{ "submission_id": "2244179", "keywords": [ { "keyword_id": "678", "keyword_name": "anthro", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "226734" }, { "keyword_id": "71", "keyword_name": "breasts", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "135838" }, { "keyword_id": "14662", "keyword_name": "camp", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "1046" }, { "keyword_id": "2362", "keyword_name": "cyborg", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "5955" }, { "keyword_id": "1674", "keyword_name": "fire", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "11923" }, { "keyword_id": "786", "keyword_name": "leopard", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "11836" }, { "keyword_id": "3778", "keyword_name": "mew", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "5378" }, { "keyword_id": "84465", "keyword_name": "snep", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "1765" }, { "keyword_id": "758", "keyword_name": "snow", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "11601" } ], "hidden": "f", "scraps": "f", "favorite": "f", "favorites_count": "13", "create_datetime": "2020-09-01 21:06:02.438909+00", "create_datetime_usertime": "01 Sep 2020 23:06 CEST", "last_file_update_datetime": "2020-09-01 21:05:41.129121+00", "last_file_update_datetime_usertime": "01 Sep 2020 23:05 CEST", "username": "morpheuskibbe", "user_id": "27566", "user_icon_file_name": "75205_morpheuskibbe_iconkate.gif", "user_icon_url_large": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/usericons/large/75/75205_morpheuskibbe_iconkate.gif", "user_icon_url_medium": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/usericons/medium/75/75205_morpheuskibbe_iconkate.gif", "user_icon_url_small": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/usericons/small/75/75205_morpheuskibbe_iconkate.gif", "file_name": "3263163_morpheuskibbe_unistaart_gif.gif", "file_url_full": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/full/3263/3263163_morpheuskibbe_unistaart_gif.gif", "file_url_screen": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/screen/3263/3263163_morpheuskibbe_unistaart_gif.gif", "file_url_preview": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/preview/3263/3263163_morpheuskibbe_unistaart_gif.gif", "thumbnail_url_huge_noncustom": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/preview/3263/3263163_morpheuskibbe_unistaart_gif.gif", "thumbnail_url_large_noncustom": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/large/3263/3263163_morpheuskibbe_unistaart_gif_noncustom.jpg", "thumbnail_url_medium_noncustom": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/3263/3263163_morpheuskibbe_unistaart_gif_noncustom.jpg", "thumb_medium_noncustom_x": "79", "thumb_medium_noncustom_y": "120", "thumb_large_noncustom_x": "132", "thumb_large_noncustom_y": "200", "thumb_huge_noncustom_x": "198", "thumb_huge_noncustom_y": "300", "files": [ { "file_id": "3263163", "file_name": "3263163_morpheuskibbe_unistaart_gif.gif", "file_url_full": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/full/3263/3263163_morpheuskibbe_unistaart_gif.gif", "file_url_screen": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/screen/3263/3263163_morpheuskibbe_unistaart_gif.gif", "file_url_preview": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/preview/3263/3263163_morpheuskibbe_unistaart_gif.gif", "mimetype": "image/gif", "submission_id": "2244179", "user_id": "27566", "submission_file_order": "0", "full_size_x": "661", "full_size_y": "1000", "screen_size_x": "661", "screen_size_y": "1000", "preview_size_x": "198", "preview_size_y": "300", "initial_file_md5": "c18c01d43d54589de68a81d1d96c0421", "full_file_md5": "c18c01d43d54589de68a81d1d96c0421", "large_file_md5": "5a1afe0fb327a7ae1a69d0e67e6ad32f", "small_file_md5": "a3baa08289c595cf41012050ec9fe90b", "thumbnail_md5": "fe8f3776b60c7aab664dec97a7a060e9", "deleted": "f", "create_datetime": "2020-09-01 21:05:41.129121+00", "create_datetime_usertime": "01 Sep 2020 23:05 CEST", "thumbnail_url_huge_noncustom": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/preview/3263/3263163_morpheuskibbe_unistaart_gif.gif", "thumbnail_url_large_noncustom": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/large/3263/3263163_morpheuskibbe_unistaart_gif_noncustom.jpg", "thumbnail_url_medium_noncustom": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/3263/3263163_morpheuskibbe_unistaart_gif_noncustom.jpg", "thumb_medium_noncustom_x": "79", "thumb_medium_noncustom_y": "120", "thumb_large_noncustom_x": "132", "thumb_large_noncustom_y": "200", "thumb_huge_noncustom_x": "198", "thumb_huge_noncustom_y": "300" } ], "pools": [], "description": "PATREON:[url=http://www.patreon.com/Morpheus]http://www.patreon.com/Morpheus[/url]\nPaypal:[url=https://www.paypal.me/AMKibbe]https://www.paypal.me/AMKibbe[/url]\nDiscord:[url=https://discord.gg/B5PJ2x2]https://discord.gg/B5PJ2x2[/url]\n\nMy Books for sale on LULU:\n[url=http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/amk1954]http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/amk1954[/url]\n\nStory by Kitsune257\n\nFire, Dangerous yet Beautiful\n\nAlethea sat on the edge of her bed tossing a blue rubber ball between each of her hands. She had no problem coordinating her new metallic hands, but it didn’t sound like a hand catching a ball. The metal of her cyborg hand resonated with every catch. While Atasi did an impressive job over the last few weeks to dampen it, they still didn’t feel like normal hands. Whenever the tips of her fingers made contact with each other when she grabbed the ball, she could feel the metal tips of her fingers. The coldness of both touching fingertips was picked up by the smallest sensors imaginable. The signals were sent to processors, which sent signals to the surviving nerves in her arm.\n\nShe would regularly find some object and rhythmically pass it between her hands. Other times she was found outside walking without any shoes. The grass would cushion her mechanical paws against the dirt. The scent of a fresh cut lawn would be blown through the air as he dug her mechanical claws into the ground. It would fill in the ridges of the supportive cushions that were her paws. It still felt real. Whether it was a blue rubber ball or the grass of the front lawn, everything she felt was still real, but it felt like it shouldn’t.\n\nAtasi was busy in the kitchen making a spaghetti dinner. It wasn’t fancy, but it was something they both enjoyed. A pillar of steam came up from the colander as she strained the spaghetti. She could smell the humidity of it as it opened her nasal passageways. Moments where her nose would let her take in such a deep breath were far and few in between. She felt a small smile crack on her face and the rest of the work became more of a pleasure than the time passer it was before.\n\nAfter allowing herself to savor the moment, Atasi continued on with making dinner. She swung open the pantry door. The overwhelming smell of all the spices, herbs, and various ingredients was an immediate mouth waterer. This was one of those pantries that you know it’s going to be a good meal if it’s opened. She grabbed a jar of homemade tomato sauce, as well as a bottle of thyme, basil, and oregano. The ingredients were set on the counter next to the stovetop as she went over to grab the colander and pour the spaghetti back in the pot. The next ingredient on the mentally engraved list was the tomato sauce. However, she was only greeted with the very well done job of sealing the jar shut. After banging the lid on the counter’s edge, the lid gave way with her next attempt to open it.