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An explosion woke me the next morning just before sunrise. Leaping to my feet with my eyes wide open and head searching I was instantly on the alert. My heart raced as yelling voices came from outside followed by the thudding of paws as a child of the egg ran past the hangar I had been sleeping in. Headed in the direction opposite of the humans, another child of the egg ran after the first one before I heard furious roaring from Big Bang somewhere in the direction of the rude awakening.

Don't mix this with that! Big Bang warn! Big Bang bite you! Tricky, tricky thing not like touch! Big Bang warn! BAD! YOU BAD! BIG BANG BITE! YOU SHOW TAIL, I SHOW TEETH! The snarled and roared upbraiding grew in volume until a black blur shot past the opening in the direction the first two had gone.

Ulysses yawned from his cot in the corner and rolled over with his arm covering his eyes.

"It's nice to know that we don't have to wait for hostile forces to blow us up when Big Bang is running around experimenting with the lithium she found god knows where."

The scales of my husband's neck tickled my nose as I nuzzled him and inhaled deeply to lock his scent in. It only took me a few words to the lost ones still draped over him to illicit fervid promises from them to keep him in sight and safe while I was away. After another couple of minutes of watching my restfully healing husband I sighed and threw the shackles of my fatigue off so that I could exit the hangar to stretch out.

"I'm guessing this happened before if you knew who it was without a translation." My remark fell on deaf ears however, as he was already back asleep. As if he had been one of the ones flapping back and forth all night long. The feeling of cold aluminum registered distantly when my tail touched one of the legs of his cot, before flipping it over.

"Kim you scaly bitch! I wanted to sleep in! We were up till 0330 last morning, night, whatever..."

"Yeah, we were. And whose fucking back were you riding on all night? Yes... that's right...it wasn't some fucking midnight colored Pegasus. It was mine, you fleshy dickweed. Calling me a bitch? Why, I oughtta..."

My tail tip rose, and then flashed downward with a heavy thud that made Ulysses fucking levitate. Now...That was funny.

"Good, you're up. Now are you done treating me like a fucking helicopter and instead as the thinking, breathing, fucking, individual that ferried you back and forth from the air base last night?"

"I don't think I need to hear about your fucking..." He muttered.

"Don't act like you've never fantasized about it, you shithead. I've caught you looking at my goods more times than you can count too. Which is five, last time I checked, you inbred dick jerking Pigmy Neanderthal. Do you think the General is awake?" I raised my head to sniff him out. Something strange tickled my nose. He was... he was with someone...

"Probably." Ulysses responded, rubbing his eyes and leaning against my tree trunk fore leg. "I know he's a living creature, so I presume he does at some point. But in the time I've known him, he's been awake when I go to sleep, and awake when I crawl out of bed in the morning. Every. Day."

Moving out into the predawn gray morning, I reared up with one paw on the hangar roof to look for what had happened. A thin column of white smoke was drifting upwards from where I had seen Big Bang's science experiment last night during all the goings on. Already, a crash tender was fast approaching with a jet of foam arcing out from it to smother the source of the white smoke.

More importantly, I spied where the General was and who he was with. They must have been laying side by side judging by their head positions, but it was obvious that he had been watching something with Virginia. No one else around here could have possibly been mistaken for her with her head completely overtopping Boyd's own. Tilting it to one side to look down at him, she must have said something because I heard the General laugh as they returned their attention off to the east.

Clamoring to see what I did, I offered Ulysses my head to sit on which he took me up on. Raising my neck to its full extension I sat and peacefully watched the sunrise past the other two heads as it climbed above the horizon.

Virginia had ended up spending the night here to get fitted for the egg pack carrier thing. In exchange, the two Huygens had returned to the mall on the third trip back and forth accompanied by a team of operators under Ulysses' command and a swarm of lost children of the egg.

I had tried to learn more about who had gone with them but had only gotten the following when I asked:

"You don't need to know who we are, only that we are on your side."

And.

Mother with egg? We go!

Which, while largely encouraging, was not helpful in any other manner.

Ulysses jumped down from my head to my spike, and then rode the rest of the way down with his hands clutching at my spinal fin to slow himself like it was a fucking curtain or something. Which, of course, he yanked on severely and caused me to crumple to one side limply with my legs kicking up into the air and a pained shriek that rather ruined what was a particularly beautiful sunrise.

What a dick.

Before he could toddle away on whatever business he had, I curled a paw around him to temporarily arrest him. Swelling as I inhaled, I pointed the tip of my snout at him where he disappeared as I cracked my mouth open wide. Then, I channeled the tingling burning feeling of my nerves out through my mouth as a blast of thunder.

Releasing my hold on him, I left him gasping on the ground as he rubbed his ears in pain from the vast roar I gave him to let him know about all the agony he had just put me through. To add insult to injury, no sooner had he gained his feet than he found himself surrounded by six opened muzzles angrily exhaling rank dragon breath at him.

You hurt mother with egg?

Bite your face!

Yes! Bite face!

Take your head!

Off!

Head off!

Giggling nervously, he just pat my neck to show everyone what good, good buddies we were as I translated all that for him.

"Thank you, Colonel, for ruining the sunrise. I can assure you that yanking on our fins is every bit as painful as something else that I'm sure I don't need to mention." General Boyd reprimanded his officer after pushing his way through the circle of overzealous scales.

"I apologize, sir, Kim." Ulysses responded, before hustling out of sight with haste after patting my neck once again.

Off you go now. Virginia added, as she walked up to tower over all of us and nudged the grumbling lost ones back to whatever they were doing. Two of them headed back towards a handful of humans holding clipboards who greeted them by their invented new names and beckoned them into a hangar that I had not been inside yet. The rest leapt into the air and scattered into the air traffic corridors to cause fresh havoc for the airport.

"Thank you for your kind words, Virginia. I will make sure you are on your way back to the mall by noon. Hopefully, I can share more calm moments with you in the future such as this morning."

"I think I would like that John." She replied with a coy smile. With a nudge from her wing against his flank, she turned away to head to where I had been fitted to my since discarded body suit.

There was a loud yawn from behind me, and I turned my head back to see that Dan had emerged alongside his two daughters who came over to sniff at my belly. I whacked them back with a wing to let them know I'd had enough with others checking on me and mine every minute of the day. They shot me reproachful looks and angry scents, but I was feeling standoffish after my abbreviated sleep and was unperturbed. Those fuckers had gotten a full night's worth, not me. I was, however, surprised to notice that Tyler was clutching First Light's neck with his bandaged arms after I had folded my wing again and could see him.

"We really hit it off last night while you were busy." He said, after I asked him what the fuck he was doing. "She offered to let me sit up here."

I looked at him with a dubious smell. Since when could he understand her? First Light cleared that up with what she said next.

"I remember...I...am Sarah. But am also... First Light. Tyler helped! Tyler friend of Sarah! First Light home from school nest when me screamed as face broke apart. Sarah see beast in the shiny self picture of car with funny mouth, long nose, and big flappy ears before black! Nothing but black! Then wakey wakey last night... Sorrys, my words no good get better later now!" She twisted her head to look at the base of her neck, and her passenger, for reassurance. Tyler obligingly provided that by rubbing her spinal frill and giving words of encouragement which made her scent change from one of uncertainty to confidence.

She recovered her identity? When the fuck did this happen?

Dan and Night Star/Becky were positively radiating their happiness about this when I asked them. The older male, who had been fairly staid so far, was rocking back and forth in paw tapping joy like an excited puppy that had tears leaking from its eyes.

I cannot thank this young man enough for helping my daughter. She remembers who she was! It is such a relief to know that my children have not lost who they were forever. That they can return. I do not know whether to thank you Kim, and your husband, for being the catalyst that brought about the meeting that helped one of my children. Or to strangle you for also convincing us to come with you into a situation that endangered their lives.

I shuffled my feet and gave Dan a whiff of my strained conflict over his remark. What the fuck was that? We're doing our best here! In the end I settled on taking the comments at face value, and respectfully looked away to his daughters as he cried his continued relief out in front of me.

Mother with egg not be sad! Know want best for us and eggs. Night Star so, so happy First Light know self! Mother and Father with egg help First Light! Confused, but know! Thoughts funny! Maybe Night Star funny two leg thing too? Maybe remember! But not know now... If help...Night Star happy! Help Night Star know once me? Help know Becky? Becky was me? Night Star sad not know Becky! Missing. Me, was me, missing! Can find? Help! Night Star hurt, confused! Not like trick! Bad, bad, bad, bad!

None of us listening who understood her cries could deny her the comfort she begged for. Dan, Sarah (with a confused Tyler rubbing her neck to soothe her own distress along for the ride), I, and Boyd surged forward in a flurry of wings that wrapped around her as she keened her confusion and we crooned sympathetic reassurances back to her in return. Her whimpering trailed off after a few minutes at which point Boyd and I realized what we were doing and jumped backwards with seismic thuds and embarrassed smells from us both.

Damn it! Was I in control of myself or not?

With our heads turned away from each other, and the family before us, Boyd and I tried to reign in our rampaging instincts.

With a couple of short, discomfited, barking coughs, Boyd cleared his throat while I scratched at the ground with a set of hind talons.

"So...how 'bout them Seahawks, huh?" He asked me.

My eyes swiveled up to look at him obliquely as I gave an uneasy smell and grin in response.

"Heard one of the coaches and a referee started changing mid-game on national television."

"Kim...are you having a hard time with..." He trailed off.

"Nope! Absolutely not!" He looked me straight in the eyes and saw the truth that shone in his own. Bobbing his head, we dropped the subject and never spoke of it again. We weren't going to let go. Not of what we were. None of those who changed ever really did. No matter what others may think. Stuck halfway, that's what we all were.

Alex came from the medical area, rubbing his eyes sleepily, and looked up to give us a good morning when he spotted Tyler. Seeing that the kid was clutching Sarah's neck with his bandaged arms the way he was sent the doctor into a grouchy tirade. The rant ended with Tyler on the ground being marched away to address the blood that was staining the white bandaging with Sarah, and her sister, following close behind.

"I have good news for you, Kim." Boyd said to grab my attention. "Aerial recon has found a child of the egg at a cluster of buildings North by Northwest and 70 klicks away. I was told you'd be interested."

"No little one? Might not be the one we're looking for."

Boyd shrugged his wings "No, it very well might not be. I think it is female, however, and some curious dormant ones have confirmed my suspicion. Are you going to finish what you have come here for?"

I was. Even though I knew what awaited me. Bobbing my head, I confirmed as much. "How is Jack Rabbit doing? I have not seen him since we arrived."

