Original story a commission for  Dan_Aers

Audiobook recording by  xSini

THIS FILE IS TOO LARGE FOR FA. The file in the above player is just a sample of the full audiobook. To hear the whole thing, listen to the story on my Soundcloud: >>> here <<<

This is my very first audiobook recording! I had entertained the idea of recording these in the past, but never got around to it. It was only recently, when I saw a comment from someone in the fandom on Twitter (someone saying that they wished there were more audiobooks of FA stories) that I was kinda like, "Aight, bet." And since I haven't been recording a whole lot of music, as of late, I've been itching for a reason to break out my mic and pop filter.

So, again, you can listen to a sample of the audio on FA, but you can only listen to the full audio on my Soundcloud. (The link is above.)

For people who want to follow along with the story, I'll go ahead and post the story text below:

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For a good many months, the mage Danathius dwelled by the Dunstone River, deep in the woods, where his only visitors were wild animals, and his only glimpses of non-visitors were glimpses of sky-roaming dragons. He didn’t plan on living the recluse life forever. No, Dan was the stark opposite of a hermit. But the location of his home offered a serenity that sweetly contrasted the busy streets of the Hardbricks.

His life of hunting and foraging came with plenty of uninterrupted time for catching up on readings of unfinished spellbooks and stories, many of which he’d purchased before he set out of the capital to keep him company. His day-to-day awarded him lots and lots of sightings of dragons. Dragons whose lives had only lived in the words of travellers and nonfiction books until Dan packed his things and trekked a hundred miles to the primal, forested mountain region of Darce.

He’d constructed a cosy, ramshackle home by the Dunstone. It was the longest river of the region, so it’d be the most frequented, he reasoned. So someday, a dragon would stumble upon his home and perhaps greet him—hopefully with a non-fiery “Heya.”

Even if said dragon was hostile, his hearing was good enough. He could tell when a dragon was winging or roaming close, and defend himself or escape by means of teleportation.

Luckily, he never needed to play ‘D’ or flee, but he did meet a dragon.

A couple months after settling down, the moon was up. He’d already had some stew, gone inside and slipped into a cozily slack robe of vinaceous velvet and champagne gilding. A mug of tea in hand, his legs hanging off his bed swathed in sheets, he had a tome about the habits about the functionality of dragon fire-breath rested on his lap. Just as he was turning the page, he felt a heavy THUMP. Flecks of tea dashed his book and sheets.

The flicker of his lamp hit him with a feeling of suspense. It played deep on his sentimentality, because at once he knew who had come to visit. But was his guest craving human chatter or chowder?

A deep, idle rumbling was shifting the stones of the riverbank. There was a lapping sound, and the sound of thick leather beating at a pace at peace with the river’s. Dan, on the other hand, was a giddy flurry of movement in his one-room home. He whipped a day robe out of his closet, donned similar colours but heavier attire, exchanged his slippers for boots. Leaving book and tea unfinished, he reached for the doorknob several times before he managed a steady-enough exhale. Steady as could be, what with him less than ten yards away from a dragon.

The dragon was black-scaled and purple-bellied, his large tongue drawing on the stream. He wore round spectacles. A pair of backward-curving fangs gleamed down from his upper jaw: one in front of each jowl. Between laps of water, he’d glance up at the house, expecting someone to come out.

Someone did: a shaky, cheery-looking man. His hand fidgeted to close the door behind him, taking a few seconds to finally manage it. He couldn’t pry his eyes away from the dragon.

The dragon looked up through his specs, then lifted his neck into a serpentine crook, water dripping from his thick, pointy sixtuplet of scaly chin-stubble. His wings spread to full span then flicked lightly, as though to coast him along a smooth thermal.

Although Dan wasn’t sure how to interpret the gesture, he felt his fear flicker out when it was made.

It was a welcoming one, he was suddenly sure. The wings were open arms, and the dragon dipped his head with measured respect.

“Hey there. Thought I’d stick around to meet who lives here. Your lights are on, so.”

The dragon shrugged, chuckled. His voice entranced Dan into an ease. It was the pleasantest, smoothest coarse voice possible. The power that it ran through the soles of Dan’s boots when he talked, Dan liked that. Part of him wanted to respond faster just to hear it again.

