The air was calm. The trees were soft. The moderately bright morning sun streamed through the leaves, making them glow.

An old cabin in the woods—long abandoned. Cute little place, but a bit eerie in the way it passively approaches its position of isolation from the world.

I had heard about places like this years ago. Once you get past the tales of hauntings and all that, you can actually find some fairly cozy remote places. This one was far away from home, and additionally far off the beaten path from the truck stop I had parked at on a rather adventurous road trip.

Appearing to be at least a decade or two old, the place looked somewhat dilapidated, but not quite as much as I would have realistically thought. It must have been constructed from some very dense wood.

Stepping in through the heavy door, I stood still on the foyer, spending a solid minute taking in the state of and pieces within this little house. There were two huge chairs and footstools appearing to be carved from a larger tree of the same wood as the cabin, each one overlooking a faded multi-color rug as well as facing a once ornate fire pit.

A flare of glare caught the attention of my eyes, and what I saw stood out from the overall tatteredness of the structure. A tall fiber-bound book lay at rest atop the fireplace mantle. Seeing nothing else to occupy myself within the cabin, I went to pick it up.

I didn't even have a second after I opened up the book to look at the pages within before the object flashed a bright white light like an enchanted relic.

When the flash cleared, my vision readjusted to take in an entirely different scene. The chairs and ottomans had become padded. There was an active fire in the pit. There were carpets and wall adornments that looked highly colorful and soft as if they were well-kempt. My feet froze and my wide eyes surveyed the sudden room transformation in near total shock. Yet, I had to whip around reacting to the sound of the well-built door behind me creaking open.

Then stepped in through the door something my eyes had never registered in reality before—a portly two-legged yellow dragon fellow about my height. He addressed me with a soft, lightly-husky elderly voice. "Ah! Qué onda! Greetings and salutations! Why, I haven't had a visit from a human in far too many years. And what has brought you over here from the human plane, friend?"

Coupled with my already-high level of anxiety from being in a strange place, this alien interaction was almost too mortifying for me to even stutter any words out of my mouth. "I have no idea where I am, I literally just…teleported here."

"Hmm… so you never uttered anything along the lines of 'I wish, I wish', you only simply shifted to appear in this realm—is that right?" His gaze lowered to the book still in my hands. "Ah-ha, of course! I see you have discovered the Great Big Book of Everything. That must be how you got here—I've enchanted the book to allow fair souls to be transported here even if they don't know the special rhyme. I figured it might be, at this point, easier to handle than something like a dragon scale or anything like that, heh."

I had no sensible response to give. My eyes darted everywhere again.

The dragon chuckled and motioned an attempt to ease my anxiety. "It's all right, you have nothing to worry about. This is a safe place—a sanctuary for the weary to rest, and be enriched. This…" he outstretched his arms to the surrounding environment, "is the realm which we call Dragon Land."

My muscles relaxed a bit, and my ears perked up as I faced him properly. Heeding his gesture, I moved to sit across from him in one of the chairs. I had picked up something foreign in his voice, but I couldn't quite make out his accent—either French, or perhaps more likely Spanish.

"I am Quetzàl…" Ah. Must then be a Spaniard in some form. "and I used to be a teacher here in the realm of dragons. Nowadays, I am simply living a retired life, as it were."

Compelled to keep the silence at bay somehow, I chimed in to speak simply about anything that happened to be floating through my mind. "Ah. So you must be the sage wizard 'round here, then?"

"Ho ho. No, I am no sorcerer," he laughed. "But I am something similar to what you might call a Wiccan—a sage. I harness wisdom and the energy from the earth to help my fellow dragons—as well as any pure-hearted humans who might happen to stop by." He stroked his chin, affirming his disposition despite any semblance of verbal objections. "But yes, it would seem as though my social life has indeed mellowed out over the years." He pointed my gaze toward a long framed group portrait over the fire. "All of my dearest dragon friends, long since departed from this continent to tread their own paths in distant lands elsewhere. Among them, the first and last humans to ever visit our land—Max, Emmy, and Enriqué—I do hope that they have gone on to lead such enriching lives since they stopped coming here."

I contemplated all the implications there. "So you're the only dragon left around here?"

He chuckled. "Oh, no, not at all. There are many more around town, and I've always tried to be neighborly and helpful to all of them. It has just so happened that the peak of joyous times in my life has been with those bribón children.

