The plane was a private one. Gretta neglected to tell Shawn this until they were walking to the runway with their luggage rolling behind them. He had brought a rather large rolling suitcase because they were going to be gone for a week. Much to his surprise, Gretta brought little more than an overnight bag and a few snacks, mostly gummy fruit.
  “Remind me again how much the spa pays you?”
  “Handsomely,” she replied with that wonderful smile of her’s. “And besides, I didn’t have to pay for the plane, my family sent it. It’s not like every aircraft is prepared for someone like one of us, so they like to take precautions.”
  “Oh…” He chuckled. “I guess this makes more sense than buying up….all the seats?”
  Gretta frowned. “Are you calling me fat?”
  “W-what?! No, I-”
  An elbow to the ribs cut him off. “Just kidding.” She winked. “You know I’d take up all the seats and most of the cockpit if I wanted to be an impolite passenger.”
  Shawn shot her a little glare, but they both shared a laugh as they walked up the roll away stairs and into the airplane proper. If anything, this private plane was comparable to the size of a regular public airliner. The inside was done up in faux marble paneling...or at least Shawn assumed it was faux marble, with a general feeling of class about it. The man inside greeted them with a nod and an offer of champagne as they walked on board.
The opulence was not the only odd thing about the plane’s interior however. There were only four seats in the whole of the plane, two on either side. Beyond this, the floor was empty besides a few cabinets that probably housed drinks, and a very soft, plush looking kind of carpeting.
Gretta noticed Shawn’s momentary confusion, and gave his cheek a little pat. “They don’t do seats,” she said simply before strolling inwards. Shawn followed, unsure what to do
with his luggage, but the man who had ushered them in took them without a word and vanished into the depths of the plane. He appeared again only briefly, before making his way to the cockpit and leaving them alone.
  “Wow….real talker…” Shawn chuckled lightly.
  “Ramone has never been very chatty, but he’s fine I assure you.” Gretta stepped forwards, lacing her hands above her head. She gave a languid stretch that did interesting things to the lines of her back that caught Shawn’s eye. She flopped herself down into the seat by the window and patted the one beside it. Shawn sat obligingly down, and they began to take off immediately.
  “So….uh...meeting your parents, huh?” Shawn said, unable to keep the nervousness out of his voice.
  “Yep.”
  “W-we haven’t been dating that long...are you sure about this? I-I mean, I don’t want you to feel like we’re rushing o-” He was silenced by a kiss. Shawn often found himself silenced by Gretta in some way or another. Her lips were soft and warm and tasted of some sort of spice, a low heat on his senses.
  “Shoosh,” she said as she broke the kiss. “You’ll do fine. Besides, it’s just the way we do things. I haven’t had a proper boyfriend in about a year or two, most of them run away screaming if I don’t eat them.”
  Shawn blinked. “Eat them?...You’re joking, r-right?”
  Gretta just smiled her mysterious smile and leaned against his shoulder. “In any case, you’ll be fiinnneeee. Don’t worry so much.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “Most of them are very nice.”
  “M-most of them? I thought it was just your parents….”
  She shrugged. “It’s mating season, most of my family has come together into the main home to celebrate and hope it’s a fertile year.”
  Shawn turned so red that for a moment Gretta was worried.
  “Oh don’t worry. I’m not thinking about THAT anytime soon. But you know how it is, parents always worried about the old clock ticking. Don’t fret too much, it’ll only be about ten or twenty people.”
  “And all of them are…”
  “Like me?” She tilted her head. “Yes, the grand majority. It skips some generations, particularly if they’re sons instead of daughters. The gene is more common in females, but I’d say at least 75 percent of my family is made up of shifters.”
  “I see….” Shawn nodded, unable to suppress a gulp. “Nothing to worry about then…”
  “Shawn, I can feel your heartbeat. Heightened senses and all? Your pulse hasn’t been this fast since that one time we got a private booth on Valentine’s and you were worried the waiter would find out about the massive snake that’d been a girl who ordered the pasta when he left.”
  “I-I think my heart was beating for other reasons on that day too…” He managed a little smile.
  “True…” she purred. “Though, ya know what they do to pets who get brought on airplanes and are nervous?”
  “Pets? Gretta, I’m no-”
  “They get them little jackets,” she continued, unperturbed by his protest. “They call them thunder jackets I think, because usually they make the dog less scared of storms and stuff? Apparently they work because the compression around the dog's sides and belly makes them feel safe, like they’re being held…” She put both arms on the armrest, leaning over towards him until her lips were very nearly touching his. “I believe I could do something like that to quiet your nerves until we land~”
  “Gr-” The trend of Shawn being interrupted continued as several hundred pounds of black and blue ringed serpentine flesh suddenly filled the airplane cabin just as his ears popped from the altitude. To give the pilot due credit, he adjusted from the weight of one young man and one young woman, to one young man wrapped in what must have been north of a ton of snake very smoothly and the plane hardly shuddered. He was very good at his job.
  Shawn found himself in startlingly familiar territory, bands of scale thick enough to dwarf his entire body curled snuggly around him in moments. He thought that the inside of the plane being so sparse might have been overkill, but now that was clearly not the case. She filled the entire space like a liquid, a river of shifting snake that utterly buried him in moments. His arms were pinned, and his legs were similarly rendered immobile under her bulk as it slithered across the cabin. The sound of it rubbing across the walls and the floor and what few seats there were filled the air, a subtle vibration as they sailed across the sky.
  Shawn’s head stuck out from a thick loop of her body. Scales pressed against either side of his face, cupping the back of his head with its girth as her head slithered down to eye him. That serpentine smile was still present as they shared a glance, Shawn’s cheeks red once more.
  “I guess I’ll just have to hold you like this until we land…” She purred gently.
  “O-oh…” Shawn didn’t complain, though even if he had, at this point it wouldn’t have mattered. “How long is the fli-Gnngg!” Gretta tightened her grip, muscles tensing all around the plane, filling it more as they pressed outwards under her scales.
  “19 hours….don’t worry it’ll pass quickly I’m sssssssure~” She cooed softly, slithering forwards to rest her chin atop his head, almost totally concealing him. “Be calm and warm while I enjoy the inflight movie…” She nestled in comfortably, squeezing him a little tighter. “I hear it’s The Jungle Book.”
  ----
 
 
  26 hours later due to turbulence, the plane landed in New Delhi. Shawn remembered most of the flight through a haze of whispered words and shifting coils. He was fairly certain that Gretta had managed to drag the whole of herself across the whole of himself within the time it had taken them to take off and finally touch down.
  When the door finally opened, Gretta pranced down the runway fresh as a daisy and rather well rested from a brief nap she’d caught somewhere over the coast of the country. Shawn, however, stumbled down the runway with his clothes wrinkled and his hair a complete mess. The side of his face was marked with the patterns of scale that had been along her neck just behind her chin, which is where she’d been laying during that ‘brief’ nap.
  He blushed as the attendant ‘Ramone’ lifted an eyebrow in his direction.
  “She’s a cuddler…” He said simply, before walking shakily down the runway and onto Indian soil for the first time.
  Things were surprisingly modern. Shawn didn’t like to think of himself as prejudiced in any way, but the word ‘India’ for any American conjured images of bazaars and colorful hijabs...or maybe they weren't called hijabs….there was probably a word for them. He opted not to voice these thoughts so as not to embarrass himself.
