A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

[Treadwell]

After lunch on the fourteenth day of the fourth month.

"He's snoring downstairs in the hot spring, as he usually does about now."

"Usually! He's been eating more and more and sleeping more and more, too, lately! Why, these last few days, he's hardly opened his eyes much even while he's been at the table!"

"Hush! Blasphemy! You've seen he's staying tired, and you know we're to study all we can in the Folds and continue with our singing, preaching, and rejoicing, even if our Tubbius isn't awake and with us in his mortal body."

"Well, I have to say that I'm a little jealous."

"Should we not all be, from reverence and love? Sleeping in his natural washtub below us in this very church is our holy father in the flesh, and we live at his pleasure to enjoy ourselves and worship him! I'd think all of us envy his position, but--" here the elderly Tubbian wags a plump finger at his only slightly younger companion--"none of us is Tubbius save he alone!"

"I just want to know what he's dreaming about! We know what it's like out on his holy plain, and we've heard his recollections about being the Glutton in his sea of ale and being the Mother Pig in her field of mud and food! I just care to know where he spends his time, so to speak!"

"He is a god, Abraham! I'd think he can spend it in all three places at the same time if he likes!"

So where is Mr. Treadwell spending his sleeping, dreaming moments?

Ever since his mystical impregnation of his Alice that left Tubbius exhausted and drained, it seems that in his sleep, Aloisius has slipped first not into the ravenous, angry, and grumpy Glutton and not into the drowsy Tubbius but into the eternally gravid Mother Pig, Porcus.

It has been most unusual. For the transformed Treadwell, there were, initially, the moments of confusion of readjusting to moving on four legs instead of two and the moments of bliss at having more than ample food available everywhere. There were the times when an odd thought entered a porcine head, questioning the slathering all around in mud and just lying there in the light.

That is when Tready finally just had to accept this form what it is: an immensely corpulent, hungry sow with many piglets growing in her, many piglets following her about wanting to suck of their mother's milk, and many stirrings of others being felt slipping into existence in her womb as mortal pigs were coupled by their farmer owners who venerated Porcus herself.

With that string of ideas to accept, these last few days spent as this particular pig have been downright heavenly. Is it any wonder Treadwell has been eating himself into drowsy stupor each meal so he could ease back into sleep, even if in his sleep he lives in a very different sort of body and life? However, he has, this morning, been feeling the stirrings of waking thought and awareness of Tubbius and his endless plain. For a short while, attention has been paid to both areas at the same time, leading to, in the end, a need to slip from the Mother Pig to the Great Rooted Belly. So it is with a merry, jolly sigh that one shape melts away to be replaced by the other, and Tubbius returns his full attention to smiling pleasantly and watching the daily chores of his busy, "little" followers.

[Treadwell]

Night of the fourteenth day of the fourth month.

After watching his tiny (by comparison) Tubbians waddle about their evening duties in his Tubbian shape, the resident deity turned taxman and toymaker awoke with a drowsy, happy yawn. . . and an empty roaring from his tummy! He was hungry! He was also wet and soggy and wrinkly from having fallen asleep in the hot spring. Getting out of the water was a slippery experience for him indeed, leading to a noisy belly-flopping floosh that brought Tubbians scurrying downstairs to see what the matter was.

Everyone gathered found it quite comical. After a few moments of getting Treadwell back upright and helping him get up, out, and dry, it was a merrily laughing row of bellies that toddled upstairs and to the dining table to gather for supper, where Tready absently rubbed his belly in circles the entire time he alternated between gently urging everyone to "Eat, eat, eat!" and stuffing himself as much as he could. Of course, as has been the case for some time, now, he ended the meal just as ravenous as he began, never able to feel fullness and always demanding more to eat, but his followers--all of them who are in the church this night, at least--all ended up either snoring at the table or toddling back to their rooms.

Tready soon found his way back to his own bed to sleep for the night, still rubbing his middle as he nodded off again.

He comes to his senses, this time, again in the shape of Tubbius, sitting in his plain of grass, and feeling even larger than usual. A look down sees his many folds of his stomach and sides rolling over themselves like a giant mushroom shape and spreading out as saggy flesh in the grass around him. He comes around to the sound of laughter from a familiar voice.

"Father! Great Belly! I trust you are pleased by this development!"

"Libri, my son?" is the Great Belly in question's reply. He tries to turn his head to see the source of the laughter and the voice, but Libri wobbles up from behind the elder deity, taking a moment to merrily tickle his father as he circles. This sets Tubbius to jolly hoo-hahas of laughter as the Scholar comes into sight. What Tubbius sees is something that brings a warm, beaming smile to his face.

"My son! You have filled out quite nicely, quite roundly, mmph mmph! Come! Let me embrace you, my child!"

There the Scholar stands in his academic's robe--though a much larger robe, for he grew quite a bit when he was forced to float inside the Glutton's stomach, held in place, and it seems that since then, he has done nothing but eat! Where he had ended up the same size, roughly, as Jon Lincoln, he has now grown well beyond even those fleshy boundaries. The two wrap each other in a squooshy, mushy hug.

"It is my wont to study and learn, Father, and I have devoted myself to learning about food and dining and the glory of rotundity as of late! I've also," he giggles here, giving Tubbius another tickling, this time to his gigantic navel, "made my followers start to learn about you and Mother and to adopt the ways of your Tubbians in reverence! They're filling out quite nicely, and they are en-joy-ing every moment of learning about all of this!"

