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Bottom of the Food Chain

by Bad Manners

===

Dark gray plates slithered across the track. It was hard for an outside observer to tell, but the snake that the plates belonged to was in a hurry. Muno's destination was still a couple of days away, but his recent altercation with a rather hungry predator pressed him even more for time. He lamented how his mint-hued scales still smelled like owl breath even after a quick bath down the river, but he could only blame himself - and he had a job to worry about instead.

Muno still preferred traveling through the faster route along the forest trail, although it could expose him to any predators. The dense trees would offer him some camouflage against any other birds of prey, and he couldn't afford another extended stay in some stranger's stomach.

His ultramarine tongue flicked out sporadically as he serpentined along dirt and pebbles, smelling the slight perfume of saskatoon and pine trees, typical of the late spring around the area. But his eyes, also of a deep lapis lazuli color, were focused on the road. He'd promised himself earlier to never have naps with owls, and he was adding 'no stopping to smell the flowers' to his list. After all, he couldn't afford any more distractions.

"Sque-eak!" An adorable high-pitched cry grabbed his attention, as did the ruffling of leaves. He didn't need to lift his head from the ground to tell that it had come from a nearby rodent; that earthy smell reaching his tongue was unmistakable. He could hear sounds too, an ability shared between very few feral snakes, and it helped him pinpoint its voice as coming from above.

Muno raised his neck and looked up at a shaking branch. Sure enough, there was a light-gray furball hanging from it, a long tail covered with fur, struggling to hang onto the piece of wood with its tiny paws. The snake recognized it immediately as a vole, but wondered what was it doing up there? As far as he could recall, they lived in burrows, not trees...

"Ack-!" The vole gritted its snout, waving its wide hindpaws midair as it failed to climb back onto the branch. It probably hadn't noticed the reptile on the ground, with how busy it was trying to avoid a fall that was inevitable. Muno looked around, wondering if there was some way to help it. There weren't any other critters nearby, just the two of them - and what looked like berries, growing on the branch the vole was hanging from. Maybe that's why it'd climbed up there?

Whatever the reason, it was clearly about to lose its grip, and there was no time to climb up and help it. The quick-thinking snake slithered right underneath the vole, wrapping its coils like a big mint-scaled target to cushion its landing.

Muno's mind was taken back to one time when the snake himself had also lost his balance from a tree, falling right into a hungry bear's maw. Though unlike the ursine, Muno had no intention of taking advantage of this situation. The little rodent was frightened enough as-is. Hmmm...but was it a bear, or a coyote, that swallowed him when he fell from a tree? He must have gotten the details mixed up, which wasn't typical for him. Perhaps the snake had become a snack for predators too many times...

Without much delay, the vole fell from the branch as expected, and Muno's heart skipped a beat. Poor thing was so small that it'd have likely survived the fall on its own, but his larger and lengthy body was perfectly positioned to cushion it from harm nonetheless. The stout rodent landed on the squamous coils, rolling towards the middle where Muno's tailtip was.

"Oof...! Ow..." The meadow mouse groaned dizzily, lying on its back against the scales. Its beady eyes stared off into the sky, watching the tasty berries far away, on the branch it had been on. It didn't even realize where it had landed. Once its balance was recovered, it pushed its paws against the snake to get back up.

The first thing it stared at was Muno's inquiring snout, and it immediately jumped back and fell right on its back again.

"Gah-! A s-snake...!"

"H-Hello, vole." He greeted it friendly, already expecting that sort of reaction from the stout mammal. "Are you alright? That was quite a fall... I'm Muno, by the way."

"A-A-A talking snake!" It squeaked back, still alarmed as it noticed that it was on the coils of its natural predator. "D-Did I die...?"

The snake had a confused look on his face, staying immobile to avoid any harm to the rodent. "What? No... A-And you can talk too, so I don't get the surprise." Despite remaining still, his blue tongue still flicked out every now and then.

"Oh..." It looked around, noticing the mint-hued scales covering its entire peripheral vision. "W-Well, I guess it doesn't really matter anymore. It's all over..."

Muno tilted his head, giving the vole a better look at his gray-plated chin. "Huh? What do you mean...?"

"You caught me, didn't you? A big, mean predator...making a prey out of little old me..."

"B-But I'm not a predator! I was s-slithering around when I saw you about to fall from that tree, and I had to catch you, or you would get hurt..."

