Summoning Ocellus

They had some free time to rest up afterwards, before it’d be time for them to start their dinnertime chores. After returning their equipment to the armory, they found an empty chamber to talk about the mission and just hang out.

“So are dragons usually this casual about sex?” Ocellus asked. “It’s kind of a big deal for most creatures I know. Half of my friends are sleeping with each other,” or with her, although she left that part out, “but we keep it quiet, you know? It’s something you only do with creatures you love.”

“I heard the surfacers are like that,” Rezzo said. “But that one seemed like she wanted to do it for fun?”

“For bragging rights,” Ocellus corrected, scowling.

“We mostly don’t care,” Ijj explained. He hadn’t been brave enough to even peek out at the adventurers, but of course he’d heard the whole thing. “When it’s time to mate, we mate. Thirty seconds and it’s done, for males at least.”

“Laying eggs is another five minutes a week or so later,” Tixi added. “It feels good to get them out of my body, so I won’t complain.”

“That’s how my people were too,” Ocellus said. “We didn’t mate for fun. But we used to have to pretend to be ponies, to steal their love, and part of learning to pretend to be a pony was learning how to mate for fun, in the pony style. We had an entire class on pretending to enjoy it.”

“So you can make the surface girl happy then?” Tixi asked. “Maybe she’ll ask for you again.”

“Probably,” Ocellus admitted. She’d probably even be able to enjoy it. She certainly had with Smoulder. “It’s just… I’m worried, whenever I go back and use those old skills, that I’ll lose all the progress I made learning how to be actual friends with people. People like you, Tixi.”

“That’s the most sentimental pile of rat-scat I’ve ever heard,” Rezzo said, making gagging motions. “I think you’re just out of practice, and worried you’ll embarrass yourself.”

“Want to practice?” Ijj offered. “I know even less about it than you, so you wouldn’t have to be embarrassed if you messed it up.”

Ocellus stared at him in horror. Her ear flicked as she tried to ignore Tixi’s flood of curiosity.

“What?” Ijj said.

“Go screw a badger,” Ocellus said, turning and stalking out of the room.

She got completely lost, but found somewhere to rest where she wasn’t alone, but none of the passing dragons paid her any mind, which was enough for a while.

Until she had to go running back at Tixi’s sudden burst of alarm. She managed to arrive in time to help carry Ijj to the healer to treat the badger-bites all over his legs and tail.

===

Tixi had, of course, handed over the windfall to the tribe, so someone came to fetch Ocellus when it was time to make good on her end of the deal.

“It’ll be easier if you can disguise yourself as a human,” the warrior suggested.

Ocellus did her best to assemble a new ‘human’ form from memory. After ten tries, the warrior and the small pack of spectators agreed that it wasn’t going to fool anyone, and that she should just go as a cat. No one ever stopped a cat from wandering around on the surface.

So it was in her sneakiest feline form that Ocellus crept up onto the surface, and tried to figure out what her client had meant by ‘the Inn’. The market was closed for the day, but there was the loud noise of partying – shouting and singing and layers of overlapping conversations – from just down the street, so she figured that was a good place to start.

“The Pub”, read the sign over the door. Ocellus darted in anyway, and dodged stomping, booted feet until she gave up and leapt onto a table, knocking over a mostly empty mug of ale and getting the attention of a group of short, bearded men.

“Ha ha ha! You wished for pussy, and here it is, delivered on a platter!” one of them laughed, banging his mug on the table.

“Excuse me,” Ocellus said, flattening her ears and pressing herself to the table’s surface. “Do any of you know where I can find the Haunted Box?”

“The cat can talk!” another of them said. “Get him a beer! He can join our party!”

“Um…” Ocellus was helpless before their energy, barely able to get a word in edgewise as they invented a story about a wizard whose unnatural meddling had finally made its way to those of the feline persuasion. She politely took a sip of the mug they ordered for her, shivering and twitching as the foul-tasting liquid burned her throat and stomach, which only made them laugh all the more.

“Ha ha ha, you’re a good sport,” one of them said, slapping her on the back and pounding her into the table. “The Haunted Box isn’t, just head away from the market and turn left at the thingie.”

“The thingie.” Ocellus repeated.

“You’ll know it when you see it!”

She found it hard to walk straight, once she was back to the relative safety of the dark, deserted streets, and her vision wasn’t doing so well either, but even impaired by whatever poison they’d fed her, she could never have missed it.