"Fascinating, hmm hmm, what spending a bit of time stuck in your old father's stomach can do, yes, my boy?"

"Fascinating! I have found a new love, a new calling! Thank you, dear Father!"

Thus, with eyes filling with happy tears. . . and belly and flesh slowly spreading imperceptibly as more of Libri's followers devour food for stomach and food for thought about the Tubbians and their lifestyle and the god they follow. . . Tubbius squeezes his firstborn to his side once more, kissing his cheek and letting forth a happy sigh. All is peaceful in the Tubbian realm tonight!

[Treadwell]

Morning of the fifteenth day of the fourth month.

This morning, Aloisius Treadwell awoke with something flitting around at his head. A bug! A bug with a stinger! A frightened yelp and a wild swing of an arm and a pillow later, there was no longer a bug with a stinger flitting around at his head. The pillow was dropped breathlessly back on the stack of other pillows, and there Aloisius rested a few moments to get back his breath one wheezy huff at a time.

"Why was a bug in here?" is a question that was quickly answered with a glance of beady, wet eyes to his window. It was pouring rain outside, and somehow, one of the window shutters had come open, hanging there to let water and insect inside. Up from his bed he arose, shuffling across the cold floor--cold even with a recently added pair of new rugs!--to shut the shutter.

This, of course, left Tready in what might as well have been complete darkness. He hadn't thought to light a candle or lamp in getting up, and the murky gray sky outside, now hidden from sight, offered no light to the Tubbian head.

"Oh, bother!"

A few moments of thought, though, and a bit of happy chuckling, saw the situation fixed. A bit of reflection, a smile-inducing moment of memory, and a brief focus on the great-girthed body of Tubbius set his Rings of Tubbius in his belly to glowing their warming gold beneath his pajamas, offering a nice, yellow light to waddle about his room by.

Where else did he waddle to but to a side table to find some bread and meat in a bowl to munch on and then back to his bed to resume snoring 'til time for a proper lunch? With no morning sermon to deliver on this particular day, Aloisius Treadwell could actually get in a little more sleep--even if the glowing of his belly continued to shine for a few more minutes after he'd dozed off.

[Treadwell]

Night of the fifteenth day of the fourth month.

The scene is the bedroom of Richard Aengus of New Hibera. It is lit by the glowing bodies of the two fairies in the room: Richard and his half-brother and physician, Orin Barrin.

"Richard Aengus," the doctor's stern voice squeaks in the silence, "this is the time of your weekly physical examination! You, sir, are grown even larger--though slightly so!--this week than last, and I must make you aware of one important fact!"

The white-balled top of a walking cane juts upward, and then over, sinking deep into the king's blubbery, exposed navel.

"Holy Tubbius is quite, quite pleased! Hee hee!"

With that, both fairies break into uproarious laughter. The two of them stand in the king's bedroom, the door locked behind them and the window shutters closed, with their shirts off, exposing both of their corpulently overgrown tummies, and their trousers off save their undergarments, exposing their similarly fleshy bottoms and legs. Richard brushes away the cold, hard cane and reaches over to pat-pat at his brother's burbly stomach: burbly with a supper fine and grand!

"A month, Orin! A month, and you've so well embraced the ways of Tubbius! Why, you're much more the preacher of his name and word than I, really, what with your, mmmmm, transformation! You're no longer the wispy little waif of my brother that you were a mere month and a half ago, no no no!"

"Well, Richard, I feel quite fine! Ecstatic! Ahem! You do know that I really can't fault you during this weekly examination, now, ever, at all, or again, yes? Why, I can't even begin to reprimand you for being such a round little ball without condemning myself!"

"Then don't!"

More merry laughter shakes the two tiny (compared to those rotten biglings in Myrken Wood) butterballs. Arms clap around backs, and the two of them squooshily squeeze each other warmly and tightly.

From his rooted spot in his plain, Tubbius smiles gleefully, jiggling in merriment himself as he chortles and watches his fine little priests in the making. "Tell your kin, my children!" he lets roll from his voice. "Spread my word to your fellow fae folk, so that they might be your fellow fat folk! Ho ho!"

[Treadwell]

Morning of the sixteenth day of the fourth month.

"I'm afraid, mmph mmph, I must be going, my children. I must return to my home in Myrken Wood, hmph, for my dearest wife and my babies await! Oh, and my job as their chief tax collector, hmm hmm!"

The announcement brings droopy sadness to the Tubbians of Westenford as it is made during breakfast.

"But I'm not leaving until after a nap and a bath in my spring below the church, and then lunch. I've a long ride ahead, and I'd rather enjoy what moments I have before I must go!"

That was on the sixteenth.

It was with care that day that Aloisius Treadwell packed a carriage full of his belongings (clothing of his size now and his size as Tobias, just in case, as well as food and drink and his books and writings as of late, and his ceremonial Tubbian walking staff) and asked one of the faithful Tubbians to drive him home. The trip took him through various small towns as he headed from Westenford, on the northern coast, to his home in Myrken Wood. One was the town he'd stopped in earlier on his way to Westenford, the town of Wane. They had a growing community of Tubbians--in numbers, especially, and all of them in size!--but as they had seen Treadwell in the shape of Tobias first, that was the shape he presented himself to them on his visit. Stopping about a mile out of town, he took a few moments for undressing in his carriage followed by a few more of magically altering his body again to be that of his ancestor. He then put on his properly sized clothes for his Tobias shape and asked his driver to continue on.

