Of Dragons and Stretching
by tannim
March 17, 2010

	Kalcao looked at the other young dragons.  Like them, he hated the mandatory workouts their parents made them do before flying.  They were so repetitive and dull.

	He watched a slender young dragoness lifting her legs, squatting, twisting her torso left and right.  Another near her did the same thing, then bent backwards and down to touch his toes.  Neck swings followed, including the dreaded lean back until your horns touch your back stretch that everybody hated but had to do.

	Kalcao snorted and wandered off, deciding not to fly for the day.  Instead he played around.  He decided to try his own stretching routine.  He looked over his body in a mental projection of himself he formed in the air before him.  His wings really were a bit small, he decided, but that didn't matter for now.  The dragon lay down and held the image floating in the air beside him.  Twiddling his fingers he attached little strings of power to the figure of himself and could make his image move as he wanted.  He twisted his his body around, this way and that, putting half his vision in the little puppet's left eye while keeping his right eye watching.

	He bent down and squatted, combining a toe touch with a squat and found it oddly enjoyable.  Kalcao slid his hands under him between his legs and cupped his buttocks on either side of his tail.  Laughing a bit at the absurd position he bent his back further to press his lower chest to his belly.  It was a weird position to look at.  Even more weird when he tried to sit down while holding the position.

	The puppet told him it was a possible position by not showing any pain from it, so Kalcao tried the position himself.  He released the image and bent and squatted.  He found the position oddly comfortable.  Rather like the fetal position only vertical instead of horizontal.  Scooting his butt forward he found he could actually inch forward while staying that way.  After nearly thirty seconds though, he felt his spine and muscles complaining.  He stood up, or tried to, but found his spine had cricked and locked.

	Kalcao struggled and groaned in increasing discomfort and rocked back and forth.  He fell onto his side but when he tried to unwind again his back spiked in pain and he had to stop.  His hands move but they wouldn't push past that locking crick.  The young dragon was growing frustrated when a pair of large hands gripped his shoulders and a foot pressed to his spine just below his small wings.

	He unfolded suddenly as his spine clicked back with a loud pop.  A deep groan of fleeting discomfort escaped from his mouth and he turned to look at an older dragon standing over him.  The big male stood looking a bit amused and concerned.

	"Now how did you get into THAT predicament?" He asked with genuine curiosity.

	"I was trying out a new pre-flight stretch."  Kalcao flushed a bit under his scales and clutched and wrung his tail absently from embarrassment. "I stretched my back too much scooting forward while trying something out..."

	"It certainly looked... different." The older dragon agreed. "Why were you trying out new stretches?"

	The younger dragon explained it away.  The older dragon listened, growled, told the young Kalcao to stop playing with his tail, and listened some more to the process of exploring new positions.  While magic was common enough, the older male hadn't heard of using it in such a way.

	Usually young dragons didn't start with magic until much older.  He made Kalcao show him the trick.  It was quite creative he realized.

	"How would you like to show that off to some of the other adult dragons?" He asked, hopefully.  "I'm Oreuc, by the way."

	Kalcao introduced himself while they walked away.  His thoughts were more on the position he was playing with than the big male and the other dragons that Oreuc wanted to show him off to.  He passed the flying field as some older dragons were taking off and saw the same boring stretches.  With a glance to the dragon ahead of him he stole away to the field and tried to show off his position again.

	Later, still flushed with embarrassment and their laughter ringing in his ears, he showed off his magic to the older dragons.  He showed them the same position and glared at them, daring them to laugh.  None did, though he did see a hidden smirk on an elderly female when his puppet's hands cupped his butt.  Kalcao growled and popped all of them into the floating image.  He controlled them all the same way, though was a little concerned when the elderly female's puppet showed the position hurting her stiff joints badly.

	They treated him as a novelty overall, but were friendly.  The younger ones made fun of him until one of their parents made the laughing dragons try tho position as a punishment.  While they complained at first, after trying it they seemed to like it.  Their bodies felt loose with just the one position rather than wasting time with the whole routine.

	Kalcao enjoyed the attention afterward, and the deer he had all to himself that night for supper as a reward for thinking it up... though some still laughed for how silly it looked.