Sovinne shifted in his sleep, feeling some minor discomfort. The brown saw-whet owl had been slumbering inside of the tree trunk hollow for the day, standing up with puffed up feathers. But he woke up when he felt something slick brushing against his skin, and yawned.
"Mmmm...mm? ...WAH!"
He jumped when his half-open eyes saw the source of that pressure: a snake, coiling around his body! Sovinne spread his wings to push it away, and that mint-colored reptile fell next to the bird's feet.
"Woah– Oof!" The snake yelled back in surprise, getting his bearings after apparently waking up suddenly.
"A snake!" The saw-whet owl screeched. "Who are you? W-Why were you trying to eat me?!"
"I– What? No, no. I'm Muno." The snake introduced himself, his ultramarine tongue flicking out in the air. "I was just borrowing some of your warmth, since the cold out there can be pretty harsh for someone like me... I-I'm sorry for sneaking on you, that was ill-Mannered of me."
"Sneaking?! You were grasping me! I know you were trying to eat me!"
"L-Look, I'm sorry for coiling on you without asking, but I didn't want to disturb you, and I was kind of desperate. But look at me!" For emphasis, he motioned his tail tip over his mint-scaled body. "I'm too small to even try to eat you. And even if I could, I wouldn't!"
"Pah! A likely story..." Sovinne scanned Muno's long body up and down. "Though you do look kind of small, now that you mention it. Small enough to fit in my beak, even..."
The reptile's eyes bulged. "Ulp... M-Maybe I should just g-go my way– Ack!"
The owl's black beak lunged at Muno's neck, grabbing and lifting most of his body off the ground. Sovinne's tongue wrapped over the dark gray plates of the snake's underside, tasting them. "Mm... Al'ost spicy... You taste weird!"
"It's peppermint...– Wait, are YOU trying to eat me?"
"Well, yeah! You scared 'e and wo'e 'e up... I thin' I deserve a tasty snack!" Sovinne gulped, and the snake's body bent to get shoved into his beak.
"P-Please, stop." Muno tried to reason calmly. "How about I find you something else to eat...? T-Then you can let me go."
"Nope! You're 'y food now."
The saw-whet owl swallowed him more, feeling those coils bulge out his neck beneath his beak. Muno's head and body were dragged closer, as his neck was slurped and sucked. At least it was warm inside, so he didn't struggle much...but if he'd wanted to be the bird's snack in the first place, he'd have already jumped into the snoring owl's mouth, instead of coiling around him!
Sovinne wasn't going to complain about a meal that wasn't fighting for its life or biting him. Especially since he'd grabbed the snake by his neck, and was essentially swallowing double his width than if he'd gone for one of Muno's extremities first instead. It was slower like this, but definitely more filling!
"You a'e enjhoying thish," he spoke around the scales in his beak, gulping in between, "a'en't you?"
"N-No?!" Muno feigned outrage. "I-I'd rather still be coiling around your feathers!"
"Sho you 'on't hate it..."
"W-Well, you see–" Another tug from Sovinne's throat, and his squamous head was getting dangerously close to his beak. "It was supposed to be a quick stop... I-I have places to be!"
"There'sh on'y one p'ace you'll be going!"
The owl opened his beak and swallowed, getting the back of Muno's skull in before he brought his wings closer to help push him in. The snake's tongue flicked at the feathers, his lapis lazuli slit eyes following the bird's agitation before his head was forcefully pushed into Sovinne's narrow beak. When he removed his wings, Muno's view of the tree hollow was mostly limited by the glistening pink maw and his own tail, some late afternoon light refracting on the transparent saliva that was clinging to the walls, tongue, and his consumed scales.
They both felt when the weight of Muno's bend pressed against the bottom of the owl's stomach. Sovinne smirked – as best as an owl could with a scaly noodle sticking out from his beak – and swallowed harder, causing the light to disappear from the reptile's vision. The brown bird felt his bulge crawl down his neck with peristalsis, while he slurped more of the elongated mint-hued tail.
Muno's face was pushed through the entrance to the dark chamber, coiling with the third-or-so of his body already matted in the slick juices of the groaning organ. He could do without the acrid-smelling goop, but thankfully it was quite warm – and more of his long body was being claimed away from the cold by the second. It wasn't the first time he'd ended up in a stomach, and it was far from the worst.
Now that his beak wasn't so full, Sovinne found it quite easy to slurp the widest part of Muno's belly, taking a few more minutes to work over the rest of that funny-tasting tail. The clearly defined tubular bulges under his feathers, both on his neck and stomach, kept increasing until the end, but the bird of prey was disappointed that the sizable snack wasn't as squirmy as he'd hoped. Maybe the snake really didn't mind being eaten, after all... What a weird creature!
Finally, the snake was swallowed a last time. "Urp! Aah... Well, that was pretty filling. Now you know your place. As food!" Sovinne chirped teasingly at his prey.
Muno was forced to coil into a tightly-pressed ball. He sighed, if only out of mild inconvenience. "Yeah, yeah..."
Once things had settled in the warm chamber, the snake closed his eyes, hoping to continue his interrupted nap until the saw-whet owl would decide to let him go.