel librarian who was frantically talking to a furred sumatran rhino professor. Espen stuffed the book in his school bag. He knew it was against the rules, but he needed to study the book and figure out what had gone wrong with his spell.

That done, he walked into the lobby. The squirrel’s little ears still swiveled in his direction before he’d made four steps into the room. She turned to face him, pointing at him with an accusatory finger. Espen stopped, hanging his head with guilt.

“That’s him,” the librarian chittered.

The rhino delicately adjusted his glasses with his giant hands and peered at Espen through the thick lenses. “He looks fine to me, Professor Donnell.”

“I’m telling you, I saw it.” Professor Donnell crossed her arms and glared at Espen, her tail twitching erratically behind her. “It was him, but he’d turned himself into living wood.” Espen glanced up, confused. Hadn’t she seen him behind the wooden creature? Perhaps not. If all her attention had been on the plant monster, it would have been easy to miss his dull brown robes and fur in the shadows.

“I’m not saying you didn’t see what you said you saw.” The rhino leaned down to pat the much smaller squirrel’s shoulder. “But from his robes, he is a student of earth magic. Maybe he was just practicing a spell?”

“Spell casting is forbidden in the library!” The squirrel rounded on the rhino, jamming her finger into his broad chest.

“We both know that students break that rule all the time.” The rhino gently pushed the squirrel’s arm away and then looked at Espen, giving him a sympathetic look. “It’s fine, colt, you aren’t in trouble.” This did make Espen relax, at least fractionally. “You just scared Professor Donnell a little. Can you please explain what happened, to put her at ease?”

Espen thought fast and decided it would be best to just go along with the rhino. An unauthorized spell was one thing, but unleashing a monster in the school was a different story. Best not to mention it. Besides, the wood thing was probably long gone by now. “Ah, yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for my spell practice to frighten you, Professor Donnell. It won’t happen again.”

Professor Donnell glared at him, still suspicious, but Espen’s apology seemed to satisfy the rhino, who nodded.

“There, see?” The rhino patted the squirrel’s shoulder again. “I’m sure the colt learned his lesson.”

“Humph.” The squirrel rounded on Espen. “Fine. But I’ll be keeping a very close eye on you from now on. Now, get out of my library. We’re closed.”

Espen nodded and trotted as fast as he dared out of the library, heading straight for his dorm room. He wished he’d tried to make friends with more of the other students so that he had someone to go to for help. But so many of them had given him a hard time about being a horse who wanted to be an Elementalist — one could only take so many jokes about not being able to punch through a written test — that he’d kept mostly to himself all semester.

It was dusk, and the hallways were almost empty. While there were classes for the nocturnal animals, they usually didn’t start until later in the evening, and it was late enough that most of the diurnal animals had already left for home or their dorm rooms.

Espen turned down the hall that led to the student dorms and stopped dead in his tracks. The wooden squirrel was there, marching back and forth across the hall as if patrolling. In the dim twilight it looked almost like a real squirrel, except for the wood grain on its nose and its bright amber eyes.

Professor Donnell or the rhino professor would tell someone about the incident in the library. It would be easy to put two and two together if a student reported this creature. He had to get rid of it, before anyone else saw it.

Espen settled his school bag against his side and tightened the straps. If there was one benefit to being a horse, it was being able to run fast. He set his legs and took off at a running start, sprinting at the wooden creature. The wooden squirrel saw him and dashed away. Unfortunately, squirrels were no slouches in the speed department either. It darted back and forth, forcing Espen to continually readjust his direction. Trying to keep footing on the slick floors was a challenge with hooves, and bit by bit, the wooden squirrel began to out pace him. But when it darted left, Espen knew he’d won. The doors down that hall were all kept locked. A dead end. He turned and slid on the slick wood, his hooves gouging the pristine hardwood floor.

The wooden squirrel was at the end of the hall, darting around and rattling locked door handles. Espen’s hooves thundered as he charged towards the squirrel. He had it. The squirrel’s unnatural amber eyes met his, and then it compressed, flattening itself out, and slithered — he had no other word for it, yet how could a plant slither? — through the thin gap between the door frame and the door at the far end of the hall. Espen was so startled that his legs lost the rhythm of the run, one hoof caught on his other leg and he went down in a tumble, crashing to the floor. His momentum rolled him into the door with a resounding thump that rattled the whole building. Doors popped open up and down the hall.

“What was that?”, “Sounded like a whole herd of horses ran through.”, “I’m trying to sleep here!”, and more shouts and jeers came at him as he crawled back to his hooves. Of course, one of the few doors that hadn’t opened was the one he’d crashed into. The one he needed open.

One of the professors, a black fox who taught air magic, appeared at the end of the hall. “What’s all this noise?”

“It’s that horse who thinks he’s a scholar,” a golden retriever dog said from a doorway, turning to point at Espen. “He was running in the halls and slipped on the floor.”

“Student Sverre, please come with me.” The fox crossed his arms, looked pointedly down at the gouge in the floor before looking back up and giving Espen a withering glare.

Espen ducked his head, his ears splaying back in embarrassment. “Yes, professor.”

* * *

Espen didn’t get back to his room until much later. The professor had given him a very stern lecture about proper conduct while in the halls of the college and then given Espen a disciplinary slip. He was to wash dishes in the kitchen after class for the next week.

With a flick of his hand, Espen sent magic into the lamp next to his bed. The orb inside sprang to life, filling the room with yellow light. Luckily, he didn’t have to worry about waking up a roommate. He’d been given a single room, since horses were significantly bigger than many of the other students.

Espen placed his school bag on the tiny desk while eyeing his bed with longing. He was exhausted and had class in the morning, but he needed to figure out what he’d accidentally revived.

Long hours of blurry-eyed reading later, he found his answer in a footnote attached to a word of warning.

“While using magic to grow plants, be careful not to magically alter the plant itself1.”

At the bottom of the page, he found the footnote:

“1. Look no farther than the infamous Pine Clone to see how disastrously wrong experiments like this can go.”

A Pine Clone? He’d never heard of such a thing, but the name described his weird transforming pine twig perfectly. Espen sat back, tapping one hoof on the floor with a rhythmic clip-clop as he thought. He had a name for the creature, but now what? He sat forward and flipped through the book, rapidly scanning the pages, but didn’t see Pine Clones mentioned anywhere else. He needed to go back to the library.

The square of his window was still totally dark. After closing for an hour at dusk, the library reopened for the nocturnal students. He’d never been there at night, but it was dark enough that it was probably still open.

Yawning, he repacked the stolen library book in his bag and headed off. The halls at night were filled with unfamiliar faces.

