Summoning Ocellus

There was no sunlight in the little dragons’ lair, but time passed regardless, marked mostly by the daily meals, which were a time for socializing and relaxation, much like they were at school. The eating chamber had dim flickering firelight from the cookfires, and a dozen short-legged tables to hold the food while the little dragons gathered around. Ocellus turned into a cat to nurse a tiny share of rat meat and rice, although she hadn’t felt hungry for food or love since being summoned.

“Why are we feeding a cat?” someone asked.

“She’s my familiar,” Tixi explained. “I gave her a little of my share.”

“If she wants to eat, she has to work,” said a little old dragon at a nearby table. “Have her clear out the rats in the pantry.”

“I’m not really a cat,” Ocellus said. “Besides, I helped Tixi fight rats yesterday.”

“Afraid of a few more rats?” the old dragon cackled. “These ones aren’t even dire. Not much of a familiar if you can’t handle such a meager foe.”

I turned out Ocellus wasn’t much of a familiar. She was stealthy enough to sneak past the giant rats in the sewer, but the little rats in the pantry were more on the ball, and also didn’t sit out in the open daring people to come kill them. After an hour of sneaking around after the faint sounds of scurrying, she decided to try a different tactic.

As a rat, it still took a while for her to find where they were hiding – the pantry was a poorly-organized mess and there was an entire pile of mostly empty boxes that had been repurposed as a giant rat nest. The rats didn’t seem to want to talk to her, but they didn’t run away as she wandered around through their suspiciously well-constructed habitat.

So now what? She could turn into a snake and start eating them, but there were dozens if not hundreds of the things, and while she might get one, she probably wouldn’t get two. Sending a swarm of rats scurrying out into the kitchen probably wouldn’t count as clearing the pantry. If this was where the rats would retreat to, however, maybe she could trap them inside by sealing the exits? There seemed to be a lot of them, but she wasn’t going to run out of slime…

Before she could do any of that, a little dragon snuck into the pantry. He was as sneaky as any of them – she wouldn’t have noticed if the rest of the rats hadn’t immediately swarmed out to greet him. She was near the tail of the pack, and stood there with her little mouth open as she watched him smearing grease from the pile of table scraps he’d been carrying all over his body, cackling and dancing as the rats swarmed all over him.

“Did you get them all?” Tixi asked, when Ocellus finally found her, playing cards with half a dozen other little dragons. “It didn’t feel like you were fighting.”

“Too slippery,” Ocellus said, changing back to her normal form and resting her head against Tixi’s back, idly watching the game to try to figure out the rules.

===

Aside from a few incidents like that, the time between missions was pretty boring. Tixi mostly trained with magic, poring through a giant, ancient book of spells that Ocellus couldn’t read. “It’s the language of magic,” Tixi explained. “It takes years of training to decipher.” It wasn’t that she didn’t know the words – they were translated automatically by her changeling telepathy, just like spoken language – but what they said was utter gibberish. Tixi seemed to get something out of it, though, puzzling over each page with focused concentration until a spark of joy marked each breakthrough in her understanding.

Ocellus couldn’t really help her with that, not without a lot of basic study that would only detract from Tixi’s own progress. She wasn’t often asked to help around the lair, and she didn’t feel confident enough in her skills to offer. So it was like a long, boring vacation, with nothing to do but relax and hang out with people who were supposed to be busy working, and worry about how much homework was piling up while she was relaxing.

She asked about heading to the surface for sightseeing purposes, now that she knew how to disguise herself as a human, but Tixi’s sudden surge of jealousy shut that notion down before she even admitted to herself that she was bored enough that she’d been fantasizing about meeting Danielle again.

Managing Tixi’s jealousy was a full-time job, which Ocellus attacked with constant attention and the casual platonic intimacy that the little dragons enjoyed among themselves. None of it was arduous – Ocellus was a big fan of cuddling and nuzzling and being stroked – but it never ended, and if she felt even the slightest bit of resentment that would only trigger a new wave of negative feedback. Within a week, she’d given up all hope of doing anything beyond following Tixi around like a shadow.

At least the missions were fun! Tixi, Ijj, and Rezzo were a fixed team, apparently, and they went on several more patrols together. Most of them were to other sections of the storm drains, but once they got to visit the sewer itself, a level down and a dozen times worse smelling. The good news was they weren’t expected to fight anything down there – they just had to make sure the catwalk was clear and in good repair, and run away to report back if any of the filth monsters showed any sign of emerging from the filth.

They found Danielle’s adventuring party down in the sewer, fighting some of the mid-level filth monsters that they’d baited out onto the catwalks. Ocellus waved, but the adventurers were too focused on the fight to give them more than a glance, and Tixi quickly led them away from the area ‘for their own safety’.

