Content
“Like, over here?” Toby asked, pressing against the scales so his ‘patient’ could feel where he meant.
“Almost, a little further back,” the dragon replied, his neck curved fully around to watch the human boy at his side.
Toby moved back a little further and noticed a spot where the wide, dark green scales were wet and a little scuffed up. He ran his hand along the area and felt the very familiar sensation of dragon saliva between his fingers. It was clear his cousin had been licking and biting at that spot, trying to get himself clean of this irritation. But he lacked the tiny, nimble hands of Doctor Toby. So the little boy continued further along, to the area just slightly out of his cousin’s reach, and-
“Ah-ha!” he squeaked triumphantly. It had been a little tricky to spot against the forest-colored hide, but he’d found it! Caught underneath a few scales was a pesky, leafy twig. These things did tend to get in there from time to time, mostly with his larger family members. Luckily, this one was just within his reach… barely… while his cousin was laying down… if he also stood on his tip toes. The boy struggled and groped for a moment, straining, before the tips of his fingers managed to come together on the tip of the nasty stick. From there, it didn’t take much to wiggle it loose, and the tiniest little clatter announced the debris’ departure as it fell to the cave floor.
Toby watched the big body beside him swell and deflate as his cousin gave a sizable sigh of relief. He smiled and his light glimmered brighter.
“Thanks, Toby,” the dragon said appreciatively, standing up and turning to face the little boy. “That’s been bugging me for days.”
“Next time you should come ask me sooner,” the child replied with helpful innocence.
“Yeah, you’re right,” his cousin replied, coming in closer. The green jaws parted slightly and out came the front of the large tongue. For a moment, Toby’s world was pink, as he felt the slimy appendage slip across his body from knee to forehead, lifting half his dainty weight off the ground.
When the wet tastebuds left his smiling face, he noticed some particularly loud thuds were getting closer. His cousin was already beginning to look up, so he turned around and did the same.
“Hello, Toby,” his adoptive mother said. She spoke softly and warmly, though at her size almost any words tended to resonate within the caverns.
“Hi,” he replied in turn, his light glittering off his cousin’s green scales and making a little glowing circle around him on the stone, as if he were one of their firepits.
“Do you think you could help me with something?” she asked kindly.
“Sure!” he answered enthusiastically, the little boy stepping eagerly toward the enormous dragoness.
His cousin, who he’d been helping a moment ago, was already quite large compared to him, easily big enough to swallow him whole with room to spare, but his mother was like ten of his cousin put together- but bigger! Still, he approached and beamed without a hint of fear.
“What is it?” Toby asked. “Do you have a stick in your scales too?”
“Not exactly,” she replied, chuckling lightly at her son’s enthusiasm. “Do you remember those woolly grazers we caught yesterday?”
“Oh yeah,” the boy answered. He could still picture the sight of his parents flying in, each holding a big, furry beast in their front claws. “They were huuuge,” he recalled. Though with a family of dragons (and one little human), not a scrap had lasted beyond the meal.
“Yes, huge and hairy,” his mother agreed.
“Yeah, really hair- Oh, I bet it got all caught in your teeth,” Toby deduced.
“Yes,” she replied, with a mild emotion somewhere between apologetic and embarrassed, but always keeping her kind smile.
“You need help getting it out?” he offered readily.
“Would you mind?”
Toby shook his head in a very clear ‘no’.
She looked down, appreciative and proud, at her little human son, as he somewhat literally beamed up at her, and the two shared a loving gaze for a moment before the dragoness lowered her massive head all the way to the cave floor.
His raggedy, perpetually-saliva-soaked hair shifted around his neck, as air was pushed aside by the broad scales coming to rest just a few steps ahead. He could even feel a light breeze against his skin from the movement of her jaws as they slowly parted, and from her huge, flowing river of a tongue as it slipped out toward him. But it was her breath that really sent his hair dancing, rushing out in a long wave from her lungs deep inside.
Toby peered through the toothy gap between her lips. His mother’s muzzle was so vast that the glow of the cave fires couldn’t reach the back through the meager opening, leaving the far extents of her throat shadowed and unseen; a living, red sea, fading out into the night, inviting him along.
She held herself there, with the tip of her tongue pressed down into the stony floor just to get it thin enough for him to be able to climb, and she waited for her son to be ready, allowing him to enter comfortably at his own pace.
She didn’t have to wait long, only enough time for the young boy to digest the vista in front of him and recognize the invitation. Once he did, he took his first squelching step forward. He lifted his foot high and placed it on the tip of the waiting tongue. It sunk a small distance into the glistening red tastebuds, saliva tickling between his toes. He stepped up and put his other foot down, hearing the quiet splat as it made contact.
