Chapter Text
Velite is quite certain that he’s never been this fucking terrified in his goddamned life; gaping wide before him was a pink and white and red mouth, an entirely alien tongue — ribbed length-wise and stark white, the muscle thick, dense and looking less like flesh and more like freakishly large kelp coiled around one another like a rope of made of flesh and blood and sinew — pressed flat to the floor of this bloody red, fleshy cavern, the back of said cave a deep black abyss, massive stalagmites made of ivory lining its entrance mere breaths from the flared edge of his tailfin.
Truthfully, the whole situation had all happened so quickly; he’d been swimming, had stormed away from his brother and the rest of the pod where they had taken the time to stop, his fins all shaking and signalling his rage and annoyance and unwillingness to talk.
It had been said on the off hand, a small remark about something — maybe something about Wilder’s mate, maybe something about how closely Wilder had been following Velite, something stupid — that had blown up into a screaming match in front of the whole pod, both brothers trading cold barbs and underhanded insults. Wilder’s mate had fallen into stride next to him, rich red, bone white and soft blue scales glittering, his sail held tall in amusement as his dark eyes flickered from one to the other.
Velite never did like that one.
Angry and hurt and tired, Velite dove.
The water pressure around his organs increased as he dipped away from the sun, shying away from his podmates and the warm glow of the sunlight, the steady increase of water weight making it harder and harder to draw in water, his gills fluffed and fluttering in his slowly calming rage. Arching his back in a dive, Velite’s fins flick, opening and fluttering in the currents, slowing in their flickering rage as his breathing slowed. The Depths had always held comfort for Velite, almost more-so than the sun some days, the cooler colours and water pressure soothing his mind and eyes, the increase of pressure forcing his breathing to become more manual and laboured and most importantly, slow.
Rolling over to swim with his belly facing the surface, Velite hisses, “What does Wilder know? Hah?! I can thrive just fine on my own, I don’t need a mate, I don’t need anyone!” He flips, arching his back and twisting into a tight circle until his tailfin slaps awkwardly against the top of his head. Snarling and snapping childishly at it, Velite turns towards where he last left his littermate, Velite’s voice rises into a hiss. “I can dance for myself, I can show off for myself, I don’t need you hovering over every action I do and choice I make, I’m a grown mer DAMNIT! AUUUGH!” Riding his frustration and the tail end of his angry shriek, he goes into a wild, sideways roll, unfurling from the strange circle to swim in a spiral towards the sand, and then quickly darting back towards the surface in an arc only to turn back towards the sand in a spinning barrel roll that leaves him dizzy and breathless and a little queasy — the display is wild, he was wild and untamed and sloppy, his display so frantic and full of unpredictable energy he has no doubt that any self-respecting reef dwelling mer would merely show him their teeth and continue on.
On his next pass, Velite swims towards the sand and curves his face skyward, sucks his belly in and arches his back towards the sea floor, flaring his spinal sail as though he’s breaching the surface — and then there’s movement, a flash of blinking red at the corner of his eye and when he turns, smooths his sail and flusters at the thought of someone having watched that childish display, Velite found a fucking leviathan charging up at him, mouth open and fins flared.
The shriek that had ripped out of him was humiliating, his tail working overtime to help him dive beneath the beast’s charge — water rushed past his head as the leviathan missed its mark, the aggressive displacement of water flipping him blindly through the water until his spine made painful contact with the ocean floor. Dazed but running off of pure adrenaline, his hands clawed into the sand and shoved him up and into a full tilt swim back towards his pod.
He can feel the water behind him get displaced, feels the ominous chitter as the much, much larger mer whips its body around and lunges.
Humiliatingly, the leviathan not only caught up to him, but its massive hand snapped up and aggressively herded him, back first, right back into the sand he’d just run from.
With his back pressed onto the sand, his fins shaking and held flat, some part of Velite’s hindbrain was still happily writhing amid the softer sea shelves, his itchy, sun assaulted skin soothed by the thin film of mucus that the shelf produced in excess. The main part of his brain — the smarter half apparent-fucking-ly, wasn’t his hindbrain supposed to keep his stupid instincts functioning?!?! — was currently doing everything it could to keep him from expelling waste into the waters like a newborn pup, his fins all snapped close to his sides and his claws shakily held up towards the looming cavern.
