A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

[Treadwell]

Morning of the tenth day of the eighth month, 210.

"Richarrrrrrrd," comes the sluggish, sleepy moan from Dr. Barrin. The two brothers fell asleep, side by side, last night after their discussion about making the worship of Tubbius required. He stands by his brother's half of the bed, gently shaking Richard's shoulder. Thus, the king wakes to an eyeful of the doctor's great, cavernous navel.

"What is it, Orin? I'm sleeeeeepy." A yawn squeaks from the old, tubby fairy in the bed.

"They're praising your name and singing the anthem out in the street and around the palace. You ought to wake up and do something about it."

"How many of 'em?"

"It looks like well nigh all of them!" Dr. Barrin chortles, his jelly belly shaking. "Some have even started a few mungus and nectar kitchens, and fairies are lined up all 'round just so they can keep eating as you told them to! And they're not running out."

Noon of the tenth day of the eighth month, 210.

"Good people of New Hibera!" comes Dr. Barrin's shrill pipe of a voice as he stands out on a balcony recently expanded and supported outside the king's bedroom. "As the king's physician, I completely approve of his order, given from Tubbius Himself to our humble, little people, to eat and rest all we wish! In fact, in order to best set the example, that is what our beloved Richard is doing right now, and that is why I am the one addressing you! For the moment, enjoy yourselves in this open air! Eat! Feed your young! Go home and sleep, and then come back out for more praise and for more food!" The doctor here grins as immensely as his belly, which he heartily pat-pats and rubs with both of his pudgy-fingered hands, much to the cheering and laughing delight of the audience.

"After all, dear citizens, you have seen me grow and fatten out from my recent life of contentment and ease! Tubbius wishes the same for you! He wants all of New Hibera to be able to rest, to have ample food at the table for all fairies. . . and," he adds with a wider grin and a twinkle in his little, beady eyes, "to have ample stomachs for all fairies, too, hee hee!" More merriment ripples through the fairies gathered--much in playful agreement, some in uncertainty, others in disbelief, and a few even now in determined acceptance to make such happen.

"Richard and I have agreed that laws and working hours need to be relaxed, that all fairies are simply working too hard and too long for the support of their families! With this unending abundance from Tubbius, we find it necessary to continue worship of Great Tubbius far beyond this week alone! Richard will be giving an announcement about that later this eve, when he wakes from his nap," here, the doctor mimes resting his head on his sideways-turned hands and sleeping, for a moment, getting more jittery giggles from below, "but, yes, for now, simply enjoy yourselves to the utmost! If the king's own physician agrees there's no harm in any of this, and he even lets himself become a disciple of Tubbius in these last months, then what harm is there to it for all or any of us?"

An ear-shaking roar of agreement and praise of Richard, praise of Dr. Barrin, and, mostly, praise of Tubbius goes up from the crowd below. With that, the doctor toddles back into Richard's bedroom behind him, rubbing his belly and making happily for a plate of creamy puffs left untouched by the snoring monarch a short distance away in bed.

[Treadwell]

Evening of the tenth day of the eighth month, 210.

King Richard Aengus eventually wakes from his good, long nap. He frowns at the missing plate of creamy puffs (missing as in taken away, not missing as in empty!), but he does at least get his revenge. Richard sneaks away, still in his nightgown, to the doctor's bedroom to help himself to Orin Barrin's usual stash of butterfluff pastries--usual ever since that day five months prior when the doctor woke up blessed by Tubbius and was induced into stuffing himself silly. Richard takes these pastries with him, leaving his creamy puffs in the doctor's care.

Once the king eats and dresses, his speech in the evening is a short one. Richard tells a contained audience still enjoying the endless food and drink before them just what they owe Tubbius for his gifts: their devotion! He also informs them of the opening of an official Church of Tubbius in New Hibera soon enough, led by him and the doctor. The crowds curiously accept this, and then Richard wobbles back into his bedroom to enjoy more.

[Treadwell]

Nearing midnight of the fourteenth day of the eighth month, 210.

All of New Hibera is quiet at the moment except a drowsy, bloated-tummied King Richard, who sluggishly toddles around his room sampling from sweet, sugary morsels. With endless amounts of food comes eternal freshness, it seems, leading to a wonderful delight on his part: he's been munching at his tray of butterfluff pastries for the last four days! Soon enough, he's nodding off in bed, rubbing a hand on his belly as he dozes.

One pair of eyes watches the New Hiberans. From a unique vantage point in his endless plain, a certain Great Belly smiles widely and warmly as he studies those little fairies. Some of them are already beginning to plump ever so slightly; the doctor and the king, of course, have only let themselves go even further. Richard is to give his first sermon to all of New Hibera in the morning, but, sermon or not, attendance at the sermon or not, Tubbius knows now that this little fairy kingdom is his.

[Treadwell]

Early afternoon of the fifteenth day of the eighth month, 210.

At the moment, Aloisius Treadwell snores mightily in the dining hall at the Church of Tubbius in Myrken Wood. He finished his morning sermon to his faithful a couple of hours ago, and he then stuffed himself at the dinner table as was customary afterward, and now he sleeps. However, while he sleeps, his attention turns again to Tubbius, who is experiencing a light, cleansing, misty rain that washes his big body and rejuvenates him. With the rainfall comes a gentle shifting of the soil and grass in which the Great Belly sits; downward he sinks, his enormous bulk easing lower into the earth. This obese god of growth and harvest is, in some ways, a plantlike entity himself, from his place of sitting naked in an open plain of sunlight to the roots that long since replaced his legs and began to grow as their fleshy extensions stretched out under the earth in search of followers.