  Instead of this, the International Airport of New Delhi was very much like the one they had left from, right down to the McDonald’s and the KFC they had lunch at. Though Shawn realized that Gretta was at least mostly Indian, it was still slightly surprising when she rattled off their orders in the language, perfectly accented, before switching back to perfect English with little difference. She humored him by putting on the accent she lacked for a while, and watching him blush as she occasionally pointed out how, at this point he almost always had a scale pattern somewhere on his body, before they finally called a cab.
  The one thing that was different about New Delhi, despite the constant general ambiance of a change in culture, was the driving. If Shawn thought dating a shifter was harrowing, he had no idea what harrowing was until he learned that in the capital of this country a ‘stop sign’ was more of a suggestion than a rule, and a cab the size of a VW bug apparently thought a game of chicken with a dragon sized truck was just run of the mill afternoon traffic. Gretta for her part seemed unperturbed by this, sitting pleasantly while Shawn clutched the door handle like a cat trying to avoid a bath until they reached their destination.
  The drive took a while, going far out of the capital and into the Indian countryside. The large buildings gave way to the inner city, the lower ghettos, and finally the jungle, where the roads were pure dirt cutting through trees and wildlife.
  Finally however, after much jostling and shaking, they reached what could only be described as a mansion, a bastion of human...or...mostly human...ingenuity within the jungle proper. Shawn reasoned that, for as long as they had been driving, that there must be no other habitations in at least ten miles in any direction if not quite a bit more than that. He fretted internally, and Gretta’s hand found his to calm him.
  The cab stopped, their luggage was unloaded, and they stood in front of Gretta’s family home for a few moments before she turned and smiled. “Well, into the lion’s den we go. Shall we?”
  Before he could tell if she was joking or not, she pranced up the massive stairs leading into the mansion, leaving Shawn to tug their luggage up after her as he went to meet Gretta’s family. He sighed. A family of snake shifters in the middle of the Indian wilderness...what could possibly go wrong.
  The stairs were even longer than they looked, which Gretta didn’t mind. Shawn, however, was starting to regret how much he had packed, and was out of breath by the time they reached the front door proper. It was wider than perhaps the whole of Shawn’s apartment and slid open with surprising silence to welcome them in.
  The mansion was done up in the traditional Indian style, lots of varying shades of red and yellow in swirls and filigree around various pillars and columns that supported the roof. Each was thicker around than Shawn could hope to encompass with both arms, and art of various deities hung on the walls.
  They didn’t encounter anyone upon entering through the foyer for several moments. Gretta seemed to have expected this, and thus made no comment as they walked, but Shawn’s nervousness was obvious in his step as they progressed. He couldn’t escape the vague, unsettling feeling of being watched as they walked deeper into the mansion’s sprawling rooms.
  They walked through another set of large doors, coming into another space with a massive window as opposed to any kind of true roof. Light from the Delhi sun stretched in on a natural garden of twisting trees that almost put the ones outside to shame. How such a thing could exist short of a greenhouse Shawn didn’t know, but he stepped a bit closer to Gretta as he heard something moving among the leaves.
  “Ma!” Gretta called. Her voice taking on that Indian tone it had when they’d landed.
  The branches all shook and vibrated as whatever was hiding among their foliage began to stir further. Shawn stepped a bit closer still to Gretta, and in fact grabbed her hand, almost knocking her over as a serpentine head the size of a Mazda slithered from the indoor treeline. Shawn realized that part of what he’d thought was a massive treetrunk was in fact the massive brown dappled surface of an impossibly large serpent.
  The snake said something in Hindi, it’s voice soft and massive all at once, filled with heavy hissing that sounded like a factory’s worth of silk being dragged across the floor. It’s scales were a smooth brown, dappled with green rings along its back. It looked old, but in a wise sort of way, massive eyes looking at Gretta with an unreadable expression. If it had noticed Shawn, it made no move to do anything to signify such.
  Gretta replied in Hindi as Shawn watched their conversation. His eyes occasionally strayed, with slight worry, from those massive, ancient eyes to the serpent’s shifting maw. A tongue thicker around than a liter of soda flicked out every few words. The soft pink interior was enough to fold around a man easily, with little besides perhaps a pair of legs sticking out.
  Though he could not understand their conversation, Gretta said something a bit more sharply than she had been speaking previously. Shawn heard the tree closest to them creak ominously. Those coils that lined it, so thick Shawn realized he was not actually seeing the trunk of the tree at all, tensed visibly and the sound of slight splintering hit the air.
  Gretta’s mother turned to Shawn.
  Shawn fought the urge to see just how close the nearest town was via running to it.
  She said something in Hindi that rumbled through Shawn’s bones. The sound of her body’s sudden shift, perhaps a serpentine sort of gesture, shook the floor.
  “He doesn’t speak Hindi, Ma,” Gretta rolled her eyes.
  “Then why did you choosssssse him?” Her mother rumbled.
  “Be nice,” Gretta sighed, tugging Shawn forwards towards her mother, who leaned in for a closer look. Those sharp reptilian irises centered in and combed over the only human in the room. Shawn suddenly felt a great deal like an ant in a room full of magnifying glasses.
  The great snout of Gretta’s mother very nearly brushed Shawn’s nose as those massive eyes focused even further, seemingly looking into his soul. He fidgeted a little, he couldn’t help it. His hair was ruffled by her breath, like a strong breeze that smelled lightly of spiced tea and something else he couldn’t identify. The humidity of it plastered his forehead a little.
  “Well…” She said slowly. “If you musssst…” As she said must, the twin tines of her tongue painted either of his cheeks, he tried not to flinch. “Stay, then I suppose the rules of hospitality apply…”
  In a matter of seconds, instead of a massive snake, there instead stood a woman in front of Shawn. She looked like a perfectly normal, beautiful, older Indian woman, besides the fact she was nine feet tall in change and had the kind of look that could peel the paint off a barn at fifty paces if the barn had been foolish enough to earn her scorn. Gretta was also a bit taller than Shawn, so he suddenly felt just a bit like a child.
  With what seemed like great reluctance, she reached a hand out, and Shawn took a moment to realize he was supposed to reply in turn. His hand was infolded in hers easily, her palm was warm and soft, but with a slight roughness to it that spoke to her years of experience.
  “I am Ludhakana. You may call me Ms.Saanp if you must.”
  “O-oh...I’m Shawn, you can call me….er….”
  “Whatever I wish I should hope,” she said bluntly, before turning on her heel. She took a moment to look at Gretta over her shoulder. “Dinner is sharply at eight. I will have the chefs prepare something….suitable...for your...chosen mate.”
  Shawn turned bright red and Gretta scoffed with a wave of her hand. “I prefer boyfriend. Everything doesn’t have to be so serious with you, Ma.”
  “I wish perhaps, that you would take matters more seriously, Gamya.”
  Shawn paused, looking back to Gretta. “Gamya?”
  She shrugged. “Gretta’s a nickname, what can I say? Not everyone likes less American names. Gamya Saanp doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. It sounds like a brand of gum.”
  Her mother’s eyes narrowed at that. Gretta’s eyes narrowed right back and after a moment of tension that Shawn feared would set something in the room on fire, Gretta’s mother continued on her way out of the room.
