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The Commute

Written By: Skabaard

She couldn't remember ever being more miserable in her life. Shitty day at work, some asshole totaling her car during the middle of her shift, and it was raining. Fuck! She wasn't sure if she could hate the universe any more than she did at that very second. It was as if God had looked at his calendar for the day and just decided to say "fuck it!" to answering prayers and causing miracles just to obliterate her with infuriating determination.

Taking a long slow breath to release some of her pent-up rage at the whole of creation, she forced her mind to the bright side. There was always a bright side, right? At least the bus stop she was waiting at was covered; at least she wasn't wet. That much was nice, right? She snorted at her dimming optimism. She didn't even have a bench to sit on. Sure, there had been one there at some point, but it had long since been torn from the ground, stolen by someone desperate enough to carry it away. She could still see where it had been bolted into the vandalized concrete.

With a heavy, defeated sigh, she leaned on the plexiglass wall behind her, listening to the rain rattle over the flimsy roof overhead. What was the fucking point anymore? Her fingers idly plucked the buttons from the holes that lined her dress coat, letting it slide off of her shoulders. The rain had made the heat of the day even warmer and grossly humid.

With a flare of frustrated violence, she screamed and threw her jacket into the road as hard as she could. It fluttered limply before the rain bore it to the ground to float away on the torrential amount of water that was turning the road into a river. She watched it go. Good fucking riddance. As if her business casual dress had helped her keep her job. She was damn good at what she did, but that disgusting sleazeball hardly cared about her productivity, just about the cup size of her replacement. She hoped that slut tore his dick off during their "business meetings." Slimy motherfucker...

She knew that she was letting her vanity get the better of her, and she tried not to let it add any salt to those particular wounds, but fuck! What did that whore have that she didn't?! She was sexy too! Mornings at the gym kept her slim and tight, and while she wasn't packing fucking bowling balls in her blouse, she was still shapely, well-proportioned. The frustration in his eyes when she had turned him down for the umpteenth time had pleased her, but she hadn't expected that pink slip sitting on her desk before she left for the day. She guessed she knew why all her sexual harassment complaints had gone unanswered. Fucking bastard would see who got the last laugh when her wrongful termination suit hit his bank account.

Before that, though, she needed a lawyer... and a new car... and money to keep up with her rent... fuck... She sighed, too angry to cry. Right now... she really just wished that the bench was still there; she wanted to sit down more than she had ever wanted anything.

As if in answer to her silent desire, she was shocked by the sound of the bus finally pulling up to the stop. It had seemingly come from nowhere, and she eyed it carefully. It didn't look like the other busses she had seen driving around the city. It must have been new; it was too clean, and it didn't have any advertisements plastered all over it. At least it wasn't perfect. The bright LED display on the front seemed to be half-out, only saying the bus was going "HOME" in big, bold letters. It was enough to make her smile. She lived in Homestead, a little suburb on the edge of the sprawling metropolis. It looked like this bus would take her home, then.

In a heart-warming display of care, the driver slowed significantly, rolling to a gentle stop in front of the plexiglass so as not to drench her in a cascade of water like she had seen so many others do. With a sharp, pneumatic hiss, the doors slid open, and a pleasant looking man rose from the driver's seat, taking an umbrella from a rack next to him to lean out of the door, beckoning her in with a friendly smile.

Once again, she couldn't help but grin, darting over and following the driver up the stairs. She stuck a hand into the pocket of her skirt for the fare she had prepared, but the kindly-featured man just stopped her with the wave of a hand. "No need, miss." he said in a surprisingly rumbling baritone, "It's been one of those days. Just take a seat; I'll have you home in no time."

She blinked and murmured a shy thank you as she walked down the aisle. The driver mustn't have been having a very good day, either, because there was only one other soul on the bus, a skinny, lanky girl who sat just behind the driver's seat. The youth looked up at her with a happy smile and a timid wave. She barely looked to be in her twenties, probably some college student home on summer break.

