A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

[Treadwell]

Early morning hours of the third day of the second month.

The sky is still dark, as the sun's rays of dawn have not creeped over the horizon. After waking himself, a shaken and sweaty Tobias toddled away from the coach to the babbling comfort of a nearby creek, bubbling along at a good pace.

Off came the Tubbian's pajamas and undergarments, and into the water's edge Tobias slipped, sprawling out in the smooth sand and mud, taking perhaps the laziest bath he has ever had--so lazy, in fact, that he ends up nodding off again where he rests, snoring there in the stream.

He wakes a short time later--perhaps a half hour--to the oddest of feelings: a plump, gray-furred, baby boar has waddled up to him in the water and is currently trying to suck at his chest! This wakes Aloisius in a flurry of water, limbs, and pig splashing about, the pig rushing away along the river bed. This Tubbian priest begins rubbing his now sore bosom and cupping water over it as his beady eyes follow the pig's flight. "What," he wonders, "did that critter, mmph mmph, see in you, hmm hmm?"

"Counc'lor?" from behind, up the river bank.

"Oh, go away, Jack! Can't you see I'm trying to take a bath?"

"Sorry, Tready. Father. Toby. Whatever it is I'm t'call ye, now! Jus' wanted ye to know that, wi' the sun a-comin' up, I can see Wessenfer right that-a-way!"

"Westenford!"

"Yessir. Ain't that where we was a-goin'?"

"Y-yes. . . Throw me a towel from the back of the coach, and leave me a few moments, Jack. I need to think."

The towel is thrown, landing atop the Tubbian's bald head and covering all of his floofy white beard. Out of the water he clambers, taking the time to brush off any loose mud and dirt as he dries himself a few feet from his spread out, sunny undergarments and pajamas. Back into those he worms, toddling back to the carriage and promptly sinking into his seat, nodding right back off while Jim Wilde follows his lord's example of getting washed.

Treadwell's first feeling as he slips almost immediately back into a dream--or is it a vision?--is again the feeling of being in that female, baggy, porcine form, sprawled on its side with a dozen piglets fighting for space to suck. Merry laughter rings forth from the nearby Marta, who carefully kneels to run her hands over the Gray Pig's swollen stomach.

"Well, my dear Porcus, for men call you correctly by your own divine inspirations, you grow fatter still with more of your kind. Aloisius Treadwell," another rub to the pig's stomach sees the pig and its litter replaced with a huffing, reeling Treadwell in red, "you must know that proper gods are many faceted, like a rarely cut gem. As long as there is evidence in the world to inspire others to believe, each of those facets remains. That is why. . . ."

"Why what, mmph mmph? Are you saying that I'm at the same time serving as a host of Tubbius and of others?"

"Shhhh. In a manner of speaking, though you are not a host. Embodiment. Living representative. Incarnation. However you wish to word it. All of these shapes are all together, Old One, even though mortals fail to realize this. Men still venerate the mother of pigs and still speak of legends about her. The pigs themselves, though dispersed as opposed to forming the great gatherings of years past, still carry her blood. . . and, as you have just seen and felt, they still know their mother whether she changes or not." Another melodious laugh shakes the goddess of healing and birth.

"Hmph. I suppose this is a most queer sort of advantage. Now, why do you keep calling me, mmph mmph, 'Old One?' I'd think I'm rather young by comparison!"

"Living under such multiple sways and portrayals is empowering. In your case, it makes you, Glutton, more of what you are. And I call you 'old' for that is what you are. Aloisius Treadwell, think a moment. Have you truly spoken with your Tubbius for these past months away from your current home, your wife, and your children? Have you seen any god besides me in your sleep?" With this question, Marta steps over to the confused Treadwell, rubbing her stomach to his and reaching out to ease him into an embrace.

"You have not, for it is foolish for a man to talk to himself. It is ludicrous for a god to do the same. As I said earlier to you, you must choose."

Bodily warmth, round bellies pressed to each other, a soft embrace. Treadwell brings up his own arms to return the hug in question.

"Marta, mmph mmph, what does it all mean?"

"It means you lead an interesting life, Old One, bound by mortal limits and mortal desires. You feel stirrings of hunger--"

"Stirrings? I'm hungry all the time!"

"Stirrings. You know nothing of an all-encompassing lust for food, by comparison. Of all the gods, you and I are the closest to understanding one another's plights. Thus, I come to speak to you. But, yes, you feel stirrings of hunger. You feel the rapture of others praising Tubbius. You see yourself performing what men call miracles. And how do you not accept any of this more deeply than you do?"

"Because I'm a man!"

"You are a glutton, and you are the Glutton, Old One, at the same moment. You will not know the fullness of this until this body you wear passes from age, but you will live long and even more fully yet. . . . Old One, you are at the moment infantile in your knowledge. You are unprepared for your destiny, your future. . . but in time. . . ."

"But you said I could choose!"

"Abandon the Tubbian faith--the faith of the Glutton--and you abandon yourself. Death will see you to oblivion: cold, dark, and empty, until the time is right to try again."

"And how," Treadwell stands a little more upright, still wrapped in the goddess's arms, "do I know you are telling the truth? Hmm hmm?"

"I am Marta, mother of truth, of healing, of birth. I tell no lies, but I can only tell so much for you to understand."

"Then make me understand! Now!"

"Old One, you do not know what you ask. . . ."

"I do! If I've nothing to fear, if all of this is more than hallucination and is what I am meant to experience when I pass away, then what problem is there to foreknowledge of it? If I've everything to fear, then, mmph mmph, I will make up my mind only faster, through sheer terror!"

Marta lets her arms slip from Treadwell's.

"You have always been infinitely stubborn, Old One, concerned--very childishly concerned--with having your will immediately. Thus, you will know what it is you will choose. . . but only while you dream, and only now. Let it guide your spirit and your decisions, a shape floating on the fringes of memory."

In that moment for Treadwell, all becomes dark. There is the awareness of being in a new, but vaguely human, shape, feeling swollen and layered and heavy and massy, with multitudes of pouches and bags of fatty tissue. Everything below the waist is no more--merely a sluglike, slime-oozing protuberance of a pseudopod extends directly from the bottom of the stomach, with no other bodily parts or orifices below that point. The rest of him up to his head--for his head connects directly to his torso--is buried in food, and he, with all of that food, floats in ale, using his odd "foot" to creep along the mounds of a feast through this peculiar sea. His white beard waves in the sea of ale and food, mangled and knotted with abandoned morsels but full and flowing about, getting in the way of the Glutton's endless meal. Last, there is constant eating and constant starving. Two mouths--one nearly hidden in the baggy jowls and flabby wrinkles of his face and one in the front of his belly, replacing his navel with two rings of teeth and a slathering tongue--chomp and chew and gulp down food at all times. None of this, though, is seen, and it is barely smelled or heard: his eyes are swollen shut, and his nose and ears are nearly the same.

The Glutton does not live. The Glutton does not know enjoyment from what it does. The Glutton exists eternally, its ancient form feeding and gulping at the endless source of food and ale that it feels is paradise. It merely grows, wanting more, having more, and never finding enough.

"Wake and rest, and in years to come, choose," comes Marta's soft command. Ripped from this. . . dream? nightmare? Aloisius wakes in his coach, again soaked in sweat, again having slept a disturbed rest. . . but remembering none of the last, and barely retaining pieces of the beginning.

[Treadwell]

Noon of the third day of the second month.

