In the culture of serpents, one of the worst insults you could give to someone was something along the lines of “You’re looking a bit skinny, aren’t you”.
To serpents, it just cut deep- Since the dawn of time, the amphibious dragon-like creatures had prized their size. This made perfect sense to them, of course: The bigger you were, the better the hunter you were, because how else were you getting enough to eat to reach that size?
So, when Sea Fisheater was called skinny, he got rather reasonably mad. Among his serpent peers, it was an unfortunately common occurrence; Sea wouldn’t call himself the runt of the litter, say, but he eventually had to admit they had a point. This led him to get rather reasonably anxious of his appearance, which caused him to get rather reasonably depressed, which caused him to spend a lot of time curled up in his den.
His lair consisted of a small, cozy cave right along his favourite place, the beach. Sea loved the water, and he loved the sand, and he loved his snug little home next to both of those things. He usually counted on these things to cheer him up, but today, his mood was having none of his usual comforts.
Sea sighed and tried curling up in a new position. It didn’t help, and he just kept thinking of his life's recent torments.
One day, he thought, he’d show them. He’d eat all the biggest, the heaviest fish!
He stared at his favourite pile of rocks and continued to deliberate. He was a successful hunter. Really! He caught lots of things! Like fish, and those rocks… Well, mostly rocks.
At least he liked the rocks, he thought. He enjoyed picking the most interesting rocks and adding them to his rock collection. He tried telling himself how great his rocks were for a while, but at the end of it, he absolutely failed to cheer up.
He sighed and curled up in yet a different position. If only his rocks were fish! If only you could eat rocks!
Suddenly, softly, a strange idea flitted through his head. It tickled the back of his mind and make him tilt his head. Well, you could technically eat rocks…
That was a terrible idea, of course. You can’t digest rocks. Rocks weren’t like fish at all. Rocks were, however, very heavy. And they could even be very large. Both of the qualities of a good fish.
Sea shook his head. What was he thinking? Just because something was heavy didn’t mean one should eat it. But… But…
He uncurled himself and dragged himself over to his personal pile of rocks. If he really wanted to be big… If he really wanted to be heavy… He had a pretty good meal here…
He shook his head harder, trying to clear such strange thoughts. This wasn’t a meal! This was a pile of inedible rocks!
But yet he felt something deep down inside himself. Something driving his great need to be a bigger serpent… Something telling him all about these rocks…
He felt butterflies in his stomach as he struggled with himself. Sea was a rational creature, and his rational mind was screaming at him right about now. You can’t eat rocks!
But his instincts were overpowering, in a subtle sort of way. He slowly wanted more and more to have these heavy objects inside of him… Making him a bigger, a better serpent…
Eventually, his rational mind decided to just give in and rationalize all this. Maybe he’d feel better if he just ate one! He could spit it out later! He had to at least try!
Sea was shaking a bit as he lowered his head towards his rock pile. Slowly, he picked out a nice, easy rock- A smooth, round piece of marble. He picked it up with his tongue, soon rolling it around in his mouth. It tasted vaguely salty and generally unpleasant, but he didn’t spit it out, didn’t even think of it.
He quite obviously couldn’t chew it, so he went straight to swallowing. He was used to swallowing small fish, but this rock proved to be a new challenge for him. He glurked as it almost got caught, but with a hard gulp, it soon started going down.
He felt the bulge in his long neck as it slowly passed downwards. Even in his neck, the weight was palpable, forcing its way down as it went. He could even feel the thing tumble down into his stomach, suddenly adding a new bit of heft to his middle.
Sea soon flipped over onto his back to feel exactly what he did. When he poked his stomach in the right place, he could feel a hard lump, making him shiver. He knew he shouldn’t have done that, but yet he couldn’t deny the extra weight in his center was… Really nice!
He eyed his rock pile once more. This felt great, despite his fears, so maybe just a few more wouldn’t hurt… He got up and lowered his head to his pile for a second round.