\n\nThe [i]thunk thunk thunk[/i] coming from coming from the kitchen snapped Alethea out of her trance. The servos in her mechanical ears twisted them as fast as her old ears would have. The sound seemed to have originated from the kitchen. Silence had fallen throughout her room, her breathing was a mere wisp. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, she came to the conclusion that something must have fallen and that something should be made tidy. The servos in her legs and arms whirred to life as she stood up from here bed. The evidence of her long period of seated rest was slowly being erased as her mattress expanded back into its original form. It was impressive the amount of dampening that Atasi put into them. The first prototypes creaked in a way that was comparable to nails on a chalkboard. However, they were now as silent as her old legs. You could only hear the servos when they first started, then a second layer of dampening would turn on, and they were eerily quiet for mechanical legs.\n\nAs she lightly stood and slowly walked from her room towards the kitchen, she could smell the tomato sauce and herbs. Soon after, it was followed by the smacking of sound spaghetti being stirred. She entered the kitchen with her feet gliding silently across the surface of the floor like a ghost on the haunted seas. Atasi could feel that there was a disturbance. Though, when she looked to where it was, there was nothing there.\n\nHer breath was squeezed out of her as two metal limbs grabbed around her chest. The weight of Alethea was more than she was prepared to handle. About halfway through her fall, the metal arms of her sister let go, and extended out towards the ground. Alethea was able to spring off the floor with her arm and stick her landing. Atasi was not so lucky with the floor meeting the entire front of her body. She lay on the floor for what felt like a few seconds before a mild pain shot from her nose.\n\n“Don’t make me turn your sight and hearing off again!“ Atasi yelled, crawling up onto her legs. Something warm was dripping on her upper lip. With a single lick, she confirmed the extent of the injury to her nose. “I’m trying to make a dinner! I don’t need you randomly tackling me while I’m trying to make the perfect balance of herbs!”\n\n“I didn’t mean to…” Alethea got cut off with Atasi’s remark to zip it and wait for dinner. Alethea didn’t fully comprehend why she did what she even did. It was something that was much more than a feeling. While hunger and pain you could ignore, this, she couldn’t. It was as if her very soul was telling her to do these uncivil things. While her sister had manners they could easily impress a queen, she never got the point of civility. She always found it to constricting. Why should you eat a meal with three different forks without a comfortable place to put your elbows, when you could just eat a pint of ice cream in your bed while watching politicians say evermore stupid things.\n\nSome said that she would be the kind of anthro to regress from society and technology and go live out in the wilderness for the rest of her life. Well, that would’ve been true, if she hadn’t had lost all four limbs in a fire. Now, she truly did depend upon technology to live a normal life. Without it, she would be a sad heap of blind and deaf flesh lying on a bed just waiting for her existence to finally wrap up. Since she couldn’t escape technology, she couldn’t escape society.\n\n“Alethea, dinner time!” She didn’t know how, but she had wandered from one side of the house to the other. She came back and took her seat at the small kitchen table. There was still steam coming off of the food. With it, was the sent of the thyme, oregano, and basil that had been mixed in with it. The scent was enough to make it feel like a dam had burst inside of their mouths’. While Atasi was twisting her fork to make a bundle of spaghetti, Alethea would put a few strands in her mouth and suck them in. Atasi glared at her sister, but Alethea couldn’t care less about how she was eating.\n\nAtasi reached into the cursed shallow depths of women’s pockets, and grabbed onto a clicker. She felt around until she felt the right button, and pressed it. Suddenly, Alethea’s pupils shrank to the point where she couldn’t see. While Alethea was horrified at the fact that she could no longer see, Atasi was internally containing the horror of seeing eyes with irises, but no pupils. “What have I said about eating?” Atasi asked with a hint of smirk\n\n“Why can’t I just eat!?” Alethea was ticked off to say the least.\n\n“We have talked about this multiple times during our past spaghetti dinners. How are you supposed to eat your spaghetti?“ A grin cracked on Atasi’s face as she said this. It was nice to finally have some control over her sister.\n\n“Like you.” Alethea said with a sigh. “Can I please have my sight back?” She heard a faint click, and a hurricane of white came pouring into her eyes. Her mechanical eyes were able to quickly adjust to the new found light. Alethea begrudgingly picked up a few strands of spaghetti with her fork, twirled them into a nice bundle, and put it into her mouth. As to not make her sister more mad than she already was, she chewed and swallowed her food before asking, “Happy?”\n\n“Yes. Now, I feel like you’ve been cooped up a bit too much since your recovery.” Atasi said this in a tone that made it evident that she was trying to lead up to something.\n\n“Yea,” Alethea said with a sigh. “I don’t want to hurt myself again.” She rapidly shook her head trying to suppress the memories of the incident. Her gray fur puffed out from this making her head look a bit larger than before. Alethea had then proceeded to bury her face into her metallic hands. She could feel the cool touch of the seamless metal, and the hands could feel the softness of the fur covering her face. The feeling was so conflicting, it was the only thing that she could focus on.\n\n“Well, me, Elizabeth, Michael, and Neo were planning on going on a campout in the mountains tomorrow night, and I was wondering if you would like to come.”\n\nThis was a chance for Alethea to get out of the house. She had met her sister's friends a few times before. Elizabeth had that unusual popular girl personality. Always craving attention, makeup, gossip, and pretty much anything that your stereotypical popular kid in high school would want. Michael was a bit of a daredevil. Some others have theorized that it was from his nature of being a buck to show that he was on top. Very outgoing, and very brave.\n\nThen, there was Neo. He was a bit odd to be in the group of friends. While her sister was a snow leopard, Elizabeth was a lynx, and Michael was a buck, and all of whom we are very outgoing and extroverted, Neo was much less extroverted. He was a fennec fox, which meant that everybody else towered over him. He was somewhat introverted, and mainly kept to himself. The main reason why the others took him in was because he had no other friend groups, and they all took a little bit of pity on him.\n\n“Sure, why not?” Alethea knew that she could use the outdoors. It would finally be a chance to escape the realm of society. Besides, since the camping trip was just going to be one night, there was a very small chance that anything bad could happen to any of her cyborg parts, which could leave her stranded without a limb.\n\n…..\n\n“I know that I said that we were late,” Atasi yelled while being out of breath, “But that doesn’t mean that you can go charging up the mountain while leaving me behind!” Alethea looked back, and saw her sister a bit of a ways behind her. With the gentle cold breeze blowing up the mountain, she could faintly pick up the scent of her sweat caked sister. It didn’t help Atasi that she was carrying everything she needed on her back. For Alethea, it didn’t matter too much since her mechanical legs could carry her load with no problem.