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The Easy Life

By Shalion

Being set free to wander the world on her own was not at all the sort of existence that the small, young dragon had thought it might be, not that she had asked to released in the first place. Indeed, from the first few moments that she had lost her family and caretakers, her life had been thrown upside down in a continuous downpour of fear, misfortune and now, hunger. The young dragonette was too tired and weak with longing for food to notice the layers of dirt and grime which dulled her once marvelous green scales. She had no idea where she was, having flown far from the place where she had once lived after her old family had left and apparently forgotten her. Finding food was next to impossible, the dragonette had lived her life eating out of a bowl and had no idea where or how to find her next meal. Rarely some kind soul had offered her a tidbit, and she had managed to find a few bread crusts discarded on the ground, but the last solid thing she had found had been over four days ago and she no longer had the strength to get into the air.

Pangs racked the thin body of the dragonet as she looked for shelter from the dark clouds overhead. She had already lost so much weight, flying took a toll on her body, and all of her body's reserves had already been used up while her prospects had not improved in the slightest. In fact, the dirtier and shabbier she looked, the more people, yes the people whom she looked up to and adored, shunned her and turned their glances aside in disgust. She'd been shooed away from patios and restaurants, even kicked savagely, like a common mutt, despite her rare breed. There did not seem to be a place anywhere for her. She could not hunt, she could not care for herself. The dragonette was beginning to feel that there was only one possible end to her story and the reality of it was like the weight of a stone on her spirit.

When the hope of stumbling across some crumb of food to sate the burning lust in her belly seemed utterly hopeless, the dragonette took shelter from the drops of rain now pelting her starvation racked body in the first likely place, a porch stoop of a modest suburban home. She set herself down as easily as she could on her protruding hip bones and watched the lightning flare over head and the rain come down in sheets.

The dragonette had not realized she had fallen asleep when she awoke to the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. Her first impulse was to flee, to seek cover elsewhere, but her body refused to cooperate, she was too weak, almost dizzy even from the effort of lifting her head on her long, elegant neck. The car shut down and a hunched figure emerged, carrying large parcels in both of its arms. The dragonette lowered her head, trying to meld into the thicker shadows of the porch. It seemed to work at first as the man, she could smell the person was male, walked right past her and in through the door. But then, the porch light turned on, revealing her completely just in time for the man to see her as he was reaching out to close the screen door. The dragonette hunched her little body, ready to be shooed away once more or have something thrown at her, but she did not know what she was going to if he came at her. The person could easily stomp her to death if he wanted.

But nothing of the sort happened. "Hey, there..." said the man sweetly. The dragonette lifted her head and noticed the man's gray, receding hair. "What are you doing there? Ya' lost?"

The dragonette could not understand the human's words naturally, but she had a keen awareness of his tone and his body language. She cowered as the man came out of the door and slowly approached her. Remarkably, he seemed to recognize this and backed away.

"Hey there, I'm not gonna hurt you, fella." The man cooed down at her, "Aw, poor thing looks like it's starving."

The man retreated back inside and the dragonet was relieved until he returned. However, her nose followed a tantalizing odor which seemed to emanate from the man's closed hands. The dragonette felt a cautious optimism that was reaffirmed as the man tossed a tidbit to land near her forepaws. The young dragon snatched it off the ground quickly, gulping too fast to savor anything, but she could tell from the aftertaste that what she had eaten had been meat, probably a bit of hot dog.

The man threw her a few more bits and pieces, steadily leading her closer. She shyly allowed herself to be lead near him, until she was standing at his feet. Already the weakness that had wracked her body seemed less now that she had something in her stomach. Distracted by the food, the dragonette was shocked initially when the man put a large hand on her head, but she leaned into the good touch, emitting the purr-growl of pleasure that she had used frequently before, but not so much since she had been abandoned.

"Come on in here, now, girl." said the man, bending his head to get a look at the dragon's hindquarters. The dragonette followed, and not just because the man kept feeding her bits of sausage from his fingers, the interior of the house called to her, she'd had enough of the bleak outside world.

The man fed her as much as she could hold, devouring eagerly a whole pack of hotdogs and then an entire new york strip steak which the man pulled out of the bags he had carried in. "Poor thing was starving..." he muttered as he stood over her, watching as she hoarked down the food greedily. After that, when she was feeling full and drowsy, the dragnet did not mind at all when the man led her into the tub and began scrubbing the dirt from her body. When she was clean, her green scales almost shined, not very much worse for wear at all. "Such a pretty girl, who would have thrown you out?" the man cooed as he tended to her. "Mind if I call you Sadie? That's my granddaughter's name."

The dragonette responded by tossing her shining green head, throwing water all over the old man.

"Sadie it is then!" he laughed and wiped the water streaming down his face. It was not the name the dragonette had gone by in her old home, but, seeing as they did not seem to want her anymore, she was more than happy to accept a new title. In time, it began to feel even more natural than her old one ever had.

Living with the man, who Sadie learned later was called "Bill," became a home for the young dragon faster than she would have thought possible. She was kept clean, warm and dry, a far cry from how she had lived on her own, but more importantly, she was kept well fed.

The man named Bill had a lot of knives and a great slab of wood on wheels that he used as a cutting board in his kitchen. He even had a big, cast iron, hand cranked meat grinder which was well loved and used frequently. Sadie knew because the old man would grind up fresh meat to mix with her store-brand kibbles. Though the young dragon lacked the understanding of what a 'butcher' was, she admired the deft and practiced way the human handled meat despite the way his hands shook or the large knobs on the knuckles of each hand.

After coming close to starving to death, Sadie had a lot of catching up to do in terms of replenishing the muscle and other tissue her body had lost. She felt this in her renewed appetite which was peaked to say the least. But it was not that Sadie was just working against lost ground, however, because Bill served the young dragon the most ridiculously delicious meals the dragon had ever eaten in her entire life, including before she had been abandoned. She was fed steak, actual steak regularly, cut into cubes so she could easily swallow them as her teeth were not designed for chewing. Sometimes Bill even threw the cubes into a pan and seared them with butter, but left the insides nice and red and juicy. Sadie liked when he did this the best out of all the things he served her. But it was not just steak either. Sadie learned the finer nuances of pork, chicken and most tantalizing of all, the various organ meats. There was even fish! Sadie found that she rather liked Salmon, especially if it was sauteed in butter. The fishy flavor and odor only further stimulated her appetite, especially in times when she was getting bored of beef. In the first few weeks of living together, Bill had attempted to fill out her diet with the store bought dry food that Sadie had been familiar with, but the dry pellets could not hold a candle to the much better food that Bill served either mixed in or in supplement to her bowl. Could anyone blame Sadie for disdaining her food of old and favoring the new under such circumstances? And Bill seemed to get the idea because she was fed less and less of the dry dragon food over time until he finally stopped trying at all.

After being introduced to new luxuries of flavor and texture in her diet, Sadie could not help but take an increased interest whenever Bill made food for himself as well, even if she had eaten before him, which was often the case. Bill favored red meat as well, along with baked or steamed starchy and green vegetables. However, it often seemed the case, as she sat at his feet gazing up at him on the recliner, that he often had trouble finishing what he had cooked. Sadie offered him a simple solution as she looked up at him with her large, amber eyes and licked her chops. She begged less because she was actually hungry, which was rarely the case, but because Bill always spent more time preparing and seasoning his own food, even when he did cook hers. Though Bill's left overs were usually too salty or pungent for her palette, she craved the experience of the complex flavors dancing on her tongue and in her nose more than anything.

Time passed and Sadie recovered from being a mere shadow of her former self, even developing a high gloss sheen to her scales that was superior in her mind even to when she had lived with her old family. However, her eating habits remained the same. The starvation hunger had passed, but Sadie remained highly aware of whenever Bill brought home or handled food. She was even guarded as she ate, even around Bill, as food seemed like a precious commodity now, even as Bill showered her with as much good stuff as she could eat. Thus, as the weeks evolved into months, Sadie went from being a skeletal waif to a rather plump heavy weight.

Sadie found herself sunning her lovely green scales in the backyard one afternoon. She lay on the grass and stretched, feeling the cords of new muscle warm under her skin and not a little of something else too. There was a new softness to her frame, she had begun to notice and she was probably around 20 pounds heavier now than she had ever been before. She even had something of a belly now, a certain roundness to her abdomen that Bill liked to rub and pat and felt good when he did. There was little doubt now that she had left her starvation completely behind her, and yet...