  “Do be careful, Gamya...your cousins may not be so accepting as I…”
  Without another word she left the room, leaving Shawn to gape.
  “THAT was accepting?” He asked.
  Gretta shrugged. “Well it could have gone a lot worst. I had to pull the last guy out of her throat. Thankfully she takes her time, I got a good grip on his ankles.”
  Shawn stared at her. “You know, the longer we know each other, the harder it is to tell when you’re joking.”
  Gretta leaned over and pecked his cheek. “And that’s just how I like it. Now come on, I’d like to get you to our room before too many of the other family members arrive. I can smell at least ten here already and that doesn’t bode well.”
  “Bode well?...What exactly have I gotten myself into here ‘Gamya’?”
  Gretta chuckled lightly. “Don’t worry too much, there are rules about these things. You’re under Ma’s hospitality now, so at the very least our biggest worry is out of the way. Now you just have to impress them, and make sure no one confuses you for a servant.”
  “You have servants?” Shawn tilted his head.
  “Oh yes...a place this big is never tended by its owners. But uh….barring that…” She tapped a finger to the side of her bottom lip.
  “Barring that what?”
  She gave a little shrug. She seemed to be doing that a lot where her family was concerned. “Well it helps when…” She let the words trail off. “Perhaps I should just show you…”
  Shawn found his hand in her’s as she walked towards a door on the left side of the room. It was one of many heading into the natural garden that, as far as Shawn could guess, was her mother’s room.
  Beyond the door was another atrium. This one, however, instead of containing a glass room to let in the sun, had a massive painting across its whole surface like the Sistine Chapel.
  Scales, that was the first word that came to mind. The painting was detailed in the utmost, to the point where Shawn, if he let his eyes unfocus even for a moment, could easily mistake the static image to be moving, shifting with life. Serpents, as large as Gretta, and even as large as her mother, twisted and curled about one another’s bodies, a mixture of colors and shades, a mountain of snakeskin. Though, that wasn’t the most striking thing. The most striking thing was the humans.
  They were among the coils, wrapped up in all kinds of ways, head to toe, haphazardly pinned under the great bulk of the snakes around them, wrapped to the point where tufts of hair stuck out the top of massive cocoons of living bondage. Some were even shared between members of the great collection of serpentine flesh, an arm among one’s coils, a leg among another’s, the tender surface of a third’s neck in the tight grasp of yet another still.
  “Oh my…” Shawn breathed with a slight blush.
  “Yeeeaahhhhhhh….” Gretta added. “A small subset of Hindu monks might consider us Gods and cater to our every whim?....That’s not a problem, is it?”
  Shawn just gaped. It seemed to be what he was doing a lot on this trip to balance out Gretta’s shrugging.
  “Annnnnd during the mating season, it’s not uncommon to take a servant into one’s coils until the season ends….so with so many of my family in one place, and with the mating season being for the next three months...if someone does mistake you for a worshipper, I might not...ya know...find you again?” She chuckled. “Ya know, usual family stuff...Nothing big…”
  Shawn looked from the ceiling, to Gretta, then to the ceiling again. “T-three months?”
  Gretta nodded. “Yeah, but you’ll be fiinnnneee. We’re only here for the next four days or so, we’ll be gone before everyone gets REAALLY….er….insistent.”
  “T-three months…” Shawn repeated.
  “Besides, you’re under my mother’s hospitality. If they knowingly take you for their’s, then they’ve earned her ire. Though….if they do it while undoubtedly being unaware….then she has less leeway…” She considered. “Would you like a badge or something? Maybe we should get you a badge or something…”
  “T-three…”
  She cut him off by grabbing his hand and leading him away from the ceiling. “Or maybe instead we should get you to a bed before you pass out. Do you like tea? I hear that helps the adjustment. You’re not the first outsider in this place, but you’re my first and I fully intend to keep you that way. Mine.” She tugged him a bit further. “Now come on, we’ve got a lot of work to do if we’re to get you prepared for dinner…” She looked back at him as they entered the living quarters hallway. “Not everyone at the table will be human…”
  The ‘work’ Gretta mentioned turned out to be a great deal like studying. Apparently, table manners in India were quite a bit different than in other places. Large plates were placed in the center of the table and often shared by the whole family. There were bowls of water for handwashing, and one was only supposed to use their own.
  Those were just the beginnings of the rules for the human members of the table. It was a while before she even got to the snakes.
  “Do not make direct eye contact for more than a few seconds at a time. If you do, you may be enthralled, and if you’re enthralled they can whisper suggestions I might not even hear. If they can get you alone, who knows what might happen.” Shawn nodded to this and she continued. “If you feel something against your foot, do not react. It is common for serpents to seek out warmth, and is seen as disrespectful to deny them some of your heat. They cannot coil you completely, but if you disrespect them, then they can demand your respect by taking you into a hold, got it?”
  “Got it…” Shawn said, trying to keep the nervousness out of his voice.
  “Good. Beyond that, snakes have first pick of the table….there….there, uh…” She cleared her throat. “There may be a few things for dinner that might not be….well...normal…” She thought about the best way to phrase this. “Okay, so...I’m just going to ask this question out loud.” She clasped her hands in front of her lips. “How do you feel…” She pointed these hands at Shawn. “About my family eating people?”
  “Your family what!?” Shawn blinked.
  “See? You see? This is why I didn’t bring this up before, I knew you’d get like this.”
  “Your family eats people, Gretta!”
  “Well….what did you think a family of giant snakes would eat? Kale? We don’t eat kale, Shawn.”
  “I know that! B-but! I mean...You can’t just….EAT PEOPLE.”
  “Well, what if they volunteer? I mean, it’s not exactly unwilling…” She looked him over. “Besides, I’ve seen the logs of the rooms you go into. You’ve spent more than one night in a belly or two. Don’t tell me you don’t find it appealing…”
  Shawn’s cheeks flushed. “Well....that’s different...I mean, they let me back out…”
  “But you still go in. Shawn, you let people eat you in one way or another so often that they’re starting to call a lunch break literally ‘A Shawn’ around the Spa. We don’t take lunch, we take Shawns.”
  Shawn’s blush got worse. “You’re not serious, are you?”
  She nodded gravely, but couldn’t help but smirk ever so slightly.
  “W-well still! It’s...it’s different! I mean, you’ve never….you’ve never eaten anyone, have you?”
  Gretta shrugged. “Well….not….not recently.”
  “What does that mean!? Not ‘Recently’.”
  “Well there was a date, he was a jerk...it was going badly, we were all alone in a movie theater. It was a Sandler flick so I knew full well nobody was going to come in for hours and I’d skipped lunch that day.”
  Shawn stared at Gretta for a while, his cheeks still rather flushed.
  “Well I did playfully threaten to eat you a few times. And if I recall, I had my body wrapped around yours the whole while and I did not feel struggles of complaint, but something else entirely.” She smirked.
  Shawn shook his blush away as much as he could, which wasn’t much. “W-well….I…” He made a frustrated sound, crossing his arms. “Well...fine...so long as they’re willing I suppose…”
  “Good.” She nodded. “Because to speak out against it at the table means that you’ll have to replace whoever they’re eating at the time. I would much rather cuddle you, Shawn, and not rest my head on the bulge of you wiggling around inside someone else.”
  Shawn gulped. “Alright then…..good to know. Is there anything else I should be wary of?”
