Jarzyl & Atlas: Counting Scales
#64 of The Life and Times of Jarzyl Mintaka (Slice of Life Stories)
Jarzyl uses Atlas for a science project
Some light fledgling flirtations (6,347 words)
With a quiet flutter of his wings, a young three-legged dragon landed on the balcony. Atlas's sooty-black scales made for good camouflage at night, but on a bright sunlit afternoon like this one, they made his appearance stark rather than stealthy.
Jarzyl had been lying on her bed and reading a book, but the arrival of her friend made her turn her head. "Heeeey!" she chirped happily.
Atlas furled up his wings. "Good afternoon." He nodded at her, but then he glanced down and pawed at the balcony's flat stone surface. "Is this new? This seems bigger than I remember."
"You are correct. How observant of you!" Jarzyl put aside her book, but she kept lying on her back, on her bed as she peered at the other fledgling. "My father did that a few days ago--he brought in all these slabs of stone and used his magic to extend the balcony here."
Atlas tilted his head curiously. "Why?"
"That balcony was designed as an exit, not an entrance. It's too short. A short balcony is good enough for takeoff because you can just drop into the air, but to land safely there's supposed to be more space." Jarzyl unfurled a wing and waved it slowly through the air. "My father kept nagging at me to land at the living room balcony and go up the corridor, but I much prefer to land right here in my bedroom. So he finally relented and expanded the balcony. Safer like this."
"I see. That's nice of him." Atlas nodded. "Earlier at school you said that you need my help with some project work--what do you need?"
"What do I need? What I need...?" Flailing her wings, Jarzyl rolled herself off her bed and gracefully tumbled to the floor. Trotting over to the balcony, she went over to Atlas and tapped his chest. "Hmm... you. Your body."
Atlas raised a single eye ridge. He nodded at his missing forelimb--unique amongst all the dragons Jarzyl knew, he was a three-legged cripple. "If you need someone to help you carry things, I'm not the best choice."
Sitting back on her hindlegs, Jarzyl grabbed one of the straps of Atlas's flight harness and casually pulled him closer to her. "That's not what I meant. It's for the science project. I need you for some research."
"Elaborate on the nature of this research," Atlas said.
Jarzyl gestured at Atlas's flight harness--the grid of straps and pouches that helped a dragon carry things while in flight. "Start by taking all of this off, would you?"
Atlas squinted at her suspiciously. "Why...?"
"Because that's what I want. Come on." Turning around, Jarzyl scampered back into her room. Placed on her bedside table was a radio set, connected to a long antenna wire that was squeezed between her bed and the wall--with a quick, practiced motion Jarzyl switched on the radio and started tuning between radio channels.
Atlas followed her in, but didn't take off his harness. He glanced at Jarzyl's bedroom door, which was open. "How's your mother? Is she still in the medical centre?"
Jarzyl replied without looking. "She's fine. It was just a... a precaution for her to be warded--don't want any risks for an egg under development, right? My father's still with her in the medical centre, but she'll be discharged by tonight."
"That's good. What about your aunt? Is she well too after the... her airship crash?"
Jarzyl nodded. "Aunt Mira's fine. I haven't gotten to see her yet because she's really busy with the recovery operation, but I've heard from my uncle that she's good."
Atlas came over and sat down beside her. "And what about you? Are you well?"
Jarzyl had still been fiddling with her radio set, but that question made her pause. "Me?" For a moment she was lost in thought, but then she glanced right at her friend. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm great. Life's good, the world's good, everything is good." She grinned and then twisted a knob on the radio, which filled her room with lively, fast dance music.
Jarzyl bobbed her head to the beat, then she leapt upwards and began dancing on the spot, bouncing between her four paws. She waved her wings, and threw an easy, comfortable grin at Atlas.
A faint smile crossed the other fledgling's snout in return. "It's nice to see you back to normal."
