It turns out that the last journal I posted (www.furaffinity.net/journal/6336222/), really inspired me to practice a bit with some challenging poses, situations and characters. Go ahead. Read my small stories and share with me what you think about these sketches...
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"Something fishy"
I come home from work after a tough day full of meetings and planning at the office, with the occasional god-blessed snack at the break room. Which reminds me I really have to cut back on the extra servings or I will end up bloating up like Jonathan did over the last winter! He really let himself go badly. Now he even struggles to move around the cubicles down in floor 3. Yeah, nobody wants to end up like a stuffed turkey this season that's for sure.

As I hang my jacket by the door, I notice that home is oddly quiet. I usually come home to see Lara in the kitchen cooking up something, or working on her computer... But not today. The lights were turned off and the house didn't smell like homemade food. There was another aroma that I couldn't just put my finger on. I stumbled in the darkness, undoing my belt, which was digging painfully into my midsection. I must've tightened it up a bit too much this morning.

"Honey, I'm home! Where are you?" I call out loud, expecting some sort of clue as to where my beautiful wife might be.

"Over here dear!" I listen her tender, purring voice coming from upstairs, our bedroom, I assume.

By the time I begin climbing the stairs, I am already undoing the buttons in my shirt, feeling the pleasurable relief from being all day long imprisoned by the uncomfortable fabric of my long-sleeve dress shirt. Stupid office dressing code.

Sure enough, the light of the master bedroom in the house was lit, and the door partially closed, so a gentle nudge was enough to open it up completely, to finally reveal some gorgeous eye candy. Laid upon our king sized mattress, there she was, in all her feline glory, just as good looking as the first day I met her.

"There you are handsome... I hope you're hungry, i bought you some snacks."

I walked right towards her, almost as if I had been hypnotized by those big green eyes of her, plopping myself in the edge of the bed, inhaling deeply the now clear aroma that permeated the whole room: two bags full of the nearest fast-food joint were neatly placed in the nightstand. I approached the bag with the stealth of any wild predator, reaching slowly but firmly towards the first one of the wrapped juicy burgers. And right when I was about to reach the confines of the first bag, with my mouth watering, I felt the firm grip of Lara's paw wrap around my middle, her eyes piercing right through me.

In a moment of loose consciousness I just wondered... When did I lost my pants?
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"The good and the bad"
"He's old enough to know what's good for him. You are clearly overprotecting him!"

"Oh yeah!? Who was the one who agreed to give him the freedom to choose his lunch at the cafeteria? It was only your fault which led him to become a blimp!"

"Oh, now you're picking on him and calling him names! Don't you think he gets enough of that at school? Huh?"

"At least I propose some solutions, and I don't stare at him as if he was our next meal!!"

"Meal!! That's it! You've crossed the line! We're all going on a diet! Apparently he's not the only one who can't stop thinking about food!"

"So that's your solution? Starve us all to death? Yeah, I am not following you down that path, mister!"

"So now you're on his side! You sick enabler, I knew you weren't ready to take such a big responsibility of raising a kid. You just want to satisfy your own lustful desires!!"

A loud thud of a fist hitting the table and the screeching of a chair were soon followed by some hurried steps up the stairs. Then a knock on the door that faded into silence. Both came into the young fawn's bedroom at once. The young kid had heard the fight, but chose to act oblivious at it, just like he had so many times before:

"Hi dad, is supper ready?"
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"Growing out"
The young-adult lizard took off his hoodie right in front of the full-body mirror, and stopped for a moment to inspect his appearance. Something he hadn't done for the last few months in the course of the semester.

It was that that time of the year again, when his body replaced his old skin with a brand new layer of shiny, sand colored scales. So even the slightest movement would result in an orchestra of crumpling and ripping sounds, produced by the tearing of the fragile old translucent sheet. Truth to be told, it wasn't an enjoyable process, nor was it good-looking, but it was part of who he was and there was nothing he could do to avoid it. So he just went along with it.

"It's a luck I have learned to live a healthy lifestyle, otherwise, I would be like my father and i would put on more than a dozen pounds every time I shed my skin!"

The lizard exclaimed out loud taking advantage that his roommate was not away, and gently began to stretch his back, raising his claws upward trying to reach as high as he could, making his abdomen distend a couple of inches forward and outwards. This small increase in the pressure was clearly enough to create a wide gap in the shedding layer of scales right in the middle of his soft and wobbly stomach, that grew larger an larger as the reptile reached his limit and bent forward to relax his back muscles.

The thing was that Andrew had gained weight, just like the other members in his family did when they shed their skin. It was a sort of congenital inconvenience that none of them could avoid. In order for their skin to fall out completely, they piled up some pounds all around their bodies to stretch and rip the useless portion of scales and it, consequently, fell off completely, torn away by their own growing girth. It was a process that began in the adolescence, and kept on going through adulthood, with weight increases getting smaller and smaller with each year.

