FSE

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This is a story about a human female and a dragon male. Both alone, both lonely, and both desperately needing another's company. This was written as a commission to a friend of mine, and was written in three and a half days. I'm still open for story commissions, to take a look at my pricing if you want.

Comment, please.

Sarah panted as she ducked around another corner, lasers ricocheting off of the corridor wall behind her. A few pipes, hit square on, burst with steam, obscuring her from their sight for now. She took advantage of the sudden protection the steam provided to keep running. Her hand to her side in a futile effort to halt the pain that was creeping up her ribs, she ran towards the escape pods.

Her mind flashed back to the start of this fight; how the raider ship had jumped out of lightspeed and latched onto her ship. The enemy crew was experienced at grab and snatch operations apparently, because they had managed to slip past the defensive shields before they had come up and cut a hole in the ship in seconds.

Once that had happened, she knew all chance of fighting was gone. As much as she had urged her crew to get to the escape pods, she hoped that she would find one or two of them waiting for her. But in the back of her mind, in the depths of her heart, she knew it was impossible.

The crew of the Topranon were the furthest things from cowards that Sarah had ever seen, but they were only trained in trading and navigation. They would have no chance to win in a fight. But they would fight anyway, to protect this ship.

She cried as she ran through the halls and corridors of the ship, not sparing the time to wipe her eyes. Already she could hear footsteps behind her as the raiders ran past the steam. They were on her tail again, and if she didn't take this chance to get to the escape pods, there wasn't going to be a second one. Space raiders were not known for their mercy.

More than a few times, Sarah had to duck down a side corridor as another team of raiders jumped out in front of her, having taken a different route. She prayed that an accidental crossfire would take down her pursuers, each time, but each time it failed.

Leaping through the main corridor to the escape pods, she reached out and slapped a control panel. The bulkhead shut behind her, locking down and keeping the raiders on the other side. For the moment, she had a chance to rest. The raiders wouldn't be able to cut through six inch thick steel, not without their ship to help them. Their individual blasters would take hours to get through, and they didn't have that much time to waste, she was sure.

Of course, they couldn't leave her alive, either. She realized that, and she was amazed that she wasn't hysterical from the thought of it. If the raiders couldn't capture her and take her away, they would get back to the ship and blow her little craft apart.

That was where the escape pods came in. At least, they would help if she was over a world that wasn't hostile to people from Karanto.

Taking a deep breath, she walked over to the ship's computer, trusting to the dark color of her jumpsuit to keep her invisible to the raiders on the other side of the bulkhead door. It might be thick enough to keep blaster shots away, but there was a glass part on the window part of it, and that was the weak point of it.

Thankfully, she was invisible completely to them. Or close enough, because at least they weren't shooting at her.

A few quick key clacks told her what planet she was over. Haranol. It was a jungle planet according to the computer, with a few small settlements further out, closer to the poles. From here, she might be able to land at the equator of the world, and then hike there, but there would be thousands and thousands of miles of jungle to get through on the way there.

But it was better to make her way through the jungle than it would be to surrender to the raiders.

Opening a locker and pulling out a small, short range blaster, some rations, and a survival kit, Sarah paused. She rubbed a hand along the sides of the ship. It had been her home and her living for so long, and now she was giving it up. She wiped a tear from her eye with her free hand. "Goodbye, Topranon," she whispered, patting the hull. "It's been great. May you fly through the stars forever."

She packed up the three things into a small pack, and moved back to the computer. A few more key clicks, going through a few menus, brought up the one command that no captain ever wanted to trigger.

"Self-destruct: Are you sure? Y N"

With a shivering finger, she pressed down on the Y. The computer blipped and beeped a few times before shutting down. The escape pod closest to her opened up, and Sarah climbed inside. As the metal door closed down behind her, she heard the ship's warning sirens start, and heard the automated ship voice warn everyone inside of the impending explosion.

The click of the entrance of the escape pod sealing itself silenced the other noises, and Sarah let herself weep for her ship as she was shot out into space.

Her escape pod floated in the middle of the void as she watched her ship in its final moments. It rattled and rocked a bit, as the raiders rushed back to their ship. Sarah smiled bitterly. Not a one of them would be able to make it back there before the Topranon exploded.

Her freighter exploded a few seconds later, taking the raider ship with it. The brilliant flame and explosion, with all of its heat and vibrancy, was quickly swallowed up by the vacuum of space, leaving no sign of the two ships, save for a few scattered pieces of steel and reactor pieces. Just like the way death would take a person, so had her ship and her crew been taken.

Sarah shook her head and closed her eyes for a moment, giving what respect she could to her fallen ship and crew, before turning her attention to the task at hand.