  “Just my Sister,” Gretta said the word with a tone somewhere between affection and extreme hatred.
  “You have a sister?”
  “I have seven.” She shrugged. “But one in particular is to be watched. She goes by Sarah these days and she’s notorious for poaching, particularly poaching my things.” Gretta huffed.
  “Your things?” Shawn arched an eyebrow.
  This questioning glance earned him a small kiss on the cheek, though Gretta made no effort to correct this statement. “Yes, ever since I was hardly one-hundred feet long she’s been taking my toys. She made me watch as she swallowed my first thrall, can you imagine?”
  Shawn simply stared.
  “I know, right?! Worst sister ever.” She gave a frustrated huff. “Anyway, since I’ve declared you as mine,” she ignored as Shawn’s eyebrow got higher. “She’ll most likely make a move on you at some point just to spite me.”
  Shawn sighed, running a hand through his hair and trying to digest a very large amount of information in a very short amount of time. “Well, alright, what should I look out for?”
  Gretta nodded. “Well, she’s got slightly lighter skin than I do, but raven black hair, and her eyes are...not quite brown...more...gold almost...that’s what she looks like as a human.”
  “And...as a snake?” Shawn inquired nervously.
  “A bit like an albino boa...but deeper yellow, just like her eyes. She’s worshiped almost as highly as mom for her ‘Golden scales’. They’re ringed in red. The followers came up with some hogwash that if she ‘Takes you into her heavenly bodice’ you become one of the red rings down her back to serve her for eternity’.” She scoffed. “The way she talks you’d think she believes it too, really drank her own Kool-aid that one.”
  Shawn’s head was spinning. “I’m starting to think this trip was less and less of a good idea.”
  “Oh it’s better than the alternative, trust me. If you weren’t sanctified on our grounds I’d have to eat you within 100 days, or my family would come and drag you here on their terms. This is much better.”
  Shawn’s mouth opened and closed. “And you could tell me none of this on our first few dates?”
  “Well...I mean I could have, but who opens with that? Oh hey, my family is basically the Indian mafia of snakes. And oh! Added bonus, we’re basically deities who occasionally eat people, I’m Gretta!”
  “A...fair point.” Shawn conceded.
  “Besides, you’ve always had a thing for snakes.” She punched him playfully in the arm. “Now you’re going to meet a lot of very, very big ones.Consider it like...a connoisseur's tour.” She turned and walked to a nearby dresser, pulling out a white and orange garment and tossing it at Shawn. “Anyway, get dressed.”
  “W-what? Don’t we get t-”
  “Nope. Dinner’s in an hour.” She pulled out her own clothing. “And we still haven’t discussed proper silverware.”
 
 
  ----
 
 
  Shawn wore the loose fitting traditional Indian clothes of a male. They had names, but Shawn couldn’t remember the complex, if beautiful, syllables Gretta had pushed in his direction before they headed out. The pants were white, coupled with an orange shirt made of fine silk, inlaid with various beautiful patterns and symbols.
  Gretta wore the traditional Indian woman’s garb, right down to a little red jewel on her forehead and a shawl draped over her hair. The outfit was more concealing than what she usually wore, but she was no less beautiful for the change. Shawn had always seen her as ‘Just another girl’, well...outside of the obvious, not this exotic creature he now courted, part of a larger world filled with rules and intrigue he could hardly fathom.
  He swallowed, trying to keep his heart rate steady. Gretta had warned him about that as well. Those flickering tongues weren’t just for show, they were for smelling the air. A fearful human was a sweaty human, and that release of pheromones would make him hard to resist.
They walked down the massive hallway and Shawn could see where the ground had been worn smooth by various massive underbellies slithering across it. A thousand enormous S like trails were worn into the hardwood.
This hall lead into the main dining room. It was stunning in its opulence. Ribbons of orange and yellow silk hung from the rafters like chandeliers of fabric. Below this was a dining room table wider than Shawn’s car, and longer than several of them parked end to end. Women sat on either side, all in opulent Indian dress. There were men too, speckled amongst the crowd, but they were few and far between with easily three females for every one male seated. They all spoke lively in Hindi in front of a spread of food almost as beautiful as the room it was laid out in. Entire pigs, apples in mouth cooked to honey brown perfection, noodles and vegetables and fruits arranged in patterns that would put a painter to shame. So many dishes Shawn couldn’t name and the smell of spices his American nose wasn’t prepared for overwhelmed his senses.
  He also noticed a lack of snakes. Beyond this though, he caught sight of ten or so massive plates in the center of the table. They were spaced every few feet or so, about as wide around as a personal trampoline.Each was pure white, and shined to gleaming.
  He looked to Gretta, who did not reply, as she led him to kneel in front of the table, which oddly, for the lack of chairs, was placed about four feet off the ground. It was then that Shawn realized how tall all the men and women were. Most were even taller than Gretta, some were nearly as tall as her mother, whom Shawn didn’t see at the table for the moment. He felt a bit like a kid at Thanksgiving dinner suddenly having been allowed to sit at the grownups table. His neck barely cleared the top of the table.
  Several other men came in, but from their dress and their height he could tell they were not a part of Gretta’s family. They wore simple white with no other colors, and hurried out from various doors around the dining room, adding the last few touches to the various foods and place settings around the table.
  Shawn sat silently, occasionally hearing snatches of English between the Hindi words rapid fired around him, until all the chatter suddenly hushed.
  The largest doors, at the front of the hall opened, and Shawn craned to see around the various family members between him and the entrance.
  Gretta’s mother walked in.
  She was resplendent in her clothes. What she wore was similar to Gretta’s outfit, but with an obviously higher thread count as it shimmered in the light, and gold inlay along all of its edges. Shawn certainly saw how it wouldn’t be hard to consider such a woman as a goddess: tall, beautiful and with a look that demanded respect. There was not a peep in the room as she almost glided from the door to her place at the front of the table.
  She cleared her throat, then, much to Shawn’s surprise, spoke in English. “Dear family, we are gathered here today to reconnect. Our’s is a strong line of old powers beyond what ordinary human beings can quantify. I thank you all for your efforts to make it here and come together in the name of family, order, and respect. I come to you now, speaking in a tongue not my own because we have a newcomer among us.”
Her eyes turned to Shawn, who had to try very, very hard at performing the exercises Gretta had gone over with him to keep his heart rate down. “Gamya has taken a man. Whether he is worthy of her is yet to be seen, but if there is any test of that mettle, I suppose there is no better than this. I extend my hospitality to him in all avenues, and I hope you will respect this.” Her eyes flashed strangely for just a moment. “With that out of the way, I shall lead us in the invocation of the feast.”
She switched back to Hindi then, her words sinuous and soft as the rest of the table joined in what seemed like a hymn of sorts. Shawn was unsure what to do with himself as Gretta too was lost in singing, their eyes closed.
Shawn thought about closing his eyes as well, until he noticed that the various men in white clothes were not joining in. Instead they were walking towards the table with placid expressions on their faces. Shawn couldn’t ask Gretta what they were doing while she was singing, so he simply observed.
His eyes widened slightly as they stepped onto the cool wood of the dining table. Their feet were bare and clean as they stepped between dishes like they weren’t even there, avoiding all of the food with a kind of strange grace. Each went for a plate. There were more men than Shawn had realized walkin in, and three or four of them sat down on each flat white dish, back to back, crossing their legs and looking out expectantly. One of them caught Shawn’s eye, he offered his fellow human a little smile and nodded in acknowledgement. Before Shawn could reply, by way of body language or speech, the prayer ended.