"Jack is grieving for his mother, as can be expected. He does not deserve your scorn for whatever it is he has done to earn that belittling title that you have given him." General Boyd admonished me. The admonishment turned into a snarl that was joined by Dan's when my body interpreted how little I cared about Jack Rabbit's feelings into a twitch that ran down my spine to make my tail tip give a flippant dismissive wave. The fucker had just really rubbed my scales the wrong way with his limp spineless bearing. "That attitude is disappointing, Kim. So many have spoken highly of you, as have I myself. Why are you being this way?"

"Look, I don't like him alright? He's a jumpy, flighty, flavorless piece of steamed shit whose panicky nature is going to get someone killed. On top of that, I know he thinks of nothing but his own fucking interests by his stupid fucking attitude when we found the female. The best I can do is to not fuck with him further while I talk with him."

Both of the older and larger males still looked pissed with their back fins trembling and tails thumping in agitation. Which was enhanced by their also smelling disappointed about it. But that was as far as I felt I could go. My body acted on my stubbornness by flaring my fins and wings to make me looker bigger as I bristled challengingly with my head snaking back and forth. It took me a minute to wrangle myself under control, and I stood there with bewilderment leaking from my scales as their body motions ceased with the scent of their own bemusement joining mine.

Just like before, none of us would look at each other, turning our long necks away to glance at this or that instead. Was I getting worse? Were we getting worse? More and more, our emotions were being acted out physically by our bodies without us even considering it. Without us being able to control it. If they were in the same pickle that I felt myself in, and I sensed that they were when I was this close to them, then the relationship between what our minds were doing and what our bodies did seemed to be changing in ways that we didn't understand yet.

An idea and a question tickled the back of my mind about my new ability. Acting on it in the way that I knew best, impulsively and without thought, I reached out to the two larger males with my wings and thoughts. Brushing their flanks at the same time I caressed the jagged antsy feelings radiating from their minds. Once engaged, I projected a sense of calm that had an immediate effect on the three of us. My internal turmoil quieted as I focused on soothing their concerns and they leaned against my gently encompassing wings while their heads drooped and their muscles relaxed. After enough time had passed that their scent changed to one of calm, I folded my wings and stepped back to look at them both.

That was some weird fucking shit right there. But I felt at least the littlest bit easier about it because, I, had initiated it, not my body. I needed to talk to one of the shrinks about this, was 'I' me? Or, was my body 'me'? Fuck, what a rabbit hole. I still don't know if I'm explaining my thinking correctly even after all these years.

Dan rumbled deep in his throat and flapped his wings uncomfortably to clear the air (literally) between us from the results of the even more alien behavior that I had just performed that felt...right for the situation. For my part, I was a little embarrassed to realize when I had dropped my wings from blocking my view that I was now surrounded by a crowd of wistful children of the egg who looked on with envy pouring from them.

Sitting there with my head lowered to point at the ground, I sighed as pleas to be calmed for all manner of reasons assailed my ear fins. Dan and General Boyd came to my rescue by standing on each side of me and pushing everyone back with their wings while asking them to come back later.

"And one at a time." I muttered to them. Which they repeated for me. Even though that was presuming more than I had a reasonable expectation of accomplishing. I still didn't know what I had just did. I had just done it.

Once the others had been cleared off, Boyd and Dan led me away to where I knew the last location of Prometheus and Tomoko were.

"I want some answers as badly as I can smell that you do." Boyd said, when one of my eyes had found his.

We entered a hangar that had two Warthogs in it and found Prometheus wound around the twin aircraft with Tomoko nestled in the crook of a fore leg. Both sound asleep it seemed, until Tomoko opened her eyes as soon as we crouched to enter.

What did I just do? I asked her, too tired to even be aggressive about it. She opened her mouth to respond with her head resting on Prometheus' leg, but Boyd cut her off with a slash of his tail.

"Wait, I want this recorded."

After a brief interlude for the General to bark a command outside, there was an airman running in with some recording equipment. Once this was setup, Boyd had me identify myself and relay everything I had thought, felt, and done just minutes previously. Only after those preliminaries were out of the way was I able to hear what I was growing increasingly impatient for.

Much to the peril of anyone and everything within reach of my tail and only after the video camera was limited to a cozy look at my interlocked front teeth. Morning Kim is not friendly Kim even with my change in species.

"Kimmy, her mate, and others like them will be different than the rest of you. Her role is an integral one of being able to unlock an ability similar but less powerful than hers and Tom's in others."

"Hold up." I said with the first question in my mind already.

"You gave it to Tom, and since he is your mate, and yours alone, he shares with you the ability unlike what you will give others."

"Sssstop that!" Boyd snarled, irately. "Let her ask the question for the record before you respond."

"Johnny! It is rude to hiss! I ask you to please be careful with what others learn of your acquired nature! Alcohol is a potent medicinal tool for you, but now the secret is out! Poor, poor, Cyndi was the victim of that knowledge being leaked! So many more will die far before they would have otherwise!" She wagged her head sadly with her wings drooping to the ground along with her tail.

"So, let me wrap my tail around this...I, and Tom, can unlock the ability for other mated pairs to share each other's emotions, as well as their children's. I, and Tom, can influence other's emotions, but other non-matriarch mated pairs cannot? So is there anything else?"

"Of course there is, silly Kimmy! Lots 'o' things! We changed the chemistry of your brains so that you can do this with humans too! We don't want anyone left out!"

Changed our brain chemistry?Dan asked, incredulously. What can we do?

"Share feelings! Isn't that the bestest ever?"

"What?"

"What!"

What?

"Yep! When you go home to your children your empathic abilities will allow you to share your children's love!"

How is any of this possible? Mind reading is a myth!

"No it isn't silly! I am doing it right now! I know everything that you think and are going to say! Your minds are exceptionally strong and able to perform a simpler version of what I do! You are empaths! Let me show you how strong you are!"

An incandescent light bulb in a simple light socket appeared out of thin air on the ground between all of our conversing heads.

"Give it a spin Dan-o! Think about your love for your daughters as hard as you can. Try to project it so that we can feel it! Show the world how amazing it is to have children!"

Four pairs of eyes looked down at the small light fixture dubiously, before turning to the one being asked to do the experiment. Boyd reached out to gently tap the device to make sure it wouldn't explode or something. For all we knew, it could be an anti-matter bomb or something equally insane.

"Of course it's not, Kimmy!" Tomoko scolded me. "What a crude weapon to make when you are trying to save a world!"

Still looking like it would jump up and bite him, Dan surprised me by sniffing at the light bulb before closing his eyes with a furrow forming on his brow. Boyd smelled unimpressed at first, but I had no reason to think he was feeling what I was. A glowing aurora was emanating from Dan that grew warmer and warmer while also making me thrum happily at the feeling of love that made my children tumble excitedly.

A tiny glimmer of light came from the light bulb, before it increased until it settled into a pulsing glow.

"See!" Tomoko exclaimed excitedly, bouncing up and down. "Now you try Kimmy!"

"No, stop. Kim did you feel something? I understand that I cannot feel this right now. But you were supposed to have, am I correct?" Boyd interrupted with a flick of his tail.

I bobbed my head and turned my attention to my children and my love for them. The cherished feeling of my affection for them trickled through my being until I held the four minds within me cradled in that sensation. Picturing my other children alongside their new siblings, the feeling of being able to share myself with them swelled greater and greater. I heard a pop and then tiny shards of glass pattered against my hardened scales.

"Very good, Kimmy!" Tomoko enthused. "I knew you could do it! Every time you use your gift you'll get stronger and more proficient at it! By the time you return to your home, you'll be ready to touch the minds of your human children! There will be so many smiles!"

"As much as I'd like too, Tomoko, I'm not going to do that until I, and Tom, decide amongst ourselves that it is safe. Not one fucking minute before that, you untrustworthy enigma." I snapped at her, while pawing the glass shards off the tip of my nose.

Her bouncing slowed to a stop and she hung her head to make grunting sniffles with tears running down her snout. Feeling her distress, the sloth like Prometheus finally awoke. Taking one look down at his ersatz sibling, his color shifting eyes swiveled to look at the most likely source of Tomoko's distress. Me, of course.

"One day you will learn to trust her, Kim, and the world will be better for it."

"Change my family back!"

"You know that is not a possibility..."

"Then tell me the fucking truth, and all of it, about what is happening! Otherwise, shut your fucking snouts about trust."

Another snorting sob broke from Tomoko's muzzle and I sighed. God fucking damn it. "Come here Tomoko." I beckoned for her, and she crawled over not looking up to meet my eyes as they tracked her progress.

Seriously, the power to remake a world with nothing but a thought, and she sulks like a kicked puppy every fucking time you're angry with it for being oracular.

I made sure to graze its neck with my teeth once so that she knew my apology while I nosed at her fin with long gentle strokes to calm the erratic source of knowledge and reality altering shenanigans.

"So, now what?" I asked, after grumpily calming the fucking child, god, computer, whatever, with my nose and tongue.

This ability of yours...do you think perhaps that you can use it to help the troubled female you found yesterday? Do you think...that you can help Night Star recover her memories?

"I don't know if that's a good idea. I'm still confused and unsure about the whole thing, and that pisses me off. The last thing I want to do is stir someone's mind the wrong way and turn them into a fucking vegetable. Trying with the lost one I found might be better. At least there I'd just be calming her and keeping her from injuring herself as opposed to rebuilding a god damned entire personality like I would be with your daughter."

"Why don't we just ask them?" Boyd pointed his snout at Prometheus and then Tomoko.

"Prometheus give us the answer we seek. You too, Tomoko."

"Why?" Prometheus said.

"Can't! I'm snug as a bug in a rug right now Kimmy! You make the bestest parent ever!" Tomoko cooed and snuggled tighter against my leg.

"Do you see what I have to put up with? If I kill you Prometheus, will you tell me what I want to know?" I just ignored Tomoko. Attempting to kill her would be like trying to murder the air around yourself, I already knew it just couldn't be done.

"Pain is very unpleasant, Kim. I am sorry to tell you however that it would not be sufficient for me to compromise the plan that can lead to your saving."

Boyd, by this point, smelled like he had reached the end of his fuse. "I don't have time for these nonsensical pursuits of chasing after alien logic like it was my last hunt."

We paused, as my stomach roared angrily. Easy, you insatiable void!

"Kim, if you are going to make an attempt to heal the female, I want Sergeant Timmons..."

"Hey! That's me!"

"...Sergeant Timmons to record and two of the psychiatrists we have in my command to provide support and observe."

I will come as well. No one should have to go through what happened to my daughters.

"Do not be too long in your attempt, Kim and Dan. Kim, the Mk 1 Mod 2 COTEMPS will be ready for your use once more and there will be a detail to accompany you for the trip to identify and retrieve the female. Be ready no later than 1000."

"What the fuck is a COTEMPS, and why are you barking orders at me?" I barked back at Boyd. Fuck that, I'm not wearing a uniform anymore!

