Ocellus was having the most wonderful dream.

She couldn’t quite recall how it had started. She remembered flopping down onto Smolder’s chest, sinking into her cinnamon-y scent and sweat-dappled chest, being half-led and half-carried down the hall and into one of the bathrooms. Things started getting fuzzy after that — she was pretty sure Smolder had helped her clean up, and was absolutely sure it had involved the dragon hugging her from behind, soapy hands roaming over her breasts and across her belly, softly around her thighs and sometimes firmly between them.

They might’ve morphed again — they remembered Smolder fondling them for a bit, then fingering, and different flavors of pleasure from each slippery motion. They remembered the heat of the water, and of Smolder’s breath on their neck, and of her lips against theirs, slow and passionate and comforting like a quilt on a cold winter night.

And then… they weren’t sure. Maybe they’d gone to bed. Maybe they hadn’t. Maybe in a different life, Ocellus might’ve wondered whether they were dreaming at all, or whether this was just another incredible moment in a night stuffed full of them. But they knew better, for good reasons and not so good ones.

When she was young, changelings hadn’t dreamed at all. That part of themselves was locked away, along with so many other things, by ignorance and fear and a lifetime of being told that those two things were all any changeling would ever amount to.

The first night after they all changed, Ocellus had woken up shouting and soaked in sweat, the awful afterimage of her very first nightmare still superimposed into the blackness she saw when she tried to blink away her tears. She hadn’t slept the rest of that night or all of the next, unsure which world was real and which wasn’t, terrified of getting lost in the false one without even realizing it.

But with time, and patience, and help from the family she’d formed at home and the one she’d found at school, she’d learned how to live in the real world and live through the one in her dreams — and eventually, even control it. With practice, and plenty of inspiration, she could make her dreams quite the opposite of nightmares, neither beginning nor ending but simply starting right where things got good.

And that was how Ocellus knew she was dreaming — because she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten back out into the living room, or how all her friends had gotten there too, or how she’d managed a morph so small that they all towered over her, eight and nine feet tall compared to maybe three for her. But it didn’t need to be real to feel amazing, to set her heart hammering and her gut fluttering and her pussy — her cock — every part of her achingly, breath-stealingly aroused.

Ocellus was in Smolder’s lap, or rather in Smolder’s clutches. The dragon’s hands — more like claws, really — wrapped fully around them, stacked one atop the other, squeezing possessively and vibrating with every rumbling growl Smolder emitted as she leered down at them. Ocellus tried to meet her eyes, but couldn’t stay focused for too long — kept losing her concentration as one of Smolder’s fingers rubbed both her nipples at once, and another tremendous digit swirled between her legs and along the underside of her cock.

Smolder turned them around, and Ocellus found something else to distract themself with: the tip of Sandbar’s cock bobbing in front of them, his lower head the size of their upper one, his shaft nearly as wide as their torso. They opened their mouth helplessly, begging for something impossible to happen — and it did. Sandbar’s tip squeezed past their lips, his pre soaking their tongue, and their neck and chest and whole entire body stretched as his length slid smoothly into their throat and painlessly down to somewhere in their throbbing belly.

Between their legs, they felt more pressure — a second monstrous cock, big enough to bump against both their thighs at once as it prodded into their gushing snatch. It felt like Gallus, pointed at the tip and ridged where his head transitioned into his shaft. It felt like it couldn’t fit inside a train carriage, let alone a needy, slutty, two-foot-tall changeling.

But Ocellus needn’t have worried. As easily as if she were made of rubber, she felt herself expand again as Gallus penetrated her, imaginary organs rearranging just so he could use every inch of her twitching body for his own gargantuan pleasure. She couldn’t imagine herself really moaning in this position, so she gurgled instead, her wings buzzing behind her, her cock — tiny by comparison, practically non-existent — bouncing in submissive delight.

They weren’t gentle with her. They didn’t need to be. Sandbar and Gallus used Ocellus like the toy she wanted to be for them, sawing in and out with near-violent speed, ruining her for any purpose other than the pleasure of creatures as big and strong as the two of them. She gurgled again, happily, deliriously. Smolder’s claws were still around her — stroking up and down, jerking both boys off inside her, driving them deeper inside until their tips smushed together near where her ribs were supposed to be.