"Don't you know it!" Closing her eyes and letting her neck frill slowly perk up, Jarzyl sang along to the music and enjoyed the simple satisfaction of the melodic sound. "Yeah, yeah, ohh!" After a moment she blinked her eyes open and grinned again at her friend. She turned the music down--just loud enough to be audible in the background, but not enough to impede conversation.
Reaching out, Jarzyl grabbed Atlas my one of his horns and gently wiggled his head about. "Hehehe. And you? How are you?"
Atlas chuckled, but he shook his head. "I... I'm good, I think?" He sounded a little hesitant, but Jarzyl didn't think too much of it.
"Excellent." Jarzyl moved her paw down to Atlas's shoulder, then she batted at his shoulder strap. "Then take off your flight harness."
Atlas snorted, but he reached up and pushed aside Jarzyl's paw, before tugging on the quick release straps of his harness. Then latches popped open, and the flight harness smoothly slid off his body and dropped to the ground. "You still haven't given me an explanation."
"Hehehe." With a giggle, Jarzyl slid her paw across Atlas's shoulder, then across the exposed scales of his chest. Dragons needed their scales exposed to sense airflow while in flight, so a flight harness was for practical convenience rather than modesty. Nevertheless there was something oddly pleasant about touching her friend--the numerous hexagonal scale plates felt flat, smooth, and warm under her touch. "Mmh, research... Hehehehe." She giggled again, then rational thought caught up. Jarzyl pulled her paw away and blinked. "Uh, ok let me explain. So the science project is that we each have to conduct some sort of research, right?"
Atlas nodded. "Yes. It's about data collection or analysis. For my project I've been searching through the library archives for historical data on where the city flies every year, to create a big map on our roaming patterns. Caden is going around her neighbourhood to ask about people's opinion on clan policy. What's your idea?"
Jarzyl grinned. "It's a great idea. I asked Drak Eeto today, and she said it would be a good research topic."
"But what's your idea?" Atlas pressed.
"Last two weeks I've been thoroughly stuck trying to think of what research I can do, but now I know!" Jarzyl scampered over to her bookshelf and pulled out a large, thick, children's encyclopaedia which was old and battered. "I've had this science encyclopaedia ever since I was really young. I haven't read it in years, but I was so desperate for ideas that I started flipping through it and looking at the science, and then inspiration!" She put the large encyclopaedia down on the floor and turned to a bookmarked page. "Check this out. I wrote on this page."
Atlas winced. He worked part time as a librarian, and on principle he had to disapprove of how Jarzyl sometimes mistreated the books she owned. "You wrote on the page?"
Jarzyl hushed her friend. "Shh. I was just a little hatchling, and this was my book so it's allowed. Anyway, look here--this page here is talking about dragon anatomy, and about scales in particular. Fun fact: Adult dragons don't have more scales than hatchlings. Instead, scales grow in proportion to body size. And..." Jarzyl tapped at the page, on which there was scrawls of written text had been added with ink. "Do you remember this? I wanted to test it!" She gestured right at Atlas. "It was long, long ago. I once spent all afternoon trying to count all the scales on my own body, but there were places on my body I couldn't reach or see, so eventually I just counted all the scales on your body instead and wrote the number down here. Remember that?"
Atlas frowned. "No, I don't really remember this. We must have been really young hatchlings then? Must have been a decade ago. And you... oh! I get it now. I understand your research."
Jarzyl grinned. "Yes!! We're going to do it again! I'm going to count every single scale on your body, and that will be research data proving that the number of scales doesn't change as a dragon grows up." She casually put her paw on Atlas's chest and slid her claws lightly against his scales. "Every single scale." She glanced up at her friend. "If you don't mind, of course."
Atlas laughed, but he shrugged his wings. "Fine, go ahead then. It is a unique idea." After a moment he frowned slightly. "You told Drak Eeto that you were going to count my scales specifically?"
Jarzyl shook her head. She pushed Atlas's flight harness to the side of her bedroom, then gestured for him to sit down on a floor cushion. "No, as a research subject you have anonymity for ethical reasons, or something. Though it might be a little obvious if I'm missing the data on one forelimb? Anyway, this will be interesting..."
