This is a short work of erotic fiction containing furry, or anthropomorphic, characters, which are animals that either demonstrate human intelligence or walk on two legs, for the purposes of these tales. It is a thriving and growing fandom in which creators are prevalent in art and writing especially.
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Phoenix's Lust
Lightning lanced through the clouds, striking without sound, lines of pure white crackling through the atmosphere. The electrical storm brewed in the distance, threatening the heady rumble of thunder, and the phoenix clucked anxiously to herself, flapping madly as the wind rose, buffeting her wildly back and forth as if she had suddenly taken leave of her senses. Yet she was entirely with herself as she dodged and circled, peering down with eyes that could have been better suited for night vision than they were, squinting and clicking the edges of her beak together as she sought somewhere safer to land.
A storm was no place for a phoenix, much less one such as Vellura with her soft fall of luxurious, blue feathering, a crest atop her head drooping and falling with the sense of tiredness lacing her body. Her wings were heavy but not from the weight of the feathers on them, which would usually buoy her up. No... All her body wanted to do then was to drag her down and down and down, spinning and screeching into an abyss in which they could all say that the storm had, once again, claimed a victim, even if she was far from willing.
Lightning forked through the sky once more, lighting up the landscape in a threatening series of flashes, taunting her with the lure of vision that was not hers to steal for more than a fleeting moment in time. She could see -- and then it was gone, plunging her into darkness once more, struggling to keep up with the rapidly changing conditions. She had to think ahead, try to peer into the darkness, even the longer feathers shaped like 'horns' on either side of her crest seeming heavy in the moment, everything about her being and her body weighing her down and down and down.
And, still, the thunder rolled, pealing through the sky as if a beast resided up there, snarling down from the mountainous clouds, pooling and swirling, torn away by a raging wind that could not be contained. The pine trees so far below creaked and groaned -- wait, how low did that mean she was that she could hear them? Vellura shivered but there was nothing the phoenix could do but keep going, keep pushing on, striving to find land, find shelter, before the wicked droplets dotting her feathers came to light in the fury of the downpour that was surely brewing, waiting in the wings to be unleashed in all its ferocity.
Roll after roll of thunder clapped, growing closer and closer with every passing second, drawing a rise of fear to her bones. Vellura flinched, chirping anxiously as she struggled and fought to stay aloft, feathers wafting and drifting, her wings far from steady. She should have been a stronger flyer than she was but there were other factors at play with the onset of the longer, summer days, days stretching on and on, the lengthier hours of daylight stirring up a need deep within her. Of course, she had already laid a clutch of eggs but it was not so much of an ideal thing when she did not have a mate with which to actually fertilise them in her womb before they were laid. The whole cycle of being a phoenix of her type left her waddling and heavy, wanting something and yet unable to find it while the seasons demanded that she do it anyway. It was a conundrum, indeed, that she would have much rather have not been part of to begin with.
What was that? Vellura craned her head to see, eyes wide and straining. A cave? She would have to chance it either way as she'd dropped so much height, tiredness dragging her to land, that something would have to suffice for the night, even if she went to ground beneath a tree somewhere.
But she hoped against hope that the cave would prove to be a true sanctuary, landing in a flurry of feathers and a splatter of mud, the weight of the unfertilised eggs in her belly pulling her harshly back into the crude embrace of the land that she would have much rather have avoided. She was a creature of the sky and of the wing, after all, and there was a place for her. It was not on the ground.
On the ground left her vulnerable. On the ground left her at risk of being taken by a predator. And, so, she had to hurry, scrabbling up a ledge to the mouth of a cave framed by yew, the bristling needles seeming to warn her back from the gaping, dark hole that, somehow, managed to be even darker than the sense of the night in which she stood. Her sensitive 'nares and resulting sense of smell were dulled by the thick, heavy atmosphere, peaty aromas of earth rising up, and Vellura clucked, edges of her beak rattling. Did she dare chance it? Yet there was only one option and the storm approached with more flashes striking throughout the sky, a mighty battle going on so very high above that not even she could be a part of.
The cave was a sweet sanctuary from the wind and Vellura relaxed just a little, although she had to remain alert, still not knowing who the cave belonged to. Asking who was there, if anyone was there, was too simple and she cautiously probed her way deeper, the open cavern of the entrance turning a corner at the back and slinking down a dark passage.
