It's suffocating—constricting. Thick coils of white wrap around the entirety of your frame with the promise of escape thrown out the window. You don't know how long it's been since he's taken you. You don't know how long it's been since you've last seen another human.

The swamp grounds is home to Chiha; an albino naga who seemed to have taken an immense liking to you. Enough to refer to you as his mate, even. The weather is hot, unbearable. It feels stuffy with the mixture of thick heat and the occasional shade that feels as if you’re punched in the gut every time you breathe and the flies buzzing about over your head are. It makes you miss the air conditioning of your apartment, of the life you used to have before you went on this dreaded trip with your friends. Really, the only cool place was the makeshift burrow that'd caved in from the ground; a hole big enough to fit the both of you with walls insulated with mud and dried stalks of reeds.

"Isn't this the perfect den to raise our future brood together?"

Chiha smiles. He keeps you in a nest of soft furs and feathers, the poison in your veins preventing you from moving. He's always been the meticulous type. You've seen him with the way he carefully squeezes his prey to their inevitable death whenever an unsuspecting thing crawls right into his den. It's a risk he wasn't willing to take, you sneaking off and away when he's out hunting. Well, it’s not like you can, anyway. Not when his scent is on you, his very musk. He tells you not to get your hopes up. There's barely any boats that pass by the marshes with the fauna too thick and the pathways too small.

No one was looking for you anymore. You're missing, he says. They've given up on searching. It's better to stay with him. He'll keep you safe.