It is a tired, hungry Tobias-resembling Aloisius Treadwell who stops his carriage outside of Westenford long enough to give Jack Alldale very specific directions to the town plaza where the town council of magistrates meets every morning up until around lunch.

It is a tired, hungry man indeed who slumps huffily-puffily in his coach and who waits as his carriage bumpity-thumpities through town. They pass the many landmarks that Treadwell himself grew up around--various taverns and theaters and mansions. . . and a particular, unusual building, too. It is nearly a sphere itself, with a dome for the top: the church of Tubbius in Westenford, abandoned in the final days of 207, a little over two years past, when its twenty-four remaining members went to Myrken Wood to seek out their new leader.

Soon, though, Treadwell has the nerve to disrupt a council meeting, ordering Mr. Alldale to pull his coach up right alongside the stone pillars and benches and ordering his man Wilde to join him in toddling out of the carriage and, garbed in their full Tubbian regalia, wobbling over to where one of the twenty-six great-bellied old men (all of them at least sixty years old) sits sprawled out.

"I suppose," comes the speaker's labored squeakiness of breath, "that you've good reason for disrupting a meeting of the Parliamentary Council of Westenford," a pause to study the clothing of the two round priests, "Fathers?"

"We do, and this Council is shy two members, sir, mmph mmph."

"How might you know that, Fatherrrr. . . ?"

At this moment, the portly pontiff turns with a sweep of his ceremonial Tubbian walking staff, waving Wilde to take a seat a few feet distant. "Tobias, my lord, head of the Church of Tubbius of Amasynia and Myrken Wood!" Thus, with a thump of his staff to the stone floor of the plaza, he manages a slight (admittedly jiggly) bow and turns back to his host. "Rest assured I know a great bit of Westenford, mmph mmph! Now, before I continue, and I promise I shall be rather brief, as we're all great-tummied bellies who are quite, quite ready to eat, where is Chief Magistrate Jon Lincoln, hmm hmm?"

"You said two members, Father Tobias, not one. You only mention the Chief Magistrate and not his predecessor, who still holds an honorary post in our ranks."

"Indeed! I know quite well where Mr. Treadwell is, mmph mmph, as he is quite dear to my heart! Quite dear! Now, what of Mr. Lincoln?" A great, stretchy smile spreads across the fleshy jowls of the Tubbian lord. His response comes not from the speaker before him but from another elderly gent off to the side.

"He ate himself into his bedroom about a year and a half ago, spread out as round as you, Father! He's stayed there like a great round lump since then! How is it you're able to stroll about but he's stuck in bed?"

"Oho, hmm hmm! Then he's doing quite well! My lords, you might well know a little of the Church of Tubbius already--a somewhat small faith spread throughout the largest cities of Amasynia, Myrken Wood, and other provinces. We devote ourselves, hmm hmm, to growth, to dining, to enjoying the excesses of knowing a good meal and living a wonderfully good life! It seems, hmph hmph, that our Chief Magistrate Lincoln knows a thing or two about all of that already," a pause to waddle forth and to prod the head speaker's stomach with the base of his walking staff, "as do you, my lord!"

"Will you get tha--" and he is cut short; the prodding of staff to stomach sets the elderly fellow chuckling and laughing merrily. Such a response proves infectious; giggles spread across the gathering of gravely serious men. Meanwhile, the sunny-robed Tobias turns about, scratching at his overgrown middle.

"I say to you, my Westenfordian brothers, that Jon Lincoln lies abed, swollen to bloated proportions like me, so that I might prove to you today the powers of Tubbius! Tubbius's church--MY church--sits abandoned here in town, but there are nearly thirty of you here in this plaza who already live by Tubbius's tenets quite well, but you know it not! Now, by that faith that you know not you hold, mmph mmph, feel the power and fullness and merriment of Tubbius!"

Arms sweep up; the ceremonial staff juts high above his head, barely inches above the yellow miter there. The familiar--to him and Wilde--golden glow of the rings at his stomach brilliantly warms his middle, and all of the men gathered--save Treadwell himself--experience the briefest flit of a vision of the lot of them being gathered around a seated, corpulent, human figure, visible from the waist up (his legs buried beneath the grass) and spreading outward on the land and upward into the heavens. Treadwell, though, experiences that same vision from a very different angle; instead, he finds himself being the one peering down on tiny, plump people gathered around his immense, white-haired, bare gut, with his legs being the ones hidden away under the earth--and, unknown to those around him, still shaped into smooth, round roots spreading slowly to other regions.

As the vision fades from their sights, all twenty-nine men present--the Council, Wilde, Jack Alldale, and Tobias--and Jon Lincoln in his bed at home, and Arnold (Treadwell's horse) all experience an overbearingly full swelling of their stomachs, as if they had feasted for hours on end each. However, with this sensation comes an equally overpowering notion of delight and pleasure, lulling all of them into a full-tummied daze as the Tubbian lord resumes his speech with a yawn.

"Feel a tiny hint of the power of Tubbius, whom all of you here have just witnessed to your own eyes, hmm hmm! Should any of you desire to know more--then, hee hee, you'll have to follow me and my Tubbius Princeps, Lord James Wilde, here, back to my church, for further instruction! I should think, mmph mmph, that such a feeling in your bellies is persuasion enough, my lords?"

So, as Tobias wobbles back up into his coach, helped by a sluggish Jack Alldale and a too well fed James Wilde, the speaker of the Council responds with a nod, a hearty burrrrrurrrrrrrp, and a merry, "To the Church of Tubbius! This session of the Parliamentary Council is dismissed! And someone go tell Jon to dress himself proper and haul his old behind to the church!"

[Treadwell]

Night of the third day of the third month, going into the fourth day.

Aloisius Treadwell has always found returning home to Westenford refreshing and busy. . . and usually enlarging. This time, though, even with his Tubbian meals eaten in the body of Tobias (a good hundred pounds heavier than his normal corpulence), he has been working hard enough to keep himself from putting on too much.

It has been a month of teaching his new disciples, including the bedridden Jon Lincoln. It has been a month of overseeing the reconstruction of damaged portions of the Tubbian church in town, of guiding tailors in the sewing of Tubbian robes, of purchasing food and drink in ample quantities (and miraculously doubling it as Treadwell has done before), of preparing and delivering sermons, and of feasting, usually with a reasonable breakfast and two extravagantly large meals for lunch and supper (with, of course, a much coveted nap after lunch).

In all of the flurrying and flailing about, Aloisius even made time to send a couple of letters home to his wife, by way of Jack Alldale and James Wilde. The letters went through Jack; that, Tready figured, was the right thing to do, as Alice Treadwell knows Jack, and Jack had a family and job to get home to himself. Jim, though, was sent to Myrken with a different purpose: to continue building up the Tubbians in Myrken Wood, to assure them of Treadwell's good health, and to stand in for him in his absence. Unknown to Treadwell, the Myrken Wood Tubbians took beautifully to the new Tubbius Princeps toddling up to their church with an enormous smile on his face and sweat on his robes. By this time, Second Tubbian Graham Kutch had left Myrken Wood at his brother's request and the church's acceptance, making for the growing faithful in the village of Wane. All was certainly well at home.

Alldale and Wilde left Westenford on the fifteenth of the second month. Treadwell was expecting to reduce automatically to his normal proportions and facial appearance as Wilde left the church, leaving him a chance to inform the Tubbians of the truth of his identity. Such reduction never happened, to his surprise!