This afternoon, King Richard of New Hibera has done a wonderful example of following in Treadwell's waddling footsteps: after a rousing, carefully worded first sermon of his own, he treated the people of New Hibera to a feast from the still constantly replenishing abundance from Tubbius, and then he merrily advised them all to take a good, long nap after. He was simply trying to do as he had read in his tiny copy of The Folds of Tubbius.

Now, as roots stretch out and poke around and connect with newly faithful fairies, Tubbius smiles warmly and happily. As the spiritual selves of fairy folk blink to life in the damp grass of his endless plain, each one painlessly anchoring to these expanding, thickening roots, the Great Belly sees them as the thin slivers of multicolored candles that they are and, with a chuckle that shakes his rain-washed tummy, the fat little globes of light that they will all become within a year's time. He stretches out a fat finger to lightly stroke the sleeping shade of the fairy king and doctor. "My children, you have done well!" rumbles out.

And that rumbling wakes the snoring Treadwell, unsettling him for a few moments before he shakes himself off, downs another slab of cake, and toddles away to bed for the rest of the afternoon.

[Treadwell]

Morning of the eighteenth day of the eighth month, 210.

Today, it is a red-vested, red-trousered Aloisius who bobbles about in his toy shop. The long sleeves of his yellow shirt that poke out from the vest barely hide the matching long sleeves of his yellow pajamas, and his belt of toymaking tools jangles and jingles around his belly. The squinty-eyed, spectacled tub is in search of something, it seems, poking and prodding about in one of the divided cubby hole shelves hanging from a wall. A partially stuffed pig rests in his usual rocking chair--one of two by the fireplace--and it seems that the old gent is missing more fabric to keep sewing on it, as he holds the last of the pink swatches of cloth in his fat fingers.

The door to the shop creeeeaks open, prompting a light bounce to his wobbly steps. He then freezes in place on hearing the gruff, grumbly voice of the one who just entered.

"Aloisius."

A sloooow turning about, still holding his pink rag of cloth in one hand and starting scratching his belly with the other, leads to Treadwell seeing just who it is: a slightly taller, pole-thin man of severe face and equally floofy beard to himself. By contrast to Aloisius' usually vibrant choice of colors for his clothing, this man--a retired circuit judge from Amasynia--still wears his somber, floor-length black robe, as he always does.

"Langley!" comes the shrill, piped squeak from Aloisius. "Come, hmm, come to see your baby brother for a bit at his, hmm hmm, well, one of his places of employment?"

"You could say as much. Your birthday was a couple of months ago, you old man." Langley Treadwell takes a few slow, careful steps forward, fishing about in a pocket of his voluminous robe and withdrawing an engraved, oaken box about the size of good-sized book. "I don't get out much these days, and you don't waddle out by the lake very often."

"Waddle? Hmph!" Tready chuckles, though, and gives his enormous belly a slap and a rub. To that, he grins wide and starts across the toy shop to meet his brother--older by a little more than a decade--halfway.

"Yes, waddle! You took right after Father, and you surpassed him! Now, about your birthday, here's your present. I've been meaning to give it to you for. . . the better part of these last two months."

"Oho? What is it?" Tready reaches out to take the box, flicks its lid open, and lets out a quiet, "Ooooooh!"

"A pipe, Aloisius, enough pipe-leaf to smoke for some time, and the tools you need to light it all. You used to smoke one quite often, 'til it was broken in some foolish something or other, if I recall--probably the doing of one of your Broken Dagger friends. I suppose it might give you something else to do with your mouth besides shovel food inside it at all hours!"

The box clicks closed and is set aside. With that, the round-bodied Councilor toddles forward to wrap a very resistant, stiff-limbed former judge in a squooshy embrace.

"You don't have to be so blasted enthusiastic about it, Allie! It's just a blamed pipe!"

[Treadwell]

Morning of the twentieth day of the eighth month, 210.

"Aloisius! Wake up, love! They're here!"

Bleary, blurry eyes work open, and Aloisius H. Treadwell groans, reaching up to rub those nearsighted, sleepy eyes. He rolls heavily to his side before immediately flumping again onto his back with a huff.

"Too early, love!"

"Early? It's nearing lunch! Or did you forget that you woke up, had your breakfast, and fell right back to sleep?" Alice chuckles, then jabs a fat finger into Aloisius's still-digesting middle, prompting a grunt from her husband. "Meanwhile, I stayed awake, you lazy old pig. The tailor brought us our new formal clothes!"

"Oh? He did, hmm hmm? It's been, ahem, nearly a month since we ordered them!" Tready here wiggles and winces his way upright, sitting on the edge of the bed in his bright yellow, one piece pajamas.

"Well, they're right here, in two boxes, with a page in the top talking about their contents! Up, up, up, Allie!" With that, Alice turns and bends to open up one of the boxes, finally clapping her hands together in front of her and giggling merrily. She, too, still wears her nightgown, and she beams in ecstasy for a moment. . . until she bursts into uproarious laughter.

"What is it, hmm hmm?"

Alice can't bring herself to speak yet; she merely bends to hand Aloisius the two pages from the boxes, followed by his glasses. A few moments of studying for the old man sees him laughing along with his wife.

