A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Re: A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Postby Treadwell » Wed Jan 15, 2014 9:08 am

Afternoon of the fifteenth day of the first month, 214. New Hibera.

The bath chamber of one Richard Aengus is warm enough thanks to the tiny (to big folks) speck of fire glowing in the fireplace near the king's bathtub, wherein the king himself lies there soaking in the water, glowing his lovely little shade of pink.

From a short distance, though, from the middle of a couch, is a globe of equally luminescent white: Orin Barrin, the king's half-brother and physician.

"Richard?"

"Mmmmmm?" comes the drowsy reply.

"It's been nearly three months. You've not yet opened up fully about what it is you were dreaming while Squeaky was growing in your belly. I would very much care to know, old boy."

A frown droops the king's jowls beneath that floofy pink beard. His glow dims slightly. "Motherhood, Orin."

"Motherhood?"

"I dreamed you had told me that our father, the king, truly had both the parts of a boy and a girl, that he had been my true mother, and that I had been born just like him, but that my set of such, ahem, women's parts had been magically hidden away."

"Oh dear."

"You rectified that with a spell."

"Good heavens."

"And then Marta, in Her wisdom, saw fit to bless me with twin daughters, Lora and Lara."

"Bless you, Richard?"

"Impregnate, yes. Bless me!"

"With the mother's light and the belly growing and the milk in the breasts and all?"

"Quite!"

"And--" And at this, Doctor Orin Barrin bursts into squeaky, shrill hoohahs of laughter.

Richard merely frowns deeper. "What? What is so funny?"

"Merely--hee hee! Merely picturing you in a maternity gown, laid up in a bed--" the doctor pat-pats his fleshy hands between his legs "screaming and panting and puffing as you push out not just one baby, but two!"

"Hmph."

"It's truly ludicrous!" The laughter, though, eases away. Tears, not to be missed, fill the king's eyes as the old butterball sinks lower into his bath. "I'm sorry, Richard. . . . It. . . it must have seemed quite real to you, all of it."

"I carried them to term and delivered them, Orin. They--" he cups a hand over a nipple, his voice draining to a whimper, "they suckled at my breasts."

To this, the physician worms off the couch, toddling over to wrap his wet brother in a hug.

"All a matter of your brain's trying to make sense of Squeaky having been in you. You didn't know about all of it, and I never got to tell you before putting you to sleep," a gentle kiss to the king's forehead, "so you made sense of it all the only way that you knew how. Your mind fabricated the whole affair, wanting there to be order in all the pain and growth you knew, instinctively, that you were feeling despite being asleep."

A sob escapes the pink monarch, whose chin sinks into the physician's white-robed chest. "I would rather have those two baby girls in my arms, at my bosom, then to have ever known about that rodent!"

Patting the king's back, gentle and soft, follows.

"I suppose, dear Richard, I was a passably good uncle to them?"

A chuckle.

"A splendid one, Orin. Splendid."

"Then we have but two solutions to this. Only one of them makes reasonable sense."

Richard Aengus wiggles off his half-brother's belly, eyes opening wider.

"We hurry up and find you a pinkwing wife from a distant kingdom so that you can sire children in your old age."

"Or?"

A groan from the physician.

"Or, against any proper semblance of sense, we find a way to make those dreams come true."

A grin starts to slip onto the king's fat face.

"The wife, Richard. The wife. I would much prefer your having a queen on the throne, not your being the queen. A wife!"
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
User avatar
Treadwell
Member
 
Posts: 2101
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 5:00 am
Location: NC, USA

Re: A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Postby Treadwell » Thu Jan 16, 2014 12:21 pm

Afternoon of the sixteenth day of the first month, 214.

Marta's heavenly realm.


"Mum? Mother?"

Libri, the black-gowned and portly scholar, as white-bearded and ample in his shape as his father, stands ankle deep in the white fluffiness of clouds, having simply walked from his dusty and myriad bookshelves and scroll cases to see the great-bellied, round-bodied woman currently between labors. She rests, reclining, in a purple-cushioned seat by her delivery bed, wearing a flowing, silken gown of the same royal shade.

"The fairy king who lives near the lake in Myrken Wood--"

"You mean my fat, little Richard! He is quite beloved for being such a silly, small fellow. Bless him!"

"That's what I've come to talk about, Mum. He has spent today ordering his physician about, and his physician's assistants. He has them all studying their writings and spells."

"Oh?"

"He's apparently spent much of the last year asleep, in a magical nap, supporting the life of a creature that burrowed in and took sustenance of him. While asleep, he dreamt of possessing women's parts and becoming a mother to twins."

"Of that I am aware," Marta notes, rubbing her swollen middle. "Even though it was but a dream, I knew of all of the experience."

"Mum, he's daffy and loony. He desperately wants that dream to be reality."

"And so it might be."

"But Mum! It doesn't make good sense!"

"Hush, Libri. Do they show the proper devotion to us? Do they beg, plea, and pray as appropriate as our followers? If so, then it is our decision to grant them their wishes or not. You know this."

The scholar sighs, his belly a-bobble beneath his robe with the huff of air.

"Their library has all of the information they need. I cannot stop them from finding it; I joy in such matters. I simply don't agree with it, Mum! You--you have your many shapes, your many roles. They're split up properly. You fashion babies human and divine. In your main shape, as old Pop-Pop, you eat forever, and as Tubbius, you oversee the growth in the seasons, and in the last, the sow wallows about and dutifully births almost waves of pigs in her time!"

"So they are, yes."

"It's not natural for this fairy to have parts for both a man and a woman! It's not natural for them to all work! But they have the knowledge to cobble it together for him!"

"It's not?"

"It's not!"

"Would you not say that, despite having my different forms and roles, my different responsibilities," Marta reaches a hand over to rest it on her son's forearm, "should you put them all together and think of me as one great entity, one something like our Creator, our Father," she nods her head and smiles, "that I am something like what this fairy wishes to be? Would you call me 'unnatural?'"

The scholar blinks and stares for a moment.

His jowls jiggle and quiver as his lips work in thought. Then?

"Oh, Mum! Dear Mommy! Mother! Why is it you have to talk good sense to me about this silly fairy who makes no sense to me?"

"Go back to your books and your scrolls, my child. I shall decide what happens with this knowledge they seek when they choose to act on it."

Thus does the son give the mother a kiss to her cheek, rubbing a hand across her belly slowly and reverently.

"May your next delivery, and all after, go easily and quickly, Mum."

As the Scholar fades from sight, returning to his books, Marta smiles, letting her conscious awareness slip back to the fat, mortal body of a tax collector in a far away land.

In his afternoon nap, though, in Myrken Wood, Aloisius Treadwell rolls sluggishly in bed and rumbles out a snore, loud and long, before he eases awake with a yawn. He is hungry. His belly is empty. He lies with his wife nearby, smiling at the infinitely detailed knowledge of their little one's slow growth inside her. He is quite sweaty and warm. Their room is hot, the result of having left their fireplace glowing before they cozied up under the covers. However, for the Treadwells in Myrken Wood, despite their matching discomfort for their different reasons, all is very well.
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
User avatar
Treadwell
Member
 
Posts: 2101
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 5:00 am
Location: NC, USA

Re: A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Postby Treadwell » Fri Jan 17, 2014 5:27 am

Morning of the seventeenth day of the first month, 214.

New Hibera. The king's bedroom.


"Richard, I simply cannot believe I am allowing you to talk me into doing this."

"I'm hardly giving you the option, Orin."

