Conventions
There's an empty table in the Dealer's Den.
We trot by it on all fours. The clopping of my cloven hooves and the clicking of his claws are lost in the colorful hubbub of the con space.
"Oh, did you hear about that?" he says by my side, his barks idle.
I had, and I said nothing, as my thoughts swirl to match the tumult around us.
The wolf prances on paw pads, fur coat a tawny brown in the sun coming through the skylight. "It was meant to be this dildo place. There was a huge uproar about it."
It's a fitting word, uproar, I thought, as we swayed along through the crowd. It's something that everyone hears, where words are lost in the cacophony.
We make our way out of the den. The doors are different sizes, and my bovine bulk easily fits through the larger, while he dances through a smaller one, tail snaking in his wake. A cheetah scampers past us, weaving between my legs, a mouse clinging onto one of her ears. A dog laughs from beneath the wings of a dragon in a nearby corner, next to a series of matryoshka-style chairs.
He leans in, his head rising to be close to one of my ears. "All their dildos are life-cast, you know?" he said, his voice laden with the air of a conspiracy. The words you Do Not Speak. He doesn't look at me as he stands up on his hind paws, wobbling as he staggers along beside my four-legged walk. "Yeah. Apparently they make moulds of their dicks. Like, they bring horses in, putty-up their dicks, everything. You hear about that?"
My teeth are chewing invisible cud as I think. I had heard. I had read. Of course I had, I'd read the website, the procedures. And I'd read about the breeding industry where those practices are also used, and the complicated mix of feelings that followed. It was a swirl of passions and awkwardness that rested in my stomachs like coffee and ice.
“Apparently they got a bunch of death threats about it,” he mutters, his words casual, complacent. Like reminiscing about an unfortunate spot of rain. “I can’t condone that, of course, but at least the con dropped ‘em.”
We move through the crowd, but I’m not focusing on those around me, instead letting his two-legged saunter guide me. I’m reading the words in my head, the pale and clean statement from just two days ago. “For safety reasons, we have chosen...”
My stomachs are hurting. But thoughts arise, like ropes dangling into a hurricane - coarse, painful, but perhaps a shaky way up, up and out. They’re woven with threads of uncomfortableness, of wonderings, of the light and dark and the sheer complications that give me pause, leave me curious and uncertain.
But an uncertainty I can talk about. I open my mouth.
He speaks first. "I'm glad the con's not allowing animal rapists."
I close my mouth. The storm rises up my throat, cold and harsh like winter, ice crystalizing on the ropes, freezing the nuance in its place. I say nothing.
He walks along, not noticing my expression. His claws aren't clicking against the ground anymore, replaced by soft footfalls, cheap rubber.
"Look, I get keeping furry weird, but there's a point, right?" he says, humming, brushing his paw back across his head. He has hair now, and it falls in long, brown strands over his shoulders. His ears poke awkwardly through it at a wrong angle. "It doesn't matter what the normies think, but if we want to be accepted, it’s not just up to outsiders to fix our image, right?” he pauses, biting his lip. “It’s our job to, well, take out the trash, right? ...Ooh, I love this place."
My hooves move from undulating carpet to the unsettling smoothness of linoleum. Lights sparkle on a store ahead of us, and pictures of stuff on plates adorn the windows, but it's not grass, so it takes a moment for me to register it as food. There are figures out front of it, cross-legged on the floor, standing around, indistinct. He walks us towards it.
"Look, what it boils down to is this," he says, waving his hands, thumbs and fingers flexing, long and furless, words spilling out like sewer water. "We're a fandom that's all about animals and welfare. We love animals. That company explicitly harms them, so anyone who says otherwise is no better. And we can't support that, right? This is the fandom! We can't support anyone that does that. We have to, y'know, uplift the companies we want to see in here. Right?"
He walks into the store easily. I barely fit through the door, the sides scraping on my flanks. I have to press it open with one shoulder, my hooves too focused on keeping me upright. Inside, we walk past a dozen equally-sized stools towards the counter. He stops right in front of me, the wolf ears askew on the plastic headband, the tail dangling from the belt of his jeans.
"You agree, yeah?" he says, and turns away without waiting for an answer. He leaves me standing in the tiny store, alone, exposed.
He steps up to the counter. "This is the best chain in the city. I always go here when I can," he says with a flat-toothed smile, but he doesn't look at me as he says it, turning to the shapeless face behind the register.
"One cheeseburger, please."
This used to be my home, I think then. This used to be grass and dandelions. This used to be little fences and meadows. When the sun was warm we’d trot, and when it rained we would lie together, and when the breeze was cool we’d huddle up for warmth. This used to be my field. Once.
I look around at the concrete and the plastic, at the too-close walls and the artificial light. It’s noisy. There are humans here. Too many of them. I can't help but think they all look the same as him.
I wonder how it is that no-one's noticed me.
By Spades Slick (December 2025)
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