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This is a story about my latest draftee character for the Furry Basketball Association, Michael River. It's a "coming of age" story, as he's growing up with the struggle of living with the prey and pred bigotry that is still lingering in the dark corners of society. These are just the first two chapters, and future chapters will be uploaded once I complete them.
Set in the canon of
furry-basketball
Art of Michael River by
Seventhunderbolts
CHAPTER ONE
Cold drops of water splashed onto Michael’s face repeatedly, startling him to wake up as he laid on his small bed. His eyes flickered rapidly to adjust to the sudden sunlight and he looked up to see the raindrops dripping through yet another tiny hole on the roof of his bedroom. With a silent curse, he sat up and reached a hand over to grab a nearby towel, placing it on the bed for the drops to land on as he scooted himself out of the bed as he predicted this was going to happen when he saw the cloud cover last night.
He wiped his hand on his face to dry off and then looked up at the roof again. “Dad! The roof’s leaking again!”
He sighed when there was no response and his eyes glance over at his clock. “Six-thirty…” he muttered to himself, realizing that his parents might still be asleep. Remembering the advice from his father, he grabbed a half-empty package of chewing gum and popped a few gum sticks into his mouth, his hands instinctively avoiding the two tusks that stuck out from his upper jaw. Chewing quickly and avoiding the taste of cherry in his mouth, he climbed back onto the bed to stand and then spat out the wad of gum onto his hand. He strained with his body stretching as he pressed the gum onto the leaky spot on the roof and then sighed in relief when the leaking stopped.
“There…” he jumped off the bed and looked back up, smiling with pride at his handiwork despite the fact the bright red gum wad visually stuck out on the white roof. The mood slightly soured however when he looked out his bedroom window to see the clouds dark and grey, looking as drab as the small city he lived in.
Yucaipa didn’t have many special qualities that made them stand out from the majority of other cities that dotted along the Inland Empire region of Southern California. It was a mere dot of a city in comparison to the sprawled urban centers of San Bernardino and Los Angeles, and while it had the dubious distinction as home base for the Stater Bros. grocery chain that dominated Southern California, even that was taken away when their corporate headquarters moved to San Bernardino. For many people even living in the region, Yucaipa was simply a city like many others gripped in a struggle economically with San Bernardino (the poorest urban center in California) and in a struggle visually in the shadow casted by Los Angeles. For Michael River however, Yucaipa was his home, and grew up with its charms and imperfections.
More specifically his home was Lot 301 at Green View Mobile Home Park, located two miles from the city’s downtown. The 920-square foot single-wide ‘house’ he lived in was tucked in a corner of the park, adjacent to an outdoor basketball court and an open field just outside of the park’s perimeter. It was a home that seen better times and looked the part, much like the rest of the city in the late 1990s, with a roof that leak during rainstorms and floors that sink in some spots. Michael didn’t mind it, simply because it was the only place he knew as home at the time.
As usual, Michael heard his father’s footsteps creaking along the small hallway floor before he spotted him, the elder musk deer’s head peeking into the bedroom. “You called for me?”
Michael pointed up at the gum wad at the ceiling. “Yah but I fixed it.”
His father Daren looked up and he grinned, one of his hands coming up to habitually rub along his right tusk with a finger. “Good job… but I don’t think it’ll last maybe two more storms. Add two more layers of gum on it.”
“Dad…” he replied with a groan. “How about just patching up the roof?”
“If you want to do it, sure! I’ll give you a few boards of wood and a couple nails--”
Michael’s eyes widened and he raises his arms up for a moment. “Not me, Dad!”
Daren just laughed and walked out of the bedroom, his footsteps creaking their way toward the kitchen. “Oh hey, check out the kitchen table, I have something there for you.”
Michael’s curiosity perked and he sped past his father to the kitchen where he found a package covered in tape decorated with FBA logos. He gasped in surprise and he simply grabbed the box to look at it. Daren followed him into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “Happy birthday, kid.”
