literature

Swallows Song [VORE]

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Literature Text

The taste of blood hangs in the evening air. You flick your tongue and follow the unexpected trail through the green. As you slither over underbrush and between trees, other flavors drift through the air to your sensitive tongue, foreshadowing what you will see when you arrive. And then, at a break in the trees, you do.

Green is everywhere painted with red. White and brown feathers dot the scene, accents in a macabre decor. You curl your lip. Jungle cats are messy eaters and rarely clean up after themselves. This one had apparently enjoyed an entire nest of  winglings. Mmmmm, wingling stuffed jungle cat sounds delicious, but alas, this cat is long gone.

Curiosity satisfied you are turning back the way you came when movement tickles at the far corner of your vision. You still your own heartbeat and listen. Close by, pitter pat, the quiet echo of a tiny heartbeat. You scan the underbrush and spot the source of the movement. Under a large dark leaf, a bunch of feathers flutters in the cooling evening breeze. The jungle cat missed one.

You lift the leaf. The fluttering feathers are attached to a broken wing which is, in turn, attached to a young wingling sprawled on its face in the mud. It lies unmoving, tiny hands and feet still, but it's tell tale heart beat affirms it is alive.

You don't like the idea of availing yourself of another predator’s leavings, but in the jungle, only a fool passes up free food, and you certainly wouldn’t mind a snack. Never one to eat on the move you scoop the wingling up in careful talons to carry back to your nest.

By the time you have returned to your stone cliff top over-looking the jungle it is full night. Normally you would wait till morning to eat, take advantage of your sunning ledge to help you digest, but with such a small snack it shouldn't be necessary.

You lift the wingling up to your face and examine it. It's a marvel that such tiny creatures can survive in this brutal land. You admire the perfect shells of its tiny fingernails, the dark curls of its hair, the microscopic sprinkling of freckles on its face and arms. Truly, Mother Nature's wonders are manifold.

The wingling is liberally smudged with dirt, but you don't mind. Some predators insist on clean food, but they don't have your tongue. Your talented tongue can taste things theirs can't. Soil is the very foundation of life in the jungle. All new life rises from it and the soil itself is made from all that has come before. Where others might taste only dirt, you can taste the green of new life and the steeped flavor of lives that have come before, fitting spices for a life that is leaving.

You tilt your head, lifting your snack up and unfurling your long tongue. You let go and the wingling falls into your mouth with a satisfying “plop". You spiral your tongue around it allowing yourself to taste every inch. You are not fond of feathers, but the salt sweet taste of its skin and the hearty taste of the soil combine into a flavor that more than makes up for it. It is every bit as good as you'd hoped.

A shame that you can't just enjoy this flavor forever, but all good things must come to an end,  When, at last, the mud and its skin oils have been sucked away and its flavor is fading you finally swallow.

There is just something about live, whole prey. Certainly chewed food has more flavor and goes down easier, but in your opinion nothing beats the feeling of a warm morsel of life sliding off the back of your tongue, the tight embrace as it squeezes down your throat, and the brief anticipatory feeling of release as it falls from your throat to splat, warm and heavy at the bottom of your first stomach.

You sigh with pleasure as your little meal settles and arrange yourself into a pile of coils to sleep for the night. You are just dozing off when you feel your snack wake-up. You hiss with pleasure at the fluttery feeling as it thrashes in its fleshy prison,  trying to fly with one wing and scrabbling at  your stomach walls with tiny fingers. All the movement prompts your belly muscles to begin massaging your terrified meal into submission and sparks warm ripples of pleasure throughout your trunk and tail. You groan as your digestive system kicks into gear and the wingling is drawn, still struggling,  deeper into your body.

When you were small and  bright-scale, your parents, like all scale-parents, partially digested your food for you. So you never connected the bright and beautiful creatures that delighted you, the animals that made you laugh, to the stuff filling your belly each day. But as you grew, you learned that meals have faces and, sad as it might be on an individual level, all things die and all things must eat. This is simply the nature of life.

Now as a full grown adult, you can enjoy the feeling of your prey’s struggles without qualm. You did not make the world the way it is, you simply bow to Mother Nature’s wisdom. The ending of the tragedy playing out inside you at this moment was written before you even found the wingling.  Though it escaped the jungle cat’s attention, its death was a foregone conclusion from the moment its nest was attacked. With a broken wing it couldn't fly to hide or escape, reach food or find a sleeping spot out of reach of predators. If you hadn't found and eaten it, something else would have, or worse, it would have starved to death, a far lengthier and more painful fate then ending as someone’s lunch.

