Relating

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.

All work is fiction intended for fantasy only, regardless of content, and consent must always be acquired when engaging in any sex act with another adult.

Please note that all characters are clearly over eighteen and written as such in all stories.

---

Two survivors form an unlikely bond in the harshness of the Palaeolithic era...

She didn't know what the strange creature was, encroaching on her territory. He walked like her, yes, on two legs, but he was not a wolf like her, oh no. He was strange, so very strange, with fur restricted only to his head and face, though the rest of his body did have a very light coating of it. It was so different from her, with her grey fur tapering to brown across the back of her head and down her spine, her hind paws toughened from running so much, always travelling, ears pricked on top of her head.

Hidden behind a rock, she crouched, an animal hide draped over her thighs where it was tied at the waist, though the clothing left a big slit up the side. Her chest was left bare, for there was no reason for the mammary glands to be covered up in her pack, before she had struck off with the other young wolves for fresh pastures and hunting grounds, but the slit ensured that she still had range of motion. It was not necessary, of course, for wolves like her to wear anything over themselves, but she had come to appreciate the warmth of it.

Especially after her pack... She sucked in a breath, ears slipping back flat to her skull. No. That was not something that she wanted to think about, no. That was too much, too painful. Still, regardless of the time she had spent on her own, she longed for the companionship they had provided, never wanting to be a lone wolf. However, that was exactly what she had become, spending cold nights on her own, with no warm body to help keep hers from the chill of the night.

Ah, yes... For the wolfess lived alone, though it seemed that the strange creatures that walked on two legs, just like her, were nomadic too, solitary and travelling. Dimly, she remembered seeing them back when she had been no more than a wolf pup, suckling at her mother's breast, but her mother had hustled her away from them, delving deep into the undergrowth.

She didn't understand them, not at all, wrinkling her muzzle curiously as she watched him, all from a safe distance. He was furless, that much she could see -- though there was something on him too, something that smelled like another animal: a deer? He smelled like other animals, even though he was not like the ones that she hunted.

What was she to do if a human was in her territory? Her nose twitched, questing, sifting through the scents in the air. She didn't remember much about what she had been told about humans, but there were rumours of them. Some said that they killed without question. But some wolves did that too, however rare that was. Another wolf had once told her, a long, long time ago, that humans had some fur on their bodies, but it was only on certain parts of them. He said that he had found one deceased, but that the meat was foul. She didn't blame him. Eating another predator was only for truly hungry wolves, for they were not natural scavengers. In times of need, however, scavenging would get them through another long cold...

She watched carefully, her tail stiff. He didn't seem to be doing anything too unusual, not as he paused by the edge of the water, his eyes cast out, though he didn't see her. In passing, she'd heard that they could see more smaller details, from a distance, than wolves like her, but didn't know much what to make of that. She could rely more on her other senses, which seemed far more natural and comfortable to her. Perhaps he was like a bat too, able to move around easily at night, though she wasn't sure if she'd heard anything about humans being more active at night, not having direct experience. It was strange.

In all honesty, with a shiver, she had to acknowledge that she knew little about humans at all.

Knowing the will of another predator, after all, was one of the ways that a wolf stayed alive in such a time...

He couldn't smell her, she knew that much, though the wolfess would never know quite what incited her to crawl down the slope, keeping her long, lean body hunkered down to the ground, on her paws and hands, fingers curling around rocks for stability. Slow and stealthy, she crept closer, lips slightly parted as if to keep a snarl on the edge of her lips.

The river curled around the rocks, a safer place to drink for one would most often hear a predator coming, though she was within three paces of him (a wolf's pace) before his head shot up and he reached for his spear -- though all she knew it as was a long stick with a sharp claw on the end.

That was enough warning for her. Their eyes locked and she shuddered, though repressed the outward display as much as possible.

A human was so strange... His face was so dull and flat, not without the smooth lines and curves of a wolfish muzzle. Why did he have a flat muzzle like that? And the fur on his head was thicker and coarser, like the tougher hair of an elk, though she wouldn't have liked to wear it on her body. And the downward facing nose... That was strange, so strange, enough so that she pulled back a fraction. She'd been interested in his vision, from what she had heard before, but he didn't seem to have ears either, not even sticking up out of his hair. Where were his ears?

But his eyes were bright, boring into her, eye contact forced from her in challenge. There was life in there...intelligence in those eyes, so blue, they were just like the sky. But how? She knew they were clever, yes, from what she had heard, though the wolfess had no idea of how much she knew was true. But no more than that, no. She hadn't gotten close enough, not ever, to learn more.

But there was something more as she peered, her own gaze steady and level, was the emotion there, the fear, the wariness, reflecting her own. His lips twitched, another expression that she could not read on a flat muzzle like his, yet her sensitive ears caught the pounding of his heart, listening intently as she matched what she could tell of his body to the emotion in his eyes.

She knew so little about them.

What she did know, as they stared at one another, the human crouched and the wolfess with one leg stretched behind her, down low, preparing to flee, was that he was male. His shoulders were broad and she scented him to be a male, something in his aroma similar to that of wolves, his rugged features appearing to speak to her more of male wolves. With what she knew of humans, however, she could have been wrong.