He wasn’t a hunter, he was certainly no fighter, but damn it all if he wasn’t going to put up some kind of fucking fight!
The leviathan — fucker still hasn’t closed its mouth, and Velite was being forced to watch the pink parts of the flesh in its mouth pulse in slow waves, red lights speckling the roof of its mouth and the base of each tooth — hunches, leans in close.
That cavernous mouth shifts, opens wider, lips peeling back, Velite’s hand snaps out to press against a plush lower lip, and then it snaps shut, leaving Velite face to face with…
Oh!
The face that peers down at him is beautiful, but fucking massive and Velite can only stare up at them in awe; clearly it was a leviathan of some sort, though he’d never seen one coloured so brightly…
Well… He’d never seen one, but he’d heard stories!
They were supposed to be dark and gloomy and all stretched limbs and glowy spots and a complete lack of hair and weird thin bodies with jagged teeth and bulging eyes; the leviathan that towers over him isn’t any of that.
This leviathan is a deep, rich brown shade, the skin of their chest and upper belly warm, and sunkissed, though heavily criss-crossed with scarring. Velite’s eyes lingered on a particularly nasty gash across their jaw, curving up and up and up and stopping just shy of one of those intense green-blue-red eyes. From their lower belly and onwards, their body writhes out into a long, almost serpentine, brilliant red tail that ripples like an eel, spotted and splotched with white as far as he can see — Velite’s eyes nearly bug out when he realizes why they’ve been so steady above him, even in spite of the constant fluttering of their snow-speckled spinal fin. Burrowed into the ground are several, densely shelled, legs; the largest of these legs are directly on either side of their sleek pectoral fins, the sharpened ends digging themselves into sand to hold their massive body in place.
Velite’s eyes flicker up, dance across the tanned length of the leviathan’s upper belly — he pauses at the dip of their belly, taking note of the massive patch of red scales just below their upper ribcage, the scales that look larger and thicker and shinier than the rest —and then settle on the two, big green eyes that have taken up the rest of his entire visual range, green and blue with the pupils seeming almost red with how wide they’ve blown.
His organs shift, his bones rattle, and it's only when Velite feels the sand at his back start to move from beneath him that he realizes the leviathan is trying to fucking speak to him. Their dialect is deep and rumbling, each burr and trill thrumming heavily and echoing from somewhere deep in their upper chest and causing the sand around him to vibrate. At either side of the column of their throat, red and white and gold fins puff up and out, the flesh filling with air, flapping and vibrating to carry the sound further.
“I-I..!” he chokes, coughs up what sand has managed to creep beneath his gills and chokes out louder. “I can’t unde-understand you!”
The sound peters, dims to a thrumming, idle buzz.
The massive face in front of him shifts, large green eyes going wider and wider, the deep pits of their red pupils reflecting a strange white and dilated so far that all Velite can see is his own face.
He tries not to scream when that mouth hovers closer.
He thinks he fails.
Summer was probably Argenti’s favourite time of the year, though not for the same reason as other leviathan merfolk.
Yes, she’d been born a carrier — not just born one, but she’d grown into a highly desirable one at that, big enough to house even another carrier and crossed with many scars and thick with healthy fat and strong, shiny scales over her pouch, Argenti was an attractive example of a healthy, safe carrier. Unlike many of her deep sea kin, Argenti was bright, her scales primarily red and splatter-patterned white, shimmering golden scales striping the point where her belly met her main body; following the slope of her back and into the raised ridge of her tailed half was one long fin, a fin that started small between her shoulders and flared into a tall sail, the white spots of her body spilling up into the red, the very edge of the sail trimmed with shiny gold. She had rigid, muscle dense pectoral fins, each edged with kelp-green scales that served as both battering rams and razor sharp blades, her body softening back into fluffy, showy golden fins beneath her body at her pectorals. Her hair was long, so long that it flared out behind her like the many legs of a deep sea squid, a few arms of it coloured shiny, bone white. In spite of these features, many of her fellow leviathans would argue that her face was her true selling point, her features all soft and round, skin densely peppered with freckles and sporting several scars that simply served to emphasize her attractiveness and strength as a potential mate.
