# One Big Family 29: Weird Nightmare

By: TheDragonBoy

## Content

Toby started hearing a sound.

He knew it didn’t fit in, not with the usual gurgles and groans of a dragon belly. He opened his tired eyes slowly, light rising a touch as he woke. Something felt… bad. That noise, it was a human sound he was hearing, a sound he’d heard himself making before, but it wasn’t coming from him.

Something moved against his back, something he realized wasn’t a stomach wall. He twisted his head around to look.

“Ambur!?” Toby exclaimed, turning around more.

“Stop stop stop!” the girl squealed.

He flinched away and looked forward again, feeling her pull herself into an even tighter ball behind him.

“W-What is it!? What’s wrong!?” he asked worriedly.

“You’re weird,” she whimpered in between sobs. Her crying, that had been the sound that had woken him up.

“W- …What?” the startled boy asked. The bad feeling grew.

“You- You’re- You’re naked!” she yelled.

Toby opened his mouth to reply but felt something soft hit the back of his head.

“Here! Cover yourself with that.”

Recognizing the form of the girl’s jacket, he grabbed hold and did his best to wrap himself up the way she’d told him before. He wanted to try and talk again, but he felt like he couldn’t somehow.

“Your dragon family… swallows you, for fun? How can you enjoy something like that!?” Ambur whimpered. Her voice was unhappy, maybe even a little mean.

“I-It’s just-”

“It’s scary!” she interrupted. “Dragons are supposed to be scary! It ate us and now we’re just going to be food.”

“N-no no, don’t be scared, I-”

“It is dangerous and scary,” a new voice rumbled. It was his big brother Clak’s, vibrating the very walls that held them and filling the tight space between. And then suddenly it was his sister Lorn’s voice instead. “You’re special, remember? But she’s just a normal human. She won’t feel the same way about bellies that you do.”

Toby felt Ambur starting to move behind him.

“It ate us and now we’re just going to be food,” she repeated.

“No!” the boy turned his head again, determined to say something that would change her mind.

But instead of seeing her curled up in a ball like she had been a moment ago, now her legs were stretched out straight. Except he could only see as far as her knees, because everything beyond that was quickly slipping away into the opening at the far back of the stomach. The walls pressed in, shoving her forward, deeper, past where anyone could ever get her out.

“Ambur!”

“I’m just going to be food! I’m just-”

“No! No no no no! Stop stop stop! Stop it-!”

“T-Toby!?” A new, tired voice rumbled loud in his ears.

The next thing he knew, he was staring at tight, slimy walls sliding quickly past his face, taking up his entire view. He started to recognize the familiar sensation of squeezing through one of his sibling’s throats, just before squelching out onto a tongue in a bundle of frantic limbs. He met the cold, hard ground with a light, wet splat, breathing hard.

“Toby?” the voice repeated again. “Are you okay?”

He looked up. A red-scaled face hung above him, his sister Asha, a lingering strand of drool breaking from her lip. She looked tired and worried. All around him, the quiet, sleeping forms of his siblings dotted the cave. He started to remember: the sun going down, everyone getting ready for the night, Asha swallowing him down to sleep.

“I-” he started, but his voice was tight and scared. “I think I-”

A few of his siblings stirred now, alerted by the distress in his voice.

“A-are you hurt?” the red dragoness mumbled, sleep still gripping at her, but with concern valiantly pushing through.

Toby shook his head no.

“Good,” she breathed. “You wanna go back inside, then?”

She might have been a little too quick to get her filling little brother back into place so she could get back to sleep. But in her defense, anything that upset Toby was usually solved by giving him some comforting belly time.

This time, though, Toby just shook his head again in a very clear ‘no’. Asha frowned, surprise and worry growing. He didn’t want to go back into her belly? The little boy saw the confused, unhappy look on his sister’s face, but he just couldn’t manage to find words.

A few other dragon heads rose nearby, wondering after what was wrong. As soon as Toby caught sight of Clak looking over, the boy’s big, sad eyes latched on to his brother’s much bigger ones and refused to let go.

The older dragon blinked tiredly a few times, but something in that gaze must have gotten through, because he spoke up.

“I’ll take him to get some water,” he volunteered. “You can sleep, Asha.”

The dragoness hesitated for a moment, concern and responsibility weighing on her mind, but in the end exhaustion and her older sibling’s wishes won out.

“Okay,” she yawned with a nod. “Thanks, Clak.” She waited until little Toby started walking away toward the other rising dragon before laying her head back onto the cool stone and letting her eyes fall shut.