In Andrew's case, however, the first one of this events, occurred right by the time he entered college, so he could barely tell if his increase in girth was due to the strange trait of his species, or due to the usual freshman fifteen that his classmates had suffered from as well. Whatever the case, his fuller figure meant less appeal as a potential mate, and a negative image among his classmates being "the chubby one", so he decided to develop a scheme to loose the weight and keep a balanced diet as long as he remained in college. His body would thank him latter, he thought.

And so he did, a regime was put in place consisting in limited-sized portions, absolutely no snacks in between meals, and a daily visit to the school's gym for a good measure. All he had to do was to stick to the plan and he would recover his lither shape in no time, and by the next time he shed his scales... who knows? He might have a ripping body to show off under his outermost covering.

And the plan sure worked... at least for the first month. Andrew was strict with himself balancing his diet in a low-budget basis, and going to the gym to loose his newfound pudge, achieving some remarkable progress towards his goal. But college life can be deceivingly tempting from time to time, and the young lizard was no one to pass an occasional pizza party with his friends, or the celebratory, alcohol-induced chicken wing binge; or he would end up having to trade his gym routine for time to finish up school work. And the further the semester advanced, the less attached Andrew grew to his plan to loose weight.

However, the lizard was certain his high metabolism (supposedly inherited from his mother's side of the family tree), along with the typical excuse of "once in a while can't really make that much of a difference", he started embracing the new, less-than-healthy activities into his routine. Sure, he still chose to eat small portions, but he would have seconds and even thirds at the cafeteria, and sure he would limit his snacks in between meals, but there was nothing wrong with slipping in a triple fudge, sprinkle covered, jumbo sized ice-cream sundae from time to time; and the gym was also within his student priorities, just above classes but right bellow the daily visit to the vending machine outside the cardio room to get some of those chocolate candy... err... energy bars to have the stamina to go through the each time shorter and shorter periods at the treadmill.

He would often find himself musing at the fact that if keeping in good shape and under a healthy regime was this easy, then he would have no problem next shedding came around. And being too busy with schoolwork to notice the slow changes in his body, he never actually noticed than far from loosing any, he was rather undeniably putting on quite a bit of soft pliable blubber around his midsection and all over his body.

And the same trend would keep going: he would gain some weight every time he shed his scaly skin, that would ultimately make him grow more and more unconsciously unwilling to loose the newfound flab, while he refused to believe that ever so slowly he was loosing ground in the battle against the pounds.

And so he stared at his reflection in the full body mirror, almost a hundred pounds heavier than a year ago, with his ever-expanding rolls making their way right through the frail surface of the crinkly scales, yet in his eyes, the very same lithe lizard stared back at him, only a couple of sit-ups away from bursting out of the old skin with a whole six pack and a god-like appearance.

"Enough exercise for today, right now, I'm feeling like some dinner..." The lizard said turning around. "Good thing I'm on a diet!"
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"Long time no sssssee..."
"N-No! T-That's not what I meant at all! I was just, ack! Err... Sylvia, Y-You have to understand, the context..."

"Oh! I ssssee! The context..." The boa smiled devilishly, wrapping herself tighter around the rooster, who gasped both in surprise and in discomfort.

"Sylvia, it's just a form of speech, you really look grand!" He paused for a moment. "Great... Yes, exceptional!"

"That's odd, lassst time I sssaw you you, I remembered you quite a bit... sssstockier." She giggled, causing the bird to feel his ribs oppressed by the multiple loops of snake that surrounded him in a tight embrace. "You would't happen to loossse your appeal during thessse yearsss, now would you?"

He could feel his throat closing as he gulped air like crazy, lamenting every second his random encounter. He knew it was a bad idea to wander off his usual route, but his was just bordering absurdity. Of all people he could've come across, it had to be her crazy high-school ex-girlfriend. And he had made the astounding idea to make a sly comment about her evidently increased weight, which unfortunately she caught and of course, used as an excuse to coil around him and never let go... The surrealism that permeated the situation was almost too painful.

"Sylvia, please... I'm running late... GASP!"

"Don't worry, the nearessst hossspital is just a few blocksss away... I'm sssure the ER is alwaysss welcome to receive a pretty bird like you with a few broken ribsss, huh?"

My breath grew quicker and my gasps shorter, slurring my speech. "Please... Please... Wheeze... I'm sorry..."

"You were not exactly ssssorry when you dumped me for that sssskinny vixen five yearsss ago, now did you!?" She said exaggerating her hissing out of sheer anger. "Well, now let'sss ssssee who'sss the girl that takes your breath away!"

Before I passed out I could only remember a factoid I once heard a while ago: "The primary variable in constriction pressure is the thickness of the snake; doubling the diameter of a snake increases its constriction pressure by a factor of 2.6."

Wonder what the variable in constriction pressure of an ex-girlfriend can be...