Content
An older dragon stepped through the tunnels at a relaxed pace, smiling with a quiet warmth as she passed her numerous nephews and nieces. She received a “Hi Auntie Thess!” from a hatchling or two, and a more mature “Hello Aunt Thess,” from one or two of the older kids, both of which she always returned with an even wider smile and a friendly ‘hello’ in kind.
She kept her nose atwitch as she mingled, trying to trace a familiar scent. One would think a mammalian aroma like his would stand out clearly amidst the distinctly draconic backdrop, but he did tend to enjoy staying in places where not much scent- or much of anything- tended to get out.
“Hello Aunt Thess. Are you looking for our father?” a young dragon asked, astute enough to notice her search.
“Hello,” she smiled. “Actually, I’m looking for Toby.”
“Oh…” the little nephew thought for a moment. “I think he’s with Lorn,” he recalled.
“Thank you,” she praised warmly. Her young kin grinned appreciatively before bounding off on his way, returning to whatever he’d been up to.
With a new scent to track, she took a turn and followed along a length of tunnel, winding through the mountain until she reached another chamber. She could hear a young dragoness’ voice talking away with seemingly no response, growing louder and clearer as she approached.
“…I tried to tell him not to, but he kept trying it anyway and of course it started burning just like I said and he-” Her ears flicked up as she heard someone approaching and she looked toward the nearby passage. “Oh, hi Aunt Thess.”
“Hello there,” she greeted, entering and stepping toward her niece who lay comfortably in a crescent, half on her side. “Have you seen Toby by chance?” The older dragoness asked, already suspecting the answer.
“Hi Aunt Thess!” came a fairly muffled call as the scaled belly wiggled.
“Hello Toby,” she replied with an amused smirk, bringing her snout in closer to address her niece’s talkative stomach. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have something for you.”
“You do?” It was clear even through the layers of flab and scale that his curiosity had been immediately piqued. “What is it?”
“Do you remember that thing you and Clak brought me?”
“Hm…” The occupied belly jiggled briefly and gurgled as the boy within presumably took on a ‘thinking’ pose. “Oh! That rock pouch thing from the messenger?”
“Yes, that’s right,” she confirmed, but said nothing more. Instead, she waited for a short time, hoping the little human would understand. It took the boy a moment or two, but eventually Lorn’s belly jolted like she’d been poked there with a claw.
“Oh! Is it Ambur!? Did-” Toby stopped himself with all the grace of a fibbing hatchling. Aunt Thess had told him that was a secret! He glanced around at the slowly undulating walls of his enclosure as if worried that one of the wrinkles might have heard him and caught on- nevermind the sibling they belonged to. “Is it?” he asked again, pretending to be calm.
“Yes, it is,” replied Aunt Thess, nearly chuckling at his reaction.
“Yay!! I wanna see! I wanna see!”
Lorn’s belly erupted into a little scaly sea of wriggling bulges. The young dragoness felt the little human in her belly spring to life more vehemently than any critter she’d ever swallowed for an actual meal, clawing excitedly at the far end of her throat with his soft, clawless little digits.
“Okay, okay, I’ll let you out, calm down,” the young dragoness said, a hint of discomfort in her voice as she quickly jumped to her feet in surprise.
Arching her neck and widening her stance a touch, she compressed her belly and relaxed her neck, letting the passage of her throat expand as the excited sibling within her pressed his hands and face into the widening chute. With a few diligent retches and a vaguely annoyed little scowl, she deposited her adoptive brother neatly into a slimy heap on the cave floor. He didn’t stay there for long, though, hopping to his feet as quickly as his sister and excitedly repeating:
“Whereisit? Whereisit? Whereisit?”
“Where is what? What’s going on?” Lorn asked, getting fairly intrigued herself.
Toby looked back at her like he’d just remembered she was there. A flurry of thoughts ran through his mind as his face suddenly ran the gamut from excited to secretive to guilty to concerned and finally settling somewhere in the middle of it all. He turned fully back to his sister, who he’d been in the middle of talking to just a few moments earlier.