He was unsure, at first, of the reason. . . and then he satisfied himself with a guess that it was still a matter of belief, a belief now spread out across his new batch of Tubbians. That particular appearance is what they expected of their Tubbius, so that is what they received. After a few days of leaving himself to solitude and thought and study, Treadwell emerged pleased with that knowledge, at least for the moment.

Now, though, in a warm, humid night, it is a tuckered out Tobias who dreams in bed, behind a locked door, forgoing the usual Tubbian pajamas and his bedsheets because of the heat.

He finds himself wobbling lazily through clouds, with his plump, flat feet leaving soft impressions in the fluffiness much as they might in snow. Just as when he fell asleep, Tobias is unclothed and unashamed. Before him, just a few feet away, is an equally unclothed woman, glowing white and looking just as rotund and just as ancient, rubbing her babe-swollen middle with one hand and her milk-swollen bosom with the other.

"Marta?" comes that familiar squeak of his voice, and it prompts a smile as the elderly goddess shuffles forth to rub her belly to his and take him in her arms.

"Yes, Old One. You might recall that we met in similar circumstances a month ago, as mortals measure time, though I looked very different. I told you then that I would only tell you what you were ready to know. Old One, you and I have much to discuss."

[Treadwell]

Night of the third day of the third month, going into the fourth day. . . continued.

A naked Tobias stands amid clouds, propped up belly to belly and wrapped in an embrace with a similarly unclothed Marta. He looks the same as he has for the majority of the last two months. She, on the other hand?

"Marta, mmph mmph, whatever happened to you? A month ago, you were young, and you were, ahem, much smaller!"

To which the woman before him smiles warmly, letting forth a bright and musical laugh.

"More mortals depict me as this, Old One, which is, in truth, a great deal closer to my true appearance. As you well know now, our looks might vary from region to region or from group to group. As you can see, we are hardly very different at all! Besides," her hand comes to rest on his middle, giving it a couple of pats and a slow, circular rub, "who are you to speak of different shapes, when your true form is nothing at all resembling this, and you held another monstrous body of a sea beast for years, and you let yourself found a dynasty as not just a wild pig--but as a series of female wild pigs at that?"

"Ahem! Welllll. . . . You, err, you said we have much to discuss, hmm hmm?"

"We do--namely, the nature of things."

"What things?" At that, the old tub bends forward a little to sneak a kiss. Why? He doesn't know, for sure, but it feels right enough, and she doesn't resist!

"Things like that, Old One. Among mortals, you have always pushed and taken and forced your way into obtaining what you wanted. With your own kind, with the rest of us, we have had to. . . restrain you from time to time, though you certainly don't remember it, it seems."

A pause as Marta lets the transformed Treadwell go and takes a couple of steps back. Her smile grows from ear to ear as she brings her hands to her belly again.

"There must be a balance to everything, Old One. And, while we have long since been wed, we cannot simply create endless progeny!"

"I do beg your pardon, mmph mmph? Wed? You can't be serious!"

[Treadwell]

Night of the third day of the third month, going into the fourth day. . . continued.

"Wed, my love, although such is hardly the product of attraction and romance. Many mortals quite reasonably pair the two of us as mates in their accounts--mates with a peculiar, loveless, distant marriage."

"But is that the truth?"

Marta smiles and nods, again rubbing her belly, this time with a wince as an infant kicks within.

"Remember, Old One, a discussion between one Tobias and his beloved Lucy about such." Marta's eyes meet the puzzled, changed Treadwell's, and in a few dizzying moments that leave the old man swaying, all is made clear: the husband and wife jesting back and forth in drunken merriment one night about the possibility of Ploav Tubbius and Marta being wed and the outcome of such--likely, lazy sloth and fatness in him and a baby just like him growing in her.

"When ancient gods jest, even unknowingly, of their peers, Old One, there are consequences! You were so wrapped in your life as a mortal that you forgot that what you implied there would happen here." Tobias reaches out a hand to Marta's arm to steady himself; the old goddess smiles and redirects that hand to the occasional kick in her middle. A kick bumps the fat fingers belonging to both. "Even though spiritually you slumbered at the time in your sea of food and drink, I found your grotesque, monstrous self irresistible, and, though your true form has always remained unable to sire children, I found myself carrying. . ." Another bump from within. "This."

"Madam, in moments, you have told me, mmph mmph, that I am your husband, and now you tell me that I am the father of an unborn babe? Ho ho! I think not! I should think I would remember a bit of it! I don't usually sleep straight through fathering children, my dear!"

"Old One. . . Glutton. . . an unbreakable law of our society is that what you want, you shall receive, provided it harms no one and keeps you fat and happy."

"Hmph! I still don't believe a word of this, madam."

"Believe it or not, Old Glutton, you are the eldest of us save the Creator. You were formed first, and I second, and--"

"Marta!"

She stops talking, letting her hand circle lazily and casually at her belly.

"This is all driving me quite mad, hmm hmm!"

"You have always shown something in you resembling senility and crotchety, cranky thoughts. This is perfectly natural."

"Senility and crotchetiness! My dear, lest you forget, I am a man conflicted, mmph mmph! I have lived over sixty years believing myself little more than a fat, elderly politician with tendencies to toymaking, acting, and stumbling into mishaps, hmm hmm! Now, in two years, nay, in the most of the last two months, hmm hmm, I've been getting indoctrinated into thinking I'm a god in human flesh? I'm living with magic in my blood, mmph mmph, able to fashion miracles at a whim, and it's because of being one of the eldest of gods with a wife who mothers all the world's infants, including an unborn child I don't know a thing about, mmph mmph!"

And here, he breaks into horrid, throat-clearing, chest-burning coughs. With sadness in her eyes, his companion pulls forward to rub his back.

"You shall wake in the morning."

Tobias nods his head a little.

"You will live as you have these last two months--enlarged, wearing your 'old clothes,' of a sort, with your miraculous powers. For now, though, you will forget me, our child, our discussions, your true shape. . . completely, until a time in your future, closer to your physical passing."

Another nod from him.

"Aloisius Horatio Treadwell, or Tobias, or Tubbius, as those are what you must be called for now if you are to remain well and whole in body and spirit, you will remain powerful--but you will not come anywhere near knowing the truth of your situation, not for a while yet. We cannot have you maddened and insane, Old One, devouring all around you and ruining everything for all of us. Now, my love, forget all of this, and wake."

At that command, it is an exhausted Tobias, still naked in bed, eternally ravenously hungry, who grumpily, foggily opens his eyes, staring out squinty-eyed at the sun. His only thoughts, other than frustration at an exhausting night of dreams he cannot hope to recall, are of finding a warm bath for an hour or two and a full table for a late breakfast after.

[Treadwell]

Fourth day of the third month, in the early afternoon.

As it has been the custom for the Tubbians since Tobias resurrected their order in Westenford a month and a day ago, nearly all of the Tubbians rest in their beds, lulled into easy dreams by their lunch-stuffed bellies.

Two do not. One of them, an elderly fellow in the customary green robes for a newcomer to the order, must sit out front and wait for any visitors. He, at least, rotates this position daily with his other spiritual brothers. The other is Tobias himself, who snores heavily, as his habit often is for a nap, in a warm tub of bath water, his stomach pooching above the water's surface to reveal the two fleshy Rings of Tubbius there around his gaping navel.