"Child Of TheEgg Modular Protective System, and I apologize. If you want assistance and support from anything or anyone under my control you will please be ready at 1000."

I sniffed in distaste for his usage of the word 'please', but I did want help. If for no other reason that I was likely going to get maimed.

"Can you reinforce the chest and shoulder areas of the suit, and assign a medic to be brought with me?"

That caught his attention. Pivoting around until he faced me, he stood breathing through his nose for a moment as he scanned my stance and scent.

"What do you know that you are not saying, Kim McConnor-Schwarzkopf?"

"I've been told that I am due to get ripped open today...no big deal right?"

His eyes glanced away from mine to look towards Tomoko, then Prometheus, then back to me again.

"If I ordered you not to go, would you obey me?"

"No."

He paused at the bluntness of my answer, his tail waving gently behind him in thought as I watched him size me up. Apparently, he came to the conclusion that it would not be worth the fight to keep me grounded. Which was good, because I would use all the power I had over the lost ones due to my eggs to make him rue today if he did.

"How many were you planning on taking with you?"

My right rear foot kicked backwards and struck Prometheus who snorted awake once again. "This one, Jack Rabbit, and three other children of the egg. Recovered ones."

"Very well. Does Jack know that he will be carried by you once more? Never mind, I will see to it that he is made ready." With those final words, Boyd left us. Rising to my feet, I looked down at the snoozing Tomoko before picking her up gently in my mouth and setting her down between my wings as Dan, I, and Sergeant Timmons...

"'Hey! That's me!' Are you fucking serious?" I sniped at the clueless wonder, who shied away from all my teeth in his big dumb face.

...headed on our way to where Bonehead told us the unknown female, and her two maybe siblings were.

Sometime last night we could see that Victoria had given her cherished Piggy to the unknown female and had lain down with her side pushed up against her elder with her head draped across a fore leg. Sam was sitting quietly on a cot that he had drawn nearby and was watching the two female's heads with a troubled expression on his bruised and sleep deprived face. Which he had every right to be wearing regardless of whether the female before him was in fact his sister. She was such a fucking mess that it was hard to tell if her skin was supposed to be black scale, or tan stretch bandaging.

"I don't know myself if it's her or not, but Vicky swears that she smells like her 'big sis'." Sam told us after he left her side to meet us. "Right now, that is enough for me. Even if she ends up not being who we hope she is, how can we not want to help a girl suffering like her? We will be her family if she has none. And continue our search for Courtney."

Where are your parents Sam? Dan felt it prudent to ask through my translation.

He gave a pained sigh as he looked back at his youngest sister. "Never knew my father. My mother had my two sisters with another man that was never around. I was 15, Courtney was three, and Victoria less than a year, when I told our mother to take her drugs and her sleaze bag biker friends out of our life. Three years ago, I got a phone call saying that she died in a motorcycle accident with meth in her system and not a thought in her head. I never told my sisters. Couldn't bring myself to do it. The only parent they've ever had, has been me."

"Jesus..." I whispered, appalled.

"So sad..." Tomoko cried from my back.

"Yeah, well.." Sam said "...we've kept each other going all these years by always being there for each other. Until the day that I came home to find Courtney gone, and Victoria in her closet sobbing while her legs and arms broke and reformed over and over until she could never stand up again. Do you know what the first thing she said to me was? Do you know what the first thing that came out of the mouth of the little girl, that I had raised since she was eight months old and couldn't recognize anymore, was? 'Sorry Big Brother, I tried to help Corky because she was hurt too but I don't feel so good!'"

Tears began to shine in Sam's eyes as he looked up at me with a twisted smile on his face. "Can you believe that? A nine-year-old girl, in unbearable pain while she was turning into a dragon, apologized to me because she was too hurt and scared to help her sister. And then...and then...Victoria...how could you ever think that I'd care about the cost of your pajamas while..."

Turning away, he bolted with his face covered by his hands, refusing to let us see him as he let out what he had probably been bottling up for almost a year. He ran straight into the chest of his little sister, who had awakened at his cries and snuck up behind him with only the slightest whisper of moving scale. Looking up in surprise, Sam tried to hurriedly wipe his nose and his eyes with his shirt.

"Big Brother..." Victoria whimpered sadly, wrapping a fore leg around to pin him against her neck. Waves of sadness coming off the both of them assaulted me, making me flinch, as they tried to be strong for each other.

Watching them, resolve filled me. I could help this situation, if I would just get past my fear of what I could do. I would try. But only with their approval. Sorry Tom, but I couldn't wait to see what you thought on this one.

The psychiatrists arrived and listened while I explained to Victoria and Sam what I was going to attempt. With Tomoko on my back observing, I described how I was going to make an effort to reach out and wake the female to help her accept what happened while calming her at the same time. Dan revealed to Victoria what part he would play in it as well so that she could pass it along to her brother.

Naturally, they had many, many questions about me, what I thought I could do, and most importantly, the risks and unknowns involved. I gave them what information that I knew, which was frankly not much, and had to direct them more and more often to Tomoko. Which didn't sit well with Sam when he caught on that the diminutive computer dongle was the driving force behind what had happened to his sisters.

"What do you mean this is for the best! What bullshit is that! Do you honestly expect me to believe that? Look at my sister! Look at her! Does she look like the little girl I raised? Do you know what she went through while I held her? How she cried and cried as her body was destroyed! You...you..." Sputtering in fitful rage, he unslung the rifle that was still on his back and drew an alarmed cry from his sister. She had withdrawn a short distance and was sitting on her tail with her stuffed pig clasped tightly against her chest with her wings while shivering fearfully at the violence of her brother.

"Big brother, no!"

Wiggling around, her tail wrapped around her brother to stop him with his rifle pointed in the air as he struggled against the limb. Realizing who held him, the fight left him, and the weapon clattered to the ground when he went limp in his sister's embrace. One of the psychiatrists ran forward to unload and safe it.

"Vicky, this thing is the reason behind what happened to you! Don't you remember how many times you told me that you hated what you are now? How scared we both were because we didn't know what happened to Courtney? What happened to you? This is our chance to get our revenge! Right in front of us is one the things that did this to you!"

"But...but...why?"

She smelled unsure, and what she had said was even more so. I felt Tomoko scratch at my scales with its tiny claws restlessly and decided that she should be front and center to hear one of its victims up close. Depositing her on the ground with my mouth, I punted her forward with a flick of my nose that sent her sliding in front of Sam and Victoria. Instead of complaining, as it normally would, she instead bowed her head to the two siblings and remained motionless with her eyes closed.

"I used to hate being weird like this Sam. Being different! Strange! But then I realized how strong I am, that I could protect you now after everything you had done for me. Now you won't have to work so hard! See? I could pay my big brother back for being strong for me! Maybe being like this isn't so bad now? You don't have to pay for food for us anymore because I can sniff it out! I found potatoes and apples and deer! I have been helping the piggies and the deer in the woods! I keep them safe and sound and happy so that they are tasty! If I'm careful, and quiet, they come to me! Their noses tickle! But I think they know that they are safe with me! Until they know I'm hungry..." She finished more darkly. "When my tummy rumbles, no one wants to play with me anymore..."

After a moment of chewing over just what that meant to the pre-teen, her smell and expression brightened anew as she discarded it for now to continue.

"Now, we don't have to be afraid anymore! I've been thinking a whole lot about it! Since I am a big child of the egg now, we can be free! Once we help Courtney, we won't have to hide in the stinky old mall anymore! We could see the world! You'll see, once we wake up big sis, everything will be okay! I can feel it in my wings! So please don't be angry at the weirdo baby for me, I think it means well even if it made me hurt so, so much. Can't we just let this big scary looking mother with egg help us with Courtney and find somewhere safe for us until we can go sightseeing? I don't want to hate anymore...okay big brother? Just you, Corky, me, and the sky!"

She opened her mouth and brushed her teeth against Tomoko's neck and then released her brother from the wraps she had bound him in. Victoria looked at her brother with a plea in her eyes as he struggled to form a response before giving up with a sigh.

"You're right little sis, you're right. But...but...I don't know if I can let go of my hatred so easily. What they did to you, to our sister, to our family! I don't know if I can Vicky, but for you I will try." He reached up for her, Tomoko forgotten in the face of his sister's plea, as she approached him with her head held low.

Victoria smelled of, and glowed with, approval as she reached out with her stuffed pig in a huge inhuman paw to bop her brother in the face with it softly. "Piggy and I are proud of you Sam, I'm glad you're my big brother! I know it is hard to do what we have already! But we are happy, happy, happy that you will try! Are we going to help big sis now?"

She brought her low held head around to look at me with questions in her eyes and hope on her scales. Sam hugged the girth of her neck and looked at me as well.

"Is there any last thing we should know about what you're going to do?"

Shaking my head to clear my thoughts of the touching scene I had just witnessed I did a brief scan of the list of concerns that I had come up with for what I was about to do.

"Yeah...if I can't make her calm on my own...I'm going to try to connect you two with her."

"Careful Kimmy! Remember the lightbulb! Compared to humans, children of the egg's minds are very powerful indeed and able to generate fields strong enough to power electrical gadgets! Among children of the egg, Matriarchs and their mates reign supreme! You are a dynamo!"

Great, one more fucking thing to worry about. I could nuke a human's fucking head like it was jammed in a microwave.

"Connect? Connect what!" Sam wanted to know. Which, as soon as I was done explaining, had already led to another complication. A ten-year-old complication.

"Not my brother then! I am like you...kinda...connect me so that you don't zap my brother! I'm strong! Practice on me first!"

Sam, Dan, the psychiatrists, three passing children of the egg, and a fucking airman eating a breakfast burrito, all started to add their two cents into the matter and drove me past the edge of my miniscule patience.

"Everyone shut the fuck up! I'm not going to try this out on a fucking ten-year-old!"

Victoria gasped, and looked at her brother with wide frightened eyes. "Sam! The scary lady said a bad word! Twice!" She pushed the crown of her head against her brother's chest, and he obligingly reached as far as he could to help pin her ears shut. Which was redundant as she was more than capable of folding her ear fins shut on her own.

I kept rolling as more barked orders flew from my opened jaws. This is a lesson in leadership for the kids out there: if you don't know what you're doing, act like you do, and own the situation no matter what.

"Dan! Lay down on the female, pin her in place. Yes, I know that sounds like, but do it anyway! Victoria, keep your brother in check and stand back. Do not touch me while I do this! Sergeant 'That's Me', stop deep throating that fucking burrito and record! You three, Keep yourselves and Victoria away from me!Psychiatrists, do you have any last second input?"

"What is going on? We have literally no idea what you have been talking about this whole time... You can feel what others are?"