\n\nWith an inspiration of kindness, one of the computer systems kicked back on. Alethea bounded back down the mountain. With all of the sensors of her cyborg parts combined, she was able to make carefully calculated decisions on where to land her paws. This allowed her to not only climb, but also descend the mountain at such a rapid pace. Once she was within arms reach of her sister, she swiftly unbuckled the waist strap, and took one of the straps off of her sister’s shoulder, before her sister could fully comprehend what was going on.\n\n“What have I said abo…” Atasi Lost all words as she saw her sister take her camping backpack right on her shoulders, hoisted it on top of her own, and turned to look back at her as if to say, “What are you waiting for?” A smile broke out on Atasi’s face as she realized that her sister had freed her from the burden of caring her stuff up the mountain. “Oh, thanks!”\n\nAfter another 2 1/2 hours of hiking through the mountain, seeing the beautiful depths of the valley, smelling the wondrous send of clean air, and the only noise is being their footsteps and accompanying laughter, they finally arrived at the reserved campsite. There were two ATVs already parked at the campsite. One looked fairly beaten up, old, and covered in mud with its red paint was flaking off exposing the body that was slowly rusting away. It had a large cargo container on the back with a rake strapped to the top of it. The second, and much newer ATV, was crackling from the engine compartment, a sign that it had just recently been shut off. It was this year‘s model, and looks like it would be an absolute joy to ride.\n\nElizabeth wasn’t too hard to find. She was wandering around the campsite holding her phone up into the air trying to get at least one bar of cell service. Her ears were pinned to the back of her head in distress as she was just now realizing that she wouldn’t have any access to the Internet. Michael was walking back to the campsite while re-tightening his belt. Alethea, with her hypersensitive mechanical ears, could hear him mutter and complain under his breath about how Elizabeth wouldn’t let him use the bathroom wall on the ride up.\n\nAlethea could smell that there was somebody else in the campsite. Following the scent, it led her to a hammock. When she peeked in, she saw Neo taking a nap. Although, something wasn’t quite right about his nap. She couldn’t quite put it into words, but something told her that this was off. As she turned to walk away, her intuition was confirmed by the sound of a sneeze coming from the hammock. Neo was actually awake, whether he was recently woken up, or was never asleep, she didn’t know. “So, how was your nap?” She heard a rustle coming from the hammock as Neo was rolling over to check his watch.\n\n“It was… pretty decent. About an hour and a half.” It was pretty clear from the tone of his voice that he was still tired. But, she couldn’t really blame him. From the little she knew about fennec foxes, she knew that they were mainly nocturnal.\n\nThere was a shriek that came from the general location of the center of the campsite. Alethea looked up and Neo poked his head out to see Elizabeth almost bursting into tears. “Why are there so many bugs?!” Atasi ran over to her bag, went rummaging through it, and pulled out a can of bug spray. She then proceeded to spray her friend down. “That stuff smells disgusting! Why are you spraying me with it?!”\n\n“It’s bug repellent. This will keep the bugs away.“ Atasi replied. She was starting to wonder if it was a genuine mistake to bring Elizabeth along to such a secluded location.\n\n“Don’t worry Liz, once you get the stench of campfire smoke on you, no bugs will want to come near you.“ Mickle was trying to contribute some helpful advice.\n\n“That is such awful advice! Why are you guys trying to make me ruin my clothes and my fur?!” Elizabeth started to have tears flowing down her face. Michael was coming over and began telling her that everything would be fine and it would wash out. Atasi made a comment over how the eye crud in her fur would be harder to clean out. Alethea and Neo looked at each other and shrugged simultaneously.\n\n“If she would have spent more time outdoors as a cub,” Neo stated, “then she wouldn’t be so ticked off by the minor inconveniences of the outdoors.” He looked over to the horizon that sat above the valley. The sunset cast an array of orange, pink, and purple light throughout the sky. The colors of the sunset even seem to paint themselves onto the clouds. “We’ve got a beautiful sunset tonight, eh?”\n\n“Ya.” Alethea said. It was wondrous moments like these that she was glad that her sister had disabled the computer assistant. It would probably start rambling on about how the angle of the sun caused the lights to be different in the sky, blah blah blah.\n\n“Well, the hotdogs aren’t going to cook themselves. Would you like to help out with the campfire?” Neo rolled out of his hammock and started to head for his ATV.\n\nAlethea was taken aback. She could suddenly hear her heart beating as loud as the birds chirping and Neo’s footsteps on the loose pine straw that scattered the ground. She couldn’t seem to move, she could only remember the helplessness of being trapped in a metal suit while being cooked alive. She started stammering in an attempt to protest the idea, but Neo didn’t seem to notice. “Come on!” Neo’s tone wasn’t rude, rather it was outreaching to her, like a teacher calling a student over for a lesson.”\n\nWith her hands fidgeting, ears twerking, tail pressed flat out against her crotch, and constantly looking left and right, she reluctantly decided to follow him. She saw Neo open up the back container of the ATV. Inside, there was firewood, branches, sticks, even smaller sticks that were in a bag, some sort of pinkish purple fluff, and a box of matches. He grabbed the bag, the box of matches, the pinkish purple fluff from inside the compartment and shut it. He gave the stuff to her, which she did not entirely like. She was holding matches, matches make fire, and fire had permanently damaged her. He unstrapped the rake and started heading off.\n\nHe walked on over to a small clearing. Alethea reluctantly followed. She was curious as to what the pink and purple fluff was. The texture was surprisingly familiar and somehow seemed to polish the dirt off of her metal hands. After putting it up to her nose and taking a whiff of it, she realized that it was dryer lint. “What is he going to use the dryer lint for?” She questioned in her head.\n\n“This looks like a good spot. You can set the stuff down where you are.” As soon as he said that. He started raking away the foliage that covered the ground. He raked away a huge circle where there was only bare ground, and he did it surprisingly quickly. While he was raking away, she could hear off in the distance her sister trying to convince Michael that doing a backflip off of his ATV was not a good idea.\n\n“I know that you know how much of a horror fire can be. The main reason your sister set up this campout in the first place was so that I could teach you about the other side of fire.” Neo was expecting her to lash out at that, but he figured it would be the best way to introduce her to the lesson of how fire can be beautiful.\n\n“She did what!?” Alethea was, to no surprise for Neo, upset at this. “She knows how much I hate fire!