Flashing her a quick smile, she wandered down the aisle, letting herself flop down into a random seat about halfway down the bus's length. It was heavenly, just getting off of her feet, and she leaned heavily back into the welcome seat. The bus was definitely new. There were no graffiti marring the shiny, fresh-from-the-factory finish of the walls and rows of seats, and it smelled clean and fresh.

Some more pneumatic pops and hisses later, and the doors were closing as they pulled away from the stop. She watched it go, and suddenly grunted a curse under her breath. She had left her handbag under the roof of the bus stop. It hardly mattered; anyone who found it would just get an empty pocketbook and keys to a car that would never run again. Fuck, she didn't even know if she would be able to afford her apartment for much longer. She let it go, refusing to mourn the loss of nothing she hadn't already lost. She could cancel her credit cards easily enough.

Instead, she just sat, eyes closed, listening to the rumble of the bus's engine vibrate beneath her, rising and falling to the rhythm of the traffic the bus navigated through. It must have been minutes before she was roused by the sound of a timid cough next to her. Sliding open her bright blue eyes, she looked over at the young woman, who had seated herself across the aisle from her. "H-hey." said the girl nervously.

Giving the youth the smile she seemed to so desire, she replied, swallowing a tired sigh, "Hi."

When she didn't keep talking, the girl shifted uneasily, fidgeting in her seat for a few anxious seconds. Eventually she once more found her soft, feminine voice. "So... is this the first time you've taken the bus home?"

"Yeah."

"Oh... um... well... don't worry. It's lots of fun! I've taken the bus loads of times!"

She looked around at the spotless bus. "You the only one?"

The girl nodded shyly. "Most of the time. I take the bus every chance I get! The driver gets lonely sometimes. I keep him company when I can. It's nice to see someone else taking the bus, though. There aren't many new people nowadays... Seems folks don't like the ride anymore."

"Can you blame them? There aren't many busses that are this nice."

The youth smiled knowingly, showing her teeth. "You got that right. This one's definitely the best. The driver takes real good care of it." The girl practically vibrated with excitement in her seat, chirping when she got no reply, "My name's Sally! What's yours?"

Something told her that the driver wasn't the biggest conversationalist, and she had suddenly become the target of a never-ending torrent of unbounded, giddy energy. She struggled to rein in a sigh; she wasn't much in the mood for conversation, but she could at least be polite. "Nice to meet you, Sally." she murmured hesitantly, "I'm Astrid."

Sally nearly leapt from her seat, grinning like she had been given a million dollars. "Oh, that's so lovely! Astrid's such a pretty name! It fits you perfectly! It means star, right? Something like that? I like the stars, don't you? They look so cold and far away when you first see them, but a little time alone with them is all it takes to realize they're so big and hot. They're so pretty, just like you!" She stopped short with a squeak and slapped her hands down over her mouth as she realized what she said. "S-sorry! I didn't mean... I just... I just get so excited meeting new people, is all! I didn't mean... I mean, you're beautiful, but I didn't mean it like that! I mean... maybe I did, but I didn't mean to say it like that! Gah! Hah! Wow! Is it hot in here or what?! I'm... I'm going to go see if the driver can crank the AC! You just sit right there! Don't... Uh... Don't worry; I'll take care of it! I'll just... go take care of it now! I'm going to go! Right now!"

With a mirthfully raised eyebrow, Astrid watched the young lady squirm from her seat and practically sprint down the aisle, her hands balled into tight fists at her sides. A few minutes into her first public bus ride and she was being hit on by a skinny, little thing barely out of her teens. That, too, helped to dull the edge of her ire, though she struggled not to laugh. Sally seemed too sweet to deserve it.

She had to admit to herself... if she were so inclined, she'd have considered it. Sally was quite the looker, with a lithe, youthful body, stunning green eyes and pale, strawberry-blonde hair that was several shades lighter than her own, a darker, more mellow red. The girl filled out the fabric of her short-sleeved tee even better than Astrid did her blouse, with a significant amount of plump flesh that made an unfamiliar twinge of jealousy tighten in her stomach. It didn't even look like Sally needed to wear a bra, she was so tight and perky, and her curves hardly stopped there. Dark blue denim capris clung to her long, shapely legs like they were a second skin, covering her from just above the generous swells of her tight butt to the middle of her calves. She must have had her run of anyone she wanted wherever she went to school, though her shyness spoke of someone unused to the attention her body must have garnered her.