Unfortunately for the many, many interested positors, despite her status as a strong and virile carrier, Argenti was not interested in siring any children of her own; fry were cute, yes, but she’d never considered herself much of the “siring type”.
She was too nomadic, too battle hungry, too untamed for any positor to feel comfortable attempting to lay any eggs within her, their lust for her looks dampening the moment she got to speaking about her endless quest, displaying fins and shimmering scales laid flat and tilted away.
No, Argenti liked summer because that was when oceanids left their reefs in droves, the little mers swimming into the open waters in massive schools of brilliant colours and sleek fins and smooth skin.
She loved to lurk below them, following their movements and cooing at their flashing colours, watching as certain ones would go into dizzying displays of colour and prowess and physical skill. Argenti kept herself sunk deep enough into the abyss that the ocean stole her red colouring, morphed her red and white into black and deep blue, made her long, trailing hair and significant size nothing more than a distant squid passing them by rather than a leviathan eagerly stalking.
What these oceanids were doing was never quite clear to her, but she adored the way two opposing schools of them would meet. Fins would lift, songs would ring out into the open waters, and she’d watch them mesh together in a crash of opposing colours and fin shapes, sleek skin winding tight to one another like two sea horses clasping tails. She felt like a voyeur as she watched them spin and spiral with loosely twined tails, only breaking apart to swim a small distance from one another and then dart back, rewinding and crying in shrill songs.
Finding herself infatuated with one particular oceanid wasn’t…
To say that Argenti had ever even expected this was…
Listen, in her defense! The little oceanid she’d found herself borderline obsessed with was very, very beautiful by leviathan standards; their tail was sleek, and nearly smooth, the flesh shiny with health and glittering with muted shades of brown and gold and little pops of red. Where your average positor, and even carriers like herself had several different fins, ranging from thick and muscle heavy pectoral fins to delicate and flowery pelvic fins and the powerful flat of their finned flukes, these oceanids had only only pelvic, spinal and fluke fins, the rest of them covered in sleek, almost scaleless looking skin and short hair.
Her oceanid was the prettiest in her opinion — their upper half was thin and lithe, the skin fading from surface-coral down into darker, sand brown scales and black speckles. Unlike leviathans, who tended to be solid coloured — another reason Argenti was a prime courting target was her white splattering and golden trim — oceanids had patterns, some sporting stripes, others spots. Her oceanid had a gradient from their spine to their belly, dark brown to soft yellow, speckled with shiny flashes of golden scales. Their most striking colour was the deep, shiny maroon scales that slashed down their spine, their sail (held loose and relaxed, the edges soft, round and fluffy) flaring wide to show shiny golden skin when stretched thin.
By leviathan standards, many of the oceanids would be attractive even!
Their skin was all soft and smooth opposed to any leviathan’s sharp and jagged edges, their fins all feathered at their edges rather than stiff and sharp, their deadliest assets being their hooked teeth and razor sharp claws as opposed to any bulky tails made for bashing or powerful arms made for grabbing — in all, the oceanids all looked like the perfect positors, soft and round and sleek and small, easy mouthfuls and even easier on ones pouch.
Argenti liked her oceanid beyond the more shallow things like that, she truly did!
She found their meek yet fiery behaviour endearing, made ever more so when she’d see their bluster, their shrill and writhing hissy fits, the way their sleek, sandy brown fins would ripple and fluff and they would shrill and chirp! They clearly held some sort of fear in their heart, a vibrantly cowardly nature that would peel back at the smallest application of pressure, peeling itself from their lithe frame to reveal a fiery and vivacious attitude.
There had been one time, a time she held close to her chest, where they’d dipped low in their migration. They swept close to the depths and stayed there for almost a mile of the swim, their sleek tail flicking back and forth — she didn’t dare stray close to them in turn, didn’t give herself away, but she did roll over to swim on her back and watch them with wide and fascinated eyes.