"The measurements, mmph mmph--they're the blooming same!"

"I know! It's rather funny, you know!"

"Well, there's good reason for it, hmm hmm!" Now, it's Aloisius's turn to poke his love in her middle. "You're, hmm hmm, four and a half months pregnant, or thereabouts, mmph mmph, and you've been eating like a fat, full-bellied sow looking to feed all her piglets! You've kept up with me and my Tubbian church feasts nicely!" Aloisius lets forth a hoohah of laughter. "I wouldn't be surprised if the baby's part piggie!"

Alice snorts and rubs her belly. "A fat, full-bellied sow am I? Well, just for that, dearest Allie, you're going to help me out! Up!" She takes Aloisius's hands and tugs him to his fat feet. "Get out of those pajamas this minute! Since we're the same measurements, and since that mirror over there needs a good cleaning and polishing, and since I need to know how I'll look in this--"

Alice pauses and gives her husband a devilish grin.

"You will put it all on and model it for me right here!"

"I'll what? I'll do no such, hmm hrmm!"

"Oh, yes, you will! From one fat old sow to another, Porcus?" Alice pokes her husband's belly again, prompting a wince from him as she hits one of his fleshy Rings of Tubbius there. "And just to make it worth your while, Allie, I'll even have your favorite foods made afterward for you."

At that, Aloisius's belly rummmmbles. The tax collector glances down and scowls at his navel. "Hush down there!" A moment to huff-whuff for breath later sees him answering with, "Oooooh, fine! But shut the blasted window, mmph mmph, and lock the door!"

An hour later, Mr. Treadwell stands there in the middle of the bedroom, dressed and gussied up in his wife's newest acquisition: a bright purple, flowing, multi-layered dress with all its skirts and undergarments and a matching purple bonnet.

"You look quite lovely in it, Allie, quite the woman!"

A scowl from Tready prompts Alice putting her hands out to pat-pat at the old man's still rumbling, hungry stomach.

"In fact, I'd say you're due in a few months, yourself!"

More laughing and giggling sets Alice to needing a seat beside her standing husband for a moment. "You look wonderful, dearest. I think it should fit me just fine! Now, let's get you out of that and back into something of yours so you can have your lunch!"

[Treadwell]

Night of the twenty-ninth day of the eighth month, 210.

Today's service proved different than usual for the Tubbians. A dozen visitors from the church in Colmouth had made their way down from their home at the coast to come visit, as a pilgrimage, the established "mother church," as it is, in Myrken Wood.

They listened raptly to the soul-stirring explanation of the holy trinity of Tubbius's forms as Treadwell gave his sermon in the morning service. While being a hard concept for some Tubbians to accept, that their majestic and mountainous Tubbius could take two other shapes with so radically different lives and personalities (one of them even a different gender!), Aloisius always manages to set his faithful straight with clear-cut examples and visionary descriptions of Tubbius's warm and gentle Great Plain, Porcus's endlessly fattening and cooling Wallow of Mud and Slop, and the Glutton's Lake of Ale and Food--and, of course, of their splendidly different owners.

At the end of the day, though, one of the visitors comes in humility to the bedchamber of his Tubbius Regalis. He finds Aloisius already wearing only the customary Tubbian pajamas--in his case, the bright yellow one-piece outfit with its long sleeves, long leggings, and too tight fabric for his great girth. Thus it is that the similarly garbed--in a novice's green, no less--Donald Guffin toddles into the bedroom and eases into a couch by the bedside.

"What, hmm hmm, seems to be troubling you, my child?" comes the squeaky puff from Treadwell, who has set aside his pipe for the night and is currently settling into the floofy, covered delight of his bed.

"Troubling? Well, nothing, really, Father, my Tubbius. . . ." The ruddy-faced tub blushes, though, and admits, "No, in honesty, there are two things that trouble me."

"And they are? Merely speak of them, and I will set them right, mmph mmph."

"One is my brother, Bellerophon, and his housemaid. . . and arguably wife to be, Dinah. They've always been frail creatures, so the point that I have always joked with him about his name, calling the skinny little twig 'Belly' out of love! But these past months, Father, they've just given themselves over to feasting like we do! Why, Belly's actually starting to put on one!"

"Good, good! And why does this trouble you, hmm hmm?"

"This is a shrivelled old man who wouldn't ever touch so much as a buttered biscuit three months ago, and now, he eats like I do, and he even attends our services! That can't be natural!"

Treadwell grins merrily, reaching his hand out from his bed to pat-pat Donald Guffin's burbling middle. "It's quite natural, my child! It just took them a little longer to give in to it all, yes yes. Nourish them, encourage them, and help them along, mmph mmph, and Tubbius will be pleased, and you will be rewarded by his mercy." A grin slips over Tready's face as he retracts his hand, returning it to rest on his own gut. "And the second thing?"

Donald smiles briefly at the touch and the kind words. Then, though, his face grows more serious, his jowls flapping gently as his mouth straightens in severity. "We've had some fellows--fishermen from off-shore, up the coast a way--come to our services recently, too. They've been talking about how they've never heard of Porcus, that where they're from, it's not a mother pig at all but a father."

Treadwell's floofy eyebrows scrunch up at this.

"They call him 'Hoggum.' He's much like our Porcus--praise her womb!--but where she is eternally bearing children, he can be about eternally making them! These fishermen, they all have family who believe in this back home, many of them farmers and pig-farmers, they say. . . . So what do we do?"