This time, he was a bit more adventurous. He lapped up a piece of sandstone and swished it around in his maw. It was a bit more abrasive, he thought, as he swallowed it, feeling it slide down his neck with only moderate difficulty. While that one was passing down into his gut, he grabbed a few chunks of granite, and popped them in his mouth one by one, gulping a bit faster now.
He jumped a little as he felt two rocks clack together in his stomach. What a strange feeling! He decided he needed to feel more of this. He rubbed his stomach with a flipper as he dived his head into his remaining rocks, grabbing whatever stones he could.
His stomach slowly got more and more weighed down, rocks clinking together and shifting as he ate. He was so heavy now! He shuddered in the middle of a mouthful. He knew now how great it felt to have that extra heft… He didn’t even mind the strange lumps in his middle as he just kept going.
His pile was shrinking fast, exactly as fast as he was growing, in fact. Soon, his belly stuck out to his sides, sagging and lumpy with its contents, the internal pressure steadily growing, making it harder to eat more. But Sea just kept rubbing his gut and chowing down on more, no matter how large or sharp they were.
The largest rock in his collection, a piece of chert, took great effort to get down. He could hardly even fit it in his mouth, but when he did, he started pushing it down with his tongue and swallowing. Gulps came only with great effort, and he could hardly breathe, but after enough time, the stone slowly receded into his gullet. As it finally slipped down in there, he sighed and groaned, immediately wanting to go for more. And as such, he did.
Eventually, the hungry seadragon finally reduced his pile to one rock- His absolute favourite, a large, shiny piece of obsidian, with soft sides yet sharp corners. He let out a soft burp and stared, a bit in shock, at the final rock. Without really thinking, he’d devoured the pile… A pile of indigestible rocks…
He stared hungrily at the obsidian. Even after realizing exactly what he did, he still wanted to eat more… He felt so big, so heavy, he wanted more…
He failed to resist his instincts, and grabbed the last rock in his maw. He winced as he swallowed, feeling the sharp edges rake against his throat, making him wriggle a bit as he felt it go down. But soon it joined the others in his belly, making a soft clacking noise.
He groaned and surveyed the results of his lapse in judgement. His rock pile, gone… All inside of him… He tried to lift his middle off the ground, but it was no use whatsoever. No matter how hard he strained, his rock-lden gut stayed quite pinned to the cave floor.
His stomach was stretched uncomfortably, making every movement just a little sore. The pressure didn’t help, either, all those rocks stretching him out to what felt like his limits. The voice in the back of his mind told him what a great hunter he was… Look at his catch! He was big now!
He sighed and looked around. There wasn’t anything left to eat in there… He concluded one thing. Time to show off! TIme to show them who the biggest serpent was!
He grinned to himself and tried to drag himself forwards. He unexpectedly met resistance from his rock-filled belly, and grunted. Showing off was going to be a long journey; but after some struggling, he figured it out. Laboriously, he dragged his heavy body across the cave floor, out the entrance to the beach he called home.
Rocks shifted in there, making him wince, as his belly soon started dragging across the sand instead, leaving a large divot in his wake.
As he dragged himself out to sea, Sea looked down at the beach. The sand felt nice against his scales, as usual, but what was sand, really…
He knew, of course. Sand was tiny rocks. And what were rocks? Heavy.
The now-familiar feeling of butterflies filled his chest once more. Maybe… Maybe if the rocks helped, the sand would also help…
He stopped forwards movement and lowered his head, pushing his belly aside. He slowly buried his head in the sand… And took a mouthful.
The sand, simply put, tasted like sand. Impossibly gritty, basically. He fought every urge to cough it up as he raised his head and swallowed the mouthful.
Almost immediately, something broke within him. He just ate sand, so really, what was keeping him from doing whatever he felt like doing? Nothing, in short. He dived right back down into the sand, taking great gulps of the gritty stuff, dragging himself along to get more of it stuffed into his maw.
