Shawn woke up, still bleary, and got out of bed. He remembered where he was when he felt the quality of the wood under his feet. His eyes focused, and he saw the room around him, with its Indian flair and various Hinduistic trappings. He’d almost forgotten the events of the previous few days in his sleep, but they came rushing back at once.
  A quick glance to his side saw Gretta, still sleeping next to him. She’d opted to sleep as a human tonight since, after Shawn had been stolen away previously, she’d fallen asleep holding him so tightly in her coils that there was a genuine worry about that whole ‘breathing’ thing he needed to do. Still, even as a human she’d managed to steal all the covers and lay rolled in them like a weird cocoon despite the fact it was probably in the high seventies throughout the maze-like mansion. Then again, Shawn supposed she was cold blooded, so that made sense.
  He contemplated waking her, but she was a grump when woken before she was good and ready, and he didn’t fancy the idea of missing breakfast while she….worked out, said grumpiness.
  His stomach gave a low growl of agreement in this regard, though his heart fluttered just slightly. While breakfast was something he wanted, he remembered dinner…
  In the eye of Shawn’s mind he remembered sitting at that dinner table, serpentine necks as thick as tree trunks towering above him. The sound of wet maws worked around kicking legs and squirming bulges descended those living tunnels deeper and deeper beyond the light of day…
  As much as he hated to admit it, he blushed as much as he shivered. Dating Gretta was having more of an effect on him than he’d realized.
  Still, knowing what little he did about international travel, in India, as with most places, if there was food to be offered, not taking it without a blessing of some sort was a downright insult. He was sure Gretta would be pardoned from such things, but he had to represent that he was a good match, and impress the family at large.
  Gretta, seemed to realize his plight in her sleep, stirred and rolled over to free herself from her blanket prison, a hand landed with a thump against his thigh. “Nervous?”
  He tried to play it cool. “Not really, it’s only a family full of massive snakes who hate me by default because I’m attempting to date you.”
  Gretta’s grin turned up a bit at the corners, and she gave his thigh a little pat. “Good. Glad to hear it. Breakfast time.” She vaulted off of the mattress, and Shawn saw then that somehow she’d gone from pajamas to nude in the night.
  He couldn’t help but let his eyes linger on the lines of her back, leading down to a not overly sized, but nicely noticeable curve to her hips and a rump he’d always found very endearing indeed. She looked over her shoulder and caught him staring, giving a smirk and a little wiggle of her hips. “You don’t need to blush. I think at this point you can be comfortable around me being naked. You do realize I’m wearing nothing at all when I wind myself about you, right?” She teased.
  Shawn’s blush got worse. “W-well that’s different I-I-I mean…”
  She turned and leaned down to pat his cheek with a palm. This position did nothing to hide her chest whatsoever, and his eyes once again strayed south.
  “You’re adorable. Anyway, time to cover up. Food time.”
  With that she went over to her drawers and picked out clothes for both of them.
 
 
  ----
 
 
  As it turned out, breakfast was not taken in the same massive hall as dinner had been. Apparently the place was so massive that there were certain rooms for every meal, and breakfast was no different. It was a smaller room, though ‘smaller’ meant ‘as big as Shawn’s apartment and then some’ by the standards of the seemingly endless building. Similarly there were far fewer members in attendance, a smattering of surprisingly tall women, and one or two men at the sides of some of these. The breakfast area had a slightly more modern vibe, though things were still done up in wood. There were actual chairs that were fairly minimalistic, offering no back support and being more stool than anything, along with a massive window that let the occupants look out into the jungle beyond the secluded dwelling.
  There was a kitchen to the left which Shawn glanced into as he and Gretta passed on the way to the table. It was even more modern, the wood having given way to a white material he didn’t recognize, dotted with metal pots and pans. Some were bubbling with exotic spices and others were hanging on racks as, what were presumably the members of the odd religion who seemed to act as, faculty bustled about preparing dish after dish and bringing it to the assorted family in the dining area.
  Shawn was about to step forwards and take a seat, but Gretta put a hand out a ways before they got to the table. Before he could ask why her lips were at his ear.
  “See those two?”
  Shawn felt a poke at his back presumably nudging in the direction he was supposed to look. At the head of the table sat two girls, each of whom had hair of a brilliant sort of white. It stood out starkly against the mocha brown of their skin, and it hung in a short cut to their necks. One wore the usual Indian garb in a similar pure white, and the other wore the same garment in black. They were both looking directly at Shawn, and when he noticed this, he quickly averted his gaze.
  “Yeah…” He whispered. “What about them? The twins?” He asked, remembering their conversation after last night’s...encounter.
  Shawn felt Gretta nod.
  “Lunya and Senya, they’re the next oldest after Sarah, and twins are rare in the family. They’re my mother’s darlings, so they’ve asked to be introduced to you.”
  “W-well...I’m right here...can’t you just...go up and introduce me?”
  She shook her head. “Not that simple. Since they have mother’s blessing...they get to...assess you. This evening after dinner you’ll be put in a room with them and dessert, dessert takes thirty minutes. Do not agree to anything they ask you in that time.”
  “W-why not?” Shawn gulped.
  “Because, they’re going to ask if they can eat you, and if, by the time I’m allowed to look in, all of you is beyond sight, I can’t do anything about it.”
  Shawn almost yelled, but he pulled it back. “You’re not gonna be there?!”
  She shook her head. “I’m not the one being introduced. You are. I can’t interfere because they have my mother’s blessing. But all you have to do is stand up to their...attempts. It’s not going to be easy...they’re some of the best hypnotists in the family, but they might go easy on you because they’re not as...antagonistic...to me as Sarah, but if you’re weak they won’t turn down a free toy/meal.”
  Shawn shuddered. “But you know I’m no good at that! Sarah literally had me sleepwalking after less than three seconds!”
  Gretta sighed. “True, but that’s quick slapdash hypnosis, Lunya and Senya are artists, they’re going to take their time, be subtle. It’s an art to them, and artists are easily led into wasting time. Just thirty minutes, that’s all. You’ll be fine. But...just in case, I’ve enlisted the help of a third party to help train you before this evening…”
  Gretta let Shawn step forwards again, but purposefully sped up to lead him towards the opposite end of the table as far away from the twins as possible. Shawn risked a glance their way and saw both of their eyes following the pair to their seats, though the one clad in all white gave a smirk that was somewhat unsettling as their gazes met.
  Shawn averted his eyes and looked to Gretta. “Training? From who?”
  Gretta nodded to a man in an apron. Without any verbal signal he walked to the kitchen and returned with two cups of coffee and a kind of yogurt dish Shawn wasn’t familiar with. “My cousin had a similar issue some time ago. Her boyfriend, now husband, managed to get out the other side, without seeing the other side of someone’s stomach, so I figure they’re the best people to ask. I’ll take you to her at lunch, and she’s going to give you a bit of a crash course in not becoming dessert on top of dessert, sound sensible?”
  Shawn nodded. “Well...yes...so long as you trust her I suppose…”
  Gretta nodded.[a] “I do. Besides, if we don’t prepare you somehow then instead of cuddling up to you tonight, I’m going to be asking you the netflix password through several layers of scale and muscle. So we don’t have a choice really.”
  With that lovely mental image, she set about eating her breakfast and, not knowing what to say in reply, Shawn did the same.
  Breakfast was mostly uneventful, despite Shawn’s worries no massive snakes attended, well….at least they didn’t change if they had the ability. His curiosity about this bloomed to the point where he actually turned to ask Gretta.