“I… I’m sorry, it’s a special thing just for me…” He watched her ears droop when she processed those words and realized she was being excluded. “But I promise I’ll come back after I’m done, okay? …Please don’t feel bad. If you want, I’ll spend the night in your belly and you can tell me all about what happened with the fire. I bet he looked really silly.”
A smirk broke through her scaly face. “He did…” she mumbled. “Okay, you’ve got a deal,” she replied, flicking her tongue across her muzzle to wipe away a smidge of brother-flavored goop, and sending it back down to her belly where he’d be spending the coming evening.
Toby smiled at his sister; happy he’d been able to cheer her up- not to mention looking forward to a fun night in her belly himself. But before very long, the pressing excitement of the moment got the better of him again and his head crept back around toward his aunt with a growing grin.
“So… where is it?” he asked again.
“Come on, I’ll show you.” She extended her wing down to the ground in invitation. Little Toby clambered up the leathery slope, slipping a few times thanks to the fresh stomach slime he was covered in, but eventually he made it to the summit of his aunt’s back.
Lorn eyed the departing boy with mildly-suppressed curiosity. She did want to know what he was up to, but for now she’d settle for her promised prize and wait for him to come back. She slipped back down onto her now-empty belly to relax as she watched her kin go.
Toby watched the cave walls slipping by as his excitement mounted. The steps were slow, but her stride was long, and he felt the air passing like a firm, gentle breeze, steadily drying him out. Rather than heading out toward the open sky, she made her way deeper into the caves and tunnels which lined the mountain. They were taking the long way, Toby realized, but that was to be expected. Flying would have been faster, but everyone knew- especially after his last attempt with Averi- that he wasn’t the best at holding on, and his aunt and uncle never let him ride inside them. They were possibly the only bellies in his family he’d never seen.
“So… what did she say?” Toby asked, trying to satisfy his excitement.
“We’ll find out,” his aunt replied patiently.
“Did you read it yet?”
“No Toby, not yet.”
“Is it far?”
“Not much farther. But I could rest here to answer your questions if you’d like.”
“No no no, you can keep going, it’s okay.”
Eventually they saw daylight again, arriving at a relatively small cave mouth, wedged into some little nook of the mountainside. What’s more there was something glittering brightly as it caught the rays of the sun, quickly catching Toby’s eye. It was…
A pile of dirt?
There was a conspicuous little pile of dirt sitting in the middle of the cave’s opening, as if a little chunk of earth had just been dropped there. But the sparkling light was coming from a little object half buried in the side of the heap.
Thess stopped as they arrived, and extended her wing toward the ground so Toby could slide off. He wriggled quickly down the leathery slide and scuttled over to the strange spectacle. Digging into the loose soil, he pulled out what seemed to be a rock, two or three times the size of his little fists, with a rough surface that glittered and sparkled and shone brightly as he turned it in his hands under the sunlight.
“Wha… what is it?” he asked, enamored. His own inhuman glow shone brighter and started refracting off the strange object as well, covering the cave walls in even more little squiggles and dots of light.
“A sunstone. We asked her for one in your letter, remember?”
He thought for a moment before the memory came to him. That’s right! Aunt Thess had put something about that in there. He hadn’t known what it was, only that ‘she would need it so she could find Ambur’s letter’.
“Oh…” Toby realized. “You can see it shining from the sky.”
His aunt smiled and nodded in confirmation.
“So… where is the letter?”
“It’s in there,” the older dragoness assured, nudging the dirt pile with her snout and flattening it out a bit. Dragon claws, especially ones her size, were not very well suited for grasping little delicate envelopes. She’d decided that grabbing the entire chunk of earth the message had been resting on would be the surest way to carry it with as little damage as possible.
Toby put the glimmering stone down on the cave floor and fixed his full attention on the dirt pile. He plunged both arms into it, then a leg, pushing and sifting as he half-waded through the loose heap, until his eyes caught a hint of white. It was far from the pure, untarnished white it had once been, but it still stood out clearly amidst the dark earth.