Treadwell chuckles. "I say we should let them alone, Donald, my boy. Should Porcus. . . shall we say, 'get to know' this Hoggum," he rubs gently at his belly in a circle, "then I'm quite sure there will be great, hmm hmm, rejoicing on all parts, and little piglet births abounding! If she doesn't, or if he won't have her, or she won't have him, mmph mmph, then there's nothing lost, and nothing gained. Similar, hmm hmm, deities have lived side by side in their heavenly domains for ages. This is nothing new!"

At this explanation, Donald Guffin smiles and lifts himself to his feet. He toddles over to offer his help in tucking his Tubbius into bed. "Thank you, Father. I'll share that with the others in the morning!"

A lamp is doused, and out the door the green-robed novice goes, leaving Treadwell to doze slowly into sleep.

Of course, the result is to be expected. With his constant jabs back and forth at his "fat sow" of a wife with her "piglets on the way," and her own jests in return, and this new information of Hoggum, the would-be Father Pig, it is not to Tubbius or the Glutton that Aloisius turns to tonight during rest. He finds himself as herself again, with the belly of Porcus already swelling greatly with new young waiting to be born in a little over a month or so of time.

Yet, there is another like her out there.

And like the Glutton in his sludge or Tubbius in his plain, Great Porcus is never truly content. She rolls herself lazily to her back, her mud-layered belly poking to the sky, and she wiggles a little to cool her back and work out an itch. In her doing so, she closes her eyes and lets her porcine jaw open up; she tilts her head to a side, and in the wiggling, she catches enough of what men might call "slop" to gulp it down amid the wallowing.

But, there is another like her out there.

And she is always, always, always ready to conceive, carry, and deliver more. Contrary to the achiness such deliveries leave for Aloisius, contrary to the almost completely sexless nature of Tubbius and the Glutton with both of them being consumed by their own growth in their own ways, the Mother Pig has her own unique desire and capability atop mere gluttony.

Beady, piggie eyes, half-closed, flit open as a plump, cool hand comes to rest on the sow's enormous stomach. The pillowy-bearded, pillowy-bellied scholar son of Tubbius, Libri, stands smiling down.

"I know what it is you're wanting, now, little pig." Little pig. Certainly a term of endearment, given the softness of his elderly voice and the smile on his face. "I'll go fetch old Hoggum soon enough! Why, I don't know if the two of you will even remotely want each other's company or not," he rubs at Porcus's belly, which prompts a deep snore from the sleeping Aloisius, "but I don't suppose it could hurt to see!"

Meanwhile, from her own realm, Marta, Tubbius's wife, watches these events with her own stern gaze. She frowns and rests a hand on her bosom. "The two of them have been kept apart for ages. To have them put together in one realm. . . . The results may be disastrous! Libri must be stopped."

[Treadwell]

Night of the twenty-ninth day of the eighth month, 210.

The Wallow of Mud and Slop extends forever in its own way. It includes much ground to cover. It includes more ground than either Hoggum or Porcus would ever hope to cover. In fact, they've lived there, together, at opposite ends of the Wallow for all of their respective lives. Why should there be two worlds for two piggish deities when one would suffice?

And they haven't known a thing about it, with both of them being so rapturously caught up in their own pursuits.

Libri, stepping away from the rolling, lolling Porcus with her bloated belly and dangling, swollen teats, turns with merry chortling and a brushing of dirt from his fine black robe--stopping immediately on seeing a familiar woman in white before him, rubbing her own childbearing middle.

"Mother!"

"Don't 'Mother' me, Libri. You know that the two pigs have been kept apart from each other by this great expanse they call their home for ages."

The maternal pig's ears perk at this. She struggles to lift her head to look and listen, but, on finding this most uncomfortable, she simply flumps back into the mud to lie there and breathe.

"What harm would it do, hmm?" Libri shuffles over to Marta, moving to wrap an arm around her waist. "A little bit of. . . well, randy enjoyment for the two old hogs?"

"Libri, Hoggum lives to sire children whenever he's not eating. He is as connected to the males of their race as she is to the females, feeling every primal urge and bodily desire and demand. Porcus," a nod to the reclining, wheezing mother many times over and mother-to-be still, "lives to produce and birth children whenever she's not eating."

Porcus snorts in agreement, getting out a breathy huff-whumpf.

"And what is the problem?"

"Do you want the world of mortals overran with swine?"

"It wouldn't be. They would be here. The two of them have to date merely mirrored their children! Why, where are her children now?" He stabs a finger at the elderly sow, who snorts, listening. She had, sadly, noticed the utter disappearance of any other porcine life around her. Her usual contingent of babies were missing!

"They fade, as mine do, on gaining even the slightest measure of waking sentience after their births. They fully take on their mortal bodies, leaving her--and me--alone on occasion."

"On occasion. Hmph. Look at her, Mother." Libri picks up the hem of his robe and toddles over to the resting pig, reaching out to gently pat her milk-swollen underside--and prompting a squeeee and a wince. "She's about to burst, and she's not due another big delivery for a while yet."

Marta shakes her head. "What is it that you're suggesting?"

Libri throws his arms up and out to his sides, wiggling fingers at the wide expanse. "This world is infinite, and yet it is held by two who have never been together! They would be the perfect pair for starting a family here--a family that would only be here! Look at me, Mother; you and Pop-Pop went to great pains to have me, and you don't see a fat little Libri toddling 'round with the mortals, do you?"