He was passing through a four-way intersection when he caught sight of a round, furry squirrel tail out of the corner of his eye down an otherwise empty hallway. He stopped and turned, recognizing Professor Donnell’s profile. She wouldn’t be up at this hour, since she worked days in the library. It had to be his wooden squirrel, the Pine Clone!

Espen wanted to charge down the hall and catch it but his hooves pounding on the hardwood would give him away immediately and he already knew it was faster than him. He had a better idea. He pressed himself against a wall out of sight of the hallway and risked a peak around the corner. The squirrel was trudging down the walkway towards him. Its head was down, so he couldn’t see the gold eyes. He couldn’t make out details in the dim light of the infrequent lamps, but it was definitely Professor Donnell’s shape. He crouched next to the door and waited.

“I’ve got you now,” Espen growled and tackled it to the floor as soon as it came through the door. They landed hard, Espen on top, and the wooden squirrel let out a squeak. Espen also let out a snort of surprise at feeling soft fur beneath him instead of scratchy pine needles.

“Let me up, now!” a female chittered from underneath Espen’s bulk.

Oh, no. Espen jumped to his hooves and was horrified to see the furious face of Professor Donnell turn to glare at him, her black eyes glinting with anger.

“Sorry, thought you were someone else,” Espen stammered out and then turned and sprinted away. His ears went flat. He’d done it now.

He ducked through a side door into the gardens. A path wound through the lawn. Espen ignored it, taking advantage of the wide-open space. His hooves tore up huge divots in the dew-soaked dirt as he galloped as fast as he could towards the library. Running like this out in the open, the wind in his mane, he felt a little homesick for the wide, flat plains of the Avoirdupois lands.

His breath came out in thick white clouds in the coolness of the night air, and by the time he reached the library, he was covered in a white lather. He slowed to a trot and wiped the worst of it from his face and neck before opening the outer door and heading inside.

* * *

Espen took a moment in a nearby water closet to splash his face and catch his breath before entering the library. The doors were unlocked.

The sight inside felt slightly surreal, like he’d walked into another time and place. Despite the magically lit lamps burning cheerily on every table, without sunlight streaming in through the skylights the room was wreathed in shadow. A white rat with red eyes sat at the front desk in Professor Donnell’s usual spot.

The rat hopped up from his chair and moved to intercept Espen as he crossed the lobby.

Espen stopped and turned to look down at him. “Are the daytime students not allowed to use the library at night?”

The rat held up a paw and wiggled it back and forth. “It’s discouraged, but not really against the rules. We want to make sure our students are well rested. Mainly it comes up around exams or when a big paper is due, but I don’t have anything like that showing on the schedule.” He looked at Espen expectantly.

Espen shuffled his hooves and flicked his ears. “It’s a little urgent. Well, I was here yesterday, or I guess earlier today? Anyway, I was reading ‘Gardening with Magike’ by Furaha Knaggs.”

The rat’s eyes widened. “Heavy reading for a first year student.”

“It’s a personal interest of mine. There was a magical plant mentioned in the book that I wanted to find out more about, a Pine Clone. Do you happen to know anything about it?”

The rat snorted with laughter. “That’s what brought you to the library in the middle of the night?”

“It’s kept me up all night.” Espen shrugged. It was true, in a fashion. “I figured as long as I wasn’t sleeping, I’d come to the library and see if I could find more out about it.”

“Fair enough. Must have some burning curiosity to make you run all the way here.” The rat nodded to the sweat stains on Espen’s robes. “I’m Professor Geels. If you’re this eager to learn about something not even in the curriculum, I’m sure I’ll be seeing more of you around.”

“Espen Sverre.” Espen’s ears went back and he ducked his head, but he held out his hand and shook the albino rat’s outstretched paw.

“Right this way, I know just the book.” Professor Geels led him through the library, talking the whole way. “Those plants are very interesting. Do you know we don’t know where they originally came from? They aren’t a natural plant. Scholars think they’re a magician’s experiment that escaped into the wild. They can copy almost any animal. Not exact, you know, but they can get eerily close.”

“How dangerous are they?” Espen asked as Geels stopped at a bookshelf close to where the squirrel librarian had taken him.

Geels waggled his hand again. “Depends on their orders, but usually not.” Espen frowned. That hadn’t been his experience. Espen was about to ask more questions when a female voice came from behind them.

“Professor Geels, there you are. I need to know about Pine Clones, and–”

Espen turned, his heart dropping into his chest, as Professor Donnell came around the corner of a bookshelf. She stopped talking and stared back at Espen, seemingly as shocked to see him as he was to see her.

“You! What are you doing here?” they both said at the same time.

Geels was looking back and forth at both of them in confusion before bursting out laughing. “Two people confused about what the other one is doing there, asking about Pine Clones? Don’t tell me, we have a clone loose on the campus.”

Both he and Professor Donnell nodded.

“I’m sorry about tackling you earlier. I thought you were the clone,” Espen admitted.

Professor Donnell gave him a sharp look. “We’ll discuss that later. For now, we need to find that thing before it hurts anyone.”

“How did you figure it out?” He’d seen the thing transform, the professor hadn’t.

“At first I didn’t,” she admitted. “Then I remembered that stick you’d shown me and how that thing had looked just like you. I was on my way here to do more research when you tackled me, mistaking me for someone — or something — else, which confirmed my theory.”

“So what do we do about it?” Espen asked, tensing up for what he knew was coming. “I understand I’m going to be expelled, but I believe in cleaning up my own messes.” Honor was everything for an Avoirdupois. Espen may have run away from his home and country, but he would always be an Avoirdupois at heart.

“As I said, we’ll discuss your fate at this college later.” She turned to Geels, who had been watching this exchange with his paws over his muzzle, not quite suppressing the fit of the giggles he was having. “Now, you were showing the colt books about the Pine Clone?”

“Yes, fascinating creature,” he said, and then repeated what he’d already told Espen. “This book has more information.” He picked up a thick volume off a shelf and held it out to Professor Donnell.

“That will help later, but we don’t have time for that now.” The squirrel nervously chewed on a claw and then looked at Espen. “Where did you see it last?”

“In the dorms. I chased it down a hall and thought I had it, but it somehow crawled through a crack in a door and I lost it.”

“I take it that the clone looked like me at the time?”

Espen nodded.

“Won’t stay that way, though,” Professor Geels piped up between giggles. “A wild one will change forms frequently.”

Espen frowned and put a hand on his chin, thinking. “It’s still a plant, right?”

Geels and Donnell both nodded.

“So it’ll need sunlight, water, and soil at some point. Maybe we should start our search in the garden?”

“That’s an idea.” Professor Donnell nodded, her bushy tail twitching.

