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The Awakening of Dragons

Chapter Two

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by NomexGlove

_ _

It was stranger for them with Julie gone, a hole amid the dragonesses who had, even over the course of a cool afternoon with the ground still hard with winter’s chill, become used to her. Maybe it was simply a relief too for all of them to see a human again, someone that they didn’t have to hide on – well, if they had tried to hide, the cat would have well and truly been out of the bag on that one. There was only so much, honestly, that they could do.

Julie had said that she would only tell their emergency contacts first, but, after that, there was no telling how the information would filter through, who would turn up. It left Brent pacing nervously, though she was usually the most confident of them, the one who had invented numerous games to play with their new bodies, often using pinecones as substitute balls. It required a little more tact than playing with the footballs she’d been used to as a human, to say the least.

Still, even if tensions had been frayed and relationships fractured, they could be repaired. That was one more thing that Brent had learned, as a dragoness. Perhaps she would have learned it anyway. It didn’t quite stop the twisting of anxiety in the pit of her stomach.

Yet no one could have quite predicted what happened next.

*

Julie rubbed the back of her neck on arriving home, though she’d found it difficult to concentrate on the drive back. It was not quite right, what had happened to her friends, though it felt as if it was all out of her hands. Everything that she had organised before, all the days out with Sandra, the expeditions they had gone on (in less volatile territory, to be fair), had changed in the blink of an eye.

Nothing would ever be the same for her again and she had to grapple with that, going to bed alone that night, though it was not as if her bed had not been quiet for a few years before that point. She’d loved her husband dearly and when his time had come to pass on, quietly and gently, she had not wanted to be with anyone else. It had always been her choice.

Yet her eyelids were heavy, so heavy, and she was dragged into a much-needed slumber before she could even think about clinging onto her whirlwind of thoughts for even a single moment longer.

Her dreams were filled with twisting figures of dragons, winding all around her, from Sandra to Alex to Jenson to Isla-Rae – to every last one of the new dragon coven who had all been humans before. In her dreams, she paused before a mirror, touching her face, startling back when she saw a dragon staring back at her, yet the moment was gone, in the claws of the dream, as quickly as it had appeared. As if it was a fleeting image – “blink and you’ll miss it” – the notion of being one of them, just like them, appeared and disappeared, leaving with it a deep sense of discontent, as if something was missing and gained, both at the same time.

She did not remember the dream when she woke, humming a tune to herself over coffee, though it didn’t taste quite right to her anymore. Making a face in the quiet peace of her suburban kitchen, she checked the packet, gave it a “sniff test”, and put it back down again. As if that was going to tell her anything about coffee beans still being “good” or not, though it was just something that she did without really thinking about it.

“Maybe I’ll skip the coffee today then, hm?”

She didn’t talk to anyone other than herself, though hearing her own voice, well, it reminded her of lighter times. Her children had filled the house with noise and bustle and energy, once upon a time, though they had all grown up and moved on with their lives. Sometimes, Julie got to be a part of it too, though she did not mind too much. It was good that they were free to live their own lives, not restrained in any way, and she was confident that they had set their kids up, both her and her husband, to be more successful than they had been. If parents could not do that for their children when they had the ability to, Julie would have considered them sorely amiss indeed as parental figures too.

The back of her hand seemed sore, rougher than usual, even a patch up her arms, and Julie paid it no mind – not more than taking an extra moment to apply some soothing cream, a little something to ease the roughness. The cold, mountain air surely had gotten to her and it would be a long drive back to the mountains once she’d gotten things in order too.

That was one thing she had to do that day, right after she’d been for her hair appointment, refreshing the colour. She had to go to Sandra’s house, hoping that the spare key still worked and, well…that would open the door to telling the rest of the families and friends, emergency contacts spreading the word, what had happened. There was only one dragoness who had been dubious about anyone being told and that was the little blue and white splotched one, only small in comparison to the others as if she had been shrunken into herself for longer.

Well… There would be the option to still call her emergency contact, depending on who it was. There was a story there that Julie did not know, but neither did anyone want those they cared about to not know what had happened. But the pain in Kelvin’s eyes had told her that they had been hurt.