Astrid looked down, away from that slender, receding back. She remembered having that much energy, rushing from place to place with hardly a thought of where she was placing her feet. Part of her missed that. It had been a long time since someone had called her beautiful with such... sincerity. Sure, he had done it plenty of times, with the intention of sliding his hands somewhere they were most definitely not welcome, but him doing it had always made her feel... dirty. The eagerness in Sally's eyes hadn't given her that slimy feeling. That was a welcome change of pace. Perhaps her luck was already turning around.

She lifted her hands to her body, sliding slowly along the silky fabric of her loose blouse. Maybe she should buy some tight jeans. She was taller than Sally, slender, and certainly had a body worth flaunting a little bit more than maybe she did. The girl was skinny, almost frail-looking. She was broader, more muscular, if in a svelte, toned way more than being jacked like some bodybuilder. With a sly smile, she undid the top-most button of her shirt, and then another, letting a tiny sliver of cleavage show. She was hardly flat-chested. Maybe shirts that were a bit less loose would do her good.

With a pleased sigh, she wriggled in her skirt. When had she stopped being proud of herself? What were all those mornings in the gym, working herself to a sweat again and again, for, if not for herself? She was beautiful. She had plush, if modest, curves; she was soft in all the right places, where it counted, but was tough enough to really _grab_onto. She could take being thrown onto her cold, empty bed and ravaged like a beast in heat. She had a form that deserved to be touched, lusted after, as much as any other woman's.

She undid another button. Who the fuck was she hiding from? Him? Let him look, look at how her bust filled her shirt, how her hips swayed when she walked. Let him run to his office every ten minutes to jerk it into a tissue like some hopeless pervert! It was the only way he was going to get off without the help of some vapid bimbo! Let his balls turn blue and fall of from neglect! Men like him gave the gender a bad name! Bullying women into bed, and using their money to buy one when a woman was smart enough to slap that infuriating, shit-eating grin off of his stupid, misogynistic face; he deserved it!

Another button was set free, and she rolled her shoulders, thrusting her chest out with sudden pride. She could see her bra, peeking up over the cloth that hid it. White... boring... She was going to buy something better, black, red, lacy, something frilly, girly. She hadn't worn anything sexy for herself, for anyone, really, in what felt like forever. Fuck her stupid car! Fuck her stupid job! She was going to buy something slinky just to take pictures of herself in it! Her cousin was a photographer; she could use her camera. She needed a good one; she needed high resolution. It would let her blow it up huge, make a poster, life sized! She could hang it on her wall and look at it every day as a reminder of how fucking sexy she was!

Whenever she brought someone home she would watch them look at it. They'd question it, or not, it didn't matter! She'd just strike the same pose, push her chest out, throw her ass out. Just. Fucking. Flaunt it! Who gave a fuck what they'd think?! They'd like it; they'd hate it! What the fuck did it matter?! She mattered! What she thought mattered! Fuck everyone else! God! Fuck! She was so hot!

The bus entered a tunnel, and she was plunged into blackness, only the bus's dim, internal lighting and the occasional old, yellow, sodium lamps outside briefly illuminating her. The engine grumbled beneath her as if it were in agreement, shaking the seat. She realized her blouse was more off than on, now, and she even more gladly realized she didn't give a single fuck as she gleefully rubbed her thighs together under her skirt. She didn't need to see to feel. Her hands cupped her breasts through her bra, crushing, squeezing, making lightning tear up her spine and forcing a moan from her plump, sensuous lips. Her tongue slid out to lick them. They were made for kissing, apart from that, only the most carnal of acts, steamy, wet. Fuck, she was hot!

Her panties were sticking to her; she couldn't remember being this needy in her life. She felt like she needed so much, and that she didn't need anyone at all. Whoever she chose to share her body with, it would be because she appreciated them, not because she needed a fuck! She didn't need anything! She was fucking gorgeous; she was perfect, powerful, so powerful, powerful enough to explode at any second, and she frantically goaded herself onward!

