MEETING HER MATCH
 
by Bitter
 
 
In the deserts of the land of Sorja, near the mouth of the river Eripides, there exists a city called Senzorca where the naga live. Like the naga themselves, Senzorca was built low to the ground, with single-story buildings predominantly made of mud brick and sandstone, with one exception: the grand colliseum that towered over all else. But the colliseum was empty at this time of year, when the harvests were still being pulled in from the rare tracts of fertile ground near the Eipides. There would be time later to enjoy the games; for now, everyone was focused on the task of bringing in the food while it was ripe.
 
The Warriors Guild, too, was preparing for a harvest after its own fashion. Every year around spring-time (chronologically speaking; Sorja's seasons could be just as easily divided into "hot" and "rainy"), the most promising naga adventurers would set out from the safety of Senzorca and venture into the distant lands beyond Sorja. When they returned, if at all, they invariably brought back with them tales of great deeds and, more importantly, all sorts of treasures and exotic goods. This was the time of year for the errant naga to return home, and preparations were being made to welcome them. Unused residences were being tidied, the merchant quarter was expanding as salesman filled it with stalls, and the guild hall itself was being prepared for a great gathering. The return of the adventurers was cause for celebration, and the naga had a holiday set aside just to hold a festival in the Warriors' honor.
 
Within the Warriors Guild hall, a building indistinguishable from the rest in Senzorca except by its width and breadth, there was a naga at work replacing the usual furnishings with tables. Normally the Warriors Guild acted as an emergency lodging for guild members, a place for healers to ply their trade, training grounds for the neophytes, and of course a place to maintain the organization of the guild. As it was every year, it was being converted to a gathering hall; the training dummies were being shipped out to any naga with space to store them, the desks and parchments being shuffled off to the side and locked up, and all the resulting empty space being filled with long wooden tables. Of course the naga at work at this last task was not alone physically; other naga were straining at the sides of the table to hold it up and not let it drag on the sandy floor below. But she was alone in her own mind, the facts of her physical occupation not enough to wholly employ her thoughts.
 
The naga's name was Kisarin, and she belonged to the Warriors Guild. Like all naga, she was half snake, though the measure could be a point of dispute. She possessed the upper half of a human's body and the lower half of a snake, though the brown-scaled snake part was closer to three-quarters of her length. Without the indication by her clothing, it would be difficult to tell where her human half met her snake half; her human skin was tanned to nearly the same color as her scales. To Kisarin's embarrassment, her hair and eyes similarly matched the rest of her body, making her rather monochrome overall. It seemed a shame to her to defy the body she'd been given, so she dressed in simple colors as well. When she was within Senzorca, she covered herself with simple white robes that kept the sun off and nothing else. She had no need of fashion or extravagance; her life, much like her color palette, was a simple and easy one. Kisarin was a Warrior, but not of the kind that ranged far from Sorja; she was an oasis-runner, a Warrior who struck out into the desert and retrieved the rarities that collected where the desert sank low enough to gather water. It kept her away from Senzorca for weeks at a time sometimes, but her adventures were never on the scale as those who left in the spring were. Her work was difficult but never exciting, and it reflected in her appearance: her arms were well-muscled, her belly was tight, her bustline was slimmer that she'd have liked it to be, and her hair was perpetually bound up in an unflattering ponytail. She could look the part of a woman if she let her hair down, but such opportunities were few and far between.
 
And fewest of all, rare to the point of non-existence, were opportunities to look the part of a woman with a naga named Sarek playing the part of a man. It wasn't that he was anything less than a perfect male specimen, at least insofar as naga are concerned. Sarek was a rare type: a green-scaled naga, better suited to the distant wilds than the desert sands, with charcoal-black hair and a chest that seemed to have been hewed from stone rather than built from muscle. But the real proof of his worth was in his face; his jaw was a bit broader than other naga, the skin just slightly more worn. Sarek was no young whelp, all vigor and no substance. He was a proven adventurer whose fortune was rooted in more than good luck. He was known among all the naga of the Warriors Guild as an experienced man who still possessed the fortitude to employ his skills. Kisarin ached to gain his notice, and had for quite some time.
 