Ocellus imagined only one way this could get better, and then, of course, it did. Through bleary eyes, she saw Silverstream and Yona on either side of Sandbar, each stroking a stiff shaft the size of a beer can — no, a stack of six cans together — no, six whole kegs — between their legs. Ocellus couldn’t see their faces. She imagined them leering down at her just like Smolder surely was, just like Sandbar and Gallus and every creature in the world with a hint of desire that teeny tiny Ocellus — under a foot tall, still shrinking — could in any way satisfy.

The changeling felt a throb inside them, felt their destroyed cunt widen another foot as Gallus’ shaft swelled inside them — and then the deluge began. Rivers, lakes, oceans of jizz pooled inside them, filling them almost instantly, building up more and more until their belly ballooned out underneath them to the size of a melon, then a beach ball, then a whole parade float and beyond.

Sandbar hilted himself in their throat, pulsing and shuddering as he added to the flood. Cell’s arms and legs spread farther apart with every shot of his gut-bursting load, and soon their body were more cum than flesh, distended into a warm and wobbling blimp built solely to contain endless and ever-growing love.

They didn’t see Silver and Yona cum, just felt it: twin fountains of steaming spunk spraying onto them, covering their back like a blanket, soaking and then submerging their face in a pure-white flood. It was all over them, all around them, rising, shuddering, closer and closer to finally–

And then Ocellus woke up.

She drifted up from unreality slowly, fighting it the whole way, squeezing her eyes shut and wrinkling her nose and hoping against hope for just ten more seconds of mindless fantasy. She’d been so close, and still was — but as consciousness won out, the throbbing in her core faded into shudders, and the slickness between her thighs began to feel chilly rather than mind-breakingly hot.

Dammit. Every time, her dreams ended too early. She still hadn’t figured that part out, even with lots of practice.

It wasn’t all bad, at least. Smolder was with her in the real world too, regular-sized but still soft and strong and cinnamon-scented, with her arm around Ocellus’ shoulders and her chest serving as a warm and wonderful pillow. Ocellus felt the dragon’s arm lift away from her back, and then her hand against her frill, stroking gently, rising a bit with her chest as she sighed.

“Nice dream?” Smolder whispered. She was smiling. Ocellus could tell from her tone, and from the way her fingertips brushed lovingly over her scalp.

“Mmmm,” Ocellus quietly hummed back. It was enough of an answer to get a little chuckle out of Smolder, and another delightful stroke of her fingers.

“Well, don’t stay up on my account,” Smolder murmured.

Ocellus didn’t need to be told twice. They were already nodding off again, and every second that passed — the deeper Smolder’s heavenly scent burrowed into their brain — drew them closer back to dreamland. Hopefully right back to where they’d left off. They could already picture themselves laid out on a sun-beaten rock, swathed in the shadow of a mountain-sized orange monster, shivering with glee as the Dragon Lord Smolder pointed her godly, lust-filled gaze down towards them…

They were teetering on the edge of oblivion, about to tip all the way over, when they heard another voice somewhere above them.

“You still awake?”

Gallus’ voice was barely audible — if he’d spoken a few seconds later, Ocellus would’ve slept right through it. But he hadn’t, so she didn’t, and now she couldn’t help but eavesdrop from behind her eyelids.

“Not for long,” Smolder whispered, so the vibration of her voice wouldn’t disturb the changeling on top of her. Too late for that, but very sweet nonetheless. “Cell was dreaming. Feels like a good one.”

“I bet,” Gallus chuckled. Ocellus felt a puff of air brush over her forehead. Gallus must’ve looked down at her, smiled as he let out that satisfied noise. Just barely, she suppressed a shudder. She wouldn’t mind feeling his breath on her face again, or his hands creeping over the sheets towards her hips, or anything else that might follow either of those.

But if Ocellus had a secret thing for being woken up by someone having their way with them, Silverstream surely didn’t. And when Ocellus took a chance and cracked her eyes open, she could see that was who was lying fast asleep against Gallus’ other side, snuggled deep into a pillow with her arm thrown lazily over the griffon’s stomach.