“But that’s a week from now, Dad,” he replied but he still eagerly ripped apart the tape to begin opening the box. Daren picked out a bottle of orange juice from the fridge and watched him with a grin as Michael’s eyes widened. He quickly tore the plastic wrapping out from inside and pulled out a Huntsville Mayors jersey.
“Woah! A Healey Davis jersey!” He exclaimed as he held the jersey up to unfold it. He gasped at the sight of the black marker autograph just below the front neckline. “How did you get this?!”
“A friend owed me a favor,” Daren replied.
Michael barely listened as he quickly donned the jersey and then ran around the table to embrace his father tightly. “Thank you thank you! I’m gonna wear this forever!”
“You’ll have to get it washed time to time!” Daren said with a laugh and he hugged him back. “Wanna go watch him play? It’s too wet outside for you to play ball anyway.”
Michael nodded silently and turned to walk into the small living room to jump onto the couch. Daren drank a few sips of the orange juice off the bottle and then followed him. He picked out a VHS tape from a shelf along the way and inserted it into the VCR before joining his son at the couch, and he relaxed with a sigh. This wasn’t the first time they watched the FBA great Healey Davis on recorded television and it wouldn’t be the last.
“Remember the last game we saw him?”
Michael nodded. “Huntsville against Williamsburg, 1996.”
“We didn’t finish watching that game, didn’t we? There was a blackout…”
Michael rolled his eyes but he knew better than to complain about living in such a rickety old manufactured home. Just as he expected, the tape began exactly where they left off, with the Huntsville Mayors, multi-year defending champions at the time, leading Williamsburg by six points by the beginning of the fourth quarter. He grabbed a quilted blanket off the top of the couch and wrapped it around himself as he watched the somewhat-fuzzy recording of the game. His father was a fan of the Mayors since the team was in St. Paul, and stuck with the team through its basement-dwelling years and championship glory. His VHS shelf contained mostly of games he recorded, and it was this ritual of watching the games that introduced Michael to the sport of basketball.
Both father and son watched the television and listened to the crackling voice of the play-by-play announcer. With the ball in possession, Healey Davis dribbled it while his free paw gestured and motioned directions for his teammates to follow. The Williamsburg Minutemen, with the orange tabby Jake Masters intently watching his rival’s every move, adjusted to follow suit in their defense and the home Williamsburg crowd chanted and cheered to bring up the hopes of their team to make a comeback and tie the game. Like water in motion, Healey sliced through the defending wall of Minutemen as he charged toward the basket, but as Williamburg’s Zak Pejovic swarmed around him to attempt a block, Healey suddenly changed the trajectory of the ball with a no-look pass toward his teammate all lonely behind the three-point arc on the corner. The crowd goes silent as the player leaped for a three-point shot, and the ball cleanly swished through the net.
“You know why he’s the best?” Daren asked, seemingly random.
Michael turned his head to look at him. “Because he’s better than everyone else?”
Daren laughed and shook his head. “No, not exactly. Did you see what he just did? He went for the basket but it was all a ruse to fool Williamsburg, and he passed the ball to his teammate as if he knew he was there all along. Court awareness, Michael. Sure he can be the best by scoring thirty or forty or even sixty points, but anyone can score that many if they attempt enough shots over time. He had this uncanny ability to know not just where his teammates would be, but also where the opponents were. Even with Pejovic all over him, he had this presence of mind to shift the ball to where it needs to be. He knew that if he tried to make the shot, Pejovic would just block it out of the way.”
“Hmm,” Michael replied with nod, but he remained silent otherwise as they continued to watch the tape. Due to this ‘ritual’ of watching the games, he knew about Healey Davis more than even his school classmates and he admired how he would paralyze defenders by working around them with such agility that the defenders might as well be tied to the ground. He certainly wasn’t a flashy player by any means, but he did what he needed to do for the Mayors.
The final buzzer sounded and as the victorious Mayors shook paws with their opponents, Michael pulled the blanket off of him and scooted himself out of the couch. “I’m gonna go see Alan,” he said, referring to his friend that lived six houses down the road from him.