And yet there remained a certain shadow of it on Sadie's psyche, perhaps even more due to being abandoned rather than the aftermath of neglect which had nearly killed her. Nothing seemed certain to her anymore and the world did not have the friendly glow it once had, even as she stared into a beautiful blue day. Sadie, despite having lost her infirmness, still spent a lot of time indoors, which was why being outdoors seemed so novel as to inspire all of these inward thoughts. Sadie thought, as she gazed into that wide blue abyss that she was perfectly strong enough now to take flight, perhaps even to look for her lost family.

But then, why would she want to? She had been scorned, abandoned. It can not have been an accident. Even after the months of recovery, Sadie did not feel any real loyalty to Bill, though she did consider him a friend and an ally and had they parted under different circumstances, Sadie might have been inspired to go looking for them. But not only did the world seem more perilous and unforgiving than it ever had, she knew that no one else out there was going to make her steak cubes seared in butter, or chicken livers or hagus. No, the young dragon decided, there was nothing worthwhile for her out there at all, and she had everything she wanted inside. And with that thought, Sadie rose and walked briskly back inside through the open screen door.

With that decision to remain with Bill, Sadie seemed to seal her fate as things continued to go basically how they had been going for the remainder of the year and well into the next. Well, almost the same as Sadie increasingly could not ignore the role her ever increasing waistline was playing in her life. As that was happening, Sadie also noticed several... oddities in Bill's behavior.

For example, Bill seemed to become very forgetful at times. Sadie noticed how Bill would sometimes grab his keys, walk out the door and then just stand on the porch for minutes, seeming to wonder where he had been intending to go. Also, sometimes he would reach down to rub her head and say something like, "How about we get in the car and drive down to the park tomorrow, eh Sadie, my girl?" only to say the exact same thing to her a few minutes later, as if it were the first. Bill even seemed to mistake Sadie for someone else, especially in the evenings when his confusion seemed to worsen. Sadie the dragon did not know who this other Sadie might have been when Bill saw her and began to tell her stories she could not comprehend, but at least he seemed friendly with her, unlike the once or twice when he did not seem to recognize her at all.

It did not overly bother Sadie to see Bill act so strangely at times, instead, she grew to recognize his cycles and merely became more wary of him and gave him space when he seemed confused. In fact, sometimes it benefitted her, especially when Bill sometimes forgot that he had already fed the gluttonous dragon and prepared a second dinner for her.

Not that Sadie really needed a second dinner other than to entertain her palate and for that delicious dull pain she felt with an overstuffed tummy. In fact, the more Sadie ate, the more she found she could and wanted to eat. Bill did notice the way she pawed at him and whined and stared at him with her large, hungry orbs, and steadily increased the size of her meals just to satisfy her, but nothing he could have done would have satisfied her. Even after a big meal, she still sat on his feet and begged for his food too, to the point where she was usually getting half of what the old man made for himself as well.

The young dragon as a result of her constant binging put on weight rapidly. Sadie felt the weight on her paws and ankles and later in her hips as her belly deepened and widened, but she paid little attention to it, even as the added weight began to slowly, but inevitably affect her behavior. Before she knew what was happening, she began to ignore sounds from outside the house that would have driven her to get up and look out a window for the source. When Bill summoned up the strength for one of his infrequent walks, Sadie wandered to and fro much less, and did not pull as hard on the old man, almost slowing down to his own snail-like pace, which was something that seemed to suit Bill just fine. And she began to sleep more, often just feeling the need to lie down and digest a large meal, but then later day time naps felt more appealing, even between meals. Sadie grew to be an extremely lazy dragon, but then her body had such an amount of padding now that she did not mind sitting in one place for long periods anymore either. And that padding kept getting deeper.

Sadie's body thickened into a sausage shape from her round chest to her hips, a pot belly filling the space under her ribs. Her tail thickened and grew heavy as well, so that Sadie began to drag it along the ground behind her. But just a couple months later, Sadie's profile was less like a sausage and more like a wedge as her fat belly drooped below her sternum and filled the space between her knees. It was around this time that Sadie's scales began to part on her flanks, revealing the pale, delicate snake flesh underneath.

Sadie had not known that the skin under her scales was so white and translucent and she was mildly troubled by its appearance one evening after an especially large meal when she paused to examine herself. It was a little cumbersome, seeing as her neck had thickened tremendously as well, and had a long wobbling sack of lard hanging from the underside of it. As her head bent, a multitude of small rolls formed under her jaw, the scales flowing unevenly over each other in the creases. The white lines of exposed flesh on her flank extended in rows from head to tail and the skin there was very soft and sensitive to the touch. Sadie did not spend a lot of time prodding herself as it was easy for the roughness of her claws to scratch the delicate exposed skin and when it did, it hurt tremendously. With effort, Sadie bent her head even more and licked at the red, swollen skin, but it was hard for her to reach very far. Indeed, Sadie had grown to the point where she could not reach her hindquarters at all, so that if a loose scale did not peel off all the way, it remained there however much Sadie wanted to reach back and pluck it off with her teeth.

At first, Sadie imagined that this new development was merely a result of eating too big a meal in one setting, but while the revealed skin did diminish somewhat overnight as she digested, the rows did not disappear entirely, and the next time she ate, there was even more skin revealed and more rows as well, appearing as the scales parted towards both her back and the lower swell of her tummy. But Sadie dealt with this new fact of life the way she did with everything else that seemed to be changing with her, namely by staying inside and ignoring it; as Sadie soon discovered, the new pale skin sunburnt easily.

Being inside most of the time, Sadie hardly noticed or really cared as her weight increased to such a point that her own mobility began to wane. Flight was a long gone imagining, but Sadie did not really notice save that at some point she became instinctually aware that her weight was too great to get off the ground any longer, even if she had tried, which she did not feel inclined to do. But as Sadie's belly stretched even lower down and her flanks expanded to bovine proportions at her sides, the young dragon felt an increased avoidance to any movement whatsoever, an avoidance that was reinforced by the pain and exhaustion that came upon her after just a few minutes of walking.

Sadie flat out refused to go with Bill on the few walks he felt up to going on in his old age and the man did not press her. In fact, he had only seemed to be doing it for her own benefit anyways. Bill still used his car to go places that she had no knowledge of, but unlike her previous folks, he always returned. Meanwhile Sadie was usually left napping on the carpet, sleeping her life away.

If Bill noticed or cared about Sadie's surging weight gain, he gave little sign of it. Sometimes he did try to scam her with half a steak or just two chicken livers, but he melted when she started mewling. Sometimes all it took was the sound of her scratching at her empty food bowl to get him out of his recliner and back to the cutting board. But maybe Bill was just suffering from a lack of energy. Sadie noticed how Bill's own tummy was decreasing in size as the man tightened his belt to keep his pants from falling. It probably had nothing to do with how Sadie was eating half of the old man's meals on top of her own. Sadie thought that he ought to take better care of himself, but had no way to communicate this. As for herself, if not for the annoying few times Bill tried to coax her outside, she was feeling great. With careful management of herself, even her exposed, naked flesh was not a problem.

But Bill did keep trying. One morning, after a lot of coaxing and bribing with lumps of steak, Bill convinced her to go out into the back yard with him. It was cloudy out, so she did not mind the sun falling onto her back, which by this point was roughly half scale and half pearly translucent skin. Her great belly was hanging well below the ankles of her long feet now and near to the ground and its weight was such that she already wanted to sit down after having just reached the porch.

"Come on, girlie. Come on, Sadie." Bill encouraged, though, clapping his hands for her as he stood in the green grass. He looked foolish, but his smile and delight were infectious enough to distract Sadie from her ennui. Gingerly, she let herself down over the porch steps, cringing and yelping slightly as the rough wood and stone scraped the surface of her belly, now mostly pale skin with stripes of green. It was a relief to get onto the grass, but Sadie stood there, sagging, longing for the comfort of her floor mat or just regular carpeting to support her body.

"Come on, Sadie. Here, lookit this." said Bill and fished another lump of steak from his pocket, the only thing he had that could hold the dragon's attention. Sadie reached for it, but Bill held it back. Sadie took a few steps forward, but Bill retreated and quickly there was a game of chase. Sadie was so weighted down with her own bulk at this point that even the elderly man proved to be a match for her as she reached for the tidbit in his fingers. Sadie's heart raced in her chest as she waddled after him, thighs rubbing uncomfortably against her belly as she panted. But Sadie's thighs soon started to burn and worse, her hips ached from the weight placed on them. She slowed and then had to stop, despite her craving for the meat in Bill's hand. She sat heavily and her gut spread onto the grass. Sadie cocked a leg to make more room for it in a well practiced movement. After she stopped, she panted heavily, feeling almost more tired after stopping than she had a couple seconds before. She knew she had overdone it. Bill noticed that she stopped and walked slowly back to her. He adjusted his pants, his beer belly almost gone now. He knelt on creaking knees and gave her the meat which she snapped up despite being so tired. He rubbed the top of her head and then stroked the hanging meat under her neck. "It's alright, girl. We'll get you back in shape soon enough." said Bill and he lead an exhausted Sadie back inside, but as it turned out, that was the last time that Bill led Sadie outside for any sort of exercise. And it was not long before Sadie could not have handled even that much exertion.