"And, although you appear not to be a child anymore, I can sense a long-running, deeply-hidden desire you may have developed a long time ago, that may have awoken with you coming here. It seems like it could be very fun and interesting to have you around here, in more ways than one." He smirked straight through the soul-windows of my eyes, and somehow extracted the deeply-hidden truth right out of my mind. "You have a burning desire to tickle a dragon. Well, you are in immense luck, for I just happen to be so decently ticklish—heh—although, the last time I truly checked was about twenty years ago."

He put down the mug of whatever he was drinking and spent a few seconds looking me over, almost as if his eyes were drinking me in. He then propped his feet up on the adjacent loveseat, likely deliberately to catch me off guard even more than I had already been the entire time. My breath paused and my heart sped up a bit. My eyes could focus only on those substantial sunshine-colored soles, and I couldn't disguise it before he very quickly took notice.

The dragon chuckled once more. "Yes, I know exactly what you are thinking, amigo. And you have no need to fret —you may have your way with me to do whatever you want to do."

I became wide-eyed and speechless, but I had to say something to stifle the awkward silence increasing by the second. "Y—you sure? You really mean that?"

He nodded. "I can sense that—well, aside from your divergent deviant desires, you possess a broken yet persistent purity of the soul not dissimilar to those of the children that preceded you. And if you truly believe that tickling me to your heart's content will help to heal it up, I have no problem at all with allowing you to do that—for my purpose in this realm is quite solely to help others, eh?"

I swallowed hard. He struck me as unusually warm and inviting for what appeared to be an old sage hermit in the forest.

"That's right, this is a formal invitation, compadrè. Have at them all you wish. I see you really like how they look, hmm? Yes, indeed, most other dragons, especially ones of my age, don't put much care into their feet. So I bet I would indeed have the most ticklish feet around, no?"

Okay, this was starting to get a little awkward. If he was just reading my thoughts at all times, perhaps it would be somewhat better if he spoke less.

He chuckled again. "I just want you to know that you have nothing to worry about, young one. I think we are both going to enjoy this." He stood back up and went to a chest next to the fire pit. Rummaging around in it, he produced several pieces of silky-looking rope. "Yes, this should do very nicely. Have your way with this, yeah?"

I looked at the rope, then at the ground to further try to hide my blush. "Alrighty then."

His warm soft grin never wavered the whole time as I took the ropes and tightly secured his arms to the chair's armrests, as well as his ankles to the ottoman. Hoping that the half-hitch knots I used for all the bindings would hold up, I exercised what little rope skill I possessed attempting to make his restraint as comfortably tight as possible. By some sort of instinct, I found myself taking a bit of rope and securing his two innermost toes together.

This setup was most certainly quite a bit thrown-together. All I could do was hope that it would last throughout the session. Had I thought about it a little more, I would have realized then that he is—despite what he said—a magical dragon, and he would be very much in full control of this session.

Nevertheless, he had nothing but best wishes to vocalize to me. "No need to worry about anything, my friend. I will tell you when I've had enough."

With a nod and a quiet deep breath, I began.

Starting with a light thumb rubbing of his rather plush soles, I got a feel of the skin's texture, which was wonderfully smooth and supplementary of the hard-working muscles underneath. The reaction of his six bubbly toes curling in response to my touch told me in that second that there was indeed some nervous feeling left in those feet, and a quite pleasant and exciting experience was immediately to come.

Then the tickling began. Gliding my fingertips from the balls down the arches to the heels, I saw the dragon's eyes shut and his smile creep up in stress. His sensitivity, if it weren't already obvious enough to me, was nothing at all to sneeze at. I kept alternating glances between his feet and his facial reactions. The glide shifted to an erratic skittering motion with some swiping, and that really got him straining. Most others his age, I had to assume, would have broken down by this point.

My moderately-dexterous fingers went for every available spot on those golden soles—the tight heels and balls, the long and wide supple arches, the plush bubbly toes. He clearly wasn't the loudly-laughing type. All he did pretty much the entire time was softly, casually chuckle—no matter which spot I went for. Nevertheless, I felt that at the same time I had to start quite gently on the old man, for I didn't at all want to push it too far to the limit.

As the minutes flew by, however, I steadily felt more confident to push that limit a little further. I went into the rope chest to see what other tools there were. A wide paintbrush caught my eye first. Running the bristles across my hand, they felt sufficiently stiff yet not quite so much an instrument of destruction as the rather devilish-looking horse-hair scrubber I saw in the chest as well.

