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The Coming of Dragons

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Chapter Four

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Anniyah sat them down one evening, fidgeting while Kelvin scowled and hunkered down at the back of the cave, sadness enveloping her. Her sleeping sack had been ripped up at some point in a fit of rage, sad at even the fact that she felt, even as a dragoness, that she did not want that humanly comfort anymore. She didn't want to change, not that much, regardless of how much more capable her body felt.

"I have some news for you... Well." Anniyah exchanged a look with Jenson. "We have news for you. We...are pregnant."

Alan's head shot up.

"What? How can you be pregnant? All of us are females! We only went over this, what, a week ago?"

Anniyah showed him, letting him document with scientific curiosity the changes that she'd presented in her body, beneath her rusty orange scales, that had led her to that conclusion. The maternal notes rising through, the feeling of wanting to build a nest, how her abdomen was not quite as flexible as it had been.

"The feel of them inside," she said, resting the tip of her tail against her belly, as if she was cradling her young even then. "You can't mistake it, being a mother. There's a heaviness to it, though...I would think it is still early days."

She smiled, her mind drifting to a few days ago, though it could have been a lifetime. It had been strange to have that stirring, a sense that was something like discomfort without truly being so. She only knew that something had shifted inside her, despite not being sick like she had been as a human. That was good, that was something that she was very grateful for as a dragoness, even if Anniyah thought that she would have pushed through it anyway for the sake of her young.

It simply felt right, nestling up to her husband dragoness, Jenson quiet against her. It had been more difficult for her to adjust to it, to be quite fair, as she was still getting used to the fact that she was a female. Alex had not needed to tell her, earlier, along with the others, though everyone else had assumed that Alex had told her privately. They'd just "known" without knowing, exchanging a look with each other and understanding.

Maybe that was a part of motherhood, or at least what motherhood was to dragons. Jenson did not have to say anything while Anniyah talked, the dragoness that had been a woman far better versed than he in the ways of the world, the ways of a female's body. The shift and discomfort in his flank had been strange to him, only a tiny note. Anyone else that wasn't wrapped up in learning how to best use a new body may have missed it entirely but he had known and felt every last bit of it, how there was a little more stiffness in her gut.

She hadn't wanted to worry Anniyah either, as close as they were. One could have said that they were even closer as dragonesses too than they had been as human beings, though that was a strange thing to consider indeed. Anniyah had come to her while she was lying stretched out in a forest grove, one of those on the lower slopes were there was a little more vegetation to cover the ground. It was a rich kind of place, a fertile kind of place, the sort of place that made one want to lie down and simply soak in the day.

It wasn't a wriggling or a kicking but a sense of settling. With a sigh, the dragoness, silver in the dappled light of the gentle grove, relaxed, letting her tail drape over her body. Without even knowing what she was doing, she raised her wing, sheltering her belly, the eggs that she did not even, as yet, know were in there. It was natural to do so, the protective sense of being motherly rising where it had never been before, nothing at all in the set of her body and belly at all suggesting that she was pregnant.

And yet... Oh, she could not have said how she suspected that there was something in there but she remembered all too acutely, lovingly, just how Anniyah had held and stroked her belly when she had been pregnant. All of their children were grown but she remembered sitting with her, putting her ear to her wife's belly, the squirm of a little one inside. Even though they were not born, the energy and presence of them could still be felt, despite everything.

It was a good memory. And that was just why, when Anniyah had told her that she was sure she was pregnant, Jenson had been able to say the same.

Starting, Jenson snapped back to reality, her wife shifting against her side.

"Maybe we were pregnant from the transformation itself, part of it," she suggested, watching as Alan "wrote" the best she could with her claw dipped in ink made from berries, the best she could get out in the wilderness. "But that's not all that I meant... We are pregnant."

She paused for a moment to allow that to sink in and yet it was a moment that would change the course of their paths forevermore, even if they may have thought that there was nothing more that could possibly surprise them.

"This is unprecedented..." Alan muttered, eyeing up the direction in which the caves lay, far more accessible than they had been. "We must go back down, see what the carvings say..."

For she had already uncovered something that she had held close to herself and needed to delve deeper again to see just where that piece of the puzzle fit in the mad jigsaw of their lives. There was something there that she did not understand, though she had to make sure she understood first of all, that everything was lined up exactly as she wanted to see it.

