Ida grunted to clear her throat once again, trying to summon any wetness into her mouth to no avail. Her tongue was as dry as the desert she waded through, the butt of her spear now relegated to a walking stick just to keep her upright as she shuffled along. The lizardlike Drauk weren't so thirsty as the rabbit-like Lagora, nor as ravenous as the scorpion-headed Serkah; she was part of a proud people who weathered the worst of desolate Vistrahda's sun and sands and monsters alike with ease and grace.
 
But Spirits Above, even SHE had her limits!
 
Even Ida's pride was dulled enough by the heat to admit to herself that her situation was, in some small, tiny, insignificant part, her own fault. Word had spread by merchant mouth of a far-off Seedling oasis -Nour's Oasis, she'd learned it was called- hosting a fashion festival, and naturally, many Drauk were interested. Their own settlement's elder abhorred any lifestyle besides a warrior's, so it was the only chance one got in these chaos-riddled sands to look and feel nice. Ida wore the fruits of her hunt even now: soft purple and pink silks that hugged her form and breathed freely, a golden belt and headwear that shone like the sun itself. No need for armor when Ida's red scales were plenty tough.
 
The poor serpent sighed as she slumped against a rocky outcropping, sliding to a sit in the patch of shade it afforded her. At least she would die of thirst feeling pretty. It's not like she'd forgotten water for the trip back, or even lacked the funding for it-- much to the contrary, her bag was still heavy with dewadems. But the chief hosting the festival had insisted that they needed to buy a special canteen if they wanted to leave with any water from the oasis; PAY for a few measly drops, out of that massive lake? She could have understood if he were simply squeezing dewadems out of festival-goers as they left, but the gall to hide behind the pretense of some 'water spirit' and 'magic water' that disappears if it leaves the oasis! Pfah! She would have spit at the memory if she had the fluids to do so.
 
But now, in the middle of the desert, far from her home or the oasis, Ida was realizing with sober wisdom that all of the dewadems in the world aren't worth anything if you can't spend them. She heaved the weighty pouch into her lap, tipping it to let the little blue gemstones trickle over her palm like the water drops they were shaped as. It's little wonder why these magic crystals were treated as currency, after all: they were easy to store and count, pretty to look at, rare to find, and they were a necessity for growing crops. It never rained in Vistrahda, after all.
 
It...never...rained...
 
Because the dewadems...make rain.
 
Because dewadems ARE water, she realized in spurts of epiphany.
Ida would have cried for her saved life if she didn't feel so foolish. No one must find out. Her pride wouldn't allow her to live with the shame, if others knew she'd gotten so used to trading with dewadems that she'd nearly -literally- died of ignorance.
 
Wide-eyed, the Drauk woman suddenly scrambled and dived for the little gems that were now strewn about at her feet, scooping and sifting through handfuls of sand while her tail waved to and fro above her, until she could cup her palms around a mound of them. Offering a short prayer (and a muttered curse) she bent over and flung them all skyward at once.
 
The effect was immediate: the glimmer of gems dissipated into the air before they'd even reached the top of their arc, followed by small storm clouds conjuring just a dozen feet overhead. The first drop of rain came seconds later. She laughed, cupping her hands and opening her mouth skyward as the chilling trickle became a deluge. She didn't care about her clothes, it was bliss on her tongue and skin.
 
For all of ten seconds.
 
Ida blinked her eyes back open as the summoned rain disappeared as quickly as it had begun, looking about in confusion. The sand was darkened with moisture for a dozen yards in every direction, her clothes and skin mildly wet, the rocks glistening, but the sun was already cleaning up the mess. And cupped in her hands, perhaps enough gathered rainwater to fill a thimble.
 
"That's...that's not fair." She shakily wheezed out the words. That many gems could have bought her gallons of water. That many gems WAS gallons of water...now fed to the desert. She wanted to cry, but her pride wouldn't let her. No, she still had plenty of dewadems. She just needed to be smarter about using them. Some sort of giant funnel to gather the rain as it fell? Doubtless that's how it was done normally, but she lacked a tarp or a container big enough, and her thin silks were a woefully poor substitute. Maybe she could find a large rocky surface, and hope the rain pools up somewhere.
 
