A Big Shiny Blue Marble Ch. 18

She patted the cheek there as she stood up and was surprised to find the girl in her arms, telling her something which she had no idea about -- other than it seemed to be heartfelt. The demon tried to see, but it was too far, so Yuan spread her hands and a reflective surface appeared out of the air as a mirror, and she was pleased to be able to show the girl that her fine bottom was once again just that.

When the demon had seen it, Yuan dispelled the mirror, and the demon went to her knees before her and bowed her head. Yuan decided that it wasn't the sort of relationship that she wanted and she bent to pull the girl to her feet with a smile and a shake of her head.

It rained for a week. Oh, it varied quite a lot in its intensity, sometimes being gentle for hours, but then it would increase. Mostly, they were safe, though they weren't particularly warm, not catching the warnings in time to look for some extra wood to burn for a little heat and dryness. They had to manage what they had carefully, but they weren't so nervous with each other, and the company helped a lot -- even though they couldn't understand anything that the other one said.

They wanted dryness particularly, since outside their little cave, not all that far from a summit, the wind screamed and drove the rain at over a hundred miles an hour, and when they stood together in the doorway, they watched rain, hail, and lightning. Before long that first night was over, a little rivulet formed outside. In minutes, it became a mud-colored torrent crashing past to join others on their way down the mountainside.

Yuan had little in the way of clothing. The demon had none and after a while, they both wanted to rest, so Yuan spread her blankets out and then she reclined while the demon sat with a thankful look on her face, both keeping one watchful eye on the opening to the world outside while doing their best to keep their tiny little fire going almost a twig at a time and eating the meat which they cooked over it, now that neither of them was starving.

They weren't in a perfect cave here, not something with a full ceiling over their heads. Where they were, it was more like several huge stone slabs leaning closely against the rock face that they'd fallen from eons ago. As such, the rain above saturated the moss and dirt which had accumulated between the stones and little trickles ran down the inside of the walls too. Happily, there were no drips.

Yuan was a little concerned, but as far as she could tell they were safe and at least a little dry, if not altogether as warm as she knew they'd have liked to be. Neither one was really cold either; they were just sitting in a rather damp place. At least they were sheltered from the wind and rain, Yuan thought. Thinking about it like that, she decided that unless anything else happened, she could relax a little and maybe sleep.

Well she tried, but there were two things working against her; the unevenness of where she tried to lie down, and the fact that she really didn't feel like sleeping anymore. She tried anyway, as she leaned back against one wall a little. Dragons sleep with one eye at least a little open, closed down to a thin line, but even though they might sleep, they still watch.

She saw the demon looking at her for a long time, the pretty face held in concentration and thought, and more than a little wonder as well. Yuan wasn't ashamed of her body at all, and she'd made no attempt to hide anything of herself from the demon. What she'd done hadn't been done out of any expectation of return, she just liked the demon more every minute. If something happened between them, fine, but Yuan was really hopeful for a friend and would have wanted a companion now if it were possible.

She watched as those eyes ran over her body, stopping now and then to look at some feature or other. It went on for a long time, and after a while, Yuan grew a little tired of it. She decided that she liked the demon's body as well, but she was beginning to feel a little like an exhibit.

The demon moved then, very slowly and with great care. She moved toward Yuan and was careful not to touch her, but she peered at her eyes and listened to her breathing, trying to decide if her friend was truly asleep.

The demon sighed to herself. When she was little, the world -- the one that she had been born on -- the right world, had seemed as shiny and new as she was. Born the daughter of a high tribesman and his female, she had been reared in a warrior clan, high in a range of mountains. She'd had no servants, the practice not being the custom of her people, but she'd been taught and expected to be able to hold her own in anything.