"Not a predator...?" The rodent had a look of disbelief. "But you're a snake! ...And much larger than me, at that!"

"W-Well, I'm not that big. You're just incredibly tiny..." Muno eyed up the round vole sitting on his body. It was slimmer than his lengthy body, and shorter than the snake's snout. "And I have absolutely no intention of eating a poor thing like you. If anything, I'm the one who's usually p-prey to other-"

"O, how cruel is destiny! That I would find myself constricted in a terrible snake's grip!"

"U-Umm..." The concerned snake looked around with a slight flush on his face, wondering if the critter was trying to call out to someone else for help - but he could only detect the vole's smell in their surroundings. "I-I'm not constricting you? Or hurting you, or anything. You can j-just get up and leave, if you want..."

"And now," it continued theatrically, "it tries to trick me with the promise of freedom... Toying with its food before swallowing me whole!"

"But that's not what I'm doing! This is all a b-big misunderstanding..." Why was the vole acting so weirdly, he wondered...

"But my eyes don't deceive me. Here I am, frozen in fright, as the beast prepares to strike...!"

"I'm not preparing to-!"

Muno interrupted himself, as something clicked in his mind. The vole was simply spouting fiction of the highest order, of course. The snake had shown no signs of wanting to harm the tiny rodent, but it kept implying that Muno wanted to eat it. And his words kept falling on deaf, round ears. As if it could only imagine a single scenario. One where the snake would take advantage of it and swallow it down, and nothing else. And in a fraction of a second, those thoughts led Muno to a single conclusion. One The reptile's mint-hued cheeks could have turned crimson if he wasn't cold-blooded.

Maybe the vole -wanted- to be eaten by him.

"Lord of teeming creatures," the vole continued, "heed my plea!" It was only getting more dramatic, eloquent, and...religious?...as time went on. "My short time on this mortal plane has been cut even shorter. I'm regretful that there is so much left undone, but at least I'm consoled that there won't be a soul to mourn me. Though, I suppose that is the natural order of things for a small thing like me, sitting at the bottom of the food chain..."

Confused though he was, Muno couldn't help but let out a chuckle at the term 'food chain'. If anything, he was the one at the bottom, not the vole. He was always the one getting snatched and slurped up like a noodle by bigger and meaner creatures, be it an owl or an anthro, or a gryphon, or even another snake. One time, even by a koi fish that was smaller than him. Muno wasn't ashamed of it - in fact, he'd quickly learned to accept his role as prey for others. The snake always came out unharmed in the end, but it didn't mean that the experiences couldn't be pretty rough.

Nonetheless, he wouldn't stoop to a predator's level. He swore to himself to never harm a fragile creature, or swallow a scared little thing like the vole. But the snake was getting mixed signals from the vole. It seemed more thrilled to have found Muno than anything.

But Muno's chuckle seemed to have startled the vole. "...Why are you laughing instead of gorging yourself on my plump being? Is something the matter?"

"O-Oh, sorry. I was just thinking that I-I'm not really qualified to swallow you, or that sort of thing."

"Why not?! Even an infant knows that snakes are famous for swallowing critters whole!" The vole almost sounded offended that the serpent would refuse such an easy meal.

"P-Perhaps other snakes. But not me... If you wanna be eaten, m-maybe look for someone else...?"

The rodent gasped sharply, crossing one of its stubby arms over its furry chest to feign shock. "Are you implying that I would VOLUNTARILY subject myself to such a treatment?! Preposterous...!"

The melodramatic emphasis on the word 'voluntarily' implicitly told Muno what he needed to know: that the vole wanted to pretend to be an unwilling prey. Right.

And it seemed intent that Muno should be the one to devour it. Just great...out of all snakes out there, the vole had to fall on his lap. By all accounts, he should've told it 'no' straight away, but he always had a hard time refusing anyone - especially when they were staring back at him with beady eyes, twinkling with excitement and just a tinge of terror. At least, he'd be more gentle than any of Muno's predators had ever-

Wait, was he actually considering it?!