She knew that feeling. She had been through a lot in her life, seeking out adventures, though it had led to hurts too, hurts that left wounds that felt as if they would never heal. Yet she had come through every one of them, all the same, finding her husband, the light and life he had brought to her world.

There would be that for Kelvin too. Even if she had to work out how to set up dragon dates…or something like that.

But yes: her hair colouring appointment. That still had to be kept, a little spot of normalcy in a world that felt as if it was spinning out of control, though, for once, it did not involve Julie. Her fingers quivered as she sat back in the hairdresser’s hair, the light smell of hairspray tickling her nose, blow dryers softening the air with a background of white noise, the pleasant smile of her usual hairdresser, Prim, curving up in a hint of pink lipstick.

However was she going to keep things hidden? Julie pressed her lips together, giving a weak smile in return, her reflection in the mirror not suited to convincing anyone. But she couldn’t just tell Prim what had happened, no matter how long she’d been cutting her hair for!

“So, are you going anywhere nice on your holidays this year, hon?” She said, bustling away, setting up her client for her colour. “It’s been so long since you’ve been in!”

“Oh, um, yeah…” Julie cast about, though holidays seemed like the furthest thing from her mind. “It’s… Hm, France? My daughter-in-law invited me, something about revisiting, ah, the site of their honeymoon…”

She did know what her daughter-in-law had invited her to, of course, but the words would not leap to her mind at that moment. The rough spot on her arm did not seem to have softened at all, spreading, taking on a coarser texture still and a paler shade. Julie did not self-tan, not anymore, preferring to enjoy the sunshine in the warm months of the year and let her skin do what it willed the rest of it, but it was paler than normal. Almost like a scar that had been left white after doing what the body did to knit skin back together over a wound that could not be hidden.

“Oh, your hair is a bit fragile today,” Prim commented, pursing her lips as she held up Julie’s locks. “Are you sure you want to go for a colour today? We could go for a condition… Get some nice strength back into these lovely locks of yours… What have you been doing?”

“What? No!”

The words burst from her lips without her thinking about it, flustered, waving her hands, trying to make things sound less aggressive than they had come out.

Darn it!

_ _

“Oh, um!” Julie tried to backtrack, smoothing the black gown down over her legs, her untouched cup of coffee sitting before the mirror. “Oh, I didn’t mean that… Just I want the colour – yes! I’ve been really looking forward to it! Is there anything you can do?”

Prim, to her credit, did not comment further, only doing as Julie had asked. She’d seen more than enough people pass through her chair to know that she could only do her best by them and a deep conditioning and treatment, even if it extended the time that Julie was going to be there, would most certainly help.

Little did either of them know that there was nothing that could actually help Julie, simply because there was nothing wrong. A course of events had been set off by what had gone on in the mountains, meeting Sandra again, gaining new friends, a new perspective in life… There was no going back from that, even if Julie did not yet understand what was taking place.

The patch on her arm spread, rougher, easing up over her shoulder, down her back. In the seat, Julie shifted, though Prim wisely chose not to comment as some of her hair came out in the sink while it was being washed, the colour holding richer and redder than expected. It was a good thing that it was close enough to the auburn that Julie had been going for, though Prim advised her to come back and have her eyebrows done too.

Emerging, later, from the hairdresser’s salon with russet red hair that was a more prominent shade than she had expected, Julie felt a little more herself, though felt a little silly too. It was just hair… If she hadn’t been able to have the colour that day, would it have been the end of the world? But it had felt like too much to her, even if it had only been a small thing, her mind frazzled after so many, much larger revelations.

That only left Sandra’s house to enter and, thankfully for her, it had not yet been sold, likely still standing empty while the extended family dealt with the will. That was not something that Julie had been involved in so it was not as if she would know the intricacies of it.

Thankfully for Julie, she was able to get inside using the spare back door key, which had not yet been changed, though it was likely that it hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind that someone would be entering the place who was not related. Her clothes didn’t sit nicely over her shoulders, however, as she tried not to be unnerved by the house, how quiet and how still it was. She hadn’t been in there since Sandra had disappeared, but the kitchen table haunted her with memories of coffees made and laughs taken.

