Hialfi and the griffon
By Strega

It was a fine flock of sheep, one the griffon had raided before. Sheep were a favorite prey of the lion-bird; too stupid to run, poorly guarded (a shepherd and a dog, most likely, and those would run the moment they saw him circling) and small enough that a single sheep wouldn't weigh him down if he needed to do a snatch-and-run. More than once, when a flock was unexpectedly well protected, he'd flown away with the a kicking set of hooves hanging from his beak, gulping the struggling thing with a few tosses of his head so he could return to circling and decide if perhaps he had misjudged and there was more mutton to be had. He was too wise to gorge until he couldn't fly, unlike  less clever (and shorter lived)  litter mates.  Two or three sheep would fit in his stomach easily enough, though.

Occasionally, things other than sheep ended up there.  Twice he had swooped down on a shepherd instead of the flock, the first time bolting the man down and following him with the too-loyal sheepdog that tried to defend its master.  With a belch and a cackle of glee he'd flapped off to digest his meal, ignoring the weakening struggle in his belly.  That always ended soon enough.  

The second time he's stooped on the shepherd and found it a woman. Overcome by the excitement of the hunt he'd held her down with his foreclaws, torn away her clothes with a swipe of his cruelly hooked beak and mounted her. It was a brief and not very interesting mating, and as he ate her he resolved to stick to his own species for lovers, or at least ones closer to his shape.

For the fourth or fifth time this year he circled the flock, watching keen-eyed as the shepherd ran for his life. The stupid sheep milled, he swooped to strike, and he discovered to his chagrin that this flock was better defended than he thought.

His only warning was a hiss as something spun through the air, followed by multiple impacts as weighed cords wrapped around his wings.  With a startled squawk he plummeted the last few feet to the grass, landing with a thump as sheep scattered in all directions.

One of the objects had hit him in the head and he shook stars from his eyes as he tried to free himself.  The thing consisted of three colorful rubber spheres, each about half the size of a man's head, connected by long leather cords to a central iron ring.  The cords tied his wings together beyond any hope of flight but he could nip through those easily enough.  He was so engaged in that task that he missed the approach of the real threat.

He caught a glimpse of orange out of the corner of his eye just as something smote his flank.  He went over with a squawk and kept rolling, pushed along but whatever had just hit him. Improbably large hands and pushes from what felt like paws kept him moving as more leather cord was wrapped around him, bundling him up like an insect cocooned in a spider's silk. His attacker was too big and strong to fight and as he rolled he finally got a look at it.

It was a fox, an enormous red fox several times his own mass.  More than that, it was a foxtaur. Where a proper neck and head should be was instead the upper body and arms of a orange-furred man, topped by a fluffy neck and foxy face. A leather harness extended from the humanoid upper body onto the feral lower, held together by buckles and rings and supporting everything from rolled-up blankets to tools and even a bundle of javelins. Two more of the throwing-weights, which the griffon vaguely remembered were called bolas, hung from the harness.

The fox efficiently bound his forelegs to his flanks and added to the ties that already restrained his wings.  A single winding of the strong leather was enough to bind his hind legs to each other and the very first thing the fox had done, while the griffon was still stunned, was to tie his sharp beak shut. By the time the griffon recovered enough to fight he was able to do little but wriggle.

Off to one side the human shepherd was watching, flanked by two sheepdogs. The griffon hissed in irritation as he was rolled over once more.  By all rights the human should be fleeing, but it showed no sign of fear despite the presence of both himself and a foxtaur that must be twenty times a man's weight.

“That's the one,” the shepherd said.  “I recognize the scar on his cheek. He raped Gunnilda and swallowed her whole afterward. He may be the one that ate Jaerod before that. There's been a griffon raiding this field for a year or two.”

Lying on his back now and able to do little but glare furiously up at the fluffy white chest-fur of the foxtaur, the griffon snapped through a tied beak.

“The men drove the prey away when they built their village.”, he hissed.  “Other griffons, or other things, hunt elsewhere.  This is my territory, I eat what there is to eat.”