The escape pod had rolled along the shockwave from the explosion, and the careful descent that Sarah had been hoping for was no longer possible. In fact, she would be lucky to land with anything inside the pod intact. Including herself. Adjusting a few degrees and hoping that it would be enough, she pushed the pod into the grip of Haranol's gravity, and let herself, and it, fall.

~~~

Sarah groaned softly as she pulled herself out of the wrecked escape pod, pulling her pack out with her as she rubbed her head. "Well...that was not nearly as smooth as I had hoped," she muttered, shouldering the pack she had grabbed over her shoulder. The blaster that she had grabbed she held tight in hand. On a planet as wild as this, going unarmed was the second stupidest thing that one could possibly do, shortly behind the stupid decision of entering the jungle to start with.

The jungle rustled with life. Every leaf, every vine hanging from the trees moved, some from the wind blowing through the trees, some quite obviously from the life forms that called this forest home. Through the branches, she could see abnormally large snakes, as well as insects that seemed carbon copies of the ones that were back on her homeworld, save for the fact that they were many times larger.

One in particular caught her eyes, as it was very familiar to her. A green skinned spider the size of both of her hands spread apart, its fangs dripped poison. Back on Karanto, this spider was called the Gerol, and it was seen as something much more than simply a dangerous arachnid. The Gerol was seen as both a source of good luck and as a sign of an old civilization. The latter hadn't interested Sarah much before, not quite as much as the former had, but here on this jungle world? Who knew what might be waiting? Best to accept all possibilities.

She watched the spider move in its slow way, climbing up the invisible strands of its tree spanning webs before it disappeared from sight. She shook her head. "Sarah, get a hold of yourself. You're going to be stuck here until you get out of the jungle, so you need to get your head out of the-"

Crashing vegetation from behind interrupted her. She turned fast, whipping her blaster up and pointing it at the source of the sound. "Hello? Anyone there?" she yelled, shifting quickly from side to side, her blaster following her aim.

Her only answer was a few seconds of silence before another crash of vegetation, this time from her left. Turning and training her blaster on it, she fired a warning shot. "I will fire if you don't reveal yourself!" she yelled. "If you're sentient, say something."

She received no answer, at least not in words. The jungle continued to resound with the voices of animals and creatures that she had never heard of before, but they were drowned out by rhythmic crashing sounds. Each crash had enough volume to suggest that it brought down a tree, and each crash seemed to be closer to her than the one before.

Letting off another shot in the direction of the latest booming sound, Sarah cautiously advanced towards the sound. Maybe if she could get a good look at it, she wouldn't be quite so afraid.

Squirming through a couple patches of vines and thick vegetation that almost reduced her movement to nothing for a few seconds, Sarah reached a small clearing. Several trees were knocked down, but they weren't what had grabbed her attention. Instead, she was staring at the thing that was laying in the middle of the clearing, something that she had never heard about in all of the bestiaries that had ever been published about the jungles of Haranor.

It looked like a centipede, if a centipede could ever grow to the length of a hover-bus. Nearly thirty feet long and with mouthparts that looked capable of chewing through iron, as well as a carapace with a reflective surface that looked resistant t lasers, it was a monster of a creature. Despite her phobia of insects, Sarah realized that she wasn't afraid of this thing.

She was terrified of it.

At least it looked like it was dead, from where she was standing. It wasn't moving, not even twitching. The body didn't lift and fall with breath, so it wasn't breathing. Did she hit it with one of the random shots earlier? She circled it, looking for a wound. There wasn't one. A burn mark, maybe, just under the eye, though that black mark on the light, chitinous hide could easily just be a stain from a fruit or something.

She shook her head. "Well, if it's dead..." she muttered, reaching for her pack. Maybe the survival kit would have something that would work as a scalpel or something. Bugs were supposed to be something that were edible, as terrible as that prospect sounded. The rations she had wouldn't last her nearly the length of time it would take to get to the poles, and this was too good of an opportunity to pass up, with this thing already dead, and seemingly freshly so.

She paused and perked up her ears as she heard the crashes from earlier start again, louder this time, closer. Her eyes jerked from the centipede on the ground to the forest again. "Oh, this just isn't fair!" she muttered to herself.

The southern wall of trees around the clearing collapsed behind her, trees falling to her left and her right. One tree nearly fell on her, and it was only through the carcass of the insect in front of her that kept her from being squashed by it. It absorbed enough of the impact to keep her from being pinned by it, though Sarah still suffered a bit from the impact of being hit in the side by the tree.

She stared at the creature that seemingly effortlessly brought down those trees. It looked like a family member of the centipede she'd been examining, only bigger. This one had to be forty feet long, and it wasn't marked by anything on its body. Its antennae were working back and forth, and she could only assume the reason behind its hesitance to approach immediately was the unfamiliarity of her scent. Based on the way that its mouthparts were working, and how much venom was dripping from the venom glands on this thing, though, Sarah was rather sure that this thing was going to overcome its hesitance sooner rather than later.

Lifting her blaster, she aimed at its head, and fired three quick blasts.

The light beams lanced out at it, pounding a triangle around its eye before bouncing off again. The centipede's hide was reflective enough to keep the laser's energy from penetrating it, Sarah realized a second later.

Still, the creature seemed to feel the pressure and kinetic energy behind the lasers, if nothing else, and it reared back in anger from being hit so close to its eyes. It roared, a rumbling sound that shook the ground around it and nearly knocked Sarah off of her feet. It came back to the ground after roaring, and charged at her, its hundred feet carrying her at an incredible speed.

She was barely able to get out of the clearing ahead of the creature's striking head. Sparing a glance over her shoulder, she saw that the venom drops that touched the ground instantly killed the vibrant plant life around the place it landed. She did not want to see what that would do to her.

She rushed over the uneven ground, panting heavily and holding her side. Her blaster stayed holstered for now. If she couldn't hurt the thing chasing her, there was no point carrying it. It would just catch on something, as her jumpsuit was doing every few seconds, it seemed. She just pulled hard enough to cause rips in it, not caring about the state it might leave her in. Better to have some parts of her body exposed than to have all of her body dead was the way that she saw it.

Her jumpsuit was ripping everywhere it seemed, despite the sturdy construction of it. It was pulled from her shoulders, her sleeves falling off after too many rips there. Her legs suffered from scratches and scrapes, and her belly wasn't spared either. One part of her mind wondered what these trees were, as they couldn't be simple wood to cut through the meshed material of her jumpsuit.

But that part of her mind was mostly silent, as most of it was focused on getting her the hell away from the centipede chasing after her.

Each time that she tripped, in the moment before she was on her feet again, she expected to feel the centipede's fangs shove through her. She expected to feel the poison rush through her body, and kill her just like the plants around her.

But each time she managed to keep going. Each time she managed to get away, by the skin of her teeth. Risking a look back, she screamed as she saw the centipede less than a meter behind her. If it were moving even a hair faster, it would have already overtaken her. As it was, she could move no faster, it was closing in, and she was losing energy to keep moving. She would have to stop soon, to rest, but to do that would be suicide.

The thought of dying boosted her adrenaline enough to allow her another five minutes of running.

After those five minutes, she collapsed, falling and rolling as she tripped. Perhaps the stumble was what saved her, because she rolled off to the side, between two trees that she had not been heading towards. It was just wide enough for her to slip through, but not enough for the centipede to slide through. More than that, the trees were thick and tall enough to give the centipede pause, as they couldn't be knocked over immediately. For the moment, Sarah was safe.

She panted softly as she stood up again, looking around her little sanctuary. The trees here were taller than the ones that had bent under the centipede before, and the ones that had collapsed around her escape pod as it slammed down. More than that, they were thicker, with few openings between the trees to allow anything through, and none of them large enough for the centipede to get through.

The centipede's pounding against the trees startled her out of her observations, though. Her head whipped around to the trees it was hitting. Cracks were already starting to spread through the trunk as it slammed against them. Nothing to be worried about just yet, but they were spreading quick enough to tell her that this wasn't going to be a safe place for long.

"Gotta get out," she muttered, moving along the circle of tree trunks, trying to find another opening in the trunks. If she stayed here, she faced a death by crushing, or by centipede. Neither of them appealed to her in the least.

She made three full circuits before realizing that there wasn't another opening that she could fit through. Maybe a spider or a small snake could get through, but she certainly couldn't.

Sarah fell to the ground, panting softly as she watched the centipede crack the trees apart, further and further. Already it could almost poke its head through the space between them. It looked at her with a feral, cold intelligence, its fangs dripping with venom. The tree grayed where it was touched by it, and the grasses and vines on the ground shriveled up, dead from the powerful toxins.

She pulled the blaster from her holster. She knew it was useless, but she wasn't going to go down without fighting, not if she had a choice.

Just as she was about to pull the trigger, however, a spear exploded through the centipede's head.