  “You know how snakes work, Shawn, they ate last night. Most of them are still digesting, they won’t be hungry again until this evening.”
  “Oh.” Shawn replied.
  She chuckled. “Knew you’d ask…” She finished the last spoonful of her breakfast. Shawn had eaten most of his, but he wasn’t used to yogurt used in a savory manner, and his tongue was still struggling to justify this. Without waiting to ask if he wanted to finish, she got up and grabbed his hand, leading him back into the cavernous hallways of mansion. Shawn was lost in an instant, and had the briefest notion that if he and Gretta ever got separated he’d have little hope of finding his way back to their room or any kind of exit without a trail of breadcrumbs.
  “So, what you need to know, Hetzbula is very nice in general, but she is still a serpent, same as me, and you must be a little wary that our kind tends to get...into...the act of hypnosis. Most people call her Hettie for short. Got it?”
  Shawn nodded. “Got it...was she at dinner? Will I recognize her?”
  Gretta shook her head. “She prefers to take dinner alone. She rarely takes human form and while the doors here are big she doesn’t navigate them unless she has to...She’s kinda...big boned as she likes to put it.”
  Shawn blinked. “Big boned?...” He wondered at this, but decided he would find out soon enough. “What about her husband, anything I should know about him?”
  Gretta shrugged, leading him down a hallway which turned into a steep incline. Shawn wondered why they didn’t just have stairs installed, but he immediately realized the answer to his own question when he thought about Gretta’s sensitive underbelly when she was in snake form. The incline was wide, wider than the hallways had been, so wide in fact that Shawn began to feel a bit of trepidation. “Nothing much to say about Harvey. He’s nice. She picked him up in London when she ‘suffered being human’ long enough to get a degree in Zoology. Been here for a couple years...bit...clingy maybe.”
  Shawn tilted his head. “Clingy? You realize how ironic that sounds coming from the lips of the woman on the side of the family who gives ‘hug’ a whole new meaning, right?”
  Gretta simply smirked. “It is, but nonetheless true.” They came out into an open area. It was underground, but the roof was so high it reached up into the sky, where a massive window sat. It let in natural light which played over what almost seemed like a Japanese style setting, with a babbling brook. This was fed by one of those things Shawn always saw in dojos but didn’t know the name of, which poured water down, before its spout tilted upwards to click audibly against its own bamboo housing.
  In the center of the room was a bonsai tree the size of a small building, and around it were vines as thick around as cement truck barrels.
  “Wow…” Shawn breathed.
  “Yeah, Hettie had a bad ‘Otaku’ phase when she designed the room admittedly. Still does really.”
  Shawn walked forwards to one of the massive vines, which sat half in a larger section of the brook around the massive tree. “This is...pretty damn cool I’ll admit.” He looked back to Gretta. “Where’s Hettie though?” He asked, setting a hand on the vine...and giving a start as his hand sank slightly into what was definitely not wood. Muscles pressed back against his palm as brown scales rippled forwards.
  “There.” Gretta said simply with a smirk.
  A head that could have sucked on Shawn’s Volkswagon like a sweet, lifted from those coils languidly, only to flop forwards on top of the coil Shawn had been touching a moment earlier. The force of this flop splashed water up from the brook, and knocked Shawn off his feet into the soft grass of the strange bonsai garden. Green eyes opened on either side of the massive serpentine head and, before Shawn could say anything, its mouth opened wide, strands of saliva stringing between the wet muscular flesh of that maw as it….
  Yawned.
  Shawn was very nearly pushed into the ground by the force of that exhale. The moist air was wetting his clothes like he was standing in a steamer, his hair getting slicked back as he looked up through squinting eyes at a forked tongue that would put a fire hose to shame lolling from the snake’s mouth for several moments before it slowly closed, the snake blinking sleepily.
  “Is it noon already?” asked the snake, its voice friendly despite its size, the kind of voice a nurse might have, deep, but soft. It was at this point that she noticed Gretta. “Oh! Hi Gret.”
  Gretta strolled over to Shawn and grabbed his hand, hoisting the moistened male to his feet. “Hello Hettie. This is Shawn.”
  The snake, ‘Hettie’, turned her head to the side, getting a good view of him with a left eye the size of a hubcap. “Ooooh…” Shawn stiffened as the sharp serpentine iris of Gretta’s cousin focused in on him visibly, its gaze wandering up and down his body. “He’s cute. I thought he’d be taller though.”
  “You think everyone ‘Will be taller’. It doesn’t help you’re the size of a bus.” Gretta walked over and playfully elbowed the massive brown snake on the side of the jaw.
  “Harumph!” Hettie huffed. “It is not my fault I’m big boned.”
  “It might not be, but it is your fault that since mother let you take meals here you order whatever you like whenever you like. I noticed the pens in the back are looking rather empty, hmm?”
  A ripple went through those massive coils. Hettie stiffened, and the motion of it made the giant bonsai she was twined about creak with the effort of even her smallest of movements.
  “That...is besides the point.”
  “Indeed it is. “Gretta gave the side of Hettie’s neck a little pat, and Shawn did notice a slight ripple from the point of impact. Far from many of the snakes he had encountered, this beast of a serpent seemed to have more fat content than he’d come across in the past. “Anyway where’s Harvey?”
  “Harvey?” She arched an eye ridge. “Around here somewhere, let me juuuussst…” She gave a wiggle of her head, and the movement traveled down from her neck and along the length of her body. A ripple of earth colored scale that flowed down and around the bonsai to the point where it was hard to keep track of it as it looped around branches and under massive roots, drawing more groans and creaks from the much beleaguered tree. Her whole body shifted for a moment though, when Shawn saw the ripple resurface near the lake, it paused. Hettie’s head perked as her maw turned up at the sides in a smile. “There he is…”
  A small, well, small by Hettie standards, section of her coils lifted from the side of the brook. Her body shifted forwards to convey a small portion of her body forwards towards them, three bands from further down her length, as thick around as Shawn’s bed back home, boxspring and all.
  This coiled section settled on an incline on the great hill that housed the bonsai, leaving the top of it at about eye level for Gretta and Shawn. However, Gretta being taller, Shawn had to lean up on his tippie toes just a hair to get a proper view.
  The scales around the circumference rippled, then began to spin, pulling away thicker coils and ferrying in thinner ones. The first thing Shawn noticed was a shock of blond hair sticking out from the ring of belly scales at the center, moments before a nose peeked out, and then a mouth gave a little gasp, before a face appeared, framed in segmented snakeskin.
  “Wha?...” The man in the coils asked. Shawn could tell little about him, mostly because there was little to be seen. There was more Hettie around him than there probably was man in the center. He was indeed blond, and he had a kind face, though it was red currently. This was either from the slight pressure around him, which squished his cheeks in slightly, or from being exposed in front of a stranger. He seemed dazed for a moment, until Hettie slithered into his rather limited field of view.
  “Harv? We have guests.”
  The man, Harvey, blinked a few times. “Oh?...What time is it? Is it noon already?”
  She giggled, and tightened her grip around him just slightly. Shawn could see the living bonds grow a bit smaller as they compressed inwards, earning a grunt from the man that sounded downright affectionate.
