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.
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."
"Mm. Well. I can do a number of things which I have not told you about. I would like to disclose one of them so as to speed this excursion up. I assure you that if you ever hear of a murder which could only have been committed with the use of my unusual abilities you will not be obliged to keep your promises to me, but do I otherwise have your word on your silence?"
"Lots of things are up. The thing I have in mind is -" She holds her hand out palm-up. She appears an illusory jellywings there, revolving slowly on the spot. "Squid bait."
"...Once we've gotten the squid. If I can."
"I could try, but I've never taught before. I'm largely self-educated myself so I have no tutors to imitate. Also, spell development takes decades."
"But I'm getting sidetracked. For now: Squid. The best way to attract it would be a large, injured-looking jellywings. The older and bigger they are, the more they accumulate damage and the easier they are for squid to hunt. Shall I keep the ship as steady as possible while you attempt to lure in our ticket to riches?"
"Good enough. Squid are smarter than most critters, but they're still pretty stupid. One attacked my ship just because the roof was a little green, remember?"
"I'll be flying the ship, trying to keep her as steady as possible for you. Let me fly well clear of any islands first. If that thing knocks around my ship, and it will, I don't want to crack open against one."