At least she could still have that again, with Sandra, Alex…and so many more new people. Or dragons. They were still people though, if it was okay to use that collective term.

The office, however, did not help her out as paperwork towered in stacks, a half-empty bottle of whisky in the corner of the desk. It was small and cramped with a tiny window overlooking the street and Julie could not shake the unnerving sense that she was being watched. She rubbed her back through her shirt and winced at how the fabric pulled over her skin. It didn’t feel right. Maybe she was having an allergic reaction to her newest laundry detergent? Or perhaps she just didn’t sleep right after seeing the dragons, that would make sense…

“Where is it, Sandra? Where did you put it?”

She dug and dug through as much as she could, wrinkling her nose when she finally uncovered the crinkled, crumpled list of emergency contacts: a hand-written list that, really, should have been uploaded onto the computer and sent to the local authorities before even going on the mission. It was fortunate that nothing worse had happened to the team, for while Sandra and Alex were diligent on an expedition, the set-up and preparation had slipped without them realising.

But that was in the past and no harm had come to anyone. There was no point in dwelling there when it was not something that was not even going to happen again and had no possibility of repeating itself.

She took the list home, not liking to linger in a house where people didn’t expect her to be. That would be strange, if someone walked in on her, though others may have thought she was trying to steal. She’d only taken the list, however, not even the couple of things that Sandra had borrowed from her, months back, before the expedition, for it did not feel like her place to take them anymore. With Sandra and Alex never able to return to their little house with the garden, now overgrown and tangled, it no longer felt as if she at all had permission.

Maybe it was better to leave the entire place as a museum to times gone by, in one way or another. It was all she could do.

*

“Yes… Yes, they’re really dragons. I’m… Yes, I’m aware that sounds crazy.”

Julie rubbed her forehead, fingers pressed to her temples, smoothing around and around in easy circles. She didn’t blame people for not believing her and, well, pictures of dragons on her phone did not help as much as they could have either, to be fair. She’d tried sending some, but they, including Arya’s mother who had seemed nice at first, happy to talk about her daughter, had still claimed that they were nothing more than photo manipulations.

“How can I convince you?” She’d pleaded desperately. “Do you think I’m bringing up your dead to tell you they’re not dead because it makes me happy? I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t trying to tell you that everything we know has changed! And they’re alive, I promise you that – they are alive and well!”

Brent’s father, though his name, to her, was lost in the mix of contacts she’d called up, speaking to some more than once, had been drawn up short by that. She could understand that. Imagine if she had been told that her husband was actually alive, after believing that he was dead, though she had sat quietly with him, at the time, as he’d softly crossed over. Still, she would have clawed at and clung onto that tiny fragment of hope, done anything at all that she’d thought she could do to hang onto it.

That was why he had been the first to talk to her and she had told him about Brent and how the dragoness – that had had to be revealed, as much of a shock as it had been to the man – had been making up sports games to play as a dragon. He’d laughed at that and likened them to the kind of games that Brent had made up when she’d been much younger, but, well, Julie had thought she was well on her way to convincing him.

Kelvin’s emergency contact had slammed the phone down on her. Figured that Kelvin didn’t want them contacted, though the surname had not been the same as Kelvin’s, so, hopefully, it would somehow filter through to Kelvin’s parents, their family of some kind. It was all she could hope for, doing her bit, though maybe she could speak to Kelvin and find out if she remembered the number of anyone else that could be contacted for her.

Regardless, everyone got the location of the dragonesses, whether they believed her or not. Julie made sure to text it too if she got hung up on, though there was an e-mail too, for a back-up. One way or another, she wanted to make sure that they could go seek out those they loved.

Yet she was not comfortable, grunting and shifting, feeling as if something was stuck in her throat. The back of her neck and all down the length of her spine ached too, feeling as if she constantly wanted to stretch, though her muscles were not tight. She fingered her hair and recoiled, while on a video call with Alex’s old fishing buddy, Tan, when practically a handful fell out all at once.