  “Yes, silly. One of these days I’m going to have to fix our sleeping patterns...still you’re so cute and warm it’s hard to wake you...or wake up myself really.” She leaned forwards and booped a nose that would put the front of a car in stiff competition to his with surprising gentleness. “In anycase, you know Gretta.” She backed up a bit and nodded towards her, before doing similarly. “This is Shawn, her chosen mate.”
  Shawn blushed, but Gretta held up a hand before he could add any addendums to that statement.
  “Oh! Well congratulations. I’d shake your hand, but mine are a bit indisposed.” He chuckled. “Hettie, would you mind doing the honors?”
  “Of course not.” From somewhere among her voluminous body, the end of her tail slithered forwards. Shawn had no idea where from, she was so long he had started beginning to wonder if she had had an end at all. Even the tip of her tail was rather large. While Gretta and much of her family tapered almost to the width of a few fingers at the end of their bodies, Hettie’s tail tip was Coke can thick.
  Realizing what she intended, Shawn straightened a bit and offered his hand. Hettie’s tail finished the gesture, slithering forwards and winding around his palm and down to his wrist, two coils of her body made his hand vanish within her hold. The texture was a change from most of the serpents he’d encountered in his life. There was that same smooth, cool pressure, but this was softer, more giving, and the added weight of her body seemed to store the sun’s heat a little better. This gave it a slight warmth as the chub of her tail filled in all available space between his fingers, her scales crinkling at the apex of every curl that formed the coils of the handshake from the sheer overabundance of….her, for lack of a better word.
  Her coils squeezed inwards. The pressure was firm but not harmful, a bit snuggly really as the thick blunt end of her tail caressed the underside of his forearm.
  “Nice to meet you, Shawn,” said Harvey as Hettie shook his hand, smiling a bit bashfully at him. “Always nice to add to the family, rare as it might be.”
  Shawn nodded nervously. “So, uh….I hear I’m here to get some practice for…’Dessert’ later today?” He nodded to Harvey. “Are you going to give me some pointers?”
  Harvey chuckled. “Oh no, that’s Hettie’s department, I’ll just spectate.”
  “Oh...well...uh…’” He found it a bit strange that the man made no move to get Hettie to let go of him to further introduce himself. Gretta noticed this and tapped his shoulder.
  “One moment,”
  She led Shawn just out of earshot. “Remember when I said Harvey was ‘Clingy?’
  “Yeah,” Shawn nodded.
  “Well, it takes two to tango...let’s just say that that man has not been without at least one loop of Hettie around him since VHS went out of style.”
  Shawn blushed. “O-oh...so...h-he’s been…”
  “In her coils for years. Yes. Partly because he likes it, partly because, while Hettie’s probably the biggest in the family, she’s not the strongest by a long shot. Plus, she’s a pushover. It makes it a lot easier to stop anything from happening to him if she’s wound about his body all the time. Can’t very well get eaten inside those monster truck tires she calls coils.”
  Shawn nodded. “I see….well that makes sense…” He glanced from Hettie, to Harvey, then to Gretta. “I don’t suppose if I stayed in your coils I could ski-”
  “Sadly not. It’s tradition, you can’t hide away from this one. Harvey had to do it, and he survived fine, and he’s more of a pushover than you are.” She gave his shoulder a gentle punch that still made him take a step back. “You’ll be fine. Now come on, time’s wasting and we have to get you at least semi prepared or you’re going to be a dessert garnish.” She turned and they walked back to the odd couple, who conversed lightly between themselves.
  “Well, I’m just saying, no need to let one of the servants do it. I don’t mind my hands being free for a little while…” Harvey nuzzled one of the coils squished against his cheeks, as much as he could anyway. The only reason he could move at all was because the coils around him had so much give from the relative fat to muscle ratio. “I think your scales are beautiful and I’d be happy to apply a little polish.”
  Hettie cooed at the compliment and her coils tightened to the point where chub didn’t matter and all motion stilled in her choice of mate. “You are just SO sweeeeet!” She squeed, and Shawn had to say it was the first time he’d ever heard a snake squee. “I could just squeeze you to pieces!”
  “Getting there….hun…” Harvey wheezed.
  “Oops!” Her coils went lax, softening to their more plush consistency. “Sorry…” She smiled sheepishly, before she noticed Shawn and Gretta returning. “Ah! Ready to begin?”
  Shawn swallowed then nodded. “As I’ll ever be I guess…” He chuckled awkwardly. “Sooo...how do we do this? You try to hypnotize me, I try to resist?”
  “Something like that,” She nodded to Gretta and she waved to Shawn before heading towards the door.
  “W-wait a minute! You’re leaving?”
  She nodded. “Of course, I won’t be there this evening, so no sense in training you with me here now.” She shrugged, waving over her shoulder as she headed back to the massive hallway, before heading up the incline and out of sight.
  “Well then,” said Hettie sweetly. “Let’s get started then, Hun...come to the Bonsai tree, it’s the best place.” Her coils parted for him, lifting ponderously into arches for him to walk under, or shifting to become thin enough for him to step over, though this was the rarer of the two options. Every time he stepped under a massive segment of her body, he got the vague idea that if she chose to stop holding it up, she could pin him utterly without straining herself in the slightest. Still, she wielded her weight with a gentle kind of ease, and made no move to smother him.
  He came to the trunk of the Bonsai tree, and Hettie settled comfortably around its trunk, looking him over. “So, the twins could very easily have you wrapped around...or rather...in...their coils in a matter of seconds. Their hypnosis makes mine look like a parlor trick, but they won't’ do that. They will try to lull you in...make a game of it…” As she spoke, coils moved all around him. The sound of scale against wood and grass, and shifting through the slowly flowing brook surrounded him like a slight pressure from all sides.
  “Indeed…” Harvey interjected. “And you have to watch out for thei-”
Hettie shot him a gentle, but firm glance. “Now, now, Harvey. While I am here to train him, I cannot spoil everything or it won’t be a proper test. You passed it blind, and so will he. I’m sure Gretta’s already spilled as much as she’s allowed. Now back you go.”
Harvey chuckled awkwardly. “Oh right, well...I mean..” Her coils began to turn, and the thinner ones that let him view the outside world grew thicker, slowly crowding in on his face, squishing his cheeks up. “O-oh dear…” What little of his face that could be seen was very red now. “Alright, dear, I love ymmphh…” His voice faded to muffles as the chub of her scales washed over his mouth, and then his eyes. His nose was the last thing to vanish before he was little more than that familiar shock of blond hair, before that too was consumed in scale.
“Love you too, dearest,” She smirked at the coil cocoon, which Shawn had little doubt Harvey would be in for some time. As she spoke again, he managed to take his eyes from coils so large it was hard to believe anything was in them at all, and back to her. “Now, on to you…”
  Shawn resisted the urge to take a step back as she closed the distance between him and her. “You can be honest with me, Sssshawn…” She lisped for the first time since he had met her, making him nervous. “If you are interested in Gretta, it must mean that you have certain...fascinationsss….” Her coils continued to shift around them, though now they seemed to move in slight rhythms and undulations. Their heavy weight audibly pressed against the ground whenever one settled there, tingy ‘flomphs’ and ‘thumps’ which signified just how much she weighed, the power within her body it must take to lift that weight. “It is not every man who runs towards the touch of scale against their skin…” She smirked a bit.
Before he could finally go through with that step back, a coil just a hair beyond being as thick as he was tall pressed against his back and pushed him forwards. That softness and slight warmth he’d felt against his hand earlier proved to be quite indicative of how the rest of her felt. He sank a good ways into scales at his back until he hit the muscle that drove them forwards, a firm flex under soft squish.
