Budding
By Veiled Lioness
Content Warning: Cubs (Preteen, Infant). Pregnancy and Birth. Mention of lactation and watersports. Light incest themes. Lore.
	Even with the morning sun shining through the cut glass slits of the windows, the grand library seemed eternally dim. Yellow sunbeams appeared pale as they illuminated bits of down drifting in the wakes of heavy wooden bookshelves as they floated through the air. Eris spread her wings and stepped from the corridor into the air with them, the vast empty space above the inverted glass dome far below always made her feel small. But when she was in the very center, scribes and knowledge turning around her, it felt almost like floating in deep space, only with a heavy backpack.
	The short sky-blue and white eagle girl hovered there for a long moment, watching the theorists therorize, the researchers research, and the students study, everyone so completely involved in what they were doing that they couldn't hear the loud collection of other’s voices pooling in the room. Eris was in her 7th year of school, and she couldn't help but dread every next one until graduating grad school. 
	There was then a particularly loud other’s voice, right in her ear as usual, as her brother Equila nearly knocked her out of the air rushing by. “I’m gonna beat you there Eris! Im going to tell the sub your the problem student!” he laughed, soaring up to a doorway on the other side.
	“Aren’t you suspended from the library?” she asked as she begrudgingly followed.
She hadn't heard about a substitute instructor, but long embassorial trips with her father meant being out of the loop. She followed her brother through the doorway, her talons tapping on the stone as she delicately landed in the small, bright terrace her class gathered in. They sat on cushions crowded in the center of grass, on one side the enormous body of the spire towered directly over them, and on the other vast rocky plains stretched out before them until the jungle’s edge. She looked out over the landscape as she chose a place in the back by the railing, in the distance she could see the floating mountain, a wide silhouette of blue disconnected from the horizon.
A couple students were in an excited talk beside her, all of them leaning over a comic book, one trying to replicate an illustration on the back of their worksheet. It was of a mean looking raven cosmonaut wearing a glass bubble helmet and holding a curvy laser gun. Eris leaned over, “Guys, who’s the sub, why’s Ms. Ganymede out?” They didn't react to her, so she took a magazine she stole from her brother from her bag and stuck her beak in it. It was about recently declassified military jets, which she liked to say she was much more interested in than her dads said she would be in her peers. There was one page which she endlessly drooled over, a blueprint for an interceptor with a detachable cockpit, VTOL thrusters, and fully dynamic aerosurfaces. Most of the photocopy was still black ink, but if she could do anything with her future it would be to fly one of these over the horizon.
She didn't get to drool very long though, the energy of the class suddenly became focussed, and Eris looked up to join some of the others in watching the sub unexpectedly enter the terrace on a levchair. The little girl’s eyes went wide, trained on their round middle underneath a stripped shirt. From the other side of all the other kid’s heads, she felt almost like a peeping tom, stealing something private yet too sweat to turn down. Theirs was smaller than she expected a pregnant belly to be, like a sand dune, the stripes made it a bit hard too see just how far it stuck out from their middle. She found herself wishing dearly that they had worn a more standard crop top so she could see the feathers across their round stomach.
Eris suddenly zoned back in, right after they had stood in front and introduced themselves, but the name of the standing chalk board read ‘Mx. Robin Andromeda She/They’. Eris also became aware that she was breathing quite quickly, and a new unknown feeling had settled in their own belly. Suddenly her algebra grade seemed much less important than figuring out what was going on with the substitutes pregnancy, and herself. 
She tried to pay attention, but her eyes kept rolling off the board and onto Mx. Andromeda, and every time she started her notes they just lulled off. She had that special kind of beauty, like a jets aerodynamic shape, but with a big juicy interruption accentuating it. Special like an extinct bird, or an eclipse, she could spend a lifetime trying to place it. They asked a question, and noticed Eris’ attention, “Yes, in the back? What’s your name?”
‘Oh dear Cavora I’ve been caught’, was her first thought, and she struggled to find a second. “Um- I- I my name is Eris,” she rapidly tried to piece together what had been asked from the equation on the board, “Is the slope of the line… one fourth?”
Ms. Andromeda paused a moment, “No, that was the last question. Others?”
‘Caught doing what?’ was her second thought. She whipped her gaze down onto her lap desk and held her head in her hands. Eris knew she was smart, and she hoped it wasn't what she was suspecting, but it wasn’t just the pregnancy that had her attention. It was Mx. Andromeda, or maybe just her figure. Their big boobs that she held in her peripheral vision, the way their full hips filled out their shorts, their bottom hidden behind their tail feathers when they faced the board.