But that was in the past. She was all that was left of her clan after they'd been beset by a loose alliance of their enemies funded and supplied by the kings of the lowland people. Her hills and valleys were a far-flung bastion in the defense of her clan's own allies. But the war had been sprung on them all so quickly that they had been overwhelmed and overrun, and had not even been able to send word calling for aid. There hadn't even been a declaration. The army of their foes had just materialized out of the autumn mists one morning and the hundred hired mages had begun it.

She didn't know how many there had been, a few thousand, she supposed. All of that to beat down a clan of perhaps two hundred proud mountain people.

She'd been dragged off to be a slave -- something which ran against her barbarian grain. She'd been beaten and threatened with all manner of harm.

But she hadn't been broken, though she supposed that it was coming one day. She planned to do the work that was assigned to her. It was her way to justify the wormy food that she was given, but that was as far as it went. They'd only tried to rape her one time and the cost had been too high. They'd tried to restrain her -- six lowland males to hold her for the fat chancellor. But it had cost them.

Three males dead, including the chancellor, one crippled and one blinded among the rest. They'd come to charge her as though what had been done by her was a crime, but their own laws proscribed that she be given a public trial, and that could not be allowed to happen. If they tried her, then she had the choice of proving her innocence in a trial by combat, and she'd heard that there had been no takers from among the lowlanders. Nobody wanted to risk handing her a weapon after what she'd been seen to do with her hands, teeth and how she'd called boulders out of the very ground to assail the outer walls of her prison with. It was too bad that there were no more boulders to answer her call or she'd have had her freedom.

And then, she'd been washing in a trough of dirty water, not daring to do more than go to one knee and keep a watchful eye on the archers who patrolled the walls of her prison yard. The next thing she knew, she was in a pack of strangers, all of them demons, though that was a wide brush, she thought.

They must have been gathered from her world and others, the way that they looked to her. She'd never seen many of the kinds that she was in with. She was the only one like her, and none of the others knew just what to make of the smallish female with the wild mane and the ability to stare down even the largest male -- as long as they were sane.

Now she was here, and this beast girl, or whatever she was, had helped her and fed her. For the way that her life had run for the past six years, she had enough trouble believing it, and she couldn't even tell of her thanks.

She was so thankful that they'd met and was happy for everything. She really had a deep desire in her to do something nice for the strange female who had done all of this for her.

She just didn't know what she could do and felt a little helpless for it.

She liked Yuan's body a great deal, though she wasn't especially drawn to females. Still, for what had happened for her and the way that she felt, she'd have done pretty much anything for the girl here with her, if there was some way for her to know what she'd want from her. She didn't know if the was attractive to her, but then she thought that she had to be, at least enough to make her companion want to lick her the way that she had.

She peered at those closed eyes and that lovely face, wanting to kiss those lips to tell of her thanks, if nothing else.

She began to pull back and decided that she had to do something, and so she moved a little closer and tried for a little courage.

"Thank you," she whispered in her speech as softly as she could and then she kissed Yuan's lips with the barest touch.

Dragons of any description excel at holding themselves still as they watch. There is an old draconian saying that to remain still long enough to be covered in moss is nothing -- if the ocean next to you dries up, then you had watched for too long.

Yuan didn't know about any of that. The demon girl's hair was tickling her breasts enough to make her want to scream.

Finally, the demon ran out of her courage and retreated silently back to her end of the blankets. Yuan watched her sit on one haunch, her leg curled underneath her as she looked and sighed a little. The dragon had a mischievous impulse cross her mind and she decided to act on it, just to see what might come of it.

And so, Yuan began to move as if shifting in her sleep. Little by little, one millimeter at a time at some points, her hand began to drift toward her mound. Yuan wanted to laugh, seeing the way that the demon had caught the motions and stared. At one point, just for a little fun, Yuan moved her fingers in a way that was just about a coin's toss as to its purpose. She might have been brushing her fingers there in response to a mild itch...

Or it might be seen as a precursor to something else.