“Also,” Espen’s mind was churning now that the adrenaline was wearing off, “could we use the clone’s magical signature to track it?” He couldn’t remember where he’d read about that tidbit, but it made sense. Like the way scent-oriented species could follow a person’s path using just their noses.

“We could,” the rat spoke up now, his giggles almost gone. “But we’d need to be familiar with the traces of that particular magic. I haven’t ever seen a Pine Clone in person.” He turned to the squirrel, who shook her head.

“I‘m familiar with it.  I’d had that sprig since I was a little colt, and I could feel magic emanating from it even then. It was my good luck charm,” Espen said.

Professor Geels was already shaking his head. “Not going to work. That tracking spell is far too advanced for a first year student.”

Professor Donnell gave Espen a thoughtful look. “I would have said that about the spells in the books I showed you earlier, Student Sverre. Yet, I’m taking it you cast ‘Regrowth’ and that accidentally revived the Pine Clone?”

Espen nodded, flicking one ear back in puzzlement. The squirrel almost sounded impressed.

“He can do it.”

“Are you sure?” Professor Geels’ black rat eyes were wide.

“I’m sure. Find the book with the spell and meet Espen and me in the garden.” Professor Donnell turned to Espen, smiling so wide she showed her incisors. “Let’s go.”

* * *

The sun was just peeking above the horizon, streaking the sky with pinks and golds as Espen and Professor Donnell entered the grassed commons outside of the garden. Dew still sparkled on the grass, steam rising as the sun began to burn it away. Fresh divots scarred the neatly-cut grass where Espen had run through just an hour earlier. The sight made him wince.

A fence enclosed the garden, and Professor Donnell stopped at the gate to survey the grounds. The garden was used for several classes. Espen had a beginning earth magics class here once a week, and he’d frequently seen another group of students at the other end tending to the plants and herbs, but he didn’t know if it was for a class or just a hobby. This early in the morning the garden looked empty.

Since it was used for teaching, it was divided into sections that each featured plants from different climates and environments. There was a large clump of various pine trees towards the far end, and it was there that the professor seemed to focus her attention.

“Should we wait for Professor Geels?” Espen asked as Professor Donnell opened the gate and headed inside.

“Only if we can’t find it visually.” She glanced up at him as she spoke, and the bags under her eyes made her whole face look drawn. She looked as tired as he felt.

The squirrel trudged off down the path and Espen headed off in the opposite direction. “It’ll be faster if we split up.”

“Good idea. Call out if you find anything.” The squirrel’s bushy tail disappeared around a bend in the path, hidden from behind by a big bush with thick green leaves bigger than Espen’s head.

It was slow going. Espen pushed aside branches and leaves, making sure he wouldn’t miss the clone hidden under low-hung branches or in thick bushes.

After he’d been at it a while, Professor Geels found him and handed him a thick book. The rat’s red eyes sparkled with excitement. “There you are. I found the spell. Page 109.”

“Thanks.” Espen settled down in the dirt cross-legged, spreading the book across his lap.

“I’m so excited to finally get to see a Pine Clone in person,” Professor Geels said, sitting down next to Espen. His long, hairless pink tail wagged behind him, brushing the leaves around.

“They’re pretty creepy,” Espen said absentmindedly as he began studying the tracking spell. It actually looked easier than the spell he’d used to revive the clone.

Geels prattled on about magical creatures while Espen did his best to memorize the spell. Espen never responded, but that didn’t seem to bother Geels.

Finally, Espen closed his eyes, held out his hand, concentrated on the feel of the clone’s magic as he remembered it, and cast the spell. He felt the magic dancing around him, and then he felt a tug on the left side of his muzzle. When he opened his eyes, he could see a glowing blue line trailing through the garden to his left. The path the clone had taken!

“It worked,” Espen said, shutting the book. Geels looked impressed. He stood up and took the book back from Espen’s lap. But as soon as Espen moved to stand up the blue glow faded away.

“Lead the way.” Professor Geels exclaimed.

“I can’t.” Espen hung his head. “The spell ended when I stood up.”

“Oh, yeah. You’ll need to concentrate on it to keep it going.”

Espen groaned and sunk back down to the ground, holding back out his hand for the book. Opening back up to the page with the spell, he began casting it again. But he was exhausted, and the magic wavered again as soon as he moved. He opened his eyes after the third failed try to find Professor Geels poking his arm.

“Professor Donnell found it, come on,” Geels said, taking back the book again.

Espen crawled back to his feet, yawning, and followed the white rat through the garden. A faint, “Over here!” reached his ears, and he was glad the rat had better hearing than him. He never would have heard the squirrel from this far away.

Professor Donnell waved at them from a bush as they came close. She was hiding behind the thicket, peering around it at something farther away. Espen and Geels tip-toed up and joined her.

Professor Geels gasped in surprise when he caught sight of the clone and Espen barely suppressed a groan. At some point it had taken the form of a tiger. In the bright sunlight, it was obvious that the thing was a plant, yet it was still eerie seeing a perfect copy of a tiger rendered in branches and pine needles. The clone was standing motionless in a big patch of ivy, facing towards the rising sun.

“What do we do now?” Espen whispered to the two professors.

Professor Donnell tapped one edge of her librarian’s robe sleeve to show Espen the red fire symbols embroidered there. “It’s a plant, so it should be afraid of fire. I’ll circle around and drive it back to you, then you use your magic to move the earth out from underneath it. Trap it in a hole.”

Espen nodded. “Got it.” The spell to move earth was one of the first ones an Earth Elementalist learned. So far he’d only practiced with flinging things off tables, but moving the ground from underneath the Pine Clone’s feet shouldn’t be too different.

“What about me?” Professor Geels squeaked, his red eyes wide. He was clearly terrified.

“You run to get help if things go wrong.”

Geels nodded.

Professor Donnell nodded back to him and crept away, keeping low to the ground. Slowly she made her way around the still clone. When she was in front of it, Espen lowered himself to a crouch and held out his hands, bringing the words of the spell to his mind. A small glowing golden ball appeared in his palms, ready to be thrown.

With a roaring battle-cry that impressed even Espen, Professor Donnell burst from the bushes directly in front of the clone. She held a ball of fire between her outstretched palms and she waved it at the wooden tiger.

The clone stumbled backwards, and Espen tossed the golden ball of his earth magic. It hit the ground at the wooden tiger’s feet and earth exploded up around it in a plume. The squirrel had been too close, and the earth plume hit her arms, knocking her backwards. She flailed, trying to keep her balance, and accidentally let go of the glowing ball of fire. It flew into the cloud of dust flying around the clone, whooshing as it hit something inside. Chunks of earth, plants, and rock began to rain down around them. Geels squealed and ducked, holding the library book above his head. Espen lifted his arm and covered his face, trying to keep the flying debris out of his eyes.