“Don’t you even want to find out if she’d pay for another night with me?” Ocellus asked, as if the answer wasn’t obvious. “I thought you wanted repeat business.”

Tixi folded her arms, and turned her snout up and away. “Unfortunately, we’re on a tight schedule, and forbidden from interfering with adventurers and from fighting filth monsters. So I’m afraid it’ll have to wait.”

Back home at the armory, after checking their gear back in with the tribe, Rezzo grabbed Tixi and Ocellus by their ears and dragged them into a side room. “Alright, this has to stop,” he said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tixi snapped back at him.

“Everything’s fine,” Ocellus said, leaning against Tixi to try to improve her mood, but to no apparent effect this time.

“Uh huh,” Rezzo said. “Look, just… do your thing on her, and then she can realize she doesn’t like it and stop acting like a child who doesn’t want to share their favorite toy.”

“I don’t think –” Ocellus started, then trailed off and glanced at Tixi, who hadn’t felt as disgusted at the notion as she’d expected. Curiosity? Anticipation?

Ocellus took a deep breath. “Fine,” she said. “This might make everything worse, but I’ll do my best. First, I’m going to need Ijj’s help. Or yours, if you’re up to it.”

“What sort of help?” Rezzo asked.

Ocellus leaned over and whispered the answer in his ear.

Rezzo cringed. “I’ll go get Ijj.”

Ocellus turned into a human to wait for him, sitting down with her legs folded, naked and exposed and a little bit chilly – there was a reason humans always wore clothes. “Sit back against the wall for now,” she told Tixi, who looked tiny and helpless with Ocellus so huge.

“Are you going to mate with him?” Tixi asked, curiously.

“Just watch, for now,” Ocellus told her. She suspected that Ijj would want to, given that he’d tried to screw his own summoned badger, but wasn’t strictly speaking part of the plan.

Ijj startled as Rezzo led him into the room. “Oh! You figured out how to do a human shape!” he said, not nearly as stupid as Tixi made him out to be.

“I did!” Ocellus replied. “Danielle taught me a new way to learn new forms, and I’d like to use it on you, now.”

“Not on me?” Tixi asked.

“Shh!” She held a finger up to her lips, then reached down to grab Ijj and lift him into her lap. “Now Ijj. This might be a bit uncomfortable, but I’m going to need to explore every part of your body, in intimate detail.”

“Okay?” he squeaked, thoroughly intimidated. Ocellus pulled him to her chest with a hand on his spine, pressing his muzzle up as it slid between her breasts. This was, in the end, a performance, but it was easier to pretend to be sexually aroused with a little physical stimulation.

She started with his face, running her free hand and her lips over his horns, biting down on them slightly to test the texture, then dragging her tongue from the base to the tip. A gentle caress across his eye-ridges, a finger slipped into the corner of his mouth and then dragged, one tooth at a time, to the front of his muzzle, which she lifted to her lips and kissed, staring into his eyes as her tongue slipped into his mouth and his long draconic tongue wrapped around it. Ocellus could feel Tixi’s excitement building as she watched them kiss, so she dragged it out for a bit.

“How are you feeling?” she asked Ijj.

“I’m very very confused,” he said.

She lifted one of his arms up and studied it carefully, running her eyes and her fingers between his claws and down to his elbow, lifting his bicep away from his shoulder to run her fingers across every part of it… then took his wrist and pulled his claws to her breast. “Squeeze here, gently,” she told him. “I need to feel how the muscles work.”

After an appropriate amount of fondling, she set him down to give him a full-body massage, from his shoulders to the small of his back, down his tail, across his hips and thighs and calves and to the very tips of his foot-claws. Then flipped him over to get his chest and belly, finally ending on the last little opening between his legs, where the little dragons kept all of their private parts.

It wasn’t much like the dragons she knew, and even less like a pony’s. There was a cavity, which led to his digestive tract, and a penis curled up along the top side, that she was able to coax out and erect with her soft little human tongue. Just as Ijj seemed to be reaching his peak, she backed off and smiled. “I think I know enough to give it another try,” she said, flashing into a little dragon version of herself, blue and pink like her normal colors. She stood up and twirled around. “Tell me if I got anything wrong.”

Ijj pounced on her, and held her down, and got revenge for all the slow, torturous examination she’d give him. To be fair, he did find a few subtle flaws, which she corrected, and Tixi’s embarrassed excitement rose to previously unknown heights as he held her down, his penis erect and resting directly over her vent.

“Do it,” Tixi whispered, hands clutched tightly to each other in front of her chest.

It was hardly a mating for the ages, Ijj not having much experience or training, but his enthusiasm was real, and so was the lion’s share of her pleasure. Her penis slipped out and rose to full mast between them, as he slipped under it and deep, deep inside her, and she triggered ejaculation as she shivered and squirmed in her best display of orgasmic pleasure, while Ijj squirted his seed into entirely the wrong section of her body.