Sadie's mobility continued to decline after that brief romp in the backyard, not because of any muscle weakness or fatigue - though those did come later - but sheer increasing bulk of Sadie's body. It got to the point where Sadie only got up to do her business in the backyard, something she increasingly waited until it was too uncomfortable to do otherwise. Sadie even found herself laying in front of her food dish rather than go through the effort of moving somewhere else. Even her increasing reluctance to move her overlarge body just a few feet did not have a significant effect on her food intake, however, as Bill was readily summoned just by the sound of scratching at her empty food dish with her claws, now grown long and curved themselves for lack of use.

Her descent continued until finally after quite a long time lying down, Sadie felt the urge to go into the backyard overcome her aversion to moving. However, she'd also just eaten a big meal meal of diced pork, chicken hearts and liver and her belly was swollen large in her even more swollen abdomen. Still, her need presented itself and Sadie struggled to her feet in a tiresome process. Her knees and hips and even her lower back creaked in protest of the weight placed on them as she attempted to lift herself to all fours, however, 'attempted' was the key word here because Sadie found that she was unable to get up all the way. She crouched, straining against gravity with all four feet, but could not lift herself even enough to part her belly fat from the ground. She held the position for several seconds before collapsing onto her belly, which felt like a thick pillow under her and between her hind legs, panting for the exertion. Sadie's nervous mind went slightly panicky at the failure, surely it was a mistake, she had, after all, been having a lot of difficulty in getting up lately. But the fattened dragon tried again, and once more fell down, squishing her own scales into the vast areas of exposed pale skin on her tummy.

Though she was winded, Sadie decided to try a different approach. With effort, she managed to get her forequarters up, straightening her forelegs under her protruding chest. The fat showed between her scales here too, giving a kind of patchy, bald appearance to her. The weight had accumulated around her legs as her torso had swelled and as such, the upper portions of her legs and in some places down to the elbow, were subsumed in heavy bags of fat that draped around the limbs. Her legs trembled just with the effort of holding her partially up like this, even while her belly and the bulk of her body weight remained prone on the floor. Her belly in particular spread massively over the floor so it would have been easy to touch it with her hind feet, just by bending them a little at the ankle. But Sadie did not pause to notice how heavy her body was, she just leaned forward, trying to pull the rest of herself up on stiff, locked forelegs. She leaned, using her head and heavy neck as a counterweight to the rest of her while pushing up with her hind legs in their awkward, spread out positions. Her long underused claws scrabbled for purchase on the tiled floor, but she did get her feet under her and started to push up. Her hind feet were bent much lower to the ground than usual, both from the length of her claws, which were bent well around where they should have been on her toes and for her sheer weight. Sadie was panting and her legs were shaking by the time that the last of her over-generous belly had deigned to lift from the floor. But she felt a perhaps overblown sense of achievement by merely standing up, it was taking, after all, her full concentration and all the strength in her legs just to hold herself over the ground, her belly barely an inch off of the ground and her flanks holding just as much mass out to either side of her body.

Clearly though, just standing up was not enough and Sadie seemed to realize this after a few seconds. At first she was almost unsure how to begin. The muscles in her legs were quivering with effort. Sadie took the initiative by taking a quick step with her hind foot, more of a shuffle forward really. Her gelatinous belly shook with the movement and she took a breath, catching her balance. Ok, now she needed to move her opposite fore foot. That one went a little easier. Sadie moved a few more feet like so, one at a time, but her stamina was draining rapidly. The third time she tried to move the hind foot she started with, the limb just folded under her weight, the muscles exhausted and uncontrollable. Helpless to resist gravity, Sadie collapsed down, her belly and flank, fortunately catching the worse of her heavy tumble. Sadie let out a weak squawk as her body hit, less than a single body length from where she had started. It would have been pitiful to see her, with fattened limbs flailing, blubber jiggling and Sadie panting too hard to do much of anything but lay her head on the cool floor and gasp to get air back into her fattened form.

Sadie, as lethargic as she had been lately would have been content to just continue to lay there on the floor in a heap, her heavy wings weakly flapping air around her overheated body, but her bladder continued to agonize her. In fact, if it had not been for the vast depth of belly fat insulating her abdomen, the young dragonet was sure that the impact of landing on her belly as she had would have squeezed the urine right out of her. She moaned a little as she panted for breath. It was simply too much to even think about getting up again, however. The leg that had collapsed under her weight still felt like jelly, and its opposite was not much better. As a last resort, Sadie tried crawling over the tiled floor in a feeble attempt to cross the dozen or so feet towards the open sliding door leading outside. It hurt her pale, slug-like under-scale skin to rub even a little against the rough tile. Without the protection of her scales, the dragonet's skin was thin and delicate, and yet over her massively bloated body, her skin was exposed in most places, her scales reduced to thin strips of green between the broad white expanses. Sadie's eyes began to tear up after moving just a few inches.

She quickly gave up, but not just for the pain she was dealing herself on the skin of her belly and chest. It was hard to gain any purchase on the tile itself with her paws and their grossly overlong, underused claws. They clicked and scrabbled over the stone tiles and Sadie was only able to move at all when her right claw happened to snag on some slightly deeper than usual grout. But with her claws curved downward so much, it was hard to get her palms down on the flat stone. Her hind legs were just as, if not even more, useless as she tried to push herself against the stone her stubborn body weighed down against. She even tried pressing down on her long curved claws themselves because they were so much in the way of her toes. In Sadie's desperate desire to reach the back yard, she must not have noticed how much she was straining with all of the muscles in her body. But she did notice when the inevitable happened and she was assaulted with a warm feeling that ran down the back of her belly which protruded from between her hind legs. It was followed by a dirty feeling but undeliable relief as well. But Sadie was suddenly frightened. What would Bill do when he saw her like this, unable to reach even the back yard to relieve herself anymore? Would she be out on the street again? Sadie could not imagine now returning to that life, how could she do even as much as move from the spot he chose to leave her in now, after all? Sadie, who lacked the full awareness of a human, but was canny for an animal, was aware that she would quickly perish from thirst, if not from hunger with the vast stores she carried on her.

Terrified and lamenting over the mess she had made on the stone floor, Sadie did keep up her efforts to move to the yard, but it was mostly in vain. She was never able to summon up as much strength as she had for the first attempt when she stood up and crawling hurt her delicate skin too much to try as hard. Bill found her a few hours later as he awoke from a nap himself.

"What's going on here, Sadie..." he asked and reached down a great hand towards the dog-sized dragon. Sadie flinched and shut her eyes, sure that he was about to grab her and throw her out. Instead, there was a gentle embrace as he squeezed the back of her fattened neck with his knobbly fingers. "You sick? Not feeling so well, girl?"

Sadie only understood the tone in the old man's voice, but that alone was enough to reassure her, despite the recent stress. She sighed in relief as he mopped the floor and gently wiped her down with a dish towel. It had already been a long time since she'd gotten a bath and the warm water felt nice on her exposed skin.

"Were you trying to get outside, Sadie?" asked Bill as he put the mop back into its bucket. He took a long moment to glare down at the excessive corpulence of the small dragon. "I guess you were having some trouble. I'll be damned if you haven't put on some weight, little girl!"

As a response Sadie mewled helplessly. Bill rubbed down her back and smoothed his palms down her fattened sides, his hands sinking deep into her flesh.

"Come on, up you get... Hmph!" grunted Bill as he placed his hands on either side of Sadie's extreme girth. Despite her relatively diminutive size, with her many extra pounds, she made for more than a double armful. It was uncomfortable for Sadie having the man's skinny arms digging into her flanks to say the least, but still she gave her best effort to lift herself with her legs as well as the man pulled upward around her middle. She held her breath as he heaved upward, grunting cursing heavily.

"Oh god, Sadie!" Bill cried as he strained.

Sadie felt herself moving upward and she pushed with her legs almost as much to relieve the pain around her middle as to actually get up. Compared to her memory, it did take a while, but given the circumstances and the adrenaline rushing through her system, it seemed to Sadie that she was back on her paws again in no time. It did not even feel that bad this time, at least until Bill let go of her.