A moment later the deluge stopped and Espen dropped his arm, waving his hand in front of his nose to clear some of the dust away. He peered through the cloud, catching sight of a bright yellow glow.

The good news was his spell had worked perfectly. The clone was at the bottom of a hole about three paces around. The bad news was that it was only about three hands deep. Espen estimated that if he stood in it, it would only come up to his knees.

The even worse news was that the clone was on fire. It ran around the shallow hole, its pine needle fur burning merrily. Stopping, the clone shook its limbs to dislodge the burning needles. They went out as they fell into the dirt, leaving singed and smoldering branches bare.

Professor Donnell, hacking and coughing, was just getting to her feet on the other side of the hole. Being so close, she’d been hit with the worst of the debris. Her robes and fur were so covered in dirt that she looked made out of earth.

Her coughing drew the clones attention, and it turned its back on Espen, moving towards the squirrel. The professor’s eyes were glued shut with the dust, so she couldn’t see the danger.

“No!” Espen shouted, bursting from his hiding place behind the thicket. The wooden tiger had crouched with claws bared and was about to leap at the helpless squirrel. Espen charged, jumping at the edge of the shallow hole to tackle the clone from behind. They went down in a heap, landing with the clone face down on the ground underneath Espen. In the tiger shape, the clone was almost as big as him.

The clone’s limbs were still hot from the fire, burning Espen’s skin where it wasn’t protected by his school robes. The Pine Clone bucked and writhed under him, swiping at him with wooden tiger claws. Espen tried to hold on and pin the clone’s arms, but it was just too strong.

The fight was strangely silent except for Espen’s grunts as wrestled with the clone. For its part, the clone didn’t make a sound. The wooden tiger made an undulating motion with its back and cracked the end of Espen’s muzzle with the back of its head. Blood gushed from Espen’s nose as he reared back and let go of the thing’s arms. The clone twisted under him, slashing at his exposed chest with its wooden claws.

Blood welled from the cuts, and the pain was excruciating, like three lines of fire burning down his front. Espen’s scream was echoed by Professor Geels. The rat turned on his heels and dashed away, screaming for help. Ignoring the pain in his chest and nose, Espen made a fist and punched the wooden tiger’s face. The clone’s head snapped back and Espen grabbed the clone’s wrists and pushed them to the ground. They struggled against each other. Professor Donnell recovered and lifted her hands to do a spell but hesitated, clearly unsure how to blast the clone without hitting Espen as well.

His vision had narrowed to a pin prick by the time he heard a commotion to the side and heard Professor Geels yelling, “Over here!” Suddenly they were surrounded by mages. Someone cast a spell and the clone went limp. With the resistance gone, Espen collapsed on top of it.

“Is that blood?” “Get a healer!” “Stay steady.” Everyone was yelling at once around him.

Espen crawled off the clone and lay back in the grass, as far away from the chaos as he could get. As soon as he moved, a group of excited mages and scholars circled the still Pine Clone, chattering loudly.

An armadillo in the robes of a healer came up to him.

“May I heal your wounds, noble steed?” she asked quietly, kneeling at his side.

Espen nodded and the armadillo monk held her hands over his lacerated chest. A moment later energy flooded through him, washing away the pain. The cuts scabbed over and by the time she pulled her hands away, it looked like they were weeks old. Not the battle scars his father had expected him to get, but still Espen was proud of them.

“Thank you.” Espen said. The armadillo looked pleased, giving him a small bow before getting to her feet and wandering off to check that no one else needed her services.

Espen got up, intending to go back to his dorm and pack. He needed to figure out what to do with his life now that his dream of being a mage was shattered.

Professor Donnell ran up to him as he began to walk away. “Where are you going, Student Sverre?”

“To get my things…” he trailed off as she glared at him, her bushy tail snapping irritably.

“What makes you think you’re expelled?”

Espen merely waved a hand to the chaos going on around the fallen Pine Clone.

The squirrel shook her head. “You made a mistake. Students do. But you did your best to try to clean up your mess, even though you should have asked for help sooner. I trust you’ve learned your lesson about swallowing your pride, and asking for help when you need it?”

Espen nodded vigorously. “Yes, professor.”

Professor Donnell smiled. “I thought so. A hard lesson, but a good one to learn early.”

“What will happen to the clone?” Espen looked back at the chaos, still curious about the strange magical plant despite everything.

“It’s the perfect opportunity for the students to be able to study a rare plant,” the squirrel gave a wry smile. “The hardest part will be getting the thing to stay put.”

Espen laughed.

 

* * *

Originally published in Ironclaw: The Book of Legends

About the Author

Ian Madison Keller is a fantasy writer currently living in Oregon. Originally from Utah, he moved up to the Pacific Northwest on a whim a decade ago and never plans on leaving. Ian has been writing since 2013 with eight novels and more than a dozen published short stories out so far. Ian has also written under the name Madison Keller before transitioning in 2019 to Ian.

His novels include the Flower’s Fang trilogy and the four book award-winning Dragonsbane Saga self-published under Rainbow Dog Press, as well as an urban fantasy series with Fanged Fiction. His work has won a Cóyotl Award and two Leo Literary awards. He is also the new editor of ROAR starting in 2020 with ROAR 11.  More information can be found on his website, http://madisonkeller.net.  He can also be found on Twitter: @maddiekellerr

by Kristen Hornung

“You don’t belong here anymore, but there are other worlds. Want to come with me?”

The river sloshes about my legs, and the mud sucks at my paws, but I run as fast as I can through the In-Between, my tail swishing a happy rhythm behind me. Time to see him again! No more waiting!

I know I’m getting closer when the wrong portals start to yawn and sigh. One promises baby mice to sniff out, another rabbits to chase through sun-warmed grasses. Tricky, tricky. I snort and toss my head. Some might forget their duty and change their path, but not me. I don’t even slow down.

Then: old wool, cedar, and soap.

But also: dried blood and sugary urine.

His portal blinks at me like a sleepy eye. Whining, I dig and wiggle and— pop out into a darkened room.

Despite the heat, the windows are closed, and a blanket is smoothed over his chest. Two ski poles balance on the bed’s railing. A wheelchair in the corner holds his sneakers and tomato soup-stained trousers. Hearing aids buzz on the nightstand next to a mug of flat soda.

I trot over to the bed and nose at the blanket until I find his hand, then give him a little nip.

“Seymour?” He sits up — pure essence now, but still shaped in his old form, like an echo — and looks at me, then back at his remains.

