#hetrosexualmpreg

This video and the two other posts like it are getting lots of views, especially this one. It's great, but what good is a lot of traffic if people only listen to the first half hour, then lose interest? Why not listen to the whole thing and even go so far as give an honest review? I am aware of its problems, but surely my writing and performance aren't that bad. I will get it fixed eventually. It'll take years to get it done if I can, but I'll get there...hopefully. In the meantime, this is what I have available.

I know this won't happen at all, but I'd love it if this story of mine got fully edited and fixed up, then turned into an anime movie, in the style that's semi realistic. What's more likely to happen is what's happening right now. Mostly nothing. But if it did happen, I could just see it winding up on Netflix as a mini series.

If anyone asks to help me do it all and is serious about it, I'd say hell yeah so long as they don't expect me to be able to pay them. I expect that whatever profit they get will come from the royalties and I get a share...and credit for the story. Fat chance of that, but I thought I'd throw that in.

This is a link to the first chapter of my novel where you can read it for free. It's also available on Amazon. I did get some help with the first five chapters as far as editing, but they don't appear in the published copy. At least not yet. I'll get there when I can finally afford an editor, those services aren't cheap. So far, a little over $300 is the lowest price I can find.

This story is a full-blown novel. The link to the next chapter for every post is always in the description below each chapter. Links to where you can find the paperback book are posted in the description of the first chapter.

I seek a broad range of opinions of my work. It's not often anyone stops to read my story. I'd simply post the chapter here, but Tumblr won't let me. So, all I can do is a link.

There's no fetish, no kink and it's heterosexually oriented simply because that's what I'm into. There's at least two strong sexual themes, but they're not the main focus of the story, only briefly mentioned. Nudity, but most of it is innocent. Yes, this is an mpreg. Why? Because I went on a DeviantART and YouTube dumpster dive and hated most of what I found there in that genera. So, I challenged myself to make my own to see if I could make a good story out of what most people turn into a major plot stinker. Simply put, most of what I found by other creators was extremely stupid and often disgusting.

For those looking for instant gratification in story, this one will take a little patience. On DeviantART, the first chapter gets noticed, but I don't think people actually read it. It's more like, favor it to save it for later...then forget about it. The hopping around though time for the first chapter might put people off a little, but I refuse to change that. It works for this book. The whole book isn't like that, only the first and fifteenth chapter. The rest is linear...but there is a two chapter flashback also...so I don't know. What I mean is that apart from chapters 1 and 15, the narrative is linear.

Certainly I don't get many people leaving honest feedback on it. I learn from them and I keep them in mind. That way when and if I ever get around to writing another story, I'll remember the comments and use them to help improve my writing. That and I just love feedback. It's better than a vacuum of silence. Especially since writing is harder than drawing.

Refuge       Little Girl landed tiredly next to him on the steep sandy grade a few yards away from the cave entrance.  Goldie leapt off of her withers and onto Johnny's back as he lay prone with his forehead pressed against his left forearm, trying not to vomit as the cramp subsided.       "Get up!" Goldie squeaked urgently in his ear as Little Girl pushed him with her wet muzzle, dampened with tears of fear and worry, soaking the cloth of his robes as she started to cry again.  "They are too far away to see us, but I can still hear their noisy engines coming our way."       Johnny shifted and Goldie jumped off his back.  He tried to breathe as slowly and deeply as he could.  He had already retched up everything in his stomach several miles back.  The next time, a couple of miles later, he only got the dry heaves.  As his queasy stomach began to settle, he made it to his hands and knees when he felt a warm and sensual ball of electric heat formed in his lower abdomen.  It spread rapidly in a matter of seconds to every part of his being, causing him to shudder uncontrollably while it held him in its thrall.  Just as abruptly the sensation had come, it vanished and he felt better.  No upset stomach and no bad cramps.       The whole experience lasted only a moment and Johnny was finally able to stagger to his feet unassisted.  Somehow he knew the sudden attacks were over and that he would be fine now. Little Girl shape shifted back into her human child form so she could fit more easily through the cave's opening and swung the satchel over one bare slender shoulder.  As it was often her custom, she went nude (since clothes could not change with her), finding clothes unnatural, impractical and confining.  Generally, the only time she put on clothes was when they went to town, which Johnny insisted on for her own safety.       Goldie went into the cave ahead of them, eager to be inside before the sandstorm she knew was coming in about an hour's time.  It was another survival adaptation that made desert rats such useful companions to those who had them.  Johnny entered the cave himself behind Little Girl's slight frame.  He had to duck and squeeze through the crack in the rock, snagging his robes and his loose pants before he could make it through.       