~~~

Toleth'memnos grunted as he stepped onto the centipede's back. Each step caused the centipede's hide to crunch unpleasantly, something he always detested when he was hunting these things. But they were some of the biggest creatures in the jungle, and that meant they had some of the most meat to harvest from a kill. If there were some unpleasant sounds to deal with after they dead, he could deal with it.

As he stepped onto the head of the beast, he grabbed the haft of his spear. He took a firm grip on the carved wood before giving it a firm yank backwards, tugging a bit of the small brain of the insect out in the process. He wiped it off of his legs and chest, not wanting the green matter to stain his scales. The few splatters along his loincloth he could care less about, as there were more of them back at the cave, but the scales were something else. If they were soaked too much in the jungle, by blood or other body fluids especially, it would draw predators to the scent, and that was something that even he might have problems with.

Standing up to his full height again, he blinked at the creature that was standing in the middle of the clearing. A human, from what his parents had told him of other races that lived off planet, but one that didn't quite look like what had been described.

She was smaller, for one. His parents described the humans as great dictators that stood nearly eight feet in height. As they said, how can one that was shorter than the Harans be rulers over so much? Yet, this was obviously a human. The furless skin, the blaster in her hand, the jumpsuit-ripped as it was- was of human make. Everything about her screamed human. So why was she here?

It was unimportant, really. It did tell him why the centipede had been so frenzied, though. New prey always seemed to do that to the creatures around here. He shook his head and bent down. He pulled a knife, the only other thing he carried besides his spear, and started cutting through the chitinous hide of the monster. He'd take some of the hide and make it into armor, probably. The black ones on his shoulders were starting to get a little bit damaged, and he would need a new pair soon enough anyway.

As he was halfway done slicing off one piece of the creature's hide, the human grabbed his arm. He froze, and looked down at her.

She was looking up at him with eyes that were wet with tears, some of which had already slid down her cheeks. Her jumpsuit, ripped in places, was also wet with sweat from her exertions. She must have been running for quite a bit of time to soak parts of herself like that, he thought. He looked at her for a moment, meeting her green eyes with his blue ones before looking away.

She yanked on his arm again, and this time he growled at her. She flinched, though to her credit, she didn't jump back. "I...I just wanted to say 'thank you', and...and ask if you happen to know of any settlements that are closer than the poles," she said in the Galactic Common language. He was familiar with it, but he didn't like speaking it. It felt like spiders walking across his tongue when he did. He turned his head away, pretending that he didn't know what she was saying. Maybe she would leave him alone that way.

But she didn't. The human tugged on his arm again, and repeated her question. It was like dealing with a child with this creature! Toleth'memnos shoved her off of his arm, and picked up his spear before leaping off of the carcass and walking towards the human. She flinched back again, her hand starting to go to the blaster in its holster, but she stopped herself. Good thing, too. If she had actually pulled a weapon on him, he would have impaled her on his spear, no matter what else she might have done.

"I just...I just want to know where I'm supposed to go," she said.

Toleth took stock of her in the space of a few moments. Her jumpsuit was ripped up badly, probably from the razorwood trees around the forest. Whatever pack that she might have been carrying was long gone, and she most definitely wasn't equipped for the jungle, not with the blaster. Most of the animals in the deeper jungles were covered in the same chitin armor that covered the centipede. There was no way that she'd be able to bruise them with that thing, let alone kill them.

He sighed softly to himself, and hung his spear from a small hook on the back of his waist, attached to his loincloth. Pointing to the north, he grunted a few times in his own language, telling her to go.

She looked where he was pointing, and then back at him. "You mean I'm supposed to go straight that way? There's no closer settlements than the ones at the pole?" she asked. She shook her head, and lowered her eyes. "Why am I talking to him? It's not like he understands my language."

"I understand it," Toleth said in Galactic Common, smiling in small satisfaction as her head jerked back up to stare at him. "I can speak it too. I just prefer my own to the spidery language that your kind prefers to use."

She stared at him for a few seconds. "Then you understood..." She broke off with a blush. "Sorry. I just...I didn't expect...Can I start over?"

Toleth shrugged his shoulders. "If you can talk while I harvest here, talk as much as you want. Just don't expect an answer all the time," he said. He went back to work, carving off a few chitin plates from the centipede as well as a few slabs of meat from it. It wasn't nearly the whole thing, but there wasn't a hunter that could carry a whole centipede back. Unless it was a young one, of course, which this one obviously wasn't.

The human remained silent behind him for a moment, which he was thankful for. Maybe she would just start walking and let him go back to being alone. She was loud, and volume of voice was a detriment in the jungle, particularly on the hunt.

He wasn't so lucky. She started talking about what happened to her up in space. Falling from the sky in some sort of smaller ship, she got away from raiders that were destroying her life. Killed her crew too, huh? Well, that was a pity. He grunted a bit as she related what had happened, a little surprised and pleased to hear that she had managed to kill all of her attackers before coming down to the planet. Blowing up her own ship; from what Toleth had heard just from these few minutes, it seemed that the ship had meant more to her than anything else. Destroying something so precious to exact vengeance on those that would take it was not an easy thing to do, and against his better judgment, the dragon felt a little bit of respect for the female.

Toleth shoved the rough chitin plates into some space between his hips and his loincloth's waistband, and shoved the meat into a pack that he carried before standing up. "You're alone, so your journey will not be an easy one," he said. "But if you run, and don't stop running until you pass out from exhaustion every day, you should make it to the pole in a few weeks. Go any slower, and the jungle will eat you alive," he added as the woman seemed to ready a protest. "May you find your kind again," he said before turning away.

Hopping over the centipede's head and heading north east, towards his cave, Toleth contemplated just how long the human might last. She wasn't used to the jungle, but she had managed to get away from the centipede, and find the one place that would have proven safe against a normal sized creature. To him, it seemed she had even odds of getting through the jungle, so long as she was careful.

What he didn't consider was that she would follow him. He was working hard enough at ensuring that he didn't leave scents for predators that he forgot to conceal his tracks, and it took him ten minutes to realize that the human was following after him. He did not want that. He had his privacy back at his cave, and all that a human could do with that was ruin what he already had.