A good week was spent there, caught up in feasting, drinking, napping, praying, and preaching.

He then left the town in high spirits, pausing only to return to his natural Treadwell shape and clothes as he rode on toward home.

With a jolly, "Mmph MMPH!", after various more stops in small towns to eat, spend some days, and deliver the words of Tubbius on more than a few occasions, Aloisius Horatio Treadwell returned home to Myrken Wood on the fourth of May. His mansion home and his wife newly faithful to Tubbius and Marta, but still oblivious to her divinely given bundle of joy within her, awaited.

[Treadwell]

Night of the fourth day of the fifth month.

"But dearest!"

Aloisius Treadwell rests in his warm, cloth-lined, comfy washtub by the fireplace in his bedroom, his bath interrupted by a simple act of his wife: unfolding his clothes!

"We talked about your getting too big for your clothes before you left, Allie, and it's quite obvious to the woman who sleeps with you every night and who's had your two babies that you're getting--" she drops his clothes on the bed and toddles over to his tub, reaching out to jam a pudgy pointer in his breast "flabbier about every time you go to church!"

"Well, love, I did spend the last few months in my church in Westenford. Hand me the soap, hmm hmm?"

"Your church! It's no wonder that Tubbians wear long, flowing robes over everything! They're all that will cover everything up!" But, as requested, Alice hands her roly-poly hubby his soap, and he starts to clean himself.

"In fact, I've been attending the services of the Tubbian church here as of late. They're. . . odd. Why, darling, do all your followers seem to think you're Tubbius in the flesh? Is that a joke of theirs? What would a god be doing taking on a body so--so disgraceful? Wouldn't a god want to look like. . . well, someone not so old and fat?" To that, Alice pulls a chair over beside Treadwell's tub and settles her own considerable rotundity into it.

Treadwell merely smiles. "It's quite simple, Alice, my love! Why would a god, someone who's used to being the same as he is for thousands and thousands of years, want to change much? He wouldn't! He'd want to worm into something comfy when he came to visit his children! Think about it like getting dressed for a party, mmph mmph."

"Ha! Are you trying to tell me that you fancy yourself a god, Aloisius?" She slaps a hand to her bosom and lets forth a rolling belly laugh, to which her husband joins in.

"Of course I am!"

"Of course you are?"

"Hmm hmm! I learned many things about myself these past few months, dearest!"

"My Aloisius Treadwell, a god on the earth!" More merry laughter sets Alice Treadwell to shaking where she sits.

"I am! I am! And. . . I also learned a few things about you, dearest!" Now it's Aloisius's turn to reach over and rest a still wet and soapy hand and wash rag on his wife's belly. Her laughter stops, and she freezes.

"Mmph mmph. About a month ago, you prayed to me about wanting another baby in our old age."

Alice's eyes widen; her face pales.

"You were praying to Marta, goddess of birth and healing, and to me, mmph mmph, although you didn't quite know all of that. Your studies will tell you that Marta's my wife--"

"Your wife! I'm your wife!"

"--as Tubbius, love! Either way, you, hmm hmm, were praying in my church here for a new babe, dearest." He rubs that soapy hand and rag on the front of Alice's nightgown. "And Marta and I heard you. And. . . ."

"And what, Tready?" Alice blinks at her husband, dazed, her face slackened.

"And I visited you that night. Darling, mmph mmph, you've been bearing a child for about a month, now."

"But how! Aloisius Treadwell, we're hundreds of pounds between us, and we're both elderly! I think I would remember a night of our making love!"

A happy chuckle and a sigh escapes the nearly dozing Tready in the tub.

"Love is a wonderful, magical thing, dearest. Would it help you believe me, mmph mmph, if I showed you what I look like?"

"I can see your tummy and your breasts and your hairy middle and your man parts and everything else quite neatly from here, Allie."

"That's, hmm hmm, not quite what I mean. I mean what I look like as Tubbius, dearest." This, of course, gets a look of stunned incredulousness. A sigh later, there is a request of, "Close your eyes, my darling."

Taking a chance on listening to her husband for once, Alice does, and so does Aloisius. A few breaths later, the first thing she knows is warmth: warmth amid a soft, fleshy cup of a pit in which she rests in her same nightgown. Looking up, squinting into the light, affords her a look upward at the largest, flabbiest, white-hairiest middle she's ever seen.

A startled, "Oh!" and a gasp sees her flopping to her left, to the rim of this pudgy cup. Her eyes settle on the grass far below, on the seamlessly grown over areas where legs should be but that appear to be below the ground. A glance up and out sees what must be miles of open plain.

"Rest," is a simple, soft, velvety voiced command from somewhere above. "I love you, my darling Alice, mother of my mortal infants, wife of my mortal body. Rest and dream and learn."

A drowsy haze falls over the startled mother-to-be. She sleepily flops backward, both where she lies in this indented bowl in Tubbius's belly and where she sits in her comfortable chair in the Treadwell bedroom. Likewise, in his waking, human self, Aloisius Treadwell begins to snore soundly through the night. Above the sleeping mother lying on his middle, Tubbius warmly smiles, content to watch her rest before doing anything else.