She was in a much better position to gain it than others, in fact. In her younger years, when she was still a fresh recruit to the Guild and had more spirit than sense, she'd actually acted on her heart's fancy and struck up a conversation with Sarek. He was as warm then as he was now; among his many virtues was an outgoing demeanor that welcomed new acquaintances. Nervousness had robbed that initial conversation of any real meaning; Kisarin vaguely remembered learning something about the proper way to shine a longsword, and that only because it had left her with such a wonderfully illicit image of Sarek in her head. In time she managed to cool herself off and actually engage him in something resembling coherent intercourse. As it turned out, Sarek had a taste for sososes, a kind of fruit that grew in the desert oases. Kisarin, as an oasis-runner, had prime access to sososes, and from that day forward she became the person he went to for them, especially when he was setting out on the year's journeys and wanted a good supply of them to take with him. But, sadly, that formal contact had robbed her of any more intimate forms. Sarek spoke to Kisarin as if she were any other male, which was not a wholly negative thing; it was clear that he respected her and enjoyed her company, but there was an infuriating distance between them that left Kisarin feeling as though he were perpetually holding her at arm's length.
 
The problem was made all the worse by Sarek's choice of mates. Kisarin had a name for the kind of women that seemed to gravitate toward Sarek like iron to a magnet: "egg sacks". They were the kind that never left Senzorca, the high-born, the trendy and the stylish. To Kisarin they were all the same-- spoke with the same grating lilts, wore their hair in one of a few predictable styles, dressed in the popular styles of the time. This Kisarin could emulate if she could stomach the loss of her dignity, but there was something the egg sacks possessed that Kisarin did not, from which she derived her epithet: broader, heavier bodies with fat underneath their skin. Kisarin was athletic and boyish; the egg sacks had bodies that were built for creating young. It was what they lived for, near as Kisarin could tell. Their life's ambition was to let some worthy mate fill their eggs. Depending her mood, Kisarin alternately regarded them as pathetic or exactly where she herself wanted to be. How she longed for Sarek to take notice of her!
 
Instead she was forced to settle for the mirror images of the egg sacks; the hot-blooded young men who enjoyed tempting fate by coupling with a Warrior. Kisarin was nobody of consequence among the Warriors Guild, but even the lowest of Warriors held a certain rugged appeal. Though uncommon, it was not unheard of for some playboy of the upper castes to boast that they could teach her the joys of behaving like a true woman. Reluctantly, Kisarin usually took them up on their offers, simply to scratch the itches within her loins. Though her lovers were often as passionate as they claimed, they were never near a substitute for the one she really wanted. So when they had spent themselves within her, given her their sperm to wrap up in eggs and transform into the next generation of naga, she took much more of their bodies from them than they had planned to offer. To date, every man that Kisarin had taken to bed had been then taken to her stomach. Kisarin was no Caducean, but there seemed to be a certain properness to using her lovers' bodies to fill the very eggs they had hoped to fertilize. And despite gaining a small reputation as a mate-eater (it was well-known that naga sometimes consumed their mates after coupling with them, but to do so often was abnormal), Kisarin nonetheless had a steady flow of suitors willing to see if they could be the one to tame her.
 
It was for this reason as well that Kisarin was prevented from ever acting on her feelings for Sarek. Though the thought of eating him was unthinkable, Kisarin knew all too well the way Warriors behaved themselves. The Guild's Warriors were used to life outside of Senzorca, where survival was a matter of devouring one's enemies at the first opportunity. Kisarin was an exception, but the norm for Warriors was well above average; more than one egg sack had entered Sarek's den giggling and exited it gurgling. Honestly, Kisarin couldn't blame him. After all, who could turn down all that rich, delicious fat, so freely given? Eating them was certainly superior to the alternative; Kisarin dared not entertain the thought of her beloved ending up as flesh in some greedy tart's breasts in some moment of weakness. But still the fact remained: Sarek's lovers, just like her own, had a tendency to wind up in his stomach. To take him to bed with her would perhaps be the most dangerous move of her life, if not her last. And so Kisarin watched the approaching day of the Warrior's return with trepidation, dreading another dry season spent watching him tarry with other women and never working up the nerve to tell him how she actually felt.
 
At last the day arrived when the Warriors began to return. They traveled in increasingly larger groups; some early arrivals came alone, then more and more of them arrived together, having rendezvoused on the way home. Kisarin did not see Sarek in the shuffle; he tended to range furthest and thus take the longest to return home. She busied herself by tending to the needs of the other arrivals; she tracked census information and ran errands for people who needed things moved to and fro. The activity kept her from brooding too much; despite the fact that she missed Sarek's arrival entirely, she paid it no mind. His return was a foregone conclusion. It was when the time for the celebratory festival came that Kisarin first paid Sarek's presence any mind. She sought him out at the guild hall, which was now filled with tables, elaborate paper decorations, and Warriors. Snacks were laid out across every table; Kisarin bore with her a clay bowl of the best sososes from her latest run. At last she spotted Sarek, who was now dressed in a perfectly ordinary brown cloth tunic and a turban, and coiled herself up next to him. As the humans from the far north said, "A naga never wants for a chair".
 