He wakes to the sound of a chair scooting across the floor and of a bag filled with heavy goods being set beside his tub. His beady, aged eyes sleepily, blurrily study the first thing they see: the round paunch of an old man in a black, academic's robe. They travel up to see the white, close-cropped beard and mustache on the old man's face, and then further up to the black skullcap there with its cute little black tuft of fur atop it. As he wakes, the visitor giggles merrily and reaches out a finger to his lips, giving him a playful, "Shhhh!"

It only shushes Tobias for the briefest of moments. He knows that sucking in his gut is pointless--that privacy is a horrible joke at this point--and so he sputters out, "You, sir! Who are you? What are you doing in my bath chamber?" These questions only lead to more boisterous, rolling laughs from the visiting fellow, who retracts his hand only to rest both of his on his belly.

"Oooo, I'm a visiting scholar, old boy, come to give you a lesson or two! Like I told your man out front, I am an interested comer to your church who is an important friend of your family!"

"Friend of my family? What family? I've never seen you before, mmph mmph!" And, with his newly acquired Tobias gestures of fluttering fingertips before his breasts, the man in the tub can't help sneaking a fat thumb into his mouth for the briefest of sucks. It's a horribly childish gesture, but it's one that Treadwell has long since come to accept ever since he's been in this new, copiously fleshed body.

"Of course you have, old boy! You just don't remember it properly, not after what your beloved did to you last night!"

"My--" and the thumb-sucking Tobias is cut off as the visiting academic bends forward, with the fingers of both hands outstretched, to encircle what he can reach of the Tubbian's belly and give it a vigorous quivering.

"Your beloved, my feeble-minded cousin! The woman with the world's infants in her middle, and yours aside that? Oh, bother, you don't know a bit of what I'm talking about, now. Your face is a fleshy, squooshy mass of confusion. Now," another jiggling of Tobias's stomach is given, which sets him to giggling involuntarily around his thumb, "I'm not talking of your wife and your babies in Myrken Wood, old man. I'm talking about--"

He sighs and withdraws his hands, turning to bend and pull three leatherbound books from the bag on the floor.

"Bother it all! You have a lot to learn, regardless of your dearest's intentions. She's always been too careful, too slow, too cautious. It comes from her toddling about with all her babies; she really is a perfect match for you, Tubbius. You're too slow and toddly-waddly from looking like you're due to birth some children, and she's too slow and toddly-waddly from actually being due to birth some!"

A flabbergasted huff escapes the man in the tub.

"I still don't know, mmph mmph," out pops the thumb from his lips, "what you're talking about, sir, and I'd rather appreciate your either talking some sense, hmm hmm, or leaving me be to my bath and my nap! And you've still not given me your name yet at all!"

"A name, a name. . . . You've always called me your annoying cousin who won't shut his mouth but for when he's reading, but most men call me 'Libri,' and most of our kind simply call me 'Scholar.' We've simple names, all of us, Glutton. Now--" a wave of a book in his hand cuts off the throaty interjection Tobias tries to make--"you've a lot of information to digest, old boy. Every time you take on a mortal shape, you, of all of us, forget everything important. I've always thought it a hanging over of your feeble-brained addled state from old age, or perhaps a choice you make so you can take in every new life as a thoroughly new experience to enrich your stomach and senses with. . . but it makes dealing with you every few centuries like this rather bothersome. We just about get you to remembering everything, and then that fat mortal shell you're in falls apart, and you end up your usual self, floating in your sea of ale and food, and then we can't talk much to you anyway because you just won't have any of it!"

The scholar snorts and shakes his head, tapping the three books in one hand into his other palm as Tobias lies there, incredulous.

"And, as usual, you've no clue what I'm blabbering about, because I'm using words and concepts too big for you."

"Hmph! I'm quite an intelligent, grown man, and I--!"

"Grown!" The edge of a book jabs harshly into Tobias's navel, leaving an impression. "Just as you always do, cousin! In fact, you're the reason I'm the shape I am, because so many of our followers are one and the same, filling their bellies with endless desire as they fill their minds with endless knowledge!"

"You're quite, quite mad, mmhmm! And I'd appreciate your not--" He fails to finish his sentence, as what he would appreciate is ignored; another jab of book corner to belly sets him wincing.

"I knew you wouldn't be happy in your Treadwell body, dear Glut Glut. Compared to the one you had before it, the one you wear now, it's just not rotund enough yet! Why else do you think you've resorted to this old bag of flesh to wobble around in when you're with your followers? And, for that matter, do you even hope to understand why you enjoy falling asleep in warm water so much? It reminds you of home."

"The womb, you mean? Hmph!"

"No, no, no, no! Home, old boy! Your sea of ale and shifting tides of morsels and food!"

"Foolishness! Madness! A madman's been allowed to come disrupt my bath, mmph mmph!"

[Treadwell]

Fourth day of the third month, in the early afternoon, continued.

"Your bath is meaningless. There is one thing that matters in all the world to you, dear Glutton, and that is this!" He drops one of the books--the fattest of the three volumes--to land flat on Tobias's wet stomach with a splutch. It gives a gurrrrrrgle of a response.

"Do you see, old boy? It talks to us. It says, 'More!' and it wants more, and it's your business in life to give it more, and that's all you rightly exist to do. Oh, living as a tax collector and a toymaker and a husband and a father and a priest are all well and good, cousin, well and good, but were you a pauper on the street wearing rags, you would still be guided by your endlessly roaring tum-tum! Do you care to argue with me, now?"

A sullen, huffy Tubbius Regalis picks up the book and lightly tosses it back onto the scholar's lap.

"Go on. If I listen, will you leave me be?"

"You won't listen, old boy. You possess a singularly infantile mindset: get yourself a full belly at any cost, lie down for a nap in the tub, and wake up to do it all again. You don't even have to deal with the bathroom, now, if you even stop to think of that."

"I don't?" he asks curiously, deterred from his original thoughts.

"Not a bit. If you wish, it all goes right into keeping you going or making you rounder. You're a perfect little butterball, you are. Now, I know you won't listen to me, but will you read any of this?"

The scholar tap-taps the books on his lap and nods at the bulging bag next to them.

"Of course you won't, Glut. You've too many other worries at heart. That's why I have to talk your language."

"What language is that, hmm hmm?"

Up comes a book in the scholar's hand. He grins great and wide, mischief and malice in his eyes, his voice giggling all the while. "I said you had a lot of information to digest. I meant that quite literally!"

The scholar's old voice drops to the babbling, cooing, giggling blabber of an adult talking to a newborn as he waggles a book in his hand and tap-taps it against the Tubbian's stomach. "Awwwww, who's a cute, fat, gweedy wittle baaaaaby? Open up! Oooooopen! It's a horsey, and tummy's a stable," another tap of book to belly, which sets the flesh rippling, "and we have to put horsey up! Who's a cute wittle fatty-watty babyyyy?"

The confused Tubbian begins to feel a stretchiness at his visibly growing, spreading navel, as well as a warm bloodiness of flesh separating to open a hole straight to his stomach. Two circles of sharp, pointed teeth ease loose from the Rings of Tubbius, forming a gaping maw, and, from within, a slimy, flailing tongue whips forth, slobbering all over the book's cover.

He blacks out in the midst of this waking nightmare.

The Tubbian leader comes to his senses hours later. The sun is setting in his room. His belly is achingly overstuffed, feeling the fullest it has felt for the first time in years.