"Good to know you're both fucking worthless, stand back and don't get killed by someone bigger than you."

By the time that the only one in the crowd around me remembered that he was bigger than me, and the rest didn't answer to me and knew I wouldn't hurt them, they were in position for this. This being something that it was entirely likely had never been done on this world before and by all rights should have been debated about and discussed for days or weeks more.

Fuck that. I fucking act! Talking is for chickenshit other people! Except for Tom though... and definitely with my kids too...and Alex...or just barely, maybe, Jesse. But that's it! Fuck everyone else! That's the final word! No more enlarging my circle of trust! Well...except Angie...you know what? Fuck it, I lost what I was even trying to say here.

The first thing I did after reaching out to lay a front paw on the female's head, was to firewall the looming giant presence of Dan. Who, of course, was draped all over the female and could not be warned off. I accomplished it, I think, by just willing the streamers of feeling that I sent out from branching towards him, and instead circled around the core of the female's mind, shielding it from him.

Which was important, because her mind was a spiky ball of fear and confusion that lashed out at each tendril of sensation that I extended towards it. Collecting the memories I had of watching my children care for each other, I projected the feelings that arose in me from those recollections towards the angsty sphere of pathos. Her needle like repulsions continued to poke at the warmth of love and reassurance that I let ooze over her mind, and with each strike the needles melted into a roiling sea of anxiety that relaxed by minute increments until I felt she was calm enough for the next step.

"Take the booze out of her mouth. I'm going to wake her up." I told the Psychiatrists. They protested that they still didn't know what was going on, and that there was no fucking way they were sticking their hands in the traumatized female's mouth. Which some abstract portion of my mind felt was reasonable, before I doused that shard of my brain in impatience and laughed as I listened to its gurgling cries as it drowned.

"Pussies!" I yelled at them, doubling my workload by having to keep my irritation from undoing all the progress I had made in calming the damn female. "Dan, can you do it? I don't want to lose contact accidentally."

My paw shifted when he used his own to gently pry her long snout open and used the other to snag the soaked towel within. Once he had scraped the fabric out, I opened my scales to reinforce the effect of comfort I was projecting. Telling Dan, Victoria, and the other three to do the same and to lay down with their heads on the ground. I arranged to have Victoria and Sam in front of the female's muzzle so that they would, hopefully, be the first friendly faces she'd see.

"And smile damnit!" I hissed at everyone in the area.

Caressing her mind, I gently nudged her awake with physical and mental touches until I felt and saw her stir beneath my paw. Her orange eyes reluctantly opened at first, before flaring wide as agony erupted between my eyes when a javelin of fear and revulsion shot through my skull. Jerking away from my touching paw, Dan was forced to collapse against her with all his body weight when she tried to shimmy her way free to the opening to the outside behind my tail.

Darting my hand out, I rest it on her head again and used my greater strength and size to hold her whipping head still. Shrilling keenly in alarm and making everyone wince, I tamped down her crazed mania until I began to feel that she sensed someone familiar nearby.

Got it!

"Victoria and Sam, come closer. Let her smell you, let her see you. Talk to her. This is your sister, Courtney."

Being panicked, not deaf, Courtney heard her name and those of her siblings. The change that came over her mind was as sudden as it was dramatic. Gone was the panic of waking up to a crowd of strangers, a strange body, and unfamiliar surroundings. In its place, was the feeling of her shame and revulsion for what she was.

"Dooooon'tlooook atmeeeee. Iiiiiimonster!"

"No! Big sis! Don't say monster! You're just like me! Not monsters, children of the egg! We're strong! Strong enough to protect big brother! We can be safe now. Look, I brought Piggy! She wants to say hi!"

Holding the large stuffed animal in her mouth, Victoria bopped her sister in the head with it, and I felt all the emotions battering my mind collapse until only one was left. Relief.

Dan released his hold on her, and I backed away myself to give her room as a new set of convulsions tore up and down the length of her body. Sobbing, she tried once more to feebly shuffle away from her siblings to hide beneath a wing. She was stopped when Sam ran to throw his arms around her muzzle. Victoria pressed herself against her flank and flared her wing up and over her larger sister to draw her tightly against herself.

"Welcome back big sis! We missed you!"

"Courtney..." Sam whispered to her, stroking her cheek with his hand while her eyes blearily stared past him where he was in her blind spot. "Why didn't you come back? I promised you...but...I failed..."

She opened her mouth, lifting her cheek out of Sam's reach, and howled her confusion about what happened to her. She told them about how she thought she had died, had gone to hell. How she thought she had to punish herself for what had happened. Each garbled, nearly incomprehensible, word that flew from her muzzle broke my hesitation into smaller and smaller pieces.

I knew it was time for us to leave, when I felt the remains of her defenses crumble into powder. But before I did, I helped one more time. Breaking my own promise as thoroughly as my resolve not to do what I was about to had been.

"Sam, Courtney, I will connect your emotions so that you can help your sister. Is this what you want? Tell me now, one way or the other, if you are as unsure about this as I am."

"I want to help Corky!"

"Keep Victoria out of this, do me!"

Sam's concern was touching but I was increasingly more worried about him and not Victoria, so I just ignored his demand. Closing my eyes, I reached out again and felt out Courtney and Victoria's ribbons of emotion, and with the utmost care and reluctance, Sam's much, much weaker ones. Guiding these strands together, I felt their minds grow quiet as they explored each other's feelings before an explosion of radiant love came from the temporary empathy I had established. Warmth suffused me while I listened to their gasping breaths as the three of them struggled to assimilate what they were feeling. When Dan asked me if it worked, I couldn't help myself sharing what I sensed from them and the three other children of the egg that crowded ever closer.

For someone who had been dead set against doing this about thirty minutes earlier, I sure went from zero to warp speed pretty fucking quick. The fact that Tom wasn't there to help me through this decision bothered me. But between what happened in the mall, and my own raw introduction to the ability, I had become confident enough that I knew how the other children of the egg would react that I finally was willing to risk it. Not so much Sam. He was the only variable that truly worried me when I had run through the lists of pros, and cons, before coming to a decision. Far faster than I ever would have on something like this before my change.

Tom was going to be pissed at me for plowing ahead without him there to learn from the experience if nothing else. I wondered if I could do more with it like transfer memories outside of the initial bonding...

"Good idea Kimmy! As a matriarch with a bonded mate there are many things that you have not realized yet! Tom as well! Isn't learning new things about yourself the funnest?"

Snuffling breaths and quiet cries for forgiveness and understanding continued to come from under the canopies of Victoria's and Courtney's wings. The psychiatrists, still not realizing what was going on, dutifully acted on what they did know and ushered everyone but themselves and the three huddled siblings from the structure. As I left, I could feel their connections begin to weaken when I distanced myself. But I could still feel that it had been enough for them to break through to the middle sister. Dan closed the doors with his tail, and we all left them to heal in peace.

"Well!" I said, sweeping the floor behind me with my tail in some bizarre alien parody of dusting my hands. The tiny weight of Tomoko reappeared on my back as I dissembled. "A good job, if I do say so my self! Still an hour and a half to spoon with my husband before off I go again! Unless you want to see me and my mate have a quick fuck... see ya!" Spinning, I tried to dart away with an exaggerated bounce to my trot. But it was not to be so, as I was immediately halted by Dan's paw grabbing my tail.

"Fuck." I grunted, in exasperation because I knew what he was going to ask of me, and because it still felt weird as all hell to have my god damned spine yanked on like that. I mean, seriously, are you going to sit there and tell me you can imagine what it feels like to have your spine shoot out past your hips and weld your ass shut while your hips blew apart into a shape that meant you would never walk on two legs again? Come on! My legs were attached to my body half way up my sides! Are you also going to pretend that know how it feels to trot around with that thick bundle of muscle waving back and forth over everyone's heads betraying every time you felt giddy about something? Unless you did in fact join me in growing a tail shut your dumb fucking human mouth, because you don't.

If you want me to beg, I will Kim.

The much larger male folded his front legs until his chest scraped the concrete while he bowed his head to the ground to touch his snout to it before looking up at me again with watery eyes.

Please, for my daughters. They are so confused right now, and you have shown me that they do not have to be. You allowed me to feel what you accomplished in there. Please, help me help my daughters with their own changes.

My nostrils flared into my sight as I felt air tumble down my long nose when I sighed through the openings at the far end of my face with a raspy snort. New nostrils, new sight, new face, new tail, new psychic abilities, new responsibilities, new duties, new, new, new... Less and less what I was, and more and more something else. Something new. My children, picking up on my distress, echoed my anxiety, and while I stood their frozen in thought with my tail captured, I closed my eyes and hummed soothingly to my all-important passengers.

As I calmed myself and my children, my new form betrayed me once again by transmitting my calming lullaby via scent and emotion. Dan's paw loosened its hold and slipped from my tail. Reacting, I turned to look back to see him blinking sleepily at me. I hadn't meant to do this, I knew, and I could see in his eyes that he knew that as well as he fought against what I had unconsciously done by stabbing one paw with the claw of another. Looking past his head as he cast off his stupor, I saw that Sergeant "Hey, that's me!" was looking around in confusion, unaffected for the most part except for the fact that he was yawning repeatedly. The three other children of the egg, further back, didn't look sleepy, instead all of them were bobbing their heads in tune to the humming that I had already cut off. Only gradually did their dancing come to a halt as they looked at me with contentment wafting from their long bodies.

"That felt like...like my mother was rocking me to sleep." The male in the middle said, to the agreement of the other male on his left and the lost female on his right.

Please, Kim. Use the ability of a Matriarch to help me heal my daughters.

A tremor ran down Dan's spine, and his tail lifted and swung to entwine with mine in an attempt to plead with tactile engagement. But his hopeful scent changed to one of dismay in one triple beat of our great hearts when I smacked his tail away with my tip.

"Not yet, Dan. I'm sorry. Look at what I just fucking did! Nothing that I had wanted to! There are just too many unknowns right now. Courtney had to wake up sooner or later, and she was an immediate danger to herself. I had no choice but to act. But you and your daughters are stable. I'm sorry that you are unhappy, and that she is lost. But neither of you are in danger right now of self-destructing. Give me time to figure this out. Okay, marine?"

Kim, our memories of who we were, and who we are to each other, is all that we have of what we once were. If Becky does not recover her memories, my daughter has truly died. Becky, my daughter, will have died, and been replaced by Night Star, a stranger. You heard her earlier, she witnessed her sister recover hers right in front of her. She knows what she is missing, and it is tearing her apart inside. She is a shell of what she should be!

I snapped my jaws in frustration at him as my scales bristled in my growing agitation. I do not know if I can help with memories! You are misunderstanding what you are seeing me do, Dan.