“It is, however, the kind of man who blushes when such scale touches him, that might be so...inclined…” She gave him a knowing wink, her coil closing in on either side, folding like a tortilla around the delicious human center. “That means it’s going to be hard for you to resist as it is…” She allowed herself a little chuckle. “They don’t feel as nice as me though, so you’ve got one advantage.” She allowed herself a little self-satisfied smirk. “I may be big-boned, but some fellows like a little extra weight to toss around…” At the word ‘Toss’ the coil at his back pitched backwards, throwing him off balance, before it pitched forwards. He stumbled and found himself leaning on the bridge of Hettie’s snout the way he might catch himself on a kitchen table.
The serpent’s smirk grew a little at this. She gently pursed her lips and blew a warm current of air against his tummy, blowing his shirt up and away to let the humid air tingle over his nerves. Shawn blushed so much his hair very nearly stood on end and he stumbled backwards, missing a step on the incline of the hill and tumbling limbs akimbo, off center and towards the slope.
He braced himself for an impact, but instead of ground, he once again found himself cushioned by Hettie’s body. He’d fallen back into a living hammock, so wide his feet no longer touched the ground, her tail upturned so he lay with his back against her softest, smoothest scales. While the scales along her back were soft, the ones along her underbelly were almost pudgy with their give against his weight. The warmth she’d collected from the sun had been insulated against the ground, and now brushed against him with every movement as he propped himself up clumsily to look at her.
“I think I could probably hypnotize you into being lunch without even using my eyes…” She chuckled, it was a nice sound. In general, Hettie seemed to exude a feeling of soft calmness, the earthy tones of her body helping in this effect, along with the natural setting of her home. The coil hammock gently swayed back and forth, back and forth. “I can tell already you want to feel more…” She chuckled. “Good thing Gretta’s not the jealous type...And I’m taken, otherwise…” The coil hammock lifted itself on one side and he found himself sliding along her belly scales down her tail. The segments pressed against his back as he moved, before the massive section of her enormous form curled into a half circle.
He found himself slotted neatly a single coil, enough to cover him from his shoulders to his knees. It cinched snugly, and he could feel her mass, the crinkles where the coil had to fold in on itself to get small enough to hold him, the extra, scaled flesh bunching up and pressing against him all over as she closed in again. “Once I got myself around you, you might find it very hard to….disentangle.” She giggled, almost wistfully. “I’ll have to give you back of course, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy this a little…” Her coil spun just a little bit, and the simple half turn added an inch on either side of it. Shawn’s shoulders compressed inwards a bit as Hettie’s hold grew. He was somewhere near the end of her body, that he knew, nowhere near her middle...This was among her bare minimum, a single coil enough to hold him here like this, suspended in front of her smiling face.
Her tongue flicked out. Despite its size, the tines at the end brushed his cheek like a butterfly kiss as she tasted his air. “Now...onto more serious topics. It’s going to be very hard not to give in. They’re going to go easy on you, but their easy is my hard...so...let’s try that, shall we?” She gave another little laugh at the minute change in his expression. “Not to worry, I’m not sure I know how to be rough. It’s probably why I’m a bit of a black sheep. Or..brown snake really.” She laughed at her own joke before continuing. “In any case, Shawn…” She turned her head, and one massive eye stared into his, so large he could see the reflection of his blushing face. “Let me look at you…”
Hettie’s eye changed. The green iris seemed to extend upwards, before curving to the left...and curving...and curving….growing into a spiral of green and yellow which spun gently. A slight glow washed over Shawn like a spa lamp, a gentle warmth beyond that of her coils washing across his mind.
“Shawn?...” She asked gently.
He found he could say little besides “Yes?”
“I’m going to make you mine for a moment. Though...to be honest it would be very easy to make it more than a moment. It’s not as though you have a choice, but I still like to ask…” She smirked and her coil tightened again. He felt it brushing the sides of his neck now, his calves dangling helplessly in the air. “Is that okay?” Further tightening, this time more in claim to him, more a simple bit of body language, a force of pressure that made him grunt and showed him how little power he had, even to this gentle giant.
“Okay…” He repeated, looking up into that massive spiral that seemed to, for the moment become his world.
“Good.” She smirked. “That was easy...now…” He began to spin again, each rotation adding another inch of girth to the coil that held him. She didn’t need to do it, he knew she didn’t, but her tail doubled back and created a second coil. By this point, it held little more than his feet alone in its grip. The upper of the two quickly encroached on his cheeks as he vanished under those massive turns of her body. “Shawn, to be honest my ‘Training’ is a bit of a cheat.” She let her scales ripple softly, the squishiness inherent from her weight letting the motion ooze along his body as the chubby scales pushed inwards to fill any free space between him and her. Another rotation pushed his cheeks up as his neck was covered. Shawn was little more than a bit of pale skin among the earthy tones of the massive serpents coiling body, the second human lost among her coils. Were it not for the fact that she was addressing him, an outside observer would have a hard time telling.
She took a moment to lean in close and nuzzle his hair, that snout he could have easily used as a bed had he been so inclined, or she so decided, gently tussling those locks as easily as a human’s hand might. She gave a gentle puff of air through her nose, and the warm scent of her encompassed Shawn completely as her coils squeezed in further. “My sisters are so cold sometimes, I feel a bit bad.” She pressed her lips to the crown of his head. Though they could have taken him between their softness and into the wetness of her mouth to be nevermore seen, even now despite her size, she was as gentle as ever. The soft, loving gesture pressed against his senses like a warm bath after a cold day. “Perhaps it’s a bit silly of me, but I do like to show the softer side of things.” She smirked. “And maybe get a new toy for a little while out of the deal.”
She backed up a little bit, those two eyes pouring into Shawn’s. He felt filled by her, her mind pouring into his. Her body, no, one 100th of her body, covered his own. He felt at peace.
“In anycase, the trick is this. I’m going to tell you a word...and when the twins say it, as they always do, they will hold no power over you, a bit of a failsafe switch, hmm? All you have to do is make it until you hear it. I believe you can do that…” She closed in again, and he felt enormous lips brushing his ear like a lover’s whisper.
Hettie told him the word he’d have to hear. Then she backed away.
“Now...Gretta’s expecting that to take a lot longer I suspect.” Her gaze turned a hair mischievous again. “So...no reason I can’t enjoy two warm bodies instead of one for just a bit longer.” Her coil tightened, and Shawn became the familiar sight of a human almost totally submerged in coils, a face peeking above the sea that was her. She let her eyes pour into his a moment longer. “You won’t tell her, will you?”
Shawn took a moment to try and find the words. He felt so calm that his muscles felt like warm jelly. “N-n-...” He attempted. “N-Mmphh…” Before he could get the words out, her soft belly scales were over his mouth. The chubby overflow of that scaled flesh flooded over his forehead, pressing against his nose and, just before it flowed over his eyes, she chuckled. “What am I saying, of course you won’t, it’s part of the hypnosis~. In anycase…” Her coils closed over Shawn’s eyes, and another turn of her body sealed him away utterly. She was, for all conversational purposes, alone under the shade of the bonsai tree. “Enjoy, Shawn, training usually takes...ooohhh, three hours? But Gretta usually gives me four...I’ll make sure you’re nice and comfy. Good luck, hun…”
 
 
---
Shawn’s next memory was waking up on the incline of the hill with Gretta shaking his shoulder. “Get up, lazy bones…”
Shawn’s vision snapped into clearer focus and he saw her and, behind her, the enormous smiling face of Hettie. “There we go, I guess I got a bit carried away. He might be a bit...over relaxed. But! He is indeed trained.” She nodded with satisfaction. “Aren’t you, Shawn?”