[Treadwell]

Morning of the fifth day of the fifth month.

A snoring, wet, and cold Aloisius wakes where he fell asleep: partially soaped and scrubbed, lying there in his bathtub. The smells of breakfast cooked and waiting reach his nose. He sees quickly that he is alone.

Drying off takes its usual bit of time, and soon, warmly garbed in the fluffy, velvety, bright yellow pajama jumper he wears under his Tubbian outfit, to the dining room he wobbles. His walking cane is in one hand while the other rests on his belly, and there he finds Alice and their two round-bodied children--nearly two years old, and he missed most of their last five months of life!--and one of their servants working on getting the two little ones fed. A happy smile crosses Aloisius's face; food is put away in very short order.

It is after the meal, when the children are put in their bed and the parents are left alone in their room (with Tready's tub having been drained and set aside by some of the multitude of their house staff), when questions arise.

"Aloisius. . . What do you mean telling me all this last night? What do you mean showing me. . . showing me a big, fat belly in the middle of nowhere? What was I looking at? You scared me, Allie, and terribly!"

At that, the Tubbian leader toddles over, joining his wife where she sits in a fresh gown on the bed. He snuggles close, wrapping an arm around her broad body and leaning his head against her shoulder.

"My love, mmph mmph, I showed you what Tubbius really looks like. In the last few months, I've come to understand, you see, hmm hmm, that this--" he picks up her hand and rubs it upon his belly; her fingers smush and catch on the Rings of Tubbius pooching visibly through the pajamas--"is all a very peculiar, quaint, little costume. I live there, as Tubbius, completely attentive to my followers whenever I'm asleep and dreaming here, and, mmph mmph, I live here as your fat, lovable, elderly hubby all the rest of the time!"

"So you're two people?"

"In a manner of speaking, I suppose." A pause in speech allows the tummy rub to continue gently. "I was an actor when I was a young man, dearest. I've told you, hmm hmm?"

Alice nods her head, listening.

"It's like that. I play different parts depending on when I need to."

"Tell me everything, then! Do you play. . . other. . . parts?"

"I do. Two of them."

"What are they, Aloisius? If we're to stay wed, and I'm to understand you. . . ."

A fat finger comes up to gently shush Mrs. Treadwell's lips.

"Shhhh. None of that. I've not deceived you, my darling, mmph mmph. I just didn't know before a few months ago!"

Another slow nod. "What others, Allie? Are they terrifying? Do you do. . . dreadful things?"

"They're quite harmless! One is a gigantic, well, monstrosity, half like a snail and half like a man, but with great, big, gluttonous mouths all around his middle. He floats in his own mushy sea of ale and food, always eating, but never filling up, and always--always--getting rounder and rounder!"

A laugh, though one a little nervous, erupts from Alice. "That sounds a little like you!"

"Indeed! He is called, simply, the Glutton."

"He has no proper name?"

Aloisius shakes his head. "Merely the title."

"Very well. . . . Do I ever have to see you like that?"

"You never have to see me as anything other than the fat, old, lovely fellow sitting here now."

At that, Alice smushes closer to her husband. Both of them are warm and wheezy-breathed; the touch, at least, is comforting.

"The other is a funny one."

"Funny? What is it? A giant chicken like that silly costume in your closet?"

"Fussen Feathers? Goodness, no! It's a pig, oink oink!"

Another outburst of laughter shakes the mother-to-be.

"Mmph mmph! But it's a very special pig."

"Oh? Whatever makes it special, this pig must suit you well! You're a pig in everything you do and in everything you eat! I expect you any day to grow a pig tail and hooves again, like you did once!"

"Ha! Hardly, my love. This pig's name is Porcus--"

"Porcus!" Recognition widens Alice's eyes. "The pig mother?"

"The one! She waddles about her endless, muddy, wallowing hole with many of her babies seeking nourishment from her teats in tow, and many more growing in her middle waiting to be born! In fact--"

"In fact?"

Tready smiles merrily.

"She's about to have a litter of them very soon. Within the month, I think, hmm hmm!"

"Aloisius Horatio Treadwell!" Alice snickers and wiggles free to her feet with a grunt, bringing her plump hands out to rest on the sides of Aloisius's belly, pat-patting it there with a wonderfully wide grin. "I grew up living next to a most devoted pig farmer. And now you tell me that you're secretly the fat hog he was praying to every morning?" A belly-shaking, infectious, rolling wave of laughter leaves Alice and Aloisius both winded and flushed, with her hands still on his stomach.

"Then soon you'll get to learn what it's like when I'm lying abed and panting and puffing and screaming, pushing a baby out of my womb! I fully expect you--want you--to have a dreadfully hard time of it, for only telling me all of this now and not sending me any letters about it while you were away!"

"Mmph! I fully think I shall likely, hmm hmm, wake up a sweaty, achey mess on several nights, my love!"

"Well! Good! Now, as long as none of this changes anything--"

"It won't, my love."

"--about us, about our marriage, about our children, about our baby coming in, what, eight months. . . . I don't have to understand everything, and you don't have to tell me, do you? Do I?"

"Not a bit."

"Then that is what I want! I'll come to your services, and I'll worship there, and I'll. . . I'll believe, as I have no choice otherwise, really. . . . But please, darling, don't bring this god business up in our normal lives?"