"Kisa!" Sarek said, his high bass voice instantly turning Kisarin's nerves to jelly with that one word. "I was just telling these knuckleheads about you. We ran into a yeti in the Kulgans, on our way to Granstraven, you know the furry gray things, all teeth, that I've told you about? We ran into it, then we ran from it, ha ha! But we lost all the sososes we had left! It was awful! I've been pining for them for months!" Kisarin had scarcely placed the bowl down before he was taking a handful of the dark red, grape-like fruits. "But how have you fared this year, Kisa?"
 
"Very well," Kisarin replied, exaggerating slightly. It had certainly been a better than average year for her Guild endeavors, but the real prize she sought was still fluttering just out of reach. "But please, let's hear about your travels! Here it is the same as always."
 
Sarek let out a hearty laugh at the truth. Thus cleared from the formality of asking about that which he already knew, Sarek launched into a series of tales about his travels, beginning, as he usually did, with the most interesting story rather than that which had come first. He and his band had traveled to the sacred forest of Ysilir simply to see what there was to be had. Their tracker had spotted a rare find indeed: an elven gatherer, abroad in the woods. The naga had capitalized on the error and laid an ambush, forming a circle around the elf like a coil. They were near at hand when the gatherer finally spotted them; as the elf attempted to flee, he had tried to run past Sarek himself. By Sarek's tone, the outcome was obvious well before he recounted it: he had caught the elf and immediately proceeded to swallow him. His description of the sweetness of the elf's skin and the way the elf had squirmed all the way down (and not, Sarek explained in bawdy detail, in any form of resistance) had the mouth of every naga in earshot awash. With great regret, Sarek's companions affirmed the truth of his story, cursing the ill luck that had carried the elf away from them.
 
The stories continued on from there, Sarek and his companions each talking over one another, interrupting to offer their own perspective or contradict someone's overreaching claims of valor. Kisarin listened to everyone with equal gusto; regardless of the teller, she loved to hear of the foreign lands and the creatures that inhabited them. But in the middle of an interesting tale about the centaurs that lived in the east, Kisarin was distracted from the story by a ticklish contact at the base of her tail. A little pinprick was sliding along her scales from the side that Sarek was sitting on. Showing no outward sign to the others at the table, she investigated this intrusion by shifting her coils until her tailtip was near the point of contact. She flicked the point outward, and it met, expectedly, with something just like it. It was Sarek's tailtip, Kisarin determined, and struggled not to smile involuntarily. Sarek, just like her, was completely straight-faced and gave no indication of the contact going on below. There was nothing illicit about it, no more so than for humans to rub their heels together, but the very fact that Sarek had made such a gesture set Kisarin's heart fluttering.
 
The pile of stories grew as the snack bowls emptied and time made its eternal progression. The lanterns burnt away their oil and the Warriors were running out of yarns to spin. In time, groups of naga began to make their way out of the guild hall, destined for a well-deserved night's rest. Sarek's team eventually joined their ranks, and as Sarek rose to go Kisarin went with him, still talking about the year that had transpired. As they traced curves in the sandy streets, their conversation turned to the future, of their plans for the coming weeks and year. Kisarin found herself framing everything in terms of her dealings with Sarek, and as he replied he seemed to do the same. The two naga made their way through the various houses, past the slums and into the seasonal quarters. They crossed in front of Sarek's den and came to a halt. As Kisarin made some meaningless comments in praise of the year's festival, Sarek said, with a sudden careless tone, "Kisa... would you care to join me inside?"
 
Kisarin's mind spun. For any but the richest of naga-- a Warrior could never hope to reach such wealth in their notoriously limited spans-- a home was nothing more than a bedroom. The rest of the furnishings typically associated with the household were communal; there were areas where naga could cook and clean or entertain guests on their own. Therefore, an invitation to a naga's home was an invitation to bed. Before Kisarin could register what Sarek had just proposed, he had pushed aside the wooden door and stood halfway through, begging her response with his gaze. All the anxieties, hopes, and fears of the past several years grew large and battled one another in Kisarin's head; the sudden demand for a verdict robbed her of conscious decision. Turned loose by her mind's paralysis, her body answered of its own accord, and Kisarin found herself slithering toward the entry. As she regained her senses-- in truth, they had only been lost for an instant-- Kisarin quivered with delight, unable to stop a smile from parting her lips. For all her misgivings, it was what she really wanted.
 
But misgivings they remained. As Sarek barred the door (a necessary precaution against desert winds blowing it open), Kisarin said, "Sarek?"
 
"Hmmm?" he intoned back.
 