More or less. But I don’t want to confuse him, so I say, “Yes.”

I expect him to swing his legs over the edge of the bed and stand, but he doesn’t. He tries to touch his hand. My tail droops. I wait.

“This is it,” he says. “Suppose I should be grateful it didn’t feel like falling.”

An itch crawls across my skin, making my fur stand up. In the far corner, a portal cracks open. He doesn’t know it’s there.

“I’ve worked hard.” His eyes scan the room, as if taking inventory, then stare through the wall, towards his office. “Seems wrong to leave so much unfinished.”

Frost rims the portal. It promises mountains lined with trees, crisp air, powdery snow, and a cabin where people gather around a fire, sharing cider.

I wish he had a nose like mine. It would make his choice easier.

“You don’t belong here anymore, but there are other worlds. Want to come with me?”

“Hard to believe this is real.” He reaches over slowly, rubs my ears, smiles. “I can feel you.”

“Like resonates with like.”

“Makes sense.” Keeping his hand on my head, he slides off the bed, and stands. “You’ll stay with me?”

I remember the river, and how I chose him. Next time, I will, too. “Always.”

“Good.” In my fur, his grip relaxes. “Show me what’s next.”

 

* * *

About the Author

Kristen Hornung lives in Encinitas, California. When not parenting or working, Kristen loves to take long walks and get lost in stories. Kristen has been published in Psychological Perspectives and with Havok Publishing online.

by Carol Scheina

“The pup blinked blurry eyes and waited for the woman to run screaming from its magma and heat and death.”

The volcano knew from past experience that humans generally fled far away when gases seeped and tremors shook the earth, signaling a pending eruption, but this time around, a man stood on the summit with arms outstretched.

In between its sulfurous gassy burps, the volcano heard the man muttering incantations.

He’s a sorcerer, the volcano realized with a snort of water vapor. There had been plenty of sorcerers who had tried to stop an eruption. They always failed.

The man finished his spell with a stern, “Your power shall be made harmless!”

Well, that’s stupid, the volcano thought. Nothing can stop me. I am heat beyond comprehension! I am destruction! I am–

The volcano’s sensations went dark.

At the base of the volcano’s southeastern slope, a pup, black as obsidian, opened eyes as red as lava and saw a female human face peering back.

“Where did you come from, little one?” she asked.

The pup blinked blurry eyes and waited for the woman to run screaming from its magma and heat and death. It gave a little bark, just in case the woman didn’t realize what he was. Then the pup froze. He’d never barked before.

A hand, soft and smelling like clean rain, rubbed between his ears. His tail, all on its own accord, vibrated like a ground tremor. Volcano-thoughts blew away from his mind like ash in the wind.

He wasn’t quite sure how it all came about, but his heart seemed to melt. He wanted more head rubs, and he knew he’d follow this human anywhere to get them.

The human brought the pup to her home at the base of the mountain, where such glorious scents struck his nose, the sensation sharp and biting. He sneezed a lot at first, but he couldn’t stop sniffing.

Buddy, the human called him. She was Jami.

“If no one else claims you, you can stay with me,” she told him.

Buddy barked his approval.

In Jami’s yard, he’d often feel a sensation bubbling inside, like an explosion of sparks and fire wanting to burst free of his body’s black fur coat. No amount of scratching or rolling would rid him of that sensation, so he did the next best thing: he ran. He sprinted after squirrels and chipmunks and rabbits. When those critters learned to avoid him, he chased bees and learned the hard way that stinging insects were not to be trifled with.

In between his runs, Jami would give him head rubs. In those perfect moments, breathing in her scents of soap, sweat, and comfort, he forgot the bubbling fires within. He’d lick her cheek, her comforting taste lingering on his tongue.

The two developed a routine of taking long walks on the volcano’s tree-covered slopes. Buddy had never before known the joys of darting around sharp pine trees, with soft dirt cushioning his paws, warm in the sunbeams, cool in the shadows. There were more temperatures in the world than just scorching hot.

At first, Jami used words like “sit” and “stay.” Buddy knew what she wanted, but the fire inside kept itching at his toes and the dog found himself leaping and bounding right up to her like an unstoppable lava flow. His tail drooped each time he forgot about “stay.”

Jami hugged his neck and whispered words of reassurance. She loved Buddy just the way he was, she explained. His tail thumped.

The dog lost all sense of the years. There was just a world full of running and sniffing… and Jami. Always Jami.

Though there came the day when Buddy found that his legs refused to move, coming to a stumbling halt mid-stride on the mountainside. He suspected what was happening when he collapsed onto his side and couldn’t get back up. He remembered that long-ago time as a volcano, experiencing the same kind of exhaustion after an eruption. Buddy could feel his heart slowing, as much as he willed it to keep burning.

But there had only ever been so much fire inside that black fur coat.

Jami’s face appeared above the dog’s. Buddy licked the salty wet around her eyes. As long as Jami rubbed his head, all was right in the world.

He gave her one more tail thump.

The last of the energy burned out.

Darkness.

The volcano was a mountain again. Deep inside its core, the magma and gases churned slow and sleepy. The sorcerer had done his job well. The volcano’s fires had been made harmless.

In the past, this was when the volcano would’ve slept as well, shutting off its sensations for the next millennia or so, when the gases would rise again. But it couldn’t sleep. Something new churned away inside it. An energy all of its own.

It burned at the volcano’s core as it felt Jami’s footsteps descending its mountainside without his black paws padding by her side. She shouldn’t be alone.

The volcano recalled the incantation the sorcerer had used. Silently it chanted, pulling at sluggish magma, gases, this newfound energy it had found — anything to recreate the spell. To transform again. Anything to return to his Jami.

 

* * *

About the Author

Carol Scheina is a deaf speculative fiction author who hails from the Northern Virginia region. Her stories have appeared in publications such as Flash Fiction Online, Daily Science Fiction, Escape Pod, and more. You can find more of her work at carolscheina.wordpress.com.

by Amy Clare Fontaine

“They say a werewolf’s bite hurts like hell, but they don’t know. The worst wounds werewolves give you are the ones nobody sees.”

1.

Everywhere. They say that passion flares like fire, but this flavor of pain tastes more like drowning: choking on a pressure so deep it might crush me. I feel like your teeth are gnawing my bones. Like my heart has been ripped out by the same claws that held me.

I miss your long tongue on my neck, your fangs in my flesh. The way your tail wagged when I came home from work, as if you were happy to see me.

As if.

They say a werewolf’s bite hurts like hell, but they don’t know. The worst wounds werewolves give you are the ones nobody sees.

