I curse you, naga… You can never truly kill us… It is our destiny to be reborn… You can never truly kill us… I curse you… I curse you…

Emerald woke with an annoyed hiss. She'd dreamt of the witch during her whole slumber, and now she was irritated. She rolled onto her back, stretching and yawning. Her muscles were cramped from sleeping, but the pain faded soon. The pain in her stomach however, did not go away. She was hungry! After her stretches were done, Emerald reached down to rub her flat stomach.

She sat up as best she could with a start. Her hands were not running over a nice flat belly, but a swollen mound of flesh. The bulge in her midsection squirmed gently, the contents rolling and pushing against her skin and hands. The humans were still alive! How long had she been sleeping? Only a few hours? They still could not have survived for so long!

Emerald ran her hands over her belly, trying to wrap her mind around her predicament. It was not as big as it had been when she'd fallen asleep but still quite large. It had settled down further in her midsection, her navel now marked the beginning of its curve, which she would have expected after a week or two of digestion. By then, her meal should have been rendered inert, simply meat, and not the rolling, kicking mass it was now.

She also shouldn't be so hungry! Another pang rolled through her and she groaned in irritation. Normally, hunger wasn't such a painful experience, but this was more acute than she had ever felt. She needed to eat, a lot and quickly.

The trip back to the entrance of the caves took her longer than it should. Not because she lost her way, but because slithering on her belly proved to be an unsettling experience. She couldn't move as fast as she was used to, and she was distracted by all the squirming in her stomach. When she got outside, she received a shock- the moon was two phases past the phase she'd last seen! That meant she'd been asleep for over two weeks!

Not only did this mean that her prey should have been dead (she winced as a powerful kick landed just behind her navel) but it also meant that her sleep cycle was off. Normally she woke after a full lunar month, five weeks, to find her belly just about to finish off her meal. Within a week she would be ready for another.

Never before had she been hungry with such a full stomach. Never before had she been so hungry at all! It was so painful, overriding any other thoughts or senses she might have employed.

Emerald lifted her head and flicked out her tongue, tasting the air. A caravan had passed through here. Foolish- had they not heard of the monster that lived in the mountains? It devoured people or so the stories said.

She was too hungry to smile. Normally, she would have taken pleasure in the hunt, but by now she was ravenous. The naga turned her head in the direction of the caravan and slithered into the forest.

A little bit of luck was still with her apparently. As she caught up to the caravan, she realized that the rear was brought up by a lone wagon, nearly half a mile away from the rest. Emerald couldn't say that she was at all familiar with human culture, but it seemed this wagon was barely tolerated by the rest of the caravan and not allowed to join the main group. No one would notice if its occupants went missing.

The fool who was in charge of the wagon ignored the warning cries of his animals, yelling at them to be quiet. Emerald slithered past the two goats and the mule, coming up behind the man. He was the only one in the camp, a lone traveler. She could taste the stink of whores in the air, coming off the wood, and the stronger smell of booze.

She had grabbed him and swallowed him up to his forearms before he could even hear her coming. He made up for it by struggling wildly, but her curved teeth would not let him go. Emerald was so hungry that it made her overzealous. She clamped down, the points of her teeth drawing blood before she loosened her hold and slipped him further into her mouth.

Emerald lifted him up holding him by the knees to control his thrashing. Another swallow and he slid right down her throat and down into her belly. For a moment, she gasped and sat back, running her hands over her belly. The movements had gone from gentle back to volatile, just as they were two weeks ago.

She wasn't satisfied though. With a hiss, she scooped up the two goats and swallowed them easily. The mule was trickier, as it was larger than her normal human prey, and stronger. Emerald was forced to smack it with her tail once, and swallowed it whole while it was stunned.

Her huge meal made her sluggish again, but it would have been foolish to stay where she was. Instead, she made her way back to her caves to sleep it off there. On the way, the mule woke back up, and her belly churned even more. By the time she got back, she was out of breath.

For a moment, she lay back in the dark, moaning in both pleasure and pain. Her hunger had been satisfied but she had never been so big, swollen with four humans, two goats and one mule. They all squirmed and jerked within her, struggling to get out but even stretched to its limits, the walls of her belly were strong.

Eventually, like always, the poisons and lack of air made her meal slow down. Without thinking, she ran her hands over her belly, trying to soothe her stretched skin and the contents. The strongest of the kicks finally ceased, and soon after, her belly went relatively still. Deep, deep within her and below her navel, something still stirred but it was more of a rolling and wriggling rather than a desperate kicking. Even that too ceased and Emerald drifted off to sleep.

When she woke again, the sun was shining. She had fallen asleep somewhere near the entrance of the caves, so light poured in over her form, making her scales glow. The first thing the naga did was run a hand along her belly and found it still swollen. It was significantly smaller than her last meal, but it was just a bit bigger than she'd found it that night before she'd eaten. In the wake of her rubbing, her belly came to life, like bubbles beneath her skin. Emerald watched it for a moment, seeing a hand press her skin up and then retreat back in. She sleepily rubbed the spot, smiling a bit before leaning back.