"I... I'm honored," Kisarin said.
 
"Ha ha!" came the haughty laugh from Sarek, which always came out as if deliberate. "To be honest, I wasn't quite sure you'd accept!"
 
Kisarin blinked. "Why on earth wouldn't I? Any woman would!"
 
As Kisarin spoke, Sarek moved to a bowl of clear water, which he filled with a ladle at a barrel. "You're not 'any woman', Kisa," he explained. With the bowl full, he rinsed his hands off. Following his lead, Kisarin did the same. "You're not like the others. You're strong, and willful, and... you're not like the court women," he said, seemingly having to find the right words.
 
Kisarin raised her eyebrows. "What's gotten into you?" she said playfully, hoping to lighten the mood.
 
"I have no idea how to treat you!" Sarek said, mixing jocularity and helplessness.
 
Kisarin twittered, hoping she didn't sound too much like an egg sack by doing so. "Treat me like a woman, Sarek," she said, tugging at the end of her hair-tie and letting the knot slip out. Her hair fell down around her shoulders. Lowering her grip slightly, she made a much stronger proof of her femininity by pulling the sleeves of her robe over her shoulders and letting it droop below her bust. Kisarin felt a sudden surge of pride despite her trimness; Sarek's assurance that he loved her for her unlikeness to the egg sacks turned all her shame over her endowments into confidence.
 
Sarek wore a sly smile. "No," he said, without a hint of the previous uncertainty. "I'll treat you better." He pulled his turban off of his head in one motion and began working at the laces on his tunic. Kisarin flowed out of her sleeves as she closed the gap between them, then ruffled Sarek's hat-flattened hair while he pulled apart the last knot. For a moment Kisarin drank in the sparkles of his opalescent eyes, then leaned back to watch as Sarek uncovered his chest. Her heart quivered with a primal feminine excitement at the sight of such raw power put on naked display. But not entirely naked: as the tunic fell away and slapped against the scales that lay behind Sarek, there remained one last item on each of them.
 
The naga of Senzorca all wore a particular style of undergarment: an oblong patch of cloth, sewn onto a bit of rope tied about the waist. These were rarely unique, never decorated and solely intended to keep one's genitals out of sight from everyone else. It was unseemly to remove it except in private, with the sole exception of having it removed by a lover. Kisarin drew forward and pressed herself against Sarek's chest; the feel of his powerful arms wrapping around her shoulders sent shivers through her body. It took a moment for her to remember her own role in the dance, which was to reciprocate the gesture. Slipping her hands beneath Sarek's armpits, she nimbly unbound the loincloth's knot and pulled it away by one end. She felt her own sliding away, the lumpy texture of the rope catching her belly-skin and kneading it as it went past. The two naga now had nothing between their bodies; Kisarin could feel the lumpy, wrinkled skin of Sarek's sack pressing up against the smooth exterior of her labia. Kisarin gently swirled around behind Sarek, prompting him to do likewise to her. Their tails braided a pathway to the bed; when they arrived, Kisarin was the nearer of the two. She bent backward and laid herself down, thinking there to be no higher position in all the world.
 
Slowly, Sarek similarly curved downward, but he came to rest much lower on Kisarin's body than she had anticipated. As his hands traced symmetrical paths along her sides and inward toward her womanhood, his intentions became clear. with two fingers per hand he prised open her slit and with his tongue he invaded her depths. Kisarin let out a soft sigh as its twin snakelike ends brushed along her inner walls, teasing a layer of fluid out from between her folds. Kisarin groaned to let Sarek know he could delve deeper, flowed as much as she was consciously able to reward him for his bravery. Gaining confidence, he spiraled his tongue through her, painting her insides with a wholly different kind of wet, squirming flesh. But this was merely an overture, a toll paid to pave the road to the true destination. Knowing this, Kisarin began winding her tail around them both: her own upper snake and Sarek's chest. With rippling contractions, she pulled him upward; Kisarin could feel Sarek extending his tongue to stay within her and tracing sticky trails across her belly in the attempt. The friction was making his shaft harden; slowly and steadily his key was made ready for her lock. As his length ran out and Sarek could no longer even tease the nub at Kisarin's vagina's apex, Sarek still made use of his tongue in taking in the flavor of Kisarin's body. He punished her for denying him his work by slickening all the rest of her; as his head rose, he wet the base of her breasts, her nipples, and the pit at the base of her neck with his saliva. When at last their faces were level, Sarek let out an appreciative laugh. "None of the others would ever have tried something like that!" he said with equal parts accusation and admiration. To this Kisarin's only response was to silence him by grabbing his tongue with her own. As a gentle but insistent tug drew their lips together, Kisarin wiggled her hips until Sarek's now-ready member was nestled into the dip of her mound. The first thrust she left to Sarek.
 