She stood in the small square and stared at it for a while, until she remembered that she had places to be. “That certainly is… a thingie…”

Her client was standing in the street about a block down the road, looking around impatiently. Ocellus tried waving to her, but her stealth in cat form was too powerful. She stumbled closer, and changed back into her normal form.

The woman started, then put her hands on her hips. “You’re late.”

“I had to ask for directions,” Ocellus said, blinking as her head cleared up a little. Transforming into something larger seemed to have diluted the poison. “I was only summoned to this world this morning you know.”

“It sounds like there’s a story there,” she said, “but that’s not why you’re here, is it?” She held out her hand. “Dannielle. What can I call you?”

Ocellus bumped her hand with a hoof. “Ocellus,” she said automatically, before considering whether to give a pseudonym. Then she remembered that the ‘mystic true name’ nonsense was something she’d made up. Any name she used, combined with an image of her, would be equally likely to allow a magical connection, at least according to Tixi’s research when trying to summon Smoulder.

Danielle picked Ocellus up – easy, for a creature so much larger – and held her to her chest, letting her rest her head on the human’s oversized (and oddly-placed) mammaries while she gently stroked her elytra. “Oh, you’re soft,” she remarked.

“Optimized for cuddling,” Ocellus said, reaching a hoof around to cling to the human, who was fairly soft herself. “We used to be all black and pointy.”

“Well, come on,” Danielle said, as if Ocellus had a say in how fast they went as she was carried into the inn’s lobby, where the sword-wielder – minus the sword – was sprawled out asleep on a couch. Danielle plopped Ocellus down on the coffee table, and shouted, “Wake up!”

The other adventurer started awake, and blinked a few times, gradually registering Ocellus’ presence. “Oh, it came.”

“Right,” Danielle said. “So, since my *esteemed party leader* and *dear friend* here is a paladin, I need to make this completely explicit. What did you think you were hired for?”

“Um…” Ocellus said, wilting a bit under her gaze, and glancing over her back at the ‘paladin’ apparently holding her in judgment. “Do I have to say it?”

“Yes,” the paladin said.

“Sex,” Ocellus squeaked. “’Mating for fun’, as Tixi put it. I assume you don’t want me to make an egg.”

Danielle grinned. “And do you consent to this transaction?”

“Enthusiastically consent,” the paladin corrected.

That seemed to be asking a bit much. “If I say ‘no’, do we have to give back the money?” Ocellus asked.

Danielle laughed.

The paladin sighed. “I guess if you’re a professional…”

“I guess?” Ocellus said. “It’s a job I was trained for, but I thought Tixi summoned me here to be her familiar, not her spy, so this came as something of a surprise.”

The two froze and stared at her.

“What?” she asked. “I was trained to use… sex… to get information out of people. To ingratiate myself with them and maybe replace one to infiltrate society, since we’re shapeshifters.”

“Well…” Danielle said, “She’s not *evil*. Right?”

The paladin nodded, but asked, “What did you do with the people you replaced?”

Ocellus had never done anything personally, since she hadn’t finished her training, but she knew the answer to that. “We’d drain their love and then put them in a cocoon for storage. I assume you want to skip that part.”

“Yeah, not on the first date,” Danielle said, with a laugh. “If you want to try to wheedle information out of me, knock yourself out. The gods know I like to hear myself talk.” She reached down to snag Ocellus again, this time holding her wing-cases against her stomach and chest, while her hands clung to her belly-plates. “Come on, I’ll show you my room. Assuming I have your permission, dearest leader?”

He sighed, and nodded. “She seems harmless enough. If it’s an act, try not to actually die.”

===

Danielle brought Ocellus up to a large room at the far end of the top floor of the inn, with a huge window overlooking the rooftops of the city, and rose-colored magical lamps illuminating the giant bed. Everything was freshly cleaned and immaculate, and there was a plate of cheese and crackers set up on a folding table.

On the stairs, her hands had wandered all over Ocellus’ underside – which wasn’t unpleasant, although she’d given a lot of attention to the space between her legs where a mammal would have had genitalia. It was still a sensitive spot, and Ocellus made sure to coo appropriately.

“So how do you want to do this?” Danielle asked, sitting on the bed and lying back, releasing Ocellus, who rolled over onto the smooth, shiny cloth and rubbed her hoof against its’ strangely pleasant texture.