"Stop following me!" he called out over his shoulder, and saw a bush rustle. He turned and pointed his spear at it, holding it focused on that one point. "I don't need anyone following me. And you don't need to try and thank me anymore. I killed the creature as part of the hunt, nothing more."

The bush rustled once more before the human stepped out from behind it. She walked close to him, standing right in front of him. She was close enough that her chest almost touched his as she looked up at him.

"I'm...I'm not following you to thank you," she said. "I already did that. But I need....I need a place to rest for a little while. If it...if it's not an imposition..." she paused, seemingly to gather her strength. She took a deep breath before pressing on. "If it's not asking too much, I would like to stay with you for a few days. Just until I am strong enough to try and get to the human settlements at the pole."

The audacity of this human! He stared at her, unable to keep his eyes from widening at the way that she so casually suggested sharing living space with him. For this, even ignorance wasn't much of an excuse. For his kind, to invite another to share their living space meant one of three things: that the other was family, that the other was a good friend, or that the other was the one that he was courting. This human female was none of these things.

She looked away from him as he stared at her. "I know...I know it sounds very forward, but I need a place to stay. If I stay out here, I'll be killed in two days."

"You're being optimistic about that," Toleth commented absently, shaking his head. "I can't see you lasting more than another twelve hours, the way that you run through the jungle without a care for what might follow after you." He turned back to his trail, taking a few steps before looking back at the human. "Go north. I am not going to look after you."

There. If that didn't get the human to stay away, he wasn't sure what would, short of attacking her himself. Jogging off into the underbrush, Toleth trusted to his speed to keep him ahead of any predators that might catch his scent or his trail.

And hoped that the human would actually make it to the pole. Being among the last of his own kind, he knew what it felt like to lose those you felt close to. All of his species did, now that there were less than a hundred of them scattered among several planets in this system.

~~~

Sarah followed the trail of her rescuer as quickly as she could, sticking to what tracks she could find and hoping that the native wasn't trying to throw her off by laying false trails. It was hard enough to track him when he was just trying to keep his tracks from being seen. If he took that any further, then she would lose track of him completely.

Fortunately, the red dragon seemed to be relying on speed, more than anything, to get ahead of anyone. At the rate that he was moving, he would be outdistancing her more with each second, but Sarah could be patient. So long as she didn't lose his trail, she would find him eventually. Better still, if he was far ahead of her, he couldn't be so sure that she was following him. When she found him at the end of his trail, he would also be much less likely to send her off again.

At least, that was what she was hoping.

The jungle swallowed up the tracks as best as it could, and the trail became harder to read as she fell further and further behind. Still, there were enough signs to keep her on the trail of the anthro warrior. He wasn't the most subtle when he was moving at high speed, it seemed, considering that he left heavy footprints in the mud, and tore branches down in his path.

Of course, when the ground started climbing upwards at a rather steeper slope than she liked, Sarah considered shifting her course straight north. There couldn't be too many of those centipedes further along, she hoped, and it would probably be easier walking for a few weeks than trying to convince the hunter further up to let her stay for a few days.

The simple fact that she was too tired to walk away from the mountain decided her. Walking away would only lead to her walking into the mouth of some predator or another further in the jungle. Walking up the slope, while more difficult, was the only real choice that she had.

Sarah groaned as she made her way up the slope. It was difficult, very steep. At some points, it was impossible to move forward while standing, forcing her to crawl along the mountain slope. She grunted as her jumpsuit ripped further, but did her best to ignore the way that it exposed her body. She would have worried about the way her chest was nearly hanging out of her jumpsuit, if she was anywhere else, around any other humans, but this was the jungle. She could be naked, for all that it mattered to the creatures around her.

She blushed at that thought, and shook her head. "I am nuts," she said with a slap to the back of her head. "No nudity. These are the only clothes you have, and the more you rip them, the worse you'll look, and the less cover you'll have while you travel to the pole," she reminded herself. Still, the bits of breeze that blew over her exposed skin definitely felt good.

She pushed onwards until she reached the end of the trail the hunter had left behind, and pulled herself up onto a little outcropping that stuck out of the side of the mountain. She grunted a bit as she kneeled down, catching her breath from the long trip. Climbing a mountain, particularly without any tools that would have eased the trip, was difficult, much more difficult than she could have thought. But now, at least it was over.

Sarah rubbed her legs a bit before standing up, and blinked as she bumped her head. She looked up to see what she had bumped.

Staring down at her were the blue eyes of the hunter from earlier. He was leaning over her, and apparently she had bumped the top of her head on his chest, or chin. She wasn't clear on that. She blushed as she realized just what she had done, but didn't look away.

"How did you find your way up here?" he asked, gesturing to the forest further down the slope. "There are miles between my cavern and the clearing where we met."

She gestured to the trail that she had followed. "Your trail...it was easy enough to follow, when you weren't trying to conceal it," she said. "I guess...I guess that you're...used to disguising scent, rather than sight?" She gathered that much when she had been watching him before, watching him not so much disguise the trail that was behind him but obliterate the scents that were left behind.

He nodded slowly, staring at her with what almost looked like respect. In ordinary times, she would have blushed further. Now, she would take whatever respect, admiration, even curiosity and work with it to make sure that she could get a place to rest.

Pointing at the cave entrance a few feet away from them, Sarah asked, "May I...please stay for a night? I know it bothered you...when I asked before," she said, still catching her breath. "I don't need much...just a place to sleep for a night or two. I can hunt...I can do everything I need...I just need a safe place for a night or two," she pleaded.

The dragon stared at her for a few seconds. He was considering something, that much was apparent, but whether it was her request or how to deal with her body after killing her, or something else entirely that he might be thinking about was the question.

He lifted his spear from its hook around his back, and pointed it into the cave. "Some of the centipede meat is roasting in there. You can have some, if you need food, but tomorrow you get your own meat," was all the dragon bothered to say.

She didn't care. She was given a place to stay for the night, and that was all that mattered to her. She smiled and muttered her thanks before moving past the dragon, entering the cave.

It was easy enough to find the meat being cooked. The cavern lacked a ventilation system, so the smoke from the fire was crawling its way across the ceiling of the tunnels that connected one cavern with another. Following it, Sarah was able to find the hunter's makeshift kitchen. It lacked the modern conveniences that were present on her ship or in any human city or settlement. Not that she expected to find any food processers or dispensers here, of course, but it would have been nice to be surprised. There were a few cabinets, and knives, which made her feel a little bit better. However, she did wish there was a stove, or an oven. Even those archaic conveniences would have made her feel a little better than seeing the meat frying over an open flame.

Still, it was food, and it was inside, and she could live with that.

Pulling open one cabinet, she rustled around until she found a reasonably clean plate. She grabbed a knife from the little block of wood that held the little collection the kitchen possessed, and moved to the fire. A few quick cuts had a slab of meat for her to eat. Her stomach wanted to turn itself inside out at the thought of eating insect, but so long as she kept herself from thinking of it as centipede, she was pretty sure that she would be able to keep it down.

Not wanting to be rude, she carried the plate of food out of the kitchen back to the outcropping. She was pretty sure that the hunter would still be there, and she was right. He watched the horizon and the jungle, staring out at it with a nearly frightening intensity.

He turned around to look at her before she could announce herself, and nodded. "If you are going to share my cavern for a few days, I would ask your name."

Sarah wasn't sure how much more blushing her face could take as she felt the familiar burning cross it. "I'm sorry. I should have introduced myself much earlier, shouldn't I? My name is Sarah. Sarah Velain," she said.

"And I am Toleth'memnos," the dragon said in return. He returned to his task of watching the horizon, just staring out at the forest, as if he expected it to erupt with many dangerous creatures at any time. In fact, it wasn't quite impossible, Sarah realized. She wasn't hiding her trail, and until it was collected by the jungle, vigilance would be needed.

Still, she wanted to learn a little bit about this hunter. Aside from the fact that he'd saved her life, he was of a species she didn't know anything about. She moved a little closer, standing beside him as she used the knife to cut a few pieces of the meat off for chewing. After eating a piece, and swallowing it without triggering her gag reflex, she asked, "Um...if you don't mind me asking...what are you? I mean, I know I'm a human, and I recognized some of the species in the jungle...but I don't know what you are."

Toleth remained silent, and for a little bit, Sarah wondered if she had offended him again. It seemed that it was easy to do with him. Just when she was about to open her mouth to apologize, he began to talk.