“Ah-ha!” The eager boy snatched it up in his dirty hands.
“Careful, try not to get the inside too smudged,” his aunt cautioned as he found the flap on the envelope- just like the last one- and pulled out the message. Heeding the warning, he unfolded it delicately, keeping his dirty digits to the edges, and then looked over the flowing collection of lines that covered the page. He couldn’t make out a word of it, but it sure looked pretty. He turned it around so his elder could see and she squinted down at the tiny parchment.
Toby held his breath as she began to read aloud.
“Dear Mr. Toby,
Thank you for going out of your way to write me about my lost letter, that was very nice of you. How did you find it? Were you there when the messenger got attacked by the dragon? That sounds like it would be really scary.”
“Scary? Clak isn’t scary. And he promised the messenger man was already dead when he ate him,” Toby interrupted. Thess paused for a moment but continued once he was done.
“My mom says she’s never seen a letter as big as yours before. Why did you write it like that on such a big piece of paper? And why did you want this letter delivered to an open field instead of to your home? Do you live here in town? Or over the Duet Mountains near my uncle?
Sorry if that’s too many questions, I guess I’m just curious. Thanks again for helping me.
-Ambur”
Toby smiled brightly at her thanks, literally, his building luminance sparkling off the sunstone placed by his feet.
“Can we write her back? Please?”
His aunt opened her mouth to speak, but at that very moment, a shadow happened to pass over them, a winged figure crossing between them and the setting sun. She looked up and out. A few of their kin were returning from an afternoon’s hunt, and among them was her mate, Toby’s uncle.
“Yes, we can,” Thess answered, “but not right now.”
Toby’s light dimmed.
“I’m sorry dear, but it will have to wait for another day.”
“Another day soon?” Toby asked disappointedly, as if hoping he could at least get that small level of hope.
“Yes. But remember, until then this still needs to be a secret.” She eyed the cave wall as she spoke, noting a relatively small chunk of rock that seemed to stick out. She reached up with a massive claw and placed her weight on the protrusion, and a hefty chunk of rock split from the caveside and fell to the ground. “Put the letter here for now.” She gestured to the new hole with her claw.
Toby nodded obediently and placed the little paper message in the crevice. His aunt grabbed the dislodged boulder between her jaws and slotted it back into place. It would be a bit crumpled and torn when they recovered it, but it would be safe from water, weather, and prying eyes.
“I’ll write back soon, Ambur,” he said to the hidden letter. Then he turned to his aunt with a smile and looked up toward her back, anticipating his return ride through the tunnels.
…
“Lorn? …Lorn? Are you still in h- WAH-Oof!”
In a blink, Toby found himself pressed to the floor with the distinct imprint of a clawed foot on his back.
“That’s for kicking inside my belly so much before,” came the familiar voice of his sister from somewhere just above. But her tone said much more than her words, considerably more playful than resentful, like a punchline she’d been saving up. And her ‘pounce’ had been very noticeably light, with hardly any of her weight put into it.
“Sorry, Lorn,” he replied, with just enough levity in his voice to show he got her intention, but with plenty of candidness all the same. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No,” she admitted. She curled her claws around him gently as she lifted her leg, helping him back up as she gave up the facade. “It just surprised me. Felt kinda funny… not bad though. Anyway, you ready to curl up for the night?”
“Sure.”
He looked up at his sister and smiled. She smiled back, her face growing closer, and her smile widening into a quickly growing expanse of glistening red and pink.
*NOMF*
*NOM*
*GLRK*
*GULP*
The dragoness’ expression sealed back into a quite satisfied little grin as the large lump slithered down her neck, once again slipping into place to fill out the scaly curve of her belly. She stretched for a few moments, her abdominal muscles pressing and squelching happily around her returned occupant as she flexed her limbs. And then she gently laid them both down, half rolled over so most of her weight was on her side rather than her brother-filled belly.
“So,” Toby asked. “What did he do after it started burning?”
Lorn smiled, returning to her interrupted story.
“Well…”