The wingling still struggles, but the increasing constriction as it moves more deeply inside you is making it harder and harder.  Bit by bit its efforts are reduced to jerks and then spasms, barely notable. Finally, it stills completely and you assume it has either passed out or given in and accepted its fate. Then something new happens.

You feel it before you hear it, a faint vibration that unfolds into sound. Your supper is singing. You press an ear against your scales. The wingling’s voice is tremulous but it’s tone is pure and even in the close confines of your coils each note rings clear.  You don't understand the words of course, but that does nothing to diminish the song’s beauty.

Your kind can't sing. Your mouths aren't made for it and your language consists entirely of hisses, clicks and various sibilants. But you love music. The sound of wind through leaves, the bubbling burbling song of the river, the chorus of birds and winglings in the morning. You press an ear against your scales to listen more closely.

The wingling’s song is haunting and its melody teases your mind. Though you are certain you have never heard it before, it feels familiar, like the long-forgotten memory of a dream that whispered in your sleeping mind once, long ago. It makes you feel homesick for a place you've never been, but were always meant to find.

For a while you lose track of time, enchanted by the song inside you. Then it grows quieter, the wingling’s voice reedier. As you listen, the song trails off and then dies out completely. You wait a few moments longer, but when no more notes follow you realize the wingling must have finally succumbed to a lack of air, or perhaps shock and its injuries.

Disappointed you lay your head down again to sleep. Well, it was lovely while it lasted.
Your digestive system, always fitful in the cold and quiet since the little singer arrived at its final destination, sputters back to life. Muscles go to work to churn the now unprotesting lump of skin and feathers into nutrients and waste.

No!

Alarmed you force your muscles to stop. During the day, this wouldn’t have been possible with the warmth of the sun fueling your internal systems and speeding your metabolism, but it is cool night, and you have more conscious control of your sluggish body’s functions. You still your heartbeat again, press an ear against your scales and listen as hard as you can. It takes a moment, but then you hear it. Faint, thready, and fading, but a heartbeat nonetheless.  The wingling hasn’t long-you can’t hear any breath sounds-but it’s heart still beats.

Questioning your own sanity you take a deep breath and bend your mind to the task of bringing the wingling back. It takes a moment, but you feel your muscles begin to move. This would be so much easier if it were still in your first stomach.  As it is it takes a tremendous amount of concentration and will to bully your muscles into moving in the direction opposite their natural inclination.  Even with the control the cold of night grants you just manage to guide the tiny body back through through the folds and curves of your lower stomach. The difficulty combined with the delicious sensation of its movement is enough to tempt you to let go, to enjoy ingesting your prey a second time, but the rapidly fading memory of the wingling’s tune tugs urgently at your heart.  You must hear the song again.  

With a final stab of effort, you feel the wingling pushed back into your first stomach. You breathe a sigh of relief. You want to take a moment to recover. You want to ask yourself what the hell you are thinking, but you don’t have time for either and neither does the wingling. Instead you jam two talons down the back of your throat. Several unpleasant seconds later your former snack lies on the rock before you covered in a slime of saliva and other fluids you’d rather not identify.

It’s heart still beats, barely, but as you feared, it isn’t breathing.  Well now what?  You wipe the slime from its face as best you can, but the wingling is so small and you are so big you aren’t sure you’ve actually accomplished anything.  You aren’t used to feeling so impotent.  Why did you do this in the first place? What did you think was going to happen? Even as you berate yourself with questions, the night breeze tickles across the wingling’s face.  It gasps, drawing in a deep breath, chokes, coughs, and then draws another. You flutter your tongue in delight.

The little one’s eyes blink open just in time to see it. With a terrified cry it tries to fly away, but with only one functioning wing, it only manages to flop about, getting nowhere. Giving up on flight it scrabbles backwards, away from you over the surface of the rock. It’s attempts at escape are laughable. You simply reach out your arm and make a wall of your fingers, blocking it’s path.  Seeing there is no hope, again, the wingling begins to cry.  You wonder yet again if this was a mistake.  The wingling has begun to chirp, pleading, you assume, for its life.  If only your languages weren’t so different.  Certainly any sound you could make now will no doubt be perceived as a threat.