Once inside, the passage opened up immediately to a spacious room with a small crack in the ceiling that let in daylight and could serve as a smoke hole should anyone need to build a fire.       He paused only a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dimness of the cave, then walked straight back to where Little Girl and Goldie crouched at the edge of a small spring in the stone floor.  With a sigh of relief, he knelt between them, pulled back his sleeves and reached out with his hands to the gently rippling surface of the life sustaining water.       He glimpsed his dim wavering reflection in the pool before he cupped his hands to fill them with water and drank, reliving his parched throat.  He resisted the urge to gulp it down as a precaution against upsetting his stomach again.  The stubble on his face was prickling his hands as he drank and he thought he needed a shave.  He hadn't managed one since the day before yesterday.       Johnny was dusky skinned with fine and sharp angles in his features, high cheekbones, fine black brows, high arched nose, big liquid black eyes with long black eyelashes and full masculine lips.  He was handsome, even charming when he tried.  His hair was covered with head dress made of a reddish brown cloth that was held in place with a woven black head band.  Under it his shining black hair was long enough to fall all the way to his feet.  He kept it bound in a tight bun at the base of his skull most of the time to keep it out of the way.  It was considered to be a sign of strength and masculinity for a man to never cut his hair, a tradition he had adopted soon after joining his tribe as a boy.       His body was long, lean and hard muscled.  His long fingered hands were strong and callused from years of rough work.  He could never get fat, what he didn't work off, the desert sun seemed to sear away.       Little Girl in her human form was similarly lean and hard muscled.  Her skin was golden brown and her nearly waist length wavy and curly auburn hair glistened with golden highlights.  Her eyes were large with chocolate brown irises, fine brows, full pinkish lips and the general cast of her facial features was rounded, angelically perfect and amazingly gorgeous.       In her dragon form she was also quite beautiful.  Elongated triangular head with powerful jaws, almost raptor beak shaped lips and dog like teeth with the upper canine elongated just enough for the tips to protrude slightly.  Powerfully muscled all over, with a horse like neck, lizard ears, large cat eyes the color of topaz with hints of light emerald green in the centers.  Each eye was protected by a single thick and smooth bony brow ridge.  Her hard scales, smooth as a serpent's, were a deep goldenrod color that blended well with the hues of the desert.  Most dragons have snake-scoot like armor plates that run from just under their chin all the way down to just past the base of their tails.  However, Little Girl's kind didn't have that particular feature; she was just smooth scales all over.       An unusual feature of her species is that the females have a marsupial like pouch to carry their eggs and young.  Her powerful hind limbs were slightly longer than her forelimbs, the better to jump into the sky.  Another feature unique to her species was the reddish brown feathered eagle wings and soft fur like feather mane that ran all the way from the top of her head to her withers that stood straight up.  Along the top of her tail she had a similar strip of feathers from the base to its tip.  Both were the same color as her hair in human form, only in her true form, the golden highlights were iridescent metallic gold colored patterns.       Little Girl's feet closely resembled monkey paws with sharp curved dark brown claws with rough scales on the bottoms that gave her better grip for climbing.  Her forepaws were every bit as nimble as a human's hands.  Her head, wings and feet looked slightly too big for her.  Her head was just a bit more rounded and softer in appearance than the adult dragon's.  As she aged to maturity her features would harden into a fiercer countenance and her body parts would look less ill proportioned.       And Goldie?  Well, she just looked like a big healthy and slightly plump rat the size of a small domestic cat.  Her shining fur was her most unusual feature, even for her kind.  It was a golden, streaked here and there with copper and bronze without being metallic in hue.  The bare skin on her tail, slightly enlarged ears, feet and nose were brownish with pink undertones.  She had another unusual feature for a rat, her forepaws were actually hands.  She was quite lovely in her own way.       Her black beady eyes, the way she moved and interacted with her environment, belied her high intelligence.  Desert rats were magical creatures with talents for food and water detection, weather sense, teleportation and human speech, though not all bothered to learn to speak a human language of any kind, preferring their own rat language.  The exception to this was the companion rats living with some of the nomadic tribes of the deep Red Sands Desert.  Constant close contact with humans, who treated them with kindness, respect and spoiled them rotten made them want to be more helpful and communicative with their human friends.       They were tough and well adapted to their desert environment.  They could go for days without water just by getting moisture from the plants and animals they ate.  They were amazingly good swimmers and had a special magic that prevented them from drowning.  They could remain immersed in water for days by using their magic to form an air bubble over their noses and mouths that constantly replenished itself from the oxygen in the water.  This saved them from drowning in the lowlands when it sometimes flooded during the rainy season, as they could accidently be swept away in the torrential waters that nearly always originated in the distant mountains to the east.  