Story's a Christmas gift for  zyyphelze

Art ©  staple



Zyyphelze strapped on his vambraces, stomped into his sabatons, and donned his bucket helm. They joined his equipped pauldron, breastplate, greaves and gloves-of-chainmail. Now, the snow leopard costumed to look like a valiant knight was ready to save the smuggled princess. He hitched a dangerous pose in the mirror, smoothing his paws over his hips. He grinned. One of his perfectly white teeth winked. Then he grabbed his replica broadsword off the bed, slung his satchel over his shoulder and left his home of thatch.

Marching through the woods was the snow leopard with an unyielding crook-armed stride. In costume, you find yourself with a helluva lot more confidence than out of costume. Which he needed.

Hungry beasts lurked in the forest: wolves with fur black as pitch, eyes that blazed like hot coal. They stalked him from the shadows, behind rows of trees. But in costume, see, Zyyphelze had a stony resilience against fear of predators and of the unknown. He did not flinch. He did not lose a step in his stride. He carried himself through the woods with an air of determination which almost smoked. It struck in the hearts of the wolves a counter-fear overruling instinct. Their great, round red eyes glowed wider, and their paces halfed by the second, and eventually they let the knight go . . . at forest’s edge.

Of course he was in the character of a knight. But you know what they say. Act until it’s fact. And Zyyph wanted to make his best impression of a knight yet, when he faced his poison dragon friend Sini in a playful bout.

We all want to give our all in some way, shape or form. Sometimes, playing pretend is really serious stuff.

In his den Sini sat on a slim belly, typing up a thunder on his dragon-sized laptop. He wore studious spectacles sleek as HP bars. The back of his jaws ground on a toothpick the size of a peg leg, helping him focus.

Suddenly the typing bar on his googledoc froze in place, blinking on and off. His left ear flopped up. It adjusted itself finely, an antenna tuning into a broadcast less local. Wind petting grass. Something else: clink clank clonk. The ear flittered, folded flat. Then it stirred, pitched with alarm. Clink clank clonk became claenkesh clankosh claenkesh as he found just the right channel, defined the sound of chainmail under platemail. Sini, with the smooth slowness of someone removing a book from a library shelf, shut his laptop. The eyes behind his spectacles performed the actions the turn of the cogs behind them prescribed. For a vast second you could see the backstage performance behind the amethyst reflections.

Sini rose. His hazardous tail curled, flexed into life. The poisonous spikes on his tail and on his neck and the longer ones on his feet (the talons) glowed with a ghostly sentience. Following suit were his eyes, horn, belly/wings. The glows were not true glows, but lusters. Lusters that fluctuated (as do the mirror images of Archivallian trams speeding past shuttle glass) when he sensed, coming his way, one of three things. A warrior. A mage. Maybe another dragon.

An sabaton echoed into his den. A knight appeared in its fangled maw. A broadsword he thrust into the air.

“Avast where ye be, ye slithering mongrel, for it is I—Zyyphelze of the Thatched Roof—and I have come to end you! Your princess-smuggling days are over.”

Sini turned. Seeing his snow leopard friend inside of the knight armor, he softened; physically disengaged. Ton after ton of potent dragon power went dormant in a ripple of ease down his frame.

The dragon smirked wickedly. Zyyphelze and he hadn’t had playtime in—figuratively speaking—cycles of cycles. And if Zyyphelze was delivering that theatre, oh, he’d see Sini delivering too.

Poisonous vapors burst from his lower jaw, hissed. The lids of his eyes hung heavy, and he snorted in jest.

“Princess hoarding eh? Your dear eyes fail you from fawning over yourself in the mirror too much, O Kitten-of-Tin.”

Sini dunked his head back, as if for a drink. Out erupted a drunken, glugging laugh. Out of the crinkled corner of his right eye he saw Zyyphelze’s boots quail. He brought down his head soberly, smiling.

Blushing now, the snow leopard circled the dragon, and he the snow leopard. They came but three sleepers (but about six meters) apart. Sini’s hungry maw unfolded in invitation, fogging out foul breath-of-violet in cascading curls. It reeked of bitter blueberries and roast beef that’d ripened too long.

Zyyphelze winced, edging his snout to the side. He screwed his shaking grip to his blade and forced himself to look the predator in the eyes. He saw double himself. Himshakingself.