  Returning to English, Gretta’s mother smiled. “Let the feast commence.”
  The room shifted. This happened in both the figurative sense, in that the air seemed to change and the atmosphere went from one of jovial reuniting, to one of palpable hunger, and in the literal sense.
  Shawn felt scales brushing against his legs as he kneeled there in front of the table. At least two thirds of the woman seated around him had turned all at once into massive, hungry serpents.
  Some were smaller than Gretta, and some were larger, but though he had thought the room was enormous before, it suddenly seemed very cramped indeed.
  The sheer amount of color among the scales surrounding the room was startling. Some were dark, like Gretta, and some were darker still, their scales like ink run free from a pen across paper. Others were light, on the far end of the table was a snake with scales as white as the surface of a pearl, glimmering in the light as she moved a sinuous dance over the table. Every shade in between ruled beyond this. All empty space was occupied by shifting, moving bands of muscle. Shawn could feel thick coils pushing against his legs on all sides under the table, though where one began and another ended he was far beyond telling.
  Gretta stayed human for now, perhaps to comfort him, and several other women and men along the table did as well. Shawn had a feeling that this was more to make use of the forks and knives for the smaller fare at the table. They seemed utterly unperturbed by the shifting serpentine bodies surrounded them. The ‘Humans’ at the table set about eating as though this were another simple family meal.
  The actual humans sitting on the large plates in the center of the table smiled gently out at the assembled predators around them. Shawn watched as the snake with the pure white scales reached out with her tail. It slithered across the table with grace, threading between dishes and reaching hands to wrap snugly around a waiting man’s lower middle. It cinched visibly before slowly working its way up around his abdomen, pinning his arms to his sides and spooling up along his neck in a sinuous embrace. The thickness of her tail forced his cheeks up as he was hoisted bodily from the plate and towards her waiting coils.
  The man next to him was taken more suddenly, a huge scaled loop lifting from its place below the table and dropping behind him, framing him in light green scale banded with darker shades. The loop closed around either side of him, large enough to encompass the whole of his body in a single powerful contraction before he was scooped up into the waiting body of the snake who had chosen him.
  All around Shawn, men were swathed in snakeskin, coiling and cinching around their bodies to the point where some, thier faces framed in scale for brief moments of light, were lost utterly in the sea of serpentine bodies. There was no section of floor without movement, the sound of shifting muscle bordered on deafening.
  Shawn looked up to see one snake, a serpent with scales of such yellow that they appeared gold as the light struck them, look down at him just as a man’s shoulders vanished passed her lips. The other snakes were taking their time, enjoying the feel of their prey. Not this one however, she was hungry. She met his eyes, her irises the same gold as her body rimmed in red.
  Gretta’s sister opened her maw wide, a smile at its edges, and let Shawn watch as a blushing, squirming man sank into the wet, soft flesh of her maw. He struggled, but it was token, her forked tongue occasionally drifting up to lick along his cheek as the steady contractions of her throat dragged him deeper, his shoulders taking the longest to pop inwards past that tight ring of flesh.
After that, it cinched around his neck and he gave a little noise Shawn couldn’t quite hear over the din of the dining room. He looked both at peace and a bit afraid as the back of his head was braced against that final entrance. That warm flesh flowed over his features slowly. She kept her mouth open, perhaps putting on a show for him, her gaze lidded, never leaving his eyes. He felt he had a hard time looking away. He almost stood up, whether to help, or to do something else he didn't know, but Gretta’s hand grabbed his arm and kept him seated.
He could see the man’s kicking against the thick flesh of her throat, vague little bulges as its entrance rose to caress his cheeks, folding wetly in on them. His face was shiny with her saliva as it folded over the curve of his scalp, no more than a face peeking out at its last view of the world. Then with a subtle ‘Glik’ of sound, she swallowed and his face slowly vanished, hot, moist maw flesh sliding over his forehead to encompass his eyes, his chin, until all that was left was his mouth and nose. A final gasp, and the man was gone, his wiggling shape sliding into her body as she closed her mouth into a full smile and shot Shawn an unmistakable wink.
Despite himself, Shawn was blushing profusely. All around him the same thing was happening in some variation or another. A glance to the left saw a grasping hand slurped up like a noodle, to the right saw a forked tongue curling over slightly kicking ankles. Glances in other directions saw men up to their noses in coils, at times little more than just limbs sticking from a mishmash of coils both of the serpents who had grabbed them and of others, lost in a living tide of hunger.
Shawn was so stupified by the sheer amount of stuff going on around him that he almost jumped when Gretta’s voice whispered in his ear. “Stop oogling and eat. It’s considered rude if you don’t.”
Shawn looked down at his empty plate. He had been hungry when walking into the dining room, but now there was a nervous pit in his stomach, and he found it hard to concentrate on food. Still, not wanting to offend the giant serpents slurping down men like noodles around him. He grabbed what looked to be a rather tasty curry dish and scooped some onto his plate. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a squirming bulge slowly undulate its way past his field of vision. At times more vague bulges pressed out from inside a dark blue patterned body, one stretching forwards so much that he thought, for a moment, he could see the outline of a hand.
“Eat.” Gretta prompted, nudging him as he tried not to turn his head fully to confirm what he thought he saw.
Shawn ate. So did Gretta’s family. The human members of the table were unperturbed by the happenings around them. In fact they laughed. The man sitting across from Shawn, perhaps a member of the family by marriage judging from his light complexion, leaned against the trunk like neck of a red and tan serpent, who curled around onto his left shoulder. Her massive head nuzzled against his ear, thick tongue trailing along his face as she whispered sweet nothings. His hands wandered and massaged across the bulge of a devoured devotee as pleasured hisses tingled across his skin. The men who were taken beyond sight, beyond the jaws of the serpentine gathering, were quickly replaced by others, disciples waiting in the wings for their chance to be one with their gods.
The snakes were endlessly ravenous it seemed. Any glance upwards towards their arced forms showed hands, feet, even heads jutting from between serpentine lips, expressions along the spectrum of bliss to a kind of nervous wariness. This was framed by that last look at the outside world before those jaws curled over their faces and sent them to join the squirming masses along the serpents’ bodies.
Shawn tried to keep his hands steady as he lifted some of his own food to his mouth. He felt awkward and clumsy on top of everything else, shakily placing the curry in his mouth. It was spicy, so much so that his face flushed horribly, but in a way he was happy about that, because it hid his own awkward blush. He’d always been interested in the way snakes consumed their food. This went beyond the usual academic interest. As a child he’d seen several instances within the realm of animation that had set him on a rather….odd path. Now, being here, it was a bit like the odd culmination of that. While part of him was terrified, another part of him felt something different entirely.
A sidelong glance at Gretta saw that she was smirking, and shot him the smallest of knowing glances. However, she was still on her guard, her hand cinching on his wrist moments before he felt a thick, scaled band brush against his thigh under the table.
He stiffened, but did not move otherwise under her earlier advice. It was impossible to tell at the outset who at the table might be touching him. In fact, from the sensation of movement, it might have been multiple members of Gretta’s family at once. It was a slow ooze of scale across the thin, high quality fabric of his pants, slowly dragging itself up along his leg. It was a gentle lather of serpentine touch, hardly parted at all from his skin by that thin barrier.