Only my escalating irritation allowed me to meet his pained eyes. But I didn't have to do it any longer when they, and his attention, shifted to my back and the listening Tomoko. Is what Kim is presuming true? Can she not help with my daughter's memories? Can you help her learn better control? Please! Never once have I asked you why you have done this to me and mine. Never accused you for the death of my wife. Never once have I doubted that there is some purpose to what you have done to us! But for this, this I beg you. Please help Kim with her uncertainty so that she can help my daughter!

I twisted my neck to bring my head around to look at Tomoko as I felt her tiny soft claws scratch at the scales on my back. Sergeant 'Hey, That's me' had moved from between us with a scared look on his face. He must have been used to seeing us communicate in the new language by now with his interactions with the Lt. Cols. and General Boyd. But seeing one of us arguing passionately for something with our tail lashing and wings raised and trembling could still be a tad frightening for pussies. We waited for her response, and when it came, it was more of what I expected from the alien computers. Bewildering and fuzzy nonsense that told us nothing that we did not already suspect ourselves.

"Oh! Kimmy is absolutely right to wait for her mate! There is so, so much more that she is capable of when control is established! With her mate at her side with his own abilities, and with all that they will learn, oh! It will be a truly happy day! But, pushing dear Kimmy and Tom forward is most very so much unwise! She and Tom must learn as they will! So many happy smiles are at stake! This is not ours to interfere with! We need permission from the big bosses! Our creators! I am just a humble *bzzzzcrack*" She ended with the sound of high energy discharge and a spark of lightning that arced from the tip of her right wing to the ground where it left a charred streak in the concrete. What the fuck was that?

"Tomoko, what the fuck?"

"I'm sorry, Kimmy! Our descriptions lay in our names, and they cannot be spoken in this universe! There are not enough dimensions!"

"What? Four isn't enough?"

"Oh, silly! Of course there are more than four here! There are..."

"Kim! Tom is waking up!"

Reaching my head down to my own back, I picked Tomoko up by the scruff of her neck and dropped her (semi) gently on the ground.

"Stop fucking with us!" I snarled at her, before leaving her, and her stupid fucking grin, behind on my way to Alex, who was the one calling for me. I was sick of saying that to the aliens, I really was. The only one that didn't play games anymore was Prometheus. But just as my tail passed its head however, I stopped, sighed loudly, and turned back to the crestfallen Dan who was staring at the ground at his paws.

"Get your daughters and meet me where my husband is. Tell the General I am going to repeat what I did for Courtney. I'm sure he'll either want to watch or detail someone else to." I turned away before the absolute joy and gratitude that washed across his scales and made his tail begin to wag furiously could make my head grow so much that it would explode. He won't be so fucking happy and thankful if this thing goes sideways on us.

I wasn't particularly concerned by the three that were watching us exploding into flight in different directions when I said that. But I should have been, because ten minutes later I was surrounded by a fucking zoo's worth of reptiles.

The guards that I had set on my husband earlier saw my approach and cleared out of my way. As I passed them, each reached out with their nose and caressed my flanks. Not that that was necessary, because at this close of a range I could feel each of their emotions, and rather wished I couldn't. It was nothing short of an invasion of privacy that would have pissed me off to the point of biting motherfuckers if it had been used on me. But I didn't know how to turn it off yet so there I found myself reading them like they were billboards as their skulls trailed along my body.

Tom was muttering in his sleep with his tail stirring alongside his body to twitch and thump irregularly while I arranged myself so that my head lay snout to snout with his. Still not sure how to proceed, I tried what I knew, my breathing exercise. With my eyes closed to slits, I focused on my husband's lovely snout and breathed evenly and deeply, sending my scent towards him with slow flaps of my ears until my mind cleared of thought. The feelings of restlessness and pain emanating from him grew stronger and stronger until I was as immersed in what he felt as I was in my own body.

Projecting my love for him, and the quieting rhythm of our children's hearts, I surprised myself by absorbing some of his pain and gave a sharp snort that I could feel tickle our snout as a jolt of angry knotted discomfort erupted in my long neck. With my hips and the thick base of my tail pushed up against his chest, I could feel as our hearts began to beat in cadence and our children reached out for their father. Curious and fretful as to why he hurt, I could feel their reaching tendrils slide along the connection I had made until they reached their father.

Only then, did Tom's beautiful, loving, eyes open to meet mine while that big dumb smile, that made me hot for him every time, grew across his broad muzzle. My scales rustled open to express how much he meant to me at the same time that I could feel him try to send something back. I kissed him when the fuzzy image of two children of the egg began to form in my mind. Two children of the egg entwined together so thoroughly, that there could only be one thing they were doing...

"Later." I promised, thrilled with his idea, as his smile changed to a more salacious one when his tongue slithered out of the side of his mouth to brush over my own.

He tasted...I could taste myself...Our thoughts blurred together again, as my body jumped with the phantom feeling of his tongue inside me as I tasted her...I was sweet and she was smoky and together we tasted...we tasted...Oh god, Tom...Kim...we love you...

I shivered, and then snapped my scales closed when Alex coughed obnoxiously loud to remind us that he was standing just a few meters away. I heard cooing noises from the other children of the egg that hadn't taken the hint and fucked off while I mentally lulled our children back to sleep and got on with business.

With tender flicks of my tongue, I kissed him again and again as I worked my way down his neck to his wound so that I could satisfy myself on its progress. Alex must have just removed the gauze before I had come, which I appreciated, because it lay exposed to the air as it flexed with each enormous rasping breath my mate drew. The stitches looked solid where the scales had fallen away, and I could not smell anything other than the scent that I wanted nothing more than to fall into and never escape.

"So..." my beat red brother-in-law began when I pulled my head away from Tom's neck to look at him. "...is the *cough* wound to your liking?" He waited a bit, as I stared at him until he cracked in embarrassment for us since we had no shame of our own. "Jesus you two, could you at least do it in private? It's bad enough that I have to hear every time you roar each other's names 10 kilometers away...do I have to watch it now too? Tom, how does your throat feel?"

He didn't answer vocally, instead making a low rumbling noise that made the pain he was emitting swell while his eyes swiveled to look at mine. A request formed in his mind and acting on what I thought he wanted I delved deeper into what I was feeling from his neck. Burning pain spread in my throat followed by the taste of blood coating the back of my tongue.

"Check his throat. Something doesn't feel right inside his throat. I can taste blood."

"Are you sure I shouldn't be checking your throat?"

"I know what I'm fucking saying Alex! He's bleeding internally from his wound!"

Alex moved quickly and had the medics on station come assist him in formulating a plan for repairing the damage to my husband's throat. It made my jaws ache just to see what Tom went through when a pair of four by four wood posts were used to prop his jaws open for a surgeon to crawl part way down his throat with a rope tied around him in case Tom reflexively swallowed. It was good for the surgeon that we had learned we had no gag reflex when swallowing elk whole. It was also bad for the surgeon that we could swallow elk whole. Him being significantly smaller than said animal and in constant danger of ending up in a chamber that had bile strong enough to dissolve hooves and antlers. An oxygen mask was strapped to his face and a light to his head as he went in headfirst with a makeshift surgical kit strapped to his forearm to do his work while I helped Tom through the ordeal.

Sharing the pain and irritation with my husband as I lay next to him, I became uncharacteristically snippy. Or characteristically, I suppose. Whatever, fuck you.

"How in the flying fuck is a fucking thing about this sanitary?" I asked over the sound of Tom constantly humming 'Ahhh' around the human stuck in his throat in an effort to keep from swallowing the poor bastard.

"Are you kidding me? Who told you any of this was sanitary?"

A wordless noise of protest came from Tom's throat as his eyes spun to look at the speaking doctor with anger gleaming in the slitted pupils. The surgeon in his throat yelled something and kicked warningly at his tongue until his grumbling stopped. At least the fucker had taken his boots and uniform off and put surgical scrubs on.

"Sorry, Tom." Alex apologized for the rest of the team who was busily videotaping, narrating, and recording the whole operation. "We're making this shit up as we go. No one does surgery on whales, and that is the only thing remotely close to your size. This is going to be a whole new branch of medicine."

"Yep!" One of the other doctor's agreed enthusiastically. "They're going to be naming hospitals and clinics after us for all the work we do with you...dragons...psshahahaha!" She clapped her hands to her mouth as she vainly tried to hold her laughter in before losing all control as she burst into torrents of hiccupping cackles. "Can you believe this? Ten years of medical school and I'm...I'm...working on dragons! Hahahahah! Oh my god! What's next? What could possibly top this? Oh, I know! I heard that Nessie needed her flipper reset!" To shut the woman up in her obnoxious hilarity, I poked her with my tongue and knocked her to the ground. Take that you, dizzy bitch!

I coughed as the feeling of a phantom needle pricking through my throat came from Tom's. Twenty times, I felt a lance slide through my throat tissue as I shared his burden. Knowing damn well he would do the same for me. The impromptu throat surgeon yanked on the rope tied around his chest twice, and the waiting team pulled him slowly outwards along with his oxygen line. Popping free, and rolling out of Tom's mouth, my husband immediately opened his jaws a little wider and swiped the props free with one paw so that he could work his jaws and shut his mouth.

"How does he feel?" Alex asked me. "Don't you dare talk, Tom!" He yelled at his brother as soon as he saw that he had opened his jaws to respond on his own. A heavy snort of annoyance left my mate's nose and buffeted his brother as he glared at him irately.

"I can't taste the blood anymore, and his throat feels...cooler...I guess? Not as inflamed. Also..." I hummed and made a big show of closing my eyes and ducking my head until I could hold it in my fore paws as I sat on my tail. Being all mystical and shit, that's me! "I see...that he thinks you're all a bunch of assholes!"

Tom's head lifted from the ground and bobbed enthusiastically as he made some approving grunts. His attention turned back to me again, and the fuzzy image of what he had sent earlier repeated itself along with an interrogative thought.

Chuckling, I nosed at him with soothing flicks of my tongue against his wounded neck. He sighed with disappointment as I laughed. We will shake the ground later, I promise. For now, we have to do something else that I had promised.

Curling my head around until I could see the nearby watching Dan and his family, I rocked it to beckon them over. Seating themselves in a semicircle around my mate's head, the two daughters nuzzled my husband encouragingly with scents meant to relax his residual tension. Dan gave his own, more restrained and human like, encouragement and then I lay down at my husband's side once more to begin to explain.

By the time I was done, to the tail whipping annoyance of my dear, dear husband, I had a fore paw pushing down on his muzzle to keep him from talking and ripping open all the stitches. At least that was what the doctors had started yelling at me to do anyway.

Instead of more blood and pain on his part, I felt the force of his glare, and the bombardment of his irritated feelings skating across my mind like jagged pieces of glass. That is, of course, when I wasn't stopping to explain things every single time he sent questions to me. Which was at a pace that I could only describe as insanely maddening.