The hunger came to her more slowly than before, but it was no less powerful and forced her from the cave. From the smell of the wagon (it was still there where she'd left it), she could tell that only a week had passed since she'd eaten. By now, the humans were out of her treacherous valley, maybe even out of the mountains.

It didn't matter. Emerald was no longer hungry for humans. Revenge or no, she was craving animals now, and for the first time in over a hundred years, she wanted fish. Her blood-thirst had overcome any cravings she'd had for her normal diet, and over time she'd even forgotten what they tasted like. Now she wished she had stayed so close to the sea.

Two deer fed her that day. Instead of lying back down to digest her meal, she began to make her way out of the valley. The contents of her wriggling stomach made her restless and she slept for only days at a time. Finally, she smelt the sea air.

It was a nice, warm, sunny day. Emerald lay dozing on some rocks on her beach, one arm behind her head, the other on her gigantic belly. A month had passed since she'd first come here, making way for summer and making the last naga happier than she could remember being in a long time.

Not only did summer mean days like this, but summer also meant a more plentiful food supply for her. Some of the bigger marine animals preferred colder hunting grounds, so they migrated north to escape the warming waters of the south. That meant bigger sharks, bigger whales, bigger everything.

Just in time too; Emerald's belly was bigger than ever. It stretched from just below her human breasts to well into her serpent coils, and outward beyond the reach of her hands. Her navel, once popped out, was now stretched almost flat as the rest of the skin over her taut stomach. It was full to the brim with both the meal she'd just ingested, and the stubbornly immortal, continuingly moving humans she'd eaten so long ago. She'd never eat another one again, partially because she didn't care to, partially because she knew it would end up like the others in her belly now. Undigested, trapped, and unable to die. She supposed they would have to come out someday, but for now she was enjoying them.

One of them shifted so that a head momentarily pressed her belly button outwards before sinking back into the dome. She gently rubbed the spot and she felt all four of them wriggle once or twice before settling back down. They were only this quiet when she was full, and full she was. A porpoise had strayed close to the beach, intent on who knew what, but she had pounced on the opportunity. Now it was in her belly, making her more full than she had ever been, and it had only finally died a few minutes ago. With that done, she settled down for a nap before sundown.

"Well, I never thought I would see the day. I saw your tail dipping into the water, but I wasn't sure you were what I thought you were."

Emerald opened her eyes and looked in the direction of the voice. Leaning on her rock was a mermaid, gazing at the naga with her chin resting on her palms and her elbows on the rock. She had wild, seaweed tangled hair the color of Emerald's belly, and skin that was bleached by the salt of the ocean. Her white in white eyes stared at Emerald thoughtfully and there was a small, amused smile on her face.

"Excuse me?" Emerald asked without thinking.

"I never thought I would see a female naga again," the mermaid answered. "You are almost all extinct you know."

"I do know. I'm the last naga."

The mermaid turned her head to one side. "Are you sure? Then how did you become pregnant?" She made a face. "You didn't resort to mating with a human did you? I mean, I know your kind was almost wiped out, but honestly, their offspring are so inferior-"

"I'm not pregnant," Emerald protested.

Now the mermaid gave her a look. "I used to live with northern nagas," she told Emerald. "I've seen a pregnant naga or two in my long lifetime. I even helped a good friend of mine give birth right before the humans went on their killing spree. Not only do you look pregnant, but you look very pregnant."

The mermaid reached out an arm and began to rub Emerald's swollen belly. She would have protested at such an intrusive gesture, but very quickly the rub started to feel good. The naga bit back a groan, but the mermaid was too smart. Or observant. Or both.

"Look at you. That's pregnancy all right. Mermaids and nagas are alike like that; belly rubs near the end are heaven. I remember when I was carrying my Azure, the way he used to squirm when my mate and I-" She stopped talking and tilted her head to one side. "If you didn't mate with a human and you didn't mate with a naga, then how did you become pregnant?"

"I'm not pregnant! Honestly," Emerald explained, "A witch put a curse on me before I ate her. She said I couldn't kill her. That I could still eat humans but they wouldn't die."

The mermaid tilted her head to the other side. "Is that all she said? It sounds rather vague. Are you sure that she didn't mean the humans you ate would become your children?"

Emerald gaped at the mermaid. "But why would she do that for me? I ate her!"

"Maybe she felt guilty," the mermaid said, shrugging. "Humans do that sometimes."

The naga looked away from the mermaid and down at her own belly. She had never noticed it before, but she was swollen way lower and bigger than anytime she had ever been. And the movements of the humans were definitely not as strong as when she'd first eaten them.

Could it be true? Could that be how they'd survived for so long? Was that why they seemed to respond to her hunger, even seeming to cause it sometimes? Was that why she was so hungry in general? Was she eating for them as well as herself?

"You really didn't know, did you," the mermaid said softly. "Well, you would have once the last view months kick in. That's when you become so big you can barely stand it. And your breasts start to swell. And you lactate. And your mate can't keep his hands off you and wants to mate all the time--"

Emerald wasn't listening to a word the mermaid said now. She was too busy thinking and studying her body. It was all beginning to make more and more sense; the witch's last words, the dream, the way her body craved more and more food. The way she had stopped thinking about them as humans or simply a meal. The way they calmed when she rubbed her belly and the way they wriggled when she wasn't paying attention to them. She'd even bonded with them. She'd started to love them.