"You're ordering me to do so. I understand that much. I never said that I agree with it."

"Orin, you know that fairy courtships--the ones that don't result in a whirlwind courtship and immediate wedding!--can take decades and are best begun when the parties are young and fresh."

"I do."

"Besides that, you know quite well that there aren't any other pinkwings at all within the boundaries of what the biglings call Myrken Wood. For any of us to travel farther than that is suicide for all who venture out. Hmph. Even leaving this cave might very well be such. We're a fragile race."

"All of us are blubbery fat, Your Majesty, not 'fragile.'"

"Praise Tubbius! So, even if we did look for someone to be my queen, what young, fruitful princess would risk coming all the way here and risk having a child by me?"

"The marriage bed would certainly feel more like a wine press, I wager."

"Precisely, hee hee! So!" Plump, pink fingers tap-tap impatiently at the stack of books on a table recently placed by the king's bed. "What of all this? Can you do it?"

"Oh, we can do it, Richard. Our kind of fairies are infinitely malleable and mutable, given we're practically made of magic, ourselves. Using our spells to take what you have and shape it anew merely takes time."

The king glances down at his belly, all that he can see. It burbles, full of lunch, underneath his pink nightgown.

"My manhood?" he whispers.

"That, dear Richard, is a concern. For you to be truly. . . ahem. . . fruitful, as you put it. . . . Well, it simply won't have a role in your reproduction any longer."

"Gone?" Fearful and whimpered!

"No, not gone, you oaf! Just useless save for visits to the privy."

"Oh." A clearing of the throat, a light blushing. "Well! Let's get on with it!"

"So casual, Richard. You act as if you already know how it is you're going to end up carrying a babe once we do all of this."

"Marta will bless me, as she did in my dreams!"

"Lunacy, Richard. Madness."

"Faith!" the king squeaks, shrill and piercing.

"And if she doesn't? You confine yourself to monthly cycles? to living by our very stringent laws regarding women and their roles in society? They are quite clear. If there's even a hint of womanhood about someone, she--she, Richard, for that's what the law would consider you!--must think of styles of dress, actions in public--"

"Reliance on servants, staying clear of gravesites, living with my sole desire to be for my children present and future? Yes, yes, yes, yes, Orin! I tell you that I heard all of this while. . . while I was napping!"

The physician frowns, deep and long and grave.

"You really are serious about this, aren't you?"

"I am, and you will see that it happens. I have been a void, ripped open and emptied, ever since I awoke. I refuse to live in misery for my final years."

"So, rather nursery than misery, hmm? You would rather conceive, deliver, and nurse at least one baby for likely the rest of your days? They grow very slowly once they're out of the mother, Richard, and you are, ahem, an older gentleman."

"I would!"

"And the title of 'king?' No woman can hold such."

"I found in my dreams that 'queen mother' would suit me nicely."

"How would you interact with the governing biglings out there? 'Why, yes, I was King Richard years ago, but now, do call me Queen?' Absurd!"

"Have I had to do anything with them since? Am I likely to ever do so again? We have food. We have water. Our population is stable. Our people have agreed to stay clear and invisible of any biglings. If I have to, Orin, I simply call myself 'Ruler of New Hibera' and avoid the whole business around biglings."

"This is idiocy, Richard."

"This is my law and command, Orin. I've already signed the documents this morning."

A snort from the physician, who reaches over to slam the top book shut.

"Then we begin now, if only to shush your blabbering. When you awake, I quite honestly hope that you experience such pains of adjustment that you admit you made a grievous mistake!"

Another snort, and a stern, simple directive.

"Lie down."
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
User avatar
Treadwell
Member
 
Posts: 2101
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 5:00 am
Location: NC, USA

Re: A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Postby Treadwell » Sat Jan 18, 2014 4:54 am

Nearing noon on the eighteenth day of the first month, 214.

New Hibera. The king's bedroom.


The king's physician and half-brother, Orin Barrin, sits on a purple couch beside the dozing, rotund, pink fairy snoring soundly in bed. Both fairies are exhausted due to the doctor's magical exertions in the last day's time. The doctor speaks, raspy and quiet, glaring at the other fairy.

"He wants to live out his final decades bearing children and caring for them--giving up life as a proper man for life as a mother? Hmph. All because he dreamt of it for months on end while a rodent curled up between his stomach and heart. Ridiculous!"

A sniff. A snort. A glance at his most peculiar handiwork--the naked Richard lying exposed--brings a faint smirk.

"It worked, though. 'Only to be used in dire emergency,' the book says. 'If the state of the realm is in danger of falling apart, if the king can find no queen for an heir. . . .' Hmph! Words written by our grandfather, merely a few pages after an early draft of the Color Laws. He was a wily one in politics and mage craft, though, perhaps, a touch off, a bit senile, to consider such."

The physician coughs lightly, staring at his half-brother.

"I suppose it's something in the blood, the family. Our father made rash decisions, too, Richard, what with rushing from your mother the Queen to my mother, his physician's wife, only scant days before realizing the Queen was bearing you. Then you came out a few days before, the rightful heir by law, and I ended up in a very different circumstance: still near the royal family, still very much the next in line after that fat, pink, baby boy, but by no means to come to the throne before him."

Orin sinks back onto the couch, rubbing his hungrily burbling gut. A small block of cheese is snatched up from a tray for the munching.

"And now, here you are, old. . . well, old girl, now, as our law considers you, sleeping and snoring and naked as the day you were born. Those new parts will work beautifully now for making a baby where your, ahem, old one has completely forgotten most of what it's there for, but, Richard, that's your concern."

A frown.

"Oh, good heavens. I'm your brother and your doctor. It's my concern, too, or it will be if you end up with someone's seed in you or if you end up miraculously and divinely blessed by Marta, like you believe will happen."

The frown grows.

"Quite personally, my snoring sibling, I think you absolutely senile and lunatic for considering any of this. I think you're going to end up in quite the same position as you were two days ago, but without a king at your side to complement your queenly status instead of the other way around. Whoever would even think of marrying and bedding someone in your position?"

The doctor's weight shifts on his couch; beady eyes stay trained on the resting fae's body, sweeping it from head to toe, looking for anything wrong. A pudgy arm goes out, straining the distance between the two siblings, and a sharp slap is given to Richard's great belly.

"Oh, wake up, you fat dolt!"
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
User avatar
Treadwell
Member
 
Posts: 2101
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 5:00 am
Location: NC, USA

Re: A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Postby Treadwell » Sun Jan 19, 2014 5:43 pm

The nineteenth day of the first month, 214.

New Hibera. The king's bedroom.


Richard hadn't awoken when slapped. In fact, he slept straight through the rest of the day until just after dawn of the next.

When he arose, there was a most peculiar issue: by the same fairy law codes set in place by his grandfather, whether part of him was still male or not, he was most certainly considered female by laws and customs both, and that meant Richard Andrew Aengus would have to adjust his dressing habits, among many other things, to match.

Morning came with his putting on a pink nightgown--a suitably generic piece of clothing--and overseeing the storing away of all of his former clothing in a room repurposed for such.

However, after breakfast, still wearing his nightgown, he had the fairies of the kingdom interrupted in their daily lives. He had an announcement to make!

Gasps spread through the crowd; Richard was always a little loony, and many of those gathered found this quite absurd. But, he was their ruler, and he was altered, as he put it, in keeping with the laws of the land.

Richard expected the holy Tubbius and Marta to provide an heir or, in his words, "a whole belly full of heirs!"