This magical talent also enabled them to hunt for small aquatic cave creatures like blind fish, small cave shrimp and salamanders.       Another odd trait of her kind was their extreme longevity.  Normal mundane rats averaged about two years in their life span, desert rats could live eighty or more years.  They were not as prolific since they didn't need to be.  They mated as often as they wished any time of the year, but females only became fertile once every three years.  When they did have litters, they often did it in a big way, having as many as fifteen pups at a time.       The odd family trio took their time drinking from the spring until they finally got their fill.       "Ahhh," Johnny sighed after dabbing his hands and mouth dry on his sleeves.  He sat back on his heels as his two family members finished drinking.       They were all exhausted and in need of food and rest.  Johnny wondered what was in the satchel Little Girl had been carrying for so long through the sky.  He hoped she had at least managed to steal some food from the camp because he hadn't eaten since yesterday morning.  He was pleased to note that his current gastric discomfort was mere hunger and not the bad cramps and nausea head been enduring the past week.  He was feeling better and better by the moment in spite of being so tired.       "What's in the bag?" Johnny asked Little Girl as she too sat back on her heels, facing him as she did so.       She wrapped her small arms around her legs and leaned her chin onto her knees.  She looked up at him with those big liquid eyes and answered with a regretful sigh, "Not much.  Just the royal seal in its box, a few ration bars and some tubers I managed to dig up a few miles back.  I was looking for the charmed mirror grandmother gave you,  but I think I found it smashed with the other things the guards broke.  One of the men almost saw me and Goldie wanted me to hurry up.  So I hid and started singing so she could help you."       Johnny smiled at Little Girl's thoughtfulness and practicality.  "You and Goldie did alright, baby girl.  Though I would not have been upset if you left the royal seal behind.  Just this once I wouldn't have minded not being able to fulfill my contract with Princess Elena.  That seal is more trouble than it's worth."       "You're not mad?" Little Girl said as she stared at him with wide eyes.  She looked surprised and half pleading for him not to be angry with her.       "No, not this time," Johnny said affectionately as he reached out and tucked a loose strand of her silken hair behind her right ear.  Then he waved an admonishing finger at both of them and added with a gentle smile, "Just don't make disobeying me a habit.  I would rather you two stayed safe."       "It was my idea to come back after dark," Goldie said stubbornly.  "If she hadn't come with me I would have done what I could alone."       Johnny smiled and stroked Goldie's head with love and gratitude.  "Thanks both of you, I don't know when I could have escaped if you had not come back for me."       Johnny stood and retrieved the dark brown satchel and passed out the sweet potato like tubers the purple berry thorn bushes grew and the three ration bars between them.  As they ate, Johnny tried to think of what to do next through the increasing sleepiness that was slowly dragging him down.  After a few moments he could think of nothing else but to go back home to his family.  He'd been putting it off, fearing the royal guards would follow him even there, but now he saw no better option.       Johnny could hear the increasingly strong wind howling outside through the cave entrance and the small crack in the ceiling.  He looked up and saw the flying sand that was rapidly dimming what little of the morning light that managed to filter its way through the crack.  Good, their pursuers won't be able to hunt them in this weather.       "Goldie, I need to get a message to Mom," Johnny asked, as his rat nibbled on a piece of ration bar.  He didn't have much hope that Goldie would make it to his mother's tent just now.  Storms could interfere with certain spells, especially when a big electrical charge was built up in the atmosphere.  Teleportation was just one of those spells that were affected negatively by fouled weather.       Goldie regarded him thoughtfully over her piece of ration bar with her beady black eyes.  Then she tilted her head back and stood up on her hind legs, looking up and through the crack in the ceiling.   Long whiskers twitching, she tested the air with all her senses, detecting things only she could with her magic.         Then she dropped back down to her heels and looked at him.  "Can't do it.  I promise to go when the storm passes.  It will blow itself out in a few hours.  What is your message?"       "I need you to bring us home.  My sand ship has been captured and vandalized by Prince Richard's guards and they are still hunting us.  We are hiding in the Crack in the Rock Spring Cave."  Johnny paused to think of anything else to tell his mother.  Then he thought better of it, best to keep the message short and tell her everything when she found them.  "That should do for now."       "I can remember that," Goldie nodded and then resumed nibbling on her bit of ration bar.       They tried to make themselves comfortable as possible on the cool and uneven cave floor to get some sleep and wait out the storm.  Little Girl stretched out next to him in her full dragon form, hugging him and flipping a huge wing over him like a blanket.  Goldie snuggled under Little Girl's wing and made herself comfortable on Johnny's belly.       Little Girl and Goldie were soon fast asleep, but in spite of his exhaustion he found it difficult to fall asleep himself.  His mind refused to stop working.  How has his life turned out so right and so wrong at the same time? 