They’d been focused on another sand-brown oceanid, one that looked so much like them that if Argenti hadn’t spent so much time learning what her oceanid looked like, even she would be lost. The pair had been sharing sombre chirps and low trills back and forth as they swam — the way oceanids spoke was mesmerizing, each one speaking in high pitched trills, ringing chirps and musical hums, their voices only barely loud enough to carry a mile.
(Argenti thought of her own vocalizations, and wondered if they’d be startled by how far her own sound would carry.)
Her oceanid had looked, flicked their dim yellow eyes in her direction, and Argenti had nearly gasped at the gentle smile they’d sported.
She knew it wasn’t for her, knew it wasn’t because of her, and yet?
Oh did she want.
So yes, she had less shallow reasons for her want!
But, well…
Argenti was still a carrier, and in the deepest parts of her psyche, she was always noting potential partners, be they a fellow carrier or positor.
Though, she would admit that her choice of when to strike and make her move had been… bullheaded.
She’d been in her usual shadowing spot, dipped low to rest her belly down in the sifted soft sands as the pods settled in the shallower reefs and, well, shallows that led up onto the land.
Her fins flicked, audial fins flaring forward at the sound of piercing shrieks and snarls; her eyes flicked up, secondary membrane snapping shut when she registered the fully enraged snarl of her oceanid’s face. For some reason, they’d split off from the pod, and swept down, down, down, fins ruffled and flared and their fangs (little things, powerful enough to crush shellfish but dull) all on show — it wasn’t anything new for them to separate from their pod, in spite of their skittish nature. They always found their way to the outskirts of their school, though judging from the few oceanids that would aggressively usher them closer, those covered in scars and missing fins, her oceanids wasn’t one of the ones that was supposed to.
They were currently split off for reasons Argenti would probably never be privy to, their oceanid tongue loud and shrill and chirping and clearly upset, but those reasons were ones she quietly praised as she pushed off of the sand and coiled closer.
Her oceanid dipped lower, lower than Argenti had ever seen them swim, their colours bleeding to blue-toned grays and blacks as they descended, the rapid flutter of their gill filaments slowing; by contrast, Argenti’s hearts pounded, her fins lifting in slow display, her biolights undoubtedly starting to pulse.
They were here.
In her excitement, Argenti’s eyes flexed, additional colour and light receptors flexing into place to bring them into their fully shaded glory.
As their little, glittering scales shift from dull greys and blues back into their rich, brown-gold-shine tones, her oceanid rolled over, exhaled a cloud of bubbles, and started… Oh!
Argenti immediately went still, flushing pink as her oceanid started displaying! Their body twisted and rolled in smooth, repetitive arcs, Argenti’s eyes catching on the golden scales at either side of their tightly tucked sail — even in the dim light of the depths, those golden scales caught the light and gleamed, Argenti’s pupils dilating at the glitter.
Her muscles burn, the familiar tickle of micro-twitching muscles letting her know that she’s started displaying her own bioluminescence in response.
With their back still to her, flicking that fluffy fluke, they dip closer to the bottom. Their hair clouds their features, flowing out like the arms of a jellyfish as they start rolling over with both hands above their head, dorsal side arching towards the ocean floor - her gills flare, nearly choking her in shock when their sail opens; dizzying gold flashes at her, bright and flashy and with the red trimming the edge of their sail, they look like art given life.
Her tail flicks, and Argenti was rocketing forward before she even registered that she was pushing off of the sandy floor.
Her oceanid pauses their dance, rolls over once more to glance downwards and then shrieks. Her mouth opens, lower jaw creaking as the bones adjust for display, biolights inside flaring to life, her fins opening to slow her approach but her oceanid is faster; their long tail twists, gorgeous golden scales glittering and fluke flaring in full to throw themself beneath her and out of the way. Argenti’s teeth snap together, fins flaring and relaxing in a desperate attempt to wheel around and follow; she’s bulkier than they are, her thickly shelled legs folded to her belly in an attempt to streamline her even further but even so, they’ve already pushed up from the ocean floor and gained about half a tail’s worth of distance from her. Their spine curves as if to head back towards the surface and she’s lunging after them with a low call of both concern and frustration.