He heartily encouraged--falling just short of commanded--those gathered to pray for such bounty.

Thus, it was, by law, the right thing to do to preserve order in the kingdom, even if it didn't make a great deal of logical sense.

Much of the day after dismissing the perplexed and bamboozled crowd was spent eagerly awaiting a staff of tailors who were working to finish sewing new garments, given the very recent measurements made by his doctor.

Noon saw lunch, and the early afternoon saw the first garment being brought reverently to the royal bedroom.

It was a purple dress, with plenty of room allowed for growth, with accompanying slippers for fat feet.

The dress drew a frown from the doctor.

"Richard isn't pregnant, nor do I expect such any time soon. Why have that much room to let it out?"

"Her Majesty likes to eat, Doctor. Isn't it best to be ready?"

"Her Maj--oh. Yes. Continue on!"

Wriggling into the dress came next; it fit perfectly, of course, to a gleeful Richard's delight.

The rest of the day would see Richard spending it in nearly unceasing prayer, alone, locked in his room, lying abed with both hands resting on his belly, and fervently entreating both the Great Mother and Holy Tubbius.

Half after midnight, the twentieth day of the first month, 214.

"A sign, Great Mother! A sign! A sign that I bear children now, tonight!" are the final, croaked words from an exhausted fairy who has spent the last eight hours in prayer.

The fairy king hefts from the bed at long last; the privy calls. The dress has long since been changed for the earlier nightgown, which is now cast aside carelessly as the tired Richard sinks blearily, heavily into place in the bathroom stall.

A few moments pass before recognition dawns.

"Missing! Orin! Orin!" So does the fairy, barely finished, come bursting from the stall as the physician comes toddling in from his adjacent bedroom in the same royal suite. "Missing!" he squeaks again.

"Missing, Richard?" Doctor Barrin squeaks with a yawn. "And, for Tubbius' sake, put your gown on!"

"Missing! It--it--my manhood! I. . . I had to sit to tinkle, Orin! To sit!"

The doctor frowns, staring at the pink, fluffy-bearded butterball before him for but a moment before turning his back.

"That's not my doing, Richard. I left it there! What did you do, hmm?"

"I. . . I asked for a sign!"

"A sign?" The doctor turns back around. "A sign for what?"

"Conception!" Richard whispers, beaming a happy pink glow.

"Orin?"

"Orin? Oh, Orin, wake up! You've fainted!"
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
User avatar
Treadwell
Member
 
Posts: 2101
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 5:00 am
Location: NC, USA

Re: A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Postby Treadwell » Sun Jan 19, 2014 6:03 pm

Morning of the twentieth day of the first month, 214.

The Treadwell house.


"A pig, Aloisius. That's most certainly what you are, with your Tubbius church and your feasts!"

The words of Elizia Treadwell, older sister to Aloisius, who has been caught before dawn with a fattened leg of ham bitten between his jaws.

"How do you stand yourself? Langley used to be my size--my size!--until you buried your fat fingers into him and filled his head with all this gluttony nonsense! And Alice!"

A snort shakes the stick-thin, black-dressed sister as she reaches to push her baby brother's plate away from his gut.

"She's the same size you are, and half of it's because you keep her pregnant! She has to eat to feed all those babies you force on her, and at her age! At your age, too! It's not safe! It's not right!"

"Now, Liza," comes the aged squeak from the other Treadwell sibling in question, Langley, retired circuit judge. He has long since traded the black robe of his judge's role for a burgundy velvet of a Tubbian faithful, and he certainly fills it out as his brother does his buttery yellow one across from him at the table. "Don't go snipping about the man's wife. She can't help she's a little stout. He didn't have aught to do with that."

"Stout! And the children, Aloisius! Why, I half expect by nightfall that you'll be changed to a bloated sow and that they'll be turned to fat piglets, suckling at your swollen breasts!"

"Teats, Liza. Teats," comes the caution from the eldest as Aloisius continues munching at his leg of ham. "I wouldn't call them proper 'breasts,' I suppose. They're more about the belly than the bosom, being pigs."

"Oh shush, you! Langley, you're not doing a thing to change any of this! Why, I thought I saw a little pig's tail on Frederick this morning, but I suppose I simply fancied it."

The Treadwell brothers glance at the meat in the younger's hands. Of course she did, they both acknowledge in their own heads. The boy was born with it. However?

"A pig's tail on a three year old babe? Foolishness, Liza. Let our brother enjoy his breakfast."

"Breakfast, Langley, is meant for eating after the sun comes up. That's what Mother told me when Father and you and Aloisius would toddle off to eat before the dawn."

"We had to eat early, Liza. Remember that pig we had? What was its name, Allie?"

"Porcus!" he croaks around food. "Named after the great pig mother herself!"

"Yes, Porcus! How did I forget? We had to feed her, and then Father felt it quite prudent to feed us!"

"And just look at the two of you. You're both fat boars, yourselves."

"Squeeee!" slips a decidedly porcine wheeze from the ever-feasting Aloisius as he strains to reclaim the plate pushed away from his pudgy reach.
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
User avatar
Treadwell
Member
 
Posts: 2101
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 5:00 am
Location: NC, USA

Re: A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Postby Treadwell » Tue Jan 28, 2014 7:01 am

The twenty-eighth day of the first month, 214.

New Hibera. The king's bedroom.


"Ten days, Richard."

"Hmm?" So squeaks the elderly king now going by the title of "Queen Mother" as from the earlier dreams. Richard sits on a couch comfortably beside his half-sibling, a tray of cheese and slips of meat and pitcher of juice before them. The Queen Mother wears the purple dress and slippers sewn earlier; the doctor wears one of his usual white, physician's robes, drawn with a red sash around the middle.

"Our grandfather's spell should be finished by now."

"Finished, Orin? I thought it was finished when I woke up the other day. Reach me a piece of cheese from your side, hmm?"

"Oh, here!" Cheese is passed. "No, Richard. It wasn't. The most obvious of changes had finished themselves, yes--the worst of the body's altering, the creation of the, ahem, new parts? That was finished."

"Then what was left?" Cheese is popped into mouth and munched as beady pink eyes settle on the half-brother's belly.

"Little things, Richard, to ensure that all goes well for you as a mother and a woman."

"Oh?"

"Little things, yes. You don't expect to fit into society properly as something in-between men and women, do you?"

"Well, Orin. . . ."

"'Permanent alterations' as Grandfather wrote. It was all speculative on his part, mind you, given no one before you has gone--and likely no one ever after will go!--through with such lunacy."

"You still think it foolish."

"Of course, I do! I've grown old alongside you having a half-brother, hmph! Not a half-sister, and that's quite what you are, now, save that enormous beard still on your face!"

"Little things, Orin?"

"Little things. Your voice, in case you've not noticed, has slowly slipped up a little in pitch. That little lump at your voice box has softened in your neck, as have your hands and cheeks, a bit. Your fingernails have grown a slight touch."

"You know all this better than I do?"

"Richard, you fell asleep in the bath yesterday morning. I had quite the while to study you before you woke, and that's when a lot of this finally took hold. Now, juice, hmm?"

"Why would I not know?"

"You've been in a little of a fog the last week. It's intentional, a side effect of the magic. It keeps you dazed while your body rights itself over time."

"Ooooh. That explains my confusion and bumbling about all week."

"And your breasts, Richard."

"Eh? What's that?"

"Your breasts. Those baggy, old sacks of flesh hanging from your chest."

"I know what they are, Orin! What about them?"

