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Uvuzi and Caeru By Strega

He was cold, very cold. Whatever possessed him to try to fly in this weather? Snow flew into the young dragon's eyes and his long muscular body bit by bit lost its strength as the winter chill crept through his scales. Worse yet, his membranous wings were simply skin between bones and they were practically numb with cold. He was never the nimblest flier and as his wings chilled he grew clumsy. There was nothing to crash into up here but if he got much colder he might drop right out of the sky.

Caeru blinked through the gusting snow, the clouds. He was entirely lost. Somewhere was his warm den with its hot spring but the wind and clouds had him turned around so he wasn't even sure whether it was ahead of him or behind him. He flew lower in the hopes of spotting a house or campfire where he might warm his bones. Hopefully whoever owned the fire or cottage would be willing to share it with a dragon. He wasn't a very big dragon, though he was considerably larger than a man, and he'd had good luck with a friendly approach.

Even close to the ground the clouds and fog and snow made visibility awful, and as his wingtip clipped a snow-covered conifer he knew he had to land. Flying was pointless and as cold as the snow on the ground looked at least the trees would block some of the wind.

With a great thump he plowed into a snowdrift, which cushioned what would otherwise be a brutal impact. He left a long track in the snow as he skidded to a halt and unbeknownst to the young dragon, unsympathetic eyes were watching.

Two kobolds, half reptilian themselves and bundled up against the cold, paused as they passed by on a scouting patrol. They knew these woods better than anyone and this dragon was a stranger to their lands. They watched Caeru struggle to his feet, clearly weak from the cold, and one elbowed the other. Hand signals were exchanged, for they had no idea now good the drake's hearing might be.

'It is a young dragon,' one signed. 'Cold and weak. For the mistress?'

'It may be too big,' the other signed.

'Let the mistress decide,' the first signed, and the second nodded. Silently, what little noise they made muffled by the snow, they crept away.

Caeru folded his wings against his sides to conserve at least a little heat and looked around. He'd come down near a river, or something between a brook and a river anyway, and while it wasn't frozen - this snow storm had popped up out of nowhere a month before the winter was properly due to arrive - the water looked deep and cold. Thank goodness he hadn't landed in it! Cold water would chill him even faster than cold air.

The good news was there was what appeared to be a road paralleling the river, and though it too was covered in snow a road had to lead somewhere. Shivering with cold but not yet at true risk of death thanks to his insulating scales and a dragon's internal furnace he chose a direction at random and set off along the road. The snow was a foot deep but at least it was a dry snow now, not the flat wet flakes from the start of it.

He'd padded down the road, or track, or whatever it was under the blanket of snow for maybe ten minutes when it happened. There was a snow-muffled clatter of hooves ahead and suddenly a horse burst from between the trees, sending snow flying from the branches. Wide eyed it charged right at him and he had a glimpse of two small humanoids in thick winter clothing clinging to its back, cackling madly as they goaded it along. Dragging behind the wild-eyed horse was some sort of sleigh or sledge but Caeru had no time to study it. It was move or be run over and as the horse swerved to the right he leapt to the left...and into the river.

It was shockingly cold and it seeped into all the gaps of his armor-tough scales, sucking the heat from his body. He was already weak from the chill and his muscles almost seized up altogether. Only a desperate urge to get away from the cold gave him the strength to surface and over the sound of the river the first thing he heard was cursing.

"Damnable little things," a purring voice said, and then "Oh my goodness! Are you all right, sir drake?"

There in the snow next to the river was a strange creature the likes of which he'd never seen. From the hips up she was something like a skunk-person, with blue and white fur, a muzzled face and pink-padded fingers to go with its pink nose. From the hips down it was more like a furry snake, with the double white stripes continuing from the skunk to skunk-snake halves. They ran entirely down its body to a fluffy blue and white skunktail at the end.

Or rather, down her body, for other than fur fluffed out against the cold and a serpent-shaped armband on one upper arm she was naked and definitely female. Her sex was where one would expect it to be on a woman, in the hollow below her hips, and modest breasts added to the feminine impression. Caeru saw this in one quick glance since he had more pressing matters to deal with, namely trying to keep from freezing to death.

"Help," he managed through chattering teeth, and he gratefully grabbed her tail when she extended it toward him. Her fur was pleasantly warm against his scales and he struggled, half on his own and half pulled by her tail out of the water.