...No, there was no way. No way that Muno would gobble down the defenseless critter! And no way that the vole would actually enjoy the idea of becoming a snack. Well...maybe that wasn't true. Admittedly, Muno didn't -dislike- being eaten, so he could relate somewhat. It was cozy, and often thrilling when it involved a big mean predator taking advantage of him. At worst, it was a minor annoyance, like his earlier chance encounter with the saw-whet owl. But he still wouldn't go out of his way and seek out someone to eat him. Much less force the idea down the snake's throat, like the vole was doing. On second thought, was that really the best figure of speech that he could come up with right now...?

But behind the rodent's little performance, Muno wasn't even sure if the vole really wanted it, and he would never get a straight answer with the direct approach. But Muno had a plan, one that involved 'playing along' as far as he would comfortably go. Rolling back his eyes before closing them, the self-conscious snake slowly opened his maw, as if he was silently yawning. Lacking any predatory instincts, the best that he could do was to act it out, leaning into the roleplay aspect of it. Just like the dramatically-inclined vole.

The snake snapped his mouth shut, reopening his deep blue eyes to see if the vole had lost interest. And, of course, it hadn't. It seemed that the ultramarine maw, with teeth retracted into his long jaws, and the gentle quivers of his exposed throat when he'd breathed in and out, had more than worked its magic - and the rodent had melted into a flustered furball. There was no doubt that being eaten alive was also the vole's secret fantasy. But why Muno...? Why him?! The irony wasn't lost on him...

If he set his mind on it, Muno could simply gulp the vole in a single swallow. But he still wasn't sure if he -should-. The idea of partaking in vore without being the prey was still awkward. But seeing how the vole had taken interest in his maw somehow brought it into consideration. No Manner of argument would dissuade it, and the simplest solution would be to go ahead with it.

"A-Alright," the snake conceded, just as flustered as the tiny meadow mouse, "j-just don't squirm in there, please...and stop giving me that look..."

The wide-eyed vole basically froze in front of the stand-in 'predator'. Despite hearing exactly what it had hoped to hear, an expression of disbelief was plastered on its face, and its whole body wouldn't budge. Resting its back on Muno's coils, it didn't seem like the stout critter would take the initiative, much to the shy serpent's chagrin.

Without much recourse, Muno brought his snout closer, his lips now shut, until they poked its soft belly. His blue forked tongue flicked out a few times on the short fur, only getting an accelerated heartbeat from his prey as a reaction. 'His prey'... It was still just as hard to come to terms with it, especially as he tasted it idly. He had to admit that the furball packed a surprisingly rich flavor, but even that did little to awaken any instincts in him. Tried as he might, Muno still couldn't see it as his prey.

Could he even physically swallow it...? O-Of course he could, but the intrusive thoughts had a strong grip on his muscles. He simply couldn't muster the will to open his maw again, and Muno himself was getting impatient at his own indecisiveness. He had to change his strategy here...

Maybe he could approach this analytically. Well... His only instinct was that he wanted the rodent to be safe. And it should be safe within his gastrointestinal tract, in theory. But without the pressing need, he saw no reason to tuck it there. So the snake forced himself to imagine that the vole would be in danger if he didn't swallow it - perhaps, a meaner predator would snatch it instead. Whereas if it was inside of him, it would be safe-

...No, he wasn't completely sold on this. But it was a start. And it helped Muno to overcome the feeling that his jaws were frozen shut, letting him part his lips over that soft, exposed underside. He tried to clear his mind, paying attention to his own movements and trying to ignore the rodent. But the more Muno tried, the more he found that it was impossible.

He could feel the vole's tiny chest thumping rapidly against the scales of his snout as it traced the upper part of its torso. He could feel his own heart racing. The vole's short limbs and even shorter fur brushed against his fleshy gums, and it felt so alien. The texture didn't give such a weird mouthfeel, though. The oddness was mostly from the awareness that the sensations originated from a living being.

"Squeak...!" The tiny voice reached Muno's ears, just a split second before its owner fell into the snake's maw.

The vole was so small, and the snake was too distracted with his own thoughts to realize that his maw had been opening wider all along. He instinctively tried to shut his jaws, squeezing the furry critter's haunches with a toothless bite and prompting a second squeak, muffled between his cheeks this time. His mandibles didn't come down too hard on it, simply pressing on the soft rodent once and realizing how doughy its midsection was. Muno's fangs were retracted as they always had been, so he wasn't worried about his gentle bite harming it.