Running       A desperate man fled through a desolate landscape east towards the safety of the weathered stones ahead.  He hoped he had lost his pursuers for good this time.  The day was already beginning to grow hot and he carried no water, no food and no gear to help him to survive for long and he needed to find shelter from the desert sun until nightfall.  His dust colored robes and pants billowed back in the rising wind and he worried that a sandstorm might be approaching.  It would a blessing if he found shelter in time.       Jonathan Taylor Smith, who was sometimes also known as Desert Rat, didn't really know why he was being pursued so determinedly across the Red Sands Desert by King Richard's personal guards.  He was just a political nobody that transported cargo and passengers; offered his services in various trades in general labor now and again.  He had made himself an excellent reputation for always delivering his cargo to where it needed to go on time.       Admittedly, not all of his cargo and business ventures were technically legal, but he never hauled anything immoral like slaves bound for the market (except on the rare occasions when he planned to liberate them), narcotics for pleasure or cargo meant for harm like weapons.  Of course his trade might have been the reason why he was now being hunted, Johnny reflected as he tried to run even faster in spite of his exhaustion.  They thought he had something they wanted.       Just the night before they had captured his sand ship (a kind of multi-functional low flying hover craft that resembled a train) after a long chase along a dirt road that led away from the little trading post he had just left behind at the breakneck speed of nearly two hundred miles per hour.  To the observer, his rust colored vessel looked like a boxy and ponderous near derelict, but it was capable of going over terrain that most wheeled vehicles would have difficulty with or found impossible to traverse.  His sand ship could travel at greater speeds than one's initial impression would suggest as it sat still or floated slowly, almost silently over the ground.       It could turn on a stone, stop dead in a heartbeat and accelerate from zero to one hundred and eighty in sixty seconds flat.  It's interior and exterior were spelled to handle the physical stresses of the sudden shifts in speed without damaging itself, its cargo or its passengers.  No matter how fast his sand ship sped above the ground, his ship and his cargo never suffered from the additional g-forces.  The spells kept gravity at a steady normal, as if it were standing still.       Johnny mentally cursed and mourned the loss of his sand ship as he panted through parched lips and his thick leather boots beat the ground with every running step.  It had been his home as well has his main source of his livelihood and he was uncertain if he would ever get it back.       However, he was not so blinded by the loss of all of his possessions that he couldn't remember to be grateful that he escaped before the guards or Prince Richard decided on the best way to kill him.  And he thanked the Goddess of all Creation with every fiber of his being that they didn't catch Goldie and Little Girl.       They would have killed Goldie outright and sold Little Girl back into slavery as a gladiator in the worst blood sport events some of the oasis towns had to offer.  The very thought of Goldie dead and Little Girl winding up mad and broken of spirit from the abuse of her captors and fighting life and death battles just for entertainment, squeezed his heart with fear and worry.  He would die to protect them both.       He spared a glance up at the sky and was rewarded once again with the form of a young dragon leading him on towards the safety of the rocks and water just ahead.  She carried what little supplies she managed to recover, with Goldie clinging to the base of her neck. This was his dragon that he had rescued from slavery and then adopted as his own daughter.  He called her Little Girl because he couldn't think of what else to call her and she refused to respond to any other name.  It wasn't her true name, neither he or Little Girl knew it.  They hoped to find it together someday, if they survived being hunted.       Little Girl would have let him ride her across the skies along with the rest of what she was carrying if she could have, but she was still too small to bear his weight.  In her true form she was not much bigger than a Great Dane and she was yet unable to make herself any bigger by shape shifting alone.  One day she would grow to the size of an African bull elephant, but she was only about ten years old now, not much more than a baby in dragon terms.  She could only lead him on and carry Goldie the female desert rat he had befriended as a boy.       He staggered up a long steep grade that led up to the big jagged rocks he was headed for.  Just a bit farther...just a bit farther...then they could rest. Even now he could see the cave entrance that didn't look to be more than a mere shallow crack.  He knew there was a concealed passage just to the right once he squeezed past the narrow opening.  