A glance upward saw all at the table taken with their own endeavors, until his eyes settled on the serpent of golden scales trimmed in red. She was looking directly, purposefully at him as a pair of legs vanished between her lips like a slurped noodle. Her tongue flicked between those ankles moments before they slipped inside that living, warm, wet bondage, licking her lips slowly as Shawn felt the end of a tail wind its way smoothly up his ankle.
He wanted to look down, to see if it was indeed her, but Gretta’s arm tightened almost to the point of pain the moment his chin dipped even slightly. In fact, she seemed to be holding on rather tightly even when it didn’t dip. What had she said earlier? Serpents seek out warmth...do not deny them this or he could be taken into a hold...Show respect at all points...and don’t….make continued eye conta-
Shawn tried to look anywhere now, down, left, right, up, anywhere, but found he couldn’t. Those eyes...they were so deeply golden, it was like looking into a calm, peaceful sun, but without pain, only a warmth that tingled down over his face, trailing down his spine like a warm bath after a hard day, the touch of a lover along just the right place, the embrace of a love it was impossible to fully comprehend.
Her lips were moving. Shawn couldn’t hear what she was saying, but he caught glimpses of her warm, deep maw, the folds and contours of her mouth suddenly looking very...comfortable.
“Haha! Oh Shawn!” A sharp pain knocked him from his delirium, it felt like he’d been hit in the back by a football player. After a moment’s confusion, he looked to see Gretta slapping him playfully and laughing overdramatically at a joke he hadn’t told. “You are such a card! What a joke.”
At the words ‘What a joke’ she wasn’t looking at Shawn, she was looking at her sister, and her voice took on a slightly more angered tone. Shawn shook off the last vestiges of whatever enthrallment she’d attempted to put him under as Gretta turned his glare to him.
She communicated about a thousand words with her eyes, and all of them were some combination of ‘Don’t look at my sister’. Her grip tightened so much he worried for his wrist.
Not knowing where to look now, he opted to look down at his food. Under the brief hypnosis, he hadn’t noticed just how much his tongue was burning. It felt, now, like he had licked the sun and chased it down with five alarm chili. A brief, careful glance upwards saw that several of the men at the table had noticed that his flushing had gone beyond ‘Slightly pink’ to ‘Red dwarf’ from the sudden realization of the heat. They were chuckling behind their hands.
Shawn very much wanted to yell, perhaps pant like a dog the relieve the pain, but as terrifying as Gretta’s family was, he wanted to make a good impression. He quickly scanned the table and found a large goblet filled with cool looking, reddish liquid. He grabbed it, trying his best not to spill it in shaking hands. He pressed it to his lips and gulped desperately.
Gretta’s eyes widened, and she laughed a more genuine laugh.
Shawn’s tongue experienced the closest thing a human’s tongue could to being assaulted with gasoline without dying.
It took every ounce of Shawn’s willpower to keep from spitting the drink all over his closest neighbor. He was fairly certain that would count as ‘disrespect’. So he swallowed the liquid fire in one single, massive gulp that scorched its way down his throat like steel wool.
He considered risking the dishonor and spitting it back up, but he managed to get it into his stomach, where it sat like a coal fresh from the fire. He coughed and sputtered, gasping for breath.
The whole table broke into hearty laughter, and Shawn felt another massive blow to the back as a beefy Indian man leaned over to clap a hand there approvingly. “That must have been a cup of Shiva’s Wrath. 140% proof! Not many men could gulp down such a drink. You’ve picked a hearty choice, Gamya!
Shawn was still too busy gasping to speak. Gretta laughed for a moment before replying. “Oh yeah, total hardcase, this one. Made of steel.” She smirked at him.
“Well, any fellow who can drink like that is good in my books. Another!” He called lifting his own goblet, as all the men and their serpentine maidens eyed the pair, a few lifting goblets of their own.
Shawn, who had just recovered enough to breathe without sputtering, looked at Gretta in horror. Gretta, for her part, simply shrugged and nodded towards his glass. “Bottoms up, oh hearty choice of mine.”
Shawn looked around helplessly for a moment, but seeing the approval in the eyes of Gretta’s family, he took a deep breath, grabbed the horrid liquid once more, and prepared to drink.
 
 
---
 
 
As it turned out, Shiva’s Wrath wasn’t so bad after the fifth gulp. Or perhaps Shawn had simply lost too many of his faculties to be bothered by things like ‘The concept of pain, or shame’. This is why Gretta was carrying him princess style back to his room while he lolled about like a sack of flour in her grip.
“Gbbbebbbablbelaaarrgld,” said Shawn.
“That was impressive,” Gretta replied. “Foolish, but impressive. I’ve got the family doctor on call in case you have any alcohol poisoning.”
“Blgahhababla…” Shawn’s head lolled to make vague, glassy eye contact with her. “Yer pweahteh…”
“Thank you…” She muttered, rolling her eyes. “And you are going to wake up with one hell of a hangover. But,” She kicked open the door to their room, tossing him onto the bed where he ragdolled like an NPC from a videogame. “We have more important things to discuss.”
“Eh oo?” Shawn slurred.
“We do. You made eye contact with my sister, and I saw her lips. That wasn’t just casual smacking after a meal well done. If you were staring into her eyes, she could have told you anything. Anything at all. Depending on how susceptible you are, you may not have to be aware of her orders to perform them, and they might be on a delay.” She frowned. “12 hours is probably the maximum a latent bit of hypnosis could stick in your head. With two hours at dinner, you’ll probably be fine by morning….but…” She smirked. “We’ll have to keep you somewhere nice and safe until then…”
“Hablegarblefloobar?...” Shawn questioned.
“It’s for your own good...I think they put us in a particularly small room just to spite me, buuuuuut…” Her smirk grew. “You’ve never minded close quarters much, have you?”
“Thebargarbofar,” Shawn replied, his cheeks getting rosier as he attempted to lean up on an arm. He missed and flopped face first into his pillow.
“Nonono… “She cooed, bending down to his level and pressing a cool hand against his alcohol warmed cheek. “Don’t get up...just let me take care of everything…” She chuckled, the sound taking on a hissing quality.
Gretta shifted. The sounds of her scales against the wood of the small room were deafening, along with the heavy, weighted noise of her thick muscular body falling to the ground around him. Shawn found himself like a man on a raft in the ocean, the bed surrounded by her as Gretta’s serpentine head rose from the coils to stare at him with a smirk.
“I’ve never wrapped you up when you’re this loose. I’ll have to squeeze a bit harder, see if I can wring out any extra warmth.”
Shawn was helpless as she began. He was helpless at the best of times, but now, with all the coordination of a newborn, her coils wound about him with ease. She started forwards with her neck, nosing his legs up off the bed without much effort and curling back to bind them together. She spooled onto the mattress, curling around again and again, the thick coils of her trunk making short work of his body.
Three coils alone were enough to cover him from his toes to his belly button, a fourth trapping his elbows to his sides. She came around again, pausing to nuzzle against his neck, forked tongue tasting him. “So long as you’re with me, she cannot take you...I don’t plan on letting you out of my grasp easily, so forgive any small bruissesss…” She chuckled darkly before curling around a fifth time, the girth of the scales along her sides pressing against Shawn’s chin, forcing it up and cupping his cheeks in her bulk. The room was now entirely full of snake to any outside viewer, even the mattress was mostly gone under the mass of her.