Sadie heard the cracking of the old man's back as he straightened up over her, but simultaneously, her flanks dropped back down at her sides. It would have been hard for Sadie to describe the sensation of that weight dropping back down to collide violently at the base of her abdomen. The heavy flanks fell, the fat moving around Sadie's body despite all of the connective tissue supporting and cushioning itself. It was not unlike two balls in a newton's cradle colliding, though less violent Sadie herself felt a huge impact on her insides as well as the fat itself. If she had not been holding her breath, she would have had the wind knocked out of her. After her flanks fell, the wave rippled all over Sadie's fattened form, from her drooping jowls, past the rolls at the base of her tail and down its padded length. The dragon took several deep breaths to recover as Bill himself moaned and stretched as his back popped behind her.

But the young, greedy dragon's weight made itself clear to her in just a few seconds after the combined effort as Sadie's legs began to tremble with the effort of standing, even with her legs locked. She did not dare take a step, realizing at this point that trying to walk even to the door was a fool's errand without Bill's support. Unbidden, she released a huge belch while she stood at his feet, the meal of meat, hearts and liver resting uneasily inside her vast belly.

But the human did not seem to realize that she was stuck. Sadie felt Bill nudge her left haunch, now ballooned to well past triple its original bulk, with his foot. "Come on now, Girlie. Get outside now."

Sadie mewled softly, her legs shaking just a little as she stood there, her belly about an inch from the ground and her hind feet bent for the weight. Sadie felt like there was so much weight on her four paws that she would fall over immediately if she lifted any one of them.

But Bill seemed unaware of this, or even that she was in distress at all. He peered down at her through his thick, coke bottle glasses and gave her another nudge, almost a shove with his foot. "Come on now, Sadie." he said a little more forcefully. "You're too damn heavy for me to lift you up again. You've got to go on a freakin' diet!"

Bill's foot shoved Sadie's smallish body forward and she staggered, barely catching herself before she fell again onto either flank or belly. Even with the distance so short and with so much cushioning on her body, the young dragon did not want that discomfort again, she simply weighed so much that falling any distance hurt. And the effort of standing was making her heart pound in her ears and neck and even making her lunch sit uncomfortably in her heavy stomach, which was worst of all in her opinion.

Thus, despite wanting to get outside herself, she did the only thing she felt it was in her power to do. Sadie carefully and with great effort bent her hind legs and let her hindquarters down. It was shockingly hard for her, since her weight wanted to fall right to the ground as soon as her knees were unlocked. Her belly was on the ground almost instantly, but there was so much more weight to let down. She let her belly out to the right, folding her left leg under her, so that even though she more or less plopped straight down, her belly actually slid over the stone tiles a short distance as more belly fat came down, forcing the paunch out to the side. Sadie sighed and then panted to catch her breath again. All this effort was putting her in the mood for a nap, and an extra large dinner as well.

But Bill was not satisfied. "Sadie... Sadie..." he cooed, rubbing down her exposed flank, which jutted out like a round hill at her side and forced even her right leg out at an obtuse angle from her hip. "You must be sick, girl, but I ain't got no money for no vet." He tickled the thick hanging fat that rippled from under Sadie's neck, "I don't know what I'm going to do with you."

Bill's embrace helped Sadie forget about her recent difficulties, but it did nothing to improve her overall situation. After a few hours, they both tried to get her out the back door again, and after an exhaustive effort on both their parts, they did manage it and Sadie took care of her business for that afternoon, but after that, she was left on the porch and neither she nor Bill had any energy left for hauling her heavy self around anymore. As well, Bill moaned even after Sadie had recovered and she smelt that he had taken more of his pills that afternoon than normal.

It did not bother Sadie too much either way, she did not mind terribly resting her heavy body on the porch rather than inside since the porch had an awning that kept the sun off of her pale skin. However, by the time evening came around, and she awoke from her normal late afternoon nap, she was famished once again.

Despite her above average cunning, it was hard to for Sadie to connect the food that went into her mouth to her body weight. To her, they seemed like separate things, with only a dim note of warning in her mind as her stomach hung empty inside her bloated abdomen and her mouth watered as she smelled Bill preparing his own meal.

Sadie yipped and mewled in her dragon tongue towards the open patio door. She was barely willing to even try getting up on the uneven and splintery porch floor. She went on for what might have been half an hour or less than a minute, she could not tell, before Bill finally arrived.

He bent down to rub her skull and neck and she pawed at the wood porch. He seemed confused about something. "Sadie, what're you doing out here, why doncha come inside?"

Sadie whined and wriggled her tail, which was hanging off the front of the porch behind her.

"Wha- you're too big for me to carry you, girlie. Why don't you get up, you sick or somethin'?" Bill asked the uncomprehending dragon. Sadie had no way to know that Bill forgot things somethings and had a tendency to get confused now in his twilight years. Bill tried for a few more minutes to get Sadie to get up, but quit after just bending over towards her, after which he straightened back up with a cry, "Ouch! My back, damn if it doesn't just go out for no reason anymore..." He groaned and rubbed at his lower back for sometime before adding to Sadie, "Girl, if you don't come inside, you're just going to have to eat out here."

Sadie just whined and pawed at Bill's feet. It was all she could really do at this point. But really, when the food did come, she did not mind eating outside. All that mattered was that she was able to fill her gullet with the good food that Bill prepared. And, as it turned out, she could summon Bill just as easily from the porch as she could from outside for seconds, thirds and even fourthsies until she was thoroughly and delightfully glutted.

Sadie lazily pulled the last few organs, now grown chill in the night air, out of her bowl and into her messy, drooling maw. She had eaten so much, it felt like the food was backing up at her throat and it was hard to even swallow, so she just let the meat sit on her tongue for a while until she could muster up the energy for it. Her glut that evening had been reckless, even by her standards, but then, she had not worked nearly so hard on any other day in recent memory. The food stuffing her helped her take her mind off of the pain she'd gone through earlier, the memory of which still lingered in sore muscles and sore fat. The massive bolus inside of her was pressing on her diaphragm and making Sadie's breathing labored, but that was just fine as well, she was used to it, and it made it easier to drift off to sleep, in fact. However, there was a dim little notion in some corner of her mind, a stray thought or half a thought that perhaps she should have stopped her dinner a little earlier, that maybe, she would be in less pain if it weren't for her irrepressible appetite. Sadie discarded the useless notion at the same time she forced down the last bloody gobbet down her stacked gullet. Sadie squeaked out a tiny forced belch and droused, half awake, half asleep as she watched Bill tidy up the kitchen in a blur and then turn off all the lights one by one. Morning came and all the next day, Sadie sat where she was, not feeling like moving in the slightest and Bill came out to serve her every demand for food and water. She slept outside again, and then the day after that and the day after that as well. Sadie did not move again until well into winter.

Sadie continued to surprise herself by becoming fatter still each and every time she bothered to turn her head and inspect herself. She had no way of knowing that she was putting on additional pounds even faster than before, both because she was no longer even minimally active and because she continued to stretch out her stomach and increase her eating capacity and her resulting hunger.

Sadie quickly became so fat that the lines of green scales on her began to part into individual diamond shaped scales all across her round body. The only places where Sadie retained some real amount of scale coverage were her paws, the tip of her tail and parts of her scalp and head. Even her wings themselves became increasingly flabby so that they began to hang open and towards the ground rather than folded at her sides. She began to look rather a bloated, shabby heap of her former self, clad in slug-pale flesh, but Sadie was unmindful of this. She was sleeping more and more, and when she did bother to wake up, all she could think about was filling her yearning belly with as much food as she could coax out of Bill. It was almost as if some part of her still hated and feared the possibility of starving to death as she once had, though the notion of that kept growing amusingly remote as her body inevitably increased its warehouse of fat inside of her.

Once she had given up on walking, her weight did not bother her overly much, but seeing as it kept on piling on her, it did tend to get in the way whenever she wanted to shift herself slightly on the rough wood of the porch which abraded her belly and chest brutally whenever even she worked up the energy. Although it was convenient being outside in terms of keeping herself relatively clean, more and more, she wanted something soft under her to support her growing figure. Of course, the possibility of that happening diminished by the day. Sadie very quickly did not even want to try to get up anymore and each passing week, she felt heavier than she ever had until it was hard to even roll over side to side.

The days grew shorter and the temperature outside began to fall. At first, Sadie did not mind at all, in fact, she was bothered more by the heat of the day than the chill at night, undoubtedly due to being so well insulated. But she could not ignore it when the first frosts began to form during the small hours of each morning. It was not so much that she could not tolerate the cold, rather, the ice stung her pale, exposed flesh making her flush slightly. Where her belly rested continuously on the wooden planks warmed by her body heat was not bad, but her back and wings grew especially chilled when the wind blew in the wrong direction.