The bus picked up speed, its engine roaring to life beneath her, sending only the most stunning of sensations trembling into her slick folds, and she rubbed her legs together with shameless insistence. Her hands roughly savaged her, her sensitive skin burning beneath her bra. She could feel her nipples, puffy and erect through the supportive garment. What the fuck was she thinking? How dare she have the gall to hide herself! Her bra was insulting, a disgusting travesty! She needed no support! She was full, firm; she didn't sag! Gravity held no power over her savage beauty! She had spent so much time secreting herself away! It sickened her! She thought of all the stares she missed, all the worship she deserved, all that from which she had run because of a slovenly_pig_ of a man!

Sally had seen through that, innocence, unabashed candor in her lovely eyes. They had ravaged her, seeing through her clothes even as she had smiled so genuinely. That was what she had missed for so long. That... that desire, that need she inspired in the hearts of those who had the courage to look at her, she deserved that. Her body demanded it! The smooth, torrid skin that shone in the lights that started to flick by faster and faster needed it! Her skin burned with that need. She felt fevered, but not ill; she was burning up, but she wasn't sweating. She just felt deliciously, sensuously hot.

The seat that vibrated against her with the primal thunder of an engine far too large to be in a bus made her twitch and writhe. She'd never been screwed so hard in her life. She didn't even need to touch herself, but she did anyway, doing anything in her power to provoke her swelling ardor. Finally, she was getting what she deserved! As good as grinding her palms against her sensitive buds through her bra felt, it was long past the time she should have set herself free.

With a trembling growl, utterly inhuman, that came to life in her throat, she sunk her claws into the offensive garment, tearing it off with vicious strength and the sound of popping clasps. Fuck! Yes! Her hands went back around her now-bare globes, tearing into them with a frenzy. She felt it happening, yearned for more. Why shouldn't she have claws, Sharp, curving, thick, claws to shred and rip, claws to hold and caress, touch with just as much tender gentleness as demanding roughness?! They were long, glittering black in the lights that were now a near-constant blur as they flew by.

She watched them finish coming into being. Yes! Perfect! More! Her body was tense, tight. She needed to stretch; she needed room to grow, become what she had always been. She ached, craving more. There was room. She had all the room she needed, and she arched her back, raising long, defined arms over her head as she pushed her legs away from her, flexing her well-worked body.

Her seat was filled by the curves of her callipygian ass. Her arms lengthened with her legs. Her spine pushed her head closer to the ceiling. She could hear almost nothing over the din of the engine she was riding, but she heard herself cry out, moaning, grunting as her frame spread out. Her clothes complained noisily, but she could only feel it as the fabric she no longer cared for shredded around her surging frame. Her blouse lost the rest of its buttons, ripping to tatters around her arms. The lean, sexy muscle that lined her shapely form grew with her, gaining definition, pounding against her skin, but not daring to exceed the bounds of her perfect proportions. It sprinted alongside her bones, but never surpassed them, never threatening her feminine appearance.

Her body shook, trembling with the violence unleashed by her transformation. She wished her skirt was made of sturdier stuff, but it surrendered weakly as her widening hips and flailing legs burst free of it. She mourned it only because she had wanted it to last longer. It was euphoric, feeling her clothes, the clothes she had worn to work in that horrid office every day, practically disintegrating around her majesty, around the glory of her form. Her shoes lasted only a second longer, creaking in distress before her toes, likewise capped with wicked, curving talons, refused to be bound any longer.

Panting as she watched, her perfect, bestial feet got further and further away from her eyes, but they didn't shrink; they stayed proportional, growing with her. She bent her toes, clicking her talons against the floor of the bus. Strong, flawless, confident. Her feet bent painlessly, her joints shifting, her athletic physique shifting to allow her to walk digitigrade.

