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Following Zazu

By Strega

Mufasa's eyes went wide as he saw what was happening in the distance. An instant later and he would have missed it; Scar stretched out his neck and swallowed visibly, that he would have seen, but had he not spied the bright feathers disappearing past his brother's lips he would never have known it was Zazu disappearing down Scar's throat. In a moment the bulge in Scar's neck was gone, and the hornbill was too small to make a visible lump in a full grown lion's belly. The crime would have gone unnoticed had he not seen those feathers. It could have been a meerkat or other small creature, after all.

But he -had- seen, and with a series of mighty leaps he reached the cave where his brother sat. There was time to save Zazu, if he were quick.

"How dare you!" Mufasa roared. "Spit him up this instant!"

"Why, dear brother," Scar purred. "I can't imagine what you mean."

"I saw you swallow Zazu," Mufasa snarled. "Cough him up!"

Scar at least the good grace to look a bit guilty. Not apologetic, mind you, since he loathed the hornbill, but guilty at least. "I can't make my digestive system work in reverse, you know," sulked Scar. "I'm afraid the bird is just -"

There was no time to argue. Given a chance Scar would draw out the conversation until Zazu was suffocated or even digested. Mufasa would have to use force.

Scar flinched as the king gripped his lower jaw with one forepaw and forced his mouth open. Before he could mumble a protest his brother shoved the other paw into his throat. Wrist and forearm and elbow followed, his throat flexing and stretching as Mufasa reached deeper with his grasping paw. In the slimy depths of Scar's throat the paw felt around, but there was no sign of Zazu.

Scar tried to rise, to back away from the discomfort of the foreleg down his throat, but Mufasa was having none of it. "Stay still, brother," the king rumbled, and shoved his foreleg into Scar's throat all the way to the shoulder. Still he could not feel the bird. Zazu must already have reached the stomach. He would have to reach even deeper.

Scar winced as Mufasa stuffed his entire head into his maw, twisting so the shoulder with the outstetched leg led the way. Joints in Scar's jaws creaked and popped as skull and ears and dusty mane scraped by fangs and Mufasa's muzzle joined his foreleg in Scar's gullet.

It was wet and dark in Scar's throat and Mufasa grumbled irritably. He pushed deeper still, forcing his cheeks past the tightness at the back of his brother's mouth, and was rewarded when his outstretched claws brushed what could only be feathers. Wet folds of Scar's stomach wall slid and shifted against his toes, and among them he could feel Zazu's wiggling form.

What he could not feel or see was the expression of surprise and discomfort leaving Scar's face. It was replaced with a look of calculation. Scar's eyes narrowed, and his stretched maw was set no longer so much in a grimace but rather the beginnings of a smile. His brother seemed bound and determined to go deeper. A good brother should really help his sibling reach his goal, shouldn't he?

Mufasa's outstretched paw once again brushed Zazu, and he grinned in the damp depths of Scar's gullet. He continued to worm deeper, just a fraction away from his grasping the bird. He didn't feel what Scar was doing.

Each time he pushed deeper on one side, Scar eased that same side of his jaws forward, working them just a bit further over his brother. In the wet smooth muscular tube of Scar's throat Mufasa only noticed that he was able to reach that much further, missing a grip on Zazu only because the hornbill was already coated in a thick layer of saliva from his own trip down Scar's gullet. Mufasa never sensed how far he himself was sliding into the other lion's body. Though his own actions and those of Scar, who exerted every effort to appear perfectly cooperative and harmless, he was soon almost to his waist in his brother's jaws. Or, as Scar would later describe it to the hyenas, "In over his head, and soon to be in deeper than that."

Mufasa, one hindpaw firmly lodged against the cave wall to help push, finally got his toes around Zazu's mucus-coated but still moving body. He was in time! Now to slip back out and -

Then the muscle wrapped around his head and neck clamped down. Mufasa's eyes went wide in astonishment as a great contraction of his brother's swallowing muscles rolled over his forehead, muzzle and mane, gripping him as though in a soft fist and pulling him deeper. Rather than ease himself back out, suddenly he slid a full foot deeper into Scar's throat in one huge lurch. His extended foreleg pushed Zazu against the slippery back wall rather than pulling him back out as he'd intended, and his elbow bent as his entire head and neck followed his foreleg into Scar's stomach.

"Stop fooling around, brother," Mufasa mumbled irritably. Mumbling was about all he could manage with his muzzle held shut by the muscular walls of Scar's belly. His own foreleg was pressed against the side of his jaw, which made it doubly hard to open his mouth, and his other foreleg was trapped to his flank by the smooth flesh of his brother's esophagus. It was a ridiculous situation he'd gotten himself into, Mufasa thought, and he took his foot from the cave wall and made to step back. With both feet planted on the floor it would take only a moment to extract himself from this wet trap.