Muno opened his jaws again as far as they could before freezing, using his coils to hurriedly nudge the pair of hindpaws into his mouth. With barely any effort, the vole was fully inside, except for its furry gray tail. Tiny feet pressed against the bottom of his maw, testing the flesh and giving out more of its flavor. Initially, Muno was worried that its digits would claw into him at any moment during the whole act, but the pawing seemed only curious about the surroundings. It was still hard to accept that the vole would enjoy being his prey.

There was already some saliva squeezing onto the entrapped mammal's skin, though Muno imagined that no lubrication would be necessary to send the round rodent down in a single gulp. And the constant palpation around his maw was unnerving him.

Trying to keep his jaws as relaxed as they would allow, he raised his head, tossing it back to try and tuck the vole away. However, as it turned out, he was too nervous to swallow. The rodent slipped further in regardless, its snout being forced to nudge into Muno's throat.

"Ghk-!"

He instinctively coughed. The walls of his esophagus lurched forward, compressing and pushing the prey back to his mouth. His lungs squeezed too tightly, to the point of aching. But he tried his best to fight the gag reflex, keeping his mouth shut around the vole.

There was some squirming and speaking inside of his mouth that followed, too muted for him to make out any words. But the impromptu reaction from the rodent only made it worse, and Muno's stomach turned, wanting nothing more than to throw up. Maybe he should've listened to his body for once. The only thing that he stood to lose was disappointing the vole, who he didn't even know. His regret only got stronger, and his mind was begging for him to stop. And yet, that reason alone was enough to let the rodent remain lodged in his maw, instead of pushing it back out onto his coils.

He wouldn't stop now. His recent failure only motivated him to try harder, and he tossed his head back once more with a timid gulp. Given their relative sizes, it was surprisingly difficult to scarf down the vole. His body should've been capable of swallowing something much larger than this, but Muno still found that he had to put a lot of mental effort into this. It was so conflicting. And it still felt wrong, somehow. And he still kept trying.

To say that his esophagus was tense would be an understatement, so Muno took deep breaths to relax and avoid choking again. Slowly but surely, he felt the vole sink down into his neck from his maw, and it seemed much bigger and heavier than expected. No...it was all nerves, it had to be. But he now knew better than to simply ignore that weight traveling into his body.

Giving it his all, he focused with concern that he could gag again. He closed his eyes, trying to imagine what the vole was going through. Muno had been swallowed by bigger snakes before, so he had a mental map. The whole, long neck was like a large tunnel, its walls made of flesh. In his case, everything should have been ultramarine, but it might as well be pitch black. The other organs, mainly the heart and lungs, were parallel to the throat, and more oblong than those in other animals. The vole was likely passing by them at this point, no doubt hearing the snake's rapid pulse just across from the wall.

At this point mid-swallow, some serpentine predators would normally slither away with their new peppermint-flavored catch. Instead, Muno preferred to stay put during the act. Being sent down to a snake's long stomach was always a slow affair, and... A-And the vole was going down at about the same pace.

Huh.

He opened his eyes and focused again on his coils, watching along his neck where the vole must've been. There was no bulge, but its fur was noticeably brushing against the esophagus on its way down. Automatic peristalsis was fully in control now, gently carrying the furball deeper into his body. He thought that he wouldn't be able to swallow it down, that his body was somehow incapable of it. That it was broken. But here it was, proving Muno wrong. Just like any other snake, he was perfectly capable of gulping down whole prey. Honestly...he didn't know how to feel about it. Glad? Relieved? Guilty? Ashamed? The internal turmoil was conflicting, to say the least. Was he a predator or not?

Whatever the answer, he was more worried about letting the matter work itself out to its conclusion. The vole would get what it wanted. If anything went wrong, at least Muno was confident that he could bring it back out.

Transiting through rolling walls, the small rodent likely wouldn't even register the curvature along the dark gullet of the coiled snake. Nor how deep it was, more than halfway to his stomach. Despite his hesitation, he was curiously very aware about his own body in a way that he'd never experienced before. The snake had wondered if the act of swallowing the vole would spark any hidden drive in him, but that didn't seem to be the case.

He decided to unravel his body, slowly moving his head away from his tail to straighten his mint-hued scales. At first, the diminutive mass in his body - insignificant though it was - threw him off. There really was someone inside of him. He could hardly believe it, no matter how many times the point was hammered into him. The snake wasn't at the bottom of the food chain - but climbing up a single step was an arduous accomplishment. Although he didn't feel any difference in his self-image, nor did he think that swallowing the vole was particularly pleasant to him. He may be a predator now, but only technically.