It was an especially windy night when Sadie was moved past her tolerance of it. The wind was coming in from the east, which was unusual, but it blew directly under the porch and right over the prone dragon continuously. Sadie's wings and the skin of her back and flank ached with cold. She mewled under her breath as awareness was forced on her, she had been trying to sleep through it after again dosing herself with a huge and heavy dinner.

Sadie tried to move herself a little, just to change the angle that the wind was hitting her, but it was immediately apparent to her that her efforts were completely futile. Her pathetic legs were no match for the sheer bulk of her body which she had, somehow, unbelievably, managed to double and more since she had lost her ability to walk in mid summer. Sadie rested mainly on her left side as she had done for at least the past month. Sometimes she managed to get her left elbow under her enough to turn her forequarters upright, but her abdomen was simply too massive at this point even to roll onto her great, round tummy. Even laying on her side as she was, her hind legs were forced to be splayed, her left hind leg nearly buried under the pale meat of herself down to the tips of her paw and the other with its knee pointing skyward. Sadie's tail had thickened to the point where multiple rolls of fat formed around the base all around it and it was now so heavy that she almost never bothered to move it either, if she even retained the ability at all. Her neck was only in slightly better shape, having many rolls at her shoulders and the dangling neck fat being nearly equal in bulk to her actual neck and descending into a heavy brisket that sat in front of her and partly obscured her front legs. She was undeniably huge and yet her physical ability was on par with that of a fresh hatchling, likely even less than that.

The wind blasted her again, rushing over her body so that her exposed skin ached with the cold, even as her innards themselves were quite comfortably warm. Sadie could do little more than mewl louder and louder as her discomfort grew. It was not her intention to summon Bill, who she mostly associated just with meals, but her mewls grew into whines and eventually moaning and she was helpless to stop herself, even if she had wanted to.

So, the dragonet was actually surprised when the lights came back on inside the house. After some time spent listening to the stumbling and cursing inside the house, Bill emerged from the porch door, clad in a heavy and very musty brown coat which he clutched around his thin frame.

"Damnit, Sadie, I can't get any sleep! What're you going on about?" The old man peered down at the bloated dragon in apparent confusion, almost seeming not to recognize her for a moment, but he shortly recovered. "You should come inside, girl."

Sadie pawed at the floor, she could still manage that at least.

"What's the matter, can't you get up? I know you've been putting on weight, Sadie. I need to put you on a diet!" said Bill who moved to stoop over her. Even though he was much larger than Sadie, it was actually hard for him to straddle her with his feet since she had gained so much girth. He started to bend down to attempt to lift the massive dragonet, but paused as he began to feel her massive weight between his hands. For Sadie, Bill had barely tugged on her belly and back fat before he gave up, perhaps some muscle memory reminding him of the several times he'd tried to lift her already, despite apparently not recalling the previous attempts. Silently he straightened up and squinting, looked down at her, studying her corpulent figure as if he did not see her every day. Not trusting his weak eyes, he reached down and pushed his palm into Sadie's yielding bulk in several areas and felt the overlapping fat rolls at her neck and draping around her limbs. "Jesus, Sadie..." he said, seemingly astonished.

Sadie took the human's shock and awe as a compliment, but she was starting to get slightly worried with Bill's strange behavior, even if she did not really doubt his good intentions any longer and did not fear being set out on the street anymore.

Bill sighed, still rubbing the wide curves of the dragonet, "What am I going to do with you, Sadie?"

Sadie only looked up beseechingly at Bill, utterly helpless.

In the end, the old man took off his smelly trench coat and draped it around the prone dragon. It was nice for Sadie as it immediately cut out the wind and kept her own body heat close to her. It also smelled of Bill, under the musty stink of mildew. Bill left her then and Sadie was quiet for the rest of the night, however, unlike most days, Bill did not seem to reset himself to his regular patterns as Sadie could hear him shuffling around uneasily and even talking on the phone, which was unusual for the lonely old man.

Bill seemed reluctant to feed her very much for breakfast, even as she tapped and knocked over her food dish several times and though he was more generous with lunch, he refused to give her thirds. Being in a foul mood from hunger, Sadie whined constantly at the porch door and Bill stamped out every few minutes to yell back at her from behind the glass, "Damn you, Sadie, you need to go on a goddamn diet! Frank is gonna yell at me for sure when he sees you!"

But Sadie did not quiet down. The yearning in her belly was no less severe for being partially sated. It had been so long since she had not stuffed herself at every opportunity that the mere lack of being glutted felt like hunger to the overstuffed dragon. And she knew that Bill could not ignore her either, even as he shouted at her intermittently, he still came out to give her bits of meat and cheese just as often as well as three quarters of the sandwich that he had made for his lunch.

Later that afternoon, Sadie paused in her whining as she heard a car pull into the driveway. It was only a few minutes until she met a man that she had never seen before. She bent her head away from him and felt the fat coating resist the movement as it formed rolls down the length of her neck.

"Jesus, pops. What have you done to this animal?" said the stranger who was a tall middle aged man who did not smell entirely dissimilar to Bill himself.

"I didn't ask you here to yell at me, son. I just need help getting her inside." said Bill.

"I can't believe you've let this go so far..." said the young man, covering his mouth as he glared wide-eyed down at Sadie. "You should have called me sooner. What are you even doing taking care of an animal? Does the landlord know?"

"He don't have to know." said Bill stubbornly.

"If anyone sees this, they are going to call it animal cruelty. You should let me take her to..."

"She ain't going nowhere, Frank! If you don't wanna help your own father, then just leave!"

The younger man sighed and Sadie looked uncomprehendingly up at the two humans. It did not seem like the younger man would do something mean like step on her at this point, but the way he looked down at her made her uneasy. It was a look of pure disgust.

The argument went on for a while after that, but the younger man seemed to bend to the will of the older one after a time. It took more time after that for them to move Sadie, who was was not too pleased with how they started by trying to grip her again around the middle and lift up. However, even with two men, Sadie's weight defeated them, combined with her sheer flabbiness which made it difficult to get a good grip on her. It did not help that she squawked and bucked as their hands pressed hard into her enough to hurt.

Eventually, the younger man went inside and retrieved a couple of towels onto which they rolled Sadie's vast form. The skin on Sadie's left side stung as they parted it from the wood floor of the porch, but it was also a relief to feel air on that side of her once again, as well as have some feeling return to her left hind leg which had been crushed under her paunch for weeks now. They got her on her belly with the towels under her, but the younger man stooped to inspect Sadie's left side. "Jeez, pops, look at those scratches and bruises."

Bill came over to look and Sadie bent her neck as well, though it was an effort. Sadie herself was shocked to see the state of her left side which was not slug pale as she had been expecting, but mostly livid purple and worse, crusty with dark lines of dried dragon blood. That side she had been laying on stank as well as had several moist looking sores to go along with the old wounds. Even as Sadie looked at herself, she started to feel the skin wounds ache as blood returned to the compressed skin. Bill said nothing, but only looked down at her with moist eyes. Then he went inside and returned carrying gauze pads and ointment. He touched up her bed sores and covered them as Sadie sat motionless, unable to get away from the stinging applications even if she had wanted to. Her belly was a giant mattress under her which her legs straddled and dangled from. She could barely reach the floor with the long claws of her hind feet, which had gotten so long now they were starting to curl back on themselves.

"You know this isn't healthy." said Frank, the younger one.

"She's going on a diet. I already started with her." said Bill as he tended to Sadie's left flank.

"This dragon looks like she could have a heart attack tomorrow. You ought to let me take her to a shelter. You know you can't take care of..."

"Don't tell me what I can and can't do, Frank! I'll whoop your ass, just see."

Frank raised his hands, "Jesus, Dad, I'm just trying to help. I know how you are with animals and I don't want to see you get all depressed when this one kicks the bucket."

"She ain't gonna kick the bucket. I'm gonna get her all better. She's just sick is all..." Bill reached down and stroked Sadie's head and neck, again tickling the heavy fat under her neck, "We're going to get you better."

"Aw, I can't stand to see you like this." Frank moaned.

"Then help me get her inside then, boy."

"You know I don't like you calling me that." Frank complained, but proceeded to grab the corners of the towels under Sadie and with a great deal of effort began to drag her bloated carcass inside the warm house.

Bill stood up and watched him work. "You'll always be my boy, son." he said. Frank only sighed and laughed, but his laughter was short lived, as it took all of the younger man's strength to drag Sadie indoors.

"Put her in the kitchen." said Bill.