"My dearest, if I do, most folks would, mmph mmph, think me quite the madman and toss me in a home for the loony folks."

"There! It's settled!"

"It is, mmph mmph!"

A pause to reflect. Awareness of what she just said dawns as she goes pale once more.

"By your fat belly, Allie, I'm going to be a mother again!"

[Treadwell]

Night of the fifth day of the fifth month.

Pudgy fingers give yet another garment a flooflap to unfold it and inspect it before folding it again and tucking it into the wardrobe in Treadwell's bedroom.

Pursy breathing quickens just a little from the mostly undressed Aloisius standing near his Alice, who is at the pile of folded clothes.

"Allie?"

"Yes, my darling sweetums?"

Flaflooflap.

"You brought home enough clothes for two! I'm through everything I sent with you, and there's still a stack right there!"

"Welllllll. . . ."

More refolding and tucking away. One more flaflooflaflap!

"Allie!"

"Yes, love?"

"When I said you brought home clothes for two, I wasn't talking about your waistline! I for one know you've never been this big around, and neither have I, even when I was pregnant with our babies!"

"Welllllll. . . ." The Tubbian shuffles back and forth on his flat, fat feet. He absently begins rubbing at his belly.

Alice turns at this and holds the great big yellow pajama jumper up to her husband, pressing her hands to his shoulders and squinting. "This has to be for a man who must be a hundred pounds bigger, Aloisius! Is that your divine plan, to grow fat enough to wear this?"

Tready here reaches up to take the pajamas in his hands. "This is how I found out who and what I really am, dearest."

"You. . . By wearing another man's night clothes?"

"By wearing my night clothes, love!"

Alice here flumps huffily onto one of the two rocking chairs in the room; both were custom-carved by Aloisius for the Treadwells' enormous frames. With that, she starts to rock.

"I'm not understanding you. If I went to see, say, your man Jack Alldale's wife, and I tried to squeeze into that tiny little thing's nightgown, it wouldn't make me any smaller!"

"Ooooooh, shush, love!" Treadwell gives his beloved a warm, face-jiggly smile. "I must explain something. On my travels with Jack to Westenford, we found an old church, abandoned for some time. We were snowed in, so we decided to stay there and explore, mmph mmph." Tready hands Alice the pajamas and begins getting undressed; all it means is removing the trousers and undergarments he wears at the moment.

"Allie!"

"Love?"

"What are you doing?"

"I have to show you something!"

"I've seen you naked before, dear. It's how we made our first two children!"

At that, Tready chortles happily and huffily finishes taking off his clothes. "While there, I met Lord Tubbian James Wilde--"

"Oh, Jim? He's here at the church, now, but what does he have to do with this?"

"He's nearing three hundred years old, love."

A puzzled look from Alice.

"He informed me of how Tobias, the founder of this church, had promised to return to him after two centuries of being dead, mmph mmph."

"And surely you didn't believe him!"

"Not at first, dearest, hmm hmm! Then I fell asleep!"

"And what happened then, Allie? Did you have a bad dream?"

"Actually, love, hee hee! I had a very good one. I quite literally woke up a new man, changed in soul, mind, and body, mmph mmph!"

"Body? You jest."

"Hardly! My body was that of Tobias himself!"

"Oho!" A laugh escapes Alice, who shakes her head.

"And I found a letter from him to me--his great-great-grandson, hmm hmm."

"And how do you know you weren't reading something meant for someone else?"

"Because I am truly full of, mmph mmph, divine power now, love. Might I show you what my great-great-grandfather looked like? I waddle about in his body from time to time, hmm hmm, and I wore it for a good long while when I first changed."

"Allie. . . how many more surprises do I get from you?"

"None at all other than this, love."

A huff of a sigh. "Go on. If it will make you happy."

Treadwell sighs, himself. A moment's closing his eyes in silent meditation finds the flabby, poochy rings in his belly gleaming golden. That light floods the room quickly, leading to a startled gasp from Alice. When both can see again, there stands, naked, holding his pajamas, the transformed Treadwell: there is the newly fluffier beard, there are the hangy-droopy jowls, the hooked nose, the much more enormous belly and behind. A stretching of his neck and tilting of his head back reveals the ample flabbiness under his throat increased, and his beady little eyes shine piggily and dark. When he speaks, it is in that pipey, whistly, years older voice of Tobias.

"Well, darling, mmph mmph?" He toddles over, still naked, draping his pajamas over his arm and leaning in to squooshily hug his wife. "What do you think?"

"Good heavens, Allie!" Up come Alice's hands, rubbing here, jiggling there, tickling elsewhere and setting Tready to laughing. They find their way up to his newly plush and cloudy beard.

A smile slowly warms her face.

"For all the nagging I give about you getting too big, Aloisius, love. . . ."

"Yes yes?"

"Something in me--I don't know what, but something!--feels perfectly wonderful about all of this! It's as if I'm. . . oh, you'll find this silly."

"What is it, dearest?"

"It's as if I'm. . . as if I've seen you like this before."

"Oh, love?"

"Mm-hmm." A pause. "Like how I know you've a mole right. . . here?" She brings a plump finger up to poke under a particularly pudgy plot of flesh under Tobias's arm. The changed Tobias lifts that arm, and, sure enough, there in the light is a familiar (to the both of them, to Alice's surprise!) blotch of brown.