Marta pauses a moment, reaching over to rest a hand on the swollen Porcus. "Maybe the two of them do need each other's companionship. As they grow together, their faiths mingle, their followers learn. . . ."

"And wouldn't you like to make your Tubbius happy, no matter his shape?" An ear to ear grin stretches over Libri's jowls. "He--err, she, to be proper, here--has decidedly different wants here from a good grassy stretch to put roots in and a good clear sky to fill up with his belly! And the Glutton? Well, he doesn't need anything at all besides his ale and his sludge!"

"You speak convincingly. Fetch Hoggum."

"At once!"

The Great Mother disappears in a show of brilliance; the Scholar fades with a swoosh of his robe. Porcus lies there on her back for now. . . and then, she breathily rolls over and works her way onto her hooved feet. There she stands, her back and sides a muddy mess, as she toddles toward a nearby pond for her water. She stands there, drinking away, when she hears a gleeful chortle from the reappearing Libri. . .

. . . and a curiously inquisitive squeal from another pig.

Porcus lifts her head and shakes her body, sending mud flicking off, before she turns and sidles over. Hoggum is the same gray furred, mud-slathered sort of animal that she is; the two are quite nearly the match in girth, with he being a little larger despite her being notably older--elderly as compared to his apparent early middle age.

The two of them slowly, sluggishly, carefully circle each other--sniffing, snuffling, nudging with snouts. Soon enough, they flop down next to one another in the mud, side by side, belly to belly.

"A bit modest, are we? Not looking to show each other what you can do while I'm here?" Libri chuckles again, then pats the newly united couple on their necks.

This is when Aloisius Treadwell wakes violently from his slumbers with one of the most dreadful coughing and sneezing and huffing fits he might ever manage. A few minutes pass before he is passing something to normal, and a few more minutes pass before he finds himself able to recline again in his bedroom in the Tubbian Church.

But this time, when Treadwell dozes off, it is not the Wallow that he experiences. A brief swimminess to his vision sees him reclaiming his usual nightly dream-shape of Tubbius, rooted in his plain. In fact, after the first few moments, he is even mostly unaware of the Mother Pig and her new companion. He, it seems, quickly starts paying attention to other worries--and other pleasures.

[Treadwell]

Night of the fifteenth day of the tenth month, 210.

Richard Aengus stands in his palace bedroom, bare to the waist, wearing only his usual pink pants with their snug drawstring tied loosely under his enormous, fluffy-haired belly.

Dr. Orin Barrin, his half-brother, stands immediately before him, identically dressed. Having taken to matching his brother in general appearance since he fattened up, he even took to borrowing Richard's clothes sometimes. The doctor has a knotted length of rope in the ends of his hands, and he's drawn it around Richard as a means of measuring the royal girth.

"This rope circled you completely, but barely so, two months ago."

"Mmhmm!"

"You do know that your shape looks to be slowly altering from ball to egg, good fellow. You're fast turning into a right oval!"

"As is yours, Orin! We've been staying the same size right along, especially since we founded the Church of Tubbius here!" Richard brings his hands up to clap them gently at the doctor's sides. He then takes the rope from Dr. Barrin's hands and proves what he just said by proceeding to measure around the doctor's gut, with similar results. "See, brother? You come up larger than this thing can measure, too!"

Both rotund fairies burst into giggly laughter at this assessment.

Both let out the same rolling declaration at the same time as they hug each other in a warm, squooshy embrace.

"Praise Tubbius!"

[Treadwell]

Morning of the eighteenth day of the tenth month, 210.

Sunlight creeps over the surface of the lake with a clear, cool dawn spreading over Myrken Wood. Aloisius Treadwell stands in front of his elder brother's house, wearing a simple black robe and skullcap, thump-thumping his walking cane on the door before him.

That door creeeeaks open to reveal the drowsy, puffy-eyed former judge, dressed in a similar fashion to his younger, much rounder brother.

"You said you wanted to see me more often, Langley, mmph mmph!" squeaks forth from Aloisius's personal cloud of pipe smoke.

"Of course, of course, Aloisius, but did you have to stop by the house so blamed early? I expect you want breakfast, too!" Langley Treadwell shuffles back a few steps to open the front door wide, revealing the simple parlor therein with its basic, unadorned furniture--elegant, neat, polished, but certainly not the plush opulence that Aloisius favors and demands. The portly tax collector toddles within, closing the door behind him and coughing a bit on entry.

"Yeeeees. That's actual fresh air you're taking in, what with your walking here and your stepping in this house, old man! I suppose you know little of it!"

"Oh, shush, Langley! Now, you've a couch here somewhere?"

"Somewhere. The den, I reckon."

"Well, where is it? Hurry up, mmph mmph! I'm old, I'm lazy, and I'm fat!"

"Oho! I'll not be denying any of those, Aloisius! This way. . . ." Parlor gives way to hall and hall, after a right turn, to the den indicated. The couch on the den's right wall is rather puny compared to any of the younger Treadwell's furniture--and it certainly doesn't match the exorbitant plumpness and garish colors of the one at the Dagger!--but it is at least wide enough to seat Aloisius, who settles himself huffily into it.

"Now, about that breakfast I mentioned, don't be thinking of it." Langley pauses to pick up a book from a shelf to poke the enormous gut nearby. "I'm not one for it, and the maid--Susan--doesn't come by until lunch!"