Flustered, he dipped his head. “T’s—it’s an honor. Not every day a dragon addresses you at your address. I’m Danathius. Dan. D’you have a name I could call you?”

The dragon plodded across the river with a few steps, then on the bank he wheeled his massive frame, then lay down facing Dan near a heated cauldron of the leftovers of Dan’s gamey dinner.

“Could call me Sini.” He talked with a forepaw under his chin, looking down at the mage through his specs with a tender smile.

“Sini … Sini then.”

Dan grinned and paced closer. Sini patted the stones, gesturing for the human to sit so quietly that a bear could have made more sound. Dan was … delightfully nonplussed. He got to sit against the dragon’s foreleg, feeling as though an old human friend couldn’t have been so hospitable.

“A whole lot of books in there. Your shelf caught my eye. A lot of stuff about dragons. Good reads, Dan?”

“I haven’t read all of them, but yeah. I have books on dragon anatomy, diets, skills, history, r-reproduction. Well, I like all sorts of subjects! About dragons.” He laughed to vent his excitement. “I’m really glad you stopped by. Glad my head is still uncooked.”

Sini glanced at him knowingly, then laughed too, the thrum of his body kindling the flames below the cauldron. He snorted when he laughed.

“Does your head have a habit of being barbecued?”

Dan laughed again. “No, I guess not.”

They lounged by the cook-fire, bathed in the night serenity, looked up at the stars for some time, not feeling any urge to talk. Just glancing at each other studiously, now and then, then back at the constellations. Their smiles flared with the warm cook-flames.

“There’s a lot of game out here,” Sini finally spoke, “but not much for chatter. Humans who are bold enough to go this far aren’t much for literary conversation or idling. They react like animals when approached. Too bad for them. Too bad for me. Most humans are like you when there’s a roof over their heads, or at least some mutual respect. And local dragons? Equally ill company. You open your mouth and they think you want a firefight. I breathe poison, not fire.” Sini chuckled. “Yeah, I’m not from around here.”

Dan listened, and cozied up more against Sini. “I’m not from around dragons. Hey Sini, since we’re both here and you seem tolerant enough of us roof-headed humans, can I ask you something?”

“For sure.”

“Could I study you?”

Sini looked amused. “You already seem to be. Hhm, what kind of studying?”

“Oh, just feeling your muzzle and all your scales, your stomach. Your paws. I don’t want you to feel like a science project; I’m just really grateful, and later, I’d like to write about how you feel, and look, and who are are. A little keepsake.”

Sini looked at Dan with a jokingly pugnacious grimace. He laughed at Dan’s brief recoil, then relaxed, ironing away the hard wrinkles of his snout. “Nah, that doesn’t bother me. In fact, it’d be a pleasure, Danathius! All these scales and no one ever wants to rub ‘em. You take your notes on my awesomeness, my charm, my handsomeness, and I get a full-body massage. Sounds like a win-win to me.”

A rumble resonated from the ground. The dragon shifted onto his side, then winked at Dan in an adorably evocative posture. The sprawled dragon reminded Dan of a human basked in the comfort of his or her home on a lazy day. Clearly, Sini was comfortable around the man. The dragon’s tail swayed along the rocks, and his gaze suggestively rolled from it to Dan.

“Best to be organized, and save the best for last,” said Sini. “Start at the bottom, and work your way to the top of me?”

Dan’s cheeks strobed to a colour that was more traditionally red than his robe. “I’d be honoured!” He leaped up, as though rattled by a spell-conjured morning alarm, then frisked to the tip of the dragon’s dextrous backmost appendage.

Taking a second to cool his giddiness, he stretched his arms, flexed his wrists and hobbled his shoulders in his sockets, pushing out a preparatory breath. It was the same ritual he used to ready himself to cast a complicated or taxing spell. In a sense, he was about to perform magic. Magic that needn’t be taught. Magic accessible to anyone, which would conjure a moment he’d remember for years to come.

The dragon shot purple poison steam out of his nose, snorting at the mage’s seriousness. He waved his tail affably, and Dan oof-ed, catching it on his chest, clinging to it with robed arms. All a sudden, his body was the meat of a dragon kebab, swaying a couple meters through the cool air on a big, scaly generator of warmth.

