This is a short work of erotic fiction containing furry, or anthropomorphic, characters, which are animals that either demonstrate human intelligence or walk on two legs, for the purposes of these tales. It is a thriving and growing fandom in which creators are prevalent in art and writing especially.
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Flock's Virginity
The Claiming of the Gryphons
Part One
"Sirran, it is a pleasure to see your flock doing so well."
Xigfeldo smiled, resting on a frosty outcrop of rock that looked down over the valley, the winter season well and truly upon them, although he could not have said that the king of the gryphons was as comfortable as he was. His body kept him comfortable at all times, regardless of the temperature, and he naturally ran colder than most, though the gryphon huffed and fluffed up his feathers to stay warmer, despite the kindness and warmth in his eye. Truly, in that moment, in the heart of Xigfeldo's territory, it was the only part of him that felt very warm at all.
"I daresay the youngsters are doing better than I," Sirran chugged good-naturedly, his black, raven plumage standing out starkly against the landscape that near enough seemed to glow under a fresh blanket of snow. "They have your affinity and I still thank you for saving our flock each and every day."
Waving a claw, the silver-black dragon only smiled in turn. It was thanks that he had heard time after time again, but Sirran did so like to repeat himself. It was just one more of the things that Xigfeldo liked to tease him about, saying that he was growing sentimental and senile in his age, although the gryphon was still spry and strong. Even sometimes, Sirran found the courage to snipe back at Xigfeldo, although they didn't really have that kind of camaraderie between them when Sirran felt, duly, that he would always be in debt to the dragon who had brought his clan back from the very brink of sure destruction.
"It's nothing," Xigfeldo said softly, though he had no real reason to tread so carefully with one that he had known for so many years: times were different then. "You don't have to continue on in this vein, Sirran, for times that are long gone by. I only hope you find this territory suitable for your needs with so many eggs hatching these days. It seems that the cold agrees with them?"
The dark-feathered gryphon nodded, curling his tail around his body, although not even that would allow him the warmth that he felt that he needed. Times were too cold for that, even if his heart was warm, and there were so very many things yet that he still had to say, times alighting with sweetness in both of their hearts. Somewhere in their distance, a daughter of his keened, circling and drifting down, letting her flight spiral until the landing was hers to claim, becoming a creature of the land after dominating the air. The dragon swallowed his smirk, though he had no real reason to. Sirran knew that he had bred her and half of the offspring floating through the skies were his. The others were only not his simply because the drakes and hens had found lovers with other gryphons from other flocks, which was all well and good for them, even if they would not be as suited to the cold as others with his blood flowing through their veins.
It was the dragon's blood, after all, that had saved the flock. Just not in the way that the legend had originally intended all to play out. And it was something that Sirran, at the very least, was unlikely to be dissuaded from recounting, the gryphon clicking the edges of his beak together thoughtfully even as his head swung gravely first one way and then the other.
"It's true though," he pressed, leonine tail sweeping around to brush the dragons in an almost tender fashion. "If not for you allowing us to breed, we wouldn't be here any longer, not even my sisters and I, most likely."
"I know, old friend," Xigfeldo said softly, for he could not have said honestly that it did not pain him to consider the notion of any species or even a clan going extinct, regardless of the reason. "But it is not the time for pain when there is joy to be held. Though you dislike the cold and, truly, from some of those I have come across in my time here, I can understand that more than fully. It chills the feathers and the bones, does it not?"
It was hard for him to understand but some topics were best left laid to rest and he could not help how the gryphon felt, how he trembled in the memory of the time that they could well have been lost to the drama of the world. There could have been nothing more for him, killed or maimed by the dragoness lord (there was no other term that could be so fitting as to describe her), Massalatrix, though he required an egg, something to take them forward into a new life and light. Xigfeldo knew that words would not help the gryphon though, even though the aged, wise beast who still appeared as strong and as virile as he had in his younger years, muscle rounding out his hind end more than his front as his feathers tried to layer themselves more thickly over the downy under-layer to maintain some element of warmth at the very least. Like much with the gryphon, it was a futile endeavour, but the bliss of life and being granted that alone was more than even he had expected for himself once upon a time.
And, truly, their life and meeting had been a fairytale in itself. Xigfeldo could not and would not stop the king from recounting it and settled down, although his eyes passed over the gryphons flocking below them, swarming to the meeting place, the circle of stones that had so been placed there to mark the gravity of the ceremony, his many sons and daughters -- along with those that came from his sisters -- coming as one to bring life and light back the beginnings of their particular flock and clan.
"My sisters still don't believe that I did it," he said quietly, knowing full well that Xigfeldo would hear every word. "That I went to challenge Massalatrix, to steal an egg of hers. I thought that I could mate with the offspring of the egg, what hatched forth, when they were of an age, though that is not the right course of action, not knowing now what I do. I was a fool then, was I not?"
Xigfeldo cocked his tail, the tip of his tail curling curiously back and forth as the first flakes of the next snowfall dropped, floating and drifting, tempting at a fluttering of snow.
"I would have done the same. It improved your species, your flock, to mate with a dragon, of course, and that is something that we can still confirm now."
Of course, it did not take a master of linguistics to understand that it was Xigfeldo that Sirran had bred with, along with his sisters who could take advantage of the silver-black hybrid drake boasting both male and female sexes within his cloaca, though the journey there was an interesting story. Other dragons said that Xigfeldo liked to get himself into more difficult situations than most but he had recently maintained the ploy that it was merely his sense of adventure and exploration that led him there, though that was not in itself at all a bad thing. It made his life more interesting than most, at the very least, and that was something that a creature that had lived and would live as long as he did was very much in need of.
"Yes, yes, it did," Sirran said, his smile lighting up his eyes even though his beak could not form the expression fully. "Every one of our offspring fares better with the cold with your blood running through their veins. Though Massalatrix would not have let me survive if I had succeeded in stealing her egg. That was a long, long time ago."