[Warning: Simba is meant to be a teenager of age in this pic in case anyone on DA is feeling puritanical today.]
Alas Timon and Pumbaa would go on their way in believing Simba was following closely behind. By the time they were out of site, Joka held his head high with a pair of furry lion legs kicking about from out of his maw. This was what he hoped would last. The squirming, the desperate flailing and the humiliating screams muffled by his insides.
For without a coil around his neck, Simba was free to cry for help near endlessly.
"Timon! Pumbaa! Anybody! Please get me out! I'm not food! I'm not food! HELP! Oh... not like this! Not like this!"
Joka answered with a smirk as a swallow that made Simba sink up to his knees. This was the true face of a lion, especially of the Pride Lands. So use they were to being the hunters and the ones who fed that becoming prey filled them with a special kind of despair.
The young ones were especially fun for Joka, hearing and feeling how their bratty bravado wasn't going to save them. He swallowed further to inch up to Simba's ankles. It was important to give the cubs hope. To always let them pray for a miracle to save them. One that would never come.
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Simba wriggled with what little room Joka's tight esophagus provided him with. The lion boy was erratic with the ultimate kind of fear when he felt the python's maw reaching his ankles. This wasn't like his other misadventures in the Jungle. This was it. This was final. No fight to the finish. No worthy opponent to fall him in his hunt. Not even a fall from a mighty cliff.
Simba, a lion and a former prince at that, was about to be swallowed alive. His final moments being spent in an overgrown worm's stomach, tucked away from the world. Nobody would even make him out if Joka slithered by. Timon and Pumbaa would probably make his shape out to be some unlucky monkey.
It was bad enough leading his father to his death but now this was how he was going out? His feet and toes wriggled in a wordless plea for mercy.