"And you've another here--" she wobbles upright and toddles around, lifting some of the fleshiness of his right breast (much to his squeaky-voiced hilarity!) to reveal another mole tucked away. After that, though, Alice Treadwell freezes in fear before throwing herself into her bodily altered husband's squooshy arms.

"What does this mean, Allie?"

The startled, naked Tubbian forefather wheezes a breath, then wraps his arms around his current beloved wife.

"I don't have a clue, mmph mmph! But I'll find out! Until then, just in case. . . mmph mmph. . . to see if you know anything else, I'm staying in this fat body and staying here at home!"

[Treadwell]

Night of the fifth day of the fifth month.

This night, despite her uncertainty about her knowledge of little things about Aloisius's suddenly enlarged and transformed body, Alice Treadwell finally dozes off to sleep cuddled up against that newly blubbery mass. Tready-Tobias, though, stays awake a few moments longer, studying his wife in the darkness before he, too, nods off.

But, as with every night since he awakened to his divine station, he finds himself back in the even greater sized shape of one of the three bodies he'd briefly described to his beloved Alice: this time easing into his planted, rooted, grass-loving and tummy-rolling Tubbius.

There lying, sleeping, cuddled in the same position as she lies in bed, is Alice, resting in one of the warm, pudgy dips in his belly.

"What is it about you, dearest Alice? You seem to know little things, now that you've seen me in my other flesh. . . ."

Beady Tubbian eyes squint to study Alice Treadwell's sleeping spirit with the same scrutiny they gave the ghost of Jack Alldale a little over a month earlier. The Great Belly reaches up a hand to rub his eyes, and then the attention intensifies. After a few moments, Tubbius frowns. She seems healthy at first, but, with further examination, there is an announcement.

"You look drab and drained, my love. You look hungry and thirsty, mmph, as if you are a babe in need of nourishment. But you sleep. You cannot feed as a Tubbian must in your sleep!"

Tubbius crosses his great, jiggly arms over his chest, and he is none too subtly reminded by a pinch of nipples under his fingers of the growth therein that started about a month and a half prior, in mortal time, before his Marta had their newest babes. It was when she warned him that their followers had been arguing and debating over what their two married deities could do. It brings a chuckle to his voice and a jiggliness to his body, and then he lowers his arms, glancing down past his enormously pillowy white beard.

"But all the same, Alice, it is quite as if you are missing something. I just need to understand what that something is!"

[Treadwell]

Night of the fifth day of the fifth month, turning to morning.

So it goes that Tubbius sits there, watching Alice sleep curled up in a fatty dip in his stomach. She seems very much an enigma, this woman who snores and wheezes in her rest. To Tubbius, whose focus is on the outside of a body--its girth, its ruddy and florid appearance, its jiggly frame--this wonderfully, blessedly large mother-to-be looks like she is missing something. But what?

"You know, Old Belly, that you could just ask her what's wrong." Thus comes the familiar, elderly squeak of Tubbius's now favorite, scholarly son as Libri appears a short distance away and huffily toddles over.

"Hmm hmm? What say you, my boy? Now, come here, lad, and let your old Poppa give you a hug!"

"Of course, of course! It's not as if you can get up and walk over here to me with your roots grown fat and wide! When is the last time you even tried to turn yourself about in place?"

At that, Tubbius chortles and looks down at himself. "Ooooh, mmph mmph, I'm rather content sitting here, my boy, feeding on the worship and delight of my faithful!" He thus reaches up an arm to put it around his white-bearded son's gut, pulling the fat academic close. "Now, you know and I know that Alice here is my mortal beloved, and, yet, hmm hmm, since she's seen me as Tobias, she seems to know things about me already."

A snore lightly rumbles from Alice herself; she rolls gently up against the sleeping Tobias in their bed and simultaneously repositions herself in the Great Belly's gut.

"Dear old man, that little woman is asleep. You've poked about in her dreams before, a month ago--"

"And made her pregnant, mmph mmph!"

"Yes, yes. A trifle. You've poked around in her head before, 'Poppa,'" which gets a happy chuckle from Libri as he mimics Tubbius's earlier naming of himself, "and you can do it again. If you would, you might learn something."

"You speak as if you already know a thing I don't."

"I study, Old Tum-Tum! I study things that don't belong to me!" Libri reaches around his arm, nowhere near hoping to encircle his immense father's body, and offers a happy tickling to, instead, Tubbius's lower back, which sets Tubbius to hoo-hahing in laughter and quivering all about. "You usually focus only on what's important to you, dear Father, and that means their bellies and behinds!"

Alice snores long and deep, snuggling up for warmth but sleeping on through the uproar.

"Take a peek, and see what she dreams, but briefly. I think it will solve your dilemma."

At that, Tubbius gives a snort and a few last huffs of breath as he slowly relaxes. Gently settling a fingertip behind Alice's head, he makes a simple request. "Let me in, Love." With that, in his mind's eye, what he sees and feels changes.

Always remaining the Great Rooted Belly on the Plain, at least in a dim and faraway sensation in the back of his mind, Tubbius lets his immediate perception shift as Libri breathlessly plumps down beside him. His body and point of view alter remarkably in moments as he nudges in on the dreams of Alice Treadwell.