The sand quickly poured into his stomach, filling up whatever empty spaces were left in between rocks. He felt himself slowly grow heavier, his stomach more round, as he went, greedily devouring the contents of the beach. He ignored the protesting sounds of his gut as he filled it up even more…
It didn’t take long before the spot in front of him showed the bedrock of the beach. With a groan, he laboriously began to pull himself forwards, belly dragging along sluggishly. While this would normally be a very good indication to stop, the instincts were too strong in Sea’s mind. He needed more!
And more he obtained, the serpent soon grazing on another patch of sand. The pressure of all the sand pushing against his hide, with the occasional bumpy feeling of a rock, drove him to continue. He only felt heavier as he went, devouring the gritty stuff in a rapid fashion.
Slowly but surely, he was making his way along the beach, dragging himself along to get to more and more. Each movement forwards was harder than the last, overloaded belly dragging more and more reluctantly across the beach… Sea felt far past full; he could feel every bit of sand push back against him as he swallowed more, the grainy stuff slishing around inside him, the abrasiveness and the pressure making his stomach ache dearly. He couldn’t help but slow down the pace a bit, his body complaining vociferously…
But his mind was focused on one thing. More. Sea, now a very successful hunter by his metrics, sported a belly larger than he was, all full of rocks and minerals. His underbelly was stretched tight, creaking with every little motion from the serpent- Not that he was moving much more than his head at this point, long neck stretched to grab all the sand in reach. Slowly, very slowly, he dragged his thoroughly weighted-down body another inch…
Just a little bit more, he thought. He slowly, yet still greedily, scooped up sand in his mouth and swallowed. He could feel it slowly, excruciatingly slowly, move down his neck to join the packed contents in his gut, making it rumble and expand outwards just a tad more. It was soon followed by another mouthful, then another...
Just a little bit more, he thought… Just a little bit more…

“Sea! Hey, Sea!”
Caye looked around as her head poked out of the water. The dark green serpent grinned as she thought about what he had planned today… But usually, she thought, Sea would be out here by now.
“... Sea?”
There was no sign of his friend. Soon, a second serpent head poked out of the waves; this one a deep blue in color.
Caye turned to his friend. “You see him, Foam?”
“Nnnnope.” he replied.
“Hmph. He lives here, right?”
“Think so.”
“Well, let’s just invite ourselves into his… Uhh, Foam?”
“Yeah, Caye?”
“Where’s the beach?”
Suddenly, they both stopped their chattering. Their eyes slowly widened as they realized just how different this scene looked today… The biggest change was the simple fact that the beach simply didn’t exist.
Stretching in front of them wasn’t a strip of sand, but instead a strip of hard rock. There was no sand! The coastline was bare! They could hardly believe their eyes as they looked at the beach, then at each other.
Eventually, Foam formulated a reply to Caye’s last question. “Dunno.”
Caye grimaced for a second. “Well, of course you don’t know. How… How much beach is gone?”
Foam swam up to the now-rocky coast and slid his way onto it. “It keeps going...”
Caye soon followed her friend’s path down the coast, looking forwards. In their vision was nothing but more bedrock, seemingly stripped of all sand. What was going on here?
The bare coastline continued for some time, the two serpents following it closely. It took them a long while, but eventually, they’d round a corner to see exactly what had been causing this terraforming.
In front of them was what looked like a huge white sphere, lighter on the underside. Two flippers jutted out the back along with a tail, looking comically small compared to the mass of the middle. For a second, the two serpents stared in shock, slowly realizing exactly what they were looking at.
They were looking at Sea!
Foam just stood there, gargling softly in pure disbelief. Caye’s eyes boggled as she rushed over to the bloated serpent’s side. It was Sea, all right; simply sporting a belly so large, it dwarfed all his limbs and pushed him well above the ground. Sea himself was straining his neck forwards sluggishly, eyeing the patch of sand sitting in front of him.
“Uhh… Hey. Sea?”
The white serpent jumped… Or at least his head twitched, soon whipping around to look at the green serpent.
“Oh. Hey, Caye. Can you push me forwards a bit?”