“Ugh… What the heck?”

She made a face and shook away the handful of hair, though even with it sprinkling her shoulders and the floor behind the chair that she had perched in, back at home. Why was it falling out? Maybe Prim had been right about her needing to take better care of her hair… Though there was no honestly telling why it had gone so bad so quickly. She’d had to sit down as she’d kept tripping over things, as if her poise was off, not quite knowing the space that her body took up anymore, her head heavier, everything feeling more difficult. But there was no reason that Julie should have suspected what was taking place.

“Are you okay? Julie… Julie, was it?”

Tan peered at her in concern, looking as odd as most people did while face timing, as if their features were out of proportion, even when they were looking dead-on at the camera.

“Oh, yeah, fine…”

But he only looked closer, as if he was squinting at a phone screen that was too small for him. Or perhaps he usually wore glasses?

“Julie, I don’t think… Your face?”

It was not something that could be easily brought up, but Julie peered back at him, her hand lifting unconsciously to touch her face.

“What? What’s wrong with it?”

Yet there was nothing wrong, not really, not as she shook her head and gasped, her hair falling out, coming out in clumps, though it was replaced with starker, redder hair, pulling back into a line at the back of her neck. It ran down in a thinner line, shrinking back on her scalp too to form that line as if it was trying to keep as close to her spine as possible.

Oh no…

_ _

She wheezed, clutching at her throat, her back aching, stretching, straining, a lump at the base of her spine boding ill.

“No… No! I don’t… I’ve got to go back!”

She grabbed at the phone, babbling, holding up the list, saying something to Tan about sending him the details, that he’d have to keep talking to people for her, because she couldn’t.

“But where are you going, Julie? Julie! I’ll call an ambulance for you!”

“No!”

For there was no ambulance or human service in the world that could help her and she could only think of going back, that what was happening to her must be something… Something to do with the place that she had been.

Oh, why was it so hard for her to get her thoughts out, hoping against hope that everything was going to be okay, though it was still early enough in the day for her to stumble down to her car, having sent Tan the list. He had everything that she had and access to her e-mail too, in case that was useful to him, though Julie had to climb into the car, curling her fingers around the steering wheel, feeling the comforting solidity under her hands all over again.

That helped. It was something familiar, even as she shoved a cushion that she had taken out with her under her buttocks, softening the lump that was growing there. Her heart hammered and she wiped the sweat off on her jeans, not the sort of clothing at all that would have been suitable for going back to the mountains, but…it was all she had. With a sick twist of her stomach, she did not think that it was wise to head back and get her clothes.

It was too late for that. Far too late as she forced every last scrap of her attention on the road, how the white line in the centre disappeared under the wheels of her car, bit by bit. Every minute had to pass one way or another if she kept going, if she kept driving, if she tried to breathe deeply and evenly, as much as every second, merely for the fact that time was passing, felt like torture.

One thing that Julie was aware of, however, was how much she needed to concentrate. There was no pain, yet her body shifted without her consent, without her moving, bones crumbling and forming new bone right there under her skin. It was needed. It felt like it was needed, like the heat of a fever creeping through her when it was burning her up from the inside out. Yet a fever was merely a reaction of the body to illness, fighting infection, fighting a virus.

That was not something that she could think about too much, if hardly at all, the afternoon wearing on, though she hoped against hope that she would be able to get there in time. She didn’t know what would come of her if she had to pull over and sleep in the car, but it at least seemed like things were slow, very slow. That was something, at least, for the bone pressing through the skin of her back, like the spines she had seen on some of the dragons.

After being told what she had been about the transformations of the dragonesses…there was only one thing that Julie could think was happening to her, as much as it made her heart pound.

But why?

That was a question that she could not answer, shaking, shoulders rounding, hunching over. The car seemed smaller than it had been before and she drove without using her GPS, trusting herself to find the way, though it was more like being called somewhere, following the road like an arrow allowed to let fly from the bow.

To the mountains… To the expedition sight. Her legs ached with the urge to move and she hoped against hope that it would be enough to drag her up the mountainside, to get her where she needed to be.