"You poor thing," she purred. "I paid those miserable kobolds for a sleigh ride and they took off so fast I was thrown from the sled. And then they almost ran you over! Are you all right?"

Instinctively Caeru huddled up against her warm fur. "C-cold," he mumbled. "I'm Caeru."

Half sunk in the snow, her skunk-snake lower half turned out to be larger than he'd thought. It came slithering up to join her upper body, folding itself against him in a series of short bends. The cold didn't seem to bother her at all but some of her body heat made it through her thick winter coat and sank into his scales. He didn't mind at all when a loop of skunk-snake slid up atop his torso. It meant more contact and more warmth. Altogether she was a little bigger than he was, mostly due to her long muscular lower body.

"I'm Uvuzi," she purred. "I don't know much about dragons, but I've heard that blue dragons can spit lightning. Maybe you could set a tree on fire to warm up?"

Caeru shook his head. "Just smoke," he said, and sucked in a deep breath before exhaling some. "Maybe when I'm bigger. My kind of d-dragon," he snuggled up against her fur, "is warm inside, but not burning. I'm so cold right now I can barely even do smoke."

"Well, let's fix that," she purred, and her snaky lower body pressed up against him helpfully. It was a long column of muscle and while not as thick as his draconic body it was quite a bit longer. It was also very furry and warm and it wasn't until a coil of it went around his wing-roots and began to put pressure on his upper forelegs that he objected. By then she had wound herself in a spiral around him and as she pressed herself close it forced his forelegs and wings against his sides and similarly squeezed around his haunches until his hind legs were pressed against his tail.

"You're warm," he gasped as the thick muscular furry-snake body wrapped around him. "But that's a bit tight. Just up against me will be enough, I'll get my strength back soon."

She was smiling pleasantly. "I'm just trying to help, dear." The muscles in her skunk-snake body twitched as it cinched itself still more tightly around him. It was beginning to get genuinely uncomfortable and his limbs were pinned to his flanks now. It was a good thing she wasn't a big, dangerous predator or he'd be worried. Why, she was hardly larger than he was.

But she was half snake, and snakes have different opinions on how big a meal is practical. The coil of her trapping his forelegs to his sides suddenly tensed, squeezing another gasp out of him, and Caeru's eyes went wide. "And I know just how to warm you up," she purred as her jaws creaked open.

He hadn't noticed how far back along the sides of her head her lips ran until her maw yawned impossibly wide. Rows of sharp little inward-hooking fangs lined the upper and lower jaws, all hooked back toward the wet chute of her gullet. He'd seen jaws like that before on a snake and he realized too late what was about to happen. Her clawed hands gripped his neck, the helpful and warm-furred skunk-snake leaned toward him, and despite his best effort to wriggle free her jaws slid easily over his head.

Wet flesh slithered up over his snout as her gullet expanded to take him in and as her jaws closed those dozens of inward-hooking fangs latched between his scales to stop him from pulling himself out. Almost before he knew what was happening her jaws were twisting, pushing one side forward, latching its teeth in, then repeating the process on the other side.

The good news was that welcome warmth pressed through his scales from all sides now. The bad was that this was because he was on his way down Uvuzi's throat and she had already swallowed his head and was making her way down his neck. Inch by inch she ratcheted her jaws over him and though he was cold and weak Caeru began to struggle. It was struggle or be swallowed whole.

But she was ready for that and even as he tensed, her coils, wrapped around him in what he thought was an effort to warm him but which he recognized now was a surreptitious bid to coil him up for swallowing, clamped down. The coil around his wing-roots and upper forelegs was almost as thick as his body and solidly muscular, squeezing with cruel strength as it kept him from wriggling free. His hind legs were less restrained but could kick only downward due to the winding of skunkette lamia around his haunches. He kicked anyway, hitting snow. The only part of him free to move was his tail, which he lashed around in a panic. It whipped past snowy tree limbs and smacked into her side like a whip, making her grunt in pain, but that did not stop the jaws working their way inexorably over him.

Wet flesh slithered over his snout in waves as he slid down her throat, holding his muzzle shut and periodically gripping down. Powerful muscular contractions in the gullet walls rippled over him, easing him deeper. He would never have believed it possible before seeing it happen but her disjointed jaws stretched wider as she began to engulf the thickest part of his draconic body. His wing roots and upper forelegs, collectively thicker than any part of her, were gradually overtaken and forced into her throat. Only now was any hint of strain noticeable and the progress of her jaws over has body slowed, but not not stop.

