30 Feet Around at 30,000 Feet High

Palm trees and lamp posts were the alternating columns that lined the wide sidewalks along the spacious flat lanes. The jet-black luxury car was the confined space that hummed all around her while gradually outspeeding the other traffic under a hazy grey sky.

The two men in the front seats were as good as strangers; one whose white-gloved pair of hands steadied the vehicle, while the other’s rubbed impatiently around his knees in slacks and watched unfamiliar scenery go by.

The overweight man riding shotgun with his thin brown haircut and thick-rimmed black glasses turned around for what had to be the tenth time in this short trip — a journey which started in a wharfside warehouse by the southern shores of the free land. “Almost there,” he spoke kindly. “Will you gotta go to the bathroom at the airport before we get in the air?”

And she was the clementine-orange pair of reptilian eyes framed in the rear-view mirror, whose body was secured with the passenger row’s lap belt over her trim torso, while her dragon wings sprawled over the seats on either side. Hulking and heavy, the wings were more angelic than batlike, lacking thumbs on-end. They bowed forward so their bottoms could rest upon the floor mats, while the triangular horns each at the top of their single bend prodded into the padded roof. They also curved inwards and blocked out the side windows like suits hanging from the handles above the doors. The flat mosaic of scales that protruded from their leathery hide were a dull shade between moss and charcoal from having gone weeks without a proper polish to restore them to a gleaming nephrite jade. They encircled the young bronze-skinned woman like she was sitting in a cave’s mouth.

Her dark shoulder-length hair had a pine-greenish hue, with a dry, scraggly splay to the ends that suggested they needed a wash. Her supple bare arms were crossed under her large breasts, bulging out of a small, clean sunset-orange tank top that was falling apart from merely being put on recently through her wings. Her nails were of the same protruding scales and her forearms were dotted with green, from freckle-size to four-leaf clovers in diameter.

Ceniza was fluent in English, if a bit unpracticed from the period of having left a volunteer-run school in the Andes mountains and the village on a dormant volcano she came from. “No,” came her flat response to the bathroom question — comprehensible in either of her languages. She had been saying ‘no’ a lot today.

Duncan grinned with his perfect teeth. “Alright. ‘Cause my other jet, the one with the toilet on-board — it’s being loaned out on the West Coast to a jet share program. It’s really interesting how it works, so when I’m not using that plane I can let other people…”

Ceniza tuned out his little tale as her tail, wedged behind her hips and a wing, briefly unkinked itself to shake out the soreness against the cold leather seat. Smooth and snakelike underneath, but rough-scaled on top, the base of her tail pushed down the back hem of her undersized new pair of jean shorts.

She wanted to trust this man; she had to if she was going to weave into this country’s fabric with his influence and resources, but he was pushing upon her all these cautionary comforts, a hurried hospitality, as they traveled with the hired driver who hadn’t spoken. A dozen questions she had, but didn’t know how to phrase.

The buildings and trees thinned, and in the distance, a flat, expansive plot was visible out the front window once the car turned.

“I love this little airport,” he was saying. “We don’t really have the time to visit, but they’ve got a gift shop, overnight rooms, a park, and even mini-golf. Y’ever play mini-golf?”

Ceniza only regarded the paved field ahead with embedded colored lights and a wide steel gate before it. The driver stopped to speak into an intercom with an accent that wasn’t from the Americas. As the car rolled off of asphalt and onto a lighter-colored tarmac, the dragongirl fidgeted with her seatbelt buckle in anticipation.

Distant were squarish buildings and stationary white planes with angular ends like paper cranes. A small jet with a blue and grey-striped side sat like a yacht in a bright-beige ocean. Something felt imposing about its luxury.

“I will be seen… no?” Ceniza ventured to ask as the car pulled up to and parked by a flight of steps.

“Nah…” Duncan rolled his frame off his wallet in his back pocket and handed several bills into the driver’s expectant hand. “Well, maybe. The plus is that we’ll already be in the air before anyone with binoculars is gonna notify somebody.”