With an adventurer's caution Sarek advanced, gently testing her limits. "Deeper, deeper," Kisarin whispered, feeling her vagina opening easily. At last Sarek reached the end of his length and began to withdraw, the retreating friction no less pleasant than that from Sarek's entrance. When his tip threatened to emerge, Sarek again reversed himself and sent it back to whence it came. It continued this way for several gyrations, both acclimating to the feel of each other's bodies, until at last Kisarin said, "Whaaaat, are you scared of breaking me, Sarek?"
 
Sarek's next plunge fell with more force. "Simply testing how far this chink in your armor runs," he said flippantly. "Before I make you bleed from it."
 
"Haaaaaa!" Kisarin breathed, haughtiness and eroticism mixing in that one exhalation. "If your sword doesn't snap off in it first!" She clenched around his member, resisting him.
 
As their familiarity built, their lovemaking grew more forceful. Sarek thrust with more vigor; Kisarin ground her hips up against his. Involuntarily their snake halves wound around each other and around the upper ends of the naga. Kisarin lifted up, taking Sarek with her as her tail swept underneath them like a creature with its own will. Sarek's tail followed it, curling in the other direction; the brown and emerald scales soon obscured the two lovers from view. It was as though they were simply a wildly-jostling reptilian ball, an appearance which had led some naga to vulgarly refer to lovemaking as "knotting". Kisarin and Sarek were certainly knotted now, inextricable from one another and happy for it. Sarek continued to pump the juices from Kisarin's womanhood while threatening to leave his own within it. His hands worked at her breasts, tamping them down with his palms and flicking the light-brown nipples with his thumbs. He devoured the chirps these ministrations elicited as they arose from Kisarin's throat; their lips were locked together, their tongues still at play. Taking a risk, Kisarin pressed further into Sarek's mouth with her tongue and lapped at the back of his throat, the place that causes humans to gag but in naga produces the urge to feed. Sarek's throat squeezed in response, trying to take down her tongue, and all of a sudden Sarek was moving with still greater gusto. He reciprocated the gesture, teasing out Kisarin's own predatory instincts, tempting her with the end of his tongue. Neither could gain a hold, but an unrequited passion burns hottest. This new context was one they could never have gained out of any other lover: they were Warriors locked in mortal combat, each striving to take the other to the limits of their endurance before they reached the end of their own. Kisarin had never felt so inflamed, so driven to see her mate satisfied. Her moans became like growls, each thrust of her hips an attack against the man who was a bizarre juxtaposition of enemy and ally. In turn, Sarek's grunts were hot and bestial, his every drive a piercing blow with the aim of widening Kisarin's gash.
 
It was impossible for Kisarin to tell how near Sarek was to defeat, only that he grew ever more insistent, panting fiercer every moment. As for Kisarin herself, her every nerve was crackling and contractions ran up and down her tail like waves. Heat swelled in her breasts and she could feel her belly tightening, twisting. A groan reverberated in Kisarin's chest unlike those before it, a softer "Hmmmmmnnnnn" that betrayed her. She heard one of Sarek's grunts become a laugh; indignant, she tried to regain her standing with an aggressive thrust. She managed two more before the next "Hmmmmmmnnnn" rolled up and carried away her strength. Desperately Kisarin tried to compress her ribs and deny her traitorous lungs breath, but a single thrust from Sarek put a moan too thick to contain with her chest; all of Kisarin's resistance only managed to turn it into a stammered "Hh-hhhm-hmmmmmmmnnn!" It took all of Kisarin's concentration simply to keep from breaking; she had no time to think of a riposte. She had little time to ponder her doom, as Sarek's next thrust was accompanied by a shock that ran all throughout Kisarin's body, from her womb to her hair to the tip of her tail. Kisarin knew now that she had been defeated, but she resisted to the last, curling inward with the incredible tension that was building in her abdomen. Then the shockwave exploded out from her, sending ripples all throughout her body and hot, delicious cries from her mouth. Somewhere in that firestorm of pleasure she heard Sarek let out a sigh, and then he too was stiff and twitching, pouring out all that lay within him. Their tails wrestled haphazardly, without technique or motive, until at last they fell limp with their owners, exhausted.
 