The paintbrush, albeit un-lubricated, glided across the dragon's smooth soles as if they were meeting a fresh canvas. The sensation of each bristle attacking the nerves underneath that flesh was felt not just in the tactile feedback in my hand, but in the dragon's reactional feedback as well. He tittered through gritted teeth and remained stout to close his eyes. Up and down, side to side, slow twists, quicker flicks—the ways that those bound feet swayed and jerked to each little tickling sensation was simply a heavenly sight and feel. I had to savor every bit of it with grinning delight for several good minutes.

The next tool I selected was a giant stiff feather quill. For that, I felt compelled to grip the two tied toes and pull them back to hold them up, rendering the soles as taut as possible. He seldom fought that—much. On the smooth arches, I brushed the frill end up and down rather lazily, almost hypnotizing myself. His breath caught a bit occasionally, but I was always well aware that hardly any gargalesis would be produced from the softer implements. It wasn't until I flipped the feather around in my hand, and tickled more roughly with pokes and strokes as if I were taking a pen to a page, that the giggles and chuckles escaped his lips once more. His toes gave a constant yet weak pressure to scrunch back down and crease the skin to minimize my coverage, but my awakened sadistic self simply had to continue the maddening torment as viciously as possible all session long.

Another few tantalizing minutes of that, and I again felt the urge to expand my horizons. And once again, the chest of toys did not fail to excite.

Donning a pair of super fuzzy gloves from the chest, I moved to his upper body, scanning the real estate there. I began to knead and stroke the abdominal portliness. Going to town on his large plush tummy elicited super-cute bubbly giggles from him. Slowly traveling across his chest all the way up to his barely-open underarms drew out a lot of less hinged laughter from him. With zero doubt whatsoever, I thoroughly enjoyed just about every aspect of this dynamic activity.

The elder dragon had been keeping his eyes shut the entire time, which greatly reduced my self-induced anxiety about the lack of a blindfold. He never really put up much of a struggle to escape the tickling, barring the bouts of light wiggling. With that in mind, I could ultimately tell that he was somehow indeed enjoying this experience almost as much as I certainly was.

Maneuvering back to his feet, the fuzzy gloves allowed me the sense of freedom to be a little more wild with my finger attacks on the soles. The light dance with hardly any pattern kept the sensations fresh as possible, and in turn kept his chuckling equally as raw.

At one point, I had a rather illicit thought run through my head. With very little hesitation, I went in for the lick. The first time, he didn't seem to notice a quick lap up the sweat-slickened smooth reptilian arch. Perhaps I should have suppressed that thought and not pushed myself too deeply into that particular territory. However, this funny thing known as kink-driven libido was the wholly louder source of my immediate thoughts, and I simply had to do it again. Surely he would have noticed by that point—and it was quite clear that he did, for there was somewhat of a change of tone in his giggle. He did not, however, say anything, and I silently praised him for that. Perhaps that could be explored much, much later, but at this time the grand finish was on the horizon.

Finally, I went for the big one. The horse-hair brush, infernally nagging at the back of my mind, had to find its way into my hand at some point. I slipped off the gloves, held his toes back much more tightly, and let it rip. Apparently, I had no need to worry about lubrication here either, for the rougher bristles skated across the reptilian skin almost as well as the paintbrush. Nevertheless, I tried to keep my courtesy sense about me, alternating between slow deeper scraping and light quicker detailing over each spot on those wonderful feet. This was, unsurprisingly, the first time that the dragon's laughter clipped the decibel threshold in my ears quite a bit.

After what seemed to pass almost akin to an hour or two in total, his usually steady stream of laughter shifted to a state of desperation and a bit of hyperventilation. While he had said next to nothing the majority of the time I'd been tickling him, he then began making a plea for me to relent, gasping "Okay…okay, ya basta, ya basta…", signaling to me that this little session had to conclude.

I put down the brush and circled back to the beginning ritual, massaging his feet back to tranquility after what seemed like the workout of a lifetime. As my hands left his soles for the last time and started untying the ropes, his eyes remained closed as he caught his breath, probably deliberately to stifle any awkward staring as I unwound the session.

"Ah, that felt absolutely amazing. I must admit, I have been just longing for such a rush of feliz as that for an absurd amount of time. My old heart has not had such a rush in far too long. Absolutely…thrilling." He shivered a bit as his feet once again touched the colder wood floor. Adorable, I couldn't help but think.

"Well…" I was unsure of whether to keep standing or sit back down, "that was really, really fun for me as well. I'm…not really sure how to thank you for this."
He stood back up and took a step toward me. "Well, maybe you could honor me by visiting for another session someday in the near future. And perhaps…on a regular basis?"