As carefully as she drove, her tongue thicker and heavier in her mouth, her teeth gradually growing sharper and sharper as her tongue ached to come back to them and to play with them, The bones of her cheeks lost their shape, her jaw a little longer, though Julie did not dare try to talk, not when it felt like she was losing everything that her body was made up of.

Her hair… There was no natural hair left on her, not as her nails grew longer, narrower, small changes that made them look more claw-like. Julie’s breath came more and more tightly in her chest, though that was not something she understood, whether it was from her body…changing or whether it was merely stress getting to her.

This can’t be happening.

_ _

She wanted to close her eyes against the horrifying worry of it all, wishing her husband was there. But he wasn’t and it was one more thing that she would have to face alone, the knobbly ridges on her back growing more pronounced. She shifted forward in the driver’s seat, focusing only on the road, as if focusing on that and that alone would make it right.

I’m…

_ _

She took a breath, though it shuddered, broken in her chest.

I’m going to be like them.

_ _

Which wasn’t a terrible thing, no, not when everyone was healthy still and well, but it wasn’t exactly something that Julie had prepared for in any way. There was a life left behind her, the kind of world that she knew and was used to, a world that she had carved out for herself after everything had changed. But change came at the most inopportune times, she had found, though there was little she could do about that.

Her bones ached as if they were scraping together, but as they pushed across her back, somewhere, perhaps, under her shoulder blades, she didn’t know what was happening. If those were to be wings… How would they work? Where would the muscles come? Her body shifted slowly, a strange feeling of bubbling pouring over her, as if her very skin was frothing. Most of her was pale by that stage, the edges of scales showing their definition, though she tried not to think about that. Best to keep her hands steady on the steering wheel, to set that aside, to be strong. He would have wanted her to be strong.

The end of the drive could not come quickly enough and she stumbled out of her car, only then realising just how her body had changed. Her jeans, which she hadn’t had the foresight to change out of, were too slight around her hips and split at the back as she moved, the nodule that reached the base of her spine bearing through. She didn’t pause to feel just what had broken through there, the size of her body simply too great for her clothes, filling out her loose T-shirt even as her chest grew softer, flatter. That was perhaps one of the reasons it had not split over the shoulders or down the sides yet, for what was gained was also lost in other ways.

Are they there? She forced herself up the mountain, though, somehow, her transformation seemed to slow. Maybe it was the frantic pace of her breath raking through her chest, taking in how her legs felt thicker, clunkier, though her muscles were stronger. I really really hope the dragonesses have not left…

_ _

The day wore on, though the late-winter brightness was wan and fading and she huffed as she climbed higher. Her body seemed more malleable and, as awkward as she was, she could use a little more brute strength to haul herself along. As her bones shifted, arms longer, it was easier to run on all fours too, kind of, though it was an awkward, lumbering gait that left her feeling foolish. Julie, however, supposed that there was little she had to feel foolish for again, however. All that had changed. All because of them, the dragons, the dragonesses.

The dragonesses, however, were not to be blamed for not knowing what was taking place not so far away, Julie dragging herself up the mountainside, grunting, wheezing, straining to work her halfway something body in any way possible. The dragonesses lay stretched out, comfortably, around their nesting mounds, warbling and murmuring softly to their hatchlings, still tucked away safely in their eggs, waiting, watching, relaxing. But that peace was destined to be disturbed.

It came in a crash of undergrowth, something larger than a human but not the size of a dragon smashing through the old pine trees above the nesting ground. In a moment, Santino and Alan were side by side with each other, their teeth bared, snarling a warning: stay back!

_ _

“What is it?” Arya shouted, jumping into the air for a better look. “An animal? A bear?”

Bears had never bothered them before, though the change of the seasons could have brought a hungrier one into their territory. They clustered together, Kelvin hunkering in the centre of the nesting mounds, her eyes darting furtively back and forth, protecting the nests as if she would not leave them, not even under the grandest of duress.

Yet there was nothing to worry about, no threat to be had, even if it would further change the course of all the dragonesses had to face as something crashed down the slope. Arya lunged with a growl that would have struck fear into anyone’s heart, though drew up short at the last moment, head whipped back, front feet shoved out before her.