"What about them?" The physician's hands come over, jerking Richard's hands from the food and up to the Queen Mother's chest, one hand per side. "Feel them! Surely you can tell that they've grown, old girl! They're filling out to what they should be!"

"Oh, goodness!"

"You'll start developing your Mother's Light in about a week, and it should be centered on your belly button. That's when--."

"Oh! That's when the baby is growing! I thought it happened at the end of it all, though?"

"Who told you that?"

"I dreamt it, Orin."

"Hmph."

Pudgy physician finger jabs deep into the navel indicated, prompting a sharp squeak from the purple-dressed fairy.

"You'll find that most menfolk don't know a proper thing about bearing babies, Richard. I'll fetch you a proper schoolmarm who knows a thing or two about such to teach you. I'm also quite sure you could talk with your ladies-in-waiting that you still have yet to adopt. You're supposed to be attended by four to six young ladies to help you in every imaginable way, Richard, from dressing and undressing to bathing to visiting the privy to welcoming guests and visitors to your presence. You've quite a lot to learn in your next six months."

"Orin?"

"Oh, what is it now, Richard?" The doctor sinks back into the couch, his wings spreading out behind him.

"My beard?"

"What of it?"

"Well? Is it going away?"

"Not if you don't shave the thing."

"Oh. Splendid! I simply must keep it."

"Richard Aengus, I haven't been able to talk any sense into you this far or to change your mind about aught of this, though I am your chief advisor, your doctor, and your sole surviving family apart from those whom you are incubating at the moment. Shave it, or let it stay the fluffy, pink ball it is. That's up to you. Just don't cry to me when you find it being caught in your dress or you have a baby spitting up in it."

A quiet pause from both fairies.

"Now, Richard, do pass me another piece of cheese, will you?"
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
User avatar
Treadwell
Member
 
Posts: 2101
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 5:00 am
Location: NC, USA

Re: A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Postby Treadwell » Thu Jan 30, 2014 10:10 am

The thirtieth day of the first month, 214.

New Hibera, in the afternoon.

The royal library and study.


"Well, Richard, you've found books to read on womanly fashions and social customs. Are you satisfied?"

"Quite satisfied, Orin!" comes the jolly squeak from the elderly mother-to-be, now wearing a new, voluminous, red dress with matching gloves and comfy slippers. Richard adjusts the pair of books, setting them against the newly grown bosom with a giggle.

And then, a grave moment of fearful reckoning.

"Orin?"

"Yes, Richard?"

"The Church!"

"What of it?"

"I'm still head of it, am I not? The Folds of Tubbius never mention there being women as priests. . . ."

Doctor Barrin gives a frown, himself.

"We simply must find out, Richard."

"But the snow outside! The cold! And I'm hardly dressed to visit with the great Tubbius in His mortal body!"

"Richard!" Stern disapproval snaps forth.

"Orin?"

"You act as if He doesn't know everything you've already done in the last two weeks. I'm quite sure that he's well aware of your being altered and impregnated! I'd wager he had a hand in influencing it! Now, put down the books; I'll spirit us to his toy shop at once."

"But what if he isn't there?"

"He usually is at this hour, often snoring in his rocking chair."

Books are set aside as gloved hands rest on great belly. "Now, how do you know that?"

"Messengers, Richard. I keep two bluewings posted invisible at the toy shop's window. They report back to us nightly."

"Hmph. It's not right, spying on our Tubbius."

"Then don't think of it as spying, Richard. Think of it as keeping a couple concerned pairs of eyes on him, hmm? Now, smooth your gown and take my arm. We'll be there in a moment."

A sizzle of magical current around the two fairies later, and a gentle pop as they disappear from the library, they appear side by side, buried halfway in a squooshy, cushiony spot: the slowly swelling, red-vested gut of Aloisius Treadwell, nearly dozing in his toy shop.

Beady eyes of man and fairies all widen in surprise.

"Mmph mmph! Doctor! Your Majesty!"

Thus does Tready reach up, blearily rubbing his eyes and straightening his glasses before smiling kindly down at the two visitors. He lowers his voice considerably to little more than a hush so as not to deafen his tiny friends.

"You could have simply offered up a prayer, you know, hee hee."

"But Holy Tubbius, I--" the Queen Mother begins before fumbling to a stammering bumble of speech.

"Great One!" the physician interjects. "What do we do with our dear Richard, now that he has been altered and, ahem, blessed by the Great Mother, your beloved Marta?"

"What do you do, hmm hmm?" Tready reaches out cupped hands, scooping fairies from belly to palms. "Feed her! Care for her! Keep her quite fat and happy, so that the babies, hmm hmm, will be the same!"

"Her?" the fairies squeak together.

"Her. Accept that, Richard. Embrace it. There's no turning away from it, now, hmm hmm."

"But your holy church, Father Tubbius?" the pink fairy cries, quivering, terrified.

"You shall still lead it, as Lady Tubbian instead of Lord Tubbian. Merely make suitable adjustments to the robe's design to fashion a similar dress, mmph mmph, or a habit." Treadwell grins merrily down at the little monarch. "And do leave room to expose the growing belly and Mother's Light! Honor and revere Holy Marta in this childbearing and after it!"

"Splendid," the quaking, pink fairy whispers. Her half-brother remains solemn and quiet.

"And Richard? I henceforth give you a new name, mmph mmph, to be used personally as you wish and formally in my church. If you must use 'Richard Andrew Aengus' in legal documents and binding matters, do so, of course, but otherwise? A new name, mmph mmph, to help in your new life!"

"A new name?" echo the fairies in unison.

"Why, yes. Doctor, do say hello to your half-sister 'Marian Ora Aengus!' 'Marian' to honor the Queen before her--and, after a fashion, my own mother to this mortal body--and 'Ora' to honor her half-brother and physician!"

Both fairies look to one another, flabbergasted.

"Marian!" the pink fairy pipes merrily after a moment. "Marian! Wonderful!"

"Fitting," the white fairy beside her muses.

"But Marian, hmm hmm?"

"Holy Tubbius!"

"This is not a game, nor a jest."

"Of course not, Great Treadwell!"

"You are fully woman, now, in body and name. The beard would best be removed, hmph hmph."

"My Lord! B-but. . . I've grown it since I was a boy!"

"But now, dear mother, you are a girl." A warm smile jiggles Treadwell's jowls.

"Oh. Y-Yes, holy one."

"Now, back to your books and your studies, both of you. I have a nap to take, mmph."

"Of course! As you wish, Great One! May your roots grow ever long and wide!" the pink fae pipes poetically, to her half-brother's frowning chagrin.

"Away, hmph hmph."

And with a touch of fat Treadwell thumbs to both bellies, away they go, indeed, reappearing with a magical foomp of bumping bellies in the royal library in the New Hiberan palace.

"Well, Richa--Marian! It looks like we've a razor to fetch for your face. To the bath hall!"
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
User avatar
Treadwell
Member
 
Posts: 2101
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 5:00 am
Location: NC, USA

Re: A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Postby Treadwell » Fri Jan 31, 2014 4:22 am

Evening of the thirtieth day of the first month, 214.

New Hibera.

The Queen Mother's bedroom.


A razor, gleaming brightly in the magical white and pink glows produced by sibling fairies, had completed its divinely ordered work of shaving poor Marian Aengus' beard from her face. Doing so revealed two very funny little facts, both to be happily laughed over as the doctor's flabby hands caressed the pink skin.

One, her age and weight meant that the Queen Mother has quite funny, heavy jowls at her cheeks.