She was, if nothing else, dedicated to the science of explanation.

*

She was right, though Alan could not be too hard on herself for not understanding what the changes in her body meant, no matter how much time she spent going over her body, the differences in her red and green scales, trying to find some sense and logic in it. It didn't even seem to match up with muzzle shape or jaw size, frustrating her with the lack of pattern she found. After all, she had not expected to find herself pregnant either. She had had to sit down with both Anniyah and Jenson to understand it better, the feelings and sensations that led them to believe they were pregnant, even though it matched up with what she had found written on the clay tablets. She had not understood just what the tablets were there for, piled and set out as if a manual, some kind of instructions, but a record did not always reveal its true purpose until one had dug deeper into the meaning behind it.

Not that she understood all of it as yet, still learning the language, an ancient text and marking... She wasn't so sure that she would ever fully understand it, but for the sake of her coven of dragons and her own curiosity, Alan certainly had to try.

She'd felt quieter and quieter, however, even before her pregnancy had made itself known to her, as if she was slower and more lethargic. All she wanted to do was to sleep, yawning as she worked away in the caves, studying, nose dipping, wings drooping. It was tiring, surely, to carry a clutch of eggs (was it a clutch? There was no way, yet, to tell) around and she could only empathise whole-heartedly with every other female in the world that went through the same. Males, surely, didn't understand how lucky they had it sometimes.

None of the confirmed pregnant dragonesses (Anniyah, Jenson and herself) had had anything happen that could have induced a pregnancy, unless they were carrying unfertilised eggs, which was always a possibility. It was not Alan's area of expertise but she had heard about instances of reptiles, like dragons, she supposed, laying clutches of unfertilised eggs to act as decoys from the real clutch. But would that in itself mean that another clutch of eggs was coming regardless of what they had gone through so far?

No... No, that did not make sense, no sense at all, not with them all being dragonesses. She'd read the carvings, the etchings, the engravings, the lines of paint inked onto the walls. There was so much to decipher there that she was sure she could have spent several lifetimes over studying them. No one was as interested as she was but she had science behind her, leaning heavily into further studies as if she had wanted to bring them into her life going forward too.

Alan smiled. Maybe she could be a teacher? She'd never thought of herself as a headmistress type but the look could be a good one on her. If she could not progress her career anymore as she had planned, studying and passing on that knowledge would be a good second-best, though she was hardly one to give up on her hopes just yet.

There was more to be found in the cave as she bounded about easily in her draconic form. It didn't seem so expansive, though she was careful of her stomach, not knowing how much at that stage could harm the eggs, if anything at all. What field of reference did she at all have to pull from? There was nowhere to go to ask questions, leaving her to dig deeper, to find the answers for herself.

"The start of a new civilisation, new birth..." She muttered to herself, pouring from one carving to the other, ground deeply into the rock of the cave walls, leaving the stacked tablets for the time being, which were more difficult to decipher. "I read that wrong, didn't I? New birth comes with egg laying...with us."

It was the start of something new, most certainly, but she did not know how much she was inferring and what was basic fact. Pictures there only showed so much, though a coven of dragonesses gathered around a pool of orbs could only be dragonesses and eggs. She pressed a clawed "hand" to her head, groaning. Maybe that was one that she would have to come back to a little later on.

For the moment, she had someone very important to give the news too, seeking out Sandra and Alex with a strange curling in her stomach and chest. Maybe them more than anyone else would be changed by the news that the eggs, to say the least of it all, would not only be with those that were of an "age" to become pregnant...

*

Finding Sandra and Alex out on an outcrop of rock, discussing something about how they could find their friends again, whether they would be able to talk to them and let them bring dragons into society, she set herself down lightly. The huge dragoness with her blue scales turned to face Alan, Alex's patterned wings folding in lightly against his body from where they had been spread.

"Oh! Alan!" Alex said with a smile, spreading her wings wide in welcome. "To what do we owe the pleasure? It's been a while, you've been busy."

The look on Alan's face sobered them, the two pressing in close, taking comfort from the feel of each other's scales pressing against each other.

"I think I have something very important to tell you," she said as gently as she could, touching Sandra's face lightly with the edge of her wing. "It's going to be a shock...knowing what you told us before...about your family."