“What the – Julie?”

Julie staggered, hands up, though her coat was torn, the blue ripped through where spines were trying to make themselves known, straining and stretching, her eyes wide, skin pushing and bulging with the forming of new bones and muscles. Her lips parted, showing how her teeth itched and ached into sharp points, a tongue writhing back and forth as it whipped about, striving to find a way to hold itself steady.

Julie let out a gargled cry, collapsing to all fours, her back shaking, though she twisted, the push from the base of her spine, a feeling of being stretched out against her will, becoming increasingly pronounced.

“You… Sandra! Sandra… Sandra, you’ve got to help me!”

She stumbled over her words, fighting to get them out as her lips changed shape, though it was obvious already to those whose minds had caught up with them that what had happened to them was happening to Julie too. Slack-jawed, Santino sat back on her haunches, staring openly at the woman as she slowly transformed, a long tail pushing from her growing back end. Her modesty, for the moment, was still protected, yet that was not something that was at all in the mind of a dragon anymore, considering that they were all female there. Dragons, of course, didn’t have cause for either clothes or that manner of modesty, merely a human construct.

“It’s…” Santino cocked her head, grappling with words while Sandra crooned and soothed Julie the best she could. “It’s happening again… Is it this place? What’s wrong with it? Or right with it?”

“Right with it?” Arya started. “What do you mean, right? It can’t be right if anyone and everyone who comes up here is going to end up a dragoness like us!”

But maybe it was, the first guilty flicker of hope lighting in Santino’s heart again, for the secret that she had not allowed into the light yet, not the light of her sister dragons, at least. The secret was out, to a select few, and they would come, one way or another, even if the dragons could cut them off.

If changes were possible…it left the door open to more. Though she could not allow Sebastian that far, that close, if only to keep him safe. She still wasn’t sure what she would say to him, though it went without saying that Seb had been her emergency contact. He always would have been, wherever she’d gone in the world if she had not been by his side.

Damn it.

_ _

She hissed through her teeth. Couldn’t anything be simple? Yet she would not deny how her heart surged at the thought of seeing him again, the idea that change, of some kind, could come. It meant something, even if she did not yet know what.

“Julie, can you tell us what happened?” Sandra asked gently, leaning down to brush her muzzle tenderly over Julie’s growing hide, scales peppering her body where bare skin showed through the shreds of her clothes. “You must have gotten home… But it’s as if you never left.”

One day, Sandra would know why the words leapt to her lips as if they belonged there, though Julie struggled. She was not a dragon, she was a human! It was hard enough that she had found her friends again, relieved that they were alive yet shocked that they were dragons…but what was she to make of her life? Her jeans split down the legs as her own legs seemed to change how they bent, though she’d later see that it was merely her body pushing up onto her “toes”, a different kind of foot bearing down, a hock forming as if she was on her toes and the hock was her ankle.

Sandra nuzzled her, though all she could do was take in shuddering breaths, eight foot tall, shirt shrugged from her body, her coat on the floor, though she couldn’t remember how it had gotten there. She only dimly recognised the shreds of it, her back aching as the spines pushed out and out, every millimetre felt in sharp definition. Still only half-transformed, she grew slowly, Sandra having the good grace to shield her modesty with her wings, though it was not as if it was necessary. To Julie, however, it would still have been needed.

Julie struggled with words, her face re-shaping itself into a dragon’s muzzle, smooth and sleek with a lightly hooked tip, as if she had a hint of a beak there. When she’d stumbled into their midst, she’d been transformed in part, bursting out of her clothes, such cloth no longer enough to hold her, though enough to maintain her modesty for a moment. Her tail wiggled out through the back of her jeans, bursting forth when she had no longer been cramped into the car, though the scales had settled into a white shade that could have been mistaken for her skin at first glance. They’d teased her, in a friendly way, about how pale she was before, though there was no indication that skin colour lent any meaning to a dragon’s scale colour, to be fair.