A glance down shows nothing out of the ordinary. There are no scars or disfigurations save the usual Rings of Tubbius puffily circling the stomach. Nothing feels out of place. There are no teeth. There is no tongue. There is no blood save a red tint to the water squooshing out of a rag being twisted in the visiting scholar's hands, squooshing out onto and down the curved sphere of the Tubbian stomach. The bag beside the bathtub lies empty and flat.

"Don't talk, Glutton. Don't get up, dress, and walk off to supper. Don't do anything but think at the moment. You're likely to feel a pounding headache for a month and grumpiness to accompany it, but you had to know the truth, and, as Marta the truth-bearer was too afraid to tell you the truth, one of us had to force feed it to you in a way you would accept."

Another splooshiness of water spreads over his middle.

"It didn't take as much work as I thought it might. For all of your old age, you really are still very much a child, Old One. With proper study and time, you're likely to end up this world's foremost scholar on Amasynian religions, though, if you don't drive yourself mad, first. I'd suggest you don't talk about any of it for a while. Now, good night, old boy."

With that, Tobias closes his eyes and nods right off, exhausted, as his temples begin to throb.

[Treadwell]

Fourth day of the third month, going into the fifth day. Night.

Tobias's eyes open not on a sunlit bedroom or a host of worried Tubbians gathered around the old man's bed. His head doesn't even end up resting on its cushiony pillows.

He finds himself again in that endlessly clouded expanse, lying on his back, although here he wears his usual yellow Tubbian pajamas. His head rests on someone's plump, fleshy thigh; his eyes squintily make sense of what they see: the round, ripply underbelly and side of a great, plump middle that is covered in an identically yellow dress.

"Marta, love?" come his squeaky first words. Her hand comes forth to rub his forehead in response.

"Libri played a horrible trick on you, Old One. He forced you to begin to remember everything before any of us were ready for it."

"Libri. . . ." His eyes close briefly as he pictures the rotund academic in the black robe. On opening them, with his head still throbbing mercilessly, "Not a cousin at all, mmph mmph! A son! Our son?"

"That is right, my love. After you were made first by the Creator, then came all of the animals and plants of the mortal world. As they were promised to you to fill your hunger, you thought it interesting to join them for supper, in your own way. That is when you took on the first of your many shapes: the sea beast. But, they knew nothing of having children at this time, and their numbers dwindled quickly. You ran out of food. When you failed to live terribly long after that, starving yourself into oblivion, you returned here. You knew that there needed to be another like you, someone who would populate the world so you would not empty it again so disastrously in such a manner. You were a scourge of the oceans in your time, but soon, life would renew and go on." She smiles, rubbing at her own middle as she massages his head.

"But you said, earlier, as I remember it now, that I had never been able to have children?"

"Of your own will, that is truth. While in your true shape, you have always needed assistance from the Creator, as making children is not what you were created to do. You fell into the deepest of slumbers when your sea beast body passed. You were in shock, and you were weak. The Creator used that time to create me from a large fold of your flabby side, molding me into what I am. As I took shape and life, all of the creatures in the mortal world began to know the joys of children, and thus I took on my role as mother."

Tobias smiles, reaching a hand up despite his aching head to pat at Marta's belly.

"But, your concern was not initially for a mate; you have always been driven first by hunger and greed, Old One. When you woke, you were jealous, and maddeningly so, at what was happening. You thought you were being upstaged. You went to the Creator and raved. You threatened to take a new, monstrous shape and eat everything that ever came of any mother, anywhere, if your position as the greatest of gods was not restored. You saw the power I had in making children, so the bulk of your demand was that you be placed above me by being able to father of me a child."

Tobias's jaw drops a bit at this. Images--memories?--float in his aching head as she speaks. However, all he experiences are the sensations of his own actions; no Creator is memorable or visible, and yet the many-mouthed, slug-tailed monstrosity addresses something or someone.

"The Creator smiled knowingly. He called you His first and favorite. He also gave you the ability to sire your first son as you begged Him to do, and He obliged you, thus enforcing on all of us to come the law that we do whatever it takes to keep you happy, dear Old Glutton. An angry Glutton can only lead to destruction. Afterward, the Creator brought the two of us together, declaring us married and informing me of His decision and your request. I grew with child from that moment, and I delivered him in the space of half a thousand of mortal years."

"And that was where Libri came from? Ranting and raving that I wasn't being pampered enough?" Tobias chuckles and shuts his eyes. "It's no wonder the Scholar seeks to play mean tricks on his old poppa, mmph mmph."

Marta smiles and slowly nods her head. "That's about the size of it, Old One."

"And the others? You've said there were others, anyway, hmm hmm?"

"None of them are of our union, Old One. The Creator saw to them, as well."

"So we only have a brat who thinks me senile and foolish, and a child on the way, yes? Good! I don't know, mmph mmph, how much more of this divinity stuff my poor head can take!"

"It will need to take quite a bit, my dear, as you have much more to learn. Now, though, in closing, for you are about to wake again, I give you the words of the Creator. Listen."

At this, Tobias picks his head up, his ear bumping Marta's yellow-dressed stomach and getting a kick for a response.

"Speak of all of this to no one among the mortals, even in your sermons, for they will think you terrifyingly mad if you do. You would be imprisoned, ridiculed, and thought a heretic, disrobed and outcast from your own church, unable to see your family, starving and alone. Study. Think. Write books to sort it out. But speak of it to no one. You must appear to be as you have been for all to be well--with no sudden shows of knowledge you could never hope to know, no suddenly miraculous displays that fit not with what your followers believe of you."

She smiles. "Alosius Horatio Treadwell, for your body and actions and thoughts of Tobias form what is just a disguise over your plump and elderly self, you were an actor, once. The Creator wishes you to fulfill the greatest role of your brief, mortal existence: to act forever as if you are simply one of them."

"I. . . I will, mmph mmph!"

With those words in his ears, a waking Tobias rolls over in his bed in the church of Tubbius, scratching at his great, gurgly belly with its veritable forest of fluffy white hair and yawwwwwwning wide as his eyes try to squint at the moon outside. The Tubbian leader's head pounds angrily, blurring his vision to the point of near blindness, so the transformed Treadwell just shuts them, hoping to nod off. He is wearing his yellow pajamas, he is toasty warm, and he is dry. At least the visiting scholar, Libri, had the sense to empty the tub of water, dry his old man off, and dress him before tucking him into bed and disappearing. With a final yawn, he finds himself nodding right back off, snoring dreamlessly and huffily until the dawn.

[Treadwell]

Fifth day of the third month. Dawn.

Tobias wakes to the sound of incessant knock-knocking on his bedroom door. After hauling himself wearily and breathlessly to his feet, and after taking a few moments to scratch busily at his fluffy-haired tummy and his squooshily-cushioned backside, he grabs his walking cane and toddles to the door to open it and answer the knock. Three Tubbian brothers--all three elderly gents who are members of the town's council and who are now grinning ear to ear like merry children--begin blabbering at once.

"One at a time, mmph mmph!" He reaches up to rub at his throat; after, he reaches over to his desk to fumble for his glasses.

