The sixth of the series is a little interlude (and another one of my banners)! Hueroc is feeling all glum, and Fortuna's character Mika is trying to cheer him up by being her cute little self. Fun fact: Mika has never appeared in a picture in which she has been anything other than painfully adorable. :D Anyway, here's the story to go with it:

Hueroc folded his wings with a sigh, letting them hang a little loose after his flight, and looked around for a moment. To think he would willingly come back to this place when granted a little freedom, especially considering how the dragoness who lived here had treated him ever since ambushing him and taking him to her cave... Yet here he was, back at the entrance to Ellora's cave, having obeyed her order not to fly more than a mile away while he got his exercise. He sighed and glanced at the collar at the base of his neck, with its infuriating little heart-shaped tag that matched his captor's scales, but didn't dare tamper with it; she had enchanted it somehow that it would punish him if he tried to remove it, or strayed too far from her home--when he had the freedom to move on his own, anyway--and after how she'd tortured him both on that terrible first day and every day since then, wearing him down, making him submit to her again and again and again, he feared what would happen if he were to try.

But today he'd been given a reprieve. A dragoness from Ellora's clan was visiting, and she didn't want her to know what she was doing to him, so she'd given him the day off to rest, to exercise, and to recover his strength. He'd met the other dragoness, briefly, before going on his flight: a small lavender-scaled dragoness, adult in age but not in size or, it seemed, spirit, if her happy chattering when they'd been introduced that morning was any indication. The cave was quiet now, however, and he looked briefly around the main chamber before settling down on his belly near the cave entrance, looking out at the sky and trying not to think about what Ellora had done to him. But over and over his mind kept returning to those terrible events, and he glumly put his head down, a barely audible whimper escaping his throat. He'd always thought of himself as so strong, so proud, and yet she'd been able to make him beg and humiliate himself so many times, so easily...

The rapid clicking of claws on stone shook him from his thoughts, and he turned his head to see the little lavender dragoness, Mika, scampering towards him. He barely had time to breathe before she was upon him, and she jumped onto his back, giggling. "Will you play with me, Hueroc?" she squeaked, nuzzling the nape of his neck and thumping her tail against his.

"I'm tired," he said, though he didn't have the heart to shrug the happy little dragoness off his back. "I just got back from flying, and I've had a rough last few days... I need to rest. Go play with Ellora."

"But I want to play with you!" she squirmed forward and wrapped her forelegs around the base of his neck, right over the collar, hugging him tight. "Please play with me?"

"I..." He looked back into her big, hopeful eyes, and sighed. She looked so excited, so full of energy, that he found himself not wanting to say no to her, and besides... Maybe playing with her would help distract him from what Ellora was doing to him. "All right, Mika, I'll play."

"Yay!" She squeezed his neck with her forepaws, then scooted forward farther to sit her hindquarters on his shoulders, hind paws dangling on either side of his neck, and her chest and belly following the curve of his neck so her head and neck passed between his horns. "I promise it will be lots of fun," she said, clinging to his head with her forepaws to snuggle against him.

He chuckled and looked up into her smiling face, the beginnings of a purr stirring in his throat. Maybe a chance to relax and play with her was just what he needed to help him forget his troubles...