Buying a Chrysalian King bed was such a good investment, Ocellus thought for the umpteenth time. The four of them fit in it comfortably with room for Yona and Smolder if they’d squeezed a bit, and if the pair hadn’t retired to their own bedroom after the night’s main event had ended. Ocellus did enjoy a good cuddle pile — especially when she got to be the thoroughly-creamed filling in the middle.

“Gallus?”

Smolder was whispering again, breaking what Ocellus hadn’t really realized was a fairly long silence. They’d already shut their eyes again, so they only heard rather than saw Gallus shift slightly to look Smolder’s way, moving delicately under Silver just like Smolder did under Cell.

“What’s up?” he asked.

Smolder sighed, barely. To anyone else, it would’ve just sounded like a normal breath, but Ocellus could feel an ethereal tingle of tension underneath it — a cap on a much bigger emotion that, they realized as Smolder gently squeezed their shoulder, had been ready to bubble out from under it for a while now.

“This can’t last forever,” Smolder said.

For a moment, Gallus didn’t seem to know what to say. Ocellus did — she just didn’t want to say it. This wasn’t a conversation she was supposed to hear, and in the end Gallus said the same thing she would’ve anyway.

“I know,” he murmured.

“I want it to,” Smolder whispered, the most vital word reverberating between her ribs and rumbling inside Cell’s head atop them. “But…”

“I know,” Gallus replied. It wasn’t a question, but Smolder answered it anyway — not with her words but with her hand around Cell’s shoulder, and her shift under the sheets to get closer to Gallus, and her silence that echoed around the dark room and through the entire apartment.

Nothing could last forever. It was what Ocellus had told herself when she was young, when all it seemed like a changeling could ever aspire to be was a spy, a liar, a thief of love they would never earn or deserve. It was what she’d told herself when she’d been led into her new school after the change, trembling from head to toe, absolutely positive that she’d end her time there as friendless and terrified as she’d began.

It was what she’d repeated inside her head like a mantra with every week and month that passed, with every new friend she made and extraordinary experience she had with them, with every spark of love she was given freely and every momentary hollow space those sparks opened up inside her. She knew she’d earned it, that she deserved it… that Ocellus did, anyway. But the longer she spent away from home, the less she felt like Ocellus, and the less Ocellus felt like her, and the more that hollowness seemed to grow until it tainted every moment of every day with an undefinable pallor of wrongness.

She’d spoken about it with school counselors, chatted about it with commiserating classmates, puzzled over it and obsessed over it and nearly given up on ever knowing exactly what it was, until suddenly she understood it more clearly than anything before in her life. Until one day, hanging out with Smolder after classes at college, she’d cracked a joke about she probably wouldn’t need to study for an upcoming test, and Smolder had laughed and called her bluff: “Girl, please, you’d study for a magazine quiz about which boy band member you are.”

Ocellus had laughed back, then fallen silent, then sunk into the couch and stared at the wall as whatever words Smolder said next dissolved beneath the echo of the ones she’d said before: “Girl please, girl please, girl please.” At some point, Smolder had noticed Ocellus wasn’t listening, gotten her attention, asked her if she was okay.

And it had just shot out of her, the thing she’d never acknowledged but always thought, never understood but always known, the scariest six words she’d ever say aloud:

“I don’t think I’m a girl.”

The moment she’d said it, primal terror had ripped through her, then indescribable relief, then a dizzying mish-mash of both — and then she’d felt Smolder sit down next to her, wrap her arm around her shoulder, pull her in for a gentle hug that didn’t need to say anything other than what it did, which was “I’m still here.”

“What do you think?” Smolder had asked her, her tone softer than any Ocellus had ever before heard from her. And Ocellus — shaking, out of breath, feeling like she’d just jumped off a cliff without knowing whether her parachute would open before she hit the ground — had told her the only truth she had to tell:

“I don’t know.”

Even now, Ocellus still wasn’t totally sure. It changed by the day, sometimes by the moment: “she” would fit best, then “they”, then back and forth again. She’d been mortified about it at first, still thinking like an old changeling would, part of her still believing that things just had to be one way or the other, and you couldn’t be both or neither or something else altogether.