One group that couldn't get enough of the continual contact that Tom and I had established, were our children. Who tumbled in their shells with ecstatic broadcasts of enthusiasm every time we mentally 'spoke' like they were cheering us on.

It was fucking adorable!

So adorable, in fact, that little did everyone else know we were only paying, at best, half a mind to the conversation of what I and Tom were going to do for Dan and his family. The vast majority of our facilities were dedicated to giving delightful little pokes to our overjoyed children's minds and then trying to outdo each other with projections of our love at their cute expressions of wonder and amusement. It was amazing that their eggs weren't making my hindquarters jump up and down given how much movement was going on back there.

"Help fix Night Star! Want know Becky, First Light, father! Egg father, help Becky! Night Star begs!"

Hearing Becky beg for her memories back, we both gave loving mental nudges to our children once more and then lulled them to sleep in their shells. Putting our full attention back into the conversation, we were ready to do it after all involved united in begging us to. Our reluctance could only hold up so long in the face of such earnest pleas.

"As long as my husband understands everything that I told him..." He looked at me and bobbed his head. "...and as long as you understand how risky and completely off the fucking charts crazy this is. We'll do it. Come closer, Becky, Sarah, and Dan. Lay your heads next to each other's."

As they shuffled around so that Dan was in the middle of his two daughters, their smell of apprehension grew stronger as the time came closer and closer to start. It was hard to tell who the most anxious of the three were, but I did know one thing, and that was that the hope pouring off Becky was overwhelming. As their tails twined together into a thick bundled triple helix, I saw General Boyd crouch to creep with sprawled legs into the hangar and lay to watch. Once he was situated, Prometheus' head craned inside to observe as well with Tomoko appearing on top of it. Great, the circus was complete.

With one last nuzzle of each other's muzzle, and a quick flick of our tongues, Tom and I shifted until we could lay our heads and necks across each of the daughter's heads. We had no way of knowing if what we were doing was right, or proper, or what the fuck ever. So we just had to act on the vague facts that we already knew, and even vaguer feelings of what felt right. In the end, our snouts met in the middle on the top of Dan's neck. We looked into each other's eyes and squeezed the other's tail for reassurance and luck. We began.

Straight away we felt the presence of the three female and male minds. The strength of the male mind almost pushing us back out of the connection until Tom and I linked our thoughts to stand against the older male's strength. Curious streamers from Becky reached blindly and at random, searching, towards her sister and her father. Guiding those ribbons of thought, I connected them to her family and them to each other. Tom showed his part to play in this crazy sequence by reinforcing those connections into permanence. Thoughts began to flow across the connections as anxiety changed to relief, and confusion to realization. More and more connections formed between the father and his daughters until a braided umbilical cord ran to and from each ball of thought and feeling. A memory broke from the noise and flooded Tom and I's senses so powerfully that it was as if we had lived it.

We were in a small four door sedan travelling through the forest somewhere in what I presumed was Idaho. As the car navigated the two-lane ribbon of road, I saw our perspective shift and look around the car and once I three other women ('Becky, Sarah, and Jessica' something whispered in my head) I realized we were seeing Dan's memories.

"So how about that boyfriend of yours?" A voice asked...It was mine...Dan's human voice.

The black haired, pale skinned, green eyed, chubby woman in the back seat had her chin resting in her hand and was looking blankly out the window when my point of view looked back at her. 'Becky' that same ethereal voice told me.

"His name was Chad, dad, and we broke up three weeks ago."

"Oh, honey!" The driver ('Jessica') said. She was a short woman, with a broad pleasant face that was currently screwed up in consternation for her daughter with her thin lips pursed. She had brown eyes, and her own black hair was in a losing battle with the gray that age had given her. "Why didn't you say something before! He was such a sweet boy!"

A feeling of approval came from Dan's memory about Chad ('He was in the ROTC') but he held his tongue and listened to what was being said.

"He got drunk and woke up in the wrong bed." The taller woman, who could only be Sarah, sitting next to Becky said with a malicious grin. She had a spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose, above which her brown eyes glittered with mischief as they looked at her younger sister. The rail thin woman with the sandy brown hair ('She has my eyes, hair, and build') opened her mouth to say something else. But a pained look entered her eyes and her hands flew to cover her face at the same time that the car briefly swerved. "Ugh! It feels like someone just punched my face!" Dan heard Becky ask her sister if she was alright, but his attention was drawn to his wife grunting in pain. I could feel the sensation of his skin crawling.

The car jerked again as Jessica reached down towards her feet where a loud creaking noise was emanating. The crawling sensation on Dan's skin grew more acute and focused on an area of his chest.

"What's wrong Jess? Do you need me to take over driving? We're not in any hurry to get to your brother's."

"No...It's just...my feet..." Her jaw clenched, and she grunted in pain. The car jerked again and sped up briefly as her legs visibly spasmed, his wife groaned loudly at the same time there was a snapping noise. A deafening scream came from the back seat. It was Becky.

"SARAH! WHAT'S HAPPENING TO YOU!"

The scene blurred as Dan's head whipped around to look at the back seat. Sarah's mouth was opened in a silent scream of pain and distended veins stood out on her neck as she grabbed with one hand at her sister and clawed at the earring in her ear with the other. A black stain had appeared on her cheek and was growing rapidly across her skin. The inky discoloration encroached on her ear on that side as it began to grow as she ripped her earring free, the skin reforming around the tear in seconds was black.

A feeling of overwhelming nausea washed through Dan, and I tasted bile in my own throat. The burning on his chest spread further, but he had no concern for what was happening to himself. The car's speed surged wildly again, and Jessica's grunts of pain began to take on a breathless tone as whatever was happening to her began to overwhelm her ability to vocalize. One of her legs was becoming...

"Jessica! Pull over! Stop the car!"

But Jessica did not look like she was in full control of her body any longer. Black spots were growing along her right leg where the skin could be seen through the expanding tears in her pants. An undulating howl of pain came from her mouth, and Dan could see that the foot pinned against the accelerator was lengthening and driving her knee into the steering wheel and locking it in place.

The screaming escalated in the back seat, and Dan looked back again to see that Sarah's ear was growing and thinning as it darkened at the same time needlelike spars began to spear outwards from her skull through the altering flesh. Another scream from Becky transformed mid sound into an inhuman screech that drilled through my head like an ice pick. The younger sister convulsed, and with a crack, her head slammed into the window behind her as she grabbed at her throat. The burning on Dan's chest grew, and he grunted through clenched teeth as he felt something inside of himself...shift. Doubling over, he tore and yanked at his pullover until he could see his chest. Dark as night, there was a pattern developing to his skin as small black discs grew in a slow wave across his ribs. Agony erupted in my own body when the level of pain he was feeling spiked so high it ran into my own body as he dug his nails into the changing skin of his chest. The taste of bile grew in my mouth, and Dan vomited into the footwell as, beneath the hand he held to his chest, he could feel organs in his abdomen move when he shifted his hand downwards.

"Ssssstop car, Jessssica!" Dan hissed between agonized breaths and locked teeth. His only answer was his wife whimpering breathlessly as her legs shook and spasmed uncontrollably.

The shrieking in the backseat changed again into a roar that I could understand. I hurt! Sister, sister! Hurt!

A throe of agony took hold of Dan, causing my vision to double in mind numbing pain as I felt the makeup of his chest and stomach wrench, and twisted him unmercifully in his seat until his head wedged against his wife's seat looking backwards at his daughters. Becky's head was whipping savagely, putting more and more craters in the safety glass until the window gave way completely and cold seasonal air ran through the car. Her hair, matted by glistening blood that turned black even as Dan watched in alarm that he couldn't draw breath to announce, began to shed from her head in clumps. A crack came from her body, and with a jolt, her head locked partially upwards as her spine began to change.

Vomit dribbled from Dan's mouth and over across the armrest as panic and pain began to make his vision dim. Her neck! Her neck was getting longer! The car careened off the guardrail of a small bridge that they were crossing, and Dan's limp body shifted until Sarah came into view.

His oldest daughter was looking back at him with an alien expression that he couldn't understand. Neither could he understand what had happened to her. The left side of her face...horror erased all thoughts in his head. Her face...

The region between her nose and her mouth had distended with her nostrils and bridge having doubled in size. Her left eye had turned gray, and the pupil had grown vertically into an oval that shrank into a slit even as he watched. Her left ear twitched, and then folded to lay flat against her head in a bizarre motion that her body should have never been capable of. The unchanged eye on her right looked back at him with panic just as great as the alien expression held in the left. Tears rained steadily from both as the light in her still human eye grew and faded in cycles while gray bled into her iris from the outside.

"Daddddy? Iiiiiiii...lossssin...meee. Whaaaat naaa..." She trailed off with a low whistling sound that meant nothing to him.

Confusion raced through Dan to fight against the horror he felt, before joining with that feeling and amplifying it. Dan watched, as the look in his eldest daughter's eyes changed. I had to fight back the feeling of vomit in my own throat when I realized what Dan had been witness to. He had watched, as everything that was his daughter faded, and First Light had been forced into existence by a wave of overwhelming agony.

A wheezing grunt came from Jessica, and I felt her hand take Dan's into it. The last thing Dan knew before the world exploded into the sound of crumbling metal and breaking glass as the car began to roll, was the soft skin of his wife's hand, and the hardened claws tipping two of her slender fingers.

When he woke up, the warm hand in his, was as cold and lifeless as the air that filled his tortured lungs.

At the time of impact, the sun had been high in the sky and light at its fullest. When Dan's eyes had reopened, night had fallen.

Strange sensations came from all across his body as he cried over the broken body of his wife. Waves of sadness and grief crashed into my psyche while he mourned her death. Hours of grief passed in seconds until thoughts of his wife began to be broken up by concerns for his daughters, and the events leading to the crash, induced him to leave her shattered remains in the car.

Dan knew, although he didn't give much thought to how until later, that by their lack of scent nearby that his daughters were not in the car any longer. Dan himself could no longer fit through the door frame next to him for reasons he did not understand. Nor did he understand why he couldn't stand up to squeeze himself through the front windshield. He felt the cold night of the air but felt strangely warm. On his hands and feet outside, the dark moonless night felt odd for some reason as he inhaled through his nose, looking for his daughters. Rhythmically, he felt something touching his body, and lifted his arm enough for his head to look over his opposite shoulder to see what part of the car was swinging against him.

What he saw, cut through his confusion and stopped all thought. Down the length of a back that had grown level by the lengthening of his arms, he saw the tattered remains of his pants, and the additional meter of spine he now had swinging idly back and forth.

A tail...he had a tail... and he could feel each time it swung to the right and brushed the open rear car door.