Instead you gently push the pad of a finger against it’s lips (well, it’s entire lower face really, it’s so damn small) to make it stop.  When it does you pat it’s head with two fingers in what you hope is a reassuring gesture.  It still looks terrified, but now it also looks confused.  You choose to see this as a positive step forward.

You settle back into what you hope is a less threatening position.  Now, how to communicate what you want?  You want, no NEED that melody. Need it to live again. It’s already fading from your memory, and you can’t let that happen.  But how to tell it that? Very gently you reach out and tap it’s chest with the back of a talon. The last thing it did was sing after all, perhaps this will be enough to prompt it.

The wingling cocks its head. It’s not enough. You sigh heavily and wilt back onto your coils.  The wingling sighs too and sits down. It takes a moment for you to realize the wingling’s imitating you. It understands!  It understands that you want something, it just doesn’t know what!  You jolt back up, excited. Unfortunately, your abrupt, exaggerated movement startles it and it’s cowering all over again. It crouches with it’s hands over its head, trembling and babbling in it’s chirpy language.

You tap it on the head once. It stops jibbering and cautiously peers up at you.  You pat it gently twice to reassure it.  Slowly it uncurls and stands again. It chirps once, a question. In answer, you tap it’s chest again and breathe in deeply.  Watching you uncertainly it pats its own chest and breathes in deeply.  Pleased you smile and nod. You take it one step further, tap its chest, breathe in deeply, and then trace a line from it’s chest up it’s throat. The wingling hesitates for a moment, unsure, but pats its chest with its tiny hands, breathes in and then draws a line with them from chest to chin.

You nod, and wait. The wingling also waits.  It does the gesture once more, but still doesn’t understand. You’ll have to demonstrate. You wait for the wingling to perform the gesture once more. When it does you follow along and then open your mouth, demonstrating the next step. This is a mistake. The wingling flinches back at the sight, and you have to stop it once again with a wall of fingers at it’s back. You shake your head at it and tap it’s chest.  With trembling hands it taps it’s chest and draws the line from chest to chin. You nod, and this time you follow suit, you tap your own chest, breathing deeply, draw a line from your chest to your throat, and then open your mouth, letting the breath out and then closing it again before the wingling can panic.

A light goes on in the wingling’s dark eyes.  It breathes in, taps its chest, draws the line and opens his mouth. You nod with anticipation.  The wingling waits for the next step.  You lower yourself in disappointment.  You can’t show the next step.  You can’t sing. That’s why you need his song so desperately otherwise he would still be inside you and you would be singing the melody yourself.

The wingling registers your disappointment and repeats the gesture a few times, puzzling it out. You turn away with a sigh, wondering if you should just eat it again or let it go to die somewhere else. Then it sings the first note. You whip your attention back to it so fast that you nearly knock it over.  You nod eagerly.  Startled and uncertain the wingling sings a run of notes.  You close your eyes and lower you head to listen, but at the end of the run, the music stops. You open your eyes and lift your head, staring at the little singer intently, frowning.  At the sight of your frown it quickly begins singing again.  You close your eyes and sigh with pleasure.  This time the notes don’t stop, but fall again into that haunting melody. It makes your heart ache, but you don’t want it to stop. It occurs to you that your “snack” is feeding an altogether different hunger within you.  One you hadn’t noticed until now.  

Strange, you’d been so certain how this story ends, Perhaps it isn’t predetermined after all. Perhaps it isn’t even a tragedy. Maybe it’s still being written.
*sings* "In the jungle, the peaceful jungle, a naga finds free fooooooood."

(I am rubbish at descriptions)

Second try:  A Naga finds a small winged snack that turns out to be something more than just food.

The story stands alone, but there are some follow up scenes I may submit (at least into scraps) if there is interest in such.

Please note: this story is VERY different in content and tone from my previous GT poem. It doesn't fit the DA description of Mature, but just to be safe, be aware that:

The following story contains:

  • vore
  • unwilling prey
  • light description of blood/injury,
  • implied violence
  • light description of digestion

Also it uses damn and hell once each (twice if you count this).

© 2016 - 2024 RainhaRaposaVermelha
Comments20
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I cringed at the, "still being written," pun. Really good story!