Shawn blinked a few times, but before he had time to actually think back to his training, he found his mouth moving. “Yes, thank you Hettie, I appreciate your help.”
“Not a problem.” The massive snake grinned.
“Alright then…” Gretta hauled him to his feet and clapped him on the back. “I guess you’re ready then.”
Shawn got his head together, rubbing his temple lightly. He felt like he was forgetting something, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what… “Alright, how much time do we have before dessert?”
“Well, dinner’s going on right now. You missed most of it. So you have abooouuuttt….” She plucked a phone out of her pocket and checked the time. “Ten minutes to get ready.”
“What?! 10 minutes? T-that’s not-”
“Ah-ah, beggars can’t be choosers. We’ve done the best we can, now it’s all up to you.” She grabbed his wrist and tugged him towards the door. “Thanks Hettie!”
Hettie’s tail tip waved at them. “Any time! Feel free to come back.” A large section of her coils moved and parted and Shawn, glancing over his shoulder, could see a little speck of blonde which must have been Harvey. He was currently, of course, incapable of waving, but must have been shouting goodbye as well, so Shawn waved on his behalf. “I’ll be happy to train you further any time…”
Hettie’s voice followed them up the incline and back into the mansion proper. They walked past the kitchen area, and, as Shawn looked into various doors and hallways, he caught a glimpse of the dining hall, in time to see the various serpent devouring their followers in the usual displays he’d learned were commonplace here. In the brief flash from door to door, he saw Sarah, smirking around a grasping arm she slurped up like a noodle, before a wriggling bulge descended down her throat. He felt a little bit more nervous about the task he was about to take on.
Gretta pulled him into their room, and before he had much time to come to a complete stop she was already undressing and redressing him. WIth quick graceful movements he went from casual clothes to full ceremonial Indian garb. He felt a bit out of place in the outfit, but it was loose and comfortable enough. Still, he felt a bit...alien...But he supposed that was normal. However, his entire experience since meeting Gretta from the other side of a reception desk had been so far from ‘Normal’ that the word no longer seemed to have any meaning whatsoever.
She fixed his collar, and stepped back to look at her handywork. “There we go, you look almost presentable.”
“Almost?” Shawn huffed.
“I’m kidding.” She gave either shoulder a pat, then leaned in and kissed his lips briefly. “Just be okay when I come in alright? Finding a new Shawn sounds like a real chore, and I’d rather not do it.”
 She smiled, and they shared a little chuckle.
“Alright...I’ll try my best. I think Hettie’s training was good, I should be fine I think…”
“You know.” Gretta nodded firmly. “You know you’re going to be fine.” She checked her watch again, and sighed. “Well, no more stalling.” She turned and sat on the bed. “If I go with you to the dessert room, I’m liable to lose my nerve and not leave you alone. So I’m staying here. It’s the door right next to the dining hall, they should be cleaning it now.”
Shawn paused for a moment, looking at himself in the mirror. He had to admit, he did look good. Now all he had to do was feel as well put together as he looked. He took a final glance at Gretta, and nodded to her, she nodded back.
“Good luck.” She said.
“Thanks,” Shawn replied, letting out a slow exhale. “Well, let’s get this over with…” He stepped out of their room, and headed in the direction of the dessert room, trying not to think too hard about what he had to face going forwards. “Eyes on the prize...you’ll be fine…” He murmured. “You’ve faced stuff like this dozens of times…” A little voice in the back of his head supplied the response ‘And usually you get eaten’ but he chased that away with a shake of his head.
He passed the dining room, the serpents within full and dozing, coils upon coils in a sea of scaled color draped over one another. He paused to look, seeing the various servants taking care to vault over thick lengths of scale to clean the various empty plates and cups. Shawn could see the occasional movement from inside those lengthy bodies, shuttled deeper inside by flexes of internal muscle as the predators that had devoured them dozed.
As he looked on, one of the servants misstepped, tripping over the end of an unseen tail and falling backwards into a pile of coils that reached well above his head. He tried quickly to right himself, but their mass shifted and anywhere he placed his weight his hand simply sank in. The coils shifted downwards like an avalanche, wrapping, coiling and laying themselves in a scaley lattice across his body. He struggled for a moment, but as his torso vanished he seemed to accept his fate. Shawn gave a gulp as a green and yellow banded segment of scales curled around his face and vanished him from sight.
“I...may be in over my head…” He murmured to himself. Still, there was no turning back now, the only way out was through.
Shawn walked to the next door, and placed a hand on its smooth wooden surface. With a moment’s hesitation, he pushed inside.
Lunya and Senya sat on the other side of a table, on chairs that were a fair ways off the ground, so much so there was a rung between the legs of them to help anyone who might have trouble to climb into them. Lunya’s white silk outfit billowed out below her to cover most of her seat, while Senya’s onyx one did the same. They smiled in such an uncannily similar way that Shawn contemplated turning around and taking things up with Gretta’s mother.
“Hello, Shawn,” Said Lunya, placing her elbows on the table and resting her chin on the backs of her palms.
Senya did the same thing, smiling at him in equal measure. “You’re cute, I can see why Gamya picked you certainly.”
“You also seem to have a bit of a thing for snakes, yes?” As Lunya’s question hit the air, two servants came in, carrying three dessert plates, a kind of extremely light cake on each. Lunya’s was dark black, while Senya’s was a pristine white. The one in front of Shawn was between the two, a slight beige. Ornate looking dessert forks were placed on the side of each plate.
Shawn tried to keep his blush down. From what he remembered of Hettie’s training, they were going to try to use his affinity for scales against him, to make him accept being eaten. He just had to not give in for thirty minutes. The clock was already ticking...how much time had passed? There were no clocks in the room, and no windows by which he might tell through the position of the sun. His fancy outfit had no pockets, so his phone was back in the room. He was blind to how long he had to resist them, and that just meant he had to try all the harder.
“Kinda….” He shrugged.
“Kinda you say?” They said at once, before Senya took up the conversation. “We
observed you at dinner. We don’t think we’ve seen anyone blush that much at the dinner table since cousin Boha drank an entire bottle of Shiva’s Wrath in one go.”
  Shawn felt his cheeks heating up, but he decided he would not be goaded. In order to hide this change in his demeanor, he picked up his fork and put it delicately into the cloud-like cake. He lifted it to his mouth and tried to keep his hands from shaking as he took a bite. It tasted slightly of coffee and mocha, along with a slight hint of spice balanced with the kind of sweetness that made his tongue yearn for more. The cooks here were magnificent as usual.
  “Welll...You’ll remember I had some Shiva’s wrath myself, so that might explain the blushing.”
  “Might,” They said as one. “Though, there are also reports of you in Sarah’s room directly afterwards…”
  Shawn’s hand paused in mid-trip down for another bite. “W-well...I may well have still be under the influence. And, if you have enough knowledge to know that, then you certainly know that she has a habit of stealing her sister’s things. There’s no way to conclude that any of that was my own volition. In fact, I can confirm it wasn’t.”