She took a deep breath, and tried to introspect. A brand new feeling was awfully in-line with the sex ed lesson her dads gave her, which they had all rushed through. However, pregnant bellies were not exactly part of what she was told to expect, in this way that is. But again, not just the belly. Then Eris remembered the part about kinks, “It could be anything, really, some other body part or activity, or even something very unusual or inventive. Whatever someone, or you, may like, its all perfectly natural and should be respected,” her dad had said.
They talked about pregnancy then too, conception and birth, but it was all far off concepts. She had to be logical about this. She focussed, and felt deep within herself, listening to what her privates felt. From her vagina all through her body spread a warm need, telling her hands to touch it, to hug Ms. Andromeda. But the nail in the coffin was the dampness against her underwear. ‘God yiffing dammit I’m having my sexual awakening’
She sat with the feeling, just feeling it, letting the equations drift by on the breeze. It didn't feel unpleasant, like she half expected, it felt kinda nice. She knew it would feel nice to touch herself. She had never had any interest in sex or masturbation before so she guessed she never really would, and now she found herself holding something new and unfamiliar, wet and exotic, but all her own. It was exciting really, she couldn't help but be excited. She decided she would go home and try it out. Eris raised her hand.
“Eris, you had a question?” 
“What’s their name?” Ms. Andromeda had already let everyone ask questions about her pregnancy, and Eris regretted not knowing all of it. 
They gave a chuckle, “We haven’t decided yet, we’re gonna wait until we see them in a few months,”

Eris excused herself from the lesson a bit early to circumvent her brother. She dashed through the air into the library, joining the flow of scribes searching the shelves. Medicine? No, eagle biology, reproduction. She nearly knocked a lion transfer student over when she found the right section. She walked along the aisle, scanning the spines and tipping out any she thought could be useful to examine their covers. A green spine, she knew she had it right when her eyes were suddenly filled with soft, fluffy tummy. She flipped through it to make sure it had enough pictures, and then made her way to check-out, clutching the cover to her chest and covering an illustration on the back cover with her palm.
The whole way through the library she kept reminding herself there was nothing truly scandalous about what she was doing, but that didn't make it any less nerve wracking when the librarian’s assistant gave her what might have been an odd look. Thankfully, he was too busy to care to ask questions, and she was quite literally home-free, stashing the book in her bag before racing home as fast as her brother usually did. She could barely sit still in the long crowded elevator ride to the upper residential district, trying to keep her flame alive by suspending Ms. Andromeda’s image in her mind, standing in front of the class with that massive bare stomach hanging out. Though at the same time, she irrationally feared everyone around her could tell what she was doing.

Ewald and Elkar sat in pleasant, focussed silence around the kitchen island. Each enveloped in their own projects, Ewald drafting a proposed revision to an amendment of a treaty between the eagle and rhino tribes, and Elkar writing a report for a damaged book set in the library. Elkar stood, and walked around, nuzzling the top of his partner’s head, “Would you like more coffee?”
“Hm? Oh! Yes, thanks!”
The mugs were filled, and he was just about to set one before his mate when the door blasted open. The coffee was sent over the documents, “Equila what did we say- Oh, Eris?”
The preteen stood like a bank robber in a search light, sweating. For some reason, she was finding the day unusually warm. “S- sorry. I gotta- uh- do homework! Bye!”
And with that she was flapping up to her room. Ewald and Elkar looked at eachother, the former dabbing up the coffee and ink with a cloth, “Huh, do you suppose she’s resolved her motivation thing, then?”

Eris sat in the center of the bed, clutching the book, giving small peaks at the round feathery bumps within. It occurred to her she didn't actually know what to do, all she had to go off of were raunchy scenes in plays she had to sit through. She figured she had to start by being naked, so she set the book face down and stood to undress. It was still getting hotter, so she much preferred to be uncovered. Eris had been unusually heavy as a toddler, but had thinned out as she grew, now just chubby. She stretched her wings to balance as she peeled off her shorts over her small white rump, not yet matured, closely examining her undies as a hair thin strand of her fluid ever so briefly clung between her and her underwear. There was a slight smell, hot and heavy but vaguely floral. Her vagina looked the same from the outside, maybe puffier? But she had definitely felt something shift within her before.
Next, she pulled her shirt over her head, and out across her wings. For the last few months her breasts had started to come in, and they were already sizable. They’d be average if they stopped growing now but she indulged in a bit of pride at the projections. Then the thought crossed her mind, these were here to make milk, if ever she became pregnant. It was something which she dreaded to ever happen, she had an extreme phobia of giving birth. However somewhere in the back of her, she felt an echo of that same feeling at the thought of her round pink nipples leaking milk as they poked out from her blue feathers.