Daren nodded. “Come back home for dinner, alright?”
“Yeah gotcha,” Michael replied and he trotted out of the living room.
CHAPTER TWO
“That was weak! That was weak!” Michael playfully taunted his friend Alan after he grabbed a rebound off a missed layup. He dribbled the ball between his legs, keeping his eyes on his similarly-aged elk friend before he leaped with the ball for a three-point shot. Alan leaped with him but his hands failed to block the ball as it arched in the air and swished through the chain-link net of the basketball post. Michael laughed victoriously, clapping his hands.
“Boo-yah!” He taunted again and waited for Alan to grab the ball as it started to bounce away. As soon as Alan grabbed the ball however, he turned to look behind Michael and pointed at a large moving truck approaching.
“Hey! We got some new people coming in,” he said, prompting Michael to turn around and watch the truck slow to a stop by one of the nearby mobile homes that was recently sold. They watched as a family of rabbits climb out of the truck’s cab, and noticed one of the four lapine children looked just about their age.
“Let’s go over and meet ‘em,” Michael said, and Alan nodded in agreement. Their game of basketball long forgotten, they walked out of the court and approached the new family, waving in greeting. The four young lapines waved in return, though the youngest of them, at aged four, shyly hid behind a small stack of boxes in front of their new home.
“Heya! Where you all from?” Michael said, smiling with his fangs glistening. Two of the children blinked in surprise at the sight of a fanged deer, but the oldest one, at Michael’s age, widened his eyes in amazement.
“Woah! Are those things real?” He asked, pointing at Michael’s fangs.
“Huh? Oh these?” Michael tapped one of his fangs with a finger. “As real as I am!”
“Cool! I’m Nathan, we’re from Indianapolis.” His large ears perk up as he shook their hands, wanting to be quick friends with his new neighbors. Then his mother stepped out from behind the truck carrying a box, and gasped upon seeing Michael. She dropped the box, shattering a glass item inside, and hurriedly walked over to the group of children.
“Hey! What’s going on here?!”
Her threatening tone startled Michael and he stepped back a few times in alarm. Before he could muster a response, the mother grabbed Nathan and the rest of her children, herding them quickly into their house. “Wha… we’re just saying hello--”
“Don’t come here ever again!” The female rabbit yelled back at Michael, closing the door loudly and shutting her children away from Michael and Alan. The woman turned to look back at them and waved them off. “Go away!”
“What…?” Michael replied, confused. “We’re just trying to be friends…”
“You’re a fanged deer! A freak of nature! Don’t come close to us ever again!”
The angry shrill voice from her was more than enough to provoke Michael to shrink away from her, and he turned away from the sight of her fuming face and wild eyes. His courage faltered completely and he ran down the road toward his own house, Alan struggling to keep up with him and Michael ignored his friend’s pleas to stop. He felt his eyes swell up in tears, and he grabbed the door handle of his home to run inside before Alan could even catch up with him. He bypassed his father whom was watching television and disappeared into his bedroom to flop onto his bed facedown.
Daren knocked on his son’s bedroom door but could hear only muffled sobbing in response. With a sigh, he opened the door to see Michael covering his face with a pillow, and he calmly sat on the edge of the bed.
“Michael? What happened?”
Michael sniffed loudly and slowly flipped his body so that he faced up at the ceiling. “Some nasty lady called me a freak…”
Daren closed his eyes, holding one of his hands up to his own face and feeling the fangs below the lips. He knew this was going to be inevitable, but this still shocked him. He envisioned on what he would tell him many times before in his dreams to prepare for this moment, on how to comfort him and tell him that the lady’s opinions were just speciest nonsense. Instead however, he simply reached over to calmly grip his son’s hand. There were many words he wanted to tell him, but he felt the anger toward this unknown lady rising within him, and realized that saying the words at the forefront of his mind right now would make matters only worse. So he simply held his hand, rubbing the palm with his thumb to remind him that he’s here with him. That he doesn’t have to suffer alone.