~~~

"I'm one of those that have been called the Haran Hunters," Toleth said, looking at the forest to avoid looking at the human. "We were born here, learned here, thrived here. Haranol was our home, and our sanctuary. Even as we moved from this planet to the others in this system, we always knew that this planet would be our homeworld. It would always be the place where we could return, and be welcomed. Not that there was ever much occasion to return home, in the past. There were hunts everywhere, and we could make our way in the universe without fear."

"Then came the Purge." He paused, clenching his fists for a moment to recollect his self control. "We were not the only hunters, not the most numerous, but we were the best. There was never a hunt too difficult, a trophy too hard to hunt. And I suppose that it was this skill that brought the other hunters against us. Jealousy proved something that drove them more than the joy of the hunt, though I suppose that our skill, taking their contracts, might have been a factor."

He reached down to the hilt of his knife, squeezing it, needing to feel it in his hand. Memories flooded back as he spoke of this. These memories were buried deeply for each of the remaining hunters, for good reason. Self control was the first casualty to emotion, particularly the strong emotions that the Purge brought up. "We became the prey of the hunters. Our entire race was targeted, even those females and children that were not part of the Hunters Guild. Hunted, cornered, and wiped out nearly to a man, the Haran Hunters were forced to disband."

He turned to her, shaking a little before he forced himself to stillness again. He pulled out his knife, holding it by the blade. "This was the knife of the last of my kind that was part of the Guild. He died under the gunshots of six other hunters, some human, some others. With him gone, we were wiped out, more or less. Most of our females were killed, and those few that weren't were immediately taken to safe places, where they couldn't be touched. Where once my people held positions of power and influence all over this system, we're now in hiding. There are less than a hundred of us left, with maybe five of them females. We are a doomed race."

Toleth watched the human's face for her reaction. She didn't display the pity that he was familiar with, and hated, nor did she look as though she agreed with the humans, which he hated nearly as much. If anything, she looked terrified. Terrified, and angry. Two emotions that were familiar to him. He lived with them every single day.

She looked at the knife in his hands, and stroked a finger along the blade. Her finger stroked the edge of the blade, and was cut. The human flinched, but did not remove her finger from the blade. "It seems....It seems we are both the last of our kind, in a way," she said. She looked up from the blade, meeting his eyes. "Both of us...had our people taken away."

That much was true, Toleth was willing to admit. The female had lost her crew, which had been as much a family to her as his people had been to him, from what she had said earlier. She had lost her crew to raiders, his people to hunters. He shrugged at her words, and pulled his knife back. Before he could put it back in its sheath, Sarah grabbed him by the wrist, and stopped him.

He looked at her, cocking an eyescale in curiosity.

She looked from the knife to his eyes again before removing her hand. She looked at her bleeding finger. "That knife. It's quite sharp. Not as sharp as the pain of being alone, but sharp," she said. She stared at the blood for a few seconds before looking away. "I've been alone for maybe half a day. You've been alone...far longer. How...how do you stand it?"

He couldn't help blinking at the turn the conversation had taken. First they were talking about him, and then this human brings up the pain of loneliness-powerful, to be sure, if a bit surprising-but asking him how he dealt with it wasn't something he had expected in the least.

His silence in the matter seemed to erase what little was left of the female's self control. Her eyes watered, and tears flowed down her cheeks before she pressed herself against him. He was shocked enough that his body wouldn't respond, even when he felt her tears stain against his scales. Even when he regained control of himself, he couldn't force himself to shove her away. This was too close to how he had felt when his father had died in the Purge, and he remembered still just how much he had wanted someone to cry on.

Hesitantly, he laid an arm around her. "The feeling of being alone...it doesn't go away. The pain doesn't really stop. It might weaken, and you can forget it from time to time, but it never goes away," he said, his voice as unsteady as it had ever been. "Nobody else really can fill the void...they can try, but I've never found someone who could be the same."

She pressed harder against him, and he involuntarily pulled her closer. She was helping him as much as he was helping her, he realized, feeling his own tears forming. He tried to blink them away, but failed, as two of them dripped down his cheeks. He hastily wiped them away with a hand before he let go of the human. He cleared his throat. "I think...an early night would be good," he said, having to pause and clear his throat again before he could speak clearly. "Would you like me to show you to the sleeping cavern?"

Sarah nodded at him, and he took her by the shoulder back into the caverns. It was easy for him to find his way through the tunnels after so long. A few turns past the kitchen cavern brought them to the stony, well heated room that was used for sleeping.