Opening her mouth to moan again, she let her head fall back. She had never felt anything that was so close to heaven than the sensations pouring through her body right then. Her skin burned with the fire of her changes, growing only tighter, so tight, tense, taut. It pinched in on itself, resolving as a coat of tough, overlapping scales that took on the bright yellow of the lamps that were no more than a line that blurred along the windows of the bus. The full, ripe breasts that pushed into her hands as she grew, however, stayed soft, supple, delightfully so. Her chest, stomach, her front continued to darken, the smooth, immaculate scales growing red, darker still, dusky, the color of brick, darker than her hair.

She gnashed her teeth around gasping breaths. They were sharp. She had more of them, so many. Her mouth made room for them to thicken, lengthen against her tapering tongue. Her face pushed out, her lips thinning, only just. Her nose receded, but her nostrils flared around the air she sucked into her lungs. Her scaly snout lengthened. There were so many teeth, dozens, twin rows that could rip, sunder flesh and bone. For a moment, she yearned to sink them into his worthless body, but that urge drifted away, carried from her by the tide of her passion. He was beneath her, so far below her. He was a worm, less than that. Pathetic. She pushed him from her racing mind.

Her ears tingled, and the engine was abruptly deafening. She grew used to it quickly, however, and she welcomed the sensation of her ears lengthening, tapering to narrow points and following the growth of a pair of horns that pounded from her skull, rising up between her scales and crimson hair. They were long, curving slightly upward, dangerously pointed. She had the head of some ancient reptile, but she was so much more than a lizard. No lizard was so mighty, so huge, and still she grew.

Her panties were the last to give way, having grown desperately tight on her hips and rear, digging into her soaked flower with frantic urgency. They snapped as she gave a haughty twist of her legs and crossed her arms over her chest, splitting the rest of her blouse off of her, leaving her finally, blissfully nude. And just in time. Her still-lengthening spine encountered resistance at its base. Her flesh bunched above the beginning of the graceful contour of her backside, pushing free of her body, growing longer, thicker. She felt it suddenly. It felt right, and it took no effort to control it, flicking it up and around as it took on her fit, trim proportions, slender, but lined with unrelentingly powerful muscle.

It shuddered larger with the rest of her. Her seat was pitifully small under her thick, perfect ass as it pushed her further up. The ceiling was rapidly approaching the tips of her horns, and she nearly kissed it as she met it, bending over to press her shoulders against the cold metal. She spoke words. Bigger. More. Words of greed, avarice, all justified. She deserved it, she knew, and as she demanded it, her body gave it to her. The flimsy aluminum of the bus would crumple under the onslaught of her body, but she restrained herself. The bus, its speed unknowable, deserved no such punishment, so she let herself be contorted into an increasingly insufficient space.

She was laughing now, uncontrollable laughter, the laughter of a goddess being born into a world meant to worship her transcendence, and she felt more nubs of flesh pushing from her upper back. Turning to save the bus that was more and more just a cocoon for her evolution, she put her back to the aisle, giving them as much room as she could as the confining steel and glass bent her further and further over onto herself. They expanded with spastic spurts, flailing through the air as unfamiliar, but entirely right-feeling muscles spasmed fitfully.

Like those of some tremendous bat, a beast of dreams and nightmares both, her wings grew long and powerful. She flapped them as they broadened, the air in the bus filling their translucent, maroon membranes with dull booms that were just barely audible over the reverberation of the engine. The bus prevented her from opening them completely, but she swallowed that surge of annoyance. There would be time for that later. Rather, she watched her metal prison grow more and more inadequate to contain her perfection, taking just as much joy from that as the heavy, pulsing throbs screaming from her loins in time with the rumbling of the engine beneath her.

Her voice, deep, feminine, unrelentingly powerful, demanded more, and more she was given. Her hair kept falling into her face; she let it, running claws through the tousled mess. She liked it. The fiery read locks suited her, just as the red of her scales and flesh suited her. The bus bent her in half, forcing her arms and legs in, tighter and tighter, enveloping her in a flimsy layer of glass and aluminum. Her wings were plastered to her back, her tail curled around her waist. But she wouldn't stop getting bigger, endlessly bigger, relentlessly bigger, stronger, more beautiful.