Ida pondered a few more ideas while she sipped up what little water her hands had caught, growing more desperate. Her tail lashed behind her. She didn't have a way to catch it all out of the air, and even if she wasted all of her dewadems to repeat what she'd just done, it would barely last her half a day at most. She was back in her original situation, dying of thirst while surrounded by water, just somehow even more ironic.
 
An hour passed, Ida having slumped back to a sulking sit against her shady rock while her ideas turned in circles. Every few minutes she tossed a dewadem skyward, the singular gem gifting just a few drops that pattered uselessly across her surroundings. She'd gathered her savings into a neat pile again, but her thoughts had mostly devolved by this point into cursing the fact that they became rain instead of anything more convenient.
 
That's when an idea occurred to her. What if...they didn't? It was all water, after all. Sort of. She didn't know, magic crystals weren't the Drauk's specialty.
So could she just...drink a dewadem or two, then, and be sated? Had anyone tried that? Ida was running out of options at this point, so pondering the logistics seemed pointless. Worst case scenario, her skeleton would be found with a few dewadems in it.
 
Ida lifted a small handful of the thumb-sized gems out of the pile next to her, dusted off one, and turned it over between her fingers with a pause of contemplation.
"Well. Here goes."
It didn't taste like much of anything on her tongue, at least not moreso than any desert rock, and it certainly wasn't water; she was starting to feel foolish again. After some rumination, she worked the smooth crystal to the back of her mouth and swallowed. A few seconds passed. Nothing.
 
Some desperation seeping back into her mind, she tried another one, then a third. The fourth stayed in her mouth, passing it along her tongue and teeth as she grew tired of the attempts. Her hands fell limp at her sides, her final idea exhausted.
"Guh...nothing. Can't give up. Just...have to think of something el-"
 
A faint glow in Ida's mouth accompanied her words, but what interrupted her was the torrent. The Drauk's cheeks suddenly swelled out as more water and vapor than could possibly fit in one's mouth fought to escape all at once, blasting out with such force that her head knocked harshly against the rock behind her. She hardly had the time to widen her eyes and bring her hands to her mouth before it was already over, left gagging and coughing as she crawled onto all fours for support in the wake of it all.
 
"-b...bwuh?" she coughed again, shocked. "W-what?!" The ground beneath her was soaked and the sand in front of her was painted into a neat wet cone, like a chalk outline of what had just happened. Her tongue -finally- wasn't dry, but those thoughts were still on the backburner while she was regaining her composure. Her mouth curled into a shaky smile as the pieces came together.
 
"I...I did it! It works! Aha! AhahaaAOURP-"
Once again Ida was interrupted, this time by a sudden coolness in her stomach and an unladylike sound forced from her mouth: water vapor, in thick, cloudy streams, reminding her of what she'd done. Her blood ran colder than it had when she'd made her peace with dying of thirst.
 
There was a moment of pause, the dewadems inside her taking longer than the one from her mouth. She used that moment to plead.
"W-wait! Wait I can sti-"
The crystal coalesced into its component elements inside her. A dull hiss escaped Ida's throat as more water than she could ever want tried to push its way out in the form of vapor, before she clapped a hand over her mouth habitually. With nowhere else to go, her stomach swelled to contain the sudden rainstorm rapidly trying to take form inside. Her purple silks stretched over equally stretched skin as liters upon liters of vapor tried to form clouds within the serpent's taut belly, all of it straining against a golden belt at her hips.
 
Ida shuddered as her stomach pressed into the sand, horrified and nauseatingly full. She looked frighteningly gravid, so much so that she couldn't touch the sand with all four of her hands and knees anymore, needing to lean backwards onto her wide rear. Her throat refused to let more than short hisses escape, some mix of habitual pride and sheer shock tightening her even while a storm was fighting to force its way out.
 