Frank complied, moving Sadie a little more quickly over the stone tiles once she was past the threshold. The dragonet was amused at being moved like this. After so many months of starting at the same part of the same wall unendingly, even going back into the kitchen was a refreshing change of pace.

"Hmph!" grunted Frank. "I'm telling you this now, don't ask me to come back here and kept hauling this thing around."

"I won't." said Bill as he directed Frank to move Sadie so she was beside the kitchen island, nearly under the great meat grinder.

Frank pushed and pulled Sadie until she was aligned so she was not taking up the entire side of the kitchen. Still, she ended up taking quite a lot of space regardless. Sadie was sorry when Frank seemed satisfied with where she was and straightened up. She pawed at the floor in his direction, but the man did not notice. "I don't know how you intend to clean up after her. This dragon is clearly too fat to move on its own."

"I got some training pads from the corner store." said Bill nonchalantly. "Besides, we only need them for a little while, until Sadie is back on her feet again."

"Dad," said Frank disparagingly, "I don't think you understand the scale of the problem here. I've never seen an animal this fat before, any kind, even on the internet! I don't even know if it's possible for her to lose that kind of weight, she must be at least six times what she should weigh, if not more."

"I said, don't worry about it." said Bill.

"What I'm worried about is you, pops." said Frank with a sigh, "But I can see I'm not gonna change your mind. I won't tell anyone how big your pet is at least. But you better make sure nobody sees it like this, or else they are definitely going to take it away from you."

"I understand, Frank." said Bill. "But I'm going to take care of it. You watch."

Frank continued to stare at the older man. "Just... just take care of yourself, ok, old man? I don't want to see you in a home, but I don't want you tiring yourself out looking after this stray. You look terrible."

"And you look like a pompous little idiot." said Bill, folding his arms.

The two men looked at each other for a few moments and then suddenly burst into laughter, embracing each other. Sadie watched from her place on the floor, craning her neck around to see mostly with just one eye since her neck was getting in the way again. She had no idea what had happened between the two of them, but was grateful to be back inside again, nonetheless.

It was not long before the younger man went away again. Bill came into the kitchen and sat down on the floor beside Sadie, his hip pressing against her bulging right flank. He sat there for a long time stroking her smooth, exposed skin and touching her embedded scales with his fingertips. Bill said nothing for a long time and Sadie sat there and accepted his embrace, unable to even lean into his touch for her sheer weight. Her hind legs dangled uselessly from her hips while her fore legs were draped over and on either side of her massive brisket which jutted out over the floor at the base of her neck. Sadie let her head rest on the floor as well, her neck being strenuously heavy to keep aloft. However, after a time, the hanging empty space inside her midsection spurred her to movement again and she tapped the floor with the flat side of her curving claws in the accustomed manner.

"Oh, Sadie, is it time for dinner already? You must be starving after so much commotion today." said Bill as he used her wide back to heave himself upwards once again.

Sadie whined and lifted her head up against the force of gravity. She 'danced' a little with the tips of her tail and wings, wiggling her wide hips and opening her mouth to receive whatever Bill would drop in there.

Sadie's lifestyle continued along its plodding pace from then on. She did not see Frank again and Bill very quickly went back to how he had been before, which suited Sadie just fine. If anything, her new position in the kitchen afforded her much more frequent feedings as Bill could not come in to grab so much as a drink of water from the tap without dropping some tidbit into Sadie's eager maw, no matter how recently or how heavily she had eaten before.

She continued to subsist on chunks of raw or seared meat in addition to different organs of various species. Sadie was honestly mostly unaware of what she was eating anymore, she just wanted to be filled constantly. The mere sight or scent of Bill making food for himself sent her into a frenzy of whining and shaking for food which immediately melted the old man's heart, even on days when he apparently remembered her "diet." And Sadie associated Bill's scent and the sound of his steps with food, so be it a lump of cheese or a few slices of pepperoni, she never relented her begging until she had gotten something from him, especially when Bill tried to eat something himself. Since Bill made all his meals in the kitchen, it quickly became habit for him to give over some of his own meal to Sadie before eating anything himself. It could not be helped as Sadie refused to be satisfied with a bit of ham or even a chocolate cookie when she detected that he still had food. Sadie's stomach continued to stretch until her appetite seemed to stretch Bill's very ability to sate it. Bill's trips to the butcher's market where he obtained freshly slaughtered meat before it was packaged and up charged by grocery stores increased from once every two weeks, to once a week, to twice per week. By that time, Sadie was capable of devouring every scrap of food Bill could drop down her eager gullet and more. With her distended sack of an organ inside of her, she was never satisfied. Bill even resorted to filling her diet out with bulk food like rice and corn, but trying to sate Sadie's hunger was like trying to stop a growing storm. The more she ate, the more she could eat, and the more she could eat, the hungrier she became until Sadie herself was ruled by the demands of her stomach alone.

So it was that Sadie's 'diet' had a definite impact on her figure, which was to say that she experienced a slow-motion explosion of her own body over the coming months. By spring, Sadie had gotten so obese that she could no longer reach the floor with her hind feet and her back began to develop a depression over her spine as her flanks bulged roundly to either side of her, taking up tremendous space. That summer, Sadie began to wake up during her naps, breathless and gasping and she sometimes experienced a deep pain in her chest. She became too fat to even move her forequarters around anymore and then late in the summer, it became bothersome to even lift her head off of the ground, her neck resting on its own mattress of under fat which itself was wider than her own enlarged neck. Her head and wings became cartoonishly small against her vast body, the wings themselves hanging with fat so that at last the scales on those limbs as well became separated by pale white skin.

When Sadie became unwilling to lift her head off the floor even for food, Bill was left with a conundrum since his back made bending over to the ground unbearably painful for him. Indeed, his aches and pains were only increasing of late, but maybe that was only because he had lost so much weight recently. Bill, however, could not stand the sound of Sadie whimpering for food, and seeing her absolutely helpless and dependant on him just to survive. He decided he had to do what he had to do, even if his frail body made things difficult both for him and for Sadie.

The solution Bill eventually came to was an old yellowed rubber sausage tube which he fixed to the end of the meat grinder which perched over Sadie's vast form. Bill attempted not to think too much about what he was doing as he ran the tube through his shaking hands towards Sadie's mouth. The dragonet, who had already missed first and second breakfast that day snapped at the end of it blindly, not knowing or even really caring if it was food. "There... there you go, Sadie... Good girl." Bill mumbled to himself as he loaded up the meat grinder and began to turn the long handled crank.

The mass of ground meat, laced liberally with rice and some cheese to spare Bill's pocket change, was pushed down the tube and into Sadie's mouth, where the dragon quickly discovered it and ceased biting on the end of the tube, instead allowing the mass to move directly to the back of her throat. It was soft enough to swallow without chewing, not that she was big into chewing regardless.

Bill turned the crank numbly, while telling himself that this was the only reasonable thing he could do for Sadie since she could no longer lift her head up to where his hands could reach. He did not want to see her licking food off the dirty floor. It took so much of his effort just to clean up after Sadie that the entire house had taken on a drungy decor. Bill told himself that at the very least, this way he could sneak more corn, rice and wheat into Sadie's diet and so stretch the meat. He pointedly did not look at the kitchen table which was cluttered with angry looking letters in yellow and red.

Sadie's weight problem seemed like something that Bill was completely helpless to do anything about. In fact, in a way he felt held hostage to it as he could neither get rid of Sadie nor bring himself to give her any less than what she demanded of him. He could not ignore her and spent nearly all of his waking hours caring for her in some fashion whether changing out the pads under her tail, bandaging her skin sores, or going on excessive grocery trips. It was exhausting him, and he knew it, even if his mind was not what it once was. But Bill was helpless to stop himself, Sadie had already gripped him by his heart and now all of his routine revolved around her. And Bill's routine was one of the few things that allowed him to keep functioning day after day. Whenever he diverted from his routine, Bill quickly became confused and it was hard to establish new trains of thought. Sometimes he even forgot what he was doing mid-act or halfway to where he was going and that frightened him even more than the noises Sadie made when she was sleeping. Somehow, Bill was completely sure that if Sadie was taken away from him or died, his mind would collapse and he would wind up in a home after all.

But Sadie just kept getting bigger, without end. By fall, her flanks were so huge they matched her wingspan, not that Sadie ever bothered to so much as flap her wings anymore, rather they were so thick now that the fat was pressing the joints steadily outwards. Sadie was so large now that her right flank was now threatening to touch the cabinet opposite the kitchen island, thus filling the entire passage through that corner of the kitchen. Sadie barely moved at all anymore and she began having trouble breathing even during the day as well.