Kisarin and Sarek lay in a pile for some time, the crash that follows passion robbing them of the energy even to look in each other's faces. The feel of each other's pulses, vibrating in their skin and sensed through their scales, spoke more than any mere gaze could. Their blood jittered in their veins but flowed in an ever cooler pace, unmistakably conveying their satisfaction to the touch of the other. Sarek was the first to recover; for a fleeting moment Kisarin's blood warmed again at the feel of his scales rippling against hers. But then her ease was replaced with fear. There was a specific, deliberate pattern to the way that Sarek was moving. It was friendly, almost hypnotic in its slowness. She recognized it immediately, having used it quite often against a lesser beast or one of her paramours. It was the peaceful slither of a naga that was preparing to strike. Sarek planned to eat her.
 
And why shouldn't he, Kisarin thought to herself. She who transformed her lovers into their own descendants! No Warrior of any merit would take her to bed without being prepared to defend himself. And for Kisarin, she who made a devoured her every partner, defense must necessarily entail preemption. Now Sarek was making ready to do what she most assuredly had planned to do to him. Kisarin thought to speak in her own defense, to proclaim her love for Sarek, but the protest died before it was even made. How could she show her honesty? The proof was already laid against her in the dozens of digested men, and mere words could not reverse history. And if Sarek truly intended to eat her, then a moment's hesitation could prove fatal. Immediately Kisarin knew that she had but one escape: the same path she had walked before. To survive, she would have to devour the only man she had ever really loved. She began to move as Sarek did, sinuously sliding around his skin as if preparing for another bout of love-making rather than the battle in which they were now engaged. Kisarin kept her head low as she wound around their entwined bodies, watching and waiting for a moment of weakness in Sarek's posture. But as she curled upward toward Sarek's waist, she felt something that stopped her cold.
 
Kisarin felt a sudden muscular wetness wrapping around the tip of her tail. It was hardly a fatal blow-- quite the opposite, in fact, as dueling naga typically struck for the head-- but nonetheless it halted her. Sarek was curled upward, his chest erect, his tongue curled over Kisarin's end. Kisarin found herself still able to move; he had not pinned her as she had expected he might. Kisarin reared up, looked into Sarek's eyes with indignation in her own. There she found a look that she could only interpret as an invitation. It was neither so weak to be pleading nor so strong as to be a threat. With the exact same coolness as he had invited her into his home, Sarek now invited her into his body. It was absurd, and the sheer audacity of it cowed Kisarin into inaction. Sarek gently tugged at the tailtip with his tongue and the salivary heat of his mouth sent an involuntarily shiver up Kisarin's spine. But Sarek did not swallow; he waited for Kisarin's response.
 
Limply, Kisarin drooped forward. Her mouth came to rest on his shoulder; in a quick motion she opened it and bit him, just hard enough to break the skin. She felt him wince at the injury, but, as expected, his tongue lurched backward with her tail in tow. It would be unseemly of a Warrior simply to surrender, to allow themselves to be devoured without a fight. Kisarin had made a Warrior's supplication: a token resistance, making Sarek pay a blood price for the use of her body in this way, however small. She licked at the rich red fluid as Sarek similarly lapped up her scales, taking in the coppery flavor that lay beneath his skin with seeming detachment. She ached for more of it, to have all of it, to make Sarek her own forevermore. But Sarek was a much greater Warrior than she, and Kisarin knew that had it come to actual violence the result would have been the same. This way was better; she got the taste of his flesh and he had his inevitable victory. As Kisarin felt her tail passing into Sarek's throat, her reptilian instincts reacted to the warmth of his body and turned her defeat into a welcome thing. The heat of the skin is a pale imitation of the heat within the body, and Kisarin found her body begging to bask in it. To receive such pleasure, she had only to do nothing, to allow Sarek to devour her uncontested.
 
Sarek's python-like jaws bisected and began to walk over Kisarin's body. For the moment, he paid no attention to the woman draped over his shoulder; he chewed hungrily up Kisarin's length with abandon. Reading his thoughts from his actions, Kisarin knew that some small corner of Sarek's mind suspected her of treachery. This she took as a compliment rather than an insult: he thought her dangerous, he thought her cunning. He was treating her with the very same caution that she found at once flattering and infuriating. As Sarek made his way up her tail, his tongue tickling her underbelly and forewarning Kisarin of the next scales that she was about to lose, Kisarin decided to make Sarek's precautions warranted. Departing from her perch at Sarek's ribcage, which was now expanding with the added width of her own body, Kisarin flowed over Sarek's shoulder and drew a loose coil around his belly. Taking up her ever-diminishing slack, Kisarin spiraled her way through the careless pile that was Sarek's lower body until she found what she sought: the place where Sarek's scales drew to their apex, the very same place on Sarek as he had begun swallowing her. Kisarin reached out and grabbed it with a hand; with a tug, she pulled it out into view. Kisarin caught Sarek's gaze; he glowered at her from above his distended mouth. Kisarin put on a disarming smile, an indication of no seriousness, and sucked on the end of Sarek's tail, subjecting him to the same squelching heat that was inundating fully half of her snake body by this point.
 