It felt … fantastic. The dragon’s scales, smooth and heated and supported by firm, large structures of musculature. It was therapeutic to rub along the subtle channels that delineated the dragon’s scales, but Dan didn’t do it too much, because he was trying to hang on.

A moist, smoky heat gushed against his back. His cauldron reeled below him.

“New plan, human. I decided I’m gonna roast ya. Raawh!”

“Ohh no, I should have known—you dragons are so treacherous!”

They giggled as Sini whisked him over the heat like an impaled marshmallow slated for a s’mores sandwich. At the first chance he got, Dan released his hug on Sini’s tail, dropped and rolled. Not because he was traumatized from the ride, but because there was so much more of Sini to explore. He rose and ran his hand along the length of the tail, and it slowly waved into its base to keep Dan’s fingers touching.

“The purple scales are softer, even kind of squishy.”

“You like those? Come here and get a load of my belly scales. The flesh beneath just molds right under your hand. Real pliant. The perfect bed, and it growls and gurgles right under you.”

Dan took his hand off the tail and meeped at the stretch of cushiony purple belly. With Sini’s sirening in mind, the stomach may as well have been a hoard of unread spellbooks.

“Then I know my next stop!” cheered Dan.

He darted and lunged in front of himself, getting ready to climb Sini’s slanting hindquarters. But when he jumped, Sini swung himself over his gut, stomping to his feet.

“Ope, too slow!”

The next thing Dan knew, Sini was in the air. He cycled around with wingbeats, pitched his wing-tips erect, then came down right on Dan, his forepaw planting the human to the ground.

Dan had thought, for sure, the dragon’s foot-paw would squash him. For sure, he’d be a sorry stain on the bank of the river. But when the paw thumped his chest, big purple talons curled around the human to lay him beneath the dragon’s cushiony, padded black soles with surprising gingerness, considering the feral power that coursed through them.

The paw-pads engulfed his chest, pressed down.

Dan gasped. The pressure cracked his back in a forceful kind of therapy. He slumped limp. Calmness and bliss swept over him. There was absolutely nothing he could do to budge the four predatory talons on his torso, and the thumb-claw was unreachable. He was helpless but trusting. That winning combination filled him with a succulent frisson. The dragon’s sole and claws carried a draconic musk (something likes clove, cave and black licorice) combined with smells of river water and raw earth and game sundered to shreds by those legendary, sharp hooks.

“Can’t forget the paws, now, can we?”

Dan blushed and muttered, “N-no.”

“Well,” Sini purred, “best get a close look if you’re going to recall them later.”

The foot-paw lifted. Then, Dan got a faceful of paw-pads. The black beans smelled twice as fragrant and infatuating. Dan could barely breathe beneath the firm cushions of Sini’s scaly stompers, but he hardly wanted to. Gleefully, he kicked and squirmed and flailed, finding the uselessness of his catharsis to be extremely, and contradictingly, a catalyst of great relief and arousal.

Danathius felt the large digits curl around him. They squeezed him to the point that a breath geysered out of his lips, his shoulders wedged to his sides. The first time that he was lifted into the air so effortlessly, it had felt a little uncanny in a good way. This time was the same.

The claws released him. He plopped onto the lithely plump middle of the dragon. While carrying Dan, Sini had apparently rolled back onto his backside; the dragon now rolled Dan, so that their bellies pressed together.

Dan lay sprawled with a lazy look of mirth, seeming to be gravitationally attached to the cosy stomach. When he tried clambering on all fours into a more comfortable position, he thumped right back down, as though drugged by the touch of the cushy, squishy belly flesh. Whatever angle he shifted his body into, it’d probably be one just as delectably plush and cosy. He stopped trying to change posture on a bed which made all postures flawless.

He started nodding off, until something large and warm and dangerous stroked across his back. He unintentionally purred. As soon as the sound rose from his throat, he blinked wide awake, fully self-conscious, and chuckled embarrassedly.

“Going for a cat nap?” Sini teased. “I thought you wanted to examine my muzzle. Might as well feast your eyes on what’s inside.”

