Zecora wasn’t sure quite just what had happened… she’d heard a pony rush up in the Everfree, a bandit perhaps, demand her bags, and then she was hit upon the head heavily, dropping her into blackness. Coming to a short while later, she blinks and winces, shifting in place. The zebra mare tried to bring a hoof to her face to rub her head, but found both of them firmly stuck to her sides, something tight gripping them and holding them fast… rope?

She grunts and stretches, twisting about to try and get a look at her situation- finding her hind hooves similarly bound together. Her muzzle was tightly bound shut as well, a bit of cloth shoved into her mouth stifling any sort of sound she could have made to call for help. Evidently whoever had robbed her didn’t want her pursuing them, or sought to dispose of her like this. Did they mean to return for her? She takes a deep breath, trying to calm herself as she thought of a way to get herself undone… but movement caught her eye.

Slowly turning to the left she sees the glint of eyes in the darkness of the forest, freezing up stiffly where she lay on her belly. A reptilian head pokes into view, giving her a start- the long body of a massive python surging forward, fixated upon the helpless zebra. With a lightning quick motion, Zecora barely had time to yelp into her gag before it was upon her!

The snake struck with its teeth, grabbing onto her side and twisting into a roll to coil around the zebra mare. The strength of its muscles were too much for her to resist in this state, finding herself coiled more and more, the snake beginning to squeeze and restrict her air. Most of the squeeze was around her neck, but her metal rings seemed to be taking the brunt of its force, keeping her wind pipe from being crushed.

She lay in the grip of the snake, struggling very little, for every movement she made alerted the predator and it just squeezed harder. The snake twists and turns, getting a better position on the prey it held in its coils.

Zecora’s eyes go wide, a moist sticky warmth creeps over her hooves alongside the prickle of reptilian teeth outside of her view, soon sliding further up to her heels. She kicks and squirms, only to have the snake squeeze her into further submission as it begins to work its jaws up over the hapless bound zebra’s legs. Her hooves were drawn further into the creature’s wet, fleshy maw, teeth prickling into her haunches as she felt herself squeezed into its jaws. It twists its head side to side, working over the widest part of her hips as her tail is drawn in- desperately she attempts to hook her tied forehooves over the side of its jaws, but the creature’s coils prevent those motions, soon finding her forehooves pulled into the slippery maw as well.

The coils shift, allowing the zebra to be swallowed more easily, with all four of her hooves now slickened and within the snake, it would make short work of her. She whinnies and snorts, muffled by the rope and cloth as it works its toothy jaws up over her belly, twitching and squirming as it went, the hideous warmth encircling her body as she was pulled in. Up, up, toward her shoulders and neck, the creature lifted her upward and gravity began to work to speed up her descent.

Covered in the sticky saliva that lubricated her body, she slipped downward. She caught a quick glance of her tied form stretching the snake’s scaly hide into a thick bulge before the jaws pull around her head. Breathing heavily, the snake’s saliva drips down over her eyes as the jaws close around her, dimming her vision and cutting her off from the fresh air of the world and casting her into darkness. She fights and twists, all in vain… surely this wasn’t it? This couldn’t be it! She thought in panic as the snake’s muscles squeezed and contracted, forcing her further into its body…

The ropes held Zecora fast as she slipped deeper into the gullet of the snake, her hooves pressed up against a ring of flesh before it gave way and she was squeezed and forced by the walls of muscle and bone that encased her into a tube-like chamber, smaller than she was around but that stretched tightly to fit her. A noxious scent hit her nostrils and a tingling wetness encircled around the mare, viscous liquid squeezed around her form, filling every nook and cranny and matting her fur and mane. She held her eyes tightly shut, her grunts and struggled muffled but visible from outside the snake.

She felt movement of the snake, contracting and pulling muscles as it slowly slithered away from where it had found her, seeking out a sheltered place to sleep and digest its massive meal.

The liquid tingled as the snake moved, building up more steadily into a sting, acid like sensation that permeated her being, seeping around her and eating away at her fur. She hadn’t suffocated yet, minutes now since she had been able to draw a breath… some strange magic was keeping her alive in the belly of the snake. The tingling and stinging ever stronger around her as her movements and struggles became more and more labored.

Minutes passed into hours, trapped in the depths of the snake, her mind fading in and out of consciousness as a numbness spread over her, body dissolving away into mush. She couldn’t move an inch now if she tried. The snake had been still awhile now, muscles churning the liquefying zebra within its stomach every hour or so, beginning to absorb her away.

Zecora’s mind wandered to and fro, finding it harder and harder to focus as time progressed… how much time, she couldn’t tell. Hours, days… the stinging had faded away, unable to feel any part of her body now, completely blind and deaf with no link to anything beyond her new little world inside the snake. Her mind comes to, as a new sensation crosses what’s left of her being, a tingling, almost like her consciousness was being drawn away from the stomach, held elsewhere, her sense of touch returning.

She felt… she felt cool rocks beneath her, as if she were suddenly outside of the beast once more! And yet… she could see nothing, hear nothing, and she lay paralyzed, unable to move. A jolt surges through her, some strange command forcing her to move, though in an alien motion- she stretched forward, only to be pulled back, entirely against her will, feeling the stone beneath slide as she- no… as the snake slithered. The jolt continued, she couldn’t think at all for herself as it persisted, stretch, contract, stretch, contract, over and over, it was all she could do!

As quickly as it began it stopped… her mind able to focus again, as it slowly dawned upon her just what had happened. The creature had absorbed her, somehow, the magic taking her consciousness and fusing it with the very muscles of the snake, her own mass serving to help it grow larger. She’d become a part of it, a sentient set of muscle within the girth of the great python… trapped, she realized, with no sense except touch and the electrical pulses from the creature’s faraway brain.

Trapped permanently… and no end in sight.