"I'm pregnant," she said out loud.

"I have to go," the mermaid suddenly said, looking down behind her. "My pod is leaving. I just wanted to make sure you weren't some giant freak of a snake. You'll be ok right?"

Emerald nodded, still stunned, and watched as the mermaid launched herself off the rock and into the sea below.

---

Weeks went by and it seemed that the mermaid was right. Her belly continued to grow and demand food, especially now that it was plentiful. It started to become even more round, even more taut, even when she wasn't full, and she soon began to worry about how much more they would stretch her skin. She wasn't sure how far along she was; she'd been so young when the humans attacked that she didn't even know how big naga babies got before they were born. The mermaids who had raised her hadn't told her. They'd never had a reason to. There were no male nagas for her to mate and have babies with. None that she knew about anyways.

At least she knew how many there were. Four. Four big, big babies taking up so much room in her that she was sure she was going to pop any moment. They continued to wriggle wildly at all hours despite the dwindling space and only calmed when she rubbed her skin. It became dangerous though; touching her belly was becoming so erotic that she would have orgasms from it, and that would set the babies off moving again, starting the process over. They only calmed by themselves when she was extremely full, and even then she wondered if it was only because they couldn't move at all.

The mermaid had been right about another thing; her breasts were starting to swell. It began as an ache in her nipples but now they were starting to bulge slightly and become heavy all over. Her set of secondary nipples, usually dormant and flat just below her primary breasts, were starting to swell as well. The only difference between the two sets was that the secondary set was situated just inside the rise of her globe of a belly. The skin and the contents stretched it out so that the breasts were still almost flat, but the nipples stood out proudly and the mammary glands beneath were beginning to fill. Once the babies were born, she could tell they would be just as big and heavy as her first set.

Her world became nothing but eating and sleeping. She only napped outside if she was too tired to make it all the way to her cave. She wouldn't have been able to leave the cave at all except she'd found a wider, second entrance further down the beach. Like her mountain cave, there was a veritable maze of tunnels in between her bedchamber and the second entrance, so she wasn't worried about being taken unaware. It was just that the wider entrance was further up from the beach than her normal entrance and sometimes she just didn't feel like making the trip. Most of the time now, she stunned her prey and brought it back to the cave to eat it there. It was easier.

This whole routine kept up until one night a thundering boom overhead woke her. She raised her head and slipped out her tongue to taste the air; that was a hurricane alright. There would be no food for her today. She put her head back down on her arms and tried to go back to sleep.

She woke again quickly but this time not because of the thunder. A blazing flash of pain ripped through her gigantic belly, making it grow even harder than it was. When the flash was over, she was left gasping for air. The babies began to thrash in her wildly.

Emerald reached down to calm them and found that her belly was even lower than it had been before. She sat up and realized that her womb had shifted so far down that her secondary breasts hung away from her body, dangling just below her primaries. Another pain lanced through her and she knew it was time.

The storm outside seemed fitting. It raged outside even as Emerald struggled inside. She tried to relax, instinct telling her that it would be some time before the babies would be ready, but as the pains got closer and closer together, it became more and more difficult. One contraction started to lead into another and soon she felt the urge to push.

Emerald lay on her back, panting as the pain became almost constant. She could feel one of the babies begin to enter her birth canal and soon she was trying to bear down to help it make its way into the world. She struggled for-- she didn't know exactly how long. No matter how hard she pushed, the first baby seemed to make progress then slide back in, undoing all their hard work.

Finally, desperate, Emerald turned over. She raised herself up onto her hands, pressing her belly gently to the floor and bore down again. When she pushed, this time the baby slid down further than when she'd been on her back, and didn't slide so far back when she was done. She rested for a moment, then gritted her teeth and pushed again.

She felt the baby's head crown her opening. She lifted her tail slightly and gave one last push, feeling the baby slide free.

Emerald turned and gently scooped the baby up and placed her out of reach of her tail. The baby squirmed and gurgled, screwing its face up into a look of outrage before starting to wail. She only had a few moments to study her firstborn, her daughter, before another pain took her.

Hours later (she knew it was only hours but it felt like days), Emerald lay with her tail curled up all around her, four wriggling babies pressed to her and greedily sucking from her breasts. They were all healthy, fully formed and perfect, each longer than her arm. Two girls and two boys. Three of them were all colored like her, bright green on the underside, black with gold patterns on their back scales.

One of them, the younger daughter, was pure white from hair to scales. She had a pale orange pattern on her back and deep, deep blue eyes. Emerald had no doubt in her mind which one of the humans had been reborn as this daughter. Albino nagas were known to be more magically potent than normal nagas.

Emerald sighed and closed her eyes, even though she knew she wouldn't sleep. Outside, the storm still raged but she barely heard it. All she could hear were the soft whimpers of her newborns, the future of her race.

~Fin~