"Right then," Bagheera spoke with sophistication, "we best get some rest."

Kaa didn't know how but recognized the pompous voice below him as one of his old friends as a cub. Bagheera might've hit puberty but there was no disguising that persnickety tone of voice. The perturbed python peered down the branches of the tree he had settled in before finding the panther on a big branch. His old friend had grown lots yet was light enough to lay on the edge of the branch. However, the snake's nostalgia was disrupted by another scent along with a voice.

"But I want to stay in the Jungle."

The whiny pre-pubescent voice was unmistakably that of a young man-cub's and a quick look confirmed Kaa's suspicions. He had heard rumors of a young boy living among the wild with the wolves but never believe in such an preposterous idea until now. The python could see the youngster's black haired head from above and taste his scent with his flickering tongue, not making a hiss to keep himself stealthy. The potential flavor of this potential prey was too good to pass.

"Ha!" Bagheera chortled in bemusement. "You wouldn't last one day out here."

Kaa would have the occasional man-cub whenever one was foolhardy enough to venture into the Jungle. Man always was arrogant to presume they could conquer the Jungle with their young ones being the most impressionable. Some he'd sneak up behind them and bring down his maw, swallowing them alive on the spot. Others had to be restrained when they had proved difficult. Either way, their fur-less skin made for a rare delicacy that made his day every single time.

"I so... could," Mowgli yawned out, his drowsiness apparent.

Kaa lowered his head slowly to come up to Mowgli's right and soon found that he was drifting off to sleep. His legs hung off each side of the branch while his arms were crossed in a previous display of defiance. The python slithered up closer to find that the man-cub's posture was fairly up right despite his head nodding off. The perfect positioned to be swallowed alive. However, the sadistic serpent felt a tad playful and wanted to make the most of his midnight snack.

However, Kaa was cautious enough to check up on Bagheera and affirm that he was asleep. He remembered the panther's terrible snore as a cub and could hear that it only got worse with age. The cruel constrictor smirked smugly at the feline in his slumbering state, his guard completely dropped. If only his once furry friend had known how right he was. If only he wasn't blissfully unaware of Mowgli's imminent fate as food. The idea just added to the snake's appetite.

Kaa turned his head back towards Mowgli and found that he had relaxed in his slumber enough to unfold his arms. The python smirked so evilly while slithering his tail down from the branches above and towards the man-cub's waistline. He wanted to savor the build-up and make sure that he timed it just right as his tail passed over the boy's red loincloth. It looped around his pelvic region and hands to make one strong coil before making a second pass, scales rubbing skin.

Mowgli slowly roused from his slumber as he felt Kaa's tail coiling around his torso with a gradual grip. He was slowly to start as he lifted his head drowsily with the tail looping around his shoulders. "Ba..." the man-cub began to let out groggily, slightly confused by the scaly sensation around his neck. "Bag... Bagheer-URK!" His eyes shot open when he felt the scales suddenly tightened their grip around his throat and cut off his oxygen sharply, driving his drowsiness all away.

Mowgli's mouth remained agape as he wheezed for what air he could take in period. The man-cub felt the coils around his neck strangling him just enough to make breathing laborious and agonizing yet not impossible. He soon felt his entire torso encased in a tighter grip of scales with no way to move his pinned down arm. The most he could do was wriggle his feet dangling off of the branch, his toes twitching frantically. The boy found that he'd woken up to nightmare.

"Ssssay now," Kaa hissed softly yet sadistically, moving his head in closer to Mowgli. "What have we here?" The man-cub's eyes were wide in response to his tight choke-hold and contained tasty terror for the python to indulge in. "Why, it'ssss a man-cub." They both looked right at the scaly scoundrel in registering what was happening to him, having woken from peaceful sleep to being encased in strong coils. "A... deliciiiiiioussssss man-cub." It was practically an appetizer.

Kaa relished Mowgli's growing distress in tandem with the horror in his eyes. The way the man-cub's mouth hung open while his eyes bulged out added a dash of dark comedy to what was his prey's harrowing final moments. The rock python began to incrementally increase the grip of his coils around the boy's torso while being extra delicate with his throat. He enjoyed the feel of oxygen straining to get in and out of his windpipe, the despair of it all. His mouth just watered.

Mowgli could feel Kaa's coils slowly squeezing his torso and keeping his throat in a perpetual choke-hold. It all feel too... unreal. One minute, he was drifting off to sleep only worried about leaving the Jungle. The next, most of his upper body was entombed within a scaly prison along with a figurative noose around his neck. The man-cub tried to ration it as a nightmare he'd wake up from. However, the painful pressure and gasping for any air at all made the reality all too clear.

Mowgli could see Bagheera resting just a few feet away and wanted so desperately to cry out for help. The panther's sharp hearing would wake him up and get him to bat Kaa away with ease. However, the most the man-cub could muster was a strained wheeze that felt far too taxing on his throat. "Ssssso near," the python taunted, getting his prey's attention, "and yet sssssso very far away." The smarmy tone of voice only added to the boy's growing sense of dread.