Ceniza continued to press her wings to the doors and block the windows as Duncan exited. In the brief lapse, filled by an infernal steady wind and whistle, she looked down at her large scaled feet, resting on their sides with her four thick toes curled to fit behind the middle compartment. With how they widened from her ankles, shoes were another human article she might have to go without. Would she really fit in here?

The door to her right opened. There was Duncan grinning. His button-down business shirt was untucked over his slacks. “Right this way!” he said above the din.

Unbuckling, wincing, Ceniza stooped over and pulled herself out from the car’s confines, and had to twist and shimmy to get her wing horns free. The driver’s foreign swears in response to the lacerated roof were cut off by Duncan shutting the door after her.

At the top of the jet’s narrow steps, a young man with swept-aside blondish hair wore aviator sunglasses and a headset. He had his arms raised above him, and twisted nonchalantly from side to side. Though she couldn’t see his eyes, Ceniza felt his smirk was a look of intrigue.

“Mark!” Duncan exclaimed to the young man. “Don’t hang on the trim. Huh huh, you look like a kid on a jungle gym. Here’s Ceniza, by the way. You have my papers in there?”

“And refreshments,” Mark grinned. “Welcome aboard, you two.”

The pilot retreated into the lit interior as Duncan tried to yell a conversation. “We should give her a nickname! Cee-cee? Ceen? Iza? Sorry I’m touching you, by the way! Mark here’s certified to fly solo…”

The dragongirl scowled as he chose to follow her up, and had a hand cupped around the underside of her tail to bend it away from him. Just a flick would toss him…

But as she ignored the names and noise, she took in a more elegant and in some ways more cramped space, which she had to duck her head and tuck in her wings like a bat briefly to scrape into.

Around her were hard surfaces that glowed like white porcelain, and soft leather seats that reminded her of wet reddish clay. Her feet stepped on blue square-patterned carpet. She lowered herself into the two-seat bench towards the back of the plane, just as the pilot closed and sealed the door after Duncan.

The fat man hunched before the single seat that faced the cockpit. He pulled a handle, dragged the fixture out a few inches, spun it around and locked it back into place. He dropped himself into it with a pleased sigh.

She swallowed; now she was going to be face-to-face with him the whole flight.

“Ooh, hey! Lift up your legs,” he said.

“Pardon me?” Ceniza asked, aghast.

“Oh no no, look…” Duncan leaned himself out, reaching for the floor towards one of her feet — she was tempted to show him one could cover his entire face and sink her clawed toes into the top of his skull.

But instead a rattle of ice came from a drawer beneath her seat, and she looked down at an assortment of familiar soft drinks; “KOLA”, a gold can read.

Momentarily touched by the gesture, she only watched him through her splayed legs as he dug around for a glass bottle and held it up to her — not to try, but crack off the cap for him with her claws.

Ceniza settled back into her opened wings as Duncan glugged his beverage and rocked a bit. “Wow! This stuff’s brutal. Almost too sweet!” He rolled the cap between his free fingers in thought for a moment. “Here, hold onto this for me until we get off the jet, alright?” He flicked it like a coin; it wheeled into the top of her ribcage and rolled into the slot of her cleavage.

He laughed good-naturedly in spite of her grimace. The cap’s ridges peeked over the bottom of the stretched U-shape in her tank. To prevent eliciting any more stares at her bust, Ceniza lifted an edge and swallowed the glinting ornament in her flesh.

A small speaker to her left crackled at her. “And we are clear to go. Let’s fly, guys,” came Mark’s slick voice.

She had trouble buckling since her wings made her sit in the middle of the two seats. When she was secured, her hips were tilted to the left and her wings were braced again against either side of the interior.

“Those have gotta be a nuisance,” Duncan commented. “Did any of the girls where you came from not have wings?”

“No. They all have.”

“Are there men of your kind? Like, I know there are male monster-people of other species but I’m saying dragons like you.”

“…No, I know not any.”

“So, only hooking up with humans, then.”