A few fuzzy hides were rolled up near the wall, and he moved to them, unrolling them and laying them over the floor. He used all the ones that he had, but it still barely made for a bed that was big enough for two, and that was if they were willing to be very, very close to one another.

Toleth turned his attention back to the female. Her jumpsuit, ripped up as it was, likely wasn't providing her much warmth, or covering. Her mammaries could easily be seen through various gashes in the chest of her suit, and it seemed that only an undergarment of some sort prevented her lower genitalia from suffering the same visible fate. The dragon did not comment after seeing such things, but he wondered for the first time what the human might look like underneath that covering.

Adjusting his loincloth after it had been pushed aside a little by his movements, he looked up at Sarah's face. "I do not know what your sleeping habits are, but for now, it is time to sleep. One must rise before the sun around here, and if one does not sleep before the sun, it is difficult to rest enough for the day ahead."

"That makes sense," Sarah said, moving closer. She stroked a hand against the furs, and smiled. "This is softer than the mattress that I had aboard..." Her words faded, and she shook her head. "This is a softer bed than I have had in a long time."

"Good," Toleth said. He shrugged his shoulders, his wings folded in tightly as he laid himself down on the furs. "I wish you a good night," he said as he closed his eyes.

~~~

Sarah watched the Hunter lay down, and couldn't help admiring his body. Despite the difference in species, and perhaps due to more than a little hero worship, she couldn't help taking in what the Haran Hunter looked like.

The red scales were like a fire, to her. A hot flame that she wanted to be close to, she realized. Even the odd tribal looking tattoos down his arms and legs were intriguing to her. But more interesting, for some reason, were the lean, but tight muscles that flowed beneath the scales.

She leaned in a little closer, her hand less than an inch from Toleth's scales as she ran her hand along the curve of the musculature beneath. There was a great deal of muscle, a great deal of power that rippled beneath the scales. She had seen it with each movement he made, flowing under his scales with no wasted movement, completely precise in each move. If Toleth was an example of the Haran Hunters, she certainly could understand why they were the best.

Her hands roamed over his body, never quite touching, but giving her a feeling of how he was shaped. She observed his tail, thick, but quick and nimble, as she had seen in his movements. His wings, tightly furled but seemingly large enough to carry him in flight. His entire body was the perfect hunting machine, the most deadly opponent.

After some minutes, her hands found their way to his loincloth. She almost tugged at it, wanting to see what was beneath it, wanting to assuage her curiosity, but propriety stopped her. She jerked her hands away, and held them tightly to herself. "What am I doing?" she whispered to herself, curling up in a fetal position, her hands wrapped around her knees. "He's not....he's not even one of my species...and he's asleep. It would be nothing more than molestation," she whispered to herself.

She shook her head, forcing herself to lay on the furs. Her back to Toleth's, she nevertheless pushed herself as close to the dragon as she could. She was not the only one that was alone, and she was not the only one that needed comforting.

~~~

She woke to the feeling of a hand on her stomach. She blinked a bit, opening her eyes in the dimly lit cavern to see what was going on.

Looking down, Sarah saw that Toleth had turned around in his sleep, and wrapped one of his hands around her, his scaly hand resting on her belly. The scales felt warm where there were rips in the fabric, the heat of his scales feeling warm against her bare skin. His chest and his belly were pressed against her tightly, and one of his legs were wrapped around hers, completing his hole over her.

She turned her head just enough to look at Toleth's face. He was muttering in his language, not loud enough to be heard, but enough for her to hear the emotion underlying the words. What truly surprised her were the tears that were leaking out from under the closed eyelids.

Two thin, clear streams slid down around his snout, and dripped from his face. He was crying, crying in his sleep. Sarah leaned a little closer, for some reason wanting to comfort him. The closer she came to him, the better he seemed to feel.

Eventually, she was spooning with him, her backside pressed right up against his groin, and his hand had moved from her belly to her breasts. He had stopped crying, but he was stirring as well.

She wasn't sure how she was going to explain this.

Slowly, Toleth's eyes opened. She met his gaze with her own, looking up at him with a small smile. She reached up a free hand, and wiped the tears from his face. "You...you were crying in your sleep," Sarah said, stroking his face under the pretext of wiping away other tears, even though his face was dry. "Were...were you remembering...others like you?"

The dragon shivered a bit, his hand clenching a little tighter over her breast, making her have to hide a flinch. He didn't seem to realize what he was holding yet. "Yes..." he answered. "I was thinking of...some friends," he said, hesitating before answering.

His eyes went wide as he followed his arm to where his hand lay at her breast, and he quickly pulled it away. "Sorry." Toleth took another few seconds to realize the position he was in, but before he could pull himself away, Sarah grabbed him and pulled him close again.

"Don't pull back," she said, looking up at him again. She reached for his hand, and pulled it back down to her breast. "I...I need this...and..." she paused. This was harder to say than she had thought it would be. "And I think you need it, too. We're both...both so lonely...we're all that the other has," she whispered. She leaned in closer, her mouth inches from the dragon's.

"We...we need each other...right now," she whispered to him. She leaned in the last bit of distance, and pressed her lips to his.

His lips were stiff with surprise for a moment, so much so that she almost pulled back again. But then he started kissing her in return, pressing his lips hard against hers. His free hand reached around her, pressing against the base of her spine and pulling her close to him. Her chest flush against his, Sarah moaned into the kiss.

The dragon's tongue pressed against her lips, and without a second thought, she opened her mouth to let it in. Her tongue pressed against it, tasting it, touching it. Her tongue wrestled with it, pushing at it as it tried to push its way into her mouth. It was slick, wet, thin in her mouth, and it seemed to slide almost effortlessly past her tongue. It tickled at her mouth as the dragon's hands explored her body, embracing her, holding her against his muscled form as he took her for his own.

For her part, her hands were stroking over the scales she hadn't dared touch while Toleth was asleep. She stroked down his spine, between his wings, her fingers rubbing in little circles as they moved. They continued down slowly, stopping at the base of his tail. Her fingers stroked along the waistband of the loincloth the dragon wore, her fingers twitching with need to remove it, but her mind telling her to wait.

Sarah broke the kiss, panting softly as she looked up at Toleth's face. Her eyes met his as she slipped her fingers under his loincloth. "Please..." she whispered. She couldn't say more. Her need was too great.

But Toleth seemed to understand. He nodded once, and reached out his claws hands for her jumpsuit. Sarah's face split in a grin as she stroked her fingers around the waistband of the dragon's loincloth, teasing it off of him slowly.