The bus would burst, it would give, and she begged it not to. The streak of yellow outside, the glaring lamps that lined that seemingly-infinite tunnel, glared down on her, the color of her scales. They brightened, flaring to stunning, blinding brilliance. Her scales glimmered with that strength, that fearless radiance. They mirrored that power. She was a shining, golden goddess. What was the sun to her scorching beauty? What were the stars to her cold, imperious judgment? Nothing! She could look down on all of her, her creation and laugh at its feeble attempts to mimic her glory!

She just needed freedom. With the shrieking groan of tortured metal and cracking glass, she pitted her titanic body against the frailty of mortal creation. The bus shattered around her. The lights outside swamped all of reality in a harsh, yellowish glow, filling her world with the color of her scales, a new dawn! She was born, finally and decisively, and she roared! The sound trembled in her tremendous lungs, tearing through her throat, and exploded from between her razored teeth with the force of a supernova. The heat in her body peaked, filling her with dire energy, and it bloomed against her scales as the brightness intensified to impossible levels, scouring anything around her in a flickering flash of primordial violence.

And then she collapsed, nearly spent, leaning heavily on the seat in front of her. Blinking numbly, she tried to corral her thoughts, a task made difficult by her still-sluggish mind. Her clawed digits closed around her support, hesitantly holding her up. That wasn't possible. She blinked again; it wasn't possible. She leaned back, her wings pinched uncomfortably behind her with her tail. She couldn't believe it; she wouldn't believe it.

The bus rolled to a slow, gentle halt, the familiar pneumatic hiss signaling the opening of the doors. She looked up, catching a glimpse of Sally debarking, a colorfully-scaled tail following her out. The fire that had scoured Astrid's body slowly, falteringly receded, dulling to a pleasant warmth that soothed her as her breathing returned to a bare semblance of normalcy.

When she rose to her feet, she expected shaky clumsiness, but she moved with cool, serpentine grace, her feet taking her weight easily and effortlessly. She strode up the length of the bus, passing row after row of empty seats, staring in awe at the surroundings she had felt crumble around her body. When she reached the front, she half expected to see a dragon peering back at her, but it was the same, cheerful-looking man as before, his umbrella still wet from the rain from which he had shielded her as she boarded his bus. He smiled up at her, gesturing to his bus's open doors, quipping a soft, "Welcome home!"

Nodding numbly, she turned and walked down the steps, stepping out into a world vastly unlike the one she had left. The sun was bright and high in the sky, free of the fear that the puffy, white clouds would think to hide it. It warmed the grass under her toes, and she saw vast, rolling hills stretch out before her, some capped with outcroppings of lush, green trees. There were birds high in the air above her, and her sensitive nose was filled with the scent of fresh, spring air, the hint of flowers coming from somewhere distant.

With the repetitive hiss of the doors closing, the familiar sound of the bus's engine rumbled to sluggish life, and it pulled slowly away. She turned, watching it go, gaping as she watched it slowly disappear, just fading away into nothingness, leaving her alone with the persistent breeze that tugged on her wings, begging her to spread them wide. She still didn't believe it.

She looked around. There was nothing, but everything. So much open space, but she didn't know what to do with it. She felt awkward and lost. She just jumped with a surprised yelp when a figure hurtled from the sky above her, impacting the ground with enough force to crater the ground beneath her taloned feet. "Man!" Sally cried, stretching her arms over her head and folding her wings behind her with a pleased shuffle, "It feels so good to bend after all that, doesn't it?"

Astrid couldn't keep her mouth closed. The dragoness that stood before her wasn't nearly as shy as she had seemed as a human. She was built the same way, thin and lithe, and the lack of clothes certainly didn't hinder her voluptuous curves any. She was covered in a coat of dark, almost metallic blue scales, save for those on her front, which were dusky viridian, a deep, vibrant green that made the pale, almost-white flesh of her nipples stand out in striking contrast, like a pair of pallid rosebuds that matched the diaphanous hide stretched across her wings and opposed the blackness of her claws and downward-curving horns.

Her tail wiggled excitedly behind her as she averted her eyes, some of her shyness appearing to return. "Are... are you okay, Astrid? Did... did you like it?"