To him, he now stands on two feet, wearing a green gown and staring into a polished mirror in a sunlit bedroom. A gown? The hair up top is different, currently silvery with a hint of brown remaining, tied back in a bun with string, and there is no beard at all. Middle age creaks the bones as this body sways gently side to side, the green gown swishing lazily about, and then there's a tilt forward with a merry smile barely showing through the polished metal of the mirror.

This face is, of course, female, although it's not that of Alice Treadwell. Instead, Tubbius, through this woman's body, can't help saying, as if scripted, "Lucy, you've not much longer!" And with that, she waddles a step forward, resting her hands on her stomach and glancing downward dreamily. She knows that there is a baby in there, growing--and growing! Most of her clothes fail to fit her, now, for she's been eating just like her tubbily fat old husband and all his fellow priesthood! "That baby must be a boy," Tobias had even joked, "for no girl would want to eat that much at a setting!" So, with that in mind, the two of them had settled on a proper name for the infant who was well on his way--a month or so off, now. And, "Oomph!" a bump from within leads Lucinda Treadwell back to her bed, rubbing at the babe within her belly. . . .

And so Tubbius returns to his normal, godly perspective, his wobbly jowls loose and slack. He can't help but to rub innocently at his own belly for a moment before he gently shakes his head and peeks at Libri.

"She's dreaming about being my old wife, Lucy!" comes out in a hushed whisper.

"She's not dreaming, Old Tummy." A pause before Libri gently prods a fat finger into his father's side. "She's trying to remember."

"You're saying that my Alice is my old Lucy, mmph mmph?"

"No other."

"But what of Lucy's ghost in the church?"

"A fragment. A residue. May I, Father?"

Tubbius slowly, hesitantly nods his head. Libri smiles, pat-pats his father's backside, and raises his hands a touch. There in those hands appears the confused, frightened, oblivious shade of Lucy Treadwell in his hands, still hunting her Tobias and a place to lie down so she can deliver.

"This was a rather traumatic moment for her, Old Tubby Tummy. Can you blame her wanting to leave this slippery bit behind? Allow me to make your Alice whole again. She won't remember everything at once, but she'll certainly be receptive to knowing more as you share it."

Another sloooow nod later, Tubbius finds himself watching as Libri gently pokes and nudges the sleeping Alice to straighten her body, and, then, like a baker kneading dough, gently rubs and smushes the shade he holds into her frame. There are no cries of distress, no laments, no tears. There is instead a smile that easily slides onto Alice's face as her dream form grows a little rounder and more rotund to accomodate its missing stuffing of sorts.

"There, there, Old Belly. That wasn't too difficult, was it?" Libri grins warmly up at Tubbius, who, beaming, returns the look. "Pop-Pop Tummy, you get yourself a little rest for once. I shall be watching over your plain and your blessed self for a short while, and you and your mortal wife wake fat and pleasantly happy!"

[Treadwell]

Morning of the sixth day of the fifth month.

It's rainy in this corner of Myrken Wood as the snoring Tobias awakens beside his quietly yawning Alice.

"Allie. . . ."

"Yes, love? Mmph mmph."

"I had the oddest dreams last night."

A quiet chuckle barely contains itself as it escapes from the rotund old man in the yellow pajama jumper.

"Oh?"

"I dreamt I was younger and plumper than I am now, dearest, but that I was much further along with a baby."

"Odd indeed." With that, Tobias rolls a little his left, snuggling against his beloved and bringing a hand to her belly.

"I dreamt that I was calling myself 'Lucy.' I don't know a Lucy."

"Well, to be honest, you certainly do!" Another chuckle shakes the gelatinous stomach.

"I do?"

"Love, we both seem to have learned in the night that you, mmph mmph, were wed to me centuries ago, as a woman named Lucy."

Alice's eyes narrow a touch, and then she reaches up to rub their watery selves. "You're joking" is said about as flatly as it could be.

"Not a bit. What purpose would I have for lying?"

Alice pauses to think a moment here. "I don't know of one. . . . Toby--err, Allie. . . ." She blushes. "This is maddening. How do you keep everything clear?"

"I manage!"

"Then we're staying here today, the two of us, in this bedroom, and you're helping me clear it all up!"

[Treadwell]

Night of the sixth day of the fifth month.

This morning, Aloisius Treadwell, who still merrily wobbles about again in his recently reformed body that once belonged to his ancestor Tobias, was told by his beloved wife Alice that he was going to stay with her in their bedroom and help her straighten everything out regarding Tobias, Lucy, and their past together.

So that's just what he did! Wearing his yellow pajamas and lying beside her in bed the entire day, he patiently explained everything: their much earlier marriage, their life together at the Tubbian church Aloisius had recently spent some time visiting on his way to Westenford, and Lucy's eventual pregnancy and passing during her delivery.

All of this was occasionally interrupted by servants bringing meals at the usual times, servants who marveled at their newly grown and changed employer but who were put at least somewhat at ease with assurance of these changes being a benevolent sort of magical blessing from Tubbius.

Alice, in the end, as night falls in Myrken Wood, is amused and a little annoyed as she rests beside her overgrown, altered husband. "So, that's everything?" she asks as she rubs at her belly with one hand and brings her other hand to rest on her husband's breasts (larger than her own at the moment!).