Jarzyl peered at a piece of paper on her desk. On the sheet she had made a rough sketch outline of a dragon's body, with empty places marked out so she could fill in numbers at the appropriate places to correspond to the legs, wings, tail, and all the other parts of anatomy. "Let's start with my favourite part of you," she decided.
"Uh..." Sitting on the floor cushion, Atlas watched Jarzyl as she came strolling over. "Which part is that?"
"Why don't you take a guess?" Squeezing on the cushion behind Atlas, Jarzyl draped both wings around her friend in a loose hug. She rested her chin on his shoulder and let out a rumbly, comfortable sigh. It was nice to hug someone. "Hmrr..."
"Uh." Atlas made an uncertain noise again. "I really don't know."
"Up here." Hopping back up to her feet, Jarzyl tapped Atlas on his snout, then she grabbed him by the chin and tilted his head around. With her other paw she gestured at the back of his head. "Those horns--I like your horns. They've very... nice."
"No scales on those."
"True. But we'll do your head first." Jarzyl hummed along to the music that was still playing from the radio. Then she reached up and carefully pulled Atlas's dark goggles off his face--as a nocturnal dragon, Atlas wore dark lenses to protect his sensitive night eyes during the day, but those were only necessary outdoors. "Let's get these off too."
With a laugh, Jarzyl slipped the dark goggles over her own head, and the world went entirely black. She was a diurnal dragon, and her eyes were optimized for providing sharp, long-range vision in the bright light of day. Wearing Atlas's dark goggles, she could only see the square of light from the open balcony doors, and the interior of her room was dark and hard to make out. With his black scales, Atlas was impossible to see. After a moment, Jarzyl lifted the goggles up to her forehead, restoring her vision.
Atlas had been watching her with his dark, wide eyes. He looked mildly amused, but said nothing.
Jarzyl grinned and her neck frill would have perked up, but it was being held flat by the strap of Atlas's goggles. She slipped the goggles off her head and carefully put them on the desk. "Right, enough of that. Let's begin." Leaning close, she held Atlas's chin in one paw and carefully started counting. "One, two, three..."
It took a good portion of an hour, but eventually Jarzyl had counted all the numerous small hexagonal scales that covered Atlas's head in tiny tessellating rows. Grabbing an ink pot, she dipped her tail tip in the ink and used the prehensile tip to write the number down on her paper. "There we go. I have the count."
"I'm surprised you have the patience for something like this," Atlas noted.
"It's easy to focus on the counting. If I had to just sit still and do nothing, I think I'd get bored," Jarzyl replied. Atlas had been quiet and still through the process, but Jarzyl doubted that she could have done the same if their positions were reversed--she would have found it hard to resist the urge to fidget, but unlike her, Atlas had a steadfast calm about him.
Atlas nodded, but he continued. "Still, counting scales seems so like such a normal and reasonable idea. I was thinking that you'd have more wild ideas for your science project."
Jarzyl looked up. "Wild ideas? Like what?"
Atlas shrugged his wings. "Uhh, maybe counting the number of airships that come and go from the airship docks for a few days? Or using your telescope to track the movement and brightness of the moons? Or maybe flying to the peaks of the nearby mountain range and trying to measure all their heights? Something like that."
"I actually like that mountain idea. That would have been fun, yeah." Jarzyl shrugged. "But it's too late--I've started on this scale counting project, so I'm finishing it." She tapped her paper. "I have the count. I now know precisely how many scales cover your head!"
"Is it that precise? I think you almost lost count several times," Atlas countered.
"Close enough! I'm not counting again. And the number is pretty close to the number that I counted for you as a hatchling." Jarzyl picked up her old encyclopaedia and compared it against her paper sheet, then she nodded. "Right. Now your neck, then legs, wings, tail, and the rest. Hmm, this is going to take all afternoon."
"You're definitely going to get your numbers mixed up at some point."