They’d displayed for her already, so would they please slow down so she could do the same! They’d barely even seen her maw, for the Beauty’s sake!
One hand cupped in front of them, whole arm shooting out and successfully cutting their escape path off as her oceanid let out a high pitched keen. Keeping her hand loose and non-restrictive, she carefully guides her oceanid towards the seabed, nudging them over onto their back as her legs reach down for the sand to anchor her down — once they’ve been delicately nestled into the sand, comfortably and with as much care as she could considering their apparent flighty nature, Argenti leans down into their space.
The thrum of their little heart — heart, singular, their body so small that they didn’t even seem to have the vestigial heart that positors had, their one, singular little muscle more than enough to circulate their life’s essence through their body — is loud and rapid and excited, tattooing a pattern into her palm that was so alien and unfamiliar that she almost, almost felt a sort of unease at its presence.
Adjusting her grasp to be more cupped, fingers curved upwards to give her oceanid some breathing space, Argenti leans down and displays.
As a carrier, her own idea of display is less a showing of her fins and sleek scales, and more a show of her physical health and the space she could provide — flexing the status fins of her throat, her teeth creak apart, bones at the bottom of her jaw pushing apart to show off the fullest breadth of the space in her gullet.
Her oceanid twitches at her fingertips, their heart thrumming faster and faster; she’s flattered and thrilled by the reaction in equal measure.
Argenti has never displayed before, had no clue what her own mouth looked like, the opening of her maw entirely driven by instinct, but the rapid beat of their heart makes her own hearts begin to beat to an unfamiliar tune. Flexing her jaw, Argenti opens even further to show off the steady flushing of colour and light and the healthy roots of her teeth and her oceanid shifts on their back, shivers in their awe and reaches out to touch at her lower lip.
Her own shudder racks through her fins, ruffles out her sail and pelvic fins; Argenti was no stranger to smaller hands, she had a positor friend that she’d visit frequently (mostly wellness visits, the poor thing been viciously attacked and was missing most of his swimming fins so she tended to drop off food and nesting materials whenever she was in the area, even when he came out and snapped all sorts of sharp words) but even he had sported wicked claws and hands thickly calloused by a life of ripping into shelled meals and carving into solid rock.
She was a stranger to hands this small, this delicate, lithe fingers only barely dipping past her lip to brush her gums.
Very careful of her own teeth, Argenti slowly slots them back together and leans back so she can peer down at her oceanid; wide, shiny gold eyes stare back at her, pupils completely dilated and jittering from one eye to the other.
Argenti preens openly when their eyes flicker, dancing down to her belly and visibly lingering on the rich, healthy red of her pouch-scales — she flexes them, ripples the scales in a wave and makes them click off of one another in a show of their physical health. “Are you impressed?” She croons softly, delicately lowering her booming voice into something that feels like a whisper to even her hyper sensitive ears.
Sadly, her oceanid flinches nonetheless, curls their tail towards their chest as their earfins snap close to either side of their head in a clear show of discomfort. Wriggling their muscular body between her claws and pawing at her hand, they let loose a shrill clicking screech, warbling and wavering through fluffed gills. Argenti’s voice thrums to a stop, her rumbles dying into a curious burr, head tilting to and fro. Her oceanid seemed anxious and flustered, their small face flushing red and tail rolling — her eyes flickered down to their pelvic fins, watching bright red skin flash and display and her chest goes warm.
If they were still willing to show off their brightly coloured bits, then she may not have messed up too badly. Moving slower this time, Argenti leans down once more, tilting her face so that her oceanid was closer to her closed maw — thick tail muscles coil and their eyes blow wide, little throat emitting a shrill whining sound that she has to assume are eager ones.
Slower now, her teeth creak apart, fingers gently nudging her oceanid closer; they squirm, trilling and chirping in their nearly too high language, but eventually one of their paws land on her lower lip. Little claws — little by her standards, thick at the root and thin and ovular at their tips, she had no doubt that those little claws were tools for prying apart shelled creatures — press against the thin skin there, but no blood is drawn.
And then her mouth opens, pouching pocket already filling with mucus and her ensnaring tongues reaching — in one rush of movement, the little mer springs to life.