Mufasa trusted his brother. He was about to learn that this was a mistake, in much the same way an insect learns that the paw descending upon it is not there to make friends.

His first indication that things were horribly awry was when Scar sat back on his haunches and lifted his muzzle. Mufasa's hindpaws left the cave floor and suddenly the long level tube of gullet was instead a sharp slant, a wet smooth chute he could slip down with hardly a hint of resistance. He stiffened in alarm just as a second, even more powerful contraction of Scar's swallowing muscles told him what was happening. Gravity added to the strong throat muscles rolling over him and he was abruptly all too aware that only his haunches, kicking hindpaws and lashing tail remained outside his brother's jaws. In the tight confines of Scar's stomach Mufasa cursed and began to struggle. It had never occured to him that Scar was capable of swallowing him, or inclined to, yet here he was a couple of good gulps from becoming a ponderous bulge in his brother's gut.

Fangs scraped through the last of Mufasa's mane, the bit that reached almost to his groin, as his brother's disjointed jaws creaked wide. With a toss of his head Scar got his jaws around Mufasa's pelvis, the grip of his muzzle beginning to force his brother's muscular thighs out straight. There was an awful lot of meat on those thrashing legs, and a vast amount of strength; Mufasa was bigger and stronger than slender and wicked Scar. It hadn't occurred to Mufasa that his brother might swallow him, and under normal circumstances Scar would never have thought to try something like this. Normal circumstances didn't include a fellow lion shoving his whole head down your throat, though.

Mufasa, who himself had swallowed only modest prey whole, did not know that sneaky Scar got away with hoarding food for himself by the simplest of expedients: he had learned to gulp it down intact. When he shoved half his body down Scar's throat it had been a golden opportunity for his brother to arrange for the meeting to end with a belch.

Scar wasn't about to turn down an chance like that, and though his belly was already drum-tight around Mufasa's head and shoulders he tossed his muzzle skyward once again. Fangs slipped through short fur as Mufasa's rump disappeared, and with a series of difficult but determined gulps Scar devoured his brother's thighs. His whole torso bulged with the bulk of his nearly swallowed meal, and only his own straggly mane kept the skin from showing through his thinly stretched hide. For all his habit of secretively swallowing prey whole, he had never had anything quite so large on its way to his stomach.

Yet bit by bit, with pained gulps and upward tosses of his head he gathered in and swallowed down the last of his meal. He would never get another chance like this. Mufasa would never underestimate or for that matter trust him again, yet it could not possibly have gone better so far. His brother had trusted him long enough for his stomach to become packed tight with arriving lion meat, and though Mufasa was bigger and stronger the brown-maned lion disappearing down his black-maned throat couldn't find the leverage to fight his way free.

Oh, there were painful bumps and bulges that tried to push out through the walls of his gut, but crammed into the stomach and wrapped in gullet as he was Mufasa couldn't bring his claws or teeth to bear. Lacking those he was simply a large and strong lump of meat, and other large and strong prey had made their way through Scar's digestive tract over the years. Never an adult lion, mind you, but he had learned that if prey couldn't hurt him, or at least wriggle enough to get him to cough them back up, then it was just a matter of letting his stomach do its work. Even his own brother would be no exception to this rule once he was fully swallowed.

There came a time, perhaps ten minutes after overly trusting Mufasa had put his forepaw down Scar's throat, that there was nothing but a tufted tail hanging forth from between his fangs and a pair of padded hindpaws protruding from the corners of his mouth. Four-hundred-plus pounds of very unhappy lion king squirmed beneath Scar's distended pelt, half in his stomach and the rest stretched up through his gullet to those last bits that remained outside.

He was stuffed almost to immobility with a meal heavier than himself, but there was nothing for it but to finish. Scar twisted his head from one side to the other, carefully working the twitching and sharp-clawed paws into his maw. In a few more moments he sat there fat-cheeked as a squirrel and all that was left was Mufasa's twitching tail. The bulges in his cheek changed shape, the forms of rounded toes showing as the trapped lion kicked, but with his legs stretched upward through Scar's gullet Mufasa had no leverage and had to constantly fight the relentless pull of gravity. Eventually those paws slipped a fraction further in as Mufasa's saliva-soaked thighs began to enter the stomach. As the bulky paws came fully between his rear teeth Scar gathered his strength and with a last mighty gulp sent his brother and king sliding down his throat.

As his jaws finally resumed something like their usual shape - helped by a chewing motion that popped one joint after another back into place - Scar watched with cruel amusement as Mufasa's lashing tail disappeared inch by inch beneath his nose. When the tufted tip passed ticklishly under his chops and past his fangs he stood, stretched, and with that stretch as much as the well-practiced muscles of his throat deposited the last of Mufasa into his stomach.