"That's why I'm writing them down as I go. Although the research method can be improved. Maybe I should mark your scales as I count them, so I don't accidentally double count." Jarzyl raised the tip of her tail, which was stained with ink, then she frowned at Atlas. She tapped her tail tip against his side, just under his ribcage, but this had no visible effect. "Black on black won't work though. Maybe I could use paint?"
"You want to paint me now?" Atlas asked, looking amused. "Oh, the things I let you do!"
"Not anything permanent! I have camouflage paint for the training hunts--that stuff is meant to be used on scales, and it can be washed off easily." Trotting over to her desk, Jarzyl snatched up a small paint tube. "But the paints I have are dark green and black. Your scales are too dark! What shows up on a dark background?"
"Something light." Atlas clicked his tongue to get her attention, then he nodded his head to the side. The walls of Jarzyl's bedroom were painted grey, and one wall was covered with numerous chalk markings.
Over the years, the wall next to her bed and her desk had accumulated all manner of scribbles. As a hatchling, Jarzyl had enjoyed making messy drawings and sketches with coloured chalk, but now as a fledgling it was writing which frequently got scrawled onto the wall--to-do lists of tasks and errands, a monthly schedule of upcoming events, random thoughts or reflections that had popped up in her head, or even things that she remembered from her dreams. Her father had offered to get her a proper board to use, but Jarzyl just preferred the simple efficiency of scribbling messily on her bedroom wall. This was her space.
"That'll do." Jarzyl dropped to her belly and reached underneath her bed, grabbing a piece of white chalk that had rolled underneath there. Strolling back to Atlas, she experimentally tried rubbing the chalk against his shoulder, and this left a small white mark on his black scales. "Perfect! Let's continue. One, two, three, four..."
Jarzyl resumed counting, now working down Atlas's neck from his head. She carefully marked each scale with a dot of white chalk as she counted them, so that she wouldn't be mixed up over which scales she had or hadn't already counted.
Atlas obligingly raised his chin, but he chuckled. "Really, the things I let you do. I was talking with Caden over lunch, you know? When I mentioned I was coming over to your house to help you with your project work, she had several things to say about that."
Jarzyl was mostly concentrating on her count, and only putting partial attention to conversation. Every twenty scales she made a slightly bigger dot with the chalk, and wrote down the number on the paper so she wouldn't lose count. "...seven, eight, nine, and that makes forty. Mmh, thanks again for your help... I'll help you with your project too, if you need? Or if there's something else you want from me, just let me know."
"I'll think about it."
Atlas's neck went faster than his head, as the scales there were mostly in neat rows of similar sizes. When Jarzyl wanted to get started on his wing, he spoke up again. "Ok, this is getting too boring for me, just sitting here listening to you mumble numbers. Let me find something to read while you're doing your count."
"Sure." Jarzyl gestured towards her bedside table, on which there was a stacked pile of library books.
Atlas dragged the floor cushion over towards the bedside table to sit down there, and then he looked through the books while Jarzyl continued counting his scales and marking them with chalk. "These books are familiar."
"Mhm."
There were six books on Jarzyl's bedside table, all borrowed from the library. Atlas looked over their covers and checked the reference labels that were taped to their spines. "I remember you borrowing these."
Jarzyl chuckled. "Right, yes. It was you." Atlas worked part-time at the city's largest, central library, and last weekend when Jarzyl had gone to get some books, he had been on duty at the borrowing counter to stamp the books as borrowed and update their index cards.
Her borrowed books were all fiction novels, and came from various genres--fantasy, mystery, adventure, thriller--except for one particular book at the bottom of the pile, which was a little different from the others.
Atlas picked up that library book. "I don't remember you borrowing this." And he wouldn't--because on that day when Jarzyl had gone to the library, she had specifically gone to a different borrowing counter just to borrow this one book, avoiding her friend out of embarrassment.
Jarzyl was sitting behind Atlas, counting the scales on his left wing, but her neck frill perked up and she briefly stumbled over the count. "...seventy-four, seven, seventy-six, uh, seventy-five, seventy-six..."
Atlas flipped open the book jacket and looked at the blurb. "How interesting. I didn't know you read romance novels."