“…”

Ceniza was silent and closed her eyes as the engine whirred and there was a slight lift in her belly from takeoff. She imagined herself back in the sheer rises and graceful valleys of the green-sparse Andes, taking off into a sprint bare-naked and leaping off a large rock jutting out from a cliff like a dais. Her muscles would pull and her wings would fill like sails and catch the wind, buffeting her as she glided, then ascended.

In this country she’d fly to her destinations if she could, but how quickly she’d be seen deterred her. That, and she was one of the least aerodynamic women of her village.

The jet leveled out after a long spell. Duncan was already unbuckled and moving around, dropping his half-drunken soda into a side receptacle behind his chair and coming back to his seat with a manila folder.

“So can I get ya to sign a few documents for me?” That grin again.

Ceniza eyed him dully, now able to cross her legs free from the strap. Her denim shorts dug in, and her tail tip snaked tightly around like a lap cat over both thick thighs.

“Don’t worry, no tricks.” A slight snort. “It’s just, remember how I told you I can get you a job at my plant? We need a lot of hot water to clean the machines that make the snack foods. And you make like, unlimited fire, so having you heat stuff saves a lot of energy.”

Ceniza ooh’d, not from understanding but from a brief flash of heat she felt in her core. Fire-making and -breathing wasn’t easy, with how it relied on sparks of emotions, uncontrollable swishes from her stomach contracting with its gasoline-esque acids.

Whenever fire erupted from her jaws it was with a scream, and if there was anyone close to the gout of flame, their skin would char or melt in moments; even hers if there was something right in front of her to redirect that dangerous, destructive heat of her stress boiling over. To do what he was thinking, she would literally have to hate her job.

“Not what I want to do, that,” she finally replied in her uncertain terms.

His brow lifted but he still beamed. “…Ooo-kay. I thought earning money for your village was what brought you here though. Improving living conditions there, and protecting it since money talks to your guys’ leaders and all.”

“True…” she mumbled, arms folded, hands stroking over her scale-speckled upper arms. The three-dozen of them living with a handful of human teachers were resorting to ever-more primitive ways in their ramshackle buildings on volcanic land that lacked abundance. Some of the dragon kin were choosing to leave and live in solitude. Few went to find work. Others would stay and keep growing old. Ceniza’s choice to cross hemispheres was drastic, now seemingly dangerous.

Duncan fixed his glasses. “Do you know what an au pair is? I have two young boys and a daughter still in diapers, but… I bet, if we can add and change up some things in our home — and we can afford it — you could live with us. My kids’d love to meet a dragon-hybrid lady.”

“Children…” she bared her teeth. “I have been one, but not around one since… since…”

He tried to reason with her. “Cee-cee, hun, you have to do something in the US. That’s just how it works. Our economy’s capitalist, and our government’s really watchful.” Just like during the drive over, his hand was rubbing his knee and his other was drumming the folder on his thigh. Was he getting impatient?

She felt an agitated flicker in the dark recess of her stomach and folded her hands over it to stifle it. As she realized she might be subjected to this for several more hours, her deeper breathing pattern coaxed the flame like a fledgling campfire. Her insides churned as if a soda was shaken.

Duncan’s round face had gone to a flat expression. “I’m trying to protect you, you know. And I haven’t heard even a thank you since we picked you up from the warehouse. I might turn us around.”

“Nnnnghhh…!” Ceniza gripped the edges of her seat as her belly subtly distended from a rush of heat. She wasn’t going to yell. “Stop… Talkinngghh…”

He didn’t seem the least bit concerned at her leaning up rigidly. “Why can’t you just take a look at what I need you to sign and I’ll explain what each of them do to help you?”

Ceniza turned to the side and pressed at her chest with a hand, its heel trying to sink through the ample flesh and stop a heartburn sensation from creeping around there too. “Please… Don’t want anything right now.”

The talkative man persisted. “What is seriously your problem? …Huh?!”

She whimpered at him wide-eyeing her pregnant bulge and buoyant breasts as pockets of heat expanded and drew her curves taut.