Clak stepped slowly and softly around the curled up forms of his kin, gesturing for his little brother to follow. The older dragon had to be careful not to accidentally step on anyone’s tail, meanwhile Toby walked past the familiar, sleepy faces fairly easily. When they reached the edge of the cave, Clak nodded responsibly toward their father’s huge, watchful eye before guiding the dimly glowing human out through the tunnel.

It was a while of quiet walking before anyone spoke up. Toby didn’t seem like he was ready for words, and his big brother didn’t want to disturb any of their family with the noise, but eventually the dragon decided they were far enough away not to be a bother. Still, he spoke softly.

“What’s going on, Toby? It’s weird for you to wake up in the middle of the night like this. You usually sleep so well in a belly.”

The shadows crept closer as Toby’s light sharply dimmed. Something Clak had just said clearly hadn’t helped things.

“…Toby?” the dragon asked, even more softly. Finally, after a long pause, the boy muttered a few words.

“…Am I really that weird? …That’s what Ambur said too.”

“Ambur?”

“She thinks it’s bad. Cause I live in a rock cave instead of a wood cave, and I sleep inside dragon bellies with no clothes…”

“But, Ambur- Oh… You had a bad dream, didn’t you?” Clak finally realized.

The boy nodded with a deepening pout and a sniffle. There was another pause, even longer now, as the dragon thought. Then he stopped. He brought his head low to block the little boy’s path and look him straight in his misty eyes.

“Toby, it’s okay that you’re weird.”

“…It is?”

“Yes,” he answered certainly. “I know that… sometimes weird stuff can be scary and dangerous and bad, but it can also be amazing and special and really good. Everyone back in the cave is really, really happy because you’re a weird human who likes to sleep in dragon bellies, and because we’re a weird dragon family who decided to adopt a tiny human. If there wasn’t any of that weird stuff… I wouldn’t have the best little brother in the world…”

“Y-You mean it?” His light started to brighten.

“Of course.” The dragon smiled. “I’m really glad we get to be weird together. Even if some other dragons like Uncle Rynn don’t like it, or some other humans like Ambur get scared.”

The brightening light faltered at her name.

“I don’t know what happened in your dream, but do you remember what the real Ambur said?”

“That… she’s never seen a glowing boy before?” he guessed meekly.

“She said she wanted to see us again.”

That was true. Dream-Ambur was pretty sad and mean, but real-Ambur had been… nice. She was smiling and happy at the end, wasn’t she? He’d asked if she was happy he came to meet her, and she’d said yes, and that she wanted to meet more.

“I don’t even think she was really scared. I mean, maybe she was scared of me, but I mean you. I don’t think she thought you were bad at all. I think she was just surprised. And if she did think you were bad at first… then I think she was just wrong. Everyone can be wrong sometimes.”

“Ambur was definitely wrong when she said you were bad at being nice,” Toby replied. He was starting to smile now, his beaming light clearing all the shadows from the stone around them.

Clak smiled back, then lifted his head and gestured for them to continue walking. A few quiet moments passed before the little human spoke again.

“…Am I really the best little brother?”

“…Don’t tell Kint, okay?”

“Hehehe.”

…

Toby tapped quietly on the very tip of a long, red snout. One, two, three times. A moment later, the giant eyes blinked open. His sister Asha let out a long breath, ruffling his hair as she was once again stirred from slumber.

“…Toby?”

“Sorry for waking you up. Two times. I had a bad dream,” the little boy said apologetically to the big red dragoness.

“Oh, it’s okay, Toby,” she replied sleepily.

“Can I go back inside?” he asked politely. She perked up a bit.

“Um, yeah, if you want,” came her answer. A thought flicked visibly behind her eyes. The way he’d reacted when she’d let him out before, it had left her wondering if maybe there was something weird with her belly? Like she’d let it do something bad in her sleep that she shouldn’t hav-

“I really like sleeping in your belly. Don’t worry about it being weird. It’s good-weird. Okay?”

The dragoness blinked a few times, startled from her thoughts, before replying, “Oh, um… Yeah. Okay.”

She smiled a bit as she lifted her head and opened her mouth enough for him to climb inside. She felt his clawless little limbs pressing into her tongue, and once she felt his full weight atop her taste buds, she started to pull him inside past her teeth.

“I love you, Asha,” he said with a hint of goodnight, starting to sound sleepy again himself.

The dragoness gently swallowed a few times to clear her mouth. Then, with particular attention to the bulge now traveling down her throat, she replied, “I love you too.”

She laid her head back down, and even though Toby was the one now bundled and buried deep in warmth, the stony ground didn’t seem quite so cool beneath her scales.

Originally Published: 14-Feb-2026