* * *

2.

In your navy-blue sweater, as I cuddle it in bed. It’s been two months now, but it still smells like a stray dog that just stepped out of the rain. A cur come to rest by the hearth for a spell, until her fur has dried and her paws start itching to run again. A mutt growling softly, legs twitching, eyes closed: chasing phantom quarry through her dreams.

I should have known you were going to leave me. Sit? Stay? Play dead? No. You weren’t my dog, weren’t some Good Girl trading tricks for treats. You could never bear to be the sidekick in someone else’s story. You wore no collar; you were free to come and go. The few burdens you carried, you left behind, fading gently like pawprints in snow.

The sweater has holes and tears and stains. I always mean to take it to the thrift store, but never do.

* * *

3.

In Central Park on a full moon night, the sidewalks littered with silver, the autumn leaves blowing about like discarded dreams. They crinkle like the pages of long-forgotten books. I wander, restless, prowling, alone. Searching for a path to silence the echoes of your eyes.

I hunt for an answer until my lungs burn and ache. Then, panting, I plop down on a bench beside an old man in a trench coat. He smells like the dog pound, but in a nice way. A way that feels warm and familiar.

His stare bores into me as I gaze up at the moon. I know what color his eyes are without even looking.

“You’re thinking of her, aren’tcha, lass?”

I turn to him. “Sorry, what?”

He chuckles. “I know that look, that voiceless howl at the moon. You fell for a wolf queen, and she wandered away.” The burning coals of his eyes dim somewhat. “Yessir, I know that look too well.”

My blood freezes over. I watch him light a cigarette and blow his smoke into the void. For the first time in a long while, my heart pangs with someone else’s pain.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur, hanging my head. My year of grief seems petty next to his lifetime of loss.

He smiles sagely, breathing the hurt into his soul.

“It was many moons ago, my lassie.” He casts me a wink. “Asides, I learned a trick to help me cope.”

My lungs catch with a flicker of hope. I can barely breathe. “You did?”

“Aye.” He points up at the moon. “That bonnie orb there makes you think of her, dunnit.”

I nod awkwardly. “Um, yeah. I guess.”

He grins, takes another puff. “Ain’t that the way it always be. Lost lovers gazing up at that moon, always a’pinin’ for their long-lost loves.”

He shakes his head. Stamping out the last stub of his cigarette, he fixes me with that carnivore’s gaze.

“But ya see, lass, it ain’t gotta be her moon anymore. It’s yours now. You make it your own.” He leans forward, gripping my shoulders. “Ya see?”

His wizened hands clamp down on me with surprising strength, like canid jaws clenching a chew toy. He stinks of tobacco and elk meat and fur. For a moment, I wonder if I ought to be afraid.

Then understanding dawns.

“Oh…um…yes. Yes, I see.”

“Haha!” He squeals a wordless triumph, letting go of me and slapping his knee. “That’s the ticket, lass!” He grins broadly, revealing pointed teeth at last.

Those teeth sink deep into my hand.

When I emerge from the park, I know exactly where I’m going. I’m going home to no one, home to no home, home to me. I am going home to my own wild heart.

The old man’s voice rings through my memory as I let loose my first joyous howl.

It’s your moon now, lass. Make it your own.

* * *

4.

In the back of my mind, simmering like the soup I made on the night you left. I expected you to open the door, inhale the air with that sharp nose of yours, and lick your muzzle, your yellow eyes glinting. I pictured you sauntering up to the stove, making that old joke about how I was a lucky little pig, and you were a lucky wolf for not getting boiled alive. Sweeping me into your shaggy arms and kissing me so hard I could almost howl. Us ignoring the soup for a good long time, while we sated our sorrows on better prey.

It wasn’t to be. You never came back. I ate soup by myself, gazing out the window at the moon.

But it’s my moon now. And I’m learning to let go.

You never gave me this gift. You said you were afraid for my safety, my sanity. You didn’t want to condemn me to your curse. I begged and pleaded, but you never did it. Never bit down long and hard enough to let the magic sink in.

Now I know you were afraid for yourself. Afraid of not being the special one. Afraid of allowing me to trust myself, to follow my instincts and sing my own songs.

Sometimes, I almost catch your scent on the breeze. Sometimes, my pointed ears perk to the wail of the wind. Sometimes, I picture my paws thudding through this whole crazy city and leading me straight back into your arms.

Only sometimes. Not always. And not everywhere.

 

* * *

About the Author

Amy Clare Fontaine is a wandering wildlife biologist and a wildly imaginative furry writer. Over the course of her adventures, she has recorded wolf howls in Yellowstone National Park, observed hyena behavior in the Maasai Mara, and listened to rock hyrax songs in Ein Gedi Natural Reserve. Fox Spirit: A Two-Tailed Adventure, her interactive fantasy novel from Choice of Games, won the Leo Literary Award for Novels in 2020. She is currently writing another interactive novel for Choice of Games which lets you play as a unicorn/pegasus/kelpie hybrid with magical powers. Her short fiction has been featured in Daily Science Fiction, Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, and the ROAR anthology series from Bad Dog Books. She hopes to instill in her readers a sense of wonder and a new awareness of the wildness within themselves. You can find more of her work, including novels, short stories, poems, games, and research, at amyclarefontaine.com.

by Katlina Sommerberg

“Stopping now isn’t an option, because my choices are a revitalization vat or a coffin. Gimmicks either die on the court or shelve themselves into a cryopod.”

I am one of four genemodded clones jogging onto the court. All three opponents wear black jerseys, proof they all survived a previous season. I’m the novice — stepped out of the vat this morning — the designated Gimmick of the game, wearing white to enhance the crowd’s entertainment for my eventual injuries or, as many in the audience have betted on, my death.

When a human dies, it’s a tragedy; when we die, it’s entertainment:  our dying game becomes a season’s highlight.

Ostrich, the tallest opponent, fistbumps his chest and shrieks at the crowd as if he’s oblivious to the bulletproof barrier. The inhuman sound warbling from his throat sends the crowd into a frenzy; he sounds more ostrich than human, feeding the lie that our animal DNA defines us. The others yell too, and I hesitate before I add my bleat, because I would still yearn to win this game if I wasn’t a genemoded clone.

Hippo’s honks fade into a wide yawn. His jaw stretches until I think it’s dislocated, then widens. Like he could bite my head off and swallow it whole, horns and all. Hippos lack the natural weapons of a predator — the MBA outlawed genemods from carnivorous animals after last season ended in a bloodbath — but he’s a legendary grappler because of his bulk and short legs.