  They each took a bite of their cakes in perfect unison, chewing thoughtfully. “A fair point. It seems you have got brains at least, that is a mark in your favor….however...minds can be molded...Perhaps it is best we stop beating around the bush, as they say where you’re from, hmmm? Shawn?”
  Shawn continued his arm’s journey downwards to the cake, taking another gentle bite and trying to come off as unflustered. “Yes...perhaps we should…” He said evenly.
  Senya and Lunya didn’t change all at once. That was the most surprising thing. In fact, they had been changing the entire time he’d been in the room and he didn’t even notice it until a swell of black scales pressed against his legs. He stiffened, it parted his legs as it ran between them, a length of scale so thick he was almost bow legged in his chair.
Shawn peeked under the table, and found there was a reason it was so high off the ground. This length of serpentine muscle had a twin, its opposite, scales of pure alabaster white undulating under the table. He traced them back to their source, each twin’s scales were the opposite color of their outfits and hair. As he looked back up to them, their long flowing sleeves were empty now, and they both smiled that cheshire cat smile that seemed to run in the family. Their faces grew smoother, rounder, the undersides of their jaws coloring into pale segmented scale before their silken clothes slipped from their new sinuous bodies and fluttered to the floor discarded.
Shawn felt like he was sitting on the edge of a pool, water up to his knees, as he sat there in that surprisingly tall chair. Instead of water though, the slight pressure shifting around the lower portions of his legs, were the bodies of his two dessert companions, who smiled solicitously at him from across the table.
“There’s that blush again…” The dark snake, Lunya, said softly, her voice a gentle purr. The length of scale between his legs pressed upwards, and Shawn had to hold back a yelp as it brushed just barely against his inner thighs, forcing his legs even farther apart. The white scales arced up behind him. He felt the weight and pressure of them against the back of his chair, the crest of that massive cylinder of muscle pressing against his shoulders. The coils all worked in tandem to pull his chair closer to the table, to the point his chest was almost braced against the wood.
Senya’s pristine white coils undulated against his back as she arced forwards, the graceful motions of her neck bringing her to hover in front of Shawn’s face. “So...we’ll start simple. You know why you are here, yes?”
“You’re going to try to...eat me…” Shawn said. His calm demeanor was starting to fracture, particularly as an arc of Lunya’s coils lifted and draped itself heavily over the side of his thigh. That length between them was now running continuously across his skin through the thin protection of his silk garment as Senya’s coils continued gently pressing against his shoulders.
“Yes...we are…” There was a slight tilt of Senya’s head. “So...for the first time, and perhaps the easiest, I will ask…” She slithered closer until her nose was very nearly touching Shawn’s. He could smell the sweetness on her breath, along with slight reveals of the pink softness of her maw with every word. “May I devour you?”
Without a single spiral to be found, Shawn felt a thrum of power in those words. He wasn’t sure if that was any intentional magic, or if it was all in his mind, but he shook it off and squared his jaw.
“No...you may not…” He said slowly.
The dark serpent smiled slowly, it was almost a creature all its own, slithering over her face to color her features as she slowly bobbed back and forth. She wasn’t even truly trying yet and Shawn had to catch himself before he followed with the motions of his own head. She turned to her sister who had asked the question and slowly mirrored the motions of her smile, wrapping slowly about her twin’s neck, lovingly nuzzling under her chin before her head curled around to whisper in the pale snake’s ear.
“Oh I do so love that answer…” They seemed to dance together as they spoke, light and dark, yin and yang, a perfect balance. They moved as though they had some unseen method of communication, every forwards from Lunya was met with a backwards from Senya, every squeeze with a release, every slither with one to match. Shawn felt himself slipping, but quickly clamped down on the impulse as he felt the coils filling the small dessert room press outwards with a flex of muscle, swelling with power as their owners showed him his own smallness.
“As do I…” Senya replied, her alabaster scales closing in around Shawn’s back a bit more as they slithered forwards as one. He felt the coils of her opposite pressing up between his legs, his chair had all but vanished now. He stiffened as the thin protection of his silken pants proved how little separated him from the twins.
The arc of nightshade scale rising between his legs pushed him out of his seat entirely as the soft, tender touch of the pristine ones at his shoulders braced him, they worked together to raise him high. The chair and the table were slowly consumed under serpentine flesh. Shawn watched them sink away as though in quicksand, the sound of scale across wood signalling their passage as it became too muffled to hear.
He hadn’t noticed how high the ceiling was when he came in, he did now, and he knew why. Even the door vanished, there was no exit, no floor, and coils piled and slithered up along the walls to either side of him, waves so high it was easy to forget they were there at all. The constant changing shifting rolling of black and white, the sound of them caressing across one another’s body, he had to grit his teeth not to let his mind wander.
A loop of Senya’s pale body wound around his ankles, though he couldn’t see them, lost as they were in the sea of scales. It cinched, pinning his legs together with the massive girth of Lunya’s tail threading between them like a massive thread through the eye of a needle. The sensation of every flex and wriggle of her body was painfully obvious to the human trapped in the room with the massive snakes. He bit back a noise as that coil set about making itself comfortable there.
“Poor little fellow...Did you even know what you had gotten yourself into when you courted our little Gamya?” Lunya’s coil set up a slow undulation between his legs, forcing his hips from side to side with how tightly his thighs were pinned against its mass. He felt his toes curling from the sensual pressure, the occasional flex of her body forcing his thighs a little farther apart before the muscles relaxed.
Senya’s coils softly squeezed at his shoulders, always moving, thinner coils ferried away to bring forth thicker sections of her, always soft in their hold, like flowing silk. “Now, now, I don’t think he’s a ‘Poor’ little fellow. I think he’s lucky. Most of the House’s suiters we have to….teach...to love our coils. I think this one’s already...well aware. What’s that American saying? He may have hit the ‘Jackpot’ in that department…”
  “True…” Lunya slithered around him slowly, eyes never leaving his, until the predatory visage of her profile came to rest on his left shoulder, a heavy weight, the sound of her maw moving right in his ear, a soft, wet noise. “But one can only win a Jackpot with a gamble, and while I can certainly feel just what he stands to gain if he wins…” Her coil pressed upwards against his inner thighs, rising to cup his shaft and balls through that thin garment. The purr of her voice pulsed against his body. “I do so wonder if he’s considered the oddssssssss~” Her tongue flickered in the corner of his vision, tasting the air, the twin tines drifting close to his body, heat spilling off that questing organ, the humidity wetting his face just lightly.
  “True…” Senya agreed with a nod, slithering forwards and draping herself over her sister’s neck before coming to rest on his right shoulder. The cheeks of either serpent pressed against his cheeks, smooshing them inwards slightly. “But even if he loses, there is no reason it cannot be a reward in itself, hmmm?” The coils at his shoulders were enormous now, not quite as big as Hettie’s, but large enough to encompass him from the back of his neck to the top of his hips in a single curl. “You’ve felt how soft our coils can be...how gentle...and the power I’m sure...Gamya is a feisty one…” At the word ‘Feisty’ her coils squeezed inwards, pressing his shoulders together as a little of his breath was squeezed out. “Would it really be so bad to let us devour you? To serve these coils, to make us hiss with the pleasure of your squirms from the insssssside?” She chuckled lightly.
