An orca’s lucky travel meal
(soft vore, digestion, talking ferals)
 
Being on his own had some definite drawbacks for an orca. Martin had been coping with them for years ever since he had to leave his pod, but it was still annoying. Sure he never had to share any of his meals with anyone, but the issue was actually finding and catching prey in the first place.
This was one of the reasons the large bull was travelling again, passing through a whole lot of nothing but water, trying to get from one seasonal feeding ground to the next. Over the years he had collected a few good locations he likes to frequent at certain times in order to keep his insatiable belly happy. A few days ago he had left a small volcanic island where he had done his part to decimate the population of Jack Fish, which had congregated for spawning. He had also helped himself to the odd blue shark which had tried to go for the same prey as him, allowing Martin to start his journey with a healthy layer of blubber. He was however far more excited about the seal colony he was heading towards. That spot was one of his favourites, only surpassed by the island populated with many dolphins which occasionally did not even mind getting eaten. Free food was the best, but if that was not an option and he was forced to hunt properly, Martin will happily go for seals any day.
 
Right now, as he passed through a slightly warmer current, which he used as a guideline for his travel, the orca was swimming on empty stomachs. He had encountered a few pelagic fish and the odd shark out on their own migration, but alone as he was, he had not been able to capture anything. So his body made him acutely aware of how displeased it was by not having any tasty occupant to digest.
“It’s not my fault” Martin grumbled to his belly. “If they had just let me stay, I would not have to do everything by myself.”
It was many years ago, but the memories still pained him. He had grown up perfectly normal, but he had always dreaded wearing down his teeth like some of the elders in his pod. Years of grinding their teeth into bones of seals or dolphins and especially tearing through the rough, hard skin of sharks had left some of them with basically no teeth at all. Nothing remained except for stumps which could hardly grab anything and only served to experience pain when touched by anything. Martin never wanted to experience that himself, or be dependent on others to abuse their teeth to shred prey for him. As a result he had trained himself to swallow his meals whole, especially sharks, rays or anything else which was abrasive to touch.
This had led to a lot of accusations of selfishness, some warranted, some merely out of spite or jealousy. And as Martin grew, so did his appetite and eventually he was repeatedly isolated, until the elders rejected him, since his habits were threatening the peace and cohesion in the pod. Martin had gotten a few chances to simply change his ways, but the idea of eventually having to live for over a decade while experiencing agony every time he bites something filled him with enough terror to choose solitude instead.
This was one of the instances he regretted his decision. By now he could probably be happily mated and have offspring of his own and help keep the pod going. But he had lost a chance at that life long ago. At least he knew from experience that a full belly and a few friendly orcas might await him at the end of his journey. For those who did not have to deal with his somewhat selfish feeding habits for long he was mainly an imposing figure or desirable mate. All the scars, tooth and claw marks his body was covered in also helped his cause when he tried to impress a cow. These kinds of memories were helping the orca to press onwards and continue his journey. It should only be three more days or so.
 
His thoughts were drifting towards the peculiar dolphins around that one island again. Why did they not just accept him better than his own pod, but even enjoyed watching him feed, be it on one of them, or an attacking shark? He was looking forward to meeting them again, but it was another long journey from the seal colony to those special phins.
But before he could dwell on more warm memories, he was pulled back into the present when one of his occasional sonar clicks gave him a very promising reflection. There might be prey up ahead, something big, something he urgently needed inside his belly.
The signature could well be a shark, given how well their rigid outer skin reflected sonar pings, but it was huge. Bigger than anything Martin had ever devoured so far. But driven by an almost desperate hunger, the orca pressed on with determination, trying to slot in behind the potential prey, staying a bit lower to keep in the supposed shark’s blind spot.
 