The dragon was anything but slow as he pulled off her jumpsuit. The way that he tugged at it, and his claws ripped at it, it was as though he couldn't waste any time. He more shredded her jumpsuit than removed it, but the way that she was feeling, she didn't care. She wanted him, just as he wanted her, and she wasn't going to wait around for clothes to get out of the way.

Eventually, they both managed to get out of their clothes, his loincloth and armor on one side of the room, and the remains of her jumpsuit on the other. Knowing what was about to come, Sarah took a deep breath and looked down to see what the dragon had below the waist.

She found herself staring at the dragon's equipment. His shaft must have been padded when in the loincloth, because she was sure she would have seen signs of that through the cloth. It was half hard already, eight inches long and thickening to nearly two inches thick at the base. To her, it was lovely, and she knew it would feel so good inside of her.

With a slow, deliberate reach, she gently clasped it, her fingers wrapping around it before looking back into the dragon's blue eyes. She stroked up and down his member, not daring to say anything to break this moment, knowing nothing needed to be said.

~~~

Toleth moaned as his member was caressed by the human-by Sarah. Her hand was soft as...as anything he had ever felt in his life against his throbbing hardness. He panted softly as her hand moved up and down, squeezing gently around the head before descending once more.

His hand, moving seemingly of its own accord, moved down to the human's bare rear. He stroked it lightly, his fingers moving along the curve of her rear, sliding in along the crack between them. The tips of his claws, turned so slightly to allow the blunt edge to rub along her skin rather than the sharp edge that would slice it, moved further down, further between her legs. He heard Sarah gasp softly as he found it.

His middle finger played, stroked along her nether lips, the tip always on the verge of entering, but never truly doing so. Just as she stroked him, pleased him, he did the same for her. And just as she was surely thinking, they could not just stop here.

As her slit moistened, and the juices stuck to his fingers, Toleth felt Sarah's hand leave his member. Shifting his gaze from his hand along her slit, he watched as she licked her hand, cleaning it of his pre. Somehow, seeing her do that made the burning arousal inside him all the stronger. He lifted his hand to his mouth, sniffing at the juices that were collected there. The sheer strength of the pheromones within, the height of arousal they represented, shocked him. He licked his hand clean, just as she did hers.

He reached for her, his hand stroking upwards from her hips. She pushed herself against his hand as it moved higher, crossing over her belly before stopping at her breast. Her eyes closed, Sarah slowly lowered her hand down his body. Her fingers rubbed against his belly, against his groin, before settling around his testicles. Her gentle fingers lifted, cradled his sensitive scrotum, rubbing it before letting it fall again.

She opened her eyes, and stepped closer to him. Her hands gently clasped his, as she looked up at him. Her eyes pleaded, and her mouth worked, trying to whisper her wish.

Shaking his head, he leaned down and kissed her once more. He knew what she wanted, and she was going to have it.

His hands clasped around her hips and behind her head, he slowly lowered her to the furry bed that they shared. His hands stroked along her side as he made sure that she was comfortable. He lingered, just for a moment, on her breasts, his hands stroking along the slope of them, across the middle to tweak the nipple gently before he pulled his hands away again.

A gentle push opened her legs, allowing Toleth a closer view of what he was stroking along earlier. He leaned in a little bit, curious despite himself.

The moisture that he had felt against his fingers had grown stronger, her entire vaginal area pulsing, slick with the liquid. What little light there was in the cavern flickered, little bits of the torchlight bouncing off of her aroused nether region. Toleth stared at it, leaning in closer, and closer, until his lips were pressed against her. Kissing her in this way had not occurred to him, but from the gasps of pleasure that were ripped from Sarah's mouth, she enjoyed this.

With gentle touches, Toleth spread her legs a little further, examining the treasure that lay between them with lips and tongue. So different from a female of his own species, so much warmer, smaller. And tastier, so his tongue told him as he slowly pressed it into her. Small wafts of scents, primarily that of her arousal, reached his nose and made him moan.

His tongue wiggled inside of her, each movement drawing gasps and whimpers of pleasure from the human. Each wiggle, each twist of his tongue seemed to make her slicker, wetter between the legs. He pushed forward, his tongue reaching further and further inside of her. He searched for the mark of a virgin, and failed to find it.

At least that would make things a little bit easier for her, when the time came.

Toleth gave her a final lick before pulling his head back and looking down at Sarah's face. She was flushed, nearly as red as his scales, and her chest heaved in pants for breath. She looked at him with admiration, adoration, and he couldn't help but return the look to her.

His member had never ceased throbbing between his legs, and he felt the need to bury himself between her legs more firmly than he had ever felt the need for release in his life. He moved forward, his penis rubbing against her legs as he slowly moved over her. His shadow covered her as he held himself above her, and met her eyes once more. Her green eyes looked back at him, glinting despite his shadow over her. She smiled, and leaned up, kissing him once more.

As he kissed her in return, panting in need, he realized that the loneliness that had rested inside him since the Purge was gone. With this human, he wasn't alone.

He groaned softly as he broke the kiss, and lowered his hands to Sarah's hips. He grasped them gently, but firmly, and lifted them as he lowered himself. Their genitals met, touching, uncertain for a moment before moving together. She rubbed against him in gently grinds, and he could no longer control himself.

All it took was a small adjustment to his position for him to be able to sheath himself in her vagina. His penis pulsed within her, as it was enveloped in the warmth of her, and he moaned. So warm, and so wet within, and tighter than he ever could have imagined.

He forced his eyes open again to look down at her, to make sure that she wasn't in pain, that he hadn't hurt her.

Far from it. She panted with as much lust and need as when his lips had been against her nether lips, and she looked at him with eyes that pleaded for more. Toleth grinned softly at her, and proceeded to give her more.

He eased his way back out from her before pushing back in, repeating again, and again, slowly sliding more and more of himself into her with each and every little thrust. It was a slow process, but it built excitement in him, his member harder than he could ever remember it being, and clasped so tightly by the female. He felt himself squirt little shots of pre within her, each thrust, each shot making Sarah moan. She flushed further, the blush carrying down to her chest as her breasts bounced softly with each thrust.

His mouth hung open as he finally hilted himself in her, feeling the sheer heat that was present in the human. Even with neither of them moving, it seemed as though she was trying to milk his member with her inner walls, pulling at him with all that she had.

Toleth gasped softly, panting to catch his breath in all the excitement. He stroked his hand around her hips, feeling her curves as he caught his breath. "Are you...are you ready?" he asked her. Belatedly, he had realized their size difference, and he wanted to make sure that he wasn't hurting her in anything that he was doing. No matter how much he needed this, no matter how much she needed it, he wanted it to be painless if possible.

She responded by wrapping her legs around his hips, pulling him closer, if that was even possible. She picked herself up from the furs, and pushed him to a sitting position. She held herself atop his member, her legs around his hips, and her breasts against his chest. "No matter what, don't stop until we both cum," she whispered to him.

He grinned softly at her words, and nodded. Grasping her by the hips, he lifted her off of his member, upwards until only his tip was still in her before dropping her back over it. The sheer pleasure of the act, of her falling down over his penis and engulfing it fully within her in that swift movement, nearly brought him to climax then and there. So long without anything but his own hands had weakened him in this, and nearly undid him.

Panting softly, he waited for a second before lifting her up again. She was quivering around him. Perhaps she had passed close to her own orgasm as well, considering his tongueplay before, or perhaps she had gone without for as long as him.

It didn't matter, not really, he thought as he brought her up to his tip again. He grinned at her, and let her drop again, though not as far this time. He caught her before she could reach his member's base, leaving two inches still outside of her. Just as she opened her eyes in surprise, he dropped her the last bit of distance, her warm flesh against his increasingly slick scales.

He panted softly, repeating this rhythm, slowly lifting her and then impaling her upon his member once more, sometimes fully, sometimes not, always surprising her as best he could.

The dragon watched with interest as her breasts bounced with each fall, with each entrance of his member into her. It fascinated him, watching them, as the Hunter females had no mammaries. It was an interesting part of the body, and he couldn't keep himself from playing with them between the times he lifted her and dropped her.

Sarah seemed to appreciate that, as she arched her back, nearly forcing her breasts into his hands. He squeezed them, groped them, rubbed them, stroked them, did everything that he could think of to them. And she rewarded him with riding his member as he did, freeing his hands to work on this part of her that so fascinated him.

He soon found himself panting hard, gasping for breath between her bouncing atop his member. Each time he entered her, he felt his member gripped tightly, pulled at each time that she pulled back again. He couldn't hold back any longer. He needed to climax.

His eyes met hers as his orgasm approached. She instantly seemed to read what was about to happen, and gave him a nod, as if in permission. Regardless of the absurdity of that, he was grateful.

With an exceedingly loud roar, even for him, Toleth came. His member pulsed inside of the female, jetting with cum. His semen spurted deep within her, and the warmth and volume of it seemed to set Sarah off as well. She hilted his length inside of her as he continued to cum, shivering around him. Her arms wrapped around his neck as her legs tightened around his hips, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist. The two of them held each other through their climaxes, and continued afterwards.

Slowly, he made his way back down to earth from his afterglow, and looked at the smaller, sweaty human female in his arms. She was asleep again, cuddled against him. It was...heartwarming, he supposed the best word would be. Toleth slowly carried himself and her to the fur bed again, and laid down. He didn't bother removing himself from her, or to disentangle her from him.

For the first time, going to sleep didn't terrify him with the thought of nightmares.