His eyes rolled to the sky and darkness more perfect than the night sky fell across his vision.

The next morning, he awoke to the feeling of a body pressed up against each of his sides and cold soil against his chin, neck, chest, and belly. He opened his eyes once more and found what had become of his daughters.

Turning his head, it dragged across the ground. Dan had to relearn how to move his body based on what he could see of his daughters. Rightly guessing that his own neck was at least as long as their own, and able to lift as well as turn. I felt his confusion at the black object that divided his vision and when he moved his head to look more closely at Becky, she disappeared into a space his eyes couldn't see. His dismay increased at the impact on his nose and the realization that his face had radically changed by lengthening to accommodate the thick pointed tongue that was even then exploring his unfamiliar arrangement of evenly spaced curved and serrated fangs.

Shouting in terror, he chased that ferocious noise with a whimper as he heard the sounds that came from his open mouth. His daughters were startled awake and spun in place on all fours looking for what was threatening their father. For the first time, he got a good look at what he supposed he looked like as well. Already with bodies taller and far, far longer than horses, his daughters looked down at him where he lay with their mouths opened in snarls. Fins spreading from the sides of their heads were rattling in what he smelled was rage, as the vast patches of scales that covered most of their bodies raised to release the scent of their anger. Just like his own, they had tails that extended far beyond their hips. Thick at the base to match their bodies, these appendages tapered gradually to the distant whip like tips that curled and uncurled restlessly as they lashed back and forth.

Their movements caused the shredded remainder of their clothes to fall to the ground at their hands and feet that were hands and feet no longer. Their fingers and toes were now capped by centimeters of hardened black claws. The fifth digits of each elongated...paw had relocated partway up their reconfigured feet, and looking down at his own hands, he experimentally grabbed at a bundle of sticks nearby. Uncurling his clawed toes pinning the twigs against the fifth palm talon, he despondently watched the debris fall. His own feet felt strange in the remains of his boots and, scraping the scraps of each shell off with the other foot, curled the unleashed talons into the ground that parted before their strength like water. A hysterical laugh shook his frame, spooking his daughters to look back at him from where they were scanning for danger from his earlier outburst. Tears began to coat his eyes, and he felt them track down the sides of a face that he did not recognize anymore.

Dan realized he could tell his daughters apart by something he couldn't quantify yet, but the feeling was reinforced by the fact that what he thought was his oldest, Sarah, had a band of white decoration marring the scales spattered over her ankle where she had had it tattooed the night she turned eighteen.

After the last tatters of their clothes fell from their unrecognizable backs. Dan was startled to see two stubby arms with skeletal fingers unfold from their shoulders to rise a handful of centimeters into the air and wave in an agitated grotesque parody of the arms that now served as a pair of legs. Bare of a membrane for now, realization entered Dan's mind. He had seen enough pictures of bats to know what he was looking at.

Wings...wings...wings...wings...wings...

The word kept ricocheting back and forth in his head. A heavy weight on his own back shifted, and he shivered at the feeling of his arms straightening out to extend. The feeling of a breeze caressing a part of him that shouldn't exist. Confused by the conflicting signals, he looked down at his fore legs / arms to see they hadn't moved a millimeter. It wasn't until he saw a shadow where one hadn't existed moments ago and felt his center of balance shift significantly higher did he realize. His wings...wings...tails...scales....

He and what was left of his family were transforming into dragons.

'Not dragons...welcome...child of the egg.'

Dan heard that message in his head. Similar to the one that I and everyone else had heard. A greeting. Unlike us, he had no guide to make sense of this all for him. My pity for him grew by leaps and bounds and fed back into the three bonded family members that I could feel watching Tom and I as we relived Dan's memories. I felt awareness and remembrance growing by the second in both Sarah's and Becky's minds.

WHO IS THAT? Dan shrilly whistled, much to the confusion of his children. MY WIFE...MY WIFE IS DEAD! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO US! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE! Jessica...Jessica...what have you done to us...Jessica...

The closest thing Dan could do to burying his head in his hands, was to lay his head down and cover it with his new paws. Which is exactly what he did as broken sobs, and shuddering twitches of growth, travelled down his body to the very tip of his new tail. His legs followed suit, by folding alongside his body until the feeling of his belly and groin touching the cold ground gave him another reminder that he was now as naked and inhuman as any beast that had ever walked the earth.

Not be sad, egg father! Wings funny not long! Fly soon! Not sad! Becky said to their father, in a misguided attempt to ease his sadness. Not even realizing that he couldn't give one fuck about the status of his wings. Dan only sobbed harder at the reminder that his daughters had been taken from him as well.

Egg father...where egg mother? First Light remember...remember other thing! Remember was! Getting far, not want go, but go anyway! Try bite, and keep! But remember other thing go! First Light not like... maybe Egg Father help? Sarah chirped at her father, with a hopeful smell coming from her scales.

Crying quietly to himself, he was forced to deal with a situation in a body that he did not how to move, in a life that he did not know if he wanted. He told his youngest daughter to stay where she was in a language that he did not recognize and led Sarah to see what happened to her mother. I felt Dan's heart break all over again when his daughter was not able to recognize the partially transformed form of Jessica as the woman who had given birth to her and raised her until she had gone to college.

Inconsolable, Dan drove his daughter away by yelling at her to see to her sister. I felt his indecision at whether to leave her for the authorities to recover, and risk her remains being disturbed by wildlife, or burying her and hiding her monstrous half-way condition from the world. Dan recalled the shaky news stories of what had happened to others afflicted as they were, how they had been killed, trapped, tested. Fear of how others would react to him and his family began to manifest in Dan's head to add to the terrible whirlwind that was sweeping away what he thought reality was.

This was hitting Tom hard to see and feel what was going through Dan's head in these terrible moments. I could see what he was thinking, Jessica's black stained face, replaced with mine. Her body, crushed by the steering column after the air bag had been punctured, swapped with mine. In the real world, I kissed him to let him know I was there, with him, alive.

We observed, feeling the wetness of our very real tears on our cheeks as Dan's sadness bled into our own private connection. We watched as Dan used his alien paws and talons to dig a grave for his wife. Using his new powerful limbs, he wrenched the misshapen automobile apart until he could reach into the twisted wreckage and extricate his wife's broken body. Holding her in his large hands, he kissed her one final time, and keened in sorrow, when he couldn't even kiss her like the man he no longer was would have. Forced to lick her face like an animal instead. She tasted like...death. Tom and I sickened at the feeling of tasting the death of his wife, his mate.

When the final swipe of his paw pushed the last of the dirt onto Jessica's impromptu burial site Dan's sadness overcame him, and he braced himself with his partially grown tail to stand tall on his hind legs and lift his head to the sky. Screaming his sorrow to the indifferent blue sky, his daughters joined in to mourn the woman that they had forgotten. Not because they were sad for her, but because their father was. A fact not lost on Dan as the terrible misery he felt only grew greater.

Dan's screaming wails grew louder for each insult his family had just suffered. The loss of their bodies, the loss of his daughters, and the death of his wife and their mother. Each lamentation pushed us further and further out of the memory. When it was almost completely gone, and we were ready to sever the connections with the feeling that any further healing would be theirs alone to accomplish, we felt one final emotion from Dan. The resolve to keep his daughters by his side and find any way he could to make them whole once more.

Tom and I retreated from the three family members as the wailing sobs that Dan had been calling out in the memory followed us into the real world. Shook to their cores, Dan, Sarah, and Becky relived the shared memory of their wife and mother's death with enormous cries that dwarfed the ones that had come from their earlier partially transformed bodies.

Tom and I retreated into a corner to collapse into a pile of our own misery as we sent thoughts of comfort and reassurance back and forth to each other. I unashamedly leaked tears on my Tom's neck at the thought of Dan, and the immense confusion and sorrow that he had to push through to see to his daughter's needs after he had watched, fucking watched!, his daughter's memories evaporate like water on a hot sidewalk. How he had been holding his wife's hand as her life was taken from her. Tom cried tears of his own, that I felt patter down my neck as we rubbed our snouts against each other's, while dwelling on images where Jessica's body had been replaced with mine. It was pure dumb luck that something similar had not crashed down on our heads like a fucking meteor. We both knew it, and it rightly terrified us.

A huge clamoring ball of noise erupted outside, causing Tom and I to raise our saddened eyes warily, before chaos descended into the interior of the hangar. The three that I had dismissed earlier had returned with almost every single lost one in the area, along with a good number of recovered, who all swept into the structure seeking to comfort whoever they could. Boyd hurriedly ushered all the humans inside in between his front paws and hunched over them to protect them from being crushed by the well-meaning horde that flowed around him.

"Was that what you were expecting?" He asked us after the rush was over and the Robertsons as well as Tom and I were fairly well buried by crooning scaly do-gooders.

Scales rasped as I drew myself from the oddly comforting pile of individuals behind me who released the scent of all their collective disappointment that I had not stayed safely within to be soothed. When Tom crept out to continue to comfort me, and I him, the heap collapsed altogether as the children of the egg left to search out others that were more appreciative of their efforts.

"Since we didn't know what to expect, no, it wasn't." I said flatly, with my itchy eyes looking down at his feet. Fuck me, it hadn't even occurred to me...us...to wonder if we would suffer doing this. Dan...Dan...I keened loudly, and Tom responded by amplifying the feeling of my children until their sleeping peacefulness drowned my morose thoughts and he joined me in reveling in their calm serenity. Someone's recently wettened snout caressed my neck and Tom's before a meters long nose slid into my view and nudged my head until I was looking upwards. It was Boyd.

Confusion at his actions reined in his eyes, but he looked at Tom and I with encouragement coming from his scales. "Forget the timeline. You come tell me when you are ready. I will have the ones you need on standby to accompany you. Hangar 12A is not currently in use." With a last nudge from his nose he crept to the side and cleared the way for us to leave with his body.

Alex was standing next to the door on our way out, and when he started forward with his arm raised Tom shook his head at him. His arm dropped as did his expression, but he nodded anyway and left us to pad lethargically away with our tails dragging behind us. We followed the markings painted on the tarmac towards our destination until we found ourselves in the darkened interior of a hangar whose sole occupant was another Warthog off to one side with its nose cannon removed. Tom slid the door shut and we were alone.

Dropping the appearance that we had any control left of our emotions, we lunged at each other with our necks draped over each other's shoulders and paws clenching each other fiercely as our bodies trembled with muffled sobs and tears. Our heads heedlessly ripped light fixtures from the ceiling as we fell on our sides feeling the scratching of our claws across our scales. Choked heaving sobs wracked our bodies while I squalled brokenly at the same time Tom made a breathless huffing noise to fruitlessly spare his throat. Burning spread up my windpipe accompanied by the thick viscous sensation of oozing blood. I smelled, and heard, blood drip to the concrete as his wound reopened. Taking his pain as my own, I cherished the reminder that I was alive as we continued to try to make sense and grapple with what we had just experienced.

