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The Awakening of Dragons

Chapter Seven

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by NomexGlove

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The news of their transformations, all that had come of them, filtered through their group of friends, their loved ones, even a little beyond. For there were some amongst them that wanted to transform too, to leave their lives behind, even though they could not be entirely sure, not quite yet, whether they would become male or female dragons, when it came to their genitalia, at least.

There was no telling too whether one’s mind would change too, as it had for the original dragonesses, how they would become something more, something new, though for all that had transformed it was more a sense of finding themselves, as if it was a shape that settled over them. They had to learn how to act and to be in their new bodies, though there was room for all genders and sexualities there, shrugging off the bonds of human constraints and boxes. It would end up being one more thing for Alan to dive into with her research, the dragoness forever hungry for knowledge.

One by one, others insisted on staying, regardless of the trepidation in their eyes, the tremors in their bodies. They all had their reasons for waiting within the bounds of the cave system, where the transformations could take place, though some were more open about them than others.

Harry, Jenson’s friend, laid his hand shakily on the dragoness’ foreleg as the first changes came over him, shifting his skin to scales, worry lining his gaze. Yet he did not need any words to show everyone how haggard he was, much younger than Jenson and yet appearing older than Jenson back when she had been human. The dragoness with two-shaded scales, shifting between silver and black, let her head lay softly beside him, always there, always comforting, one of her people though there would be no telling what his scales would become.

Slowly but surely, Henry transformed, there only with Jenson, his dark skin fading to bright, sunny scales, mostly yellow but with a few orange ones dotted through, almost as if she had been speckled in the process. Her legs grew strong, though Jenson explained to her what was happening when it became a little more obvious what was happening to her body, her sex changing, the two of them comfortable together after all they had been through.

Oh, but the lack of words… Harry had never been much of a talker, though she might well have found her words as a dragoness. She had known it was a possibility and did not mind it, not one bit, for anything would give her a respite from the dark twists and turns of her world, her life, the traumas that plagued her. There was no telling, truly, whether she would still want to turn to substances and the abuse of them when she was a dragoness. But it was her last try, the last thing she could relish in as her gaunt frame changed, fleshing out, bringing her into a way of being that finally allowed her to fill her lungs with a breath of air that felt as if it flowed through her, at long last.

“How do you know I’m female?” She asked once, quietly. “I don’t know. I don’t feel different, like that.”

Jenson rumbled comfortingly, shading her with a wing, which was easy enough at her size.

“We grew a little more accustomed to the change in scent, though it is faint,” she assured her. “You will see it in time too. But you will bear young too, just like us, I am sure. It is the coming of us, as dragonesses, that is bringing about a new age, though even I do not fully understand it.”

Harry nodded and laid her head down, her neck longer, wings taking shape, a patient transformation that cleansed her inside and outside. There was a lot for her to take in, mind reeling, though she had made her decision and would stand by it. Yet her life would never again be the same, all for the better, exactly as she wanted. Others, of course, had their own reasons for wanting to transform, sometimes in plain sight and sometimes below the lines of pine trees, the vegetation growing thicker and denser with the encroach of glorious spring in full bloom. They could have privacy or not, as they liked.

“I want to be myself again,” Alan’s sister, on the other hand, proclaimed, a fiery, short woman with hair dyed red, though it was already falling out, a dye job that was never supposed to last long. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a hospital bed…”

Alan shifted her weight back and forth, torn, snaking her muzzle. But what could she say? So much had happened after her transformation and it felt like she had been left out of the loop on so many things, though she should have known already! It was not as if her father had not been to visit her, to understand what had happened… Why didn’t he tell her that Annabelle was…that Annabelle was…

She couldn’t make herself say the words, visions of hospital beds and IV chemotherapy filtering through her mind, a shroud of ill-intended thoughts that clouded the forefront of her mind.

“Annabelle…” She groaned, the tightness in her throat too much, head spinning. “Why… Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t dad tell me, when he came? I didn’t know… I would have come, if I’d known…if I’d known that you were sick.”

Annabelle shook her head, lips pressed firmly into a thin, hard line. Her determination was one of the many things that Alan had always loved about his sister, how she took everything as a challenge, refusing to be bested. But, with the news that Annabelle had brought along with her, it seemed as if that was one battle as a human that she simply could not face.

“I don’t know if it will change anything, Alan,” she said, kissing her brother (though was Alan really her sister now?) between the eyes, her wide forehead greeting her. “But I want to try. If nothing else, it is one last adventure. And, besides…” She forced a smile that was less watery than the one Alan would have been able to give her, if the roles had been reversed. “Consider it something for you to research too. Would you really want to give up this opportunity, hm?”