Gretta’s head came around again, settling near Shawn’s captured face, paler belly scales making an outline around his smooshed, blushing features as her tongue licked along his cheek to taste him.
“Free yourself from that~” She chuckled, her coils compressing around him, firmly, his body loose and soft for the effect of the drink. “Oooh, you’re warmer than usual...I should get you drunk more often…” She purred, resting her head on a coil near his head. “It’ll be a dream to sleep with you in my coils. It’s like a space heater.”
“Mmbhehbglble…” Shawn managed at a breathless gasp.
“Exactly~” She smirked. “Goodnight, Shawn. In the morning, we have a meeting with my mother, so sleep well.”
“Yablgbslf…” Shawn managed.
 
 
---
Night settled properly over the mansion. The alcohol in Shawn’s system, mixed with the gentle undulations of Gretta’s body, assured that he wasn’t long for consciousness. His drunken warmth also helped to lull his serpentine lover into a deep, restful sleep, assured in the knowledge that he would be safe in her coils until morning.
Around 1 am, however, Shawn began to stir. He wasn’t fully conscious of what he was doing, but somehow he now knew ‘the corner of her jaw’. Gretta’s head was resting right next to the curve of his scalp. He leaned his head to the left, and began to gently wiggle back and forth, his hair tickling along the lower left corner of jaw. There was no response at first, but she let out a hissing murmur, and slowly, but surely, he felt her coils relax.
It was an old trick regarding reptiles, that if you knew just where to rub, you could ‘charm’ them into relaxation. He didn’t know how he knew this, or even why he was doing it, but it seemed the right thing to do at the moment.
Gretta’s subtle hisses grew in volume, until her coils began to roll and shift limply about in a subtle pleasure, now loose enough for Shawn to extricate himself. His body was still warm and malleable from his earlier drunkenness. Despite this however, he avoided brushing the coils spread about the room with grace. For reasons beyond him, he quietly opened the door and wandered into the hall.
In the night, it seemed larger than it had been earlier. The shadows made the space between spaces seem infinitely bigger. The lack of gentle activity going on around the house’s various rooms was a noise you didn’t notice until it was absent.
Shawn knew where to go. He walked at a loose, slightly unbalanced wobble, still feeling a bit giggly from his earlier drink. He passed a mirror about six doors from Gretta’s room, pausing for a moment to see that his eyes were glowing a vague golden hue.
“Heheh….” He commented, poking the mirror. He was too addled to comment beyond this, and continued his drunken path through the winding halls of the family home. He passed a few rooms that were occupied, and a few that weren’t. Some had their doors open, others were covered by simple hanging fabric that did little more than hide the details of what lay beyond them, leaving vague silhouettes of everything from sleeping human couples to massive serpents coiled in on themselves in spirals of sleep.
At times, Shawn saw other shapes among these more round, smooth outlines, what might have been a hand or a foot jutting from a mountain of coils. Some of Gretta’s serpentine family even slept in bunches of two or more. It was hard to tell, but Shawn decidedly stepped over a yellow and green tail wound about each other jutting from a doorway. They gently swayed back and forth in a way that suggested there may have been more than sleep going on beyond the door’s borders.
He walked until he reached a room separated from the hall by hanging golden beads. They pressed against his skin, cool and heavy in such a way to make him wonder if they were in fact real gold. Beyond this entryway his feet were met with plush carpeting, the only carpeting he’d felt since entering the household. Most of the family apparently preferred the smooth touch of the expensive wood to what Shawn assumed, might be irritating carpet fibers. The carpet beneath his tread however, was so cloudlike in its softness that he couldn’t imagine it causing any sort of discomfort.
The shadows were deep, but he could hear her waiting within them. The room was bigger than Gretta’s, golden objects sitting on various shelves and draped along the walls casting what moonlight they could back along his skin.
“There you are…” Poured a voice, honey sweet from the dark. “I was wondering how long you were going to keep me waiting, Ssssssshawn….”
The voice made Shawn stand up a little straighter, despite his drunken state. The low hiss following his name vibrated across every nerve. He felt as though he was an instrument she played as she spoke. In the dark he could feel her body grow close to his before her golden head poured from the shadows, glowing eyes like treasured coins pouring into his own.
“I can give you a much comfier place to ssssssleep, my dear….” Her tongue tickled along the nape of his neck as she spoke. She slowly circled him, more of her golden scales oozing from the dark shadows at the back of the room, creating a ring of them rimmed in red around him, leaving less than a foot of free space in every direction.
Shawn gave an involuntary little moan as her tongue touched him. In the moonlight her scales looked soft and smooth, perhaps thicker than Gretta’s as she curled her way around his body, filling any absence of her around him until he couldn’t even see the door beyond that shining snakeskin. It was hard to think, just being around those coils seemed to addle him further, graceful sinuous movements hypnotic in their own right as she came around to face him again.
“I know you and my ssssister have a little fling, but dear Gamya really doesn’t know how to properly make use of you. It’s been months, hasn’t it?” The serpent tsked, somehow pulling off a perfectly natural pout with her serpentine features. “And she hasn’t shown you the true embrace of a serpent?...I know it feels nice…” The coils around him tightened, cinching inwards, the space between him and that living bondage went from a foot to nothing in an instant. He was bound up to his neck in gold and red, the predator that had ordered him from his bed with just a few words looming over him. “To be held on the outside….”
Her coils rippled, muscles tensing visibly under those perfect scales, pressing in all the right spots to milk a gentle coo from his throat. Her coils seemed slightly more giving as well...Gretta was a bit leaner, there was a bit of fat on her sister. Shawn thought, through his haze, back to the table, of the men he’d seen vanish down that throat. Every facet of her spoke of indulgence, and he knew now what her hunger earned her: size and softness.
“But a true embrace is more...intimate...more...internal. To think that all these little wretches around the mansion should get to feel such a thing and you, a near family member should be denied?” She looked genuinely regretful. “That doesn’t seem fair now, does it?”
“Doesn’t….seem….” He trailed off, his voice falling to a choked whisper as those gentle undulations drifted into something more concrete, more secure, more constricting.
“Fair, I know, right?....Sssssso….” Her tongue tickled his lips shamelessly. “Why don’t I correct this imbalance, hmm? I’m sure little Gamya will thank me for showing you the true ways of our family…”
Shawn’s feet left the ground, coils hoisting him upwards in a pillar of scale, that encompassing grip tightening. The coils arose with effort as they became a bit bulkier with the flexing of that ensnaring musculature pressing against the edges of his features. “I can see your desires in your eyes as plainly as a more ordinary woman might read a book.” Her coils lifted him higher. He gave a gasp as they tightened around his neck. His toes poked from the bottom most coil, smothered along the top from the girth of her scales. He could feel her breath and the tickle of her tongue as she spoke.