"And you don't have yourself a proper wife, eh, Langley?"

"Not a one. I never have seen the use for them, myself. I've never fancied fatherhood, I can cook reasonably for myself when I have to, and I have a tailor here in town for when my clothes need mending. Whatever possessed you to go through. . . you're on your fourth, yes? Blanche should have been enough to swear you off women forever, what with her birthing Babette to you in the first place!"

"And running off with my butler! But, Langley," there's a squeaky pout to Aloisius's voice, "Babette, mmph mmph. . . delightful girl! Took after her father quite nicely!"

"Aloisius, you're lucky she didn't get her mother's hook of a nose! She favored you, yes, but what good is that for a woman?"

"Plenty, mmph mmph! Why, she's the ideal daughter, old man! Except. . . ."

"Except?" Langley sinks onto the couch beside his brother, slipping into place where some little cushion remains.

"Well, she ran off with some would-be lord here in Myrken Wood, completely against my permission! He's probably knocked her up, hmm hmm, half a dozen times over by now and reduced her to slaving in a kitchen!"

"You're still holding on to that notion that Treadwells shouldn't have to work an honest living."

"Don't call being a judge for nigh fifty years honest, Lang, mmph mmph! I've served on enough town councils to know the truth!"

"Honest indeed! For all this talk of a religious conversion, Aloisius, you're just lucky that the folks here don't have a hint of your. . . shall we say 'more interesting' affairs back in Westenford? Honesty. . . . Serving forty-seven years as a circuit judge and never once taking a bribe is honesty! Always working to see scoundrels like you and yours stuffed in a cell is honesty!"

"Scoundrels!" Aloisius gasps in mock horror, setting smoke to fluffing from his pipe as he claps a fatty hand to his breast. "Dearest heavens above, Langley! Surely that's not what you think of me and my fellows, hmm hmm?"

A bony finger jabs into a fat bosom.

"Not now, Aloisius. Not for the last few years. I've kept my eyes on you, here. You were an actor, once, and you still are. You've played your role as fat, bumbling, lazy councilman oaf well."

"There's no playing, Langley, old boy! Removed from all the messiness back home, mmph mmph, I should dare say I've let a few things go."

Another jab into the fat bosom in question.

"Obviously. You were heavy back in our younger days, Aloisius. This is downright absurd. It's like you're connected to a god that's a bloated sack of fat and goo."

"Well, hmm hmm, who says I'm not?" Aloisius grins wide, despite his wincing at the repeated pokes. There's another!

"It's ludicrous! Why, in all creation, would there be such a god in the first place, and why would it ever want to take on a human shape just to suffer ridicule for it?" Langley waves a hand as Aloisius begins to sputter an answer. "No matter. There isn't such, you're not such, and we're wasting our breath and the few years we have left debating it. Now. . . ."

Langley pauses as his younger brother sits there, slackjawed.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, Aloisius! To be a priest, you're hardly one for spiritual debates! So, let's talk of earthly matters. You, sir, look quite the fool with your mouth hanging open, and I trust you have very little in your head to say at the moment. There's a bowl of chocolates in the cabinet beside your right elbow. Eat! It's about all you're good for!"

With that, a disgusted Langley Treadwell works back to his feet and makes for a side exit. An astounded Aloisius Treadwell does as directed, helping himself to the offered candies and waiting for his elder brother to return from what proves to be the kitchen.

[Treadwell]

Nearing noon of the eighteenth day of the tenth month, 210.

"I don't even begin to understand how you are even remotely hungry, Aloisius, after all you had for breakfast! I don't usually cook or fix so much, but you were, so I felt I had to be generous."

Aloisius Treadwell has made himself comfortable in a borrowed guest bed after breakfast, lying there covered up with his arms out of the covers, his hands resting on his burbly belly. He grins up at his older brother, but his rest is now made slightly less comfy with a bony-fingered poke to said stomach. That poke even disrupts his steady puff-puffing of his pipe.

"You ate enough for three or four men just now, old man! What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Mmmmmm." He pulls his pipe from his mouth, wincing a moment before releasing a rolling, throat-quivering burrrurrrrrrrrp that leads to his brother shuffling back a few feet. "Rather delicious cooking, Langley! Thank you!"

"You really are just a pig in a man's flesh, aren't you?"

"Wellllll. . . . ." Aloisius blushes at the suggestion and returns his pipe to his mouth.

"I suppose you're wanting to borrow the bed a bit for a nap, too?"

"I had thought about it, mmph mmph. I'm letting you borrow my Folds of Tubbius for a bit, so I reckon it's a, hmm hmm, fair exchange!"

"I'm only reading that so I can see what sort of lunacy you're teaching your followers at your church." Langley sighs and shakes his head. "As I said before, you're just like Father. Right after he ate, plop! Down he went, whether he was sitting at his table still or whether he made it to his bedroom! Just. . . ."

"Just what, hmm hmm?"

Langley reaches over to tap on the side of Aloisius's pipe. "This. Finish it. Put it out. Whatever you're going to do with it, do it before you fall asleep with it in your mouth and burn my house down!"

"Oh, of course! Do you really think I can't stay awake with something in my mouth, mmph mmph?"

"I saw Father nod off a time or two in the middle of a meal, Aloisius, and as like him as you've proven yourself, I wouldn't doubt the possibility!"