Sadie wheezed incessantly, her air passages compressed by her hundreds of pounds of fat lying on top of her. Her head rested on the ground while her neck expanded into a huge lump of a body with so many rolls of creamy white fat it was difficult to see her legs and still more difficult to tell that she had ever had scales in the first place. From Sadie's perspective, she was really feeling the effects of her own obesity for the first time. The stress on her own organs made her feel sick with a general malaise that did not fade and her heart was constantly pounding in her neck to meet the demands of her body, now large enough for ten or twelve dragons of her former stature, there was hardly any way to tell now just how massive she was. Sadie did not beg for food as much now, as she lacked the energy, but Bill never failed to fill up the meat grinder several times per day and Sadie passively accepted the food through the tube in her mouth, letting it all slide down her throat, however much Bill wanted to pump into her. However, if at the end of the day, she was still feeling less than satisfied, she would scrap her rounded fore claws against the stone tiles and moan for Bill. Her claws were now nearly circular in shape, only an inch and a half away from the pads of her paws and their outside sheathes were rough from where she scratched them against the stone, but her chest was now so massive that Sadie had to reach downward to even reach the floor anymore.

But despite having now many health complaints that Bill was only marginally able to manage, Sadie was most distressed by the way she was unable to seemingly get enough air into her fattened frame any longer. She knew her breaths were shallower than they once were, but she could not help it, not when she could feel the great weight resting heavily on her ribs. And she could hear the fluid sloshing around in her lungs since she was unable to breathe in deeply to clear everything out. She developed a cough that worsened over time, a deep, but unproductive cough without fever. By this time, Sadie's neck was so heavy she really could not lift her head up anymore, even if she had wanted, and she felt like that was adding to her respiratory troubles.

Sadie's eyes were bloodshot as Bill lifted up the folds of fat clinging to her face and she was feeling weak for lack of her usual 20 hours of sleep; at least weaker than normal. The human seemed just as fixated on helping her as ever, but Sadie had no idea how now at this point. Even Sadie had to admit to herself that her body's condition was beyond the pale. Something had gone terribly wrong at some point, but Sadie could not place where. Her episodic memory was not the same as a human's, the past tended to roll together for her rather than as a sequence of specific events. Regardless, Sadie felt like her 'illness' would soon be the end of her, whatever the cause of it all.

And again, that nagging thought came, that perhaps this pain was all her own doing. It came as Bill left her to stomp around somewhere upstairs and she laid in the heap of herself exhausted, but unable to sleep for the coughing which stung her raw throat. Every breath she took was a labor, both as it wheezed out of her, and then slid around the fluid filling half of each lung on each inward breath. Sadie tried to conceive of her body's shape in her mind's eye but failed, it having been too long since she last lifted her head to take a look at herself. However vast her back and flanks had been, she was even fatter now. How long had it been since she had even tried to move her hind legs? She wiggled her toes a little and felt the long circular claws rub against each other, it was easy to touch her paws with the tips of them just by flexing them a little, indeed, she had to try not to flex them too far, or the rough claw tips would press into the now softened pads. Sometime ago, she had lost all of her calluses from lack of walking. But stretching the legs themselves was painful, the muscles stiff, and more, all she could feel was her belly pressing outwards against the insides of her feet. There was a deep pain in her hips as well that was ignited by just trying to move her legs and that forced Sadie to stop her explorations.

The mass of Sadie's extensive torso was a leaden mystery, more an inert landscape behind her head than a real part of her body, and yet Sadie felt a close connection to the mountain rising behind her head. Each shallow breath she took rose its edifice by a couple millimeters and Sadie felt the weight of it on her diaphragm. Her flanks jutted out to either side of her so that they were more or less always in her field of view behind her. They were a wall of white specked with green pin points at her peripheral vision on both sides. Sadie was almost always unaware that they were a part of her, except when Bill happened to touch her there, or more often stumble over her as he attempted to get past her obtrusive bulk. "This isn't normal." Sadie told herself in wordless thoughts, but with more or less the same meaning, "You've eaten yourself to death."

Sadie could only gape open mouthed and continue to gasp for air. It was indeed getting harder and harder to breath from under all of her many extra dragon body weights. For the first time, she no longer felt hungry, too distracted now by her need for air. Sadie felt like she would gladly give up all of her future easy meals from Bill now, just to let her breathe again. But at the same time, it felt like it was much too late. This was a sickness now that was going to get worse, not better. Sadie did not know how she was going to last the night like this, let alone the rest of her life. Although she had a sinking suspicion in the pit of her empty, neglected gut, that that might not be altogether much longer now.

As Sadie laid on the floor, gasping for breath, her beleaguered heart continued to pound furiously in her chest, leading again to that deep chest pain that was afflicting her more and more often now as she passed into her third Autumn at Bill's house. Sadie clutched her foreclaws, painfully shoving the claws now curved back towards her hands into her pads, but she did not care. The pain in her chest would have been enough to make her stagger had she been able to even shift her body an inch, and that was the last thing she needed when it took so much effort just to get air into her body. She gasped, coughed, spluttered, the spasms rocking the mountain of white behind her head, but not really all that much. On a particularly hard cough, her flanks rippled outwards and for a moment, Sadie felt both the kitchen island and the distant cabinet touch her flanks simultaneously. It was a disconcerting spacial awareness that passed over Sadie's mind without lingering as she struggled for breath while her own heart stabbed her in the chest deep inside her bloated frame.

The pain in her chest went on and on, a longer episode than she had yet known. It might have been exasperated by her insufficient breathing, but she had no way of knowing or counteracting it. The air wheezed and then bubbled in her chest, pebbles knocking around in her lungs as tears streams down from green scaled eyelids. Now it seemed to Sadie that evening might have been an over generous estimate. She wanted relief now more than anything, and she would have gladly given up any number of her past meals now to have even a little rest, but of course it was no use. Even Bill, her provider, was powerless to stop the inevitable now...

At least, that was how Sadie felt until she felt the plastic mask slip around her face and became dimly aware of Bill now crouching over her, fumbling with some metal container whose top he twisted until a thin hissing could be heard. In the first moments, Sadie struggled against the mask, it felt like it was suffocating her, but she had literally no strength to resist. Her wing tips and the digits of her claws twitched, but that was all. But as the hissing started and Bill desperately lashed the wrong shaped mask on her nose with duct tape, Sadie could feel the cool, flavorless gas filling her nostrils. It seemed little different from before as she continued to wheeze and labor for breath, but after a minute or so, she felt somehow revitalized. Her heart rate slowed, though it took more time for the chest pain to subside. She continued to wheeze and the pebbles in her lungs remained, but she felt less need to cough, less like she was drowning under her own weight. What miracle Bill had wrought, Sadie had no clue, but she was grateful, grateful in a way that the endless deluge of ground meat and other delectables had not coerced in her before. Bill had just satisfied her in a deeper way than merely filling up her endless desire for free and easy food. She did not even care that he had had to tape her mouth shut in order to do so.

"Oh Sadie..." Bill moaned as he crouched over her, putting his arms around her massive body, or at least as much of her as he could reach with unsteady hands. "What am I going to do with you? I ain't got but this one tank of air left over from my surgery. How did you ever get so big as this?"

The man continued to lean on Sadie's back and she felt his warm tears wetting her flank. Sadie felt like crying herself, both in sympathy with Bill and self pity. She felt like having her mouth taped shut right now was strangely suitable, even as her undaunted hunger arose like a black fog in her mind, ready to devour all thought as soon as she was less concerned with the immediacy of either suffocating under her whale-like flanks or her heart giving out entirely.

The air continued to hiss into Sadie, providing temporary relief from the stress of her many, many pounds and so leant Bill a sense of time passing, a ticking clock. He knew that after that tank was exhausted, there was no oxygen left. Sadie had calmed down enough for now, though her breathing still sounded terrible, but he was so afraid of what would happen after. He was afraid of even rationing out the gas. Sadie was always worse at night. What would happen to her when he was sleeping? He could not bear the thought. Bill wondered if it were not a stroke of luck that Sadie had decided to decline so rapidly during the day at least. She could have quietly passed any one of the past nights.

Bill decided that he would just go and get more bottles of air somehow. He figured he was an old man after all, his doctor would probably not say no to him, but he needed to leave right away. Bill stood and braced himself against the kitchen island against a wave of dizziness. He had forgotten to eat breakfast again, or had he fed it to Sadie? He could not remember. But there was no time for that.

Sadie watched Bill go, hitching up his sagging slacks along the way. His belt was too large for him now. He did not even bother to shower or change his clothes before heading out to the car, he was in that much of a hurry. He did not even pause to say goodbye to her. Sadie had no way of knowing that that was the last she would see of Bill.