Ribs popped and muscles creaked as the muscular thighs and strong calves, padded paws and tufted tail slipped those last few inches through his throat, and somewhere down inside himself he had the warm sense that his stomach was as full as it could possibly be. The last of his furry, ticklish meal was out of his throat and his gut drooped until it dragged the ground, flesh and pelt stretched thin around his meal.

The hard part was at last over and a devilish grin creased Scar's face as he wrapped his forepaws around his swollen middle. Swallowed whole and alive his brother still wriggled beneath his hide, but the layers of slime coating the walls of his stomach kept Mufasa from exercising much of his strength. His brother was still dangerous, but not for much longer. Scar kept his paws tight around his middle, muffling that struggle despite the discomfort - more than a few times moving into actual pain - of having a lion larger than himself crammed into his belly and extremely anxious to get back out.

The struggle in his belly soon weakened. It had taken a huge effort to swallow Mufasa, but his brother had worked just as hard to keep it from happening once he realized Scar wasn't so much helping him retrieve Zazu as sending him after the hornbill. Nor did Mufasa have access to any more air than had gone down with him. When Scar finally let his grip slacken, lifted his muzzle, and let out a long, loud and somehow smug-sounding belch, his meal was all but still.

"Well, brother," the gorged lion murmered, "The king is dead. Or will be in a few moments. Long live the king."

He could not see or hear what happened inside that bulge, though he felt the small movements that were all his great meal could now manage.

So thinly was Scar's hide stretched that pink light illuminated the tight-packed cavern of his belly, and in that light the hornbill was trapped tight to Mufasa's cheek by the surrounding fleshy walls and the lion king's own tangled limbs.

"Don't tell me," the bird said. His feathers were slimy but intact, and would in fact eventually emerge from Scar looking much as they did now. It was the skin under the feathers that had already begun to dissolve. "You saw Scar swallow me and stuck your head down his throat to rescue me. Your head. Down his throat."

"Shut up," the king mumbled. His pelt was slick with stomach juices, his mane matted and damp. His fur too would survive the digestive process, some being passed but most eventually retched up in a slimy mass. His flesh and bone would not be so fortunate. Too weak to escape, his fate was no different than the bird's. It would simply take Scar's guts much longer to process him. "How was I to know -"

"I told you not to trust him," the bird squawked, and poked a wing against his nose. "Now who will rule the land? Scar! The circle of life is not best served by the king being reduced to fertilizer by an unworthy usurper!"

"Shut up," Mufasa repeated. Squeezed from all sides by wet acid-dripping walls, scarcely able to move, it still took only a flip of his paw to push Zazu into his jaws. There was a gulp, a brief bulge in his sodden mane, and no more little bird voice to chide him. After all, Zazu was food one way or the other. It was hardly a crime to change which stomach he lay in.

Under other circumstances he would worry about the digestibility of the hornbill's beak and how painfully it might exit his body if it wasn't, but that was Scar's problem now.

Surrounded by the gurgling rhythms of his brother's body, Mufasa at last relaxed. There was nothing for it, and to be fair, eventually even lions got eaten. Just not whole, not alive, and not by their brothers for the most part.

There was a last twitch in his midsection, and Scar blinked awake from his torpor. Another burp percolated up from his bloated belly, and he realized he had forgotten something.

Hidden in a crack in his cave was a strand of woven fur, black and white like the zorilla he had purchased it from. He had treated the little she-weasel with respect, since the hyena he sent to eat her had simply disappeared, and the one after that as well. It had not taken much thought to realize she was a shaman, a magic-maker. In return for the promise of peaceful relations and further meals (for he had no doubt the hyenas, though ten times her size, had ended up in her stomach somehow) he acquired the charm.

He hooked it from its crack with a claw, wrapped it around his wrist, and growled the few syllables she had taught him. He felt and saw the shimmer as he changed. To any eye, now, he was as thin as ever, practically gaunt for a male lion. It was mere illusion, but it would serve - as long as his swollen gut didn't gurgle too loudly, anyway.

It would take at least a week to digest and pass his brother. Sooner or later someone would come to ask if he knew where Mufasa was, and a distended middle was sure to raise suspicion. Now, though too bloated to easily move, there was no such incriminating bulge. There were a few cubs he'd have to deal with to consolidate his rule, but even if he didn't give them to the hyenas he wouldn't need the charm for that. He certainly needed it now, though.

The new king of the pridelands settled down to digest his meal. He was roused only a few hours later by a pair of lionesses: soon to be his mates, though they didn't know it. He lay in his cool cave, to any eye slim and innocent as the newborn, and answered as he had rehearsed.

"Have I seen Mufasa?" He said, and paused as though to think. After a moment he gestured vaguely toward the pridelands outside the cave mouth. He was also pointing past his own muzzle, and thus quite honestly in the direction he'd seen Mufasa most recently, and said, "Why, yes. The last I saw him, he was following Zazu."

Which was no more and no less than the truth.