*squelch* *squelch*
*squelch* *squelch*
*squelch* *squelch*
He approached the waiting maw with a wonder-filled smile, and a silent reverence. He was used to dragon mouths that barely gave him room to crawl, or gave him no room at all, pressed snugly between slick walls of squishy red and rows of rock-solid white. But his mother’s muzzle? He could walk inside it. He ducked under a gap between two curved, pointed, mammoth-munching teeth, thicker in places than his own body, and then stood up straight, his hair not even tickling the dragoness’ gums.
She moved once he was inside, and it felt less like being carried, and more like if the solid caves he usually walked through had suddenly woken up. She kept her movements minor, though, only slipping the relatively small length of her extended tongue back between her lips, and letting her jaws fall comfortably shut.
Toby, wobbling to keep his balance, saw the firelight of the caves disappear. And then everything went still again, and the sounds of his mother breathing around him filled his ears; great gusts of air rushing through her nostrils somewhere above him.
He turned slowly and took in his surroundings. His light glimmered off the huge, jagged columns of white that were his mother’s teeth, sealed away from the rest of the world along with him behind her lips. It glistened off every visible inch of red and pink, from the rolling ridges of the palette above, down to the individual little beads of saliva that trickled their way across her massive tongue, slowly pooling in the tiny indents his feet made.
The boy giggled excitedly and cast his gaze back, as far as it could go, off into the deep shadows. He wanted to see more. The light shining from his body began to grow brighter, either at his intention or simply fueled by his enthusiasm, which only grew with every new detail he made out, until finally the glow touched the deepest point of all. Dimly lit, across the vast red expanse, the arch at the far back of the great maw greeted him; the entrance to her massive throat, resting quietly closed, but there on full display for him to see.
He took a step toward it, another squishy splat under his feet, but then he stopped. No, he wasn’t here for exploring today. Today, he had a job to do. His mother needed his help!
Toby turned back around, with a determined smile and a dutiful gaze, and with his bright glow shining, he scanned with careful eyes over the expansive array of chompers that lined the dripping red cavern.
“Ah-ha!” He’d found his first target.
He padded quickly across the tastebuds, venturing deeper into the cavernous muzzle, following the white rows along until he stopped beneath a conspicuous wad of colorful fur sticking out of a gap. It looked matted and tangled and thoroughly licked-at, but strong as this pink, squishy ‘floor’ was, it just couldn’t match the careful precision of his little human hands.
He reached up to grab hold, and his fingers grazed the edge of the furry lump. He struggled for a moment, wiggling his arm and pressing his tippy toes deeper into the spongy tongue.
“Mom? I need to get a little higher.”
She wouldn’t reply verbally, not with his position, but it was very clear she’d heard. He felt the muscles under his feet tense, and a moment later the whole red floor of the living cavern swelled upwards, with a sound like a mountain stream as dozens of little saliva pools slipped off the edge to fill the newly opened space somewhere below.
Toby refocused himself on the pesky leftovers in his mother’s teeth, now much closer. He reached out with both hands and smooshed it around, getting a feel for how it was stuck. He pulled here, and then there, getting out little strands and tufts until-
*splat* *splat*
The curious boy looked down at the two fur-tangled lumps that had fallen free and felt a spark of understanding. She’d gotten one of those little bones stuck between her teeth! That’s what all the hair had been caught on! She’d crunched it in half, but she’d gotten it stuck in the process, and now his work had gotten the two halves loose enough to fall out.
He reached down and scooped up the ‘little bone’ pieces, which together had actually been the size of one of his own larger bones, and carried them over a few steps toward the center of the tongue, where he let them splat back onto the tastebud floor.
Then he looked around for his next target, and once again he was off.
Tuft after wad after clump he pulled, until the entire upper row of pearly whites shone clean as mountain icicles. And then it was time for the bottom. That part was always trickier, since her tongue covered up her gums where most of the leftovers liked to get stuck. But he could reach down and squeeze his arms around the squishy muscles, or ask her to move things around so he could get a look. It was hard, sweaty work, and he was sure she could taste it on him as her saliva carried the sweat away. But by the end, he had a pile of debris sitting on her tongue that was almost half his size.
“I think… I think that’s all of it!” he declared proudly. “Do you feel any other bad spots?”
His mother gave a nasally, “Nuh-uh,” sound that vibrated around him.
He smiled wider and glowed brighter. He looked around proudly at the inside of his mother’s maw, feeling happy that he’d helped. …And then he spotted the back of her throat again.
“…I’m just gonna help get rid of all this stuff,” he said.