Sadie never learned about the car accident Bill caused on his way to the doctor's office, nor what it meant for a senior citizen to have their driver's license revoked and be declared incompetent. What she did know what that Bill failed to return home and as the time passed, her hunger gnawed at her like never before. It was like teeth gnashing inside her belly. Sadie stared at the cabinets ahead of her, aching for something to fill her. Whenever she thought of Bill coming home and turning the crank again for her, her mouth watered until the drool leaked out the sides of her still taped mouth. The gas continued to hiss into her nose, keeping her stable, at least until it stopped sometime early the following morning.

Sadie whimpered when the lack of the hiss awoke her. Now the mask on her nose was only an obstruction, though fortunately it had its own holes to let the atmosphere mix in, and she could still breath out the sides of her mouth if she really needed to. She was worried that she would start drowning again immediately, but instead it took quite a while for any of the symptoms to return. But they did inevitably return and Sadie's breath grew more labored as the hours passed and Bill still had not come home.

Sadie tried desperately to get the mask off of her face, but all she accomplished was tugging the clear tube from its socket on the heavy metal canister. Sadie could not lift her head from the floor at all anymore and the fat at the sides of her neck was so thick she could not even bend it back towards herself in a vain attempt to get her muzzle near her useless claws. Pitifully, she rubbed her nose against the stone floor, wearing away at the duct tape binding her, but it was exhausting and was making her get out of breath faster. She mewled in fear, having flashbacks to her time of being abandoned. Could Bill have left her behind along with the entire house? Well, Sadie did not understand enough about humans to put it outside the realm of possibility. And indeed, it seemed to be increasingly the case with every passing hour.

Sadie puffed air through her jowls and through the mask on her nose. Her savior was now become the thing that was going to kill her as the mask and the tape shutting her jaw accelerated her breathlessness. It was not long after she was gasping for air that again the terrible chest pain racked her as well. Sadie twisted her muscles into knots, tugging and pulling against the immovable weight of her body. The fat tugged sympathetically, but was ultimately unyielding in its bulk and its undeniable presence smothering her. As Sadie grew exhausted once again and her breathing labored, she found herself grateful to Bill for at least one more day, even though it was his last gift on her face that was now killing her.

Sadie was barely conscious by the time that the front door opened. She had no idea who it was that stood over her and ripped the tape painfully away from her face. Try as she might, she could not stay awake any longer even as she felt her body being tugged at and molested by some unknown force. She meekly gave herself over to it, she could do nothing else.

When Sadie awoke, she was first aware of the sound of gas, once again hissing gently into her. She sucked at it greedily, feeling it making her more awake and aware. She was again aware of her hunger, but somehow forced it from her mind, for the first time, she was more interested in her surroundings than having her belly filled, as they were vastly different.

Sadie did not recognize at all where she was, which was somewhere indoors in a house wholly unfamiliar to her. Her body rested on some sort of soft mattress, which was a comfort to the many bedsores that liberally coated her belly. She also seemed to be located in the corner of some room with couches, facing towards a back yard which was buried under orange and yellow leaves. A similar canister of air sat near her head. Inside her, Sadie's belly rumbled, the hunger fighting against her consciousness and Sadie whimpered a bit, but did not give in entirely. She still felt sick and exhausted. She had no way of knowing how close to death she had come. Her heart still ached dully in her chest, which was different as the pain before had always been sharp and not lingered.

Eventually, enough of the outside air mixed into the new conical shaped mask on Sadie's face for her to detect a familiar scent, that of the younger man who had once helped Sadie into the house and had argued with Bill. It was not long before he came into the room where Sadie was sat. Her neck was too heavy to lift, but she turned her eyes expectantly up at him.

"Don't give me those eyes, you damn louse." said Frank. "You're lucky I'm a vet or you would never have survived that heart attack. Speaking of which..." Frank proceeded to retrieve a bottle from his jacket pocket and remove a number of pills which he placed into meat scented packets. As soon as Frank removed the mask from Sadie's muzzle, she eagerly devoured all seventeen tablets without thinking. She licked her chops and whined after they were gone, but Frank just forced the mask back on her. "You're even more lucky you're my father's pet. Damn if I need another burden like you around here."

Frank sat down on the sofa and proceeded to turn on the television, every once and awhile turning his head back at Sadie, as if expecting her to suddenly be in need of more medical attention. She apparently failed to meet his expectations. She whined for a while longer, but stopped when Frank coldly rebuked her. Sadie sank into a heap of self pity even as the gas was making her undesirably more awake and conscious than she had been in months.

After a while, however, Frank was joined by two much smaller humans, a young boy and girl who giggled and ran about the living room as they pleased, to the silent chagrin of Frank, who sat motionless. They patted and ran their hands all over Sadie's fattened form, eliciting purrs from her. "She's a big fatty fat!" giggled the girl.

"How you get so f-fat, S-Sadie" laughed the boy.

Sadie had no idea that the young humans were making fun of her, but rather relished their attention, even if in her state, there was no way to keep up with their movements, even on a purely mental level.

"I think Sadie's hungry!" shouted the girl.

"She can have my cheese stick." said the boy, eagerly reaching into his spiderman backpack.

"Stop it you two!" Frank said sternly, the first thing he'd said since the two children had rushed in and started the commotion. "That animal has probably had enough to eat to last her a lifetime, no thanks to grandpa. And I'm stuck taking care of it, since I don't want to see him in prison."

"Aw..." whined the girl. "But Sadie is so cute and flubbers."

"Yeah, Flubbers!" added the young boy who stroked the warm, soft flank of the fattened dragon.

"I don't want to hear it, and don't let me catch you sneaking her any food. I have a very strict diet plan for her, so you don't need to worry about feeding her or cleaning up after her." said Frank sternly and glared down at his two offspring.

The two children seemed subdued for the moment and quickly wandered off to play in the backyard for a while before running upstairs for something Frank referred to as "Your damn homework."

However, Frank soon left the living room and it was not long after hearing his car pull away that again the children crept down the stairs. They sat on either side of Sadie's neck, her bulging flanks more massive than either of the young human's whole bodies. She responded to their caresses and pets and with both of them lifting under her neck, she was even able to get her head off the ground for a little while. The boy got under her sagging neck meat and let Sadie rest her jaw on his shoulder. "Sadie's heavy!" he laughed. Then he reached below him and unwrapped something. The scent activated Sadie's salivary glands before she was even aware of the cheese being presented in front of her nose. The boy teased her, letting her attempt to snap feebly for the treat with her atrophied muscles before letting her have it. The whole cheese stick sunk like a pebble into a deep well and she continued to drool.

"Sadie is so freaking, cute and fat!" laughed the girl.

"Daddy says she has to lose weight." said the boy and shifted Sadie's neck on his shoulder, his fingers squished her pale, green studded meat effortlessly, like sacks of oatmeal. "Ugh, and she is really heavy!"

"I don't care." said the girl capriciously. "Sadie is cute and I never once saw a pet dragon as cute as her."

The boy reached into his bag again and withdrew some crackers. These disappeared as rapidly as the cheese stick had. "She's hungry!" he laughed.

"Of course, she's hungry, look how big her belly is!" said the girl giggling and proceeded to clamber up onto Sadie's wide back. The dragonet was more than a sufficient mattress for the young girl, who spread her arms and legs out across Sadie's body, barely able to touch either side of her. The girl compressed Sadie's fat coated wings uncomfortably, but she did not mind as the boy was now letting her lick pudding out of a container. The girl sighed from her perch, the divet over Sadie's spine caressing her whole little body. "I don't care what Daddy says. I'm going to make sure Sadie stays cute forever!"

The boy said nothing, only laughed as Sadie licked the side of his face. She bit and tugged at his collar, eager for whatever else he might pull out of his bag, she did not care what it was. While laughing, Sadie's jaw fell off of the boy's shoulder and she lingered just for a moment in the air before the weight of her neck pulled her slowly back down. Sadie felt the heavy bags of flesh squish under her neck as she came to rest on the ground again. The children continued to laugh and pet her and she looked fondly up at them. Their smell reminded her of Bill as well and she found that she already liked them, despite herself, probably even more than she tolerated Frank. Nevermind that they blitzed around the room and tugged on her soft bits, the two of them had found the easiest way to her heart, her stomach. Sadie wondered if she might not have as much or more to look forward to now than she had with Bill. There was something to be said, after all, about stolen snacks and laughter that seemed to satisfy even more than a pump filled with endless ground meat.

Sadie thought she could more than make due with this.