Perhaps her curiosity would get the better of her, the human softening a little, some of the tension slipping from his shoulders. He stepped back, giving her space, and picked up something that smelled like animal skins, something that she had used to keep herself warm on cold nights during the long dark of time. The long dark had come many times in her life with little light during the day, when it was so much harder to find food. Prey was scarcer then.

Yet the human did something very strange indeed, picking up the skins and slinging them over his shoulders, wrapping them around him...and then he looked a lot furrier, hairier, as if he was putting on a body just like hers. It seemed perfectly normal to him, though he kept a wary eye on her, as if he thought she was about to attack. When he grunted and pointed, she could not have possibly known what he meant, too busy staring at him, how he covered himself practically from head to toe.

Her eyes widened, incredulous. Was he...putting on his hide? Like she'd heard that the furless ones had to do to keep warm? She shot back with a growl.

He approached her softly, slowly, extending his hand to her as if to touch, though she showed her teeth to him. No, no, no... No, that was too much, she didn't want him to touch her, but he understood her and backed off, hand dropping away.

They were predators in a world that was dangerous to them, though the human seemed to have less interest in her than she did in him. Or perhaps he was just scared of her? She inhaled, tasting a drop of fear in the air, though not as much as she might have thought. The air clawed at her, hot and dry, though the summer heat was not something that always bothered her.

When the human pulled a sling of wrapped something, something that smelled divine into his arms and moved off down the river, following the bend of it into the shade of the rocks, she followed. She didn't know what she was doing or where she was going, yet it was not as if her travels had led her in any particular direction so far anyway. That was not the way of a nomad, following the seasons and the prey, making her way in a dangerous world without any sense of direction.

He glanced back occasionally, perhaps to check if she was still following, though she kept her distance, ears pricked and turning back and forth, ensuring that it was not a trap. Her mother had told her that humans loved to make traps and were very skilled at it, a long time ago. She had said that they were difficult to get out of.

The sun moved across the sky as she paused at the entrance of a cave that the human had slipped into. It was open enough for her to see the back, even as her eyes adjusted to the light, the human already sitting cross-legged on an animal's skin.

Before him was the source of the delicious smell, meat laid out from a fresh kill, though she had known that it had been there already. How strange! He didn't seem to have the scent of young on him, so he didn't have other mouths to feed. In fact, there were no other human scents on him at all. She couldn't understand any wolf carrying food when it was not being taken to the elderly or young or even the injured.

He grunted and moved his lips in a strange stretch that made her wrinkle her muzzle. He seemed to be baring his teeth at her, but...where were his fangs? The rest of his body did not look like he meant to be hostile either, though baring one's fangs was seen as aggression, of course, to wolves.

Slowly, he got her to enter the cave, though she noticed that he kept the long stick with the sharp claw on the end close to him, one eye on her at all times. The cave had a large overhang where one could rest at the front, nice and open so that she could see what was coming, her natural wariness keeping her on edge. She still didn't want to find any of those traps that her mother had warned her about, sniffing carefully.

Yet there was no danger there as she settled, curiously, half on it and half off it. He made a face at her, not understanding why she'd chosen to take that position, though offered his food to her, the meat that smelled so good. It would likely go bad if it was not eaten soon, but there were berries too and other foraged foods, things that the human had brought back or along with him from hunting and gathering.

He grunted and made a weird smacking sound with his lips until she reached for the meat, picking it up between her fingers and sniffing it delicately. It smelled fine, though he made that weird stretching motion with his lips, something that the wolfess would later learn was a smile, again when she ate.

Together, they sat and ate, filling their bellies comfortably as the afternoon slipped into twilight, watching the stars appear behind the cave, stretching down into a rich meadow and forest beyond. There, prey lay and she pricked her ears to the calls of elk: tall, towering beasts with antlers that could sweep a wolf off their feet and into the cold grip of death. They were prey best taken down with a full pack, their teeth and claws at the ready. If the dam had grown across the river to the east of the forest, there would be giant beaver to be found there too. Although her language was not as refined as she would have liked, she drew a picture of the beaver in the dirt, making sure to show off the giant teeth. The human seemed to understand, nodding his head.

They rested, even if she sat up watching while he merely took more distance from her to sleep, setting a fire that warmed her fur. There had been fire, of course, back with her pack, but it was not something that she had continued with on her own. With someone there with her, a companion, it felt more soothing, less of a reminder of all that she had lost,

Together, they would survive.

The days that followed were interesting, at least for the wolfess. Having someone there allowed her to relax a little more, knowing that she didn't always have to be on watch, and they bonded swiftly. Heading down to the forest was a mutually agreed upon decision, though they would have to leave his cave, which extended further back into the rock face than she had expected, a narrow tunnel protecting them from predators. He showed her how to carry food that would not go bad too quickly with her, though she scoffed at it. She had already eaten -- why would she again need to eat food so quickly? Still, she brought it with them, carrying the food as he showed her.