There was good shelter inside and a pool of spring water, its overflow trickled further back into the cave system, so no one from the outside would discover there was water here.  Unless they had the assistance of a desert rat, a dragon's unfailing ability to find water even when it was miles away, plus his own working knowledge of the local landscape.       His hunters neither had the assistance of his companions nor possessed his intimate knowledge of the desert.  No self-respecting dragon would willingly permit herself to be domesticated by anyone and the royal guards hated desert rats.  Like most city dwellers, they tended to kill them on sight whenever possible, which was not easy to do.  Desert rats were intelligent, opportunistic, highly alert and magically gifted.         Anyone trading in grains or other edible food stuffs had a terrible time keeping the tenacious rodents out of their stores.  They could bring a trader to ruin in a matter of days without the proper wards to keep them out.       Johnny stumbled and fell gasping; another one of those damned cramps had him in its grips again.  He didn't know the source of what ailed him, though he suspected magic. The source of that magic might have been the princess that found him eight days before.  She was recently widowed when her husband was killed for the throne by his younger brother.  She had fled for her life, found Johnny and asked for his help.       Warning bells went off in his head, but one look at those big dark eyes tearing up after he initially refused her and he had to relent.  Johnny was tough as nails, resourceful and capable of cold practicality when needed.  Yet by no means was he heartless; it was both his strength and sometimes his weakness.  His good nature got him into trouble more than once in his thirty years of life.       The princess was a competent white witch; she had drugged him somehow or cast a sleep spell on him shortly after he agreed to help her.  When he had awakened, she gave him the royal seal, asked him to keep it safe for her until she contacted him again and requested its return.       He accepted the task along with twenty-five pieces gold as a retainer.  Yet he had sensed some other motive and that keeping the royal seal safe was just a cover for the real reason she needed his help.       Before he could discover the truth, they had been attacked by Prince Richard's guards.  He made his escape at Princess Elena's barked command to go while her own guards fought to protect her. He liked Princes Elena, but he wanted nothing to do with politics.  Getting too much attention from royalty meant they might discover the less than legal cargo he sometimes carried.  He would honor the contract that he made with the Princess to the best of his ability; he had a reputation to maintain.  Besides, Elena could take care of herself.  In addition to her personal guards she was powerful in her magics.       Johnny had no knack for spells himself, so he could not divine what the princess had done to him while he lay in his enchanted stupor.  Nor had he been able to ask any practitioners of magic along his usual trade routes.  Since agreeing to help the Princess, every time he stopped for more than a few hours, Prince Richard's guards would find him again.  Why Prince Richard wanted that stupid hunk of metal bad enough to kill him for, he didn't know.       The cramps started just twelve hours after he had escaped capture from the royal guards.  They started as annoying twinges he forgot about as soon as they passed, but the steadily became worse.  The cramps would go from a dull pain nothing would fix, to so agonizing that it left him sick and weak until it passed and he could catch his breath.  The constant dull pain passed in a couple of days, but the periodic attacks would come and go without warning.       After four days of this, he realized couldn't continue business while trying to hide from the guards.  So, he stocked up on extra supplies and headed out into the deep desert intending to stay there until things cooled down and Prince Richard lost interest in him.       For three days the ruse seemed to work, relatively few people dared to live in the largely unmapped and completely untamed wilderness where water sources were unknown to the city dwellers and royal houses of the Red Sands.  Johnny had grown up there and had lived with a nomadic tribe of honorable thieves since he was twelve years old.  He knew how to survive in the desert far better than any of the royal guards that were chasing him.       Then somehow they located him, after he had passed briefly through a tiny trading post looking for any useful local gossip.  They chased him down with their heavy wheeled vehicles after he and his family had fled back into the Dune Lady, driving away as fast as his sand ship could go.       He might have gotten away if they didn't have a powerful armor piercing rifle that took out his main engine before he could make it to terrain too rough for them to cross at any great speed. Little Girl had been sitting in the passenger seat in her child form holding Goldie in her lap when the sand ship suddenly dropped out of the air and skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust, nearly tipping over sideways more than once as it came to rest.       "Get out!"  Johnny had ordered desperately as he leaned over them and shoved open the passenger door.  "Take Goldie and fly away from here!  Go find the other dragons and stay with them!  I will catch up when I can."       "Daddy, no!" she cried in protest as she hugged the frightened rat to her bare chest, terrified tears running down her cheeks.       Already he could hear the guards approaching through the rapidly dissipating dust cloud.  He couldn't fight them all, defend them both and he wasn't fast enough to escape them on foot.  He had to get Little Girl to flee.       "GO!!!" he shouted at her with a gentle shove toward the open door.  "Fly into the sun as fast as you can!  Do it now!"       With a sob, the brave and beautiful child tumbled out of the passenger door and shifted into her true form with Goldie still in her arms.  She did as she was told, flying into the sun as fast as she could. The guards fired their guns at her, blinded by the bright sun they missed their target and she was soon out of sight altogether.       They had hauled him out of his broken ship and attempted to subdue him with great difficulty.  He knew he couldn't fight them all, but he was determined to kill as many as he could before they killed him.  He could at least buy Little Girl and Goldie some more time to get away. He managed to break free of the first guard that grabbed him, killing that one first with his pistol and then several more.  They rushed him before he could reload, but he managed to kill three more with his curved short sword.       He might have brought down a few more, possibly even escaped in spite of his initial misgivings, if he hadn't come down with another attack of those damned debilitating cramps that caught him by surprise and involuntarily doubled him over in agony. Johnny cursed the princess under his breath, face pressed in the dirt, as they pinned him to the ground and took his sword.  They tied his hands behind his back with rough hemp ropes and hobbled his feet then stood him up again.       He watched helplessly as they ransacked his sand ship's cargo hold, tore up his and Little Girl's few personal belongings and maliciously blew small holes into his ship's hull with their fire arms after they finished with their reckless search of his ship's interior.       They found the seal.  He didn't have time to hide the troublesome thing while he was busy running and hiding in the oasis towns that were his usual haunts.  They "officially" declared him a thief, a murderer, and a traitor to the crown and he was to await judgment by his Highness King Richard...blah, blah, blah...       Johnny didn't care, all he wanted was to escape, with his sand ship if possible and find Little Girl and Goldie.  He wasn't loyal to any established government.  How could he be a traitor to a kingdom that he was not a citizen of?       The sun was setting when he had finally been captured.  He soon learned that Prince Richard himself was coming in person to see him.  The guards' orders were to remain until he arrived early the next morning.       Johnny's heart sank.  A personal visit by royalty in the middle of nowhere couldn't be good news.  Out here, one could get away with murder and worse without anyone in polite society being any the wiser. The guards didn't feed him or give him any water.  They kept his confiscated supplies and their own to themselves.  Laughing and gaming with cards or dice, they would sometimes try to torment him by offering him food and water then denying it.  After the second time, Johnny just ignored them, laid down and tried to rest as the night cooled uncomfortably.         He didn't know how long he lay there, shivering on the still warm sand in the cold air.  They had not provided him with a fire to keep warm and his only company was a single guard that watched over him grimly.  It was clear to Johnny that he would rather be gaming with the others.       Sometime later, he heard his guard say with a nasty chuckle, "Have a drink!"       Johnny opened his eyes and then rolled out of the way barely in time to avoid being urinated on.  The guards all looked up, laughed at him and cheered his antagonist as he put his private parts back into his loose fitting grey pants.  They laughed again when Johnny doubled over in pain as he lay on his side, trying not to cry out as his lower belly cramped up.  The mysterious attacks never lasted long, but they left him sweating and sick to his stomach.  So far he managed to avoid vomiting; he needed to conserve his body fluids as much as possible.       He didn't know how he was going to escape in his current condition, but he was determined to try once the opportunity presented itself.  Until then, he let the guards think he was completely subdued.  He tried to make himself comfortable on the sand again, trying not to shiver, trying to will his stomach to settle and trying to ignore the increasing ache in his limbs from being tied up for so long.       Then to everyone's surprise off to the west, came a sweet singing voice with words no one could quite make out.  It was haunting, achingly beautiful and filled with such longing that tears were brought to Johnny's eyes.  