Martin was slowly running out of air as well, but decided against surfacing now. the sound would give him away and he needed to strike by surprise. As he drew closer, Martin was convinced he had made the right call because now, he was looking up and ahead at the round, spindle shaped belly of a great white shark. Not a fully grown one luckily, but an obviously male one at the verge of maturity. Martin felt his hunger growing even more when he stared up at his prey, almost hypnotised by the rigid claspers swaying besides the white shark’s tail whenever his caudal fin changed direction.
Martin kept observing the shark as he dropped further, preparing his attack, hardly believing his own luck. He had never preyed on a white shark before, merely heard stories of some pod elders who had and now he had come across one that was apparently sleeping. Just when he needed to feed the most.
 
He had thought about just trying to swim up behind the shark and start eating it, but he remembered how violently those half this one’s size could struggle and he knew that that was just asking to lose a lot of enamel. So he had to properly incapacitate the shark, which should be worrying about losing his life instead of idly drifting along the current.
Then, with sufficient space to accelerate, Martin commenced his attack, kicking his tail firmly to gain speed, hoping the noise would not wake his prey up.
Six tonnes of orca were set into motion, shooting towards the surface on an interception course for that shark. Even though he knew it would hurt, Martin tried to aim right between the shark’s pectoral fins, hoping to knock him out. But it suddenly became apparent that one did not become a three meter long white shark without some keen senses and instincts to match. With a small shudder the shark woke up to Martin’s noise and swiftly started to turn, bending his surprisingly flexible body almost into a U-shape.
This resulted in the orca hitting off mark, slamming his firm rostrum into the shark’s lower belly instead. He definitely felt something give way or break inside his prey though, still making the attack worth the pain he had to endure himself as abrasive shark skin ground roughly over Martin’s rostrum. This added some deep scrapes to the small pits and marks left by countless seal claws in the wake of similar attacks. But just like all those seals, the shark will soon be digested if nothing went wrong from now on.
The shark however, wounded or not, had no intentions to simply lay down his life and become orca food. Instead the toothy predator used the spin Martin had put on him to get in an opportune bite at his attacker. However with no time to prepare or even get his bearings the white shark could only snap his jaws at the huge electric signature moving before his snout. Once again Martin ended up being lucky, when the deadly serrated teeth of the white shark only cut into the remaining blubber on his flank. The belly he would soon end up inside proved too girthy for the shark to properly grip and what could have been a lethal attack turned out to only produce a few gashes in the orca’s smooth skin. In time the resulting scars will become another talking point for him and receptive females, but right now, Martin was in a hurry to defeat this shark before he could get in a better bite.
 
After momentum pushed him past his prey, Martin turned around as well, just in time to see the shark taking aim at his fluke. Hungry and bigger or not, when a maw nearly half a meter wide and filled with serrated teeth is about to descend on your tail, you get scared. Martin tried his best to push his fluke to the side, but it only worked so well. A hot piercing sting of pain shot up his spine as the shark’s teeth sunk into the left tip of his fluke. He heard the sickening noise of his own flesh being cut and the same evasive motion which had prevented the shark from hitting him perfectly centered was now providing the force needed to slice through his flesh, cutting the tip clean off his fluke. The last thing Martin ever saw of this little bit of his body was its descent down the shark’s gullet as he instinctively devoured the severed piece.
“I’ll take that back.” snarled Martin as he swung around and found the shark still trying to stay behind him, but with limited success. The injured predator turned prey was apparently injured more severely than Martin had previously thought as the shark’s tail now had an unhealthy looking little bent in it. This clearly prohibited the dangerous creature from moving as swiftly as it liked and very much needed to escape Martin’s appetite.
Now in front of the once more sharking orca, the shark only managed to spit out a quick “Please don’t.” as he tried to turn and evade the attack. Such utterances never worked and while the shark knew that fully well from his own predatory track record including numerous smaller sharks and dolphins, such pleas simply came instinctively with defeat.
 
Martin felt a mix of shudder, relief and success when he closed his jaws around the white shark, feeling his teeth grinding along the particularly firm and rough skin while also tasting this species of shark for the first time. It could not be helped, he had to finish this, even at the sacrifice of some enamel. As the shark was stuck, sideways in Martin’s jaws, struggling and pleading for his life, Martin found him to be quite delicious, but not enough to risk mutilation.
 