It took longer than it should have, or perhaps it just seemed to, but finally the water's magic had run its course. The storm had abided. So Ida sat, coughing, soaked, with her arms cradling a belly large enough to nearly dwarf the poor Drauk in her lap. Everything felt tight. Trying to move caused her to audibly slosh, a mix of water and air trapped inside a container somehow resilient enough to fit it all.
 
"Gh. Gotta," she moaned out, shifting her weight. "Emp...ty."
She was strong, but exhausted, and had to settle for rolling herself forward instead of picking herself up. Putting any pressure at all onto her beach ball of a belly left her nauseous and uncomfortable, but in a sense that's exactly what she needed. Sadly, even propped up on top of herself and staring down at the sand, she couldn't force herself to...empty, as it were. She readied herself to wait. It had to happen eventually.
 
She didn't have to wait long, but it wasn't what she was waiting for. A dim blue glow emanated from somewhere in her stretched stomach. Her pupils shrank as she noticed it and realized what it meant.
 
"N. No. Please!"
 
The second of three dewadems cracked, billowing into a storm of water inside her.
 
The effects were more immediate this time, Ida's gut visibly churning with the tide of a new torrent unleashing itself. Her stomach pressed harder into the sand beneath her, well and truly beginning to outsize the Drauk herself as it grew. A small stream escaped Ida's lips while her belt creaked and her silks strained, her beloved fashion items barely holding on until, with a metallic plink and a loud ripping noise, her cream-colored belly busted free of its constraints, rounding out in its newfound freedom.
 
The bloated and stunned Ida tottered forward as the weight and sheer size of herself reached a tipping point. She hadn't been able to touch the sand with all fours since the first dewadem, but the moment she felt herself pitch forward, unable to reach the sand with even one limb, a new panic sparked inside her. She flailed, legs and arms and tail squirming uselessly as her impressive water tank of a stomach simply swelled beneath her, stuck with her rear tilted towards the sun like she were sunbathing atop a growing boulder. By the time it was finished, she outsized the rock she'd been using for shade.
 
Deathly still, barely cognizant, only able to make shallow groans cut with the occasional cough, the poor Drauk was afforded a full half hour of rest before she recognized another blue glow throbbing from within the grand globe of her gut.
 
"Nn-nnoouu..."
 
----
 
Years later Ida ducked beneath the awning of a Bloom Booth; one of the shops run by one of the many tiny Seedlings that lived there. The food at this new oasis was delicious, and the air temperate. It felt not unlike the one she visited all those years ago, but this time, what had caught her eye wasn't a fashion festival, but a particular shop. Selling balloons of all things, of all shapes and sizes. A morbid fascination that she denied for years had finally drawn her here.
 
A green-skinned Seedling leaned against the counter inside, hardly tall enough to reach Ida's waist. Despite the size difference clearly in her favor, Ida was a little nervous speaking up first.
"H...hello."
"Hey," answered the smaller girl casually. "See anything you like? The khepri balloons are the most popular, but I can make something custom if you want."
"Make?" Ida blurted out of curiosity. She'd never actually considered how these things were made.
"Oh, sure. I make all this stuff. Snakeskin's great for it. Sometimes cactus skin too, but that's a hassle..."
"Snake...skin?"
"Yeah. I mean, it's not my original idea. People have been doing it for years, I assume."
"You assume?" Ida found herself asking a lot of leading questions today.
"Well...sure. That's how I got inspired to start, you know?" The seedling rambled on, her passion for her chosen line of work rather charming. "I saw this great big one in the desert once-- HUGE! Like, bigger than my shop! Must've been a master's work. All snake skin! I didn't think to use the material for balloons before then, but like I said, it's great for it."
Ida, having gained a new hue of sweaty red to her own skin, adjusted the collar of her shirt.
"You...you don't say...?"
"I do! And I just did. Say, have we met before?"