He knew who it was and prayed that Little Girl would come back to her senses and fly away again.       Even a few of the royal guards started to sniffle quietly; it would take a heart of stone not to be moved by the Little Girl's singing.  Their leader barked an order for some of his underlings to go find the singer and bring her to him.       While everyone was distracted by Little Girl, there was a soft almost inaudible scuffling coming up from behind him, then a tugging sensation at his wrists.  Johnny smiled, he didn't know whether to praise or reprimand Little Girl and Goldie for coming up with this plan.  He feared that they may be all killed before he got the chance to either.  Goldie continued to gnaw as fast as she could through the tough ropes at his wrists from inside of his left sleeve so the guards wouldn't spot her.  It was a good thing that Johnny's sleeves were so loose fitting because Goldie was the size of a small domestic cat.  In about thirty seconds his rat's teeth made short work of the rough hemp rope and then she scrambled silently to chew through the rope binding his feet while hiding inside his loose pants leg.       By now, all the guards were straining to see who the singer was through the darkness of the moonless night.  Little Girl kept eluding the guards hunting her as she kept singing, no easy feat, even for a dragon.       Johnny resisted the urge to sit up and stretch his limbs and instead remained unmoving with his hands still behind his back.  He planned to wait until the last second to make a run for it.  He looked up carefully at the guard standing next to him, he was staring fixedly to the west, head slightly cocked and listening intently.       Goldie cut his ankles free and hurried back to his hands, pressing her furry back into his palms.  To his surprise, a small sheathed hunting knife was strapped to her back by a leather cord.  He grasped the hilt with his right hand and Goldie backed up to free the blade from its sheathe.       Suddenly she leapt up onto Johnny's shoulder and then launched herself at his guard's black bearded face.  She went for his eyes, viciously tearing at them with her sharp rat teeth before the man managed to dislodge his attacker.  Johnny was on him a second after the guard had roughly dislodged the rat from his face with a startled cry of pain and revulsion.  In one practiced move slit his throat to keep him from calling for help or try to stop Johnny from escaping.         His limbs aching and stiff, Johnny none the less managed to flee with as much speed as his long legs would carry him, a blood stained Goldie following close behind at his heels.  Fortunately, none of the blood was hers; she had managed to escape injury when the guard had thrown her.       It only took a few seconds for his captors to realize what happened and they were after him with shouts and ringing explosions of gunfire.  Little Girl circled silently as an owl above Johnny just out of range of the firelight, so she was nearly invisible in the darkness.  Whenever a guard got to close to her father she spat fire balls at them with deadly accuracy and neatly evaded being shot by their fellows, flying quickly away from the area she had launched her fireballs; making herself an unpredictable and elusive target.  She hated to use her fire on living things, but she would not allow the men to hurt her father.       Johnny ignored the screams as they burned and he fled deeper and deeper into the desert.  He stayed in the scant scrub and rocky places where the guard's vehicles couldn't go as easily as he and his companions did.  The guards knew that so they continued to chase him on foot, but they couldn't keep up for long.  For all of their special training, compared to him, they were soft and a little out of shape.  They couldn't run in the desert all night with barely a pause.  Johnny however could, because he had great stamina built up from many years of hard work in harsh conditions.       And he had two other boons in his favor that they didn't have, he had a dragon and a high steep cliff looming ahead of him.  At just inches above six feet tall, Johnny knew that his lean frame was too much weight for Little Girl to carry any distance; however she was strong enough to slow his fall.       "We got him men!"  shouted their leader from some distance behind as they tracked him with their electric torches.  They saw the cliff too and assumed that he would stop once he got the edge.       "Goldie?" he panted as he pointed to the cliff's edge.       "Okay go," she squeaked as she guessed his plan.  "Meet you below."  Then she was gone, vanished into thin air.       Trusting that Little Girl would see what he was up to and in total confidence in her, he ran even faster, almost heedless of his footing as he fled towards the cliff.       "HEY!  He's going to jump!"  Someone shouted.       ZZZZZING!  A bullet was fired at his shoulder with the intent of slowing him down, but missed in a flash of greenish light he saw out of the corner of his eye.       Little Girl hit the marksman in the chest with a fireball and he fell screaming and rolling in the dirt, trying to put it out.       