Velite shrieked, wailed and cried as his tail started thrashing desperately to wrench him backwards; he thought the leviathan had started second guessing its original intention, had hoped that the massive thing would get out of his space and give him the room to fucking swim away.
He hadn’t expected the fucking thing to lurch forward with an open mouth, that weird, roped tongue splitting open and flaring out like the arms of an anemone — each one of those arms caught his own actual arms, twisting tight and pushing them against his sides until his breath came out in harsh pants. They were each mostly smooth, the undersides textured in such a way that they had no issue with wrenching him further inside the strange, purple-red pocket they’d revealed.
“Please, please no!” He wailed, coughing and choking on the stale water within the beast's mouth, claws curling and scrabbling desperately. “I can’t-! Let me go, please, by the Deep, please!” Partially twisting and thrashing his tail even more aggressively, Velite’s heart soared and he wheezed a ragged sob. Finally twisting an arm free, Velite shoves frantically at the tongue wrapped around his still trapped arm, weird, tiny spines digging semi-painfully into his fingertips. Curving his spine to the side, Velite’s body manages to wriggle backwards a few fin-lengths, the thick of his tail tensing to whip his caudal around.
The leviathan jerks, flinching as his caudal fin slaps at the massive mer’s cheek and lip and nose.
Full lips tighten around him, mouth buzzing with a deep growl as its many tongue(s?) twist tighter around his ribcage — water leaks from his mouth, bubbles floating up and blinding him as air is squeezed from his lungs. Each tongue flexes, folds around on itself and wriggles until he can feel texture on the underside of each one somehow hook into his miniscule scales and pull, reeling him deeper and deeper.
The leviathan’s lips are soft as they slide down his body, some of the weird tongue-arms flicking out to smooth his sail down flat. (Oddly gentle, following the smooth fold of his spine, gently applying pressure to urge his sail flat, as though his sail has any muscles in it to knock the arm loose) As he’s forcefully reeled further and further in, Velite’s face was pressed to the smooth, soft skin within the pocket, the space around him starting to fill with a strange, thick mucus that coated him head to chest almost immediately.
In spite of the way he shrieked — choking as the slime coated his gills and filled his throat, his tail thrashing as much as the leviathans loose grip would allow — his body was trapped from the hips up, the softness of the leviathan’s lips pressing into the hyper-sensitive space where small scales met land-skin, pinching incrementally tighter with each twist of his tail. The leviathan hummed gently, water outside of their mouth shifting around Velite’s tail until he was disoriented, dazed, confused, body and mind completely unaware as to whether the beast was faced up or down or rolled onto its side.
Becoming lightheaded in his hysteria, Velite whipped his head to the side and snapped his teeth at the pocket flexing around him, his teeth sliding somewhat harmlessly off of the skin due to the mucus.
A mistake.
The whole space contracts, clamps down on his upper body and Velite chokes up more slime, the substance forcing itself into his throat and down into his belly.
His head pounds, his vision flickers, his eyes roll… and then the tongues shift, sliding down his waist to heave more of his tail into its mouth and Velite can breathe.
The slime still sticks, still gunks its way into his gills and his throat, but somehow he can pull oxygen in past the muck. It feels odd, heavy in his chest, numbing even and Velite is so confused by the sensation that his tail stills and allows those writhing arms to wind around his fins and draw him fully within their mouth, carefully maneuvering him to lay on his side within the mucus filled pocket. His body is carefully adjusted, the unnaturally dexterous muscle pressing and pushing until his tail is folded, body turned so that his caudal fin tucked beneath his cheek and his torso is bent down over his tail in a loose spiral, that slime making every movement uncomfortably slick and smooth.
Velite only starts struggling again when the leviathan’s great maw opens, sucking in a fresh mouthful of saltwater before snapping shut and sealing him in a pitch black hell.
His chest shudders, Velite forcing his eyes open past the muck and gross slime clinging to his lashes
When he manages to focus his gaze, he almost immediately wishes he hadn’t.