Although she had changed, Alan was still not the smoothest about bringing up things from the past - painful things. Alex growled a little but Sandra was more than capable of thinking about it by then, stalling her as she gestured for Alan to go on.

The dragoness fidgeted.

"It's... Oh, I do not mean this to be personal, but I think your daughter would be smiling down at you right now."

She paused, understanding the gravity of what she was about to deliver, despite her young age. She knew she could not match up to Sandra's wisdom, the time taken in her years, but there was still a difference between them, some good news that she could give her, as life-changing as it was.

Sandra stared, hardly even blinking. But Alan had to press on.

"You're pregnant, Sandra. Again. And you too, Alex. All of us are. It's not just Anniyah and Jenson!"

She rushed the last words as if she had to hasten to get them all out where she could best make use of them. But Alan may as well have not been present as Sandra sat back, her lower jaw falling slack. Alex tried to clear her throat, tipping forward as she worked at the lump there, tail curled tightly around her haunches. It was shocking, something that no one could have anticipated, though surely it was enough that one couple had become pregnant...surely?

"Alex?"

Alan dithered, not sure what to do, using her tail to touch Alex's shoulder and then pulling back.

"Are you okay? I'm so sorry to spring this on you, I know it's a sensitive subject", Alan said awkwardly, half-hiding behind a wing. "I didn't know how else to tell you, anything was going to be a shock at this stage. Are you... Are you alright?"

Dragons could not cry, not in the way that humans did, but the way that Sandra turned and pressed into her wife-husband could only be taken as an expression of pure joy, their long, draconic necks winding together as they crooned. Their sides trembled with the strange force of those crooning cries, huddling together, though it was the force of their delight that had them engaged in such a tryst at that moment, not upset by any stretch of the imagination.

Alan smiled. She knew when to take her leave. And the caves, later, would have even more to offer her.

"I knew..." Sandra whispered, eyes closed as if against the threat of tears, though dragons did not expel tears through emotion, not like humans. "I knew, Alex... Alan... Alan, you... How did you know?"

"My studies and, well, I suspected that there was something more at work after speaking with Anniyah. Are you two okay?"

Sandra smiled, her lips parting, showing her teeth but hardly in any kind of fearsome manner.

"Yes... Better than alright, sweetheart. Oh... Oh, I never thought that I would ever feel this again. I didn't want to tell you yet, Alex, because I wasn't quite sure, not quite, even if I thought it could not be anything else."

Crooning to her wife, Alex rubbed against her, their cheeks pressed together and horns knocking lightly, trembling, necks still interwoven. As close as a couple could be, they leaned into one another, sharing the warmth of their bodies in the rays of the sun, a light wind picking at their scales, though there would never again be a wind that would shake their hold on the love they held for each other.

"I know, darling... I know why you didn't say. But a daughter? Or a son?" Alex took a ragged gasp, wings lifting, though the tension in his body could not be relieved so easily. "Me too... Why me also? I don't understand..."

"Maybe this is just the way it is meant to be. She would have wanted it this way."

Alex shuddered, emotion welling up, trapped in his throat, the lump there one that she was more than familiar with. She didn't want to think back to the accident but she had to, the day that everything had changed, the day that everything had become just a little bit more difficult in every way.

Maybe, being pregnant, understanding what had happened inside her... Maybe that would bring them something new. Maybe it wouldn't make everything alright again but would give them something that they might otherwise never have known, her wife quivering against her, the anticipation in her scales palatable, something tangible that was strung out between them.

It was not a place for Alan to be and yet she could not so easily make good her exit, awkward in the moment.

Sandra and Alex... Together, the eggs growing inside them offered a fresh start and a new purpose in life, something that would keep them going, step by step, as they took flight into a new life. They had lost so much in the accident that had rendered Sandra infertile, though she had not remembered that it was something that she had told Alan about. She supposed it must have just come up at some time, when they were discussing their past lives. It was no matter though as she shuddered against her husband, folding her wings around him, the closeness of touch more powerful than any words that could ever have been passed between them.

"It's finally..." Sandra took a shuddering breath, unaware that they were alone, that Alan had left. "Finally happening...again. In the right way. This is all the right way."