~~~

Sunlight streaming in through a small hole in the wall was sufficient to wake Sarah from her sleep. She yawned softly as she pushed herself out of the darkness of sleep and opened her eyes, expecting to find that the sex from last night had been a dream, and that Toleth had walked out of the cavern earlier, perhaps to hunt.

Finding herself lips to snout with the dragon instead was something that nearly made her jump. And she would have jumped, if she didn't feel the warmth of a certain familiar appendage still inside of her.

Wiggling a bit confirmed that she was still impaled on the dragon's hefty piece of meat. Sighing softly to herself, Sarah leaned into the dragon's embrace. It wasn't so bad. In fact, it was quite good, being held so tightly, almost possessively, by such a large male. The fact that the sex that they'd had the night before had been the best she'd ever had hadn't hurt, either, she thought with a giggle.

Laying in the dragon's arms was a wonderful way to wake up in the morning, she decided. It was warm, and it was secure and comforting.

The only odd thing to her was this strange warmth that was filling her belly.

She had noticed it somewhat before she had fallen asleep last night, but it was stronger this morning. It was almost like a fire in her belly, but it didn't hurt. It just warmed.

Sarah lowered a hand to check it out, to see if there were any outward signs of what it might be, but stopped herself as her hand came into view. She stared at the nails on her hand. They hadn't been nearly that long yesterday. Now, they were almost like claws, sticking out almost two inches from her fingers.

"Well, that will make some things a little more difficult until I trim them," she said with a shake of her head. Still, they were just fingernails. They were taken care of easily enough. She nuzzled herself into the dragon's grip again, sighing with contentment.

Unfortunately, Toleth picked that moment to wake up. He yawned widely enough to make her wonder if he planned to eat her for a moment before blinking. He looked down at her, and smiled. "Good morning," he whispered. He started to lean in to kiss her, but then stopped. He pulled back, looking at the area around her eyes for a moment or two. "When did you have gold around your eyes?"

Sarah blinked in surprise. She started to raise a hand to her eyes to feel it, remembered the nails, and stopped. "Do...do you happen to have a mirror anywhere?" she asked.

Toleth gave her directions to the bathing cavern, where there was a hot spring and a mirror. She nodded and walked there quickly, rubbing her belly absently as the warmth seemed to be almost spreading, building for some reason.

When she reached the cavern, she walked backwards towards the mirror. She took a deep breath, and turned to see what the dragon had meant.

She stared, not just at the golden skin-almost scaly looking, part of her mind noted-around her eyes, but also at the far larger stomach that she was now sporting. Where before she had a small waistband, almost petite, she had grown enough to look partway pregnant. It scared her, enough to make her shriek.

The shriek apparently grabbed Toleth's attention, because he was in the bath cavern a few seconds after she finished. She rounded on him. "What happened to me? What's going on here?!" she asked, barely keeping herself from falling to hysteria. She had reason enough for it, but it would only make things worse.

Toleth looked at her, and for a change, it was the dragon who blushed. "I...Um...Well...I guess that's what happens when Haran Hunters breed outside their species..." he said.

Sarah blinked at the answer, and started to calm down. At least there was a possible biological, scientific explanation. With a reason behind what had just happened, it was a little easier to accept with some measure of calm. Of course, there were other things that were buzzing around in her mind that she was sure she would worry about later, but for now, there was one question really buzzing in her mind.

"Just tell me this," she said, smiling a somewhat shaky smile. "I'm not going to have to lay eggs, am I?"