Dan was cosy and too ready to doze to reply before Sini yawned his jaws. That perked up the human right away: the hot, putrid blast of poison breath from the dragon’s handsome jaws. So many ropes of slather pulling the mage right out of sleepiness, and slick, stretchy, slimy jowls. The sheets of cheek flesh were similarly enticing, but more lubed and pliant-looking. The huge teeth which daggered up from dark gums could use much kneading, and that corpulent tongue and its heavy furrows and wrinkles.

Indeed, indeed!

Although Sini wasn’t the most giant dragon in the mountains, his jaws measured wide enough to fit the mage’s chest. He still likely couldn’t fit the whole mage in his maw; parts of his legs would probably stick out.

The fact that Dan was contemplating how he would fit in Sini’s mouth gave him a shudder. He couldn’t decide whether it was a delightful tickle or a fearful shiver.

He struggled to get up from his serene lounge. But his eager bones escorted him to Sini’s forechest, where he grinned over the insides of the dragon’s jaws. They grinned back, calmly puffing purple-tinted breath at Dan’s face. Dan groped the ropy lips first. Their squish and moisture and puffy, wrinkled flesh mesmerized his fingers. His hands meandered outwards, following the inrolls of Sini’s pearly lower teeth.

The pupils of the dragon’s amethyst eyes dilated huge, then shrank smaller than they’d originally been. Around his backmost teeth, ropes of saliva drooled more thickly and copiously.

A low, slow croon of longing stalked through that dragon’s throat, like a beast on the prowl. Dan did not entertain the inkling of caution that gripped him. The ambiance of breath-stench and warmth and lathered insides strengthened their clutch on him, and won his emotional tug-o’-war; so he dipped his head inside, humming happily, then stretched his hands deep into that maw. Along the heavy hips of the tongue they glided, until he was embracing the budded tasting appendage in full. There, he lay absently caressing, gazing into the dark depths of the esophagus. The warmth-breathing void gave him a hypnotising tranquility.

Sini—with his human friend playing with his maw so much, teasing his taste buds with flavors of fine wine and salty, late-night snacks—tingled uncontrollably. He whinnied so quietly, the sound was almost imperceptible to Dan’s human ears. But he heard. He felt it, and Sini’s change of breathing rhythm too; and that was the littlest pinch of peril which provoked him to question his fondness of the dragon’s esophageal beyond.

Sini could feel the human shuffling, loosening his grip. A doleful, yearning rumble fluttered out of him.

Suddenly, he huffed a concentrated gust of toxins over the human. Sweet, hypnotic neurotoxins. Toxins that couldn’t be resisted by his prey, his friend. Toxins that would persuade Dan to crawl deeper.

A perfume that smelled of acrid meat and strange fruit: it enshrouded Danathius. If anyone were in an un-heightened state of mind, the acid notes of the breath would potentially repulse them. But once anyone inhales the fumes, they’re already in a heightened state, so does it matter? The harsh odors, they intrigued and attracted Dan as soon as the the neurotoxic effects took hold.

Dan could think of nowhere else to go but forward—could think of nothing else but of pulling himself over that tongue. Of learning what awaited him beyond that abyss of peristaltically shimmying flesh. Of giving in to the desire of the warmly rumbling dragon, for now it was his own.

The mighty tongue rose as a wave of flesh. Driven by the surf, Dan felt his back crash against the grooves of the palate. His world thumped, and he plummeted forward, downward. The dragon had taken his first gulp. Around Danathius, generously lubricated walls clenched and molded round his form with ringed muscles, making the top of the gullet—and thus, the neck—expand like a swollen purple pouch.

Swallows progressed to a faster speed. A wash of drool, and a mental wash of hunger, both stirred the dragon’s muscles. Reflexively, he swung onto his belly. The instincts of a predator steeled him for hungrier, snarlier gulps. His nostrils flared wider, tongue rolled faster over the mage’s fabric. His eyes clenched and rolled to the throaty sounds of hums. The mage, Sini utterly drenched him. He constricted bones and flesh with loving fervor. He fed his gullet with every tug of his serpentining throat, the bulge blooming and wriggling with zest.

