She jabs at its face, but with momentum intended to meet resistance, and there is none. With momentum intended to compensate for a dodge on the part of the creature, but it surges forward. She's engulfed, and then there is no snake, and there is no ground, and she's falling.
She gasps. The air is clean; she doesn't need to heal poison out of herself with each breath. She sees - floating land, of sorts, there, some kind of oddly geology-themed ship maybe. She could, potentially, turn Lævateinn into something with enough surface area to steer herself onto it rather than fall farther and suffer worse from the fall, but she just recently perfected a new...
She's a bird, a swift, and she catches the wind, and her spear is a twig clutched in her feet, and she wings her way to the land.
"Well, call me a bleeding heart. You didn't have a house or tools or anything. You probably could have fed yourself, but you'd have been pretty miserable the first time a storm came along. Those idiot passengers are why I laid out a lot of rules for you on the first trip, though I know you enough to trust you have common sense now."
By the end of this he's yelling. He takes a deep breath. "I try to screen people for common sense before talking to them for more than five minutes or inviting them onto my ship. Other people are three quarters of why I don't have a bigger ship - this is the largest one I can manage by myself. I built her from scratch."
"Impressive. Both that you built this thing and that you didn't tie them up and dangle them out the window halfway through the trip."
Is that a storm approaching from the east? It is! Nick moves to point the ship west and considers. "This is a problem. It's a large-front storm and we're right in the middle of its path. We're closer to the bottom limit of the storm, but we need to go up. So either we backtrack, or we risk not getting above it in time."
He acquires paper and starts doing some math.
Loki, having neither relevant meteorological expertise nor weather magic, stays out of his way while he does that.
He asks her to add and subtract a few large numbers while he runs for a book. Comparing the results with something in the book, he declares, "I think we can make it over. I'll start maneuvering, you close all the doors and hatches."
This state of affairs continues for about an hour and a half. There is some violent shaking in the middle bits, but eventually they are clear of the storm.
"I think I need a nap."
"Was it, really? It's just a matter of focus. I wasn't even aware you were still here. Anyone can - get in a rhythm like that if they have a good reason to."
"Yes. But only in areas of great expertise. Someone who doesn't know what they're doing will choke instead."
He writes some things down. Then he goes to bed.
A few hours later: "Nothing broke while I was asleep, right? I should have done a check earlier. Nothing feels wrong, at least, I built this thing tough. Oh, and thanks to the homesick angel I pulled to get us above the storm, we're close to squid-territory now."
"You'd have noticed. Ah, homesick angel is a colloquialism. An old religion thought that divine... Winged things called angels live in the hydrogen layer, so a ship ascending as fast as possible is like an angel trying to go home. Hence the phrase."
"It is, isn't it? I don't think my ship bears much resemblance to anything divine, much as I love it. I should go maintain the mechanisms, but if you have decent vision, soon would be a good time to find a jellywings."
If it takes too long to find any and they don't attack the ship either, she may see what squids think of illusion jellywings. She probably can't make them really convincing having only seen a picture, but it would get a squid to come out of hiding, and then she could spear it.
Nick doesn't seem to be too worried. "I brought plenty of food and water, and the gas cells were full. We can cruise around for a few days, no rush. The only thing is that every hour does make it trickier to get back again."
"That's like asking, do you want to make a deal? Depends on the deal. Depends on the secret. I don't normally have a good reason to gossip, at least."
"I'm mostly wary of unconditional promises. If there is a compelling reason to reveal something I promised to keep secret, I will reveal the secret. If I promise to, I don't know, keep it secret that I saw someone hanging out in front of an abandoned building. Discovering them with a bloody knife and hearing that someone was murdered inside is a good reason. Thinking that abandoned buildings should be left alone is not a good reason."