When she moved her hand away again, she almost succumbed to the urge to grin and laugh for the very quiet and disappointed groan that she heard. But she knew then that she really wanted this girl as a friend, a rather close friend. Anyone who hangs on the motions of a sleeper's fingers in something such as this, Yuan thought, ...

She stirred as though shifting in her sleep and let out a soft sigh as she moved one leg outward and brought her fingers back to caress herself a little. Watching her companion as she did this was precious, she thought. The girl looked as though she was about seven years old and looking at a plaything which she didn't have the silver to purchase for herself. Yuan wanted to hug her for it, for just that look. It was that sweet.

She went on for a time, sometimes being a little coy and sometimes being more blatant about it. Gradually, she raised her knees and began to play, though always being careful to look as though she really was asleep. Focusing outward, she watched the demon moving a little, squirming and shifting, and it was a few minutes before Yuan realized what she was looking at.

The demon girl was rocking herself on her heel as she watched. Yuan was reaching the point where she knew that she had to either move ahead, seeking her own release, or give it up and stop. But she had one more slightly cruel trick to play, and so she groaned a little and licked her fingers before she slipped the ends of two of them just inside herself for a moment. The demon became more insistent as she rubbed herself on her own heel a lot harder, doing her best to remain quiet.

When Yuan brought her own wet fingers to her lips, the demon began to caress and clutch at her breasts gently. They weren't large and they had such puffy nipples. Yuan had been admiring them earlier. She inserted her fingers again and moaned loudly, still appearing to be asleep, and the demon almost fell on her face, shifting her heel and pressing back against it as she did her best to stifle her noises.

The sight of the girl on her front with her face turned toward Yuan as she gave it up and frigged herself shamelessly brought Yuan to a quiet orgasm herself.

As the demon lay there in front of her gasping for breath a little, Yuan moved a little and opened her eyes. The demon froze then , wondering what she could do to save this.

Yuan's face grew a concerned expression and she placed her hand on the girl's shoulder gently. With a little pantomime of hugging her own shoulders, Yuan asked if she was cold, and the demon nodded and looked a little miserable.

Yuan smiled and lay back, making room and motioning that the other one should lie with her, and the offer was accepted. As she lay down next to Yuan and faced away, curling herself up a little as though she was colder than she felt, Yuan pulled one blanket so that it covered them and she put her arm around the demon, who sighed and it was obvious that the words that she said were her thanks.

Yuan hugged her a little and smiled to herself.

It poured rain outside and the wind screamed over the summit a few hundred feet above them. There were gaps between the stones -- enough to let a bit of a breeze through, but anyone with a nose could tell that the little cave smelled of happy females.

Yuan pressed her face against the mountain of hair at the back of the demon's head and after a long sigh, she closed her eyes.

Yuan had begun as a tiny little girl who'd been starting out to be nothing more than a disappointment to her parents. They'd wanted another son to help with the work on the river. Though they had a son already, a daughter was second-best. But to them, it was not even that good, from the little that they could tell.

Little Yuan seemed to have nothing in her which resembled the spark of life that a normal child usually had. She was happy to sit for hours wherever her mother told her to sit. She didn't do anything then, not even play. She just sat and looked into the distance, and if what happened to be in the distance was a wall only three feet away, well then Yuan looked at that.

At three years of age, she could comprehend what was said to her, but as far as anyone knew, she couldn't speak, because she'd never been seen to have ever tried to make any sounds, other than in response to the irritation of soiled pants long after she'd filled them. She even toilet-trained herself.

She just never said a word, and even tickling her wouldn't cause her to laugh.

All of that changed after she'd been left behind, and Yuan had begun to speak then. All that she'd needed were parents who provided her with something to think about, and between the couple who raised her and loved her more than anything and the old dragon who loved her as well in her way, it had been a long journey of learning for Yuan.

