Sarne studied the trembling, tiny Nari for a few seconds, simply allowing the newly shrunken boy to contemplate his situation. Lip quivering, eyes watering from the sheer overwhelming nature of what had happened, Nari stared up at the plush lips of his goddess as they stretched out to a length seemingly double that of a house.
“I do believe that you will amuse me far more in this new form, little Vaw,” she said with a soft murmur. Her smooth hand rose up again like a terrible beast from her lap and came closer to Nari again, her pointer finger and thumb stretching out and keeping apart just enough space to fit a tiny boy-shaped object in between them.
Nari didn’t vocally object as Sarne’s two finger pads closed themselves around his sides and lifted him up as if he was weightless. The tip of her thumb dwarfed the young boy by this point, who came in at no more than half an inch in comparison to the breathtakingly titanic mountain of holy woman. He shivered for a second, the chills along his back quickly requited by the sheer warmth radiating from the two soft fingertips, which seemed to almost instantly regulate the small boy’s body temperature.
Nari found himself staring into the face of his goddess, so close that he couldn’t see her forehead or chin without craning his neck in either direction. His legs dangled uncomfortably in the dizzying space below, as he was only supported by the firm grip of Sarne’s fingers on his sides. Luckily, the goddess quickly corrected this as well, placing a thumb from her other hand just underneath Nari’s feet, allowing him to stand semi-safely upon the grooved surface. Even though Sarne’s hands were smooth and shapely, at his size, the ridges of her fingerprints were noticeable on the boy’s feet, and he struggled to balance correctly on the surface.
Sarne’s lips parted upward, rising into the air like the jaws of a whale that Nari had once seen out in the ocean, the pink, glistening interior of her mouth catching the glow from the hall, her teeth rearing almost, each appearing over half as long as Nari’s entire body in their partially sharpened, saliva-shined, porcelain-like glory. Her tongue lapped upward, flicking the tiniest droplet of a warm bubble outward, where it smacked Nari roughly on the cheek. The tip of her tongue rose upward, clicking lightly against the ribbed roof of her mouth as she began to speak.
“I offered you your chance, Vaw. Perhaps you misunderstood in your vast unintelligence. You are the first pitiful human I have given the gift of rebirth to: the first sign of weakness I have displayed, all as a result of your patronage. But now… I see you clearly have forgotten your love for your goddess. You are…” began Sarne, slow and measured, a rolling wave of hot breath seeping around Nari’s body and making him sweat.
“No! I… I…” stuttered the poor boy with a squeak, cutting her off, desperate to redeem himself.
“YOU WILL NOT INTERRUPT ME, LITTLE SLAVE!” screamed the goddess, her fiery passion ignited all at once. Nari could have sworn he heard a bolt of lightning crack across the room, although it could have just been his ear drums nearly imploding from the sheer volume of the shout and the tidal wave of cold air that rushed from the tunnel-like back of Sarne’s throat.
“I’m sorry!” cried out the ten-year-old with a cracked sob, tears streaming down his face, his pants becoming wet as he soiled himself in depraved fear. He closed his eyes, his chest heaving with the difficulty to breathe steadily.
Sarne shook her head, tsking. “But… nonetheless… you have proven yourself above those of your insect ilk, and therefore, I offer you this final gift…”
Nari raised his eyebrows, his vision blurry with tears, and felt a tingling sensation along his arms and hands, which then flowed down his legs and into his feet, and finally to his head. His neck jerked back, and his brain seemed to turn backwards inside his skull. He groaned from the brief pain before it all ceased, and he swallowed hard.
“W-W-Wh…” whimpered the small boy, more tears flowing.
“Immortality, my young slave,” she said with sudden gentleness. “You will not perish this day as a sacrifice, but will live on. Forever.”
A smile crossed the young boy’s lips through the caking tears. “R-R-Really?” he squeaked.
She nodded purposefully. “Evidently you are incapable of conjuring your own worthy praise of your goddess. But this is to be expected. You are a human. So I shall, just as I have done for everything else in your life, provide.”
“H-H-H…” coughed the boy, beginning to realize another possibility of his predicament.
“Surely you are not this vacuous, Vaw. I shall swallow you. And then when you return, I shall swallow you again. And again. And again. And again. Until I feel you have repaid your debt to me for your misgivings. Until I am satisfied.”
The boy was about ready to cry out in mental agony, but something kept him from it. A mantra? A memory? He couldn’t even think clearly enough to understand it; he simply listened to it.
“And hear me well, young slave,” she whispered, parting her lips further and holding the young boy precariously over her cavernous mouth, the heat emanating out like smoke from a volcano. “I may NEVER be satisfied…” With this final, soft-spoken statement, the goddess released her grip on the boy with a smile, allowing him to plummet down into her shadowy cave of a mouth.
Nari tumbled down the rough, slick surface of her tongue, cascading down multiple crisscrossing waterfalls of steaming, sticky saliva and bumping his fingers against taste buds. Suddenly, he found himself slamming against the undulating back wall of Sarne’s mouth. His foot slid along a molar just as it clacked against the top row of teeth, sending him into uncontrollable shivering as he slid easily into the opening of Sarne’s wet gullet. Just as Sarne’s colossal lips closed, sealing the boy in darkness and his grimy fate, the boy felt himself becoming lodged in the rippled esophagus of the human-shaped goddess as she slurped his miniscule body wetly down. As the muscular, slippery flesh began pulling him lower and lower into her throat, Nari disappeared into his thoughts, the flow of tears ceasing as he tried to accept what was going to encompass the foreseeable future of his now-infinite life. He was unsuccessful in this plight, but he was determined, and not from confidence, but from something far more potent. His fists tightened as his body became engorged in the foamy, digestive slime of Sarne’s throat for the first of many times.
Courage.