Alex nuzzled her tenderly, his tongue flickering out to brush her cheek. It was not quite the dragon version of a kiss but it was something, something that they could share between them, a moment of closeness. Intimacy, after all, was not lost either.

"She would be so proud."

"Julia would have loved a younger sibling."

Smiling up at the late afternoon sunshine, how it cast down the valley, greening as a warmer time came to the land, they knew it to be true. The stirrings inside her had heralded new life and, now, she could bring forth all that she had known before, all that she would have taught her darling daughter, if only the world had not taken her from them so soon.

Everything happened for a reason, even if those reasons were not ones that they liked or understood. But they had another chance to teach, to show youngsters the way. Even if Alex would have to learn how to be a mother too, following in Sandra's footsteps while applying what she knew too of tender fatherhood.

It was the best thing that they could ever have hoped for.

*

With Santino, Kelvin tried to distract herself, tripping over her own feet as she trotted and jogged. It was harder than she liked to admit to forget about her reality, though she had not taken flight as yet still, running and moving too much like a human as if she wanted to linger there, back in the time when life, at the very least, had made sense. Her blue scales had become more splashed through with white over time, though she didn't want to focus on it all that much. Arya thought she was pretty, but Kelvin could not think of a body like that, not the one that belonged to them.

"Come on, my man, you have to try out your wings sometime!"

Kelvin rolled her eyes.

"Are you going to fix your language then? Man? Dude? We're none of those things... You're better off calling me "lady" after everything that's happened. It's more accurate."

Santino stumbled back but did not go as far as to fall over dramatically, though it was certainly something that she could have done. Chuckling, she shook her head and shrugged with her wings, trying on another human mannerism that, truly, had no place between them as dragons when there were far subtler ways to communicate.

"So cold... But that's just the way you are too, isn't it? There's no harm in simply being like that, Kelvin, you know. We're all in this together, you don't have to be so curt and snappish with me."

She huffed and turned her back on the purple dragoness. Whatever she had to say was just noise, white noise, background noise. Kelvin did not know what she was looking for down in the caves, inspecting an offshoot of the grand cavern that she had had to laboriously and tediously dig out. She didn't know quite why her mind had locked onto that but it gave her some sense of purpose, something to get up for in the morning.

She had not thought that dragons could feel like that. But no one talked about such things in fantasy novels and tropes, did they?

"It looks like dragons have been around before humans, or at least back in the stone and bronze ages."

Kelvin touched the wall etching reverently, though it was so faint that she had to press in close and squint, turning her head first one way and then the other to try both eyes, so close was she. There was much to be learned and she wondered at that she could uncover something that Alan had not, simply due to being in a different place at just the right time. There was so much down there that she was tugged on a little bit more, coming out of her shell just a tiny little bit, though she was not so sure that it would not be so easy to slip back into it.

"You think? What tells you that?"

Santino, at least, pretended to be interested. As loud as she was, she was not a bad soul, kind-hearted despite her dramatics. Maybe, in time, that would be tempered, for she already did not quite feel that she fit in the shoes that she had worn as a human, so to speak. In the absence of a little of her own noise, she found contemplative thought, even if she still preferred to be near her dragon sisters for such things. Being alone still very much was not what Santino enjoyed and preferred for herself, trying to settle into her new body with all the complications that brewed along with that, her lighter, feminine build not sitting right with her.

And it was nice to hear Kelvin talk as if she was herself again, though she had not known him well back at the university.

"Here... This translates..." Kelvin peered at the notes that Alan had allowed her to borrow. "This is the type of home that they used to build, these mounds of earth."

Oh, it was faint, but the shape of the imprint on the wall could be traced, ever so lightly, with the tip of a claw. But careful, yes: she had to be careful. It could not be damaged or the path that they were to take might be lost forever in the history of their civilisation.

Kelvin jolted. Just where had that thought come from? That was not her. That was not her own mind.

"Kelvin? You alright?"

"Yeah... Yeah."

But she wasn't. She could not be when she was a dragon wanting to be a man, missing her partner, her gentle smile, how her black hair had falling in a straight curtain past her shoulders. Casey... Casey would be wondered what had happened to her, thinking that she was dead. And just what was Kelvin to think about the vaguest, faintest possibility of Casey still loving her when she was a dragon?