“I know,” said the fox, looking down past the chest-ring that held his harness together.  “And I am sorry, but I have to eat too, and I can't afford to buy food.  I have to take what I can get.”

Huge padded hands reached down for the griffon, hoisting him up against the furry chest. All he could do was thrash impotently, his tail slapping the fox's belly, as the creature's muzzle turned toward the shepherd.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the man nod.

“I won't say that this is fair, or just,” the fox said as he once more looked down at the griffon, “But the village needs its sheep.”

The griffon's eyes went wide as the fox licked its chops, and he suddenly realized what was about to happen. Big as the fox was it had not occurred to him that it might see him as food.  He was a griffon, proud and strong, and he tried to twist his beak aside as huge hands pushed him into the fox's jaws.  Tied or not his beak was cruelly hooked but the fox held his neck and slid the point of the beak into the corner of its mouth. With a thrust of its muzzle the fox engulfed his entire head and his beak slid past the tongue into the wet chute of vulpine gullet.

Suddenly afraid, the griffon kicked and squirmed, but with merciless strength the fox forced him into wide-open jaws.  Fangs scraped through his feathery mane as his skull followed beak into the waiting maw.  It was a tight fit, the fox clearly no more able to unhinge its jaws than he was, but the size difference was decisive.  Big as he was the griffon was narrow in the beam and the fox was just able to work its jaws further over his chest and wing-roots, the thickest part of him. With a lurch the fox's jaws were past his neck and a great contraction of the surrounding muscle carried him deeper as the fox swallowed.

He weighed as much as four men even with an empty stomach and was a solid mass of wiry muscle.  On land or in the air he was swift and strong and carried not an ounce of excess fat. If he hadn't been tied up he might claw or tear at the fox's innards with his beak, but the slimy throat took more of him in no matter how hard he thrashed. In mere moments the fox had shoved him in almost to the haunches and was tilting its head up, readying itself to swallow him alive.

The strong muscle pushing in from all sides squeezed the strength from the griffon despite his desperate efforts to escape. With a toss of its muzzle and another gulp the fox took in still more of him, and now only his haunches and kicking hind legs hung out into the cool afternoon air. He could feel the bulge sagging down through the big fox's neck as his own weight helped push him deeper.

It had always amused the griffon to swallow prey whole, and though he tore apart large meals, at least a hundred creatures of various species disappeared into his his jaws just as he disappeared into the fox's.  Dozens of sheep, perhaps a dozen humans - shepherds, wandering bandits farmers, the occasional woman working in a field, the griffon was not picky - kobolds, orcs, goblins, and even a few lanky gnoll hyena-men had slipped down his throat to struggle their last in his waiting belly.  Once he had stretched his beak around a bulky, furry bugbear almost, but not quite too large to swallow. In the end he had belched and laughed as that one kicked and squirmed, the clink of its patchwork armor emerging from beneath the stretched fur of his abdomen. The next day he regurgitated the armor mixed with a mass of fur, their owner no longer needing either.

He had never thought it would happen to him. He was proud and he was strong but with a last toss of its jaws the fox took in his haunches and swallowed. With a helpless, muffled shriek the griffon slid deeper, his hindpaws and lashing tail following his rump past the fangs and into the slick heat of the fox's gullet.

It was a long way from the fox's jaws to his stomach. The shepherd watched, fascinated, as a great gulp and bob of his head the fox swallowed the griffon's hindpaws and tail, a few long wingfeathers the final thing to vanish past the fangs. The long bulge in its neck slipped downward, disappearing into the slender ribcage onto to bulge out once more when the abdomen was reached.  There was a struggle beneath the fur, one hidden again as Hialfi stepped one forepaw to the side, stretched, and swallowed once more. This time the bulge of griffon was forced to turn the corner in the fox's strange L-shaped throat and was pushed into a second ribcage, that of the foxtaur's feral lower body. Seconds later it once more reappeared as the feral half's belly began to droop.  With a groan the fox stretched, the meal finally reaching his stomach.  A very unhappy griffon squirmed beneath that white belly fur.  The shepherd found he had little sympathy for the beast.