Set in the canon of
furry-basketballArt of Michael River by
SeventhunderboltsCHAPTER ONE
Cold drops of water splashed onto Michael’s face repeatedly, startling him to wake up as he laid on his small bed. His eyes flickered rapidly to adjust to the sudden sunlight and he looked up to see the raindrops dripping through yet another tiny hole on the roof of his bedroom. With a silent curse, he sat up and reached a hand over to grab a nearby towel, placing it on the bed for the drops to land on as he scooted himself out of the bed as he predicted this was going to happen when he saw the cloud cover last night.
He wiped his hand on his face to dry off and then looked up at the roof again. “Dad! The roof’s leaking again!”
He sighed when there was no response and his eyes glance over at his clock. “Six-thirty…” he muttered to himself, realizing that his parents might still be asleep. Remembering the advice from his father, he grabbed a half-empty package of chewing gum and popped a few gum sticks into his mouth, his hands instinctively avoiding the two tusks that stuck out from his upper jaw. Chewing quickly and avoiding the taste of cherry in his mouth, he climbed back onto the bed to stand and then spat out the wad of gum onto his hand. He strained with his body stretching as he pressed the gum onto the leaky spot on the roof and then sighed in relief when the leaking stopped.
“There…” he jumped off the bed and looked back up, smiling with pride at his handiwork despite the fact the bright red gum wad visually stuck out on the white roof. The mood slightly soured however when he looked out his bedroom window to see the clouds dark and grey, looking as drab as the small city he lived in.
Yucaipa didn’t have many special qualities that made them stand out from the majority of other cities that dotted along the Inland Empire region of Southern California. It was a mere dot of a city in comparison to the sprawled urban centers of San Bernardino and Los Angeles, and while it had the dubious distinction as home base for the Stater Bros. grocery chain that dominated Southern California, even that was taken away when their corporate headquarters moved to San Bernardino. For many people even living in the region, Yucaipa was simply a city like many others gripped in a struggle economically with San Bernardino (the poorest urban center in California) and in a struggle visually in the shadow casted by Los Angeles. For Michael River however, Yucaipa was his home, and grew up with its charms and imperfections.
More specifically his home was Lot 301 at Green View Mobile Home Park, located two miles from the city’s downtown. The 920-square foot single-wide ‘house’ he lived in was tucked in a corner of the park, adjacent to an outdoor basketball court and an open field just outside of the park’s perimeter. It was a home that seen better times and looked the part, much like the rest of the city in the late 1990s, with a roof that leak during rainstorms and floors that sink in some spots. Michael didn’t mind it, simply because it was the only place he knew as home at the time.
As usual, Michael heard his father’s footsteps creaking along the small hallway floor before he spotted him, the elder musk deer’s head peeking into the bedroom. “You called for me?”
Michael pointed up at the gum wad at the ceiling. “Yah but I fixed it.”
His father Daren looked up and he grinned, one of his hands coming up to habitually rub along his right tusk with a finger. “Good job… but I don’t think it’ll last maybe two more storms. Add two more layers of gum on it.”
“Dad…” he replied with a groan. “How about just patching up the roof?”
“If you want to do it, sure! I’ll give you a few boards of wood and a couple nails--”
Michael’s eyes widened and he raises his arms up for a moment. “Not me, Dad!”
Daren just laughed and walked out of the bedroom, his footsteps creaking their way toward the kitchen. “Oh hey, check out the kitchen table, I have something there for you.”
Michael’s curiosity perked and he sped past his father to the kitchen where he found a package covered in tape decorated with FBA logos. He gasped in surprise and he simply grabbed the box to look at it. Daren followed him into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “Happy birthday, kid.”
“But that’s a week from now, Dad,” he replied but he still eagerly ripped apart the tape to begin opening the box. Daren picked out a bottle of orange juice from the fridge and watched him with a grin as Michael’s eyes widened. He quickly tore the plastic wrapping out from inside and pulled out a Huntsville Mayors jersey.