"Hmph! Shush! I'll take care of everything, and I'll sleep right here 'til it's time, hmm hmm, to get up!"

"Knowing you, old man, it will likely be right on time for supper."

With that said, and Aloisius chuckling behind him, Langley turns and makes for the door from his guest bedroom. His younger brother nods off soon enough (after finishing the pipe, of course!), leaving the elder Treadwell to his reading.

[Treadwell]

Evening of the eighteenth day of the tenth month, 210.

Supper is meager and simple: hardly filling to the Tubbian Treadwell's tastes. Aloisius sits across from his older, slimmer brother, who stares at the tax collector's stomach from his side of the dining room table.

"You can't be serious, can you, Aloisius?"

"Hmmmm?"

"This," he waves the slim volume of The Folds of Tubbius in his hand before lightly dropping it onto Aloisius's gut, "is completely ludicrous! Your holy book claims that there is a threefold deity embodying varying aspects of gluttony with remarkably different lives. . . and it claims that you, yourself, are the physical, mortal embodiment of such? Oho! Not by name, of course, but there are more than a few implications and hints throughout the book!"

"Mmph mmph!" Aloisius nods his head, scooping his book from his belly and tucking it back into his robe. "All of it truth, Langley! All of it."

"Oh? All of it? Even the bit about your Tubbius taking not only one mortal form in his time but at least two, both starting and favoring our own bloodline? That note tucked in the back from one of our ancestors is true, as well?"

"All of it, Langley, old boy!"

"Then do pardon me when I say I don't believe a word of it."

Aloisius frowns, then chuckles, letting a smile ease back to his face. "Even if you were shown Tubbius himself? Or Porcus, or even the Glutton?"

"Dear, silly brother," out comes a bony finger to poke, gently, at the toymaker's middle, "I shall make a deal with you."

"What is that, mmph mmph?"

"Show me any single, blessed one of those three, and I promise you right here that I will henceforth devote myself to the worship of your Tubbius." Langley snorts and chortles at this suggestion.

Aloisius merely smiles.

"Langley, old boy, you wouldn't make a happy Tubbian, mmph mmph. In all your years, you've never cared to eat a bit!"

"That's not what I said, Aloisius. What I said was that if you showed me any of your--yes, your--three godly shapes, you would have a new believer in your church walls."

A sigh sets Aloisius's lips to trembling a little. He reaches over to take his brother's hands.

"Shut your eyes and relax, old man, mmph mmph. I'll make no promises on what you'll see next, mmph, but you'll see something!"

"Oh, bother! Enough preamble and get on with it! If you can!"

At that, the younger Treadwell gets to his feet, a hand on his back, and toddles about the dining hall blowing out candles and lamps. Then, after a moment, with both of them seated, the Treadwell brothers shut their eyes as directed, and, at Aloisius's insistence, hands are joined. After a short while--a few minutes or more, perhaps--both have calmed enough in the darkness, with only their breathing (Aloisius's slow and labored; Langley's quiet and even) making any noise.

As Langley slips away into meditation and begins to relax, he finds himself standing in grass at the foot of what seems a giant mountain going mostly upward. He brings a hand up to rest on the nearest surface, expecting rock--but nearly falling as he sinks inward, meeting flesh. He loses his footing and slips in the grass--grass wet with dew, the sky sunny despite it being night in Myrken Wood--and ends up flopping into the roly-poly mountain of flab, beginning to sink into what feels like the softest of pillows.

"Aloisius! Help!" is squeaked in terror, only to be met with a thunderous, booming, merry laughter high above. Langley stops sinking inward, the corpulence finally no longer giving way beneath him, and pauses to get his breath.

After more laughter from high above, that same booming voice can be heard to sigh, and a gigantic hand, roly-poly with fleshy excess, slips down from the heavens to rest by the frail judge. "Up, my mortal brother! Enjoying yourself too much, pressed into my belly, might just lead to your joining me here forever!"

Joining forever? With some degree of fear in his heart, Langley worms his way free, sinking, sitting in the warm, sweat-slick palm as it carefully eases upward. He finds himself shutting his eyes and dropping forward onto his knees, shaking.

There he quivers until something softly brushes his back and shields him from the sunlight above. He peeps upward--a finger?--and then downward from the side of the hand.

What he sees below him is surely an unusual sight: straight down from where this hand hangs in the air at the end of its arm is the white-fluffy-hairiest belly he has ever seen. Rolls and folds and flesh unbelievable serve as a nearly endless layer of cushioning all around, in every direction he looks, from an obvious pair of sagging, spreading breasts to the immense cave that surely must be a belly button.

And there he rests, shaking, a hand on his chest as he trembles until drowsiness and dizziness overtake his senses again.

Langley awakes to seeing something similar: Aloisius, wearing too-tight, button-up, bright yellow pajamas, stands over him in his chair, lightly fanning the elder Treadwell with the skulllcap from Aloisius's head. Langley finds himself covered up in a peculiar bedsheet: his younger brother's enormously sized black robe.

"Well, mmph mmph?" A seriousness has overtaken Aloisius's usually squeaky piping, reducing it to a gruff, hoarse squeakiness. "You have seen me, as you wished. Do you believe?"

His answer is shaky and sudden, but only after he lurches forward where he sits to wrap his bony arms around his obese baby brother. "I--I do, Tubbius! I do!"

[Treadwell]

Evening of the eighteenth day of the tenth month, 210.