Sarek had momentarily hastened his swallowing when Kisarin seemed prepared to renege on her submission, but as she became playful again he slowed and savored her. He could feel Kisarin's muscles rippling just beneath her skin; she was fighting her own reflexes, straining to keep from struggling. This was a new flavor of resistance for Sarek; the fat and entitled nobles he had sometimes devoured fought with all their might to no avail. It was all too easy to simply compress them into his own body no matter how they thrashed, but Kisarin was entirely different. She could escape him if she honestly tried. At any moment she might force her way out and then make him answer the same challenge; even now she threatened it by playing with the end of his tail. Yet at the same time he knew she would not try to reverse her fortunes. She had submitted, totally and finally, to being swallowed. So Sarek took his time, tasting each individual scale as it passed through his mouth, inching his way toward Kisarin's other end.
 
The two naga lay for some time looking like an off-center ouroborous. Sarek continued to rise as Kisarin continued to slicken his tailtip and consider the moist, muscular throat that was pulling her in. At last Kisarin felt her long-buried tailtip press up against something less yielding than the soft flesh it had been passing through. At her body's touch, the sphincter opened and began to squeeze itself around her. A tingling sensation greeted that emissary of her body, challenging her to resist even as her body became more deeply anchored. But there was no fear in Kisarin, only acceptance; she lay calmly against Sarek's scales as if the rest of her body were not disappearing down another creature's throat gulp by gulp.
 
His purchase secure, Sarek drew back and sat up. His body lengthened out until Kisarin felt her snake half being tugged away. She was startled enough to look behind her; there she saw Sarek bulging around her. His mouth was wide enough to encompass the entire diameter of her snake half; his chest had expanded to support the added girth. Now that Kisarin's body ran the entire length of his esophagus, Sarek could move her simply by swallowing. The muscle surrounding Kisarin tensed rhythmically, pressurizing her in waves until her body relented and moved onward. Turning away from the sight of herself being devoured, Kisarin returned her attention to Sarek's tailtip, which was suddenly out of reach. But Kisarin found a much better way to amuse herself: she teased Sarek with feigned resistance, subtly squirming as if to draw herself out of him. She wiggled within him, rubbed her scales up against the throat walls, slithered upward against the flow. Every time Sarek's might reasserted itself; Kisarin's every attempt at escape drew a powerful swallow and another lost inch of her length. With her hands, Kisarin clawed at Sarek's scales, trying, always just weakly enough to fail, to keep from falling further into him. Her tail reached the end of his stomach and began to curl over itself to allow more room. For a brief moment Kisarin rolled over the growing distention in Sarek's jade scales that marked her destination, and then she was being pulled backward over the distended snakeskin in which the lower regions of her body were flowing in the opposite direction.
 
The more of her that was taken, the easier it was for Sarek to continue; Kisarin soon found herself rolling over the border between Sarek's human and snakes halves. She was running out of scales herself. But before Sarek could begin to take her caramel-tan skin as well, Kisarin passed over his manhood, which lay flaccid at his waist. Unwilling to allow Sarek's maleness to pass without reaction, Kisarin flicked her tongue out and wrapped it around Sarek's member, taking in the residual flavors of Sarek's semen and her own musk. A bit of tension was all it took to enact a change in the bloodflow; Sarek's penis began to warm and grow as Kisarin continued to knead it encouragingly. Her descent into Sarek's body halted, not only because she offered him a pleasant diversion but because he had one of his own to give her. Kisarin felt Sarek's tongue sneaking out of his mouth; her womanhood lay just beyond his lips. Kisarin stifled her reaction at the invasion by Sarek's tongue by clamping down on Sarek's member at sucking at it as if she intended to take in the whole of his body by doing so. As the two naga's tongues tortured the others' sex, Kisarin was determined to have some measure of victory in this last test of wills. Her tongue danced in her mouth, tracing delicious arcs across Sarek's cock, and with her fingers she kneaded his balls as if to tease the come from them. But all the while Sarek was lashing her vagina, pricking her every nerve, slathering her walls with a mixture of her own juices and the semen he had placed in her earlier. Kisarin felt the first tinglings of an orgasm bubbling within her pussy, but resisted. Sarek's member was twitching, releasing sweet nectar in waves; certainly Sarek must have been weakening, certainly with just another lick-- but then Kisarin felt warmth flood through her, fluid flowing out of her, her breath moaning out from her and her every muscle dancing beneath her skin. It was no consolation that immediately thereafter her mouth was full of something thick and sweet, though in the comfortable haze of afterglow she gulped it down without a second thought. Sarek had withheld longer than she had; he had defeated her one more time.
 