Ignoring the fact that this giant tongue probably didn’t need any ‘help’ getting things into her gullet, he got down on his knees with arms outstretched and started pushing the pile of leftovers deeper, scooting across the ever-slick pink tastebuds, splashing through little pools of drool. His mother kept still, silently allowing her little one his fun.
Toby kept his eyes on the enormous gullet, looming larger as he grew closer. The boy stopped when he started to feel a slope in the squishy floor, all the way at the far end of the big dragon’s maw. He pushed himself up and took a long moment to peer down over the drop, as the flowing sea of tastebuds quickly fell away before him to form a deep pit, where the squishy muscle pressed out into the firmer walls to form the barricade that kept her throat sealed off from the world.
After blinking down at it a few times, he remembered he had a job he was doing. With one leg, he pushed the bulk of the pile over. It shifted, then slipped then tumbled, stray bits breaking off on the way down and splattering onto the damp flesh below. He stared after it for a long moment, optimistically hoping that something might happen, but he knew his mother might not do anything with him standing there, not unless she knew it was safe enough for-
The squishy floor shook like an earthquake, huge muscles jerking beneath his feet. A light gust broke across his back as the air was drawn sharply forward. And for just a moment, the enormous, gaping passage of the dragoness’ throat opened wide before his fixed, awestruck eyes. The meager scraps of leftover hide and bone slipped further into the glistening, rolling red passage, and then the flexible tongue slopped back into place with a mighty squelch.
*GULP*
It was a deep, physical noise which rattled the little boy’s body like a nearby thunderclap sometimes shook their mountain. And Toby listened to the echoes, the fading crackles and gurgles, as all the scraps he had gathered up were carried away. He smiled broadly.
“Thanks, mommy.” He knew she had done that just for him.
He stared for another moment, then waved goodbye to the closed off pit of her throat as if it were a friend he wouldn’t see again for a while- it was alive and big enough after all. He turned around to walk back toward his exit at the front of her muzzle, but then he noticed something. He could see her lips moving from the inside, and he noticed the back corners curving up into a growing smile.
“Huh?”
He looked down. It felt like the ground was moving again, but the tongue didn’t look like she was moving it. But gravity was shifting, turning, pulling him toward- Toby looked back. A quickly growing pool of saliva was collecting at the entrance to her gullet, he could see streams of it running across her tastebuds. She was raising her head! Was she really going to-
The boy felt a jolt of excitement. He looked forward again toward the teeth and this time saw the massive tongue beginning to swell, blocking off his view. Now he was sure of it. If his mother was blocking that way, that meant she wanted him to go-
He finally lost his footing against the slick muscle as it sloped steeper and steeper beneath his feet. Falling onto his butt with a splat, he started sliding down with the rivers of drool straight into the waiting drop at the precipice of his mother’s throat.
“Yay!!”
*splash*
Landing in the deep puddle, he felt his hands come up against the smooth, firm flesh at the very back of his mother’s maw, the first touch of the outermost reaches of her inner depths. Though he was almost insubstantially small compared to her, as his hands touched the entrance of her gullet, he knew she could feel him there.
*GULP*
Toby felt the flesh part below his feet. There was a rush of liquids, like falling into a lake during a heavy rain. And then he felt the world shake with a deep, drool-muffled squelch.
A moment later, his head resurfaced in a little air bubble. A continuous, wet crackling caught his clearing ears and he looked up to see the walls of his mother’s esophagus folding tightly closed behind him in an ever shifting pattern as they retreated. The entire little pond of saliva had been swallowed down, and him along with it, slipping through the passage within her long neck.
He reached out a hand and rested it against the flowing flesh as he passed by. When his mother swallowed him, it was nothing like his siblings, even his older ones. With the others, everything was always pressing in tight around him, which, admittedly, he enjoyed, but it meant that the most he ever got to really see of their gullets was just a twisting pucker of muscle pressed up in his face as he slipped down into their belly. She was so big that she had room to spare even in her throat! Now, he could see the entire interior of the little bulge he made as he traveled on his way. His light shimmered off the shifting muscles as it refracted in the gently churning pool around him, giving off the impression of the walls waving back at him as he passed.
Gravity gradually shifted as he followed along the contours of the long passage, carrying him deeper, and a new sound began growing louder. A deep, rhythmic thumping, distinct and powerful. It sounded almost like footsteps, but Toby had spent more than enough time inside his family to know what it actually was. He stared up at the shifting muscles of the esophagus, as if he hoped he could see through them, listening to the steady, constant beating, feeling its pulse in the walls that enveloped him. He had no idea what it looked like, but it sounded big. He’d always heard his mother had a big heart, and his rare trips to her belly had only ever confirmed it.