The dragongirl heard her stomach bubbling like lava, motes of heat rising from the molten pool and popping, dissipating but altogether warming her interior. Her blood was boiling, heart beating like a hammer on white metal fresh from the furnace. Her skin was like a hot air balloon trying to encompass it all, only flexing more with every degree. This had never happened before but she knew how it was, compounding from her frustration and embarrassment.

But she fought against releasing it, instead bending over and pressing her middle’s growing swell into the tops of her knees — a sensation that elicited a groan.

Ceniza glanced down at her extra cup sizes and shot up from her seat. “Do not look!” she snapped at Duncan, her fists balled, then they opened to check her rounding hips.

“Ahhh, heyyy…” the man raked at his thighs, papers hopelessly scattered on the floor. “Just calm down! We can land and get you to a doctor…!”

The scaly woman snarled, flapping her wings and thudding them off the interior. Her shorts hiked down as her tail mightily thwacked the bench. The bottoms were fraying as her stance widened for her perpetually swelling waist. Her top was also disintegrating from the holes put through already, and it was riding up to serve as nothing more than an elastic band over two M-cup melons with bumpy volcanic peaks for areolae.

Her claws tested her sproingy underbelly, toasty and turgid with her tannish skin sunken only by an innie navel advancing steadily towards Duncan’s lap.

The way he cowered as she grew and grew in proportions, she found herself laughing haughtily, along with a few flickering embers wheeling in midair. “Is this how I make you shut… up…?! Grraawhhh…”

Ceniza reached up and grit her teeth, swaying herself to help shake off her pitiful clothes with a few creaks of her skin adjusting to the freedom to stretch. Faintly she felt the stored bottlecap bounce onto her foot, and by his gaze darting from what she could see over her mounds, the piece of junk’s glimmer gave him an idea.

“Ice, you need ice?” he yelped, and lunged from his seat, dropping underneath her girthsome shelf of a stomach and grazing her shins.

Just as the soda drawer came out, Ceniza growled and witnessed a gout of fire escape from beneath her teeth; in that instant she swung back a heel and banged it shut, and by extension clumsily dropped her weight on top of his back.

Her naked, flame-bloated frame teetered on Duncan hunched over on all-fours, who squealed and tried to pull out from underneath, or lift her back a tad onto the bench — neither which could happen with her beachball ass, her strong tail or her resilient wings refusing to fit in the jet’s rearmost space.

Ceniza’s color in her cheeks now was that of revelry, a lust for power superheated and unquenchable in a runaway reaction. Wrapped up in emotion, bravely penting up the temperature, she swelled up and leaned out her magnificent belly, which quivered ever so softly as her smooth skin puffed out with ease. In those few seconds casually rocking on the man, she locked eyes with the pilot visible through the open cockpit, who was turned back from his controls with his sunglasses dangling from his ears at his chin.

“What are you doing?” Mark’s bewildered, amplified voice came through his headset.

Duncan at last crawled backwards enough to straighten up, red-faced and sweating. “Mark!” he wheezed, hurrying away. “That monster’s trying to kill meee…!”

“Am not!” Ceniza roared, shaking as she picked herself up with her elbows and the convex bend of her wings.

She saw him huddling in the narrow passage before the cockpit, slack-jawed. Her body was just barely glowing, the brightness fluttering faintly as her globular breasts bounced off each other. Ceniza wanted another chance to press this perilousness simmering in her against him, and make him swelter in this aerial cell. The jet’s sudden pitch forward spurred her feet into motion.

Despite the dragongirl’s remarkable heat tolerance, she was beginning to bead on her brow and chest. Her tiny limbs attached to her enormous curves were unwieldy, and she had to lean back to keep her middle’s underside from touching the carpet. Staggering forth, she briefly became wedged between Duncan’s seat and the wall, but her tail pushed her free. Grinning wickedly, rumbling with fullness and hunger, she tried to reach around her tits to grasp him.

