Ocellus snuggles herself into the plush fabric of the chair and closes her eyes.
Almost straight away Sugarcube Corner prods her with the scent of sugar and marzipan and warm dough. The other customers become beacons of lemon zest and lavender-soaked cotton, avatars of spiced cocoa and sea-salt rain. Professor Pie is an apparating beach of flavour; crashing waves of ginseng and smoke against intangible stretches of sherbet. Somewhere deep deep down, the sting of grapefruit is pushing back, wanting to be acknowledged.
As always, Smolder fills Ocellus' world with the taste of paprika. Ocellus chitters appreciatively whenever the flavour is smothered by nutmeg; she knows that if she opens her eyes during these moments, she will briefly catch the rarest one of Smolder's many gazes before her girlfriend can hide it.
The collection of flavours is heady and intoxicating. And at the end of a day full of exams, they are almost always the perfect balm.
But sometimes Ocellus needs something else. More importantly, she needs to be something else—just for a moment.
She snaps her eyes open and on cue Smolder looks away. Nutmeg savages her tongue and her heart. Ocellus licks her lips and waits for her girlfriend to stop pretending to read her book.
A textbook, no less.
Ocellus smiles back at the passage of time.
"Do you ever think," she says, "about how much fun we'll have coming here with a brood of our own?"
Smolder splutters, the orange of her face bleeding red. The taste of nutmeg burns.
Ocellus laps it up, smiles, and closes her eyes once again.
I have put way too much thought into the many ways this could work out even if changelings and dragons aren’t normally compatible. The easiest of course being that Ocellus simply becomes a male dragon for long enough for her testes to generate sperm in sufficient quantity to impregnate Smolder; the resultant eggs should probably be normal dragon eggs with normal dragon fetuses inside.
The downside to this is of course that spermatogenesis takes about 60 days, which would be way longer than any changeling we know about has held a single form. Although on the other hand if we assume that a changeling that turns into a thing is that thing, inside and out, and it’s not merely cosmetic (supported by, at the least, Ocellus being able to breathe water as a seapony), then it’s possible that if Ocellus turns into a healthy male dragon then she is a healthy male dragon, with a full stock of sperm already.
Other possibilities include magic, in which case either Smolder or Ocellus could be the mommy. Just MST3K mantra it.
If you’re wondering how Ocellus got knocked up
In defiance of science facts,
Just repeat to yourself “it’s just a show, I should really just relax!”
i'm gonna need a flash-forward chapter where this exact thing happens
...and smolder is too big to fit inside Sugarcube Corner
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No, no, you see I've thought about this. Ocellus totally decides to stay in her dragon form when Smolder gets too big to live within towns and cities, so that she can always be with her love. And then, I dunno, they dominate the dragons and get them to build a huge replica of Sugarcube Corner, complete with a giant Pinkie Pie automaton and an endless supply of magnificently oversized cakes and shut up I'm totally not overthinking how adorable they are!!!
Also, god yes, I totally want to write about Smolder and Ocellus being accidental young parents, haha.
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Yeah, I agree. Obviously here it was a throwaway comment designed to harvest flustered love (one of the best kinds of love), but I admit that I kind of want to do a story with them both raising a hatchling. Whelp. Whatever. I think I'm definitely in the camp of Ocellus coming ready with whatever equipment and innate stock of the [x] she turns into. But then that led me down the road of how a changeling would even perceive matters of sexuality and reproduction. Personally, I deal with the hard (or soft, I guess) romance rather than bio-psychology, but it'll be interesting to put at least a degree of that into such a story.
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The potential complexity is that it’s possible that if a piece of a changeling is separated from the changeling it loses the changeling magic and reverts back to its default form. Seemingly this might be kiboshed by Chrysalis seemingly able to separate a piece of her “armor” in “The Summer Sun Setback” without issue, but on the other hand it remained gripped in her magic so maybe that doesn’t count.
Point being that after Ocellus, ah, finished, the ejaculate might turn into...whatever it would normally be inside of her body as soon as it loses contact with her, making impregnation impossible.
Still, ridiculous world of magic. Maybe there’s some way to force it to not change.
Snrk. In my story Trouble in Tiatarta there’s a bit where a character named Nonchalant has been love poisoned and it’s making her act super maternal towards Smolder. And...
“Oh, yes,” Nonchalant said, taking Smolder's hand into both of her forehooves. “Definitely bring Ocellus! We need to have a talk with her, if you're going to settle down with her one day. Also we'll have to discuss plans for the future, I know dragons live a very long time but when do you start being old enough to lay eggs? I want grandkids! We'll have to use magic, of course, then again as long as we're using magic anyway I suppose Ocellus could be the one whose eggs get - ”
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See, that right there is a perfect metaphor for a story exploring the impact of failing to conceive within a magical setting. That's definitely my kind of subject matter.
That's my level of tackling the challenge right there. Magic says it's possible, so it's possible.
Eeee, I still need to read that one. Thanks for the timely reminder. Ah, to have the time to write stories of that length, haha.
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That's fine, I was only mentioning it. I really like this story and I look forward to more adorable Smolcellus.
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Oh, and you're more than welcome to! I enjoy writing serials because I like having the time and means to chat with readers.
And thank you. I'll do my very best to keep you supplied with said adorable fluff.
10184664
Alright then.
10184466
You do that.
This chapter was good and the ending was funny.
I’m keen for more. Unfortunate I can only give out one upvote to the collection but yeah. Good going so far