Too busy running for his life to contemplate the significance of what he had just seen in that green flash of light, Johnny filed it away in his mind for later and kept moving.       "He's warded!" another guard shouted.  "SHIT!"       BANG-BANG!   "Where is that fire coming from?"  "Watch out!"  "Hurry up!  Don't let the prisoner get away!"         The shouts of the guards barely registered in Johnny's mind.  Just then he reached the edge of the cliff, heart leaping even higher into his throat than he knew possible, he gathered himself up and jumped as hard as he could before he lost his nerve.       Little Girl screaming in horrified protest as he fell with his arms spread wide, she dove after him, catching him in a matter of milliseconds after his leap of faith. Johnny got a vague impression of a small dark mass falling past him as she caught him.  She had been carrying something and had dropped it to be rid of the extra weight. Smooth scaled forelegs wrapped around his upper torso just under his arms, her hot breath gusting in desperate pants just above his head, Little Girl's feathered wings beat frantically to slow his decent to the rocky ground below.       Johnny did his best to help her by trying not to move too much and cause his weight to shift around.  He also tried to not act as terrified as he felt.  If he panicked so would she, possibly causing her to make a fatal mistake.       Thanks to the moonless sky, he couldn't see anything beyond Little Girl's beating wings.  Below, it was almost pitch black at the base of the cliff and he couldn't see how fast they were descending.  Fortunately Little Girl's eyes would have no trouble seeing in the dark; she could see well enough for both of them.       Little Girl made high distressed whistling noises every exhale as she strained to save her father's life.  Her wings beat harder as she redoubled her efforts to slow them down and he could literally feel her frantically slamming heartbeat between his shoulder blades where her chest was pressed firmly up against him.       The controlled fall and the rush of wind seemed to take forever and Johnny began to worry they might not make it.  Then he could just make out the starlit ground a few yards below his hanging feet.  It was coming up fast, almost too fast.  He gritted his teeth and braced for impact and he resisted the urge to tell Little Girl to slow down; he knew she was doing her best.       "OOOFF!" he said as the wind was knocked out of him as he finally hit the ground and tumbled sideways.  He nearly slammed into a thorn bush when she was forced to drop him a couple of feet off the ground to avoid crash landing on top of him and injuring them both with the impact.  Fortunately the satchel Little Girl had dropped had landed in front of the bush and it served to stop his roll before he wound up in a rather prickly situation.       He sat up panting and looked around to see if Little Girl was alright.  She was fine...and she was seriously pissed off.  She had landed a few feet away to his left with her eagle wings and elongated triangular head drooping tiredly.  Tongue lolling, her mouth hung agape as she panted hard to catch her breath, causing her flanks to heave with every inhale and exhale.  Her furiously glaring yellow gold eyes flashed dimly in the starlight as they fixed on him when she lifted her head.  They were wet with tears that had been blown back during their decent.  Her tail lashed back and forth like an angry cat.  Her jaws still hanging open as she breathed in great steaming gusts of the cold night air, she bared her fangs and emitted a short growl.       "Sorry Sweetie," Johnny apologized with complete sincerity as he tried to catch his own breath.  "I'll make it up to you, alright?"       Little Girl barked angrily, hopped on her forelegs, landing stiffly with a soft thump and kicking up small puffs of dust with impact of her front feet.  Before she could make any further comment, her attention was suddenly diverted by a sound Johnny didn't catch at first.  The shadowy form of her head had whipped to the right and upward, then she snarled viciously.       Then he heard it as Goldie finally came out of hiding and curled up in his lap.  Engine noise from some of the trucks as the guards started them.  He knew there was a way to drive down from up there and it would be only a matter of time before they found it.       He turned to Little Girl and asked, "Can you fly?"       Little Girl lifted her wings experimentally and then chuffed an affirmative.       "Good."  Johnny grabbed the satchel with its unknown contents.  Untying the sheathe from Goldie's back, he replaced the knife he had somehow managed to hang on to, placed both in the sack and gently tossed it to Little Girl.  She caught it deftly in her forepaws as Johnny stood up with Goldie in his arms and placed her on Little Girl's withers.       Goldie clung tightly to the dragon's feather mane with all four feet, readying herself for takeoff.  Little Girl launched herself up into the air with Johnny running along behind her.       They went like this all night, stopping only briefly to catch their breaths.  Luckily, Johnny's attacks were not frequent and he managed to recover quickly enough not to slow them down too much.