Jarzyl kept her gaze low as she marked Atlas's wing scales with her chalk, and she furiously avoided his amused smile. "It's not. It's about... it's a story about clan intrigue, subterfuge plots, and... and exciting action."
"I see." Atlas looked at the book's front cover, which featured two dragons flying together far too closely to be safe, in a tight embrace with claws locked. It almost looked like combat but was not. "The action does look exciting." He flipped the novel open and his eyes darted across the pages. "Hmm. Ooh, this is a very descriptive page that you've got bookmarked."
"Eeep." Jarzyl let out an embarrassed squeak. In that moment, she was glad that her scales were brightly coloured--pale scales made a blush obvious, but her orange colour concealed it well. "Caden recommended it to me!" she hissed.
Atlas nodded, still looking thoroughly amused. "Caden likes romance novels. But I didn't know you did. Hmm, and this is book two of the series, so I take it that you've already read book one and liked it so much that you wanted more."
Reaching out, Jarzyl turned Atlas's head and his amused grin away from her. "Shhh! Shut up, shut up, I can't count when you keep distracting me!"
Gradually, Jarzyl covered her friend with a pattern of white chalk dots over his body, as she marked all his scales one by one--first on the top surface of one wing, then across his upper back, and then on the other wing. Music continued to play softly from the radio, and Jarzyl hummed along while tapping her tail to the beat. As she continued her counting, Atlas read one of her library books--not the romance novel, thankfully--but he lay down on his front and read one of the other books.
"Your wing isn't smooth," Jarzyl noted.
Atlas didn't look up from the book, but he tilted his head. "Hmm?"
Jarzyl tapped her friend's wing. "See right here, there are some scales that didn't grow properly flat. They're a weird shape and they're protruding upwards. I don't mean the big flight control scales, but there are some small little scales jutting out from your wing."
Atlas glanced back at his own wing and tilted it to see, then he shrugged. "No, that's normal. A wing isn't supposed to be completely flat. Check your own wing--it's the same."
"Really?" Jarzyl unfurled a wing and peered at it. Now that she was taking a proper look, she realized that Atlas was right. As a dragon fledgling, just like a fully grown adult drakken, her wings were large membranes covered in those same thin, lightweight scale plates that covered her body all over--but rather than being properly flat, there were small scales at certain places that noticeably jutted out from the flight surface. Jarzyl picked at the protruding scales with a claw. "Oh, you're right. Why are they like that? Would I fly faster if I polished those scales down?
"No, quite the opposite. You don't want a perfectly flat wing. Those little protruding scales help keep the airstream attached to your wing, which improves control and lift." Atlas briefly glanced up from the book to look at her. "It's called vortex generation. That's from the flight school textbook. I read ahead and it's one of the theory topics that they're teaching later in the year."
"Bumpy wings are better than smooth and sleek--I didn't know that." Using her chalk, Jarzyl marked the scales and added them to the count, and then she continued. "This really is research. I'm learning all sorts of things!"
Moving onto Atlas's lower back, Jarzyl counted all his scales there too. Then she examined his tail and his hindlegs. "There's that one special scale."
Atlas was still reading one of the library books. He could read quickly, though not quite as speedily as Jarzyl could, possibly because he lacked her relentless impatience. He replied without looking up from the book. "Hmm? What was that?"
Jarzyl smiled. "Your one special scale. I just passed it in the count."
"Huh?"
With a giggle, Jarzyl grinned at her friend. She tapped a spot on his hindquarters--on the back of his right hindleg, close to his tail base. "Your one special scale. The one right here."
"What?" Atlas finally looked up. He glanced over his shoulder at Jarzyl, as she sat behind him. "What do you mean?"
"You don't know?" Jarzyl's grin widened. "Your scales aren't all black."
"Yes, because you're getting them all covered in chalk. Isn't that the point of your whole research project?"