“\n\n“Well, even if you never see a flame in your life, It’s always a good idea to understand how things work. When I got that ATV about two years ago, it could barely run. Most others would be scared to even take the body panels off. However, if you’re not afraid to dive into it and do your research on how it works, you’d be surprised how easy it is to fix something like that back up into running condition.”\n\n“So, Atasi wants you to teach me about fire?” She was starting to become a bit curious about this. She was still scared nonetheless, but curious.\n\n“Yes. For the first part of our lesson, can you grab me the matches, dryer lint, and the bag?” Alethea stood there for a moment in a mental dilemma. Her sister was kind enough to try and help her with her overwhelming fear of fire, but she is going to help make a fire. “Don’t worry about it, this fire is going to start off small and slowly grow as you become more comfortable with it.” She reluctantly decided to go on over and grab the supplies that he had asked for.\n\nWhen she handed them to him, he took the dryer lint and put it in the center of the circle. He then started taking the smallest twigs out of the bag, and started creating some sort of teepee around it. “There are three essential things that a fire needs in order to survive. Air, heat, and fuel. If you smother a fire, you starve it of air and it dies. If you throw water on a fire, that takes the heat away, and it dies. If you take any available fuel that’s not already being consumed by the fire away from it, it will eventually burn up all of its fuel and die out.”\n\n“Is the last reason why you raked this circle?” Alethea asked out of curiosity.\n\n“Exactly. The foliage is one source of fuel that a fire can use. By raking it away and leaving the barren ground, it has no way to spread.” A smile started to form on his face as he saw that his first lesson was already starting to take root. Suddenly, there was a zip as Leo had struck a match. Alethea backed up a little in surprise. “Don’t worry, using matches takes a little bit of skill, so I’ll light the fire for you.”\n\nHe gently pushed the flaming tip of the match into the dryer lint. As soon as it caught fire, he dropped the match right where it was and grabbed the bag of kindling. The first smell of smoke started to fill the air as the fire slowly grew over it’s tiny little teepee made of a dozen or so tiny twigs. “If you want the fire to continue to grow,” he said while holding a small twig in his fingers, “you will have to give it more fuel.” Using the nimble dexterity of his fingers, he gently placed the small twig next to the other twigs. Within a few seconds, it also caught on fire.\n\nNeo extended a small twig out to Alethea. “Be gentle, but fast. Although, I doubt that the fire at this size combined with the fact that you have a mechanical metal hand is going to harm you.” She nervously grabbed the small twig and knelt down next to the tiny fire. She cautiously extended her hand with the twig out towards the fire. She could feel the warmth of the fire from her hand. She slowly drew her hand closer and closer to the fire. As she got closer, somethings strange started to occur. The heat didn’t seem to intensify after a certain point, as if the feeling had plateaued. “System warning,” rang in her ear, “please do not expose yourself to high temperatures for prolonged periods of time.” She cautiously set the twig on the other burning twigs. As she did, the flame licked around one of her fingers. She could feel that it was hot, but not that it was burning hot. “Warning, please allow right index finger time to cool off.”\n\nShe examined her hand, it was still a bit warm, but it wasn’t harmed. She could see a small layer of carbon had accumulated on the surface of it. “So,” Neo asked, “would you be comfortable putting another one on?”\n\n“Sure.” Although Alethea was still a little phased at how the fire felt different, she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it. And since she wasn’t harmed by putting one twig on, she concuded another one wouldn’t hurt. That same logic kept playing through her head as she had put more into the fire twig by twig. She was mesmerized by how the fire could seemingly roll over her hands without causing pain. The only thing that she could feel was warmth from it, and she could also hear the safety system warning her to let her hands cool off. After a certain point, she seemed to have lost the fear of the fire, and was starting to find the boundaries for how long she could expose herself to it and be fine.\n\nSteadily, the twigs turned into sticks, and the sticks turned into branches, and the branches turned into logs. Before Alethea even knew it, she was helping Leo take the logs out of the ATV so they could be added onto the fire with just as much contentment as she had with the twigs. Just as she was moving on from twigs to sticks to branches to logs, the chirps in the air changed from birds to bats and insects. And the silence from her sisters' friends turned into Elizabeth constantly complaining about how hungry she was and also complaining about why they couldn’t just use gasoline to make the fire.\n\n“I think you’re finally starting to see fire in the same way that I do.” Neo said as Alethea as she added on the last log.\n\n“How’s that?” She asked out of curiosity.\n\n“Fire, when contained, can be a mesmerizing and beautiful thing. Although, you do have it a bit easier than me. You can pick up a log that’s on fire without burning your hands off.\n\nFor the first time that night, she finally took a step back and looked at her work. The fire was roaring for a small campfire. She could hear the wood crackling and shifting, and could feel the air that it was pulling in from around them and pushing up towards the night sky. Her fur smelled just like the campfire she built. She watched in mesmerized awe as the flames flickered and danced. As she was trying to savor the moment for as long as she could, Elizabeth came running over with two hotdogs on a hotdog roaster. They could hear her stomach growling from hunger.\n\nEverybody had gathered around the fire to roast hotdogs to eat for their dinner. They all sat around telling their favorite parts of high school that were now distant memories. Michael tried roasting some hotdogs on his antlers, but was only successful for about two seconds before Atasi pulled him away. The smoke from the campfire added a unique flavor to the hotdogs. It was something you couldn’t get off of a grill, whether charcoal or gas. One by one, as the night was starting to seep their stamina, and started to run out of stories to tell, they secluded back to the tents that they brought.\n\nBy around 2 AM, only Alethea and Neo were awake. It was unusual to see him so awake at this hour, or even this awake in general. At this point, the fire had smothered down to mere coals blanketed in ashes. ”You know, you built one great fire.”\n\n“I guess I did.” Alethea stared at the slowly cooling pile of ashes and coals, seeing her work at its peak, and its long-lasting effects on everybody for this trip. “And I guess that you were also right. The fire that made me lose my limbs was what you could call an “out of control fire”. But this, everything was calm, everything was contained, and I didn’t hurt myself.”\n\n“Fire has two sides. There is the dangerous side of fire that everybody fears. The one that destroys everything in its path. And then, there is the beautiful side of fire. The side of tribal dances that have existed for millennia, the side of our only source of light during the night for millennia. The side of exquisite beauty.”\n\n[url=http://www.postybirb.com]Posted using PostyBirb[/url]", "description_bbcode_parsed": "PATREON:http://www.patreon.com/Morpheus
Paypal:https://www.paypal.me/AMKibbe
Discord:https://discord.gg/B5PJ2x2