  Her voice had taken on an odd tone, like two of her were talking at once, it was hard to focus again. Shawn felt dreamy, detached…
  “Awww….quite so…’ Lunya joined in, the thick length of her body pinned between his legs ceaselessly moving, almost squirming, moving every which way now to tease him as they spoke. “It would be a deserving fate, to become part of the divine. We are worshipped for a reasssson you know…” They turned then, the ends of their snouts pressing lightly against either side of his head, warm air washing over his ears, the slick sounds of their tongues scant inches away. “You could be with us forever…Under our power. You could sssstay…” Her tongue lathered against the outer rim of his ear, and despite himself he moaned.
  “Yessss….” Senya purred. “Feel eternal blisssss…” The touch along both ears made him squirm, and Lunya’s coil replied in kind, taking advantage of his weakness with constant stimulation. “Tell us, Sssssshawn….what is the ansssswer to our question now? Will you allow us to devour you? I promise I’ll be ever so gentle…”
  “Or perhaps you like things a little rougher…” Lunya gave a soft sigh against his cheek. “In which case I can certainly oblige…”
  “So….” Said Senya.
  “Will….” Lunya continued.
  “You let us…” Senya’s coil closed in further around his body, he found taking a full breath impossible.
  “Devour you…” Lunya finished with a slow undulation of her coils against his crotch.
  “Nngn….”
  “Sssspeak up…” They both said at once, tongues roaming over ears and cheeks, slicking over the crown of his head and sticking his hair up in odd directions. “We can’t quite hear you…”
  “Nnn…..gnngnn….”
  “They’re so cute when they try to speak…” Lunya purred.
  “N-no!” Shawn managed, breathlessly, chest heaving with effort.
  Both serpents paused, pulling back. They looked at each other, then they looked at Shawn, before their smiles grew.
  “Oooooohhh~” purred Senya.
  “I guess we’ll have to actually try this time,” said Lunya..
  Senya’s coil around Shawn’s ankles released, and the dark coil of Lunya’s body between his legs pulled away, as did the pure white loop of Senya’s body around his shoulders, leaving him sitting atop a mound of coils, the depth of which he couldn’t tell.
  They slipped from either side of him, settling in front of him again. Their necks slowly moved in waves like they were being charmed, though in reality they were doing the charming.
  “It’s been awhile since we’ve had to pull these out…” Senya said gently. “But I suppose you’re a special case, so you should be quite honored…”
  “Quite so…” Lunya continued. “I’m impressed…”
  Shawn took deep, slow breaths. He could feel the coils shifting around his legs, though in this reprieve from more heavy attentions he tried to get his head in order. He had no distinction of time, but surely he didn’t have long left.
  “But you’ve earned it…” The black snake continued. “So, thusssss, prepare to get a bit more of a tassssste, of what we can really do…”
  With a sound like shifting leather, the sides of their necks seemed to expand, a wide smooth circular arc that tapered the further down their bodies it went. It was unmistakable, the classic shape that marked all of their breed.
  “C-cobras…” Shawn said blearily.
  “Ooooh he’s a quick study…” Lunya commented with a murmur of approval.
  “Indeed he is…” Senya smiled, and together they leaned in closer. The shade of their hoods cast a shadow over him, seeming to enclose him even further than he already was. “But we are not simply that, Ssssshawn…” A glimmer passed along their hoods. It seemed for a moment like a trick of light, but all the work he had done to collect himself seemed to melt away like a popsicle on a summer sidewalk.
  “W-wha….”
  “What indeed….” Lunya chuckled, another glimmer...then another...then another...their eyes began to glow as well. Familiar spirals of black and white spiraled outwards from the sharp reptilian irises, their will pouring down onto him like standing under a waterfall. The black rings of their hypnosis arced out from their eyes, and didn’t stop there, the smooth rings of color flowed over the shape of their heads and out along their hoods. Senya went left and Lunya went right, no matter where Shawn looked it was swirls, always swirls. The coils that had been supporting him somewhat began to shift and move, his weight sinking him into their hold. He tried to push his way up, but it only served to trap his hands under thick ever moving portions of their bodies. His motions were clumsy and awkward under the river of their willpower.
  One of them spoke, or perhaps it was both of them, it was hard to tell anymore. They seemed almost like one being made of two parts, a singular inexorable pull on his consciousness that begged one thing: obedience. It called to him like a feather bed after five weeks without sleep, a hot meal after a month of starving, a glass of water in an endless desert. To take it would be the purest bliss he could imagine.
  “Mnmgff….” Shawn groaned, his shoulders shifting as he tried to free his arms. He could feel the coils around his legs shifting and turning, individual coils winding around either leg, spiraling downwards to pull his pants off and away with their friction. He was up to his belly in their grip, and as a rapid of scales turned around the tender swell of his stomach it ripped his shirt and tugged the tatters away to be lost beneath him, just as the table chairs and door had been.
  “Now…” They said, two beings one voice, the sound of their voices thrumming through his body like a tuning fork to a perfect melody. “What you are experiencing is a small iota of our ability. How do you feel?”
  Shawn’s shoulders slumped, his pectorals vanished under scale. He was naked now, he could feel every diamond shaped bit of their bodies shifting across his form. Every nerve was set alight with their touch, seemingly all the more sensitive for their hypnosis, if this could be called that. This was leaps and bounds above anything he’d experienced prior. He felt as though if they told him to grow wings, feathers would have started sprouting between his shoulderblades.
  “S-so good….” He said on automatic. It was the truth, telling a lie would have been harder than walking to the moon under those swirling hoods and endless eyes.
  The echoing voice of the pair chuckled low and long, a melodious sound. Shawn was almost up to his neck now, one of their tails...no...it was both… twined about his neck slowly, creating an oozing series of coils in perfect balance, black and white, black and white, black and...white settled under his chin, forcing his chin up. Coils braced against the back of his head, his fingers the only part aside from this poking out of that sea of scales. Their hoods and eyes became the sky above him as they looked down.
  “So happy to hear it…” They cooed. “Now Shawn...would you do...anything we request of you?”
  Shawn’s fingers vanished, he watched his index as it disappeared under a band of black, white shifting over it as it was encompassed, his face was framed in the same colors. They pressed against his cheeks, his chest, his legs, twin lengths flowed above and below his member, fully at alert, sandwiching them in weighty, tight, shifting ecstasy. He moaned and looked up as his vision was framed by their hold, his living bonds as they squeezed in all around him. The movement of the musculature flexing under those onyx and alabaster scales oozed around him slowly, motions squeezing from toes to head like toothpaste from a tube, the coils compressing around his member expanding and contracting with their breath and the force of their constriction.
  “In that case…” They said, their voice a gentle rumble that shook gently around the whole of the room. “Shawn...you are going to give me...give us...permission to devour you….Isn’t that right?”
  Shawn felt that pull towards bliss, the bliss of doing what he was told above all else, to give in, and allow himself to be encompassed by it. He felt the belly scales of a pure white coil wrap over his chin, a black one starting to flow over his forehead. It became hard to breathe as his whole body was compressed.
  “N-nn…”
  A chuckle sounded. “Silly little human...you have no choice...you have to...obey…”
  That final word, it didn’t gel the way the rest had. In a moment he felt a small bead of clarity, like Hettie’s warm smile breaking through the haze of what seemed like unstoppable hypnosis. He grabbed onto that bead with his mind and tugged at it.
  “N-no!”
  Everything went absolutely still. The coils around him went still, the undulating of their necks went stil. You could have heard a pin drop, if in fact there was a floor visible in the room for it to fall on.
  “No?...” Said Senya, her voice was seperate now.