Ok, naked, now what? Touch self? She returned to sitting criss cross applesauced on the bed, looking at the book’s cover flat before her. She opened it and flipped a couple pages, past the creepy fetus diagrams and gave an deep “Oh!” as she landed on a picture of a person with twins in a hospital bed, down nervously fluffed. She immediately wondered how many a person could even have, more babies meant bigger belly, and she liked bigger belly.
She decided to begin, and sort of awkwardly pressed her fingers into her sex, she rubbed, and sparks of pleasure ignited within her. A moan hung in the back of her throat, surprising her as her voice entered the room. She kept rubbing her lips, back and forth, getting used to the feeling. It wasn't working quite right though, she sat back against her pillows, and held the wide book awkwardly on her white thigh.
She was nervous to move deeper, to put her hands literally inside her body, but it was her body. She carefully stuck her index between her lips, and was surprised as a wave of pleasure flowed up her, making her thighs shiver. “Oh! Ah,” The flat part just under her urethra was much more sensitive, and she stroked it over and over just a little bit to keep from peeing herself. That feeling too, strangely called that same echo. She realized then that she had felt the alien feeling before when peeing. It felt as though she were a cavern, and she had just unearthed a whole new network of tunnels within herself that she hadn't known of, dark and mysterious, full of wonders.
She looked back at the large belly on the page, and imagined Ms. Andromeda with an even larger stomach, but masturbating to a real person she could speak to tomorrow didn't sit right with her. She imagined the heavy raven she had seen in that comic book, sleek shiny black feathers spilling from a skin tight silver space suit. Their stomach was so large it ripped it open, and they had to try and take it off as it pressed back into them. The comic looked interesting, she’d have to pick it up, learn their name.
Eris wondered, did she like more than girls? Boys? Enbies? Intersex? Trans? Did she like muscles, thin women? None of them were immediately disagreeable as they brushed across her mind, but still she wanted to just get her bearings.
She flipped the pages again, looking for something more, before finding part of a diagram showing the fully nude pubic area of a pregnant person, white feathers cresting the curve of their fupa. “Woah…” She was amazed. She had seen other vagina’s in the book, and in other books like it, but she had the deceptively simple realization that this one, this image, she could look at as much as she wanted. Nobody was going to interrupt her, tell her she was being naughty, she was in her own room with a book she checked out herself.
She started stroking again, getting into a rhythm, smiling wide and restraining her little moans into high whines. This was really fun! She imagined this person with twins, as the plump raven. Then growing with triplets, then with quadruplets, at which point it was getting difficult to visualize. 
As hard as it was to keep repeating the motion, the sensitive flesh was becoming a bit sore from the scales of her avian hands. Eris moved the book to look down, and was surprised by the amount of juice she had generated. It was all over her hand and even on her thighs, and she could feel it puddling beneath her cheeks on the covers. She pulled her hand away, and watched the strands form, thin, and fall between it and the tiny blue feathers covering her sex. Other girls had this too, she thought, bringing her hand to her beak. The scent was much stronger, she stuck out her tongue and tasted a little. It wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't like anything she’d tasted before, neither was the smell. She sucked a little more off her finger and giggled at how gross she was being, how gross she could be, and decided she liked it.
Still, she couldn't go on masturbating like this for long until she would have to stop, maybe some sort of tool? Not a dildo of any sort, sticking a foreign object into her most sensitive cavity was a whole other level at that point. She had accidentally touched her hymen in the bath when she was younger, and she did not want her first go to be painful like that. There was no way she could get a vibrator, but she couldn't think of anything she had that would work.
The heat was really picking up, and she longed for a satisfying extinguishment. Thinking about it, she realized she needed lube, something that the lesson had touched on being important. Her dads might have some, but she immediately banished that thought from her mind as soon as she had realized she thought it. Soap? No, that would wear away her own juice. Maybe some sort of cooking oil? Her dads were in the kitchen, she wasn't sure what type she needed but made a mental note to swipe some olive oil she had seen. For now she contented herself to just spit in her hand and use that.
	She settled back and sighed, closing her eyes and envisioning her muse as she spread her lips and exposed herself to the cool air. Why just avians, why not a lion or a rhino? The raven transformed before her eyes, becoming larger as well as she found the feeling again in the heavy set rhinos she’d seen on her trips. She rubbed harder, squeezing her slimy hand in her thighs as the sound of her wet flesh filled the room, careful not to accidentally slip too deep and deflower herself. She tried giving her vulva a rub, and caught a screech as her body was struck with pleasure like lightning. It was easy to overwhelm herself, and she felt herself drifting into a strange place between reality and sleep. Occasionally she tickled her vulva to stay awake, but planned to drift away when she climaxed, wondering what such a thing as a climax would feel like.