Two of the old men stop talking. The third, the one in front who happens to be the shortest and roundest of them, happily babbles, "Our Father Tubbius! A wonderful discovery has been made on these very church grounds! One of your children from Myrken Wood, Second Tubbian Kutch, arrived here this morning from Wane, looking quite merry and well-fed and blessed, and, as he explored the grounds, awaiting your waking, he fell straight through a weakened section of floor in the storage room near your office--"

"What? Is he--"

"He's quite well! He didn't fall all the way, Father, but he was painfully stuck at his generously blessed tummy! We pulled him out, we called for a light and one of the skinny little orphan messenger boys, and we sent the lad down into the hole to see what it was. It so happens that there's a cave down there, Father, with a wonderfully large hot spring of water, bubbling and churning all the while! Why, all the other brothers are down there right now, enjoying themselves, since we, umm, took the liberty of opening that hole a good bit more. It's fairly safe getting down there, as long as you're careful, as it seems there used to be steps that, umm, partially gave away at one point, and that's why it was so poorly closed off. . . ."

Tobias stands there a moment, dumbly soaking all of this in. After a moment, he reaches over to snatch up a towel from near his bathtub, and, with a throat-clearing, shrill, ear-piercing squeak of a cry, "Well, my sons, what are we waiting for? Go go go! Hmm hmm! Shoo! Get! Go!" And so he wobbles forth with towel and cane in hands, nudging his followers backward with each gentle bounce of his belly.

[Treadwell]

Fifth day of the third month. After lunch.

The morning went by well, with the buiding's resident Tubbians merrily enjoying their time in the newly discovered hot spring under the church. Too soon, though, they had to leave the water to go upstairs and eat--and eat they did!

Now, though, the majority of them snore soundly upstairs in their rooms while Tobias, trying to sleep away the headache that still plagues him (as Libri the Scholar had said it would) snoozes in the bubbly, warm water. He wakes to the feeling of someone settling in beside him and wrapping an arm around his broad, fleshy shoulders.

"My Lord. . . it is my understanding from our new Tubbius Princeps, whom I'd met before coming here, that you are the man I know as Aloisius Treadwell, yes?"

A curious question from a hesitant Second Tubbian Graham Kutch.

"Oho! Umm, ermm. . . Graham! Umm. . . ."

Beady eyes settle on a slowly nodding head.

"That I am, dear boy."

"Then how is it you look as you do, our Tubbius? It's been a little over two months, but you look like you've put on enough around your middle to be a hundred pounds rounder! And your face! You don't really look to be the same man!"

"That's quite simple, hmm hmm. It's because that here, dearest Graham, I am most assuredly not."

"I don't understand?" Here, Kutch shifts his weight a bit to become more comfortable where he sits.

"You met James Wilde, you say? Well, in a rather short telling of a long story, the man is a couple hundred years old because of a blessing placed on him some time ago by one of my ancestors--both physical and spiritual! When Jack Alldale and I arrived at Jim's church, hmm hmm, we found it happened to be the same church where the Tubbians first took the name as such. . . and his monumental faith, and the magic thoroughly present there, altered me into this!"

"But what is all of this?" The puzzled old fellow pat-pats the changed Treadwell's back, fingers pinching a baggy bit of pudginess to make his point.

"This is what my ancestor, the great and wonderful Tobias, the living incarnation of Tubbius before me, himself, looked like, mmph mmph!"

"'Before you?' Then do you finally accept that you are our Tubbius in the flesh, great one?" An enormous grin slowly shapes across Kutch's face as Treadwell nods emphatically.

"I do! And that is why I must look as I do while I am here! It is a matter of faith and of what my Tubbians expect to see! These men, ahem, know not that I am one of their former number, mmph mmph, and what I look like otherwise, and thus, they know not to expect or want different! I shan't trifle with everything by flip-flopping one fat old body for another, no no, and besides--"

The old fellow grins despite the pounding in his head.

"It would mean a horrible time of keeping myself in clothes, my lad, mmph mmph! A hundred pounds means a great deal more fabric to keep it all covered, you see."

"But when you come home?"

"Then I expect I will look as I always have, hmm hmm. I just need to be careful here."

"Careful?"

Tobias rubs at his white-haired tummy cresting through the bubbly waters, grinning jovially as he plays a little with the pouchy Rings of Tubbius there.

"Careful so I don't change back to my rightful body, mmph mmph, and not do much changing at all around the belly!"

[Treadwell]

Sixth day of the third month. Morning.

Sunlight shines blindingly bright through the window in Tobias's bedroom.

Tobias grumpily finds himself rolling over on his side, wheezing with the action. His head still aches as new thoughts and memories ease their ways into their spaces amid the squooshiness of gray matter.

It doesn't help that there is a jovially incessant knocking at his door.

"Come in!" he squeaks. "But don't think of getting me out of bed at this time of morning, mmph mmph!"

The door creeeeaks open. In comes one of the Tubbians, grinning, and huffily hauling an easel into the room with an armful of brushes, bottles, and the like. The easel is already covered with a sheet of parchment.

"That's perfectly fine, dear Father!"

The door opens again, this time to reveal another Tubbian devotee who waddles in with a tray of food and a pair of mugs of drink. These are set on a tray by Tobias's bed, and then that Tubbian waddles out with a bow.

Of course, Tobias can't stop himself from sitting up sluggishly and starting to munch at the meal before him.

"What is it, mmph mmph, you aim to do, hmm?"

"Paint you, Father!"

"Paint me?"

"Well, in a manner of speaking. I wish to paint you in your glory, Father, on your grassy plain, as Tubbius!"

"That, mmph mmph, will take a great deal of fancy and imagination, my boy, to translate me from a fat old tub in yellow pajamas sitting in a bed, hmm hmm," more chomping away, and swallowing, "to that!"

"Well, umm, I have a good head for it all, Father."

Tobias smiles, pausing in his breakfast to scritch-scratch at his middle. "Come here, my child."

Obedient wobbling ensues as the elderly man, maybe only a few years Treadwell's younger, shuffles over, grinning, his hands on his belly.

"Here." The food is set aside for a moment, long enough for Tobias to take the artist's hands and place them over the visibly poochy ripples of the Rings of Tubbius in Tobias's stomach, visible through the yellow pajama fabric.

What the artist sees when his hands meet his Holy Father's stomach is just what he wishes to paint: Tubbius in all of his immensity, spreading to the heavens, with his legs vanished under the earth and his gut sprawling-rolling-folding out over the land.

"I trust, hmm hmm," Tobias asks as he gently lifts the hands away from his belly and the vision fades, "that's what you wanted to see, my boy?"

Vigorous nodding sets the old man's jowls to jiggling. Over to the easel he goes, and, without a word more, he begins to paint.

Tobias grins merrily. The rest of his breakfast awaits!

[Treadwell]

Night of the sixth day of the third month. Around eleven o'clock.

Sitting in bed, posing (in a manner of speaking) for a painting, and stuffing oneself all day have led to a very sleepy Tobias. Thus, he nodded off about an hour ago. Thus he dreams. But, as has fast become his usual, his dreams are no mere flits of thoughts in his head, stringing together absurdities and wishes. His dreams are more and more frequently becoming times of meditation and divinity.

Such is one now.

He is Tubbius, lazily staring out over his vast plain where he sits, secretly rooted below the surface of the grass. Those ever-stretching, ever-thickening roots that replaced his legs some time in the past wiggle slightly in the coolness of the moist dirt, feeling their way to other parts and searching out new believers.

Tonight, he finds one. A faint flit of magic touches the tip of one of those roots, and, in a slow fading in to reality, standing atop the rounded flesh of his stomach, a familiar, pink, corpulent fairy appears, wearing a loose, pink nightgown and slippers.