My Books for sale on LULU:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/amk1954

Story by Kitsune257

Fire, Dangerous yet Beautiful

Alethea sat on the edge of her bed tossing a blue rubber ball between each of her hands. She had no problem coordinating her new metallic hands, but it didn’t sound like a hand catching a ball. The metal of her cyborg hand resonated with every catch. While Atasi did an impressive job over the last few weeks to dampen it, they still didn’t feel like normal hands. Whenever the tips of her fingers made contact with each other when she grabbed the ball, she could feel the metal tips of her fingers. The coldness of both touching fingertips was picked up by the smallest sensors imaginable. The signals were sent to processors, which sent signals to the surviving nerves in her arm.

She would regularly find some object and rhythmically pass it between her hands. Other times she was found outside walking without any shoes. The grass would cushion her mechanical paws against the dirt. The scent of a fresh cut lawn would be blown through the air as he dug her mechanical claws into the ground. It would fill in the ridges of the supportive cushions that were her paws. It still felt real. Whether it was a blue rubber ball or the grass of the front lawn, everything she felt was still real, but it felt like it shouldn’t.

Atasi was busy in the kitchen making a spaghetti dinner. It wasn’t fancy, but it was something they both enjoyed. A pillar of steam came up from the colander as she strained the spaghetti. She could smell the humidity of it as it opened her nasal passageways. Moments where her nose would let her take in such a deep breath were far and few in between. She felt a small smile crack on her face and the rest of the work became more of a pleasure than the time passer it was before.

After allowing herself to savor the moment, Atasi continued on with making dinner. She swung open the pantry door. The overwhelming smell of all the spices, herbs, and various ingredients was an immediate mouth waterer. This was one of those pantries that you know it’s going to be a good meal if it’s opened. She grabbed a jar of homemade tomato sauce, as well as a bottle of thyme, basil, and oregano. The ingredients were set on the counter next to the stovetop as she went over to grab the colander and pour the spaghetti back in the pot. The next ingredient on the mentally engraved list was the tomato sauce. However, she was only greeted with the very well done job of sealing the jar shut. After banging the lid on the counter’s edge, the lid gave way with her next attempt to open it.

The thunk thunk thunk coming from coming from the kitchen snapped Alethea out of her trance. The servos in her mechanical ears twisted them as fast as her old ears would have. The sound seemed to have originated from the kitchen. Silence had fallen throughout her room, her breathing was a mere wisp. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, she came to the conclusion that something must have fallen and that something should be made tidy. The servos in her legs and arms whirred to life as she stood up from here bed. The evidence of her long period of seated rest was slowly being erased as her mattress expanded back into its original form. It was impressive the amount of dampening that Atasi put into them. The first prototypes creaked in a way that was comparable to nails on a chalkboard. However, they were now as silent as her old legs. You could only hear the servos when they first started, then a second layer of dampening would turn on, and they were eerily quiet for mechanical legs.

As she lightly stood and slowly walked from her room towards the kitchen, she could smell the tomato sauce and herbs. Soon after, it was followed by the smacking of sound spaghetti being stirred. She entered the kitchen with her feet gliding silently across the surface of the floor like a ghost on the haunted seas. Atasi could feel that there was a disturbance. Though, when she looked to where it was, there was nothing there.

Her breath was squeezed out of her as two metal limbs grabbed around her chest. The weight of Alethea was more than she was prepared to handle. About halfway through her fall, the metal arms of her sister let go, and extended out towards the ground. Alethea was able to spring off the floor with her arm and stick her landing. Atasi was not so lucky with the floor meeting the entire front of her body. She lay on the floor for what felt like a few seconds before a mild pain shot from her nose.