The little dragon egg which had been placed in her chest provided its own impetus and drive. Yuan turned from a silent toddler into a quiet girl with quite a good deal of intellect inside of her, unlocked by the inclusion of the egg, and given all that she could process behind the brown eyes which turned slowly golden as the years passed. She grew fit and stayed that way in her body's response to the physically challenging life that she led as the daughter of two masters of ancient and arcane fighting arts. And that had been only half of it.

Yuan was also very much part-dragon.

She bore little resemblance to the one which had given her this. She looked nothing like the traditional Chinese-style dragons of legend and very little like even the ones out of the stories and accounts of the dragons of European antiquity. Yuan was something much closer to a form which had existed before man ever set foot on Earth. Because of the magical nature of the gift and the intent of it, Yuan was something of a mix between two types of pterosaur and owed much to her dragon mother for the other gifts of the ability that she had. But while it all helped in a lot of ways, it also took her far into her own loneliness. She was the only one.

Even if there were another like her, it would only be a partial fit due to the way that she could also be -- the same quiet human girl, quite lovely now as a young woman who lay trying to sleep in the darkness of a cave on the mountainside, lit by the flickering light of a small fire as she held a young female demon to help keep her warm. She was a little sad because she felt something for her but she knew that she had to journey farther soon, the lone dragon in all of the world as far as she knew.

It was all that she'd ever have, as far as she could see it. She could be the girl, and she could even select between two of the dragon shapes, one much larger than the other. That large form had been what the old dragon had intended for her, and it gave her the ability to soar for days if the wind was right, with her mind resting as she managed her flight. Without the metabolic constraints of being reptilian, she could slow her metabolism a little while she soared and remain largely unaffected by the colder air temperatures and reduced oxygen up there. Where Yuan could fly for days at a time, a reptile would have become torpid and died -- even if they hadn't fallen out of the sky right away.

None of the original pterosaurs had ever flown as high as Yuan could go rather easily, not one of them could have lived there.

Weight was always an issue for all flying things, and like that, she was nearing her prime and weighed close to four hundred and fifty pounds, but she was strong then, and not really reptilian, though it was what she looked like in that form; four hundred, fifty pounds held in the air by a wingspan of more than thirty-five feet.

In human form, her legs were long and graceful, but as a dragon, they were short overall, though in actual length, they were even longer. On the ground, she was a little ungainly, moving around using motions somewhat like a bat, but in the air, she was nothing but graceful, her wings set far back, trailing her legs as steering rudders with her long neck stretched out. The wings were rooted at the backs of her shoulders, her arms were almost human in shape and size. Those arms were almost the single departure from the pterosaur type.

Her feet weren't all that she used to steer with. Her long beaklike snout had an effect and the vane-like comb which stood at the back of her skull helped a great deal as well as the fat and stubby tail that she had. Once she knew what she was, Yuan just knew that there wouldn't ever be anyone for her and she'd just adjusted to the fact.

The dragon had commanded that when she'd turned eighteen, she be provided with humans to learn about sex with. They were hired and brought by her foster parents and had been willingly blindfolded in a dark room. They'd had no idea what it had been that they'd mated with, those men and women, and they hadn't been harmed in the least.

After that, others were brought for her very occasionally, most often for her birthday again or perhaps to celebrate the arrival of the Chinese New Year. Only the first time, Yuan had been watched and coached a little by her elders. All of the other times after that, no one had watched. It was in preparation for those times that Yuan had seen the need to develop a third form, much smaller than the other. As far as she was aware, no one knew of that form.

Some of it had been for economy, since there were times when Yuan didn't want the energy expenditure of the nearly fine hundred pound shape. She wanted a form which was nimble in the air and not as awkward on the ground. And there were other things which she'd wanted.

In the shared past of the reptiles, birds, and mammals on Earth, there is an organ which combines the functions of several into one. It is the cloaca, a shared opening for genital, urinary and anal tracts and all of us have it, though it develops differently in human embryos and disappears to become what we have for those purposes long before birth, barring the appearance of a defect.