“I’m here to make you happy,” Ocellus said, leaning over and nuzzling at her cheek. “If I had to guess at what you’d want – you were interested in me as a strange creature and as a shapeshifter? So I could let you explore my body, then change into something you found more attractive. Although I have to warn you that my human shapes aren’t very good.”

“And what about me?” Danielle asked. “Am I attractive at all?”

“Hmm, I don’t know human standards for beauty,” Ocellus said, thinking hard, since the answer obviously had to be ‘yes’. “You’re aggressive and not shy of just grabbing hold of people, which makes you attractive by dragon standards.”

Danielle sat up, reaching back and untying her top, which sagged off her oversized breasts. She shrugged her arms out of it, and it slipped down around her waist, leaving only a thin cotton undershirt that left little to the imagination. “What about by your standards?”

“I’ve always found dragons *fascinating*,” Ocellus replied, shifting into her dragon form and using one of her new fore-claws to fondle a breast through the fabric. Mammals usually – yes, by her reaction, humans enjoyed that as much as ponies, even if the placement was odd.

The next hour or so was a comfortable exploration of her well-studied skills. A light caress *here*, a gentle lick *there*, skin pressing against scales, mouths wandering around each others’ bodies, culminating in a nice long session of tongues and claws working together to drive her partner to a screaming orgasm. Humans were a lot louder than dragons, or at least a lot louder than Smoulder, but still wanted to cuddle afterwards, which was the best part really, both for energy absorption and for Ocellus’ personal pleasure.

After cooling off a bit in each others’ embrace, Ocellus changed back to her normal form and let Danielle work her over, her lovely soft fingers even better than dragon claws at exploring every nook and cranny. Plenty of attention placed on her belly and ears, and then an *intense* few minutes when she spread her wings as a demonstration, and Danielle decided to massage the tender flesh beneath them instead of letting the casing settle back into place.

“Is this hurting you?” she asked, pressing a little harder.

Ocellus squirmed, and gasped, wing casings quivering as she struggled to hold them open. “I don’t – oh please don’t stop!”

The room had a mirror, so they spent a while trying to teach Ocellus to take a human form. Apparently, pink hair was borderline acceptable, but her blue skin had to be shifted to a more natural shade. Seeing and touching all the new specifically human parts made transforming a lot easier, and Danielle insisted she touch and examine all the key features again, just to make sure she hadn’t forgotten. Afterwards, she had human-Ocellus lay back on the bed, while she tested each part of her in turn with her own hands and tongue. There was pleasure, of course, enough that she was almost reluctant to fake an orgasm when she felt her lover might be getting a bit bored.

She made sure to make it a convincing one, of course. Ever since she’d reformed she’d acquired a deeper understanding of the satisfaction of watching her partner climax, and didn’t want to deny Danielle any part of the experience.

Plus, everyone knew that an orgasm was the signal that it was time to cuddle some more. Humans were fairly good at cuddling, although there seemed to be an extra arm that could never really get comfortable.

Once Danielle was too worn out to continue, Ocellus slipped out of bed and onto the balcony outside. She turned into a cat, found a place to climb down from the roof, and made her way back to the storm drains.

===

Tixi was still awake, waiting for her in the large chamber just past the hall of traps.

“I’m back!” Ocellus said, smiling and waving to her. She was brimming with energy – even without actively draining love, there had still been a lot of emotion in the air. “I wasn’t expecting you to wait up. Were you worried about me?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Tixi replied. “It felt like you were having an awfully good time.”

“You know how it is,” Ocellus said, moving over and nuzzling her. “The pressure makes you nervous, but once you get started it all sort of clicks into place.”

“I’m glad,” Tixi said. Ocellus could tell it was a lie. Nothing but jealousy flowed through their bond. “Although now I wish I was the one who made you feel that way.”

Ocellus put a hoof on Tixi’s chest. “You’re a friend, not a client,” Ocellus said. “I could practice on you sometime if you want, but it didn’t sound like little dragons were really interested in my services, and the entire point would be for you to enjoy it.” That only made things worse, somehow. Ocellus closed her eyes, and sighed. “I’ll let you in on a secret, though.”

The spark of curiosity was a start, at least.

Ocellus spread her wings, and kept the casing open, turning sideways to let Tixi see the over-sensitive flesh beneath them. “If you rub me right there… it’s *super* ticklish.”