He ’watched’ the sound pass him by, but turned to look forward again when a very familiar sloshing and gurgling started to reach his ears. He felt a renewed spur of excitement, staring forward at the rolling pucker as he was pushed along, waiting, watching with unblinking focus, knowing that soon it would-
His face quite literally lit up when he saw it. The folding flesh suddenly had a little hole in its center, then bigger and bigger. The pool of drool started rushing free like a waterfall. He braced his feet off the back of his little throat bulge- now buried somewhere unseen deep within his mother’s chest- and pushed himself forward, launching his little body out into the shadowed chamber.
*splash*
*GUUURGLE*
Toby broke through a thin layer of liquids and squished down into the folds of the stomach floor, which caught him gently, flexing under his impact and rebounding him up toward the surface. He set himself upright again, finding his footing with deceptive ease thanks to his experience. Chyme ran off his head as it surfaced, the digestive tide rising up to his chest and lapping against his skin like waves on a beach.
Then, he finally looked up, and his eyes grew wider than ever, as he took in the sight that had excited him so.
It was huge. Absolutely, unthinkably, ridiculously enormous. He couldn’t just stand up; he could jump and not even get close to touching the top- even if the squishy floor had been solid. She had so much food inside that it wasn’t just a little puddle he laid in; he could swim in it- even now when her belly was mostly empty.
*SLOOOSH*
He stared, marveling as a massive section of the stomach ahead of him constricted, the slick, folding walls pressing in toward each other, sending a wave of chyme rippling out through her belly that almost knocked him over when it passed.
In the bellies of his littlest cousins- the ones just big enough to get him down- he could just about push back against their walls when they squeezed. His older siblings had bellies so big and strong that he didn’t think anything his size could do much against them. But this… his mother was like a living mountain; trying to hold back a squeeze like that would be like trying to hold back an avalanche. It seemed to little Toby an unstoppable force. The very stew around him was made from the uncountable beasts she’d hunted and swallowed, creatures many, many times his size, overwhelmed and dissolved by these same walls he was staring at.
And yet…
Toby waded forward, toward the center of the cavernous stomach, pale pink walls shimmering in his brilliant light as they slowly shifted. The soft, supple muscle flexed slightly below his feet, sometimes dropping away into little unseen valleys and forcing him to paddle with his hands and kick with his legs to stay afloat until he found it again.
The little human boy made his way over to the big stomach wall he’d seen contract just a moment ago, and he put his hand to it. His mother’s warmth, and the pulse of her heart came to him through the layers of slime.
*SLUURP*
*GUURGLE*
Her body spoke to him, in a language he almost understood. He smiled back at it in response, running his hand affectionately over the tiny section of muscle.
*RUMBLE*
*SLOOOSH*
“Whoa!” he yelped with an excited grin as the walls lurched again. The muscles around him lifted him up and pushed him, driving him out into the lake of chyme on the back of a wave. He tumbled into the murky stew, sloshing around with the remains of her recent meals as her belly did its work on them. When the tides of her belly calmed, he found the ‘ground’ again, and pushed himself up to stand. The potent acidic mix could not melt the smile from his face, in fact it only seemed to fuel it, the same way it fueled the gigantic dragoness who carried him.
“Are you having fun in there?” The familiar voice vibrated through every inch of the living cave.
“Yeah!” he called out to the stomach, and his mother’s ears beyond.
A low, happy rumble reached him, not from her belly, but from her chest. It was a sound he often heard when she smiled at him as he played, but he rarely got the chance to hear it from the inside.
A stray thought crossed his mind, and he briefly looked around, scanning the sloshing seas. There was absolutely no sign of the wad of scraps she’d sent down ahead of him. It had probably dispersed and sunk deep into the chyme, or maybe her belly had already churned it all up in just the few moments before he’d arrived.
“Mom?” he called questioningly.
An inquisitive rumble vibrated his body in response.
“Why didn’t you ask me to help you yesterday? That’s when you ate all the big hairy food. Weren’t your teeth hairy the whole time?”
She chuckled lightly as if she’d just been caught. Ripples bounced around the contents of her stomach as her belly jostled.
“Well,” she explained, “I knew you’d want to go inside for a while, and I wanted to make sure there was enough room for you to be safe.”
He could hear the loving smile in her voice, and he smiled back. She’d planned to swallow him up from the start, from even earlier. She’d wanted to surprise him and make him happy. And she’d let herself get hungry and walk around with messy things in her teeth all day to make sure he’d be safe too, so he didn’t get lost with all her food when her enormous belly was full.
“Thanks mom,” he said sweetly, wading back over to the nearest wall. He threw his arms around a fold with a wet splat. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Toby.”
A little tremor jostled the little boy as her belly rumbled; a unanimous agreement.