Feeling Martin’s warm and heavy tongue pull on him, the shark went into full panic. “No! Please don’t” he repeated with the same result as the orca did his best to line up his prey with his gullet as quickly as possible. Now the shark’s outward facing eyes forced him to see the conical teeth of his captor periodically opening and closing around him while his keen electrical sense gave him a shadowy image of the gullet opening before him. The shark uttered a last desperate shout before his voice was muffled by the oppressively hot and tight orca gullet. The last thing the former predator consciously noticed was the omnipresent convulsing orca flesh overloading his senses and causing him to fade into a dizzy unconsciousness.
 
Martin noticed this happening when the wildly kicking shark tail went still. it was as if his prey had given up and his already abused teeth, and the rest of his body for that matter, thanked the shark for it. Martin had hoped the white shark would show this behaviour too, like the smaller blue sharks tended to. Another surprise like the ones before would have been very dangerous.
Instead he was now free to swallow the almost motionless shark, depriving his prey of oxygen as his hungry gullet clenched tightly around the former predator’s glls. With adrenaline still dulling the pain he should feel, Martin was instead left with a sensation of incredible predatory success and pride. As he slowly rose to the surface for some well needed air, he watched the shark’s limp tail dangling in front of him, occasionally sliding a little deeper when he swallowed. During his stay at the surface, the orca felt the pectoral fins of his meal folding against the perfectly streamlined body he was in the middle of consuming. With his jaws and throat aching from the mere girth of his meal, Martin pushed on with greedy resolve, swallowing the great white shark down ever further. He soon felt the tall stiff dorsal fin of the shark pressing against his upper jaw, presenting him with another obstacle to overcome. But filled with dedication and a sense of entitlement to this meal after all the sacrifices he had made to obtain it, Martin would never let his prey go. Instead he continued to gulp and stretch his jaws just a little further, timing his gaping and swallowing until the find gave way and allowed Martin to fold it on the tasty shark's back.
 
Once the widest part of his prey was engulfed by his undulating gullet, things went a lot smoother for both orca and his meal. The shark’s spindle shape now worked against him, helping Martin’s throat to squeeze all that well needed flesh down towards the orca’s waiting stomachs. Before the belly of his prey slipped off the back of his tongue, Martin could already feel the pointy shark snout pressing into his forestomach, giving the greedy digestive organ the occupant it had been craving for days now. This meal might actually be a little too large for comfort, seeing that the shark was almost a third the orca’s overall length. But determination and a well trained gut, one used to whole entire sharks and dolphins, would see him through.
 
Bit by bit the shark’s body slipped into the claustrophobic tightness of Martin’s forestomach. Almost like the shark’s skin, this organ was lined with a rough surface, albeit a less regular one with actual protrusions. After all this was not meant to reduce drag in water but to grind down prey, like this white shark, into a rough chunky paste which could then pass into his gastric stomach for chemical digestion.
In a way, the shark was getting the same treatment Martin’s snout had received on the initial attack, only it was going to be a full body affair for him and he would not recover.
When the shark was already half inside Martin’s belly, the orca felt a sudden jerk extending from deep inside him all the way up to the large caudal fin inside his maw.
“Running out of oxygen?” mused the orca, not sure the shark was even in a state to understand him still. But he could not help but to gloat at his prey’s demise a little bit on account of his fluke.
He then pressed the fin against the roof of his maw with his tongue, enjoying the last bit of taste as the now twitching shark tail was devoured and pushed down into his slightly drooping belly.
 
A minute later the shark was entirely settled inside Martin’s forestomach. He had been on track to become one of the oceans most feared predators but now, he had instead narrowly been caught and devoured. The success Martin felt when his stomach sealed around the shark’s caudal fin or the filling beast finally stopped moving forever was indescribable and matched that of his first mating. Now he also started to feel just how sore his throat was after this colossal meal or how badly the bites on his flank and fluke stung. But now, with the hunt concluded, his meal consumed and his belly happy, Martin could bear these discomforts with pride as he continued his journey, weighed down by around 300 kilos of fuel for his greedy warm blooded body.