“Don’t make me turn your sight and hearing off again!“ Atasi yelled, crawling up onto her legs. Something warm was dripping on her upper lip. With a single lick, she confirmed the extent of the injury to her nose. “I’m trying to make a dinner! I don’t need you randomly tackling me while I’m trying to make the perfect balance of herbs!”

“I didn’t mean to…” Alethea got cut off with Atasi’s remark to zip it and wait for dinner. Alethea didn’t fully comprehend why she did what she even did. It was something that was much more than a feeling. While hunger and pain you could ignore, this, she couldn’t. It was as if her very soul was telling her to do these uncivil things. While her sister had manners they could easily impress a queen, she never got the point of civility. She always found it to constricting. Why should you eat a meal with three different forks without a comfortable place to put your elbows, when you could just eat a pint of ice cream in your bed while watching politicians say evermore stupid things.

Some said that she would be the kind of anthro to regress from society and technology and go live out in the wilderness for the rest of her life. Well, that would’ve been true, if she hadn’t had lost all four limbs in a fire. Now, she truly did depend upon technology to live a normal life. Without it, she would be a sad heap of blind and deaf flesh lying on a bed just waiting for her existence to finally wrap up. Since she couldn’t escape technology, she couldn’t escape society.

“Alethea, dinner time!”  She didn’t know how, but she had wandered from one side of the house to the other. She came back and took her seat at the small kitchen table. There was still steam coming off of the food. With it, was the sent of the thyme, oregano, and basil that had been mixed in with it. The scent was enough to make it feel like a dam had burst inside of their mouths’. While Atasi was twisting her fork to make a bundle of spaghetti, Alethea would put a few strands in her mouth and suck them in. Atasi glared at her sister, but Alethea couldn’t care less about how she was eating.

Atasi reached into the cursed shallow depths of women’s pockets, and grabbed onto a clicker. She felt around until she felt the right button, and pressed it. Suddenly, Alethea’s pupils shrank to the point where she couldn’t see. While Alethea was horrified at the fact that she could no longer see, Atasi was internally containing the horror of seeing eyes with irises, but no pupils. “What have I said about eating?” Atasi asked with a hint of smirk

“Why can’t I just eat!?” Alethea was ticked off to say the least.

“We have talked about this multiple times during our past spaghetti dinners. How are you supposed to eat your spaghetti?“ A grin cracked on Atasi’s face as she said this. It was nice to finally have some control over her sister.

“Like you.” Alethea said with a sigh. “Can I please have my sight back?” She heard a faint click, and a hurricane of white came pouring into her eyes. Her mechanical eyes were able to quickly adjust to the new found light. Alethea begrudgingly picked up a few strands of spaghetti with her fork, twirled them into a nice bundle, and put it into her mouth. As to not make her sister more mad than she already was, she chewed and swallowed her food before asking, “Happy?”

“Yes. Now, I feel like you’ve been cooped up a bit too much since your recovery.” Atasi said this in a tone that made it evident that she was trying to lead up to something.

“Yea,” Alethea said with a sigh. “I don’t want to hurt myself again.” She rapidly shook her head trying to suppress the memories of the incident. Her gray fur puffed out from this making her head look a bit larger than before. Alethea had then proceeded to bury her face into her metallic hands. She could feel the cool touch of the seamless metal, and the hands could feel the softness of the fur covering her face. The feeling was so conflicting, it was the only thing that she could focus on.

“Well, me, Elizabeth, Michael, and Neo were planning on going on a campout in the mountains tomorrow night, and I was wondering if you would like to come.”

This was a chance for Alethea to get out of the house. She had met her sister's friends a few times before. Elizabeth had that unusual popular girl personality. Always craving attention, makeup, gossip, and pretty much anything that your stereotypical popular kid in high school would want. Michael was a bit of a daredevil. Some others have theorized that it was from his nature of being a buck to show that he was on top. Very outgoing, and very brave.

Then, there was Neo. He was a bit odd to be in the group of friends. While her sister was a snow leopard, Elizabeth was a lynx, and Michael was a buck, and all of whom we are very outgoing and extroverted, Neo was much less extroverted. He was a fennec fox, which meant that everybody else towered over him. He was somewhat introverted, and mainly kept to himself. The main reason why the others took him in was because he had no other friend groups, and they all took a little bit of pity on him.

“Sure, why not?” Alethea knew that she could use the outdoors. It would finally be a chance to escape the realm of society. Besides, since the camping trip was just going to be one night, there was a very small chance that anything bad could happen to any of her cyborg parts, which could leave her stranded without a limb.

…..

“I know that I said that we were late,” Atasi yelled while being out of breath, “But that doesn’t mean that you can go charging up the mountain while leaving me behind!” Alethea looked back, and saw her sister a bit of a ways behind her. With the gentle cold breeze blowing up the mountain, she could faintly pick up the scent of her sweat caked sister. It didn’t help Atasi that she was carrying everything she needed on her back. For Alethea, it didn’t matter too much since her mechanical legs could carry her load with no problem.

With an inspiration of kindness, one of the computer systems kicked back on. Alethea bounded back down the mountain. With all of the sensors of her cyborg parts combined, she was able to make carefully calculated decisions on where to land her paws. This allowed her to not only climb, but also descend the mountain at such a rapid pace. Once she was within arms reach of her sister, she swiftly unbuckled the waist strap, and took one of the straps off of her sister’s shoulder, before her sister could fully comprehend what was going on.

“What have I said abo…” Atasi Lost all words as she saw her sister take her camping backpack right on her shoulders, hoisted it on top of her own, and turned to look back at her as if to say, “What are you waiting for?” A smile broke out on Atasi’s face as she realized that her sister had freed her from the burden of caring her stuff up the mountain. “Oh, thanks!”