Two, one little concern that their grandfather's altering spell hadn't been made to fix was that she was still quite bald above the fluffy pink tonsure of hair that came with growing up a man.

Of course, the first was the one that was covered up in centuries of hair growth now cleansed from the face; the second had merely been ignored and not considered until there was no pillow of a beard to draw attention away.

A potent, creamy ointment, pale white and tinged green, was carefully applied with the sides of the razor to cover the bald dome above. What good would it do to have the Queen Mother with so little hair at all? She would be the only woman in New Hibera with male baldness!

Fervent prayers went up to Tubbius and Marta both to aid in the quick regrowth of long absent flowing, wavy, pink hair. Then, the doctor put on thick gloves and rubbed the ointment thoroughly into the scalp. And, then, off to bed with both the fairies!

Morning of the thirty-first day of the first month, 214.

New Hibera.

The bedroom suite of Marian Aengus and Orin Barrin.

Early, early, early morning.


"Orin! Orin! Orin! Wake up! Look at me!"

And so do pudgy pink fingers close on the doctor's shoulders, gently shaking him to rouse him from his snores. Bleary, blurry eyes squint at the pink glow above him. Glasses go on.

"Oh, by Tubbius' great and blessed gut, Richard, put your clothes on! What is it?"

"It's 'Marian' now, if you please! And my handmaids are in my room drawing a warm bath, and--"

"And you had to wake me up to tell me this?"

"My hair, Orin! My hair, my hair!" The fingers move from shoulders to hand, pulling the doctor's arm up with a light pop in the shoulder to rest it on the successfully regrown, wavy, pink hair. "I've not had hair like this since, oooooh, I was two hundred!"

"Well, congratulations! Now, go let your maids bathe your blubbery arse, and let me sleep."

Morning of the thirty-first day of the first month, 214.

New Hibera.

The Queen Mother's bedroom.

A bit later in the morning.


Marian Aengus has had her very first morning of being bathed by selected ladies-in-waiting and then being dressed and made up by them after. In truth, it was a most peculiar, face-reddening experience. At first, there was humiliation: the first thought being after she left the doctor's bedside being "I'm naked! I'm naked! They will see my manhood! I can't!" with that being followed up by the very truthful analysis of "You haven't one any longer. Shush!" That was quickly followed by merriment and laughter; even with the body altered to being female, the Queen Mother still retained her excessively ticklish self. Being bathed by another meant many hoohahs and much wiggly laughter from all involved.

Then there was the event of getting dressed and having a light, powdery, dusty rouge applied to the cheeks. When Richard was asleep and dreaming with Squeaky in his chest, his male brain never thought to fill in the fact that there would be a woman's undergarments below the dresses he would wear. He never even considered any powders or blushes. But now?

Marian Ora Aengus stands amid her whitewing four ladies-in-waiting, letting their hands gently primp and prop and smooth out folds of her scarlet dress and gloves and slippers and--

"What do you call this white thing on my head again?"

"A wimple, Queen Mother."

"And why do I wear it?"

"It's awkward and unseemly for married women to keep their heads uncovered, Mother."

"But I'm not married."

"But, Marian, my sister, you are, as the queen, a woman of great years who is performing the single most dignified service a fairy woman can do. You are carrying children in your womb. Reread your grandfather's law books; you'll see he made a special adjustment in there for women in your position whether married or not. Seeing it as most unnatural for royalty to have children out of wedlock, he made the provision and argument that they were to be considered like they were married to New Hibera, regardless, since they weren't married otherwise."

Thus chimes in the doctor, now entering from his bedroom and wearing his as of late white robe and red sash across his spherical middle.

"So I had hair grown anew on my head only to have to cover it up in public?"

"That's the way it is, Marian."

"Oh, bother."

"Dear maids, leave us; the Mother will call for you when she needs anything at all. You have done well."

Four maidens, right plump and paunchy themselves like every other fairy in the kingdom, toddle out of the room, smiling.

The doctor's white-gloved hands gently turn the Queen Mother around. Orin takes a moment to study--covered, wimpled head, jowly and jolly cheeks, carefully tailored dress that happens to emphasize the breasts with a light sash (knotted at the back above the origin of the wings) resting just under where they rest on the belly.

And the slightest, pinkest hint of lavender peeking through the fabric at the navel.

"Marian. . . ."

"Yes, Orin?"

"I simply must say this, in truth. Though I still think it quite silly to have gone through all of this to get this far. . . ."

"Hmm?" A smile begins to peek forth.

"Ahem. You make for a most attractive woman. Quite dignified, and beautiful even with your heavy, fat jowls."

The doctor is taken up in a sudden, squooshy, belly-smushing embrace, only to prompt a stern warning after a wheeze for air.

"Your face, Ri--Marian! You'll smear it--ooooooh! That red stain at your lips and the powder at your cheeks is a bother to make properly!"

"Oh, shush, and hug your sister, you oaf!"
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
User avatar
Treadwell
Member
 
Posts: 2101
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 5:00 am
Location: NC, USA

Re: A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Postby Treadwell » Sat Feb 01, 2014 4:45 am

Morning of the first day of the second month, 214.

New Hibera.

The Queen Mother's bedroom.


"A letter, Your Majesty!"

So speaks the merry, young bluewing messenger, happily buzzing his wings lightly behind him where he stands before the red-gowned Queen Mother. As he extends the letter in hand, he adds, "By couriers from Old Hibera!"

"Old Hibera? Whatever do they want with us? Thank you, and I'll call on you to send them a note when I'm ready."

"There won't be a need, Your Majesty." Seriousness! "Their king and royal entourage await at The Tunnel."

"The Tunnel! Well, go! Welcome them to the palace! I'll. . . figure this out!"

Thus does the amply-bottomed woman settle into a bedside couch where her half-brother already sits, munching on an early lunch.

"A letter from Old Hibera, old girl, and they're waiting at The Tunnel?"

"Mmhmm!"

"Well, open the thing! Immediately!"

Shlick of a letter opener later. . . .

= = = = = = = = = =

Day 3. Aengus 746.

To the residing king, queen, regent, ruler, etc. who receives this: Greetings.

Information between our once joined kingdoms is scarce, indeed.

These recent years here have been a time of turmoil. James Aengus, former Lord Protector, and his wife both fell to a bigling brought plague that ravaged us starting in 739. The former queen passed early in 740 from the same with no heirs, leaving the kingdom floundering for a week as legal challenges to the throne were entertained. Only one--mine, the queen's eldest brother, an elderly pinkwing of then 306 years--proved valid. I have ruled, childless, for these six years. I am now 312; our kind usually live to around 400, of course, though this is elementary information any school child knows.

Old Hibera was, in time past, ruled by Richard Aengus, once king of both lands by right of blood and birth. Should he yet live, I invite him to a formal reckoning to discuss the futures of our separate domains. I understand, as rumors have it across the distance, that he, too, was without surviving wife and child as of several years past. He and I must come to an agreement to prevent further disintegration of our realms. Should that august fairy not live, or should he have been replaced at some point in time, I would speak with his successor in person, just the same.

His Royal Majesty of Old Hibera and Protector of Faekind Therein
Oswald Grimley

= = = = = = = = =

"Orin?"

"They're waiting outside, you know."

"I wasn't expecting this."

"You haven't time to dawdle, old girl. Keeping him waiting is terrible form. It's good you're dressed and made up already."

"Oh? To meet him now?"

"Of course to meet him now! Just. . . ."

"Hmm hmm?"