Ostrich stands as far from his goal as he’s allowed. Clearly, he’s sticking with the strategy which best matches his digitigrade, long legs:  reckless offense, ignoring his own goal entirely. Ironically the opposite of how a real ostrich would protect its eggs. Hippo and Armadillo are bulkier, more defensive than me — and veterans like Ostrich — so Ostrich’ll sprint for the ball and throw it at my goal.

The buzzer squawks, vibrating the waxed hardwood under my cloven feet. The crowd cheers as quickly as Ostrich reacts. He lunges to intercept the thirty kilogram ball falling from the ceiling and catches it before the buzzer silences.

A fraction of the crowd cheers. The volume difference means Ostrich is not a fan favorite, likely because he’s not a brawler and the crowd finds his playstyle — shattering knees, hips, or other bones with a precise throw — scummy, because the audience craves the intimate violence of bloody victory marking the winner and the loser, not the dispassionate efficiency of a sniper.

Ostrich eyes Armadillo and Hippo, but both are defensive and more likely to catch the ball than let it slip by them. No, Ostrich is ignoring me because I’m his target.

The goals are smaller than hockey nets, so guarding would be simple if we played in teams. Simple, not easy, because the trick is blocking without injury. I squat and hold my arms tight to my body, so Ostrich can’t land an easy wrist-breaker. Better to let him score — plus two points for him, minus one for me — than cripple myself for the rest of the match. I’m tempted to abandon mine; my mods are cloven hooves and ram horns, shit-tier for defense and too gimmicky for above average offense.

Ostrich grips the ball in a two-handed throw, pulling it back as he stares down Hippo, but Hippo stands relaxed as if he’s superior to us all. Armadillo hunches over, his natural plates slide in place, and he hunkers over his goal in flawless defense.

Ostrich’s body coils. His gangly ostrich limbs fold up for maximum buildup of force. I blink; he’s uncoiled, turned, and locked his sights on the gap behind my left shoulder. My arms are too low to block a high shot; I should’ve known the projectile build wouldn’t be limited to shooting through the larger gaps around my legs.

His inhuman eyes meet mine; his body slows, like he’s hesitating, and his gray eyes beg me to dodge. I’m pissed at his pity. I don’t need charity from a veteran player, especially not one built to run from confrontation instead of fighting like a baller. I’m not a coward like him. And I’m going to prove to the whole crowd my horns aren’t ornamental; they’re a threat.

Impulsively, I lunge left.

The ball thwacks into the crown of my head — a perfect block — and the crowd roars. The ball bounces high in a vertical trajectory. My skull and neck throb. Concussion, most likely. I shake my head, trying to clear the brain fog.

I reach out to catch the falling ball, but Hippo slams into my shoulder. I slide back to defend my goal, but he plucks the ball out of the air and runs for it, charging for Ostrich’s goal.

Nobody intercepts him.

While Hippo has the ball, I muscle in on the drop zone, pushing Ostrich to the outside. He’s taller than me, but his hollow bones are fragile and a stray kick of my hooves could ruin his whole game, so he backs off. I doubt this’ll work once he figures out my range and abilities, but he’ll never take me seriously if I can’t steal the ball.

A child bouncing in her parent’s lap joins the crowd’s answering cheer. Despite the thick glass between the players and the audience, the noise hurts my ears.

“Two points to Hippo! Minus one to Ostrich!” the announcer yells over the screams.

The ceiling door slides open. The ball drops.

I jump for it, and the thirty kilogram weight slams into my chest. The breath leaves my lungs, but I wrap my arms around the ball and land, knees bent to guard against Ostrich’s counter—

But he jumps to my left. A second ball? It’s a possibility. Rare. I can’t worry about my own goal; I pivot and sprint.

“Two points to Ostrich! Minus one to Ram!”

I run. The ball restricts my breathing as I hold it tight to my body, minimizing the drain on my back and arms while guarding against steals. I’ve got to hurry and score before the ball drains too much of my stamina, but Armadillo’s guarding his goal and Hippo’s heavy strides clunk behind me.

My heartrate pounds, drowning out the crowd. But I’m not playing for their applause.

This is what I was made for, even if they made me poorly — not my fault, but my burden to shuck off. I’ll prove everyone wrong. I’ll succeed, I’ll win, I’ll go down as the first gimmick to win a match. No, win a season!

Ostrich’s goal is on the other side of the court. I sprint, outspeeding Hippo.

My hoof steps on the paint, and I hurl the ball inside the unguarded goal. My left shoulder shrieks. I held the damned weight too long before releasing, but it’s not a serious injury.

The thirty kilogram ball drops like a stone — throwing it is harder than I thought — before it reaches the goal. Would’ve been easy to block, but it rolls between the posts and disappears down the chute.

“Two points to Ram! Minus one to Ostrich!”

Thunderous applause drowns out the squeaking sneakers and the ball drop’s mechanics. They’re cheering for a modern gladiator genemodded to fill the underdog niche, and I hate them for their willful ignorance.

Yet I raise my arms and drink in their approval.

My stomach drops when the cheers die. I want to stay in this moment, but it’s already passed. I understand the veterans now; I’ll play again and again for the dopamine kick. Nothing else compares. Maybe these humans know greater joy in their lives off the spectator’s bench, but there is nothing else I want more than to score.

The applause roars to life again; no, louder, with whistles and rabid yells. I know it’s not because of me, and I try grinding out their cheers by grinding my teeth. I hate myself more than the crowd for jealously craving the spotlight.

“Two points to Hippo! Minus one to Ostrich!”

As I turn, the buzzer shrieks thrice in rapid succession. I hesitate; anything more than one buzz signals a timeout. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to move, until Hippo and Armadillo run back to their goals.

I trot back to mine, passing where Ostrich slumps against a panel of bulletproof glass, holding one foot completely off the ground. His knee bends the wrong way — strangely more normal than his uninjured digitigrade leg. He’s not looking at the injury, but at the medic team running to the court’s entrance.

“First knockout of the game goes to Hippo!” The announcer is barely intelligible over the roaring crowd. “Let’s get that on slowmo. Will Ostrich’s knee ever be the same?”

Ostrich throws his head back and laughs. I’m strangely fascinated. Is he delirious? Pissed his injury will be a national obsession for a week or he lost the game? Or is he amused that the announcer’s talking out of his ass, because he’ll be in a revitalization vat until he heals (or rots if they forget to take him out)? He catches my eye and laughs harder — he’s still laughing as the medics carry him out on a stretcher.

The buzzer squawks.

I sprint toward the ball drop; Armadillo and Hippo’s sneakers shriek as they take off at the same second. With Ostrich out of the game, it’s anyone’s guess who’s faster. My digitigrade legs are shorter than Armadillo’s, but I’m accelerating faster.