Half-transformed had left her with a longer neck too, her arms less useful and her legs thicker and chunkier, muscle pulling into more useful places, though it was no way to run, crashing up the mountain and stumbling, cutting herself accidentally on sharp shards of rocks even as her body changed. The injuries, as small as they were, were easily healed as she transformed, though the gasping rake of breath in her expanding lungs brought a fresh flush of fear with every step.

Her arms pushed out before her, settling a little, her shoulders rounding, though the muscle there was hidden in a quadruped body, not the round shape that could be seen in a human being. The shifting of muscle and the feel of it thickening was as if she was being filled with icing, something squeezed into her from a piping bag, muscles fleshing out softly, giving her strength.

“I… Unff…” She twisted, shoulders pushing down a little more, into the position on her body that befitted a quadruped. “It’s… I got home, I went straight…to your home, your place…”

Sandra stroked her head gently with a claw, letting Julie get there in her own time, though the transformation, perhaps thankfully, did not seem to be a particularly rapid one. Julie grunted, her jaw settling into its long shape, muscles working around the corner, forming her new cheek.

“Take your time.”

“I spoke to people… They didn’t believe me, some, but I gave them the location, they know…where you are.”

Julie may not have been in any pain, though it was a struggle to get out her words in the order intended as her face shifted, slowly, though the layer of soft, delicate scales forming and enlarging helped ease the edge of her appearance. It softened it a bit as her nostrils pulled up into a lightly defined draconian shape, allowing her to breathe more deeply. It loosened the band around her chest just a little.

“They know…but then I felt strange, like my belly was gurgling, bubbling. I had to get outside and then…” She trembled, eyes closing. “I knew something was wrong. I got in the car and came back as quickly as I could. I just kept getting bigger in the car….until I could hardly drive. Then things got quicker when I climbed the slope. I was faster than before, but clumsier too… Does that make sense? Oof.”

She worked her jaw as her face settled into a long, elegant, draconian muzzle at last, her teeth taking their time, drawing themselves into their final sharp points, one after the other. That was better… It had felt “wrong” to have them half-transformed, though in a way she could not put words to. Halfway between one thing and the other…no. She pushed for a dragon, what she saw as the result, something that could not be set back through any means.

She licked her lips, her tongue sweeping across, more muscle control there, though the straining pull and stretch of her tail felt as if she was lightening, as if something was being drawn from her. That didn’t make sense, but there was little there that did, as her tail tried to wiggle. It wasn’t as long as that of the others, not yet, but she would soon see how long it could grow, running her tongue along her new teeth, wondering at them. No more would she need molars, not when their diet was so often of tougher fare, though she would be glad, later, to find out that they were still able to eat vegetables. She hadn’t taken that course of vegetarian cooking classes for nothing, after all.

“It’s going to be okay, Julie,” Sandra said, flanking her protectively on one side, Alex on the other, Brent starting a fire that would, hopefully, ease Julie’s mind a little more. “You’ve seen how we are, what’s happened to us. You’re not going to be in pain, you’re not going to be hurt. We may not know what our purpose, quite, is here yet, but everything is going to be fine. Most importantly, you are going to be fine.”

Julie groaned and laid her head down, awkwardly positioned, though her transformation continued at a steady pace that the eye could follow, starting at her front legs while she slowly grew in overall size too. There was little else for her to do, fearful, worried, shrinking in close to Sandra and Alex, though no amount of hunkering down into the ground would make it so that she disappeared completely.

She had to lie there, her new friends and her old ones comforting her, soothing her, letting her know that everything would be okay. Her hands shifted fully into feet, what had begun of her nails forming into red claws, though it was not the red of blood but bright red, like berries on a holly bush. She liked that, though she was struck by how her thumbs slipped away, taking a little dexterity while the flat of her “foot” pressed into the ground. Her tail stretched out behind her, muscles lining it, allowing her to move the appendage, thick and functional, the kind of tail that might have been used for balance while clinging to a rockface.

More transformed, bit by bit, her clothes taken away when she was more dragon than human, on her request. Julie didn’t want to feel them scratching and shifting over her body, rubbing her scales. It felt wrong, something that wasn’t supposed to be touching her anymore, though her mind swirled with too many emotions and sensations, all crowding in on one another all at once.