“Woah! A Healey Davis jersey!” He exclaimed as he held the jersey up to unfold it. He gasped at the sight of the black marker autograph just below the front neckline. “How did you get this?!”
“A friend owed me a favor,” Daren replied.
Michael barely listened as he quickly donned the jersey and then ran around the table to embrace his father tightly. “Thank you thank you! I’m gonna wear this forever!”
“You’ll have to get it washed time to time!” Daren said with a laugh and he hugged him back. “Wanna go watch him play? It’s too wet outside for you to play ball anyway.”
Michael nodded silently and turned to walk into the small living room to jump onto the couch. Daren drank a few sips of the orange juice off the bottle and then followed him. He picked out a VHS tape from a shelf along the way and inserted it into the VCR before joining his son at the couch, and he relaxed with a sigh. This wasn’t the first time they watched the FBA great Healey Davis on recorded television and it wouldn’t be the last.
“Remember the last game we saw him?”
Michael nodded. “Huntsville against Williamsburg, 1996.”
“We didn’t finish watching that game, didn’t we? There was a blackout…”
Michael rolled his eyes but he knew better than to complain about living in such a rickety old manufactured home. Just as he expected, the tape began exactly where they left off, with the Huntsville Mayors, multi-year defending champions at the time, leading Williamsburg by six points by the beginning of the fourth quarter. He grabbed a quilted blanket off the top of the couch and wrapped it around himself as he watched the somewhat-fuzzy recording of the game. His father was a fan of the Mayors since the team was in St. Paul, and stuck with the team through its basement-dwelling years and championship glory. His VHS shelf contained mostly of games he recorded, and it was this ritual of watching the games that introduced Michael to the sport of basketball.
Both father and son watched the television and listened to the crackling voice of the play-by-play announcer. With the ball in possession, Healey Davis dribbled it while his free paw gestured and motioned directions for his teammates to follow. The Williamsburg Minutemen, with the orange tabby Jake Masters intently watching his rival’s every move, adjusted to follow suit in their defense and the home Williamsburg crowd chanted and cheered to bring up the hopes of their team to make a comeback and tie the game. Like water in motion, Healey sliced through the defending wall of Minutemen as he charged toward the basket, but as Williamburg’s Zak Pejovic swarmed around him to attempt a block, Healey suddenly changed the trajectory of the ball with a no-look pass toward his teammate all lonely behind the three-point arc on the corner. The crowd goes silent as the player leaped for a three-point shot, and the ball cleanly swished through the net.
“You know why he’s the best?” Daren asked, seemingly random.
Michael turned his head to look at him. “Because he’s better than everyone else?”
Daren laughed and shook his head. “No, not exactly. Did you see what he just did? He went for the basket but it was all a ruse to fool Williamsburg, and he passed the ball to his teammate as if he knew he was there all along. Court awareness, Michael. Sure he can be the best by scoring thirty or forty or even sixty points, but anyone can score that many if they attempt enough shots over time. He had this uncanny ability to know not just where his teammates would be, but also where the opponents were. Even with Pejovic all over him, he had this presence of mind to shift the ball to where it needs to be. He knew that if he tried to make the shot, Pejovic would just block it out of the way.”
“Hmm,” Michael replied with nod, but he remained silent otherwise as they continued to watch the tape. Due to this ‘ritual’ of watching the games, he knew about Healey Davis more than even his school classmates and he admired how he would paralyze defenders by working around them with such agility that the defenders might as well be tied to the ground. He certainly wasn’t a flashy player by any means, but he did what he needed to do for the Mayors.
The final buzzer sounded and as the victorious Mayors shook paws with their opponents, Michael pulled the blanket off of him and scooted himself out of the couch. “I’m gonna go see Alan,” he said, referring to his friend that lived six houses down the road from him.
Daren nodded. “Come back home for dinner, alright?”