It was getting hot now, like the height of summer even though it was becoming cloudy outside, a discrepancy which made her take notice as her rubbing was less and less effective to sate her. It wasn't hard to figure out, as much as she dreaded its coming, this was the start of her heat cycle. “Oh noo,” she groaned between light airy moans. She could not describe the frustration she felt when she was first told that once every single month she would have to deal with this. But she set it aside, determined not to let it ruin her time.
She kept going, carefully as it would only take a slip to send her over the edge, and she was not practiced at this yet. She found another rhythm she liked, stroking with all her fingers up to her vulva, giving it a light brush. She tried out and experimented with several different ways to masturbated, trying to find a balance between pleasure and dexterity. She felt the pleasure hit a threshold of sorts, and she was now being pulled towards the finish. She went faster, hitting the vulva more, the rhythm speeding up.
The book had fallen back onto the spread, but as Eris looked back at it and the page it had fallen to. The entire page was an intricately drawn illustration of a crowning breach birth. It was glorious, from the fully stretched lips to the baby’s adorable tiny penis, every feather glistening in amniotic fluid. Suddenly she screeched again, unable to restrain her voice as she had her very first orgasm. Her back arched and her whole body shook, her wings stood on end shivering, her eyes fluttered as she felt the rhythm rock her asleep. She still could go on, not yet having reached her summit. All it would take was a long, hard stoke on her winking vulva. Before she could even complete the motion her whole body spasmed, and she screeched from her chest as her legs became unresponsive, her wings slammed back against the bed, and she felt a gush of pleasure explode from her. A tiny thin trail of slime shot out of her body and into the sky like a shooting star.
Her breathing slowed and deepened, every nerve in her body tingled, every sweaty feather standing. She rolled over and snuggled into the blankets and pillows, her heat keeping her pleasantly warm as she fell into sleep.

Ewald was putting the finishing touches on the proposal, having retranscribed it, his hand still slightly sticky from coffee. Elkar settled back next to him after scrubbing the counter, leaning against one another as they worked. Elkar looked up, hearing his daughter’s cry from her bedroom. After a few seconds, Ewald came out of his hyper-focus, “Did you hear something? Was that Eris?”
“I don’t think so,”
“Ah, ok.” he said, almost refocusing, “Oh, I’m almost done with this, do you think we’ll have some playtime after?”

	The next morning, with feathers nicely ruffled the night before, Elkar stood with his son beside the door as Equila talked about their substitute teacher. “I’m here, sorry!” Eris called as she floated down from her door’s loft, over the head of her other dad as he got ready to go to work. Soon both siblings were out the door, and Elkar looked to his husband. “Does Eris seem fine to you? She looks like she might be a bit sick but she hasn’t said anything,”
	“Sorry, what did you say?” Ewald said, looking up from his briefcase as he sorted papers.
	“Ah. Im a tad worried Eris is feeling sick, she hasn't said anything but she looked like she might have a fever,”
	Ewald was about to speak, but his eyes caught Eris’ backpack still on the loft. “Ah, yeah she forgot her backpack too thats not like her,” he said, hopping into the air.
	As he knelt and picked it up, he noticed a stray textbook on her bed. He walked in to get it, but stopped as he saw the back cover. A flash of that unreasonable anxiety struck him.
	“Hon! Elkar, maybe possibly emergency!” his voice wavered as he flapped back down, dropping the bag by his feet “This book- On her bed- I thought it was algebra but- She’s at that age, i- is our little girl pregnant!?”
	Elkar stroked their shoulder, taking the book and blushing as he saw the cover “What? Slow down, dear, your leaping to the worst possible scenario. I haven't seen any signs that Eris is being abused,”
	Ewald took a deep breath, “Sorry, I know. But why did she check this out?”
	Elkar connected a few dots in his head, and felt a bit embarrassed as he realized their tastes ran in the family, “That’s easy, her substitute teacher is pregnant, she’s probably just taken an interest,”
	“Ah!” Ewald relaxed, “I’m dumb, our twelve year old isn't pregnant,”
	Ewald gave his partner a nuzzle on the cheek and smoothed his robe as he turned to the door, “Ill drop her bag off on my way to the council chambers,”
	Then he froze.
“The bag,” Elkar said.
	“The bag,” Ewald said, and turned back.
	Once the door shut, Elkar took a peak inside the pages, before placing it back on his daughter’s bed and applying some hand sanitizer.