"It was..." she answered, "It was like I... I mean I felt... I felt-"

"Like you were growing" Sally interjected, "Getting bigger, all that power and confidence just rushing through you?" She shifted her weight nervously from foot to foot. "It was real. It happened. I didn't believe it my first time either, though, so don't feel bad."

"But..." Astrid stammered, "But I don't... it doesn't feel like-"

"Like you're a goddess, perfect in every way, demanding worship, expecting love and praise from everyone who looks at you?" Sally took a slow, careful step toward her. "Don't you feel that way? Wait for it, it'll come back. You just have to forget who you thought you were. This is the real you." She came closer, putting her own clawed hand on her Astrid's arm. "Look down... at the grass. Really look at it."

Heaving an uncertain breath, she did so, looking down. Unsurprisingly it looked like grass, but Sally's insistence didn't abate, the youthful dragoness bending to scrape a handful of the green carpet from the soil, holding it up in front of her face. It went up to her ankle, but the blades were thin, almost like hair, they were so fine and skinny. She didn't get it, and her traveling companion hummed thoughtfully, tossing the clump of dirt disdainfully over her shoulder. "Okay... Oh, I know! Here, come on! This'll put things in perspective for you!"

With an excited wiggle, Sally bounded away, half-floating on her wings as often as her taloned feet touched the ground, practically dragging Astrid along behind her. She was stronger than she looked, and the stunned dragoness found herself borne toward a distant hill, capped with a thick, wooded crown. At least, the hill looked distant. In reality, it was just small, and the two dragons reached it in less than a minute.

Astrid was speechless. The trees looked ancient, huge, hoary oaks and maples that crested the top of the hill they stood on. Even the tallest of the massive trees only came up to her waist. And then the rest of it hit her. The way the ground shuddered every time her feet hit the earth, her talons gouging cavernous ruts in the grass, the way her voice, thunderous in her throat, deep, earthshakingly powerful, rumbled with overwhelming strength, she hadn't thought of it before; it had seemed so properly natural, but she had grown unstoppably powerful.

It crashed through her, the memory of that power, the power she still possessed, overwhelming, unknowable. Her flawless, impregnable scales gleamed a bright yellow in the warm sunlight, the red of her chest and stomach glinting more dully. She lifted her arm, balled her hand into a fist, and flexed. The familiar shape of her modest, feminine muscle bunched like it always had, but she knew that she had the strength to move mountains now. She was enormous, countless feet of savage beauty, countless tons of muscle, bone, and sinew. "Sally..." she whispered, a gale hissing between monstrous teeth.

The shorter, skinnier, curvier dragoness stepped closer again, her alluring, jade eyes half-lidded. "There you are. Do you remember now? Do you feel better?" She got even closer, scales hovering a scant hair's breadth away from hers. "For what it counts, Astrid, you're still beautiful. More, now, so much more."

There it was, what she had been looking for. Her pride. It flared within her, bright, hot, reigniting the firestorm that had burned in her body. She had come close, but hadn't found her release during her transformation, and that need abruptly stunned her. "I..." she said, suddenly panting again, "I've never done this before..."

Sally cocked a scaled ridge over an eye. "Done what?"

Astrid pushed forward, pressing a kiss onto the smaller dragon's thin, reptilian lips and taking comparatively spindly arms up in her unforgivingly strong fingers. She pushed, pushed hard, bearing Sally down under her greater mass. The pair of dragons fell, the smaller one landing beneath the larger with a boom that made the earth quake. Maroon-membraned wings billowed open behind her, shrouding them both in murky, crimson shadow, and she viciously attacked her fellow draconian traveler, shoving yard after yard of fleshy tongue between accepting teeth.

She paused, shifting her hands down, hovering over breasts that, were her own not perfect, would have put hers to shame. And then she pulled briefly away, a silent question in her eyes. "Well?" Sally growled playfully, lacing her fingers behind Astrid's neck, tucking a lock of bright red hair behind twitching ears as she did so, "What are you waiting for?"

Nothing... Not anymore.