“This Kitten-of-Tin shall carve you into a Dragon-of-Din, should you come any closer, princess-smuggler!”

Sini couldn’t cork his laughter. The throaty guffaw made three things roll at once: the belly, the burbling dragonfire within, and the den itself.

Right paw swipe! Sini snatched naught but air—the snow leopard slipping out of his grasp like bar of soap.

Left paw swipe! Sini got him this time.

A sinkhole of maw cracked open below the snow leopard’s wild legs. It rumbled bassily.

Squeezed in that great warm paw, Zyyphelze squirmed and mewed. In all his fuss, his bucket helm flew off his head.

Sini ignored a tinny clang. He opened his hot maw to a shying cheek then spoke very soft into a flattened snow leopard ear, “I think we both know who gets to be Din, kit-kit.” The dragon plucked the sword from the snow leopard, footing it into the earth like Excalibur. Then he lowered the snow leopard, curling his tongue around the bitter surface of the greaves and the sabatons. Though they tasted too much like stale mineral tablets, the pink appendage firmly pressing and ironing over them got the cat’s body beneath shakily upset, and the sweet taste of fear discharging onto Sini’s taste buds. Music burbled out of the pleased dragon. Sliding his snow leopard prey deeper, he would playfully gnash on the armor just enough for the armor to vibrate. Just enough to feel the jaws toying, the hot moisture’s presence, the blood rushing to his perking ears.

a huge tongue
slicks him up, slops him up
grinds his nape
against the fang-hemmed roof
to the crackling hum
of a vintage furnace
the cat blushes and mews
sweat sweetens his metal clothes
curls his tail the way
shaved wood curls
stuck to a stump

Throat music livened the den. Sini knew his performance was showstopping. The snow leopard and gone numb in the wake of every sense being pleased. “Perhaps it’s time to consider a new line of work, kit,” Sini said, but not really, because his mouth was full and the words came garbled.

Now we slip into an X-ray of the quivering juicy esophagus. Coming out of his tongue-induced trance, he blinked into realization. He was sliding through the gullet of the princess smuggler! On the outside of the dragon’s craw, brilliant purple links swelled and contracted with snakelike fluidity. Zyyph slid down. He remembered his character too late. “N-nygh! I don’t like being Din!” A drooling chainmail glove shot up, trying to grab a hold of the uvula. But that had gone too far up already. A glurp! rumbled the throaty shaft. The walls of flesh responded to the sound, hugging the leopard in a tight-enough-to-take-your-blood-pressure embrace, and between them Zyyph got the reverberant brunt of a quaking hum, a pulsing heart (hmmmmmmmmmmn/thomthom, thomthom, thom). Next he knew, his legs twiddled below him in an open space. The breeze of hot popping stomach bubbles tickled his legs even with the armor they had on. Next he knew, sweet, gooey warmth scaled to his waistline. A tide at the peak of the moon, rising, rising—lumps of flesh smooshing and squooshing his muzzle and cheeks—and then—

Mffmph!

Sini’s gut bulged like a big purple armadillo. The arcs of black between his belly plates grew. The dragon wet his lips and purred. He then stalked around his den, breaking into the wobble-and-writhe of his gut the way you and I do a pair of new shoes. As his feet warmed the floor, his wings stretched into the shape of bows, exposing the swinging lump he’d added to his belly for you and I to see.

Eventually Sini lay down, lazily licking his chops. His meal, the knight who’d come to steal away the princess, got himself stolen away instead. BurRRrup! “Better luck next time, Zyyphster!”

Snicker-snicker. Knees of his haunches propped up beside the purple mound of his belly, Sini picked his teeth. The taste of ethereal fur lit his taste buds as his tongue scraped the gaps of his dragon choppers clean. Residuals eddied down his esophagus with his snow-leopard-sweetened saliva, which drizzled on the leopard himself downstairs. Beneath drips of drool, Zyyphelze mewled; removed his gloves-of-chainmail and pawed at the fleshy ceiling, as kittens sometimes paw at balls of yarn or scratch posts. But soon the light trickle and the light air brought a blanket of sleepiness over him. And his resistance against the belly walls slipped away, and his head sank into plush-as-memory-foam folds of flesh. It was the best cat nap a dragon’s catch could ask for.