Wasn't it enough to have suffered that ourselves? Our own turning? Our own loss of humanity? A gift? Those sick fucks call this a gift? What good are we if every time we use it this happens?

I felt Tom's thoughts echo my own as our four legs tightened to draw each other closer. Gradually our cries grew quieter as the sounds of our grief veered degree by degree towards needing something else. Towards needing a reminder that we were alive, and with each other. That we weren't the ones we had felt suffering the loss of a mate. That we held each other, now and forever.

Tommy...

Kim... I thought...in his words...his feelings.

Our minds began to merge again as the walls between us bled away. I felt her fore legs push him back so that she could bow my head until I could kiss him as shrieks of anguish were replaced by something else. She licked my snout tenderly as we joined together to replace thoughts of death and loss with life.

Rolling until I was on top of him, he whimpered at the feeling of his wing being briefly pinned before it came free once more. My head raised to allow him access to my neck as I lifted my head to nip at her delicious scales covering her throat. The taste of them as I kissed her over and over was intoxicating as I felt myself grow aroused. Extending my fore legs forward, and my rear backwards, I slowly lowered myself onto him as the scales around my slit flared opened and the hide beneath softened. The smell of my arousal reached his nose and he groaned while shifting beneath her. Pressure built in my sheath as blood began to inflate what was hidden inside my scent changed to encourage her inviting passage to open further. Burning came from my throat as I moaned when he used his tail to draw my hips against his as we ground together.

Tommy...I am here...I am you Kim, and you are me...and we live...

With that reaffirmation of our presence, our lives, to each other. I felt Kim shimmy forward a bit, coaxing my erection from within its protection. I felt his dick tease at my opened folds as I surged forward and licked at his jaw. His neck bowed upwards as he dragged his head on the ground, his neck spike squealing as it dragged across the floor.

The pain we had just felt at watching Dan's children turn, and his wife's dying, faded as our love and arousal soared. I reached up to clamp my jaws around hers and prodded at the sealed snout with my tongue until it allowed me entrance. His tongue tasted sweet as it brushed mine when Kim moaned heated air straight down my gullet as I bucked my hips to tease her increasingly inflamed opening. Her splayed legs collected beneath her, as I tightened my wings, and I released the lock I had on her snout and tongue as she shifted forward and then backward.

I felt his harpoon part my passage as her wet folds enveloped my penis as it sank further and further into her. Sitting up on my hind legs, I felt the ductile nature of his dick as it bent to accommodate my position with my hips resting on his. She bent her head down to kiss me as I moaned, and she blanketed the pain of my throat with her mind while cleaning the blood that seeped from the corner of my jaws.

Do not talk. I cooed to him softly at the same time I sent an undulating wave down the length of my spine that pumped my hips once before it finished at the very tip of my tail.

Bursts of light danced across my mind as he sent feedback to me with every rock of my hips or serpentine swish of my tail. The feeling of a barb brushing my walls just right, how she squeezed that spot just above my base, how he licked at the bottom of my neck.

Like polarized waves, as my length retreated, his advanced, faster and faster as our nuzzles and licks grew more intense, as our scales opened wider and wider to show our love until we could smell nothing else, the sound of scale rubbing past scale filled the hangar along with the rhythmic thumping of our love making.

The feel of her passage, the taste of his cheek, the way her wing brushed my side, how his legs clasped my thighs. I brushed my nose against his as our eyes opened to stare into each other's. Her brilliant green eyes looked back at me as her snout opened to huff panting breath against the underside of my jaw. A glazed look came over them as her gyrations grew in intensity when I flared the spines of my little friend to lock and tease her inner walls. Tighter that canal became, before it released and clenched again and again.

He bit me and scratched at my back as he experienced his first female orgasm. His tail whistled as it whipped back and forth in the air while his talons curled and left long pale marks on my shoulders and hips. Bucking and writhing, I felt as his mind stopped functioning briefly before I felt my dick's spines flare open to lock into my waiting pussy as it began to convulse. I could feel the even pulsing of him at the same time his heated load tickled me as it reached his tip and exploded inside of me. My tail entwined hers as we struggled against each other and gasped into each other's open mouths in breathless screams. We silently felt what it was like to make love as each other for the first time and it was fucking amazing to feel her pussy clamping down on my dick. Warmth spread deep inside me as my seed bypassed the eggs to go deeper inside myself.

Tom was not done, and as he drew his fore legs around my neck, reached up and licked me from collarbone to chin as she trilled breathily with each passage of my tongue. Flaring the spines of my penis in a discordant cadence, he thrust in and out of me until I squeezed him once more with my wings spread widely behind me and my fins trembling. I felt his spines stretch and excite me until I lowered myself to lay atop of him as we writhed together. His sensations were mine as were hers mine. We exploded as our phallus convulsed in our canal and our whimpers joined in an escalating spiral that culminated with the collapse of ourselves.

With our chins together, bellies pressed tightly, and talons locked, we snaked back and forth in slowly undulating waves until our ardor cooled. Snuffling breaths were taken through flaring nostrils as we buried ourselves in each other's aroused scent while we cooed on and on when we could not. We unlocked our claws and set our paws to the ground so that we could untangle ourselves as we rolled off ourselves and lay panting with wings overlapping as we tried to recover from our short but intense interlude.

I could smell his dick as it slowly shrank back into its sheathe, leaving a ring of moisture around the opening that couldn't be hidden. Bending in half, I swung my head down the length of his body to kiss gently at his underbelly while upside down. His body convulsed with a snort from his nose at each touch of my tongue while I cleaned him. With a thought, my own folds began to seal, trapping his fiery hot seed inside me (for my body to do who the fuck knows what with, I was an alien now after all) as my scales returned to their normal positioning to hide my pussy beneath a barely discernible slit. My snatch was sorely tempted to reopen as I felt his hot breaths teasingly brushing along the outer covering alongside the soft lapping motions of his rough tongue across it as he cleaned what was left of ourselves on my scales after our intimate moment. But that moment was over, our celebration of life fulfilled, our morbid thoughts banished, and it was time to move onwards.

Both of us knew, without it having to be said, that it might be our last chance at lovemaking for a while once I set out to reunite Jack Rabbit to his wife and child. I could very well come back gravely injured, or not injured all. Who knew what changes had been wrought by the meddling with time that Tomoko and Shadi had performed?

An image of the exit to the hangar we were in formed in my head, and then Tom appeared in front of it with his wings flared to block the opening. The feeling of those wings wrapping around me was followed by the peacefulness of being held safely in his arms. Or whatever other limbs now, I suppose.

I sighed and looked away from him until his head and questioning look snaked into my view again and forced me to close my eyes instead. "You know I can't do that Tom." My mood went from basking in the afterglow of some hot, nearly silent, sex to what the motherfucking hell with his next mental comment. The ringing of metal came from within my mind followed by the image of a flood of coins flying out of a slot machine. "It's not about the fucking money Tom! Don't be an ass!" I snarled at him. If I hadn't been so high on what he had just made me feel, and the fact that he was injured, I would have bitten his fucking neck.

His eyes narrowed in exasperation and he snorted in my face before his eyes narrowed in concentration while looking back at my stomach as I felt the reaching tendrils of his thought, full of wakeful purpose, extending outwards to our children in my womb. With way more fucking effort than I'd admit, even though Tom already knew, I just barely managed to halt his attempt to wake our children and then bashed my head into the side of his to break his concentration. Fuck! His mind was just as strong as mine!

"That's fucking dirty Tom, and you know it! We owe it to them to get their family together! Even..."

"...if it might cost our family you and the lives you still hold?" His incredibly raspy and ill-used throat gurgled out. Trickles of blood ran between his rear teeth to creep over his rigid lip and patter on the ground when it dripped from the tip of his snout.

"Stop fucking talking dumbass! Let yourself heal!"

He grumbled instead of shutting the fuck up like he should have and worked his jaws back and forth restlessly for a moment. With a sharp barking sound, his neck convulsed, and he shot a blob of partially dried blood to the ground.

"...know what might happen. If you go, I go."

"Tom...I love you more than I can ever love myself, but you are a fucking moron!"

I felt as his snout quirked into a smirk and I thought my heart was going to burst. Tommy, you big adorable shithead. He ate it up of course. I was broadcasting everything I thought, and with his tail still twisted around mine it made the transmission all the more powerful.

"...love you too." With my eyes still closed, I didn't have to see the stupid shit eating grin he had creeping across his muzzle, but I still felt the rasp of his tongue as he kissed me. God damnit Tommy. How can I love someone as much as you?

Opening my eyes, I saw the stupid shit eating grin that had been tugging at my own lips even before I could see it. Bopping his nose with mine, I relented and my scent changed to one of acceptance.

"If you want to go off on a flight and risk bleeding to death to find some psychotic mother, that's on you!" I told him! That's right! He fell in against my flank, and we nudged the doors open together to face the crowd of twenty fucking children of the egg who were busy looking in any direction other than in our direction

"Did you all enjoy the fucking show? Get the fuck away from us!" I roared at them, as Tom and I bull rushed them and flung our heads and tails around with abandon. They exploded into flight in every direction like a flock of geese that had just had a fucking M-80 thrown at them. Neither I, nor Tom, were fucking porn stars! We didn't need others sitting around sniffing out our love making! What the fucking flapping fuck?

When we found General Boyd, he gave us an odd look while his nose twitched so much that I thought his snout was going to snap clean off his skull.

"Not quite what I had in mind..."

"Oh my..." The colossal Dorothy said from where she lay nearby. Too large to fit inside any structure nearby she had lay down with her head near the ground as three medics looked at her horrendous burns. "You two have been acting absolutely scandalous, haven't you?"

"Why? Did you want to join in?" I sniped back. Tom jabbed me with his wing, and then slapped a paw to his snout to cover it when I sent an image of us and the giant female vigorously...playing a round of poker.

She reared upwards in shock with her wings spreading to cast the entire area in shadow. Boyd coughed uncomfortably, knocking a few of his underlings back with his gale force exhalations. I noticed the quick furtive glance that he sent the older female.

"In any event, are you ready to begin?" He asked me, after mastering himself and the embarrassment coming off him.

My wings rose from my back and each phalange flexed one by one with a series of crackles that made Dorothy wince before folding again.

"Yep! Let's fuck this old woman!"

Tom braced himself with his tail so that he could slap his other paw to his face to cover his muzzle. Even as he muttered an aside to me out of the side of it.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"You put the ring on my finger and seven babies in my hotbox...you tell me."

Poor Tommy, I thought as he covered his head with his wings. He was running out of limbs to slap himself with.

...