"Good, good. . . but Langley?" Aloisius reaches up a fleshy hand to rest on his brother's shoulder. "Believe, mmph mmph, but please. . . . Don't go changing your ways just to suit me. Skinny folks, hmm hmm, can believe Tubbius exists as well as fat folks! Come to the services, worship with us, and enjoy yourself, but don't think you have to fatten up on my behalf!" He pat-pats his own overly large middle at this note.

Langley, though, chuckles and steps back, still shuddering gently, out of Aloisius's embrace. "Now, Aloisius, is that what you tell everyone?"

"Err, of course not, but--"

"Then you'll not be telling me a bit of it! I've read your Folds of Tubbius, and I know some of what you expect of your followers: dedicated study of your scriptures, time spent with other Tubbians, and hearty devotion to filling one's belly in the name of thanking Tubbius for bountiful excess, and so forth."

Aloisius Treadwell slowly nods his head, his jowls jiggling under his beard.

"I reckon that I can manage the first two of those well enough. As for stuffing myself silly. . . ."

"Well, hmm hmm?"

"Confound it all, Aloisius. Why did you have to go and be a blooming god in flesh? Ahem! What I meant to say, little brother," a pause here for a chuckle from both men, "is that I suppose I'll need to spend a great deal of time with your other believers. . ."

"Yes yes!"

A bony finger snaps up to Aloisius's lips to shush the man.

"And that you will have to come by here as often as you can to dine with me."

"Well! Of--of course!"

"Good. It's settled, then?"

"It is, hmm hmm!"

"Is this the first time a man of my, errmmmm, age and build has come to such an agreement?"

"To be quite honest, mmph mmph, no. The fairies in New Hibera were much the same, particularly their king's physician, Dr. Barrin."

"Oh, dear me. Now you're talking about fairies. . . ."

"But Langley, dear brother, I do have one small request of you that I can help you with."

Langley Treadwell sighs and waves his hand at Aloisius's gut. "Go on."

The younger Treadwell responds by reaching out and patting Langley's flat abdomen a few times with a cheery reply of, "Be hungry and eat!"

A faint warmth passes from hand to stomach, and thus a merrily chortling Aloisius Treadwell takes up his cane. "I ought to be going home. Alice waits, hmm hmm, for her fat, lazy hubby!"

Langley nods, quietly showing his brother to the door with that warmth briefly fading from his middle.

By the time he starts shuffling back from his front door toward his kitchen, the former judge, contentedly full a few moments ago, finds himself feeling rather empty and hungry.

He settles quickly, confusedly, and, admittedly, merrily into fixing up something else to eat.

[Treadwell]

Evening of the twenty-fifth day of the tenth month, 210.

The night is cool and breezy as Aloisius Treadwell shuffles his way through the grass leading up to his brother's house by the lake. His squeaky, elderly voice pipes out "Laaaaaangley?" as he plods closer.

Not being answered immediately, the portly Tubbian in the yellow robe and miter fishes out his key and lets himself in. Locking the door back behind him, what he ultimately sees delights and tickles him.

Langley Treadwell snoozes in his dining room, plates picked clean and mugs drained from supper. He has wriggled out of his black judge's robe, leaving only the matching trousers, and his belly, obviously full beyond its normal flatness, gurgles quietly.

"So that's why no one has seen you around for this whole week, mmph mmph! You've been right here, doing just as I told you!" comes a happy whispering. Aloisius shuffles over the short distance between them to get a better look, floorboards creaking underneath him but not waking his heavily sleeping brother. "All in good time, old boy, hmm hmm. All in good time!"

[Treadwell]

Morning of the thirtieth day of the tenth month, 210.

The yellow-pajama-wearing Aloisius Treadwell wakes briefly in his bedroom, late for the dawn, late for breakfast, and almost late for lunch.

He groans and rolls achily onto his side, reaching a hand behind him under his covers to rub carefully at his overgrown behind. He then nods back off. Everything this morning has been late, it seems. . . including Porcus's latest deliveries.

He comes back to awareness once asleep, refocusing his dreaming attentions as the ever gravid pig mother. She spent all of the last four nights, and even the night before those in painful, slow, demanding labor for babies who were at least a few days behind schedule already, leaving the waking Treadwell sluggish and grumpy for the better part of a week, now. With Libri's help in having seen them delivered, she now rests on her side, with her backside throbbing and with her eyes welling up in tears--just like the sleeping Aloisius.

The only real difference is that Mr. Treadwell doesn't have a litter of fat, healthy piglet babes all fighting for space at teats long over full, a fact the Scholar her son had pointed out recently enough. The nipping of little piggie mouths going for milk is painful, yes, but it is a glorious release for the burdened mother, who's but another month away from giving these new arrivals more siblings.

With or without any attentions from the snoozing Hoggum nearby, Porcus has her share of work set aside for her in the time to come.

Treadwell will wake after a few hours, having snoozed right through lunch (the horror!) and feeling just as miserable as he was earlier. Tender all over and slow, he won't even bother to dress himself past his pajamas, finding his cane and limping-waddling slowly for the nearby servants' quarters to demand something to eat. No explanation is given; no attempt to joke or laugh or bounce about with his toddling children is made. He doesn't even manage to say much to Alice; he doesn't have to. She's come to expect these sorts of days about every few weeks or so, even if, to her, they're the farthest thing from being natural. Thus, it's back to bed to rest while he waits for his late lunch.