Jarzyl playfully smacked Atlas's rear. "No, the point of the research is to gather information on drakken anatomy, and getting your scales covered in chalk is a side effect not an objective. Anyway that wasn't what I meant. I meant that your scales aren't all black. There's a little scale right here that's grey instead.
"Really?"
"Yeah. Right here." Jarzyl used her stick of chalk to draw a circle on Atlas's rear, highlighting that one tiny scale that was grey. "Did you not know that? Because I knew that." She winked at Atlas.
"I... did not know that. I thought all my scales were black." Atlas twisted his body, but he couldn't contort himself enough to see. His tail and his back were in view, but for him to see the back of his hindlegs or his own hindquarters would have needed much more flexibility, or a mirror. Now he sounded self-conscious. "Does it... does it look weird? Is it very obvious?"
Jarzyl just laughed. She drew several large arrows on Atlas's lower back, pointing right at the one grey scale. "No. It's just a miscoloured scale--everyone has those. And no one would notice that one unless they stare at your butt."
Atlas raised an eye ridge. "And you do that?"
"Sometimes." Jarzyl gestured with her chalk. "See, this is good scientific research. You're learning too. Hehehe."
After counting all the scales on Atlas's tail, Jarzyl bumped his shoulder and gestured for him to roll over. Her friend complied, lying back on the floor cushion with wings spread open, holding the library book up to keep reading.
Jarzyl sat on the floor cushion along beside him and then she slumped her upper body over his torso, making him grunt. "Ooh."
"Halfway there. Maybe another hour." Jarzyl casually tapped Atlas's chest, then she started counting the scales there too.
Atlas kept reading, now lying on his back with his head against the wall, but then he had to put down the book when Jarzyl grabbed his forelimb. He yawned lazily, and watched as she counted each scale and marked them with white chalk. When Jarzyl had finished with Atlas's foreleg, she looked up to find her friend's eyes closed, with his head down against the floor cushion--he'd dozed off.
Rather than moving on immediately, Jarzyl spent a long moment staring at the other fledgling. Atlas's chest moved calmly with each breath, and his mouth was slightly open, letting a line of drool slide down his cheek and onto the floor cushion--he looked vulnerable yet comfortable, and there was a simple, appealing authenticity to that.
Jarzyl was deeply tempted to curl up beside her friend and take a nap too. Soft music continued to play out from the radio, and a cool afternoon breeze wafted through the room and made the curtains sway. But there was work to be done, and she had her science project to complete.
For a moment Jarzyl held Atlas's paw, feeling the warm softness of his paw pads against hers, then she gently put down his forelimb and moved down to his hindlegs. Once more she began slowly counting scales, working her way down each line of tiny, hexagonal scales and marking each of them with chalk.
Counting scales for Atlas's hindlegs took twice as long as his foreleg had, unsurprisingly. When that was done, Jarzyl tallied up the numbers and added them to the paper sheet on which she was keeping record. She nodded approvingly, then glanced over the sooty-scaled fledgling. She was now done with his head, neck, wings, back, tail, chest, forelimbs, and his hindlimbs, as indicated by the white chalk markings that covered his scales almost everywhere.
There was only one place left, which Jarzyl had been deliberately avoiding until now--his underbelly. Jarzyl bit her tongue, and her neck frill perked up. Below Atlas's ribcage, his torso smoothly became the flat of his underbelly without any specific transition point.
Jarzyl double checked that Atlas was still napping, and then she had another good long stare, but not at his face this time. It really was just another part of the body, yet this was also something different. Dragons didn't care much about nudity or covering themselves, except there. Jarzyl knew things--from reading her encyclopaedia, from attending science classes at school, and even from the numerous jokes and insults which were common amongst fledglings.
Partially but not completely concealed by his jet-black colour, right between his hindlegs there was a pair of orifices. Lower down, closer to his tail base was, as slang had it, the tail hole, which had a biological function. But then above that was a different, longer slit--the genital slit, which was for a different and altogether far more curious function.