"Richard Andrew Aengus of New Hibera!" Tubbius jovially rolls, setting the fairy king dropping on his cushiony behind amid the folds.

"Y-Y-Yes?" Beady, pink eyes flit upward, trying to take in the immensity of the great, round frame. "Are you. . . Tubbius?"

"I am!"

A hand flits up to the fat fairy's chest, flapping furiously there. As quickly as he can, he lets himself topple forward, burying his face in the hairy stomach. "I--I mean you no disrespect, great one! I--I--I was curious! I started talking to your men in Myrken Wood, and I started believing in you, but they said you were their Treadwell in the flesh, and I was worried and afraid and--!"

Tubbius here lets a mighty bellow of a laugh shake his immensity for many moments. The tiny fairy picks his head up and straightens the shoulders on his nightgown.

"You are forgiven, little one, and you are welcomed into my fold!" A moment later, after the fairy king is studied, "I see you are finally free of your double life, your double memories. You are whole again. Your brother has done you a great service, King Richard."

"Y-Yes. . . . He doesn't believe in you, though. Little bony old man. He still thinks me silly for being devoted to a bigling god!" The fairy here sits up, his back squeaking as he props himself up with his tiny pink arms.

"Then he must know better!" At that, disoriented and similarly dressed for sleep, Orin Barrin, half-brother to Richard Aengus, slips into view beside his brother.

"What--?"

"Hush, little fairy. Your brother is absolutely correct about believing in me. In fact, the two of you are to be my messengers, my priests, to New Hibera. However, Doctor, your current state of health will simply not DO."

Another uproar of a laugh shakes the jelly that is Tubbius. It seems that Aloisius is enjoying this reunion splendidly. . . and it seems that he is accepting the powers at his command quite naturally!

"My state of health?" the white-winged fairy doctor pipes up when Tubbius lets himself fall silent.

"You are too small!" And thus, the tiny fairy finds himself touched: a single stroke from an impossibly large fingertip passes across his body. "You are henceforth blessed! You will believe in me, and as your belief grows in the weeks to come, so will you, little doctor. I hereby decree that you shall match your brother, roll for roll and flesh for flesh!"

The doctor's eyes go wide at this. "You can't do this to me!"

"I have. Turn to your brother. Learn from him, for once. And know that the two of you are both forgiven. . . and accepted! Preach only of me to your fairy brethren, however, for my, hmm hmm, 'biglings' see to their own!"

With that, the two fairies disappear from their fleshy pews in this Tubbius sanctuary.

And so Tobias sleeps in bed all night, a wonderfully happy smile on his fluffy-bearded face.

[Treadwell]

Morning of the seventh day of the third month.

The cool, damp, fairy lit caves of New Hibera have been a haven for fairies in their little pocket of Myrken Wood for some time now.

This morning, their king, a pink-gowned, pink-glowing, pink-bearded butterball named Richard Aengus, rolls lazily onto his back and blearily opens his eyes. His room is its usually lavish decor, with the curtains and bedsheets that match his own amethyst tint, with its floofy-fluffy and pillowy bed that even the spherical king can sink quite nicely into, and with the comfy chair and couch across the room sitting next to a private buffet table that stays exceedingly well-stocked.

Richard has always been one given to gluttony and excess. His time spent trying to emulate Myrken's Councilor Treadwell only pushed those qualities even further for him while driving him to senility and beyond. The fairy ruler has in the past few months been aided back to reality, with memories of his time spent trying to mimic Treadwell purged from his mind and everything inside his head set to as much rightness as it can be. He was left with an unintended, uncurable fear of the Councilor that borders on god-fearing worship, and he has spent the past months getting back to being himself.

Part of that personal exploration had led Richard to peek his head out into Myrken Wood again, to resume the hunts he so enjoyed, hunts in which he and his entourage chased fluffy woodland critters around the forest at night. One night, though, about two months prior, the hunt went cold, and he found himself at the feet of a particularly rotund old "bigling" in a green velvet robe.

He'd sent the rest of the entourage back home, then. He was curious! He felt an odd kinship with this plump fellow, and thus, he exchanged introductions. It turned out that this man was a priest, a holy man devoted to an order for the bigling god Tubbius, a god who was a glutton and a gourmand of the highest order, who wished for followers like the same. Of course, Richard was drawn into it. He spent every other night for the next two months coming out and talking with this fellow, learning more of the man's ways, sharing snacks with him, and eventually declaring his own belief and conviction in this mighty Tubbius!

That was when, on the night of the fourth, he learned that, according to the Tubbians, their Tubbius waddled on this earth in the form of one Councilor Aloisius Treadwell.

Poor Richard was thrown into terror. He felt adamant about serving this god whom he'd learned so much of in the last two months, and yet--Treadwell? "Are you sure?" he'd inquired, and just as vehemently, he'd gotten the same answer every time, that "Treadwell is indeed our Tubbius!"

Richard spent the last two days rather ill and terrified. . . until last night.

Last night, he was summoned to the stomach of Tubbius Himself to speak personally with the Great Glutton--and his half-brother was spirited in, too, to prove the old doctor wrong about Richard's "foolish bigling god!"

Thus, with all of that having transpired in the last months and days, it is no wonder that Richard Aengus frightenedly lunges forward at the hurried knocking to his door this morning and ends up belly-flopping onto his fluffily velveted floor.

Two guards come rushing in to help their portly king up, to give him his glasses, to fetch him his slippers and cane, and to tell him, "Sire, your brother is in a most unusual situation! Come with us!"

"Where is he?" the fairy king mumbles.

"In the baker's storeroom!"

Overall, the trip to said storeroom takes much longer than it should for the three of them. Richard is barely awake for half the trip, so he certainly doesn't get to help heft his own weight. But when he arrives. . . .

There, sprawled out on his back amid open, empty boxes that used to contain sweets of all kinds, is the white-gowned, white-glowing Dr. Orin Barrin. He lies there looking utterly miserable, a hand rubbing his visibly swollen, rolling-gurgling stomach. A burrrrrp escapes him after a moment's inspection.

"Orin!" Richard pipes, "You look like you're about to pop! What happened?"

"You know quite well what happened! Your fat old god 'blessed' me last night! I woke up three hours ago absolutely ravenous--" another burp shakes the old doctor, and he can't resist fishing out another pastry from another box, gobbling it down with all haste. Afterward, with crumbs flitting from his lips, "and, though I feel absolutely stuffed beyond everything I've ever felt, I can't quit eating! I want to stop, but I can't! I--I'm still bloody hungry!"

There is a pause as an enormous grin spreads over Richard's face. The fat fairy king puts a hand on his cane and a hand on the wall. . . and takes to laughing hysterically! After this jolly outburst subsides to wheezy, squeaky breathing, as Dr. Barrin keeps munching at everything within arm's reach, Richard waddles over and pats the doctor's stomach.

"Doctor, I hereby relieve you of your duties as my personal physician for the next few weeks while you see to your own health! In fact, I henceforth give you new duties! You are to eat, eat, eat, eat all you want, when you want it, and you are to listen to me discourse with you about Tubbius in His glory and what He wants for the two of us! He said last night you would match me roll for roll and fold for fold, or some such. . . ."

Here, as the doctor puts away a muffin, Richard motions for the two guards to lift up the doctor and remove his nightgown.