She had carefully and cleverly restrained him and as his scaled forelegs, wings and scute-armored belly were swallowed the natural strength of her body squeezed his legs in against his body. It was almost impossible to move them now, much less claw her, and as her muzzle progressed her coils shifted downward. Move and more of her windings wrapped around his lower body and in an absolute panic Caeru lashed his tail, because she had him half swallowed and as she restrained his hind legs he simply could not see any way to stop her. She had him wrapped up and barring a miracle he was going to be her dinner.

She was a little longer than he was, maybe seven yards long from nose to tail tip - not counting the long fur of her skunk tail, naturally. As his nose progressed down her throat and through the creaking tightness of her ribcage he began to learn things about her that given a choice he would never want to know.

A thick layer of lubricating slime eased his trip down her throat and it was plain now that her humanoid body was just an organless, rib-lined shell around a greatly expandable gullet. There was nothing in there to get in the way of a dragon's head as it made its way past whatever served her as a pelvis and into the long snakey ribcage that followed. Here there was the whisper of lungs - she was breathing as she swallowed him the same manner as a snake, through an extended windpipe - and the thump of a great heart. The thick muscle on all sides of him, muscles for constriction that could have squeezed him to death had she not preferred to swallow him alive, trapped his forelegs and wings to his side.

Muscles creaked as her body expanded to let him slide deeper and her many sets of ribs groaned as her meal progressed. Caeru learned things that no living person knew, though many long-since-digested people had learned them in their turn. Some six feet from the back of her jaws and maybe three past the sex of her humanoid half his muzzle encountered a muscular valve. He was certain he did not want to know what lay beyond it but a great contraction of her swallowing muscles left him no choice and he winced as his head slipped into the lamia's lengthy stomach. His tough scales easily resisted the small amount of acid now present but as her jaws continued to ratchet their way over his long draconic torso more and more of him slid into her gut.

It was not so much her advancing jaws but the undulations of her gullet that pulled him in now. As she wriggled forward through the snow her advancing maw slipped over his haunches like a sock being pulled over a foot. So much of him was in the grip of her gullet that the contractions of her swallowing muscles were all she needed to gulp him down. Some distance into the slimy bile-scented pocket of her stomach, perhaps the length of a man, his nose encountered the bottom.

For a moment Caeru knew hope. Her jaws were stretched around his haunches and yet his nose had already hit bottom. Surely she could not swallow all of him. Maybe she would even be forced to heave him back up alive!

He had reckoned without two things. The first was the elasticity of her gut, which gave way before his advancing snout. When it had stretched to perhaps half again its normal length, nine feet or so, it seemed to reach a natural limit and his nose ceased to advance, but though she was stuffed from jaws to the bottom of her stomach with dragon still her throat continued to squeeze and push him deeper. Eventually so much of him was forced into her stomach that a bend formed in his neck and Caeru's muzzle began to proceed back up toward her maw, albeit while pressed tightly against his own neck and wrapped in her distended gut.

There was a limit even to this and when his nose was pressed against the sphincter that allowed it to enter the stomach in the first place it was plain that no more of him would fit into her belly. But she did not stop feeding. Her belly was at its maximum expansion both in length and diameter but she stubbornly kept working her jaws over him. His hind legs were gradually swallowed and when they were gone the great bulge of his long body was entirely inside her. The hard part was over and she stretched out her nose, slurping up his tail like a noodle.

Even to the end he squirmed, wanting very much to be out of this fleshy hell, but the muscle and pelt stretched tight around him and the slick mucus lining the walls of the stomach allowed no purchase, no leverage. He could only lie there as inch by inch she swallowed his tail. When even that proved too long for her throat, the downward pressure forced it into a a wavy curve. A series of bulges now ran from the gross bulge in her middle all the way to her jaws. And finally, when all was said and done, his still twitching tail-tip slipped into her jaws and was gone.

Wrapped in her skin-tight pelt, conscious of the bulge he made that outlined as though in stretched leather the shape of a swallowed dragon, Caeru still wriggled. It made her twitch as though in sympathy but that was all.

The good news was that he was quite warm now. He had a beautiful form-fitting skunkfur coat lined with warm muscle and slime between him and the snow That was the good part. The was bad that that while he could hold his breath for a very long time the half-hour gulp and the struggle against coils and advancing jaws had exhausted him. Despite his best efforts he'd still gotten a slimy trip down her gullet and he was so tired that he could barely more.