“Yeah gotcha,” Michael replied and he trotted out of the living room.
CHAPTER TWO
“That was weak! That was weak!” Michael playfully taunted his friend Alan after he grabbed a rebound off a missed layup. He dribbled the ball between his legs, keeping his eyes on his similarly-aged elk friend before he leaped with the ball for a three-point shot. Alan leaped with him but his hands failed to block the ball as it arched in the air and swished through the chain-link net of the basketball post. Michael laughed victoriously, clapping his hands.
“Boo-yah!” He taunted again and waited for Alan to grab the ball as it started to bounce away. As soon as Alan grabbed the ball however, he turned to look behind Michael and pointed at a large moving truck approaching.
“Hey! We got some new people coming in,” he said, prompting Michael to turn around and watch the truck slow to a stop by one of the nearby mobile homes that was recently sold. They watched as a family of rabbits climb out of the truck’s cab, and noticed one of the four lapine children looked just about their age.
“Let’s go over and meet ‘em,” Michael said, and Alan nodded in agreement. Their game of basketball long forgotten, they walked out of the court and approached the new family, waving in greeting. The four young lapines waved in return, though the youngest of them, at aged four, shyly hid behind a small stack of boxes in front of their new home.
“Heya! Where you all from?” Michael said, smiling with his fangs glistening. Two of the children blinked in surprise at the sight of a fanged deer, but the oldest one, at Michael’s age, widened his eyes in amazement.
“Woah! Are those things real?” He asked, pointing at Michael’s fangs.
“Huh? Oh these?” Michael tapped one of his fangs with a finger. “As real as I am!”
“Cool! I’m Nathan, we’re from Indianapolis.” His large ears perk up as he shook their hands, wanting to be quick friends with his new neighbors. Then his mother stepped out from behind the truck carrying a box, and gasped upon seeing Michael. She dropped the box, shattering a glass item inside, and hurriedly walked over to the group of children.
“Hey! What’s going on here?!”
Her threatening tone startled Michael and he stepped back a few times in alarm. Before he could muster a response, the mother grabbed Nathan and the rest of her children, herding them quickly into their house. “Wha… we’re just saying hello--”
“Don’t come here ever again!” The female rabbit yelled back at Michael, closing the door loudly and shutting her children away from Michael and Alan. The woman turned to look back at them and waved them off. “Go away!”
“What…?” Michael replied, confused. “We’re just trying to be friends…”
“You’re a fanged deer! A freak of nature! Don’t come close to us ever again!”
The angry shrill voice from her was more than enough to provoke Michael to shrink away from her, and he turned away from the sight of her fuming face and wild eyes. His courage faltered completely and he ran down the road toward his own house, Alan struggling to keep up with him and Michael ignored his friend’s pleas to stop. He felt his eyes swell up in tears, and he grabbed the door handle of his home to run inside before Alan could even catch up with him. He bypassed his father whom was watching television and disappeared into his bedroom to flop onto his bed facedown.
Daren knocked on his son’s bedroom door but could hear only muffled sobbing in response. With a sigh, he opened the door to see Michael covering his face with a pillow, and he calmly sat on the edge of the bed.
“Michael? What happened?”
Michael sniffed loudly and slowly flipped his body so that he faced up at the ceiling. “Some nasty lady called me a freak…”
Daren closed his eyes, holding one of his hands up to his own face and feeling the fangs below the lips. He knew this was going to be inevitable, but this still shocked him. He envisioned on what he would tell him many times before in his dreams to prepare for this moment, on how to comfort him and tell him that the lady’s opinions were just speciest nonsense. Instead however, he simply reached over to calmly grip his son’s hand. There were many words he wanted to tell him, but he felt the anger toward this unknown lady rising within him, and realized that saying the words at the forefront of his mind right now would make matters only worse. So he simply held his hand, rubbing the palm with his thumb to remind him that he’s here with him. That he doesn’t have to suffer alone.
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 607 x 584px
File Size 60.1 kB
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