I reach the paint first. Eye on the mechanism, I leap and grab the ball, watching for a second ball, because a mechanical error could give me four points. Anticipation chokes my lungs.

But the trapdoor slides back into place. I squeeze the ball to my chest until my diaphragm complains, and land.

Armadillo slams into me at a full sprint; his natural armor tears the skin off my tricep. He grabs for the ball, but I spin from his body slam and run without considering the direction.

Blood trails down from my arm, wets my jersey, and the crowd howls like baboons in a blood frenzy. The announcer quips. I tune them out and listen for Hippo and Armadillo’s shoes. They’re on my heels; I accelerate faster than them, but now they’re closing the gap.

I’m three steps towards Ostrich’s goal before I realize I’m running the wrong way. Scoring in a removed player’s goal will earn me two negative points. So I adjust my grip on the ball, cradling it with my good hand like it’s my baby and holding my injured right arm out for balance.

I turn tighter than I thought I would. One hoof skids on the waxed floor. I nearly fall on my ass, but I find my footing and charge.

The closest goal is Hippo’s. And with his genemods and one point lead on me, he’ll risk everything to defend.

But it’s not over until I win. Stopping now isn’t an option, because my choices are a revitalization vat or a coffin. Gimmicks either die on the court or shelve themselves into a cryopod.

Hippo skids to a halt and trots backwards, his arms out and already positioned for a grab. He backs up until his back nearly touches a goal post. With so much of the goal obscured by his own body and my poor throwing accuracy, he’s forcing me to fight him at his strongest.

Behind me, Armadillo stands between the ball drop and his goal. I’m too far away and he’s too close for me to have a chance at making the goal. If I make the goal, Armadillo will have an opening to score in mine, but I can’t worry about my future opponent when Hippo is between me and my two points.

I charge, willing my legs to accelerate as fast as possible. If I push him into the goal and score, then I’ll earn four points and secure a lead. No time to think or care about the crowd; I focus on the sound of my hooves pummeling the court.

Hippo catches my horns, one in each hand. His feet slide back until the backs of his shoes collide with his goal.

The sudden stop jostles my spine and fuzzes my vision. The slightest twist to the left or right shoots painful jolts down my straining neck, so I can’t slip out of his grip. I hug the ball tighter. I could release one hand to grapple, but that’s favorable for him.

I grin. Chewing on my mouthguard, I drop my gaze to Armadillo’s feet. I pivot and raise my right hand off the ball.

Hippo takes the bait. He pushes me, twists my head to fuck with my balance.

I let a hoof slide, like he succeeded.

He releases his grip and reaches for the ball.

I lower my head, presenting my horns forward, and charge. He has to sidestep me to avoid the blow, but he doesn’t. I accelerate faster with my digitigrade legs; we’re both surprised.

I spear him. His flesh squelches, and I’m triumphant. No, not yet — he has too many points and genemod advantages, I can’t defeat him even if he’s injured.

My hands grab his shoulders. I’m yanking him forward while I push my head forward. The horn’s tip punctures his back; the lessening resistance propels my head into his chest.

His scream is exquisite, like the sound of the world unraveling, until the cacophonous crowd drowns his voice. I won. I will survive — and yell my truth to the crowd.

Neck straining, my jaw pops. I clench my eyes against the blood sliding down my face. The smells of the sport are gone, replaced by the sharpness of fresh blood. I see nothing. I taste my opponent’s death on my lips.

I run him through until my forehead squashes his pec. He slumps, and I shove the ball into his belly, pushing with my head and arms until I force him into his own goal.

“Four points to Ram! Minus one to Hippo!” The buzzer shrieks three times, signaling a medical intervention. “First double-pointer of the game goes to the Gimmick! Looks like Hippo will spend the rest of the season in the revitalization vat — if he lives.”

Hippo falls on his ass. Horn snagged on his flesh, my head follows. His ragged breaths in my ear are almost too soft to hear over the crowd’s hoots and claps, but the whistling from his chest rings.

The rage fades, leaving me blood-soaked and attached to a dying clone. With a sudden flip in consciousness, I realize I attempted to murder him — maybe he’s a dead man already and we just don’t know it — and my stomach lurches. I want to blame the steroids and synthetic testosterone in my veins, but the juice filling out my physique didn’t cause the muscle contractions that punctured his lung.

Every scream from the crowd’s bedlam hits me like a slap in the face. Why did I kill him for this empty reward?

I close my eyes and bite my tongue. I count multiples of three’s to steady myself. If I panic, I might rip my horn out, and doom him if he’s not already dead.

I could be in his place. Ostrich could’ve cracked my head open with a throw. Armadillo and Hippo both could’ve easily outmuscled me. But I went for the kill.

When the medic orders me to withdraw my horn, I’m frozen. Three orderlies pull me off him, and when they do, I finally breathe.

“The score’s five to zero, Ram in the lead by a landslide!” The announcer’s words elicit another cry from the audience, and I flinch. “Armadillo’s only chance for a comeback is a knockout! Pray for blood, this game is going down in history!”

I stand up; the crowd screams in delight. Their maniac faces grin at me through the transparent walls, thousands of eyes crawling over my skin. Millions more on the livestream. Judging my performance as worthy entertainment. I’ll never stop playing these games if I’m a crowd pleaser. Otherwise, I’ll rot in a vat.

I plant my hooves in front of my goal. If I can survive until time runs out, I’ll win without another showdown.

Armadillo is all fangs and bristles; I don’t think he’ll let me. His armored plates for skin pulse with his rapid breathing. His aggressive stance tells me he’ll run for the ball — or me — and fight.

An apology burns in my throat. But I bite my tongue. Even without the crowd baying for blood, I can’t talk to him. Players can’t talk during a game. What could I even say?

The buzzer squawks.

Armadillo charges, slower than me but fast enough to grab the falling ball before it hits the ground. As he draws closer, I hold out my arms defensively, but my body’s relaxed. My heart’s not in the game.

The fight’s drained out of me. I’m sick of the game; there’s no joy in hurting, killing other clones for the humans’ fickle approval. I won’t let them force me into a veteran’s jersey.

He raises the thirty kilogram ball over his head. He’s going to bash my skull.

I lower my hands.

I choose to die on the court.

 

* * *

About the Author

Katlina Sommerberg is living xyr best queer life in Portland. Previously a security engineer, xe left the industry after working in cryptocurrency and defense contracting. Unfortunately, hacking in real life is always boring or unethical, with no in-between. Xe has quadrice been honorably mentioned in the Writers of the Future Contest, and links to xyr published work is available at https://sommerbergssf.carrd.co/#