Alan shook her head, gulping, shaking lightly.

“If it meant that you stayed alive, yes. A thousand times, yes.”

But it was one way in which Annabelle could be saved, if her end was not to come in a hospital bed, slipping away, bit by bit. Even if she could not be saved in transformation, to rest out in nature and to be freed of the tight constraints of human medicine, which seemed intent on prolonging the kind of life that Annabelle was afraid would no longer be worth living, in the long days and months before the end, was worth it. To Annabelle, it would always be worth it. And her opinion was the only one that mattered.

She transformed quickly, though it was a surprise as her smooth horns and blue and purple scales revealed themselves that she…well… That there was no going back from that point, though it was just as well that she did not become a male, for that might have been one change too many for a body that had already been put through hell. Annabelle became a dragoness, her body powerful, not as large as the female dragons who had been dragons for months longer. Considering that she would have a lot more time to grow, she was already sizeable, to be fair to her, bigger than those that had become or stayed males, like Jenson’s son.

Her body, however, was longer and more sinuous than that of the dragons who had transformed beforehand, as if she was becoming a dragoness from another part of the world entirely. Alan’s eyes gleaned, wanting to record it even as she dithered, supporting her sister, whiskers tickling free from the scales of her face, hanging down lightly in a purple sheen, fins around her head taking the place of what had been taken to be horns on first glance.

Alan peered, stretching up to see the fins, how the spines of them straightened, allowing a fan of soft skin to form between them, incredibly sensitive. The skin there bore a light blue shade, contrasting the spines of the fins. Yet even down the line of Annabelle’s spine rose a flush of blue fur, taking the place of the dorsal ridges and spikes that had been seen on others, the bulk of her body blending into her tail, which was thicker and almost more rudder-like.

“Wow… Annabelle, this is… Well… Amazing!”

The dragoness, transforming, grimaced, waving her tail back and forth where the tip grew thicker and fluffier, the long, supple hairs there fanning out. It would most likely flow wonderfully underwater, the warming weather up there making the lakes more appealing still.

“This… This is weird.”

Yet it was a distraction for them both, Alan becoming female, prior, and Annabelle becoming female to join her, right then and there, the studious dragoness torn between supporting her “sister” and seeking out a way to record everything. She fluttered and dithered until Annabelle snorted and pinned the tip of her tail to the ground by lying across it, sending Alan squawking while Annabelle giggled at her fury.

It was just the sort of thing that they had gotten into before as brother and sister and would still, though Annabelle would be the one to support her sister through the raising of the hatchlings first while, assisting the matriarchs as her body and mind healed. Going from strength to strength, the end was not as near as everyone had said it had been for her. However, her body would bear young too, already ready with the eggs of offspring to come, though there was no round to her sides, not yet. Like those that had gone before her, that would be seen in time, the dragoness settling into something of an Eastern dragon form, longer than the others but no taller that the dragonesses after their transformations.

Her wings, however, were strange, different to the more typical, bat-like wings that the “original” dragonesses, the first to be transformed, had gained. They could have been missed, in a way, for their laid down against her longer, more sinuous body like fins, a little more typical of the different type of dragoness that she had transformed into. There were only three spines in each wing, providing the soft, skin-like membrane a frame, but the tops of her wings, where they extended from her shoulder blades on her back, was softer, lighter, almost feathered. There were no scales there, but a fluffier substance, like fur, laid down the length of the “arm” of the wing. Even in the light breeze, it flowed and ripped, the same blue as the hair spilling down her neck, while her scales remained a soft shade of mauve, the colours lightly highlighting the new features of her body, complementing all that had been set in place.

Yet there would be much more for Annabelle to discover, living and loving and learning in her new body, the body that had offered her more of a life than she ever before could have hoped for. And, of course, her brother, as a dragoness, would be right there beside her.

She grinned, shaking her head. Brother, sister… Did it matter much anymore? At least, to her, it did not.

A friend of a friend, David, didn’t really know anyone there, though he gaped in awe at the dragons. With a little digging from Arya and Brent, it was uncovered that David was from Wales and knew Santino from their studies together, though David had been a foreign exchange student.

“I…” David shook his head, sitting back on his hands, cross-legged in the opening to a cave mouth, talking while he was still able with his bones, softly, remodelling themselves. “I just… I can’t go back there. This is a choice that we all can make, right? You’re not going to make me leave, are you?”