  “I think he said no…” Lunya repeated.
  Thier voices joined again, the swirls started up at double speed, the twin snakes leaning in so close he could see down the moist caverns of their throats as they spoke.”Did you just deny our request?...”
  “Nngnn….” Shawn fought, holding onto that same pearl of will Hettie had given him. They squeezed in around him, the defined lines of their muscles standing starkly out against their scales as they pressed him like an orange, wringing the free will from his body, or at least trying to. “Y-yes…” He managed. “I….did….”
  The coils held their tension for several moments, then they eased, the motion leaving little of Shawn exposed besides his upper lip and eyes.
  “Wait…” Said Lunya. “This has Hettie written all over it. No one can deny us without outside influence…”
  Senya frowned. “You’re correct...but that is not technically speaking against the rules…”
  “True…” Lunya concurred nodding. “But also….if we eat him, he can’t tell anyone he passed.”
  There was another pause. Senya rippled her scales, a serpentine shrug. “True, that’s what we did to Raymond. And he was tasty. I suppose since I got to eat him, you can have this one. But, next time we play fair, okay?”
  Lunya replied with a shrug of her own. “If you say so….”
  A spire of coils rose from the pit he’d sunk into, lifting him, still held in their bodies, upwards, immersed in a spiral of scale. He struggled, but he may as well have been trying to fight his way out of concrete. They gave no quarter. His body was turned sideways, coils falling away from his feet as Lunya settled in behind him, speaking slowly.
  “I would like to take my time with you, but I’m quite certain there’s not extremely much of that left. I don’t like to lose, Shawn, and neither does my sister. Though if it’s any consolation...you would have made a lovely cousin-in-law…”
  Though he couldn’t see, the ability to turn his head long since lost to the girth of their coils, he heard her mouth yawn wide with a lecherous breath, felt her tongue wind about his feet. His soles pressed into the carpet of her mouth, slow undulations of her lips as they closed around his ankles, suckling him deeper.
  The twin coils undid themselves as she slurped him up, like spaghetti. Her motions were neither slow nor fast, but she enjoyed him nonetheless, the steady suction pulling him until his feet were enfolded in the tight tunnel of her throat. He felt it take hold and was tugged backwards sharply in one muscular flex of her internal muscles, her stomach needy to hold him as her coils had.
  As her sister slowly devoured him, Senya settled in front of him, her eyes lidded as her hypnosis, not enough to make him agree to anything any longer, made his complaints and cries incomprehensible, soft murmuring.
  “Such a shame, I’d very much like to be the one who gets to eat you…” She pushed forwards, and to his surprise, kissed him. Her massive serpentine lips encompassed the whole of his face between that soft caress. It was then that he realized he wasn’t being kissed, but tasted. Her forked tongue slipped under his chin and from between those suckling lips to wrap around his neck in a wet, spongy hold, squeezing a bit of flavor from him before she disconnected with an audible pop.”But I’ll have to make due with a little sample while my dear sister here enjoys the true prize…”
  The distraction had made it easy for Lunya to take his hands beyond her lips. Another slow spasm of her throat along its length pulled him deeper again, up to his shoulders as the last of their coils fell away,
  “Goodbye, Shawn. I have to say you impressed us. But in the end, you should learn that we are greater than you can imagine. We are divine, and you cannot hope to truly defy us…”
  Lunya’s lips wrapped around Shawn’s neck, their plump forms pressing against the sides of his jaw, the back of his skull, she sucked him in slowly letting their touch press around his face until he was almost gone.
  “Perhaps a true...internal embrace, will show you this...If you are reincarnated, let us know if it helped.” She giggled.
  Lunya’s lips curled over Shawn’s forehead, then chin, then his eyes were taken by their advance. With his nose and mouth being all that was free, he said what were to be his last words outside of the onyx serpent’s form.
  “I….win…” He managed.
  A gong rang….Everything went dark.
 
 
  -----
 
 
  Shawn awoke in the dining room, to find Gretta’s mother glaring daggers at the two, now human twins. They cowered under that glare, and he learned then that, while he thought the way she looked at him was bad, that was probably 1/1000th of her true ability. He was pretty sure if she ever truly glared daggers with her full ability, someone nearby would get puncture wounds.
  “What...happened?” He asked blearily. He was laying on the floor next to the table. He found Gretta sitting on a chair next to him, sipping a cup of tea.
  “Mother dear had to pull you from Senya’s throat. Has anyone ever told you that that happens to you a lot, Shawn? Like….more than should happen to a normal person.”
  Shawn blinked. “W-well, in my defense it wasn’t my fault this time. I won! They cheated.”
  “I know…” Gretta’s mother said in English. “I have suspected for some time. They were too clever to get caught most of the time, but they grew complacent.”
  Gretta smirked at him and as her mother turned back to the twins and started yelling at them in rapid fire Indian, she said, in a lowered tone. “She’s not so mad that they cheated, so much as she’s mad that they were sloppy enough to get caught.”
  “Oh…” said Shawn.
  Gretta turned in her chair and offered him a hand. With ease she hoisted him to his feet with a smile. “You did it. That means you’ve got the family’s approval. And with one day to spare in our trip. Should be smooth sailing from here on out.”
  Shawn blinked. “W-what? Realy? It’s over?”
  Gretta shrugged. “Weeeeelllllllllllllll, sorta. I mean, you’ve still got family reunions...and Christmas...and Mom’s birthday….OH! And I talked to the Spa, Pachy’s trying to set it up to where one of the doors leads to the Mansion.”
  “The mansion!?” Shawn blinked. “You’re going to get your customers eaten!!”
  “Oh, you mean more eaten than usual?” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, someone always fishes them out. Besides, we’re doing some specific hiring.”
  Shawn tilted his head. “Specific hiring?”
  Gretta nodded. “Yeah, Hettie wants to see about getting into hypnotherapy. Harvey’s all abuzz about it.” She looked from left to right conspiratorially. “Though between you and me, I think he just kinda gets off from watching other people get coiled ’n such. But that’s none of my business.”
  Shawn blushed. “Oh…” He paused, taking a deep breath. With all he had been through, the idea that there was no looming threat on the horizon almost seemed impossible. “So...what do we do with our last day here?”
  Gretta shrugged. “Well, mating season starts.” She gave her shoulders a sassy waggle. “We could try our hand at that.”
  Shawn turned redder than perhaps Gretta had ever seen him, and she gave him a playful shove with an arm. “I’m kidding. But seriously. Stay. In. The Room. The females around here without my modern-mindedness get….’Handsy’ to use an incredibly ironic term. Anyway, you’ll be fine...we’ll be on the plane before you know it, then it’s back to normal.”
  Shawn actually managed a little smile, and even a laugh. “Is anything about us normal?”
  Gretta smiled back. “No….but that’s kinda interesting, isn’t it?”
  “I’ll say…” He brought his hand up to feel something in his hair. It came back strung with clear slime. “Oh...uh….want to help me clean the saliva out of my hair?”
  “Oh. Is it that time in our dating life once again?” Her smile turned into a smirk, and she took him by the hand, leading him towards the spa and leaving the twins to their tongue lashing. “My pleasure…”
  Shawn followed in her wake, his smile growing a bit more. “I love you…” He managed.
  Gretta paused in her step for only a moment, before smiling over her shoulder at him.
  “I love you too…” She said.
 
 
The End
[a]Both characters nod, and you start the new line with an action rather than the speech