All around him is the hellish purple-red of the underside of those freaky tongues, each one carefully curved up into a loose dome yet pried apart just enough for the fresher, cooler water to wash over him with each mouthful. The thick, slimy muck that he found himself pressed into made his vision blurry and glassy, yet somehow he found himself breathing it just fine, the thickness not gunking up his gills even slightly. If Velite tried hard enough, he could probably even reach his arms out and still not touch anything.
He’s not allowed to uncurl however; the moment he goes to pull his tail out from beneath his head, those tongues constrict, the gaps vanishing as the massive muscles contract down onto his body.
Argenti seems to have found heaven.
Her oceanid was smoother than she’s expected, the darker brown scales on their body having made their scales look larger and thus, she’d been sloppy on her first grab — her tongue had nearly failed on the first go, ensnaring hooks sliding against the smaller than expected scales and nearly allowing her oceanid to wriggle fully out of her mouth. After some adjustment of her jaws and a quick roll onto her back within the sand, her tongue had finally gotten a better grip around their tail to heave them in, pressing them within her pocket and carefully folding them into a comfortable curl; she’ll also admit that they were stronger than she’d given them credit for, the heavy blows of their tail actually causing her to wince and tilt her head in mild pain.
Once she’d managed to close her lips behind their fluke, they went fully still beneath the heft of her tongues; body shuddering, their little chest heaves, clearly exhausted and run ragged. They jerk a few times, hands twitching and chest stuttering as they begin to inhale the thick, oxygen rich mucus in her pocket — after a moment to let them regain their bearings, her mouth opens to force out the old, musty water and take in a maw of fresh water.
From what Boothill had divulged to her, there was nothing worse than the feeling of musty, stale water when you were getting ready to slip into a carrier’s pouch. She remembers watching him roll in his nest, coiling his long tail beneath himself and wrinkling his nose in an open sneer as he recalled one of his own misfortunate rolls with a number of carriers who hadn’t thought to refresh the water, and how he’d had to sit in stale, rapidly warming and uncomfortable water until he’s had enough and clawed his way out.
Her oceanid shifts, their body beginning to relax out of the curl she’d urged them into and her snaring tongues carefully contracted — mostly to make sure they’d been comfortably coated, but also (selfishly) just to feel the presence of their almost negligible weight. They were small, so, so small and as her tongues wandered, they gently scratched over miniscule scales, carefully peeling away dead skin and working more pouching mucus into their body.
Feeling them wriggle impatiently once more, Argenti tips her head upwards.
At the back of her throat, muscles flex and shift, a wet ‘Pop!’ echoing hollowly; her oceanid shifts at the sound, fluke thumping at the back of her teeth when they stretch out in full, clearly attempting to peer down her throat. Keeping one tongue wound around their back and tightening its hold, Argenti’s lips part once more, exhaling the stale water from both her mouth and pouch, sucking down another fresh wash of water. The cooler water chills her chest from the inside, pouch distending in a way entirely unfamiliar to her but pleasing in a particularly instinctual sense, like prying a rock out from beneath a particularly stubborn scale.
Mouth closing, she thrums out a gentle purr of pleasure, tips her head up and swallows.
Still so, so small, so, so light, a single swallow was all it took – they twitched and wriggled minutely on the way down, their scales sleek and fins soft against the lining of her throat, nowhere near as jagged what she’d been warned to expect from other carriers. For one long, selfish moment, she relaxes her throat mid swallow, letting that small, fragile body sit in the dead center of her esophagus. They wriggle weakly, shifting and twitching just enough that Argenti finishes the swallow reflexively, pouching muscles coaxing the small body into settling within. Another weak wriggle is all she’s offered when they come to rest within her pouch, resting at the bottom with weak flicks and flutters of their fins before they fall fully limp.
Swaying with the rush of endorphins and dopamine that flooded her veins – evolution was fascinating like that, most carrier experienced some pleasure rush when normally swallowing things, but pouching things was a different ball game – Argenti drifted down into the sand, anchoring legs folding beneath her tail and upper body drifting and swaying with the lazy rolling of the tide. New instinct wells up, jaws clenching together as her legs push her up off the sand, even as her mind begins to dip into a soft, sleepy haze.