She only hesitated for a moment as her eyes adjusted, easier to at least see a little of where she was going. There seemed to be gemstones of some kind set into the wall and yet they could not be any stones that she was familiar with, tail dragging lightly over the ground as she made her way deeper and deeper, as they glowed with their own light. Briefly, for she could not afford to dally when she may well still be in danger, she paused and tapped one experimentally with her beak, the sharp clack that sprung forth from the semi-translucent crystal pinging back at her instantly, the end tone lighter than how the tenor began.
Ruffling her feathers, Vellura squawked, but quietly. Strange, very strange, but she had to go on, keep going through the wide tunnel, the sides scraped smooth in narrower places as if a large body had needed to force its way through. The sense of disconcertion lingered but she pushed it aside stubbornly, for what other option did she have other than to try or venture tentatively back out into the storm when she was not in any position to do so?
Her persistence, however, paid off as the tunnel abruptly opened out into a massive cavern with a crystal roof, layered with shades of what she thought were purple and blue in the low light, although it was hard to see in the dark and even harder to glimpse in the flashes of lightning striking overhead. It seemed that Vellura had managed to seek shelter at just the right time and, for a few seconds, she paused there beside a circle of rocks that would do nicely as a makeshift nest, admiring the beauty of the storm as it raged, yet left her safe from harm. From a safe distance, the show of jagged shards of lightning splitting the sky in two was spectacular, reminding her of myths and legends that her mother had regaled her with during much younger ears, back when she had not been all that long out of the egg and hatched herself. In its own way, it was comforting, soothing her soul like a good session of preening.
It was as good a place as any to relax and wait out the storm, far from the entrance where other predators may well have been looking for shelter. And the cavern had a pleasant aroma to it too, something lightly and softly fragrant, like a field of wildflowers at the height of summer. Something about that scent pulled at a memory inside her but she merely chirped and settled herself down heavily, belly flattening to the ground as if to give the appearance that she was 'melting'.
And yet all that relaxation was about to change as the biggest flash of lightning yet lit up the cave, illuminating everything through that sheen of purple and blue -- maybe there was some pink in the crystal too -- to reveal a shape out in the centre. She didn't know how she could have possibly have missed it before but Vellura squawked and scrabbled, hustling away as yet another flash showed the detail in the definition, a dragon triple her size sleeping right there before her. With the round of his stomach tipped towards the crystal ceiling, he grumbled in his sleep -- sounds that she had, quite rightly, mistaken for thunder. Of course, she was not to be blamed for such a mix-up but sharing the cave with a predator that could snap her up in one gulp of his massive jaws wasn't exactly one of the things highest on her list of things to do!
But the drake didn't stir, her eyes straining to see as she hopped closer, her natural curiosity getting the better of her, regardless of how she trembled. She wanted to see too badly and, well, it was not as if dragons were known for attacking phoenixes. Most creatures like them got on well, although she had not seen a dragon close up before. It seemed better to take the opportunity to see what she had not when the beast in question was out for the count and dead to the world in all the ways that mattered.
Silver and black... It was difficult to pick out just what shade his scales were as she hopped around him, moving as lightly as was possible with the weight of the eggs weighing her down. Vellura was not the most elegant of beings in that moment but there was no one there to see her as the dragon slumbered, the phoenix's eyes adjusting as the lightning came in a series of sharp, repetitive flashes, enough for her to take in the fall of hair down his neck, the horns, the dark depths of his scales that had originally made him look as if he was part of the cave itself. Maybe the dragon was and she was imagining things. Stranger things surely had happened in worse storms.
His hind legs were spread, one foot twitching and curling lightly, snores increasing in volume, which only made her bolder. What a lark to find a dragon caught up in such a vulnerable position! And he was sleeping through the storm too like a hatchling! What were the odds? Quite good, in fact, for a dragon who had seen so many thunderstorms that they no longer even bothered him, tail shifting across the floor as he dreamed, lips vibrating lightly in the growls of his sleep.
Vellura paused, stock still and neck raised to attention, her eyes gleaming and wide in the darkness of the cavern. She didn't need a flash of lightning, those jaggedly revealing forks, to tell just what lay between those hind legs but seeing it in the flesh, well...that was something else entirely.