After another 2 1/2 hours of hiking through the mountain, seeing the beautiful depths of the valley, smelling the wondrous send of clean air, and the only noise is being their footsteps and accompanying laughter, they finally arrived at the reserved campsite. There were two ATVs already parked at the campsite. One looked fairly beaten up, old, and covered in mud with its red paint was flaking off exposing the body that was slowly rusting away. It had a large cargo container on the back with a rake strapped to the top of it. The second, and much newer ATV, was crackling from the engine compartment, a sign that it had just recently been shut off. It was this year‘s model, and looks like it would be an absolute joy to ride.

Elizabeth wasn’t too hard to find. She was wandering around the campsite holding her phone up into the air trying to get at least one bar of cell service. Her ears were pinned to the back of her head in distress as she was just now realizing that she wouldn’t have any access to the Internet. Michael was walking back to the campsite while re-tightening his belt. Alethea, with her hypersensitive mechanical ears, could hear him mutter and complain under his breath about how Elizabeth wouldn’t let him use the bathroom wall on the ride up.

Alethea could smell that there was somebody else in the campsite. Following the scent, it led her to a hammock. When she peeked in, she saw Neo taking a nap. Although, something wasn’t quite right about his nap. She couldn’t quite put it into words, but something told her that this was off. As she turned to walk away, her intuition was confirmed by the sound of a sneeze coming from the hammock. Neo was actually awake, whether he was recently woken up, or was never asleep, she didn’t know. “So, how was your nap?” She heard a rustle coming from the hammock as Neo was rolling over to check his watch.

“It was… pretty decent. About an hour and a half.”  It was pretty clear from the tone of his voice that he was still tired. But, she couldn’t really blame him. From the little she knew about fennec foxes, she knew that they were mainly nocturnal.

There was a shriek that came from the general location of the center of the campsite. Alethea looked up and Neo poked his head out to see Elizabeth almost bursting into tears. “Why are there so many bugs?!” Atasi ran over to her bag, went rummaging through it, and pulled out a can of bug spray. She then proceeded to spray her friend down. “That stuff smells disgusting! Why are you spraying me with it?!”

“It’s bug repellent. This will keep the bugs away.“ Atasi replied. She was starting to wonder if it was a genuine mistake to bring Elizabeth along to such a secluded location.

“Don’t worry Liz, once you get the stench of campfire smoke on you, no bugs will want to come near you.“ Mickle was trying to contribute some helpful advice.

“That is such awful advice! Why are you guys trying to make me ruin my clothes and my fur?!” Elizabeth started to have tears flowing down her face. Michael was coming over and began telling her that everything would be fine and it would wash out. Atasi made a comment over how the eye crud in her fur would be harder to clean out. Alethea and Neo looked at each other and shrugged simultaneously.

“If she would have spent more time outdoors as a cub,” Neo stated, “then she wouldn’t be so ticked off by the minor inconveniences of the outdoors.” He looked over to the horizon that sat above the valley. The sunset cast an array of orange, pink, and purple light throughout the sky. The colors of the sunset even seem to paint themselves onto the clouds. “We’ve got a beautiful sunset tonight, eh?”

“Ya.” Alethea said. It was wondrous moments like these that she was glad that her sister had disabled the computer assistant. It would probably start rambling on about how the angle of the sun caused the lights to be different in the sky, blah blah blah.

“Well, the hotdogs aren’t going to cook themselves. Would you like to help out with the campfire?” Neo rolled out of his hammock and started to head for his ATV.

Alethea was taken aback. She could suddenly hear her heart beating as loud as the birds chirping and Neo’s footsteps on the loose pine straw that scattered the ground. She couldn’t seem to move, she could only remember the helplessness of being trapped in a metal suit while being cooked alive. She started stammering in an attempt to protest the idea, but Neo didn’t seem to notice. “Come on!” Neo’s tone wasn’t rude, rather it was outreaching to her, like a teacher calling a student over for a lesson.”

With her hands fidgeting, ears twerking, tail pressed flat out against her crotch, and constantly looking left and right, she reluctantly decided to follow him. She saw Neo open up the back container of the ATV. Inside, there was firewood, branches, sticks, even smaller sticks that were in a bag, some sort of pinkish purple fluff, and a box of matches. He grabbed the bag, the box of matches, the pinkish purple fluff from inside the compartment and shut it. He gave the stuff to her, which she did not entirely like. She was holding matches, matches make fire, and fire had permanently damaged her. He unstrapped the rake and started heading off.

He walked on over to a small clearing. Alethea reluctantly followed. She was curious as to what the pink and purple fluff was. The texture was surprisingly familiar and somehow seemed to polish the dirt off of her metal hands. After putting it up to her nose and taking a whiff of it, she realized that it was dryer lint. “What is he going to use the dryer lint for?” She questioned in her head.

“This looks like a good spot. You can set the stuff down where you are.” As soon as he said that. He started raking away the foliage that covered the ground. He raked away a huge circle where there was only bare ground, and he did it surprisingly quickly. While he was raking away, she could hear off in the distance her sister trying to convince Michael that doing a backflip off of his ATV was not a good idea.

“I know that you know how much of a horror fire can be. The main reason your sister set up this campout in the first place was so that I could teach you about the other side of fire.” Neo was expecting her to lash out at that, but he figured it would be the best way to introduce her to the lesson of how fire can be beautiful.

“She did what!?” Alethea was, to no surprise for Neo, upset at this. “She knows how much I hate fire!“

“Well, even if you never see a flame in your life, It’s always a good idea to understand how things work. When I got that ATV about two years ago, it could barely run. Most others would be scared to even take the body panels off. However, if you’re not afraid to dive into it and do your research on how it works, you’d be surprised how easy it is to fix something like that back up into running condition.”

“So, Atasi wants you to teach me about fire?” She was starting to become a bit curious about this. She was still scared nonetheless, but curious.

“Yes. For the first part of our lesson, can you grab me the matches, dryer lint, and the bag?” Alethea stood there for a moment in a mental dilemma. Her sister was kind enough to try and help her with her overwhelming fear of fire, but she is going to help make a fire. “Don’t worry about it, this fire is going to start off small and slowly grow as you become more comfortable with it.” She reluctantly decided to go on over and grab the supplies that he had asked for.