Every dragon had a genital slit--Jarzyl certainly knew she had one too--yet it was a place that was considered private. And of all the places on the body, this was one where drake and drakka differed most--though currently that wasn't obvious. Externally it didn't look too different. Atlas's genital slit looked slightly shorter compared to how she knew her own slit looked, though it seemed to bulge out just a bit more from his underbelly--for _anatomical_reasons, and that thought alone made Jarzyl's tail twitch.
When Jarzyl had first counted Atlas's scales, years ago as they were both hatchlings, she'd been getting bored of the project at this point and just rushed over the count, not touching or examining this one part of his body too much. Now though, her curiosity was running wild. Jarzyl rested both her paws against the insides of Atlas's hindlegs, feeling the muscle in his limbs. One moment of hesitation, and then she slid one paw down and onto his underbelly--not yet touching his slit, but very close, closer than she'd ever touched before.
Then she glanced up and found Atlas with eyes wide open and head raised to watch her. He'd woken up instantly. Both fledglings stared at each other, neither saying anything. Then Jarzyl used the chalk stick and marked a scale on Atlas's underbelly. "Uh, one...?"
Quiet for a moment, then the tension snapped, and they both laughed. "Hahah...!" Awkward embarrassment mixed with that same easy, familiar comfortable feeling from before, and Jarzyl grinned. Instead of feeling relaxed, she felt energized and curious. "We're almost done. I'm... I'm going to count the scales here now. That's all that left. Down there." She gestured vaguely at his underbelly.
Atlas opened his mouth to say something, but then he closed it without saying anything. He tilted his head, glanced around the room at everything except her, and then finally made eye contact with Jarzyl again. "Well. Okay."
Jarzyl's grip on the chalk tightened. She considered offering the chalk to Atlas and asking if he would have preferred to count his scales himself. "Atlas, would you rather...? Eh... Never mind." She changed her mind--this was her project, and she was going to do all of it--everywhere.
Atlas blinked. "What?"
Jarzyl nodded but didn't bother to explain. "You just lie there, let me continue. Yes. One, two, three..." Her count went slower than before, with each mark of the chalk gently applied to Atlas's scales.
Jarzyl worked in a circle, first along the portion of Atlas's underbelly closest to his right hindleg, then across his torso, moving down beside his left hindleg, then across his tail base. Slowly she went around that circle, closing in towards his genital slit. The touch of her paw finally made Atlas flinch and his hindlegs twitched as if he wanted to close them. Jarzyl felt his thigh muscles tense up, but he didn't push her away.
"Ticklish?" Jarzyl asked, trying to sound casual despite how her heartbeat had picked up.
"Uh. Umm." Atlas was breathing quicker now, and he was holding onto the edge of the floor cushion with his forepaw. "Ticklish, yeah. Sensitive. That's... you... yes. Jarzyl." He said her name in sort of a breathless gasp, and that made Jarzyl lose her count.
Blinking, Jarzyl backtracked and then started counting again. "That's very distracting when you say my name like that."
"Oh?! Oh really?" Atlas asked, sounding amused. "I'm distracting you? And you don't think that you're distracting me--?"
"Shh, we're almost done." Jarzyl had been resting one paw against the inside of Atlas's hindleg, but then she shifted her paw towards his underbelly. She used her other paw and casually marked more and more scales with the chalk, until finally there was no avoiding it, and she touched Atlas right there. Just a light, brushing contact against his genital slit, but that made Atlas flinch again, and she could feel the strain in his abdominal muscles. Compared to how he had been peacefully napping and slack just a few minutes ago, he now appeared remarkably alert and tense.
Instead of immediately counting scales and marking them with chalk, Jarzyl made a few experimental touches. For the first time she was touching a drake's genital slit, and it didn't feel too different compared to how her own slit felt, or even just how touching his torso had felt--his scales were smooth and flat, but the flesh underneath seemed a little warmer and firmer. Keeping one paw pressed right there, she counted the rest of the scales--they were particularly small here.