“Two males can mate?” Rezzo asked, staring.

“Of course,” Tixi said haughtily, as if she was an expert. “There won’t be any eggs, but that isn’t the purpose of this sort of mating.”

The purpose, of course, was as an excuse for tired, sticky cuddling, which Ijj and Ocellus were getting on with in the middle of the room. And to entertain Tixi, of course.

Ocellus leaned her head back to look Tixi in the eye, while still cradling Ijj to her chest. “You can be next, if you want? I wouldn’t mind studying the female version of this form.”

Tixi froze, staring at her like a deer caught by a basilisk – then turned and ran, squealing.

Once they were cleaned up – and got yelled at by an older little dragon for being perverts and degenerates for mating out of season, and washed the room thoroughly under his disapproving gaze – Ocellus tracked Tixi down to her sleeping chamber, and smiled to dispel her embarrassment.

“The offer’s open if you change your mind,” Ocellus said, keeping her tone matter of fact. “But I won’t mention it again unless you ask.”

“That’s probably best,” Tixi squeaked, slowly relaxing as Ocellus ran her hoof down the little dragon’s back.

Ocellus slipped into bed with her, and wrapped her hooves around her, cuddling her in a good position for sleeping. It wasn’t quite time to rest, but time was fluid underground.

“If you want to see that human again… I mean,” Tixi stumbled over her words. “You can ask if she wants to pay for another round.”

“Not if it hurts you,” Ocellus said. “We’re stuck together, we can’t be at odds.”

“If she says yes, then I want to watch,” Tixi added.

Which would be a logistical problem, Ocellus thought as she considered the offer, but then again so was just finding a way to contact the adventurers at all. They might as well live in different worlds.

===

Knowing a proper little dragon shape had its disadvantages. Rezzo insisted on dragging Ocellus to his training sessions, teaching her how to fight with knives and shields and how to shoot a bow. She was terrible at it.

“Again,” Rezzo said, as she scrambled to pick up the blunt wooden training knife he’d just knocked out of her grasp.

“This isn’t working,” Ocellus said.

“Everyone has to learn this stuff,” Rezzo replied. “Would you rather wait until the eggs hatch, and train alongside a bunch of babies?”

Ocellus considered it. “That sounds adorable,” she said at last. “I bet all the baby dragons are going to be so cute!”

“At the rate you’re learning, they’re going to be able to beat you up if you don’t get your tail straight and pay attention. Again!”

Tixi was a little sympathetic. “I didn’t have any talent for that sort of fighting either, but learning to sneak and make traps was useful. Everyone should know the basics.”

“I’m surprised you had time to learn to read… this…” she gestured at the magical book, which remained incomprehensible. It was technically their free time, but Ocellus was trying to learn the very first spell that every wizard had to learn, that would let them read the shifting magical words. It was, unfortunately, written in those very magical words, which made it a sort of aptitude test to weed out those who didn’t have the right combination of memory and puzzle-solving to use wizardly magic safely. It should have been right up Ocellus’ alley, but she’d made as little progress as she had with her knife-fighting.

“Oh I didn’t,” Tixi said, stroking Ocellus’ back as she studied. “Learning all the basic skills probably held me back an entire year. I heard the wizard was really angry about it, but he put up with it since it’s so important to our culture.”

“How often does the wizard come by?” Ocellus asked. “Do you think he could get a message to my friends back home?”

“Once the eggs hatch, he’ll be around to examine them for their aptitudes,” Tixi said. “He keeps a record of each generation, and sometimes tells us who should mate with who next time for the best eggs. It doesn’t always work out like he hopes, but the elders say his data shows that over time it’s been having an effect.”

“And I can ask him then?”

Tixi nodded, but seemed uncertain. “Probably. He’ll be very busy with the hatchlings, but I might be able to show you off to him, since I’m one of his special projects. I might even be able to get you to see him a little sooner… but it’s not a sure thing, so I probably shouldn’t get your hopes up.”

“That’s fine,” Ocellus said. “There’s probably no rush. I mean, they’ll be looking for a way to make a mirror portal to get me back, but it’ll take them months since they have so little to go by.”

Tixi’s hand froze on Ocellus’ back. “You’re going back?”

“No!” Ocellus said, turning and hugging her. “I mean, it would be nice to be able to visit home sometimes, and talk to my friends, but I won’t just leave you forever.” As Tixi calmed down, Ocellus continued. “If I could send them a message, I could tell them not to worry. Someday you’ll be a powerful wizard, and we can just travel back and forth whenever we want, right?”

Tixi giggled. “Someday! Maybe someday I’ll even be able to summon Smolder.”

“It would be nice to see her again,” Ocellus said. “I kind of left her hanging.”