Weird as this situation was altogether, I felt actually comfortable being here with him. I felt that I could realize and live out this deeply-rooted fantasy for as long as I wanted. Although, I couldn't entirely shake the feeling that he saw me as yet another child—high on adolescence and in heavy need of a conservator or some other kind of hands-on parental-like guidance. It might just be me, but his energy definitely seemed at least somewhat paternal in nature—not unlike that of a certain motherly goat from another distant realm. I could swear it felt like I was on a day tripper or something like that. It seemed a bit too much like a personal heaven of sorts. I had to wonder what the catch would be, as there is almost always a catch with these types of situations.

"And—now, I don't mean to pry—but, perhaps you could one day take me on a quaint little tour of today's human world. After all…it has been far too long since I've gone back to visit my old hometown in México. And as well, I have been lately thinking about hosting, for the first time in a long time, a family reunion of sorts with all of my old friends. And now that it is confirmed by you that travel between our land and the human realm is still possible…" He let out a deep sigh. "I'm sure they are all well grown-up by now, although I have no idea what they would be up to at this time. Just a few thoughts, no pressure at all on you."

That was a lot to dump on me all at once, but my response to that had to be nothing less than genuine. "I think that all sounds like a wonderful idea. I do hope, though, that the responsibility of putting it together won't fall solely on me?" I have no idea where such loquacity came from at that moment.

He laughed a bit of amusement, then made up for that with a comforting hand on my shoulder. "Worry not one iota, friend. As I could tell from the moment you arrived, you've still got that childlike wonder in your eyes—a real niño estrella. If you channel that into your path ahead, you are capable of doing amazing things."

A blush and a nod was all I could do. "Thank you, Quetzàl. Thank you…so very much." He motioned closer, and I fell into the dragon's embrace. A massive hug. I relaxed into it for just under a minute, but after that point, I simply couldn't help but give his sides one last little prod.
"Ahay! You are one cunning little rascal to keep me on my toes, eh?" The dragon broke the hug and took a knee to produce one more thing out of the chest.

I grinned but still tried to keep a reverence as he handed me the wonderful object. "Here is an extra copy of the book containing the portal spell to traverse between our worlds for you to take home—so you won't have to travel very far in order to come here anymore," he chuckled.

"Thanks again," I somehow beamed. "I will most definitely be coming back, very soon." I opened the book, turned to the door, closed my eyes with a deep breath, and recited the incantation. "I wish, I wish…"

So, this is where I find myself presently—back on the road in my world, with the spell book in my possession. Once my original plans are followed through with, I suppose I shall then be off to find these three special people and awkwardly explain the situation to them.

I am still not entirely sure if that whole adventure was a dream or not. Certainly, it felt unbelievably real and lucid to all of my senses. Yes, for the time being, I think I will appreciate it as an always-welcome break from the rather normalcy of my life.

Hopefully this can work. We'd all be able to hang out at this little library and adventure and sing classic rock songs all day—and, time permitting, there will be many more private tickle sessions to come.

EPILOGUE:

"All right, stranger," cocked a very skeptical Emmy. "You've dragged us all out here to this remote backwater restaurant for a little private chat. Now, what is it you think you know about us and dragons, huh?"

After tracking them down and sending out letters, the three former protagonists sat at the table alongside me, looking rightly annoyed, but simultaneously extremely suspicious of me.

"Yeah, I'm not even sure any of that was real, anyway," Max chimed in. "We must've had some really overactive imaginations or something like that."

My expression was neutral for the moment. "Well, I can understand how you might feel that way, since you all were kids at the time, but I can assure you to the fullest extent, with my own firsthand knowledge…" I reached into a black messenger bag, pulled out the book, and lightly plopped it on the table. "It is entirely real—all of it."

Emmy's face grew a worry of concern. "What…you went into our old house?"

I had nothing but the truth of my story to relay to them. "I stumbled upon an old woodland cabin in my travels, and in it, I found a strange book—although, this is but a mere copy of it. The book transported me into the realm of the dragons. I met Quetzàl—you remember him?" That's when they finally eased and perked up, hopefully no longer thinking I exude any craziness. "And it was he who suggested that I gather you all for this…Dragonland reunion of sorts. He's still back there, in the other world, probably corralling all of your old dragon friends in a similar fashion, and just waiting for the tip from us." A second to catch my breath, I waited with bated breath for their response. "So what do you say?"

They looked at each other for an agonizing minute, then nodded. "Okay," agreed an optimistic Enriqué. "Sounds magnífico."