When she was done with the counting, she put down the chalk stick but didn't remove her paws from between Atlas's hindlegs. Instead Jarzyl shifted her touch about and explored. Despite how the scales here were small, they weren't thin and soft but were instead slightly thicker, especially right around his genital slit. Partially extending a claw, Jarzyl slid her claw tip against those scales.
"He--hey, that's ticklish. Sensitive," Atlas said to her.
Jarzyl nodded. "Interesting. The scales here are a little tougher."
"I think that's normal. You'd want the scales there to withstand impact," Atlas muttered.
"Huh?" Jarzyl paused, and she briefly lifted her paw to sniff at it. It smelled interesting--rather like Atlas's scales, but also like him in a new, different way. "Impact? You mean like if you crash landed on your belly?"
"Not that sort of impact. The other kind."
"What?"
Atlas shrugged his wings, as he lay back on the floor cushion. "I mean, um... repeated, deliberate, rhythmic impact, against other scales which are... are from a different dragon but a similar location."
Jarzyl's neck frill twitched. "Ah, yes. Right. I know what you mean." Curiosity got the better of her. She would never have dared to do something like this in public, but now it was just the two of them in her bedroom. "Hang on a second. Look away." Opening a wing and flipping it forward, she used it like a curtain to block Atlas's view of her, and then she moved her paw down to check her own underbelly. Sure enough, there scales there also felt a little tougher, but certainly sensitive. What would it feel like to have her underbelly against Atlas's? That was an intriguing thought that she could hardly believe she was having.
Jarzyl furled her wing back up to find Atlas had not looked away and was staring at her. In response she stuck out her tongue, then playfully winked at him, which made him laugh. He looked embarrassed, but not uncomfortable. "Haha. Uh... This last bit is taking longer than the other parts," Atlas noted.
"I'm just curious. You need to be curious to do good, proper research."
"Proper research? I don't know if this is very proper. You know that we're fledgling now, things are different. I just... I... uh..." Atlas babbled for a bit, but then he stopped and stared with his wide-eyed expression as Jarzyl sat over his tail and resumed her examination of his underbelly.
It was just fun to touch there and see the reaction that got. Jarzyl had never seen Atlas this alert and wide-eyed before. His whole body was tense, and she could feel the tension in the young drake's hindlegs and his underbelly. Jarzyl found this amusing, but also genuinely interesting to explore. Although there was a groove between the lines of scales right at the middle of Atlas's underbelly, he had his muscles tensed, keeping things clenched up. Jarzyl wasn't sure if she felt relieved, or disappointed that there wasn't more to see.
"No scales in there..." Atlas murmured.
"If you say so." Finally Jarzyl lifted her paw away, but not before giving a friendly pat right there--even that gentle action made Atlas grunt and jerk, rather to her amusement. "Good job. We're done."
"Bllrrrghnnaah," went the sooty-scaled fledgling, making a hilarious incoherent sound. He flailed his three legs, then hurriedly flipped himself back onto his front and stood up. He gritted his teeth for a moment, staring out the window, then he slowly relaxed. "Ooh, that was close."
Jarzyl added the final number to her paper, and then she wiped her tail tip clean off ink and tossed the chalk stick back under her bed. "Close? What was close?" she asked.
Atlas paced around her bedroom, then he walked out onto the balcony and fluttered his wings. He took a deep breath of air before coming back in. "Close to being very improper." The way he phrased it, Jarzyl suddenly felt like it was a challenge and she half wanted to pounce on him and do... something. Uncertainty made her hesitate.
Instead she picked up the paper and glanced over all the numbers, comparing them to the expected numbers for Atlas's scales. "The numbers actually match quite closely. So it really is true that dragons keep the same number of scales from hatchling to drakken. Another victory for science."
"Ah, yes. Hooray." Atlas glanced down at himself. "I'm all chalky." He licked the back of his paw to try and clean his scales, but then stuck out his tongue. "Uggh, not a good taste."
Jarzyl nodded. "Let's get you cleaned up. We have the data, now it's time for the post-research clean up." Putting her paper down on the desk, she turned and beckoned for Atlas to follow her. "Come on."
TO BE CONTINUED