The light squirms shifted to the back of his throat. The vole was casually squeezed into his stomach, deposited along the wall closest to his belly plates. Muno felt how the empty gastric chamber expanded, cupping the mammal, and how its paws wouldn't stop moving even as its whole body, from stubby snout to furry tail, was sealed behind the sphincter. Ugh... Simply thinking about it suddenly hit Muno with a mild wave of nausea. He took deep breaths to regain his composure, and brought his head to the widest part of his body.

"A-A-Are you okay in t-there...?" He stuttered badly.

No response...other than what vaguely sounded like a muffled squeak. The vole was definitely trying to speak back, but Muno couldn't make out any of its words.

"S-Sorry, I can't hear you. I think- Hic...!"

His head and neck jumped when he stopped himself with an involuntary hiccup, no doubt jostling the rodent around.

"Oh, sorry about that... T-Tap twice at the wall if you're okay."

His request was followed by another silent pause, until he felt the tiny digits kneading the wrinkles of the pliant wall, two times in succession.

"T-That's good, I think... Hic-! Ulp..."

The next hiccup made him queasier than the last. Muno shook his head, and muttered to himself.

"I still can't believe I stopped my errand to do this... W-Wait, my errand!"

Suddenly having his mind cast back to his duty, he looked around at his surroundings. The forest trail was getting darker as the sun approached the horizon. How much time had he wasted, hours...? By all accounts, he had already been late on his schedule. But now he was really jeopardizing his mission.

Muno turned to his stomach again, anxiety temporarily obfuscating his nausea. "I need to let you out now. I gotta get going, I'm in a rush to-"

The stout vole must have mustered all of its energy, wiggling against the gut and pushing all of its four paws out. All of that movement was fully concealed, not even bulging out his scales, but the sudden outburst couldn't be more obvious. But it wasn't an attempt at a escape, his gut feeling told him. Grabbing his attention -was- the goal, and Muno had a good hunch why.

"U-Umm... Are you trying to tell me you wanna s-stay in there?"

There wasn't any response, no squirming or pushing at all. Muno was confused at first...until he realized that the vole was still pretending to be unwilling. Even now, it wasn't gonna drop the charade... In fairness, Muno could empathize with that. Being used to the role of prey, he had acted similarly before, pretending that he didn't enjoy being stuck in a stuffy stomach for who knows how long. Hmm...actually, did Muno enjoy getting eaten as well? It would explain quite a lot. Surprisingly, being the predator for once was putting a lot into perspective...

"O-Okay, then... Heh...g-guess I could use a s-snack for the trip..." He tried his best at teasing his prey, before silently cringing to himself when he heard his own words back. "Er, s-sorry, I should've asked if I could call you 'snack'..."

Muno couldn't say that he'd expected the vole to react with two timid pushes at the wall. The snake was so flustered by the reaction that he could bury his face in his coils and-

...No, that's right. He still had a mission. Deep breaths. He looked back at his body one last time.

"I-I really need to get going...! Ugh, can't believe we're actually doing this... Hic-! J-Just don't squirm so much in there, please, or I'll throw up..."

The vole finally was willing to listen to him. As it settled inside, Muno began to crawl away from the tree it had found it. Back on the trail once more, he continued eastward, following his shadow cast by the setting sun. The extra bit of weight in his middle point didn't impact his slithering as he began to rush, but he could only imagine the otherworldly massage that his occupant was indirectly receiving, from the stomach swaying side to side. There was one silver lining in all of this: Muno's journey no longer would be as lonely as he'd imagined.

Already his queasiness was gone, and instead Muno's mind was preoccupied with plans. Thinking of ways that he and his prey could better communicate with each other while it was in his gut. Projecting how long he'd be able to travel tonight before his slithering body needed some rest, and where he might find some food - after spitting out the vole, of course. Maybe not far from here, so that it could return home...

Although, making note of something it had said during its dramatic rambling, Muno suspected that it didn't really have a home. Something about 'no soul to mourn it'... Whenever he stopped to check on it - and make sure the rodent was safe and sound - he'd have to ask it directly.

Because if that was the case, and the vole had nowhere else to go... Ugh. He shuddered at the thought of eventually being convinced to swallow it all over again.