What Kelvin should have remembered, however, was that love transcended all bounds when it was true of heart. It cut through obstacles that one may have before considered insurmountable and brought new roads into fresh light, opening up routes that had not been evident before.

Such was the way for dragons. They didn't have much of a meaning for personal space between them and Kelvin was unnerved more by how it did not bother her in the slightest to have Santino pressed up against her. It should have set her skin - no, her scales - crawling, but to have the other dragonesses there, somehow, felt like the most natural thing in the world as she grunted softly in the back of her throat.

She could not write, not even the bare, light scratches that Alan made. Even then Alan took a very, very long time to do anything, which was fair enough when it was anticipated that dragons were never supposed to write in the human fashion at all. Yet what Kelvin could do was pretend that she was, somehow, back in university, maybe out on a field trip, taking it all in for her course, something new, a sub-course or degree that would add on to what she was studying.

It was only a matter of getting by.

*

However, what Kelvin had failed to realise in her studies with Santino, digging into the caves and excavating a route to a new cave for fresh information, was that the mounds of earth that she had seen in the drawings had had a far more intimate meaning for them, for their species. Sandra, Alex, Anniyah and Jenson, along with Alan, of course, were pregnant, but what had not been considered was that there was more to it.

Frowning as Santino devoured the carcass of roe deer, blood lightly marking her purple muzzle, Kelvin turned away distastefully.

"Could you eat a little neater? We are people, after all..."

Santino, however, for all her distaste of raw meat before could not stop eating, chewing up great, tearing gulps of meet as ifs he couldn't get it all down her throat quickly enough. She had to rip it free, had to have its life-sustaining sustenance, growling softly, her tail flicking back and forth. Nothing else existed for her, right then and there, other than eating, not caring that she was being watched. It was not a devolving into a more animalistic state, however, but something that she needed, something that her body hungered for in that moment more than anything else.

Kelvin left her there, a little disgusted. She would have to try to cook meat again for herself if Santino was going to eat like a savage. It was a pity as the other dragoness had bene the only other one of them to enjoy cooked meat still with her, even if they had, in a way, bene clinging to the humanity that lurked deep within still. They'd changed and she supposed she could not count on Santino to stay the same either.

In a pool of late-afternoon sunshine, she yawned, showing her teeth. There was nothing else to do and she didn't much feel like delving back down into the caves to research more. What more could be found in there? Alan clearly thought there was something but the answers there, well...Kelvin was not all that sure that she wanted to know them anymore. There had always been a warning in her old fantasy books, that one should be prepared for the answers they sought. Or else what was the point in looking for them in the first place? Knowledge was power but it also had the potential to strip one of power, taking it from them.

Kelvin feared losing what little power she had left, even if control, self-control too, did not seem hers anymore. But it was too late for that.

She turned one way and the other, sleepy and yet unable to get comfortable, sweeping twigs off the patch of grass where she wanted to lie, which should have been warm enough. Just what was wrong with her? What did she have to do to get comfortable? She just couldn't stop yawning, tired and lethargic, nothing at all sounding better to her than a snooze in the sunshine. So why wasn't that possible?

Frustrated, she slipped off into a pond, sinking into the cool water, letting the cooling ripples flow around her, lapping around her face. She signed, bubbles rising through the water, but still the sense of heaviness within her remained.

If she had carried young before, she would have realised that the number of pregnant dragons, as much as she might have tried to deny it, had increased already.

*

Motherly instinct was only known to those who had experienced it for themselves or were in the process of experiencing it. Brent growled, pushing Isla-Rae back from the cliff-edge where she was practising her wing strength in the face of a rising wind.

"Ouch! Brent, don't do that! You could have pushed me over!"

The dragoness glowered, digging her claws into the dirt.

"You were going to fall! You've got to stay back until your wings are stronger!"

Isla-Rae scoffed, a little more confident since becoming a dragoness, though still very much finding her feet. Her wings may have allowed her great agility with her small frame but one thing that she lacked was stamina. That didn't seem any easier of late either with something, she could not say what, weighing her down. Did dragons put on weight? She guessed any creature could.

"Brent... You've got to let me do this, I'm strong enough now. You've got to trust me."