Ceniza tripped from the jet’s dive and fell with her broad shoulders and bosom just barely squeezing in. Thoonk! Groooo… The apex of her stomach stayed right outside, propping her up on a tense inflatable bed as tall as either species on the aircraft could stand.

Weaseling and worming to the rubbery cacophony of her breadth chafing the boundaries, legs beating off the underside of her vast belly, Ceniza had her beanbag-blimped boobs boxing in the obese exec right up against the back of the pilot’s chair. The dragongirl leaned up arms-straight on her palms, eyelids fluttering, moaning as the pressure and heat built between countless out-of-sight obstacles.

“P-please stop damaging my jeeet…” Duncan whined, arms raised at right angles to not touch her. But her skin was like a sauna, making him fidget and agitate her more. Heat flooded through like touching the outside of an oven, and she rose like a massive baking pan of dough, blotting out the lights and even the sun above the clouds.

Ceniza chuckled, the air from her nostrils like a bathroom hand dryer puffing in increasingly quickening bursts. “Can’t… stop… I… will crush… Ooohhh…!~” She flopped down onto her chest and embraced her twin suns, thwacking her tail against her buns and the enormity poised to erupt.

“L-Land the jet anywhere, Mark!” Duncan wailed, and the plane desperately dove steeper.

“I’m trying, man! ATC doesn’t believe me that I’ve got a literal fire on-board…!”

There was something between the slight turbulence and the jet rattling from her body pressed against nearly everything that shook her just enough to stimulate her still. The man’s seat behind her crunched in half underneath, making her gasp in satisfaction. Still angled in a helpless position, Ceniza let her mouth hang open and allow Duncan to peer into the hellish glow down her throat. One climactic caterwaul from her grinding, and she could roast all of them.

The fat man squared his shoulders and turned his head as the monstergirl’s taut flesh engulfed him all the way up to the chin. “There’s no more spaaace…”

Tears beaded in her squinted eyes. Her wing stems had practically subsumed into her bloatedness. All around her trembled, hide creaking like a boiler overheating, overloaded and overcapacity, at war with the stubborn fuselage.

Awash with sweat, too hot for even her to stand, Ceniza’s limbs danced like on scorched sand in a desperate attempt to cool off; she shook whatever she could to breach the jet as her hide surrendered — a culmination of groaning, rattling, mewled excitement from the pressure hemming her in and out…

Fweee—BAKROOOOM! “PHWAAAH!”

Ceniza felt the multi-ton mass of metal tear and shear away in the span a belt buckle would explode. The cockpit detached before she bellowed out a shocked, victorious cry by force of collapsing like a crushed can. The ball of intense flame sizzled the hair blown into her eyes with a singe. In shrinking so fast she tucked her wings in and endured the concussive blasts of the jet engines and an object glancing off her back.

When she could see again past the eye-watering blackness and deluge of rubble from the hollow tail overhead, she was under rain clouds and plummeting towards the green earth.

She committed an unjustifiable crime, Ceniza resigned herself to as she picked up velocity diving head-first in her cocoon of scales. The air seemed to scream its hate, battering her as she refused to peek at the space between impact.

But over the edge of her wing she barely saw upside-down a lush mountain range of sorts — unfamiliar land. Her eyes snapped closed. The wind on her bare, tingling skin brought back the sensation of flights over the majestic Andes.

Languidly opening herself up to glide, Ceniza managed to get out from underneath the disorganized shadow of the plane’s tail, and only then when she pitched her wings to slow down did she gaze at the farmland clearing she found herself wheeling over. Sapped of strength, successfully descending last of all the wreckage that collided with the ground, the dragongirl sank like a drifting parachuter and happened to angle towards a stretch of paved road.

Ceniza spotted a young man getting out of his car and hurrying over the rows of planted fields to get a closer look at her. She swallowed her discontent. She needed somebody’s help.

Landing with a stumble, Ceniza paused a short distance apart, holding her opposite shoulders and covering her breasts with her crossed arms. “I am Ceniza,” came the almost apologetic introduction. “Do you have a home for me?”