The inside of the fox was dark, wet, hot, and horrible.  Despite his best efforts to squirm free there was nowhere for the griffon to go but down the hungry gullet, pushed by the throat muscles and well-practiced movements of the fox's body that helped ease him deeper. Eventually the slithering journey slowed as a strong ring-shaped muscle resisted the progress of his beak.   A moment later the throat pulsed again and the griffon shuddered as the sphincter opened and he slid helplessly into what could only be the fox's stomach.

The stench was appalling.  Bile, wet fur, and an acidic tang that burned his nostrils as he sucked in what little air was available. Fragments of softened bone pressed against the griffon's flanks as he squirmed, the nearly digested relic of whatever unfortunate last arrived here, and a soft mass against his rump resolved itself as a wad of soaked fur yet to be regurgitated or passed. The clink of metal as a few loose scales of iron armor shifted, their leather backing long since dissolved. He was just the latest visitor to take a trip down the fox's well-traveled gullet.

He didn't want to die!  He especially didn't want to end his life as a meal for a roaming foxtaur, however large it might be.  Dying in a fight over a female, or defending his territory against an invader, that was the way for a griffon to die.  With all his might he kicked and wriggled, but the fox had tied him too thoroughly. In the squelching wetness of the stomach his exposed flesh was already burning and even his thick feathers grew sodden with the acids that would digest him, but still the griffon struggled. There was not so much flesh between him and the outside, only a few inches, but it was strong muscle and sinew and pelt.  Without the freedom to claw and bite he could do little damage, and less still as he tired.  The heat and humidity and scant supply of air swiftly wore him down. 

Only now did he realize why he'd been tied with leather.  The fox could digest that as easily as it would him, but until the acids got to work it was too strong to break.  By the time it softened, he would have as well. The colorful rubber weights at the ends of the bolas were another matter, but surely this wasn't the first time they'd ended up here.

Gradually he became aware that the fox was moving.  Not walking, no; it was arching, pushing its haunches forward in sudden jerks and withdrawing to thrust again. Through the wall of stomach and muscle and fur the griffon could feel the stiffness developing along the fox's belly.  It did not take much thought to reason out what it was.

In the wet dark of the stomach the griffon snarled through a bound-shut beak and struggled to get his claws into the surrounding flesh.  He failed, managing to inflict perhaps a scratch or two that the fox appeared not even to notice.  Stretched out in the stomach, destined only for digestion and with the fox humping itself off against the bulge he made, his humiliation was complete. The only good thing to be said was that a great belch vented the air from the stomach before the ever-hastening thrusting and the shudder building up in the fox's haunches could reach its inevitable conclusion.

“Please don't tell anyone about this,” the foxtaur panted, his lower half arching seemingly of its own accord.  “Has a mind of its own.”

The shepherd grinned. He had no fondness for the beast that comprised the bulge the fox was rubbing against and imagined that the griffon, if still alive, must be deeply shamed by being made a meal. A just outcome for the monster he'd seen rape a fellow shepherd, holding her down with its foreclaws as it thrust.  Once it was sated its beak had dipped and he had watched from beneath a bush, frozen in fear, as his fellow shepherd and sometimes lover Gunnilda was swallowed alive. Tired of the griffon's depredations, he and the other villagers had scraped together a bounty they then offered the foxtaur to deal with the problem. That the griffon died in such a humiliating way was icing on the cake.

“I know,” the shepherd said.  “I've heard the song.”

The foxtaur groaned, but his feral lower half paid no more attention to that now than it did any other time. Hialfi yelped and came, his haunches shuddering and massive half-unsheathed red cock twitching as great volumes of fox semen spurted over the bulge of griffon. The shepherd wasn't surprised.  The fox's life was as lonely as any shepherd's, probably even more so given the lack of lovers for a male of such size, and even a fox has needs. He wouldn't tell anyone.

Well, not until he ran into a bard, anyway. The Tale of the Lonely Fox kept growing new verses, and this would make a good one.