The dragoness growled and shook her head but Isla-Rae was neither her daughter nor her sister, not younger than her by any means. But why did she want to protect and look after her so much? Her stomach twisted up into knots as the pearlescent dragoness leapt up again, letting the wind catch her wings, spreading them, cupping and shaping the air so the updraft lifted her higher and higher.

"Be careful!"

Brent couldn't stop herself but all Isla-Rae had for her was a exuberant cry as she floated higher and higher, learning how to save her energy and make the wind work for her.

"Look! Brent, Brent! I'm doing it! Look at me!"

She squealed as she maintained her place in the air, only flapping her wings very lightly, holding her position. And she'd done it all on her own, brent looking up at her like a proud mother, heart brimming over with a kind of pride that had nothing to do with her at all.

Mother?

_ _

Something pulled inside her and she gave a sharp intake of breath through her muzzle, though that was not natural for a dragon. Her wings stiffened against her back, something settling into place inside her, a niggling scrap of knowledge that had been knocking around her mind for too long already.

Oh dear...

_ _

The funny thing was, as she turned to look at her ever so slightly larger stomach, flanks pushed out a little more than they had been, as if she had had a larger meal than normal, she didn't mind all that much. Maybe she'd known all along, but it was not up to her, as a previous male, to know the ins and outs. She'd thought she'd just been extra hungry of late but that explained, a little, why she hadn't quite been able to fly as quickly as she had before.

Her eyes drifted to the floating dragoness, who was only then beginning to tire.

Maybe she'd have to have a chat with Isla-Rae too about any "strangeness" that she'd been experiencing...

The others too noticed changes, though they came slowly. Maybe Arya was a little more tired than usual and maybe Santino's ravenous appetite, her change in how she ate, had to be paid attention to sooner or later. Isla-Rae huffed and puffed going up slopes but came to life in the air, learning how to more aptly and efficiently make the wind and the air that she soared through work for her.

Some ignored the changes, hunkering down, acting like they didn't exist, even when Arya less than timidly asked if she'd been feeling a bit "odd" lately.

"Kelvin, have you been experiencing anything odd?" She floundered for words, awkward in a moment where she could have really used a guiding hand. "Why... You're off on your own so much... I mean... You seem quieter..."

Kelvin scoffed and rolled her eyes, coupling the dismissive expression with a flick of her tail.

"Who wouldn't be different? We're dragons, Arya. Maybe you didn't notice?"

Arya reeled, taken aback.

"Alright, well, there's no need to be so snappy with me. I just thought that there might have been something wrong, that you were feeling...sick...or something..."

The growl that ripped itself from Kelvin's lips was entirely genuine as she rounded on Arya, both of them easily matched in size, though Kelvin was most likely the more delicate of the two. The scar on Kelvin's foot itched and, without thinking, she covered it with the other, lips trembling with a deeper snarl.

"And just what do you know? Think you know everything because we're both dragonesses now?"

Arya scowled, clicking her teeth together, her own anger rising.

"No, it's because - hey!"

But Kelvin was not due to stay around for the fallout of her outburst as she grunted and launched herself into the air...only to land again awkwardly. Her wings were not strong enough, not even then, to obey her command and she cursed under her breath, storming off on all fours instead.

Arya shook her head, sighing softly. She'd thought Kelvin would be one to ask, one who may have known just a little bit more, but, alas... Some things did not come so easily. She had to understand that she was probably having the hardest time out of all of them.

"Arya, are you quite alright?"

Sandra appeared from around an outcrop of rock, the slope where the two dragonesses previously had been talking quite open otherwise. She half-shrugged, touching her forehead briefly to Arya's in greeting.

"My apologies, I was basking and I didn't have a chance to move on before you began talking."

Arya sighed again, more heavily that time, her sides seeming a little rounder afterwards, not quite settling in the same way. Maybe they were imagining things there though, seeing them all as bigger than they were...or maybe she was overthinking it.

"I thought Kelvin might not have been well too but..."

Oh, it was hard to say, scuffing a claw through the dirt, not wanting to give any more weight at all to the knot of anxiety in her belly. It was too soon for her, much too soon, and she could not help but feel that she had so much of her life left to lead and then...her stomach started to grow. Not much, so little that it should have been imperceptible, but she knew when her movement began to shift, ever so slightly, that something was different. And there were already others there, among them, that were experiencing the same.