"Marian, listen to me. Everything about you now shrieks and screams 'respectable and solemn mother-to-be' and not 'lonesome old king with no wife and children.' For goodness' sake, please remember that."
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
User avatar
Treadwell
Member
 
Posts: 2101
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 5:00 am
Location: NC, USA

Re: A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Postby Treadwell » Sat Feb 01, 2014 5:38 pm

Morning of the first day of the second month, 214.

New Hibera.

The royal library and study.

A little later in the morning.


The Queen Mother and her physician stand side by side in the royal study, a comfortable lounge of sorts with plush couches for easy reading and well-stocked bookshelves lining the walls. They wait, with her body nervously swaying a little on her feet and her hands resting atop her great belly and with his hands fidgeting at the scarlet sash around his own body.

"You sent a messenger to have him meet us here?"

"Of course, Orin; it's a comfy little place, and it's not so public as my throne room."

"He'll be here soon enough, then. Be truthful with him, Marian. He knows nothing of these last two weeks that you have experienced and felt, and he expects a certain portly little pinkwinged fellow to still be ruling. Honest communication, not deceit, is the proper way to handle all of this."

"I'll try. You'll be here, won't you?"

"That I will. I am your doctor, your advisor, and your brother, old girl. I simply must look after you, hmm?"

From the door, a chubby-cheeked, bluewing face peeks through. "His Royal Highness, Oswald Horace Grimley of Old Hibera!"

The Oswald Horace Grimley in question then enters a moment or two later, alone. He is a very slim fellow and very elderly, too, his strands of pink hair pitifully combed over the top of his bald head. As if to compensate for the missing hair up top, a great, fluffy sprout of a mustache spreads across and over his lips--but no beard! He wears a pink suit and hat with a white sash draped from his left shoulder to his right hip.

His entrance comes with a slight bow to both, a brief scrutiny of the two others from behind his heavy eyeglasses, and a gentle offering of a kiss to the gloved hand of the queen, giving a sensual thrill quivering up her arm and back, tingling in excitement.

She has never been kissed like this.

"From Old Hibera, I come with greetings and a humble request for your time, Your Majesty. As your man stated, I am Oswald Grimley, King of Old Hibera. I ask your forgiveness on my arriving here with such a very short notice, but it is most important I speak with whoever rules New Hibera now. I beg your pardon, but I expected Richard Aengus to still be here."

"He is, my lord Oswald," Marian offers with a hint of a nod.

"That is wonderful! I trust that you are his queen? And a new mother, too?" A nod gently toward the pink-glowing, childbearing middle, with a return smile. "Richard has never mentioned a sister before, but, then again, he never mentioned a new marriage, either."

"New marriage? Richard? Certainly not! There's no other pinkwing anywhere in the lands the biglings call 'Myrken Wood!'" The doctor interjects with a sniff before the Queen Mother can reply.

"Oh!" A sniff back, and a nod, and then the visiting monarch gives the doctor another long squint through his glasses. "I believe I know you, though, sir. Doctor Barrin, is it? However, the last time I saw you, some years past, you were no larger than I!"

"My dear Oswald," Marian begins, "I'm afraid I have some grave and serious news for you."

"Grave and serious? Hopefully not about Richard?"

"In a manner of speaking, it is." With that, she sinks slowly into the nearest of couches, smoothing out her dress as she settles. The physician fills in the rest of the sofa beside her, waving the king to a nearby chair to pull over. A glance from Queen Mother to doctor is followed by a nod from her to him.

"You must understand, Your Highness," Orin begins, "that as of two weeks past, Richard saw the need to engage in a very important and, admittedly, risky magical procedure so that he might ensure the future of this kingdom."

"What did he have done? Does he live?"

"That he does."

"Then what happened to him?"

"Alteration."

The king's pink-glowing face dims a little; his wings droop gently behind his back. "Do you refer to William Aengus' spell of alteration that he fashioned when creating the Color Laws? I had heard of it, but no one ever thought it real--that it was a myth, a children's story."

"The same." A nod back to the Queen Mother. "This is Marian Ora Aengus, Queen Mother of New Hibera. Two weeks ago, she was one Richard Andrew Aengus, King of New Hibera."

"Why?"

"I wanted to maintain my family line! I wanted children, Oswald!"

"But--the children? They had to come from somewhere?"

"My entire realm is devoted wholeheartedly to the worship of Holy Tubbius and Marta. I was divinely blessed by their hands."

"Blessed?"

The doctor stands here, pouring a glass of wine for the lightly trembling, elderly king, guiding the glass to his thin lips.

"Conception, my lord." Plump-fingered hands in red gloves caress the lightly glowing belly.

"But Tubbius and Marta. . . are they not bigling gods? Both very fat, and very old, and very much given to growth?"

"Yes, yes, and yes! Quite right on all of it!"

"And your people? Devoted, you said?" Siiiipppppp.

"Every last one of them."

"This is why there isn't a thin fairy to be found anywhere in this palace?"

"Or the rest of the land. We're all quite wonderfully cared for, with unending stores of food and drink. All they ask is our proper faithfulness."

"My goodness!"

The glass, soon emptied, is set aside on an end table. The Queen Mother's hand is gingerly taken up again for a second, gentle kiss, a second exhilarating wave of bliss that leaves her again blushed and warm.

"So, my dear, whatever should I call you?"

Call me 'love,' she thinks as emotions flood her at the touch. My love! Sensible and rational thought blinks away for brief moments; passions never felt as a man in over three centuries, even during his first marriage, one of business infinitely more than pleasure, are explosively awakened as a woman after but two kisses to the back of the hand.

However, the answer, simple and warm and pleasant, comes as the much expected, "Marian!" rolls from her lips.
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
User avatar
Treadwell
Member
 
Posts: 2101
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 5:00 am
Location: NC, USA

Re: A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Postby Treadwell » Sun Feb 02, 2014 8:13 am

Early afternoon of the second day of the second month.

New Hibera.

The Queen Mother's bedroom.


"Marian, sit down, if you please?" A stern command from a stern whitewing face. A wave of hand to bedside couch.

"Hmm hmm, Orin?" Into the couch indicated the purple-gowned, wimpled woman eases, straightening her skirts as she settles.

"Marian!" a hiss!

"Orin?"

"Are you sure that you're well, madam? You've been about to faint over your royal visitor every time he's so much as laid eyes on you, ever since yesterday morning when you met him!"

"I have not!"

"Oho!" A clearing of the throat, a faked pipe and squeak to the voice. "Oh, dear Oswald! Do sit here! I wish a moment of your company here at lunch!" A pat of hand at the nearest chair with a faint slip of a smile. A tickled sort of quivery jiggle and an accompanying giggling from the doctor prompts the lightest of rose blushes to his pale white cheeks. "Does that look even remotely familiar?"

"Welllll. . . ."

"Marian Aengus, you haven't had a sensible, clear-headed moment about you since yesterday before lunch. He kisses your hand or rubs your arm, and you nearly swoon sitting there. He offers an arm about your waist to help steady you on the stairs, and you blush as red as the gown hanging there on your wardrobe." A snort and sniff. "I should hate to see what you do if he even comes close to kissing your lips or cheek."

"But he's special, Orin."

"He's a fairy king who is showing you half a moment's attention to butter you up for something big, Marian. A treaty, a document to sign, or something." The doctor wags a fat finger at his seated sister. "He might even want to unite the kingdoms again, which means that one of you would be giving up a great deal of power, and I certainly doubt it would be him."

