Dragon Fluffer

I’ve made a nice living breeding dragons, but it’s tricky.

A female dragon won’t mate with a male unless he kills another dragon while she watches. Artificial insemination doesn’t work because the female’s hormones aren’t right without the dragon battle. On the other hand, we can’t be letting our studs kill each other every time we breed a female. That’s why we need a faux dragon to do battle with our stud, and then die. That’s where I come in.

I operate my dragon machine from the inside. It can fly, breathe fire, and behave like a male dragon with ideas. I “fight” the stud dragon and then, when the dragoness is sufficiently excited, I drop dead.

My biggest challenge so far came when our company got the contract to breed Queen Myar, of the Olar tribe, with our champion stud, Grilloffixx. The eggs from this royal mating would be worth a king’s ransom.

The problem was, Grilloffixx was wise to my faux ways. He had discovered, the last time we fought, that he could grab my right leg and pull back, and I’d flip over, out of action. I had to distract him this time so that he wouldn’t do this, because I hadn’t figured out how to fix my machine and a dragon battle has to last at least ten minutes or the female won’t be ready. No mating, no pay.

With Queen Myar tethered and Grilloffixx loose, I entered the mating circle. I had tied extra meat to the throat of my machine. Dragons by instinct go for the throat and I put the tastiest meat I could find there, to distract Grilloffixx temporarily from my front leg.

The big guy was in a real state. When he saw Queen Myar, his lizard eyes bugged out and his tail lashed about so hard he knocked some of the circle’s lumber struts out.

He went for the meat, though.

Then, rather than target his throat, I turned as if to attack his hinder parts. Dragons are very touchy about this and Grilloffixx flew into a rage. His breath got so hot he had to back off until his head cooled down. Meanwhile, I preened, as if competing with the Queen for his affections. This pushed him completely over the edge and he rushed forward, grabbed my leg, and flipped me. But by then, the ten minutes had passed.