And of course there was the really bad news, and that was the thick droplets of caustic stomach juices that made their way down the walls of the belly to join the growing pool at the bottom. Bit by bit the level of the pool rose and though his scales were tough, it was making its way into the gaps between them. The tickle turned into actual pain as her digestive juices began to work.

Stretched out in a tight pocket of flesh, too tired and too tightly wrapped in flesh and fur to do more than twitch, Caeru still tried to struggle. He knew what was going to happen now. Eventually her stomach juices would eat away at the tissues supporting his armored scales until they dropped off one by one. As they did his skin and muscle would be exposed, and though they were tough too, they weren't acid resistant. From there it would be an ever accelerating process as her stomach juices consumed him. It might take a week or more, but one moment of weakness, of trust, and here he was on a trip through a pretty skunkette's digestive tract.

Not all of him stung. Not yet. Elastic as her stomach was most of his hind legs and all of his tail still lay in her gullet. Caeru stirred, tried to kick. It accomplished nothing. His legs and tail would survive for now, but only until she digested enough of his body to make room.

As her belly began to gurgle and churn, as the acid pool rose and his scales began to drop off one by one, Caeru fought to wriggle free. The pain slowly grew as digestion accelerated and his exhausted struggled intensified but there would be no escape.

Uvuzi lay stretched out in the snow, ponderously distended from breasts down over twelve feet of furry body by a dragon with his neck folded back on itself. The resulting bulge stretched her fur tight as a drumhead. There was simply no room in her belly for more dragon and fully a third of his mass lay in her gullet, with his muscular hind legs further down and then a long tail folded into a sine wave. Only in this way did she manage to get it all inside and even so she could taste and feel the twitching tail tip that lay in her throat just behind her tongue. It was one of, if not the largest thing she'd ever swallowed. She lay there panting and thought: had that enormous werewolf been bigger? Or that red dragon who quite willingly put his head down my throat? Was anything else even close?

Uvuzi groaned, stirring wearily. Though she had overpowered the winter-weakened Caeru with relative ease swallowing him had taken a herculean effort. Her stretched pelt twitched as he struggled, even more exhausted than herself and unable to do more than wriggle. The squirming in her middle made her uncomfortable but it would not change anything in the end. Uvuzi could digest and pass an entire human in little more than a day and though this would take much longer, Caeru would not get out of her the way he got in.

"Mistress?" A bundled-up kobold approached through the snow. "Are you all right?"

"Right as rain, Tiktik," Uvuzi said with a smile, and the long belch that bubbled up out of her made the kobold smile too. A moment later the sleigh returned, the kobolds having calmed the horse they used to startle Caeru into the icy river, and Uvuzi laboriously slithered on board. The sheer weight of swallowed dragon made it hard to move, and then there were his movements.

Dragons are tough and stubborn and it was the greatest stroke of luck to catch one off guard this way. It was only the second dragon she'd ever eaten and the first either she or her sister had taken against its will. Their sole dragon meal each had before today had in both cases been a dragon that for its own reasons allowed itself to be consumed. It wasn't until she snuggled up against Caeru to judge his size and discovered he had no breath weapon that she decided to eat him. She'd wanted too all along, of course, but you had to be careful with meals this large and dangerous.

Four kobolds spent a few minutes covering up the tracks Caeru and Uvuzi made in the snow. Even if someone happened by, there would be no sense of what happened to the dragon. He had disappeared down a skunk-snake's gullet and no one would ever know save herself and her kobolds. With the snow falling thickly the work was probably unnecessary but caution was their habit.

Having completed their task the four climbed into the sled with her and the two others directing the horse clicked their tongues. The horse, stolen from a passing caravan, would eventually become a meal for her larger sister but for now it was very useful. As the sled set off the five kobolds set to work massaging the great bulge in Uvuzi's middle. The pelt was tight around her meal and she groaned happily as their practiced fingers worked.

"Thank you dears," she purred. "I don't know what I would do without you. I certainly wouldn't eat as well without you finding me treasures like this."

Tiktik and the other kobolds smiled as they rubbed her pelt, feeling the movements beneath her long winter fur. A low and growing gurgle made it through the fur as the acids began their slow work. Caeru was still alive and would struggle for hours yet. It would not save him.