"It's okay, Arya, you don't have to tell me if you don't want it."

"It's not that... I..." She sighed again. Best to have it out. "I think I'm...pregnant."

Sandra rested her nose against Arya's, the two of them, just for a moment, taking in the scent of the other. A moment of peace stretched between them, settled in certainty, as much as the trepidation did not soften easily in Arya's heart.

"I know, sweetheart. But it's going to be okay."

Arya quivered.

"It's going to be all of us, isn't it? How did you feel when you knew you were pregnant? What were the...signs?"

Sandra told her, though there was no nausea to contend with. Settling Arya down somewhere more comfortable, a small cave that allowed two dragons to converse more comfortably, she draped a wing over her back and they watched the day grow old. Their eyesight allowed them to see just as well at night as they delved into darkness, matching up little hints and symptoms, things that pointed the whole coven of dragons towards something that neither of them could have imagined. For there was something, something deeper, linked between them all, something that would render every last dragoness there carrying and expecting in time.

They had no proof, but the proof already seemed to be right there before their eyes. They'd only been blind to it until that moment.

*

The dragonesses had the day to day to get along with, bit by bit, though some days were, by the very nature of the beast, easier to get through than others. Some, however, managed better than Kelvin, even if her time too would come to spread her wings and delight in all that had come to pass.

Sandra and Alex... They had a reuniting, of sorts, to bring them closer again, closing the distance that had opened up between them after the accident, her infertility, Julia's death. It was all bundled up in a tangle of pain that had only been unravelled by the shedding of one skin for another, embracing the change, the difference that eased forth. She'd never thought that she'd feel whole again. A womb did not make a woman but the absence of such, as her abdomen was too badly damaged, was something that she felt acutely, day to day.

But as a dragoness...she had another, already ripe with the promise of new life. Smiling, she nuzzled at her stomach, Alex pressing in, his tail sensually and softly twined around hers.

"Alex... I think things have come right in the end."

"All as Julia said."

Dragons did not kiss and yet there were other things that they could do to demonstrate love for one another, the passion that brimmed over in their hearts. As if they were transforming all over again, their scales tingled and itched as they pressed in closer, breath catching.

They were dragonesses though... Were they really going to do it?

There was no one around, not that that would have mattered to dragons, such inhibitions and light modesty cast aside in lieu of something more passionate. It was not true to their beings exactly as they were to hide away such a potent, tangible part of themselves, something that they too intrinsically needed in order to be healthy and whole.

"Let me show you..."

Alex shivered, not knowing quite what her wife had in mind as yet but she was keen to see, something stirring deep inside her. Although she had, of course, admired Sandra's form, loving her all the same, she just hadn't known where to _begin_with a dragon's body instead of a woman's!

Luckily, Sandra had more of an idea on that than her, letting her body rub up against Alex's, twining and winding around him as if she was a domestic cat purring and murmuring.

"Relax, honey, this is going to all be at our pace...the only pace we need..."

What that meant did not matter as their noses touched, shivering in place, taking in each other's breath, the soft, life-giving force that was always present. Alex's warm exhalations eased over her scales, prickling along the edges as if the very essence of his being was slipping into her. Maybe that was how it was for dragons but that was for the two of them to find out, tails tangled, their limbs pulling together so that there no longer was any kind of distinction where one dragon ended and the other began.

Sunset marked their scales in a glow of crimson and russet, illuminating them softly, the lines of their bodies as they moved together, ever so lightly. Blue and red came together as they had before, yet things would never be the same between them ever again, but even better for the partner dragons. Tender parts that Alex had never considered pressing up to anything or anyone in that matter proved to be so much more sensitive, the dragoness gasping and trembling, her eyes half-lidded as if she did not have the strength to open them widely anymore.

"Relax, darling, I'm here for you... I'm always here for you."

They twisted together, rolling. There was no mounting, no penetration, not between dragonesses. It could have been crude but sensuality was what twined and twisted around them in the setting rays of the sun on a day that had been one of many that could have been considered the best ever. For they no longer needed to escape their reality with vices of choice when everything had come right, their Julia sending them a gift that they could hold near and dear to their hearts.

