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It was a rather tense moment, silence filling the cave. Toby stood before his mother and father; a tiny human boy, with his dim, timid glow, looking way, way up at the faces of his adoptive parents.
But he wasn’t standing alone. Just next to him was his brother, Kint. Toby stood somewhat pressed against the folded wing at the dragon’s side, taking emotional support from the warm contact. On the boy’s other side stood his even bigger brother, Clak. The brown dragon wore a determined, serious expression. His words had been the last sounds to fill the cave; the final, heartfelt declaration before the silence of their parents’ deliberation.
And it wasn’t only the three of them standing there either. On the other side of Kint was their big sister Averi, a few steps behind them was their cousin Sky, and those were only a few of the family members Toby could easily see. He had easily half a dozen dragons backing him if not more. The way they all rallied to support him made him feel brave and proud and thankful, but more than anything at that moment, he still felt nervous.
His father and mother looked to each other for a lengthy moment, sharing a silent exchange, and then finally back at their offspring.
…His father nodded.
The stir in the air was palpable, expressions shifted to joy and excitement, Toby’s light quadrupled in brightness. But just before anyone could cheer, the looming dragon spoke.
“Keep to your words,” he told his sons, daughters, nieces and nephews. “Do not neglect your other tasks. Always keep him in sight. And above all, remain safe.” His booming voice faded and Toby saw those huge eyes focus solely on him. The boy went solemn for a moment as he felt the emotions they conveyed: wariness and trust, pride, strength, understanding and compassion.
And then came the tongues. Licks upon licks blocked his view and nearly toppled him over as his family began to cheer for him and show their affection. He couldn’t help but start laughing, tickled from every direction. They’d done it! They’d actually done it!
They’d convinced his parents to let him go outside.
Through the sea of pink he caught sight of his brother Kint’s face. “See, told you it would work if we got everyone to help,” the dragon affirmed happily. Toby beamed back at him, in more than one sense.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” one family member asked.
“Yeah! Let’s take him right now!”
“You ready?”
“Yeah, ready Toby?”
Toby looked around at all the grinning, toothy faces, too excited for a moment to even find words. But they came quickly enough.
“Yeah!! Let’s go!!” he yelled. And he turned and started sprinting in the direction of the cave’s mouth.
A chorus of overlapping cheers followed him. A couple of his younger kin ran past him and had to stop and turn around, forgetting in their excitement how much faster they were compared to the little human. He felt a touch against his back and a snout pressing between his thighs and suddenly his feet were no longer on the ground. He was sliding back atop a neck of blue scale.
“Need a lift?” his cousin Sky asked rhetorically, glancing back at him atop her as she carried him quickly forward. “I can’t fly down with you yet, but I can at least take you to the ledge,” she offered happily.
Unfortunately, she had accidentally brought up a point of debate.
“Hey, who’s gonna carry him down?”
“I’ll do it!”
“No, I want to!”
“You wanna fly with me, Toby?”
His mother’s voice could be heard cutting above the rest: “Clak, do you have room for him?”
Almost no sooner had she asked, than Toby had heard the beating of wings. And the boy had only just looked up in time to see the wide splayed maw of his big brother descending upon him and his grinning face.
Clak’s maw sealed around his tiny sibling’s waist mid-flight, plucking the boy into the air right off their cousin’s back. Toby felt the rush of air against his lower half for a moment before that familiar tongue enwrapped him and pulled him deeper. And then it flexed and swelled and:
*GULP*
Down Toby slipped, headfirst into the gullet of his big brother, as the words vibrated around him:
“I always have room for my favorite snack,” Clak replied, equal parts teasing and caring.
A few protests could be heard outside:
“Aww…”
“No fair.”
“Lucky.”
Toby didn’t pay them much mind, not that he could hear much over the squelching walls pressed tight against his ears. He felt the slightly jarring thud as his brother landed again, though in the gullet’s embrace he only jiggled a bit as he was squeezed further down.
Clak paused for a moment as he folded his wings and felt his sibling reaching the entrance of his belly. He took a moment, amidst everything, to enjoy the sensation as the human within completed the quick journey and his gut rumbled happily, then another moment to give his passenger the chance to adjust himself before they started moving.
Toby arrived with a splat and righted himself almost before he had even slipped fully inside. The familiar pastey goop greeted him as he sunk into it, rising above most of his body up to his shoulders and the very tips of his gently bent knees. But rather than taking in his surroundings as he usually did, Toby found his attention rapt by the thuds and the swaying motion of his brother’s steps, quickly picking up speed.
He pictured the ground beneath them, the rock he could hear clacking against his sibling’s claws, as if he could see through the walls of muscle and scale to the cave beyond. He felt them moving forward and excitedly pictured the cave mouth approaching before them, the wide world open and ripe for exploration.
He heard Clak unfurl his wings. And then suddenly, they were airborne.
There were a few moments of furious flapping and then: silence. To a less experienced passenger, it might have seemed like they’d somehow stopped, but Toby knew better. They were gliding down. Down all the way to the ground. He felt the subtle changes in gravity as Clak gently spiraled, and he tried to imagine from the glimpses he’d had over the years what it must look like. But though he knew he had been down from the mountain before when he was very young, he couldn’t manage to picture it. The mystery only added to his excitement.
*flap* *flap* *flap* *thud*
Chyme splashed lightly against him as the stomach jiggled. They’d touched down. His imagination went to the ground below his brother’s belly, but he pictured only darkness. He had no idea what was out there. Outside was where everything was, which meant it could be anything. But it was right there, just a moment away, just past the walls of his sibling’s body, just beyond warm, familiar safety…
His light dimmed a touch.
“You ready, Toby?” Clak asked happily.
“…”
“Toby?”
The boy put a hand to the familiar, comforting walls and nodded. “Yeah,” he replied bravely.
And so the walls pressed in. They lifted him up from the stew of the dragon’s stomach and up into the passage through which he’d slid. Up, up, up he was squeezed until his feet felt the tickle of open air at the back of Clak’s throat. Out the boy slipped, into his sibling’s maw and down the long, slick tongue, little flashes of blue and green meeting his eyes through the familiar red and white.
And then all at once he was on the ground.
Clak had intended for his little brother to land on his feet. Toby was usually quite able to emerge gracefully from within his family members, but this time he stumbled and fell to his hands.
Toby looked down. There was grass. He stared at it. It tickled at his skin as the breeze passed. It caught little drops of slime, dripping off him from his recent journey. The ground below was cool, like the cave floor, but not quite as cold; and though it was hard, it was somehow much softer.
“…Toby?” came his brother’s voice again.
Slowly, the boy looked up. Several other family members had landed around him, watching eagerly with expressions of excitement and concern. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light. He saw the sun peeking through the trees and heard the gentle sounds as the leaves rustled. And further up there loomed their mountain, with their little cave he couldn’t even see. He rose to his feet so he could turn his head higher and gaze all the way to its peak.
After a long moment he gradually brought his gaze back down to earth. Down to where he now found himself. He looked across the faces of all his family members who’d gotten him there, who’d sympathized and supported and volunteered to keep him safe just so he could experience this simple joy.
His smile, briefly overtaken by awe and wonder and fear, slowly returned, growing bigger and brighter than ever.
Toby was outside.