Yet they were so different. Walking on two legs was about the most that they had in common, but he carried more with him than her, while she was content with her elk-hide skirt, something that smelled of her old pack still, however faintly. There were long poles too, tipped with much sharper stones than she was used to, though she recognised it, even if wolves did not use spears too often. As they were strong, they didn't need to make them as sharp as possible, except when they were hunting more challenging, larger prey. She tilted her head, perplexed by how much time he spent sharpening the sharp claw, the sharp stone or wood or tool he had tied, tightly, to the end.

Maybe he did it because he was weaker? That was clever. Her sense of admiration grew.

His sense of smell, however, was pitiful at best and she had to steer him away from the reek of animal dung as they hunted, which wasn't something that they wanted to trek into their trail. It could lead predators to them and, even together, they were weaker than bears, beasts that hungered for meat. She shuddered, tail stiff behind her as she scented the air, the thick forest wrapped around her.

It was hot there, though the river and the dam where prey would be found too could not be that far, not as they carried on.

As they perched by the river, the human set something thin with lots of holes in it in the water, putting his finger to his lips. She didn't know what that meant and grunted, but he put his lips together, quiet, not making a sound. That made a little more sense to her and she settled back with him, the coolness of the river soothing her, making things a little softer, lighter and easier. She didn't understand why they weren't trying to chase the beavers that had moved away from the water and the protection of the dam, but resolved to wait, at least for the moment, at least to see what the human had in mind.

She'd let her curiosity and want for companionship lead her so far, after all. Though, truth be told, the wolfess had not even realised that she missed her pack so much, the softness of other furry bodies pressed against hers.

The beavers themselves were not aggressive creatures, even if the force of their teeth, used to carve and gnaw through trees for their dams that blocked rivers. It was the ease at which they slipped away into the water that was the real problem, though they had been known too to band together to run off smaller predators. Flight, however, was the first instinct of a beaver when faced with a predator and had served them well down through many generations.

The meaning of the strange tool that he had cast into the river became evident when a beaver swam right into it and he pulled it to the shore, even though the beaver was huge, enough to feed both of them for a good many moons and suns. She wanted to run in and clamp her jaws around its neck, to stifle the frantic life from its body, but he stopped her from dashing in, jamming his sharp tooth on the long stick deep into its guts as the giant beaver cried out and weakened.

It was a harsh way to live, but it was the cycle of life and death that had to be appreciated, one creature feeding another. Predators did not think or care so much for the family and relationships of those that they ended the lives of, seeing it as the chain of life. They didn't see it like that, not as they took the meat back to their young or led their young to it, after all.

And yet there was compassion in the heart of the wolfess too, wanting to make it a quick kill as the beaver struggled faintly, weaker and weaker. With a snap of her teeth and a crunch of her jaws, she locked her teeth around the front of its neck -- it was too large for her to get around all the way. But that was more than enough as she crushed the windpipe and then used her bone-crushing jaws, while the creature was weakened, effectively ensuring her safety in a quick kill and ending its life. Its passing, at her jaws, would allow them to eat and take what they wanted from it.

She ripped into the beaver's flesh while it was still warm, no longer seeing it as a living being but taking her fill from the body. It was not longer a creature but solely meat that she needed to devour, to let slide down her throat without barely chewing to renew her body with the energy that it needed to live. Yet that was the harsh way of the world and neither wolf nor human could see anything wrong with that.

The beaver was too large, of course, for her to devour whole, so she allowed the human to take her place, sprawled happily on the grass with her legs kicked off to the side. With the buzz of insects in the air and her stomach comfortably full, so full that she likely would need to sleep off a bit of it before making the trek back from a successful hunt, she was as content as she had ever been. Though the wolfess did not think all that much about her past, not wanting to go back to it, to a time that was less comfortable than her present.

It didn't do her any good, even if the memories were there.

He, however, took charge with a small tooth on a stick, chunkier and thicker than the long one that he had used to spear the beaver. Curiously, she half propped herself up to watch as he carved the beaver open, separating organs and slicing off meat. It was as if he was seeing something that she wasn't, though it was not something that she could see through his eyes, in the light of his mind.

He folded the meat and organs that they were to take back with them into leather animal skins, wrapped up and put in a sling-like contraption that could be carried on his back. Her nose twitched. That was the gatherer in him, though he was not at all like the squirrels that she had chased as a pup, filling their cheeks with nuts and other forage that would last the long dark. No, he knew how to make places to put the meat, ways to carry it, more so than either he or she could ever have done in their arms alone.

And it allowed them to eat and feast for longer, even though it did mean that they left less behind them for the scavengers of the forest, which the wolfess frowned upon. The temptation of having meat and forage to last them longer, however, was tempting, so very much so, and he even cooked the meat over the fire, after impaling it with a long stick.

That had been interesting, even hypnotic, to sit there and watch him turning the stick, around and around, his little fire pit surrounded by stones. Even more so, the smell of charring, warming meat scared other animals away from them, as much as it made her drool.