“Such a naughty little thing. I’d think you were one of our disciples, though their thoughts don’t tend to be half as lasciviousssss…” She chuckled darkly. She moved, her breath tickling along his soles, tongue lathering more lavishly along his skin. “The things going through that little head of yours. Oh how Gamya would blush…”
Shawn made a low noise as he felt those coils tense against his skin. On pure impulse, by the part of his brain that fought back at any form of bondage, he squirmed, or at least attempted to. Her coils gave no quarter, this battle of bodies a one sided contest, hers wound around his, stilling it completely, toying with it, pressing against him everywhere. Its girth delved into his most intimate places as he was hoisted above her maw.
“I am not shy about indulging my suitors however. Let me envelop you in warmth, and make the dreams in those eyes an eternal reality…”
Her jaws opened wide, the golden snake’s smiling serpentine visage parting to a deeply pink maw. Shawn felt his soles press into the contours of her tongue like a soft, wet pillow. He felt himself sliding down along that insidious oral appendage as the forked ends teased along his skin, tasting him. The serpent’s murmurs at his taste vibrated along his body as she held him.
Shawn felt he should mind this. There was something nagging at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, not that he could move his fingers in anycase. There was someone he should be thinking about…
As this thought struggled to the surface of the murky gelatinous haze that his awareness had become, his feet his the tight, clenching tunnel of her throat. The undulating embrace of that seemingly silken tunnel chased all thoughts from his mind.
That’s it… he heard that soothing voice say...not with his ears though. In his mind her words were clearer than if she had spoken them. Let yourself sink...relax…
A luxurious swallow tugged him in up to his ankles, her coils unspooling to allow his entrance into her body as she slowly lowered him inside, letting gravity and the natural rhythms of her serpentine form do the work as she enjoyed his taste. Shawn’s legs were tasted and teased by that forked tongue as it dragged itself wetly along his calves as each slow wave of internal motion tugged him further.
She took her time, the inexorable pull like the wash of a tide. He could try to fight against it, but this, her body, was a force of nature, and he was but a small speck within its mass, subject to its whims. As though to punctuate this thought as it passed through his mind, her coils tensed, pushing at his cheeks, threatening to bury him utterly as he sank.
His thighs were now the subject of her tongue’s probing explorations inside the soft giving walls of her throat. His toes clenched and his legs thrashed just slightly, always pressed back into place by another slow swallow cascading down along his body. Shawn moaned as that thick textured thing pressed right where his legs met, licking slowly along his taint before juggling his balls with the twin tines, showing off shocking dexterity with either end as she teased his sensitive skin.
“Mmmm…” She murmured as her tongue left his orbs to spiral up along his shaft, already at full mast and throbbing needfully from her attentions. Has Gamya left you so unattended as this? Oh this will definitely have to be fixed.
Shawn moaned with what breath he could muster as her tongue began to toy with his member, twin tines teasing its head from all sides, licking lavishly along the underside while the thick textured bulk of it pressed wetly against all of his shaft at once. With the trip and all their worries, it had been some time since Gretta, or even he had given this most intimate of places much attention at all. He felt that familiar building sensation inside of him, like the wick of a firework approaching the gunpowder.
She was relentless, her coils squeezing and releasing in waves down his body starting with the top most pressing around his cheeks. It almost threatened to engulf him with its girth, before the one around his shoulders tightened, then his torso, then his waist, before she finished with her tongue, the rest of him encompassed in the wet undulations of her throat. He felt as though his whole body was being milked of pleasure. He couldn’t hold out, he doubted any man could.
With a cry enough to rustle the beads of her door, Shawn spent himself onto her wonderful tongue. The intimately attentive appendage circled and lathered itself against his skin until every drop was gone, his body squeezed of his essence like toothpaste from a tube until he was utterly empty.
There we go...now...back to business…
Her throat resumed its tugging, the sensation of his member sliding over the thick, plush pad of her tongue towards the start of her throat enough to make him squirm even after such an immense orgasm. He lay halfway inside her body as the coil around his belly loosened to usher that inwards as well.
He felt his tender stomach dragged along that same tongue as its length delighted itself in his flavor. His breath shuddered as he was pulled deeper, and deeper, the squirms of his legs visible in the thick tunnel of her throat, pressing outwards from inside those golden scales.
That progressive, inexorable swallowing tugged him deeper and deeper by the moment. Soon he was up to his shoulders, the edges of her maw coming into view, framing his vision as he looked out at the dark moonlit room around him. The slick sounds of her mouth filled his ears.
In his afterglow filled haze, he tried again to remember that thing it felt like he was forgetting. It was hard to focus as his chin settled on her tongue, her throat folding around his shoulders to cinch around his neck before the clenching entrance began to climb up along the curve of his head. She’d entombed almost all of him within her body, only his face at the back of her throat, and the wriggling bulge along the base of her neck showed that he was there at all among those shifting golden coils he was about to enter truely.
As her jaws began to close, to seal him within entirely, a name flashed across his awareness. Just before that soft pink rose over his mouth he managed to say it aloud.
“G-gretta…”
The world vanished into humid warmth. He was surrounded utterly, devoured by the golden serpen-
“SARAH!” A hissing growl issued from the door, and Shawn felt himself battered from outside of that living prison by something heavy. There was the sound of angry hisses, and muffled words. The lowered volume following that initial yell did not allow him to make anything out over the slow gurgles and slick noises of her throat.
In the warmth, and his tiredness from his orgasm, and the tingly pleasure that lingered with it, despite the noise and the movement, Shawn fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
 
 
------
 
 
  The first thing Shawn noticed upon waking, was the fact that there was something in his hair. It felt oddly heavy and clingy. The rest of him felt clean, but tender, as though he had gotten out of a particularly hot bath. He opened his eyes to see he was laying besides what appeared to be a spring, a hot spring... And he was naked besides a towel around his waist. The morning had come, and the night was little besides brief flashes across his mind like a half-remembered dream.
  He sat up. His body felt oddly loose, like he’d gotten a massage at the spa back home. On impulse, he reached a hand up to his hair. It met the usual brownish follicles, but they were matted with something. He pulled his hand back to see strands of clear ooze connecting him to his scalp still and strung between his fingers.
  It dawned on him.
  “S-saliva?” The night came back more clearly. “I….I got….she...she…”
  “Ate you,” said a chagrinned voice.
  Shawn turned to see Gretta standing a few feet away, kneeling at the side of the spring with a wash bucket, wringing out a rag. “Now hold still..” She brought the bucket over. “Getting snake spit off of skin is one thing, getting it out of hair is another.”
  Shawn was stunned into silence for several moments as she began washing his hair. He found his voice after several seconds.
  “Your family is….”
  “Insane?” She finished.
  “W-well no….I-”
  “Was going to be more polite about it?” She smirked.
  “W-well no I-”
  Gretta’s laugh was warm in his ears. “It’s fine. But we’ll have to train you a bit better. Sarah is crafty, but I bested her last night. She shouldn’t make another attempt. She looks pretty, but I know how to scrap far better. If you should run afoul of any of my other sisters we might not be so lucky.”
  “Well...I’ll just have to avoid them then.”
  “Yeeeaaahhhh about that….”
  Shawn paused, and turned to face her. “About that?...”
  “Tomorrow you’re scheduled to meet some more of them….twins actually.” She finished with his hair and dumped the cloth back into its bucket before giving him a hearty pat on the back. “Good luck there champ! We’re here three more days.”
  Three more days….
  Shawn gulped, and flopped back into a puddle on the hot spring floor. “I’m doomed…” He muttered.
 
 
To be continued.