"But is that so wrong?"

"What?"

"We have been isolated here for a long time, Orin. It might do us well to open our borders to one another again."

"Marian, Old Hibera is many days of travel away for biglings. Short of magically spiriting someone across such a distance, it would take us. . . ." Quick counting on pudgy digits. "Richard--Marian--did you hear what he told you late last eve over supper? He's been traveling over land for, essentially, the past month. Why, by Tubbius' great gut, do you think we will have anything to gain from an alliance?"

"You forget, Doctor, that the Aenguses have ruled both kingdoms, until he took power after my former wife, and we have ruled them very well, for nearly eight centuries."

"Schoolboy knowledge, Marian."

"I never have lost anything in my dealings with other lands, other fairy lands included. I have only gained."

"Pray tell how you might gain from aught of this, then, dear Mother?"

"He needs a stable influence to steady his kingdom. He is new to the throne--"

"A few years."

"New, Orin. I took the throne when I was a child of fifty years."

"Very well. Go on."

"He needs proper support for his claim to power."

"Yes, yes."

"And I will need a husband willing to help me raise my little blessing--or blessings, however many there are!"

"A husband! You have known the man for a day, and you speak to me of marriage? Marriage, Marian!"

"I force him to take the Aengus name in wedding me, as our customs give the right to the woman if she wishes to take it. We maintain our equal rulerships, and we make time to spend in each other's kingdom during the year. He gains proper influence in Old Hibera by being wed into the Aengus line. I gain a father for my children."

A whufffff of breath slowly huffs out of the doctor, causing his great belly to sag.

"A clever strategy, Marian, and a crafty one." A nod. "Not immediately, though! I'll not see a priest officiating your ceremony in the morning. We must make sure that your 'dear Oswald' is fit for the position of beloved husband and father."

"Oh, of course I wouldn't wed him tomorrow, Orin!"

"Good!"

"I haven't a proper wedding dress to wear!"
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
User avatar
Treadwell
Member
 
Posts: 2101
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 5:00 am
Location: NC, USA

Re: A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Postby Treadwell » Mon Feb 03, 2014 10:24 am

Morning of the third day of the second month, 214.

New Hibera.

The Queen Mother's bedroom.


Doctor and Queen Mother stand before each other, both dressed in their usual formal attire: he in his white robe and red sash, she in her recently fashioned purple, floor-length dress and slippers. The white wimple covers her head and trails down her shoulders; purple gloves have been added to the outfit. Her cheeks are done in a light, rose powdering. The glow of the pale lavender Mother's Light illuminates a little of her belly, even through the grape-colored gown.

"Were I not your brother, madam," the doctor chuckles, offering an arm as he waves toward the bedroom door, "I should ask your company or your hand right now. Let it not be said that stout, elderly women cannot be quite beautiful all the same!"

"That is the entire point!" A couple wobbly steps forward are taken, setting the pair of embonpoint fairies into motion. "If I must use my new, hee hee, state as a means of diplomacy, so be it! Merely trust me today, and leave me alone with our visitor."

That was this morning.

Afternoon of the third day of the second month.

A lounge off the royal dining hall.


"Merciful heavens above, Marian!" squeaks a very full fairy king. "How do you and your subjects eat so much?"

"We are blessed, Oswald." She smiles, patting the remaining purple, cushiony surface of the couch she mostly fills. "Join me?"

Into the couch the pinkwinged visitor eases. The two have been left alone, per the earlier request. A pleasant sigh escapes the pink king. "Splendid! Such comfort!" And then, with a worm of his shoulders, over on the sofa he wiggles, finding new cushions to rest upon: fatty ones that make up one of the Queen Mother's arms!

"Ho ho, good Oz!" Pudgy, purple-gloved finger strokes the king's bushy mustache, playing with the longest of hairs. "This is forward, sudden! And you have yet to speak of why you came here to my land."

"Then I shall be frank, my dear Queen Mother!" He sits up, giggling at the touch to his mustache. "I wish to unite our kingdoms by some means. I was thinking on the way here that a formal treaty might be in order, an alliance on paper, a declaration--but I hadn't fancied I would meet such a ravishing maid on the throne."

"And what, pray thee tell, does that have to do aught with such measures?" Pink eyes squint beneath the shade of the wimple on her brow.

"Mere alliances, my dear, can be broken; bartered deals between men are often written with deceit between the words." He sniffs. "But betwixt man and woman? They might be longer lasting--dare I say 'til death they part?"

"Oho! You speak of matrimony? I, a new mother-to-be and a new woman to match, am not simply a prize to be talked sweetly into a marriage bed, my lord!" She offers a poke to his breast that prompts a squeak. "How do I know you mean well? How do I know you will prove a suitable husband and father?" Purple-gloved hands thus take to the sides of her fat middle, rubbing gently around the visible pink light emanating weakly through the fabric.

"Come, Marian, to ask me such?"

"I am. Speak."

"I have never been wed. We are of like station: you, a mother alone with no husband beside her who, once others know of your state, will be deluged with offers from fae folks from far away, offers caring not for you or the contents of your womb but wanting only New Hibera. I am an old man only desirable for the kingdom he leads; I am no finely built young man, no marvel of appearance. I am gaunt, and I am aged."

"Dear Oswald, I am fat, and I am nearly as aged as you. I am in the family way without the other half of the family in question; I will only grow fatter and older as I carry and nurse however many children are in my belly. You are quite aware of the duties a mother faces."

"Utter devotion to her offspring and her husband, yes."

"Utter devotion! Such a holy, precious demand will mean I must have a husband able to share in the responsibility of running such a large kingdom, especially one that spans such far, distant lands. A husband cannot see his wife but once in a very distant while, especially not a husband and wife of our ages, and especially not a father so far from his children, even his adopted ones."

She frowns and again traces a finger under his mustache, on his lips.

"Prove to me that you mean to be a proper beloved to me and to what would be our children."
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
User avatar
Treadwell
Member
 
Posts: 2101
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 5:00 am
Location: NC, USA

Re: A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Postby Treadwell » Mon Feb 03, 2014 3:32 pm

Afternoon of the third day of the second month, 214.

New Hibera.

A lounge off the royal dining hall.

Moments later.


"I have come prepared, Mother, with a most peculiar offering," Oswald says, offering a smile as he slips a gentle, gaunt, pink hand atop said Mother's belly, bringing it to rest atop her lightly glowing navel. A hinted smile in return, the briefest of giggles as ecstasy warms her at the touch, and one of her hands places over his.

"And what offering is that, dear Oz?"

"My kingdom at a mere moment away. A proper removal of boundaries between our lands, so that we might rule them without separation between us."

"And how do you propose this?"

"I brought many of my greatest whitewings with me here to your bountiful realm; they have crafted portals between the low and high points, and many points in-between, of Old Hibera. They could do the same from Old Hibera to here. We would rule Old Hibera and New Hibera as if they were neighbors to each other, not separated by many bigling miles."

"No, Oswald."

"No?"

"We would rule them as they were meant to be ruled: a joint kingdom, neither Old nor New. There would only be Hibera."

"Of course!"

"Then I put this first test to you. You are to fashion that portal that you mention, here, inside New Hibera, to Old Hibera. I would see my birth home again before I pass away."

"And you will. We shall begin work at the base of this great cave, at once."

"No, Oswald."

"No, Mother?"

The slip of a smile widens; fleshy, gloved hand pats down soft again on the bony hand beneath it, above the royal cradle.

"Not at once."

"Of course; of course!"