But with such bliss in defeat, Kisarin could not countenance victory. She went slack not out of any willful submission but out of a total lack of energy. As Sarek resumed swallowing, Kisarin did nothing but smile. Her immensely satisfied womanhood slipped down into the welcoming heat of Sarek's throat, where its own heat and wetness were hardly any different from that which surrounded it. The feel of Sarek's teeth poking against her belly and the small of her back prompted Kisarin to fidget and twist, but only out of habit. As Sarek's lips brushed up against the bottom of Kisarin's breasts, Kisarin reached up to them with her hands and helpfully made them flatter still. The bottom of Sarek's mouth trapped Kisarin's hands; she squeezed them further down until her arms lay flat against her chest. Sarek tipped his head up to force Kisarin's shoulders down, and then there was nothing but her head at rest on the opening of his throat. But even this would not be spared; in a single gulp, Kisarin was immersed in slippery flesh up to her nose, and with another, Sarek's throat closed over the top of her head. There was a loud gulping sound as Sarek made his final conscious swallow.
 
Slowly, Sarek's torso returned to its normal size as Kisarin's body flowed downward. The bulge in his snake tail, however, grew ever broader as Kisarin filled it, coil upon coil of her helping to create a giant egg-shaped distortion in his middle. Kisarin could feel the accumulated stomach slime squelching between her curls as they twisted and piled up within Sarek's stomach. She marveled at the force with which she was being pushed down, the incredible ease with which her body was sliding through the inside of Sarek's. If she hadn't been shifting herself to fit better, the peristalsis would have forced her to do so. Squelch by squelch she drew closer to the stomach. She felt the sphincter ride up over her waist, her belly, her chest, and her face, and then it was done. Kisarin was exhausted and at rest; she would not move again.
 
Kisarin gently shrugged herself into a more comfortable position and twisted such that her chest was pressed up against the wet and rippling stomach walls. She could feel the acids prickling at her skin, already soaking deeper inside of her, but the heat and muscular undulations were strangely comforting. Even the part of Sarek's body that would slay her felt loving to Kisarin. As the fleshy walls rubbed their acids into her, she wriggled back in counterpoint, taking as much soothing pleasure from their touch as she was able. There was nothing friendly about the stomach's intent, not unless you believed the Caducean creed, but Kisarin hardly cared; it was making her closer to Sarek, deepening a love which already felt unfathomable. A sudden pressure from above compressed Kisarin still tighter; Kisarin knew that Sarek, like many naga who ate before sleeping, had laid down on his bulging stomach; an instinct designed to conceal his handicap and aid digestion by adding more force. Even with her skin tingling and her body piled up on top of her, Kisarin herself felt sleepy. There was nothing left ahead of her but to wait for Sarek's stomach to turn the two of them into one. With dreamy detachment, Kisarin bid farewell to her life as a Warrior, prayed for success for Sarek, and drifted off into unconsciousness.
 
Kisarin never truly awakened, but perception colors the dreams. She was dimly aware of the changes occurring within her body: the slowly-growing heat, the ever-deepening liquidity, the waves of fluid pressure that churned throughout her softening form. Sarek's body was descending upon her as she became ever less able to resist his weight; she simply smiled at his nearness. The liquid gurgles that increasingly originated from within her were to her merely the sound of satisfaction, as though her womanhood were once again at play with Sarek's member. Kisarin squirmed as her muscles slipped away from the weakening bones to which they belonged. The inner rhythm of her body, the heartbeat that had timed her life, slowed until it was indistinguishable from the stomach's churning. By now she was barely a naga, her mind a chaotic mix of pleasant sensations. With a final squeeze, Kisarin shed her body as though it were any other pair of scales. Outside the stomach, Sarek merely sank by an inch, his slumber undisturbed by the departure of his finally requited love.
 
 
***
 
AUTHOR'S COMMENTS:
 
Sometimes it's interesting to explore a(n almost) completely foreign form of sexuality.
 
"His key was made ready for her lock." Ho ho! An adventuring reference, you see. Or I'm just stretching for a metaphor. Or Sarek's just stretching, full stop. (Har har, I am hilarious.)
 
The naga of the Bittersweet Realities are monotremes, apparently.
 
I briefly considered adding an epilogue about Sarek's life after this story, but it clashed with the predominantly Kisarin-oriented perspective and felt too trite, so I simply ignored it.