Without her clothes, there was nothing to be hidden from her transformation, her scales and new body holding her modesty intact, transforming into a dragon that was much smaller than the others, though one that would grow in time. The swelling of her body felt strange, as if she was being blown up, though her scales came right along with her, allowing her to grow without straining. It was a better feeling as she tried to find the new muscles for her tail, to twitch it back and forth limply, the ache of new bone forming in the growing, smooth horns raking through her skull. That sensation was gone almost as soon as it had appeared, growing overall, her mind flitting from one sensation to the next.

The pull of her tail reaching its final length, a smooth, rounded tip gracing her new form.

The ache at the back of her jaw as her bite strength increased.

How she felt even how the tips of her horns curled ever so slightly, as if the ends were tapering, being shaved off.

The feel of her new hindquarters, the sensation under her feet, earth and tiny stones shifting, crunching.

Julie stood shakily, finding herself, how the set of her body felt different. She was smaller than Sandra and Alex but roughly one-third, but that was an estimate that would be better placed when they stood side by side. Her white scales did not gleam, though they surely would in the right light or with a sheen of water on them, the dragoness swinging her suddenly very heavy head back and forth, inspecting herself.

“This is…”

Julie licked her lips, not sure that she had the words, though she was thankful that they slipped from her throat as they did, not taking speech from her. Her feet, no more hands, came with red claws, like berries, the flow of hair down the back of her neck not unusual, for she had usually had long hair in her life, though it didn’t quite look like what the other dragons had. Although she could not see it, from her position, her horns curved back into a fish-hook shape, red too, though not a bloody kind of red.

Yet her face retained a sense of femininity too, a moderate muzzle that was neither slender nor chunky, but perfectly set for her as she worked her jaw, running her tongue around her sharp teeth. The slimness of her tongue caught her attention, though it was not forked like that of a serpent, even if the tip was narrower and thinner, more sensitive.

Sandra led her gently to a span of water, an eddy of a river where the water stilled, to show her the new horns atop her head, the red and white stripes, how her wings were set on her back. She stretched them out tentatively, showing the bat-like shape to them, though how they were set into her body was uniquely dragon. There would never again be anything like it found in nature.

“Soon, you’ll be able to fly too,” Sandra murmured. “Like us, I think you will see your belly swell… There will be little ones for you too, eggs to lay. But that is only an assumption, dear, it might not happen to you.”

Julie shook her head, angling it so that she could better take in the raised ridges of nostrils on her snout, how her nostrils flared and puckered obviously with every breath. It was weird…like she was looking into a funhouse mirror, even if she hadn’t been into a place like that in many years.

She swung her tail lightly, the tip rounded, soft, her wings extending with off-white spines, the membranes lightly translucent. Yet her eyes gleamed with a rich red brown that suited her fine, reminding her, ever so slightly, of the fire of her younger years.

Julie smiled – or tried to, at least, the best she could with a dragoness’ muzzle.

“Maybe… Maybe I can get used to this. Even the…eggs, if you think that’s going to happen.”

That was something new to take in, something uncertain, for whether she ended up like Sandra and the others, frankly, remained to be seen. Only time would tell, but already her scales itched in anticipation, wanting to know despite the flutter it sent into her heart, anticipation battling with anxiety.

Julie coughed lightly, something tickling the back of her throat. In time, she would learn to use her fiery breath, though did not yet know it was a possibility. The sensation of something there being charred, however, made her want to swallow, to send a cool slick of saliva down to her stomach.

Any disconcertion, however, would pass, the dragons that had become her sisters bowing their heads softly, allowing her to be, allowing her to come to her understanding of what was happening to her. It would change her life forever, as it had for them, and the dragonesses both knew and assumed, for it seemed the only sensible course of action, that there would be no going back for Julie either. There would be no way for her to be human again and it had been her perseverance and determination in finding Sandra, what had happened to her, that had ultimately led to her change.

But maybe change was a good thing. Maybe it was something that not only their little corner of the world in their wilderness needed, but the entire world.

Maybe.

All would be seen in time…