When she handed them to him, he took the dryer lint and put it in the center of the circle. He then started taking the smallest twigs out of the bag, and started creating some sort of teepee around it. “There are three essential things that a fire needs in order to survive. Air, heat, and fuel. If you smother a fire, you starve it of air and it dies. If you throw water on a fire, that takes the heat away, and it dies. If you take any available fuel that’s not already being consumed by the fire away from it, it will eventually burn up all of its fuel and die out.”

“Is the last reason why you raked this circle?” Alethea asked out of curiosity.

“Exactly. The foliage is one source of fuel that a fire can use. By raking it away and leaving the barren ground, it has no way to spread.” A smile started to form on his face as he saw that his first lesson was already starting to take root. Suddenly, there was a zip as Leo had struck a match. Alethea backed up a little in surprise. “Don’t worry, using matches takes a little bit of skill, so I’ll light the fire for you.”

He gently pushed the flaming tip of the match into the dryer lint. As soon as it caught fire, he dropped the match right where it was and grabbed the bag of kindling. The first smell of smoke started to fill the air as the fire slowly grew over it’s tiny little teepee made of a dozen or so tiny twigs. “If you want the fire to continue to grow,” he said while holding a small twig in his fingers, “you will have to give it more fuel.” Using the nimble dexterity of his fingers, he gently placed the small twig next to the other twigs. Within a few seconds, it also caught on fire.

Neo extended a small twig out to Alethea. “Be gentle, but fast. Although, I doubt that the fire at this size combined with the fact that you have a mechanical metal hand is going to harm you.” She nervously grabbed the small twig and knelt down next to the tiny fire. She cautiously extended her hand with the twig out towards the fire. She could feel the warmth of the fire from her hand. She slowly drew her hand closer and closer to the fire. As she got closer, somethings strange started to occur. The heat didn’t seem to intensify after a certain point, as if the feeling had plateaued. “System warning,” rang in her ear, “please do not expose yourself to high temperatures for prolonged periods of time.” She cautiously set the twig on the other burning twigs. As she did, the flame licked around one of her fingers. She could feel that it was hot, but not that it was burning hot. “Warning, please allow right index finger time to cool off.”

She examined her hand, it was still a bit warm, but it wasn’t harmed. She could see a small layer of carbon had accumulated on the surface of it. “So,” Neo asked, “would you be comfortable putting another one on?”

“Sure.” Although Alethea was still a little phased at how the fire felt different, she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it. And since she wasn’t harmed by putting one twig on, she concuded another one wouldn’t hurt. That same logic kept playing through her head as she had put more into the fire twig by twig. She was mesmerized by how the fire could seemingly roll over her hands without causing pain. The only thing that she could feel was warmth from it, and she could also hear the safety system warning her to let her hands cool off. After a certain point, she seemed to have lost the fear of the fire, and was starting to find the boundaries for how long she could expose herself to it and be fine.

Steadily, the twigs turned into sticks, and the sticks turned into branches, and the branches turned into logs. Before Alethea even knew it, she was helping Leo take the logs out of the ATV so they could be added onto the fire with just as much contentment as she had with the twigs. Just as she was moving on from twigs to sticks to branches to logs, the chirps in the air changed from birds to bats and insects. And the silence from her sisters' friends turned into Elizabeth constantly complaining about how hungry she was and also complaining about why they couldn’t just use gasoline to make the fire.

“I think you’re finally starting to see fire in the same way that I do.” Neo said as Alethea as she added on the last log.

“How’s that?” She asked out of curiosity.

“Fire, when contained, can be a mesmerizing and beautiful thing. Although, you do have it a bit easier than me. You can pick up a log that’s on fire without burning your hands off.

For the first time that night, she finally took a step back and looked at her work. The fire was roaring for a small campfire. She could hear the wood crackling and shifting, and could feel the air that it was pulling in from around them and pushing up towards the night sky. Her fur smelled just like the campfire she built. She watched in mesmerized awe as the flames flickered and danced. As she was trying to savor the moment for as long as she could, Elizabeth came running over with two hotdogs on a hotdog roaster. They could hear her stomach growling from hunger.

Everybody had gathered around the fire to roast hotdogs to eat for their dinner. They all sat around telling their favorite parts of high school that were now distant memories. Michael tried roasting some hotdogs on his antlers, but was only successful for about two seconds before Atasi pulled him away. The smoke from the campfire added a unique flavor to the hotdogs. It was something you couldn’t get off of a grill, whether charcoal or gas. One by one, as the night was starting to seep their stamina, and started to run out of stories to tell, they secluded back to the tents that they brought.

By around 2 AM, only Alethea and Neo were awake. It was unusual to see him so awake at this hour, or even this awake in general. At this point, the fire had smothered down to mere coals blanketed in ashes. ”You know, you built one great fire.”

“I guess I did.” Alethea stared at the slowly cooling pile of ashes and coals, seeing her work at its peak, and its long-lasting effects on everybody for this trip. “And I guess that you were also right. The fire that made me lose my limbs was what you could call an “out of control fire”. But this, everything was calm, everything was contained, and I didn’t hurt myself.”

“Fire has two sides. There is the dangerous side of fire that everybody fears. The one that destroys everything in its path. And then, there is the beautiful side of fire. The side of tribal dances that have existed for millennia, the side of our only source of light during the night for millennia. The side of exquisite beauty.”

Posted using PostyBirb", "writing": "", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "", "pools_count": 0, "title": "Alethea in the Flames", "deleted": "f", "public": "t", "mimetype": "image/gif", "pagecount": "1", "rating_id": "1", "rating_name": "Mature", "ratings": [ { "content_tag_id": "2", "name": "Nudity", "description": "Nonsexual nudity exposing breasts or genitals (must not show arousal)", "rating_id": "1" } ], "submission_type_id": "1", "type_name": "Picture/Pinup", "guest_block": "f", "friends_only": "f", "comments_count": "0", "views": "55" }