"Wh--what is this, Richard?" Soon, there stands the skinny, elderly doctor in his underwear with his belly pooching bloatedly full. In that time, Richard leaves and returns, ordering a full disrobing of the doctor while providing new garments from the king's own pink wardrobe! All of the king's pink underwear is supported by equally pink suspender straps, with this pair being no different, and a pink nightgown drapes over the doctor, swallowing him whole.

Another fit of laughter escapes the king. . . and, this time, the doctor.

"This is ludicrous, Richard! Give me back my garments immediately! And, darn it, reach me one of those butterfluff pastries!"

"Oho! No no no, dear brother! Hee hee! You are going to grow to match my size, we're told, and you will like it," Richard reaches out to gently poke the pudginess that is currently the doctor's middle, "so what better way to see how big you truly get? Once you fill out these clothes sufficiently, we'll know you're finished!"

A look at the guards sees them dismissed with a request. "Bring us a chair each, a couple of pitchers of milk, and my little book of The Folds of Tubbius from my bedside. We have much to do!"

[Treadwell]

Morning of the tenth day of the third month.

Breakfast!

It was a gorgeous first meal--with an emphasis on "gorge"--for the transmuted Treadwell and his equally immense friend, Magistrate Lincoln. The two of them shared a straining, overstocked table of eggs, breads, soups, and fresh seafood--everything locally grown or caught, given Westenford's being on the coast. Both men were and still are comfortably dressed--Lincoln in his nightgown, and Tobias in his bright yellow pajamas, with the rest of his Tubbian garments hung up neatly across a nearby couch. Now, their bellies are swollen full; their plates are desolately empty.

And that is when Tobias offers a simple question.

"You've taken to raising pigs out back, I see, mmph! But, old boy, no ham at the table?"

"Oh! Forgive me, Father! I simply can't bear myself to slaughter those of my babies outside! I love them too much, you see, but they're none of them having any litters to fatten up and cook!"

Tobias smiles. "Your babies are half your own size or bigger, my boy--a blessing from their great mother Porcus if I heard of one!"

"But their great mother hasn't blessed them with the proper urges, ho ho! Maybe she's too busy having babes suckle her teats to see more into the world right now, hmm?"

Merry laughter escapes both men, although, in honesty, Tobias's own laughter is undercut by a faint, faint twinge in his breasts, a sensation similar to when he was awoken in the stream by a visiting pig thinking it a good time for nourishment.

"Well, old boy, you should know that I'm quite close to the great mother herself. Piggies old and young are quite sacred to the both of us! In fact, I'd dare to say you could think of Tubbius and Porcus as one and the same, hmm hmm!"

"You could, eh?"

"Indeed! Now, allow me to go see your pigs, and I will guarantee that they will all be perfectly happily mated by the morning!"

"Are you serious?"

"Quite so, my boy!"

Laughter again shakes the old politician. "You can't go out of this room in your pajamas, Great One, or your holy robes! And you certainly can't wear them out among pigs!"

"Then lend me a gown of yours, Jon. It should fit. We look to be about the same in the middle!"

Within a half hour, away from prying eyes, Tobias finds himself behind the house in the lot with Jon Lincoln's pigs, wearing one of Jon's nightgowns and pairs of boots. All of the swine, male and female alike, are lazily sunken into the mud. None seem to pay any others any attention. With Jon watching from the house, the old tub toddles out into the herd--scratching ears here, carressing bellies there, rubbing rumps and backs and jowly snouts there. The cutest of baby mutterings escape while appropriately porcine squeaks and huffs are breathed. In short, the transformed Treadwell seems as happy as a pig among pigs in slop.

As the mud-splattered, pig-smelly fellow returns to the house, grinning joyfully, he notes, "Pigs are veritable manifestations of all things Tubbian, Jon! Gluttony, laziness! Is it any wonder that I love them so?"

"I don't see them going at anything yet, Great One!"

"Ho ho! You will! Wait 'til nightfall, and then send me a message in the morning about how you didn't get a wink of sleep!"

[Treadwell]

Night of the tenth day of the third month, going into the morning of the eleventh day.

The visit with Jon Lincoln, ended with a wonderfully warm bath to clean the old fellow off, only inspired the resident waddly-wobbly Tubbius to merrily jaunt elsewhere in his carriage.

No pig farm or butcher's shop with any pigs in the back that was between Lincoln's estate and his own home at the church was ignored. He stopped at each, happily and freely offering blessings to all of the plump porkers he saw--with the permission of their owners, of course. Some of them were highly religious--some already devoting themselves to Porcus, the great mother of pigs, with others not wanting to offend a representative of any god or goddess whatsoever. The rest took the attitude of "What harm can it do?" and they humored the old butterball with the pillowy white beard.

That night, around Westenford, as Tobias snored soundly, the farms and shops were bursting with porcine lovemaking.

All night, Treadwell dreams in rapturous bliss. One could argue he's hardly himself--he lives in another man's body, and in his dreams tonight, he takes the shape of that gray-furred, bristly, tusked, corpulent, baby-swollen mother of pigs with a number of babies scurrying beside her, Porcus.

It is his first time doing so for longer than a few moments.

Porcus, like Tubbius and like the Glutton, has her own domain, which is something of a cross of the two of theirs. Hers is a vast plain, like that of Tubbius, but hers is layered halfway up her belly with areas of food suitable for hungry porkers and areas of cool, smooth mud for wallowing.

When Treadwell finally comes to his senses, accepting his situation with blissful glee, he finds himself--no, rightly "herself," here--in that common position that Porcus tends to stay: lying on her back in mud with belly overgrown with young waiting for delivery, with a dozen piglets suckling at teats.

However, as the pigs of Westenford indulge themselves, Porcus becomes aware of many things: the physical acts of such, of course, but also the moments of impregnation. She feels the same enjoyment that all of the sixty pigs that were blessed do as they fulfill their lusts. She knows the exact dates when these babies will be born, how their lives will go, how their lives will end, and which of them will bear or sire young.

It is a very peculiar sort of emotional and physical high for the deified Treadwell.

It is a high that is gently interrupted by the rubbing of a human hand across the hoggish mother's kicking, burbling tummy.

"For once, you have indulged this side of yourself, Love. Now, you experience life as I do--save in your peculiar fashion."

Squinty, beady eyes follow the hand up its arm to the elderly, portly, pregnant Marta, soon settling on her smiling and gently wrinkled face. The owner of those eyes speaks, but it is with a soft oink and squeal with some snorty noises tossed in. Marta breaks into a bigger smile, and she laughs.

"I fully understand! Now, know you that you can't just go around blessing every pair of your children to have more, regardless of the enjoyment you now feel. Why, you'd be doubling their populations every few months!"

Another smile.

"Instead, take your time. Indulge this side of you maybe once every year or two, and allow yourself to reach out to different regions of land. Porcus is a minor goddess, respected by the pig farmers and superstitious, but she does have some power. You can't just give in and feel it all at once, though!"

With that, Porcus nods her head in the mud and wriggles, allowing her babies easier access to their milky feast. She grows foggier by the moment, losing herself more and more in the merriment of her earthly young. Marta rubs that swollen pig's stomach once more, visually comparing it to her own with a chuckle.

"Good night to you, Glutton. Enjoy this night of bliss, and then return your attentions to your duties as Tobias of the Tubbian faith!"

Treadwell, still in the shape of Tobias in his waking hours, wakes in the morning feeling more than a little full of the stomach and dizzily sick. After waiting a few moments for these feelings to pass (which they do, not to be felt again), he warms up to the idea of a good bath followed by breakfast before his noon sermon.