It was their friends who had convinced them otherwise, who not only still loved but treasured the real Ocellus, and most of all it was Smolder who had listened as they thought aloud, hugged them on days when those thoughts became too much to think through, been the first creature in the world to see them naked and told them — love in her gaze, lust in her curling lips and tongue — that they were perfect exactly the way they were.

Things had moved kind of quickly after that. Ocellus had sensed the tension between Smolder and Gallus, put two and two together, suggested in a moment of wine-enhanced courage one night that, y’know, if he wanted to and she wanted to, they wouldn’t mind being between them. And then Silverstream had joined in a few nights later, and Yona and Sandbar both after that, and pretty soon they’d needed to get organized just to make sure everybody got time with everybody else.

And that was how Movie Night began: a creative compromise that quickly became a tradition, and such an eagerly anticipated one that they all often stayed totally celibate outside of it, saving their energy and enthusiasm for a single explosion of passion at week’s end. Well, they tried to save it, anyway. Ocellus could be patient about a lot of things, but sex wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t her fault her friends were hot, or that well-loved changelings had libidos like bunnies in springtime.

“Hey.”

It was Gallus again. Ocellus felt Smolder twitch as his free hand found the dragon’s and wrapped around it.

“It doesn’t matter how long this lasts,” he whispered. “It’s good right now.”

“I know,” Smolder said. What she didn’t say was what they all knew she thought about sometimes: the future, years and decades and maybe centuries forward, when most mortal creatures would’ve gone to the next life and left a few other creatures behind. Nothing could last forever, but with care and a bit of luck, dragons could get pretty close — and griffons, ponies, yaks and hippogriffs and changelings couldn’t.

Smolder tried not to think about it. Ocellus tried to help when her brain forced her to anyway. But Gallus was better at it than Cell was. He — with his bright-blue plumage and flexible preferences, and his tender heart once hardened by what he’d once called his family — knew better than any of them what being alone really felt like.

“No, listen,” he went on. “You see Cell there? They love you. And if they had a million years or a single day left to spend with you, they’d love you the same way.” He shifted again. “Silver here? She loves you. Yona loves you, Sandbar loves you…”

“You love me?” Smolder wryly interjected.

“Despite your best efforts, yes,” Gallus said through a chuckle. “That’s all life is: loving creatures and things and all of everything, one moment at a time. And when those moments end, there’ll be new ones, and memories of old ones. All we can do is enjoy the ride.”

“Phrasing,” Smolder murmured.

“You’re insufferable,” Gallus replied.

Gallus raised his hand and rested the back of it against Smolder’s belly, knuckles bumping gently against the tips of Cell’s fingers. Ocellus felt them both lean towards one another, and heard their lips meet and stay together.

She smiled, and chanced another look up. She couldn’t see much beyond the bottoms of their chins, but she could see and hear and feel the comforted hum vibrating in Smolder’s throat, and the happy distant purr emanating from Gallus’.

She could also see Silverstream looking at her through half-lidded eyes, tucked up against Gallus’ neck so her head was pressed right against the rumbling in his chest. The hippogriff smiled across the sheets at Ocellus, who winked back. Then they both closed their eyes, keeping their secret to themselves.

“I know you’re awake, Cell,” Smolder said.

Or not.

“No‘m not,” Ocellus mumbled. “Havin’ a good dream.”

“I bet,” Smolder shot back. Ocellus could tell she was smirking, from her tone and from how her lips felt when she pressed them softly into their forehead. “Better get back to it. Got a busy day tomorrow.”

Ocellus sighed, snuggled in closer, and bit their lip in anticipation. They knew nobody in the apartment had any real plans tomorrow, which meant they could stay in bed all day if they wanted to. Maybe their friends would too. Maybe it’d be like just they’d dreamed. Maybe it’d feel so good they’d want it to last forever.

“‘Cause you’ve got laundry to do.”

Or not.

“Fuck,” Ocellus muttered, right before she fell back asleep.

Author's Note

<3