Blood flowed to Dan’s head on the downward descent. Blankets of flesh squeezed on his face and limbs, jostling, wringing him about on his squelchy promenade. The blood-flow would later give him great recollection of Sini’s gulps, close heartbeats and the intimate, breathy thrums of Sini’s chest cavity. The drug of poison breath rhythmically attuned his body to the loud constrictions, to the show of a sphincter in its throes. It welcomed him to his final stay for the night.

The muscular ring seized open.

Dan loosed a joyful cry. The blur of man pitched through the filmy skin of a bubbling purple swamp. His sound and its splash coalesced to flutter the fleshy, ovoid walls of Sini’s stomach. The gut’s acoustics matched that of a lightly padded room.

For a second reverberant burbles filled his ears, acrid taste his nose and mouth. Fire-insects seemed to nibbled at his skin. His saturated robe tried stubbornly to anchor him under the acids. Still, his head burst free. He gagged and snapped out of that neurotoxic trance.

Stomach acids!

The mage wheezed on the acerbic air. He fumbled through his confuzzled mind, found a spell to ward against any fluid that could enzymatically harm him—blurted it. The tingles on his skin cooled, or so he thought. He could’ve swore his body was perspiring easier. The difference, though, wasn’t exceptional.

Staying buoyant in Sini’s belly acids was kind of impossible, he realized—only because of how shallow the poison pool was. He had fallen in face-first; but now that he lounged comfortably on his arse with his arms floating by his sides, the belly acids reminded him of an experimental spell which created a steam-pool some mage had deemed a “jacuzzi.”

His entry splash had snapped him out of hypnosis. At least, it knocked him out of the peak of his drugged state. Despite that, he inhaled the thick, hot fumes of the gut and found the hairs of his nape uncurling approvingly. The gamey, sour berry miasma should have grossed him out. But the pastime of inhaling Sini’s gastric atmosphere was less bitter, more bittersweet.

His fascination with taking whiffs of the toxic flesh-cavern gave way, and he became pristinely aware of the dragon’s low trilling; his belly’s gurgly, whispery serenade; the post-meal roiling and rumbling of the belly. Then Danathius’ situation set in.

He was in a dragon’s digestive system.

Alive. Safe. Happy!

He had willingly slid down the throat of a hungry mythical beast, of a dragon who seemed unconcerned about his human friend being plopped into a powerful metabolic chamber. Wouldn’t Dan be churned into a squishy layer of pudge for the next man Sini met to bounce on? Or had Dan gotten bellies all wrong?

“Sini, sh-shouldn’t I be concerned that you ate me?”

The weight of the world around Dan shifted. Dan sensed that Sini had heard him, but Sini had granted no reply. The dragon’s gut did the talking. Its effervescent booms and borborygmi soon transformed into ructions and brouhahas of mythic proportion.

“BUrRrrRuuRRRrhHP!”

The belch of satiation turned the bubbling acids into a field of bursting projectiles. The bang of sound ballooned the stomach, stampeded over Dan and staggered every bone in his body with the strength of a tribe of bears roaring simultaneously. As far as the mountains, the burp echoed and whispered through caverns and nooks, and startled critters and predators awake for miles.

The belch rolled Sini’s tongue out of his mouth. Sini rolled his eyes mirthfully, groaning at his own grossness. After wiping spit off his big lips and jowls with the back of a forepaw, he thumped his chest.

“Excuse me. No, Danathius—to answer your question. A guest of mine need not be concerned, stressed or scared in any form that fear takes. You need only be comfortable. You gave me a good meal; it’s only fair that my acids are nulled. Your bed is just as good.”

Sini smiled and sprawled on his side by the cook-fire. Crooking his neck, he rested his head on it, nosing as near to Dan as he could. There his muzzle retired its movements for the night, and, furling a purple-membraned wing over the bulge of his belly, so did Sini.

Dan rubbed the walls that’d been cushioning his head. He chuffed contentedly, then flumped his back into a fleshy mattress. It molded to his shape then sucked him in a little, lulling him toward sleep with pulsations and quiet dribbling sounds.

“Been a while since I’ve been to bed without setting a book down,” he mumbled, cosying deeper into the slick hammock flesh folds. His smile was unstoppable.

Almost no muscle of Sini’s body moved: just enough muscles for his lips to curl a smile and his mouth to move.

“Want a belly-time story? If so, you’ve been eaten by the right dragon.”

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