"How long would it take, this portal?"

"A few hours or thereabouts. Nearly nothing in the spans of our kind."

"Then they begin as soon as I release you from this room. But, hold. There is one more demand."

"And that is?"

"That is that I invoke Mother's Privilege should we be wed."

The fairy king slowly nods assent. "Then I shall forevermore be your Oswald Horace Aengus, and I shall be Oswald Horace Grimley no more."

"Oswald? Is that what you truly wanted from this visit? My hand?"

It is the slightly elder fairy's turn to blush. "I wished our kingdoms to be as one again."

"But to do so, you needed my approval to appease your advisors? Either my name as Richard Aengus, my seal on a page. . . or my name as Marian Aengus, and rings upon our fingers."

A warmer blush. "Yes, my love."

Marian joins him in the face-warming redness beneath her powdered jowls. "Create this portal. Then we shall talk further of our future plans."

Early evening hours of the third day of the second month, 214.

New Hibera.

The Queen Mother's bedroom.


"You told him that, to prove himself, he would have to create the portal between the two kingdoms first as a test?"

"Yes, Orin."

"So that's why all of his whitewings are down at the base of the cave, fashioning their spells."

"It is!"

"I don't care for it, Marian. You're too trusting. You are thinking right now not with your head but with your heart and with the fluttery tinglings up your backbone when touched. He could just as easily use that portal to march an army of greenwings through when it is prepared, without our warning."

A munch on a piece of sweet, tasty mungus--the lightly glowing, fungal, spongy cake that the fairies of New Hibera have come to love.

"We're hardly fighters, and we're not anywhere near physical health, none of us. Too trusting, Marian."

"I haven't reason to think of him otherwise, Orin."

"Ri. . . forgive me. Marian. You and I have not seen the man for more than two days recently, and I alone met him many years ago for a period of a fortnight. I don't know what to think of him, properly."

"I do, Orin, and--oooooh! It begins! Out the window! Look! Look!"

Night of the third day of the second month, 214.

The base of New Hibera.


Grass.

It has been some ages since any fairy of New Hibera has ventured outside The Cave for more than a few hours in search of food or entertainment. Even Richard, prior to his alteration into Marian, had long since given up his monthly hunts of young bunnies and dangerous insects.

But there before the Doctor and Queen Mother, gleaming emerald through the portal before them, is the grassy courtyard of Old Hibera's castle. Unlike the white hoarfrost and snow of Myrken Wood, there is emerald grass, foliage, sparkling under whitewing created orbs of light and the shimmery glazes from greenwinged guards flitting about the battlements.

"Home, Orin!"

"Home." The Doctor nods, satisfied. "But is it safe, Your Majesty? Safe for individuals, for parties, for groups? For," a glance at his half-sister and her precious burden, "growing babes and pregnant mothers?"

"It is, my good Doctor Barrin. There is a little swimming of the vision, a little dizziness, at the first few trips, but that soon passes. In fact, I keep a private nurse who assists me on my worst of mornings; I am old, and the castle is cold and drafty, and it makes me ache and chill. She is great with child, herself. She finds the portal from the far corner of the court there," he points, "to my bedchamber in the highest tower to be a great help and relief for her and her young one."

"If it's all the same, I would go through first to test it all before I send my sister, the Queen Mother."

"That's perfectly acceptable, Doctor. But. . . Marian?"

The Queen Mother in question turns gently to face the slim, pink fairy king, who slowly eases to a knee with the help of two accompanying whitewings at his sides.

"I have a small host of my finest tailors--the yellow wings there whom you see--at the ready. They await the good fortune to be able to fashion the both of us proper wedding attire. All we would lack is a proper priest of whatever faith you find appropriate and desirable. Thus, as your suitor and as your royal equal, I would make myself lower in faith and truth than your great personage, as your own Oswald Horace Aengus. Dearest Marian, would you have me join you 'til the end of our days in holy matrimony?"
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
User avatar
Treadwell
Member
 
Posts: 2101
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 5:00 am
Location: NC, USA

Re: A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

Postby Treadwell » Tue Feb 04, 2014 8:31 am

Night of the third day of the second month, 214.

The base of New Hibera.

Barely seconds later.


"I would! I would, dearest Oz, and I do!"

The Queen Mother toddles forth the few steps, taking her would-be King in her flabby embrace to gently help him back to his feet for a warm, squooshy hug. . .

And a most passionate kiss that sets every bit of the Queen Mother to tingling, excited, and gleaming a brilliant pink for a few seconds.

"We shall begin at once, Oswald!"

"But the portal, Marian. I can't vouch that it's safe for you, yet!" pipes the doctor. "You're not going through there to fulfill this agreement until we find you a proper priest and we see how fairies react going through the gateway!"

"You are a priest of Tubbius and Marta, dear brother, and my only remaining kin. I can think of no one more suited to the occasion. And you said you would toddle through to test this yourself. So. . . shoo! Away!"

A playful flapping of purple-gloved hand his way sends the doctor hesitantly waddling forth through the magical passage.

His feet take careful steps from cold stone to chilly grass, but, with his vision spinning lightly as predicted, it is grass. "Grass, Marian!" he calls back, the aged voice traveling through the opening. "And clean, fresh air open to the outside! We are home!"

Afternoon of the fourth day of the second month.

A borrowed castle bedroom in Old Hibera.


"Oz, love, I thought your tailors would faint when they saw my ladies-in-waiting with me, hee hee, and they realized how much fabric they would need to fashion me a proper wedding dress!"

"Our kind here are not so plump, my dear Marian."

"Mary, if you like, though Marian is fine."

"As you wish, dearest. How is the bed?"

"Soft! Quite nice! A lovely cushion all about!"

"And the babe--or babes, perhaps?"

She smiles. "Well, the belly is glowing, but I've not felt the first of sickness quite yet. Orin says, though, that it's likely coming very soon, all the same."

"Splendid. Now, while you have enjoyed my tailors and my cooks this day, I have been busy at work, dear Mary." The fairy king, wearing the same pink suit as the day before, here produces a rolled up page from his coat. "A draft of the arrangement we were discussing in your sitting room."

The resting Queen Mother, wearing her same purple dress and white wimple where she lies on the bed, unrolls the document and reads, beady pink eyes offering scrutiny.

"The points are here. One name of Hibera between the nations. A careful examination of laws to avoid duplication or unwanted harshness. The permanent keeping up of the new portal. Your taking my name on marriage. My eldest child being the first of the heirs to the throne. . . . What's this?"

A pause.

"You give me the final say in all matters political and judicial? 'The king is set below the queen in all regards?'"

"Yes, Mother."

"Please, Oswald. No titles here."

"Marian."

"But why?"

"Love, Marian. I have never known it, but I have known a long, long time that the wife and mother is supposed to be respected and found holy, reverenced."

"Thus you are willing to give up the ultimate rulership of the new kingdom, giving that to your beloved wife, merely to prove a point?"

"A most wonderful, wondrous, delightful point! How else can I truly show that I am not doing this solely for my own gain?"

The Queen Mother rolls up the paper again before waving the King closer with it. . . and closer. . . and closer. Another kiss, this time with her leading the way, serves as a reminder of growing love and joy.

It is interrupted by a gentle knock at the door.

"The first cut of your wedding undergarments and gown, Queen Mother Aengus!"
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
User avatar
Treadwell
Member
 
Posts: 2101
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 5:00 am
Location: NC, USA

PreviousNext

Return to Myrken Wood



Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 19 guests

cron