They pressed together, breath catching, flanks shuddering with it. They had never gasped like that before, not as dragons, panting for air and yet still drinking down everything that they could have ever wanted and so much more. The two of them changed positions, Sandra showing Alex, lovingly, the way, leading the way only because she, at the very least, understood more of the ins and outs of a woman's body when it came to that kind of shared bonding, that pleasure.

"Easy... It's not...about being rough..."

Gentle was the way and she showed him just how a flicker of the tongue in just the right spot could bring forth shivers of delight, Alex's body trembling without her consent. It helped Sandra too that the vent under Alex's tail was strictly for waste removal from her body while the one lower, supposedly in an easier position for a partner of the opposite sex when it came to anatomy, was purely for reproduction. It was within that sparking joys lay as she teased her tongue forth, her tail flicking up against Alex's muzzle while the two of them lay end to end.

"Oh... Sandra... Ohhh!"

But Alex could not hold back as passion gripped her, her body no longer within her control, though it was not like anything that she had experienced as a human. Muscles twitched that were purely draconic in nature, even her wings flapping, twisting onto her back, wings flapping, though it was hard to take care not to trap them under her body too in her contorted writhing. There was no sense of having a handle on her body, maybe like the freefall that she had taken under Brent's misguided advice, everything rushing by her so quickly, feeling like she could not pull up out of the freefall even though her wings were right there, waiting for her.

Such in the same way, Sandra was there for her, licking off her muzzle with a decidedly smug look on her face, though just how a dragoness managed to appear smug was beyond Alex.

"Hah," she groaned breathlessly, tail curling back and forth, the slender, winding tip so flexible that it kept drawing the eye over and over again. "You know...it feels like that every time?"

Alex purred, lips trembling, the croon rising up from deep at the back of her very long neck and throat.

"Well, darling, I must return the favour then."

There was no one-way street when it came to the two of them, giving everything passionately even as the sunset eased into twilight. The mountains, rocky crags and stubborn conifers too, cast into a dim, blue that could never be considered a gloom, shading and shadowing them faintly from prying eyes. That was, of course, if dragons could not see as well in the dark as they could in the daylight, one dragon higher up watching them from afar.

Kelvin tried not to look, she really did, but it was hard not to be drawn to such an outward expression and vivid outpouring of love. She'd heard some of the misfortunes that had befallen them and yet all Kelvin felt was sad and jealous that she could not have that love for herself. The bodies twisting and writhing beneath her did not appear like they needed any more privacy for themselves, though she was vaguely aware that she would have looked away and gone somewhere else if she had been watching them in her past life.

Oh, it seemed so far away. Kelvin swallowed hard. Maybe it was better not to look at what was happening too. She knew that she was pregnant already, even with Alan revealing it to her too, though Alan had been about all over the place trying to corner her. That was something that Kelvin could do without, even as the weeks passed and it became almost comedic.

Brent was less discreet, browsing the shrubs for berries as she caught wind of their enjoyment, soft, sensual groans rising. It did not take a genius to work out what was going on down there as they twisted around one another, a tangle of limbs and tail, Sandra panting in a flutter of pink tongue pouring over the edge of her lips while Alex explored under her tail. She watched for a while, curious without wanting to know too much, for it was as simple as mating, even if it was between two dragonesses.

Maybe I am changing.

_ _

Maybe she was. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe the physical changes were the extent of all that. But she had no way to tell until they happened, even if she revelled in flight.

Spreading her wings, she soared serenely into the darkening night.

Sandra and Alex did not know that they had been observed and neither would they have found it in themselves to care. The moment was a reawakening for them, their true moment of rebirth, trying to kiss one another and laughing, for it was not something that dragons did. Their instincts and feral natures were still coming through as they curled up around one another, letting the tease and pulse of their bodies, so sensitive in the heat of that moment that they were able to feel each and every individual scale in shocking detail, do the work for them.

"I love you so much."

"And I you, darling. Always and forever."

They wound their necks around one another, as close as any two beings could be and not wanting to be anywhere else at all. They needed that moment, the tenderness stretching sweetly between them, letting the night take them as they explored one another's bodies more and more.

They may have been pregnant and they may have been wives, but that did not mean in any way that they could not grow even closer together.

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