Mowgli felt a special kind of humiliation mixed in with his dread when he got a good look at Kaa's smug smile. The man-cub was a toy to him. It was all a game to see how long he could take being squeezed so hard like this and not die. In fact, the boy could actually feel that this wasn't anywhere close to the rock python's true strength the more his grip tightened by the minute. The sadistic serpent could put him under or snuff his life out in just a second if he so choose.

Kaa enjoyed how the violet hues on Mowgli's face becoming more vivid the more he couldn't breathe. Combined with his coils puffing up his cheeks along with his hair becoming more unkempt, it was a meal unto itself. The rock python even found himself mentally congratulating the man-cub on hanging in longer than expected. He almost wished that the boy would last one day suffering from his squeeze. However, a sudden yawn from behind him disturbed his playful mood.

Bagheera stirred in his sleep with the strange sounds coming from behind him and could only assume it was Mowgli making a fuss. "Now man-cub, there's... no use arguing over it now," he groggily groaned with a yawn in between. "You can whinge about it all you like in the morning." The panther's eyes were still shut as he set his chin down upon his paws without a care and drifted back to his comfortable slumber. If he had looked behind him, his words might've been correct.

"He won't be here in the morning," Kaa laughed quietly, turning back to Mowgli. "Wouldn't you agree?" His dread shifted back to a more emboldened sense of sadism over the whole near miss. The man-cub was oh so very close to being saved. If Bagheera had only been able to listen to his strangled cries, his right paw might've been strong enough to knock the rock python out. Alas... the boy's guardian had failed to protect him. That was simply the cherry on top of it all.

Mowgli wanted so badly to scream at the top of his lungs and get Bagheera awake. He'd take whatever "I told you so," that the panther would rub in his face. Anything that would save his life. Sadly the very lungs in question felt as though they were burning without proper oxygen to take in. Yet another agony while Kaa's coils continued to squeeze his chest and crush his throat. As if that wasn't enough, the man-cub found his prison of scales to be lifting him off the branch.

Kaa slowly elevated the cocoon of coils containing Mowgli off of the branch with his legs dangling below, maintaining his agonizing grip. "Although," he mused, drinking in Mowgli's perpetuated strangled expression, "it would be niccccce if you ssssssurvived until dawn." He flicked his tongue to taste his prey's actual despair. "Only one way to find out, of coursssssse." The rock python proceeded to rotate his prey around to loop a coil around his pelvic region and upper thigh.

Mowgli's wheezes were soon reduced to silent croaking once the coils around his neck closed his windpipe with barely space for air. He felt himself tilted backwards upon being turned around on his left helplessly before feeling heavy breathing hitting the back of his head. The hissing made it all too clear to him even as he looked up with his eyes, still hanging onto life by pure reflex. "A few ssssecondssss to make peaccccce with your fate," Kaa pretentiously promised.

Mowgli was far from making any kind of peace. He was too young to die. There were places of the Jungle he had never explored. High flying adventures that this wild world promised. He always thought that he'd die in combat with an apex predator and go out as a true Jungle dweller. Yet here he was now. All coiled up as if tangled in living vines while completely at Kaa's mercy. The rock python had reduced him to a mere toy and made him suffer for a little pre-dinner show.

Mowgli could only see the moon one last time before Kaa's maw engulfed his entire head. He could feel the coils coming undone around his body while the snake's mouth pasted over her shoulders and down his torso. Total darkness was all the man-cub could see in his new tight prisoner that wrapped around his body. He was too worn out from the constriction to kick up a fuss as the rock python took in his loincloth around his pelvic region and began work on his thighs.

Kaa savored the flavor Mowgli's naked body while slowly slurping up his legs like noodles, taking his time with the last stretch. He could hear Bagheera mumbling in his sleep and mentally chortled at how oblivious the panther was to his ward's final moments. The rock python's maw reached his meal's ankles and stretched wider so the boy's bare feet could fold into his mouth. Ten toes felt the air one last time before the snake closed his maw and swallowed hard.

---

Bagheera yawned before stretching out his body on the branch. "No time to dilly-dally, man-cub," he groggily began before turning around towards where Mowgli was. "Like it or not, I'm taking you to the-" He stopped in disbelief once he found his ward nowhere to be found. "-Man Village." He pressed his right paw to his face as he groaned in frustration. "Oh, of course, he would just up and leave," the panther berated himself. "Who couldn't have seen this coming?"

Bagheera set to work sniffing whatever was left of Mowgli's scent as diligently as he could. "He couldn't have gotten far even in the middle of the night," the panther tried to reassure himself while slowly making his way down the tree. "He's probably huddled up in a hollow tree nearby, all scared like the brat he is." He leaped onto the ground smoothly and began to sniff the air for any traces of his ward. "I have half a mind to smack him across the bottom for all this stress."

Kaa smirked while looking down at Bagheera from the branches above. "Closssssser than you think, old friend," he hissed while looking up at his stomach that hung like a hammock upon a higher branch. "Ssssshame you couldn't have ssssaid goodbye." A sizable bulge had settled into his guts, slowly moving around feebly. "Alasssss that isssss the law of our cruel Jungle." The rock python could only imagine in delight how Mowgli must've survived the stomach acids this long.