“No, of course not,” Arya assured him. “But I’m not sure… Why do you want to stay here? Why do you want to be a dragon? I mean, we can go get Santino if you want to talk, she can’t be far away.”

“No…” David shook his head, resolute, his hair coming away, though it was only to make way for smooth, brilliant scales. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to run away from anything…but this is starting anew. I never was tied there, always waiting, always wanting something more. I feel it, I do, I think this is it. I know this is it.”

For, sometimes, there did not have to be any huge reason for someone to want to be part of a change as David grew and transformed into a male dragon too, just like Annabelle, from the new dragons who had joined them. His scent did not change, not as a dragon, and he stood tall and proud with a long, lean body as if he was destined to be a swimmer or more reminiscent, in outline, of an Eastern dragon with a longer, more sinuous body. His head shaped itself with whiskers trailing around his face with leathery skin rather than scales where they hung, curled faintly, sensitive to touch. Only time would tell how those would come in use, frills surrounding his face and his scales blustering in light blue with forest green markings to his crest and down the line of his back.

His wings, however, were interesting – not at all like Annabelle’s, even though the longer form of his body was reminiscent of the dragoness that she had become. With five spines in each wing, they seemed more like fins with two parts to the arm that allowed him a greater range of motion. There seemed to be more muscles around the base of his wing-arm too, where it connected to his body, which allowed him to tilt and rotate his wings to a greater angle than the Western-type dragonesses, like a fin that could aid him through the water. Experimentally, settling into his new body, he flapped his light blue wings, the thicker membrane between the spokes of his wings like the skin of a dolphin – or close enough that it retained a light, wet look, smooth, leathery skin flowing down the arms of his wings.

A swimmer… Maybe?

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He’d never been keen on the water but it seemed, somehow, that would have to change. It would take him some time before he was bold enough to dive into the water and see what that part of his body was all about.

He knew his reasons, though getting used to a new body would be a big change for him, a change that could never again be taken back, leaning into it wholeheartedly. Maybe Santino would be surprised that he had chosen such a path, yet the casting off of human worries freed him, the new drake shaking himself off, despite the wobbles in his legs. Spreading his wings, he allowed Arya and Brent, however shyly he dipped his head, to support him as he stood, the matriarchs holding him up.

There, he was finally home.

Two humans came together, hand in hand, to transform, though they had not known each other before the climb up the mountain. Yet Isla-Rae knew her friend, Aki, deeply and flung herself at him, the Asian man, though he was mixed Japanese and Korean, as he would so often tell people who made silly assumptions, laughing as they were, at long last, reunited. The reason that a man, however, who was transgender would want to transform, well… To Isla-Rae, that needed no explanation. Healthcare where they lived very rarely paid for surgeries like that, as necessary as they were when requested.

Still, Aki made sure to introduce her to Mark first, as if they were long-time friends, drawing forth her admiration, once again, for him, his compassion. Even then, he put everyone before himself. Though that Mark was a friend of Brent’s, when the dragoness had been quite devoid of company in the throngs of people that made their way to them, whether to talk or to transform, was a surprise. That was something she would have to ask Brent about later, though there were more pressing things to concern themselves with as Mark and Aki, slowly, transformed.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” She made sure to ask, even as Mark allowed his transformation to settle, fingers shaking as he drummed them over a stone. “It… What if you become female? What if it doesn’t work?”

Aki laughed, his smile flashing, pulling at her heart as her friend had done all those years ago. She’d been with him through so much, coming out publicly – and that had been enough to bring them together, when it should have been a time of joy for Aki rather than strife.

“Isla-Rae, if that happens, it will only mean that I am in the same position,” he said gently, resting against her side, his legs kicked out, shifting as his spine, slowly, began to lengthen.

But all was well, her transgender friend, finally, at long, sweet last, able to spread his wings as a dragon, a drake, a male, his body portraying what he had always known inside. The body sometimes did not express accurately who someone was, even if modern medicine was excellent when it came to surgery. Yet what could be better than a transformation into a male that did not require any surgery, casting off the final shrouds of so-called “femaleness” that the rest of the world had told Aki was true when, absolutely, he was male?

Male at last, in his true body, the red and green dragon was trying to fly before even her wings had grown fully and her horns come in. Though Mark was just as eager, despite the man’s apparent nerves, becoming a drake also. The matriarchs, still, only wished that they knew better what structured the transformation, why some became male and others female. In the end, however, they had to trust that the cave system knew what the dragons needed, diversity in their species allowing them to go forward as they were, a coven, a clan.

They were dragons and there was nothing that would hold them back in the world.

Despite all the odds.