"The most of it, mmph mmph!"

"I still don't know if I have to believe it."

"You might as well, love. It's the truth, hmm hmm!" Tobias chuckles where he wheezily rests, then wriggles over a little closer to Alice.

"I usually believe things I can see, Allie."

"But you can see me!"

"I can't see me! I can't see what you've been talking about all day!"

Tobias smiles warmly as an idea comes to him.

"Oooooh, that can be arranged, love! Do you. . . would you want to see?"

At this, Alice worms herself upright in their bed. "Are you suggesting that you could make me look like this Lucy woman?"

A nod and a chuckle escape the reclining Tubbian. "I know I could, mmph mmph."

"For just a little while?"

"As short a time or as long a time as you would like, my darling!"

There is a pause from the elderly woman sitting up in bed. After a moment, there is desperation.

"Aloisius, I have to know! All day, I've listened to your babbling, thinking that it makes sense, but I'm just a fat, old woman! I'm nothing magical!"

To that, Tobias huffs and groans to his feet and, stooped somewhat, waddles around the bed to Alice, reaching out to embrace her and help her to her feet. As they stand there on the rug beside their bed, he smiles broadly and steps back just enough to help her remove her nightgown.

She stands there, perplexed, of course, quivering in uncertainty.

"You'll want to take this off, mmph mmph. As Lucy, you'll find you're a bit heavier, love!"

Off the gown goes, dropped onto the bed, and thus Tobias toddles forward again, their bellies meeting as he wraps her in his arms for a hug and a kiss. The room then glows golden with magical light centered from the Rings of Tubbius at his belly.

[Treadwell]

Night of the sixth day of the fifth month, continued.

As Jack Alldale's warbly voice wobbles out, "All is way-elllllll!" from somewhere down the road, the golden light fades in the Treadwell bedroom. The two people at the middle of that light are both lightly a-huff of breath, leaning into each other for comfort and support.

Tobias is merrily chuckling. At the height of the brilliant gleam of magic centered from his stomach, he felt a very obvious plumping and swelling of his wife under his embracing arms, with his own squooshy tummy being mushed inward a touch to make room for her growing body.

The changed Alice Treadwell--changed to resemble this Lucy she has learned much about in the last day--wheezes and puffs as she lifts her head from her husband's shoulder and toddles back a step. Apart from the greatly grown heaviness, which she stands there studying mutely and wide-eyed, she feels. . . not young, but younger. As she gets her breath back, she takes a few steps toward the blurry sheet of polished metal that passes for a mirror in their room. Meanwhile, Tobias goes toddling about, lighting lamps throughout the room that cast a dim orange glow.

"Mercy!" Her aged voice is a little less strained and squeaky; before the mirror stands a woman in the early, salt-and-peppered-hair years of middle age as opposed to the elderly matron in her sixties of a few moments ago. "Allie, I'm fat!" She giggles at this, putting her hands on her belly and turning a little from side to side.

"Yes, my love, and quite beautiful, mmph mmph!"

From her belly to her face her hands go, rubbing gently on the fleshy cheeks that are a touch less wrinkled but a bit more puffy-jowly.

"So this is Lucy?"

"Mmhmm!" Over Tobias creakily walks, wrapping himself around his Lucy from behind.

"Beautiful, indeed!" A pause to think, and then, "Why, I could stay like this for a day or two, could I not? Just to see what it's like?"

"As long as you like, beloved!"

"But--but I have no clothes for it!"

"Ooooooh, I can fix that! A little bit of thought put into things, and I should be able to do something about one of your dresses or gowns, mmph mmph."

"Wonderful! And--and no one here knows what I look like or who I am, like this?"

"Nor I. Why, we could toddle about town on our fat little feet, and no one would know a thing about who we are!"

She turns her head to beam a grin at her "Toby!" This naming throws her for a moment as it gets a splendidly wide smile from the man behind her. "That's what you called me, Lucy, love, mmph mmph. And, by the way, 'Lucy' is short for 'Lucinda.'"

"Oh!"

"Only any Tubbians we meet might know or suspect who we are. And we'll need to go about on foot, of course. Taking the carriage would be too obvious. . . although I suppose, hmm hmm, we could say we're visiting friends of the Treadwells, mmph mmph!"

"Perfect! I--I want to do it! Tomorrow! I want to see what people think!"

Tobias chortles and rubs a hand up and down her flabbily rolled hip. "They'll think, hmm hmm, that we're here to eat 'em out of house and home, darling! But I suppose we can go make the baker a very happy man!"

His wife's reaction catches the portly Tubbian priest by total surprise. Alice has never really enjoyed sweets, but to the Lucy standing before him, this is certainly a different matter. She pipes out a joyous, "Yes! Yes! Please!" that sets both of them to belly rolling laughter into the night.

[Treadwell]

Afternoon of the seventh day of the fifth month.

This day has been short but hurriedly eventful for the transformed Treadwells. With a touch of magical resizing for some of Alice's clothes to fit her newly much stouter frame ("From fat to fat! Look at me, Toby!" she chirped in the morning on awakening, giving her stomach a slap to each side.), the two of them crafted a quick story about being some of Aloisius's relatives from outside of town who were possibly intending to move in with him and Alice but were "quite certainly going to stay at home and out of sight most of the time."

Then, with this new Lucy dressed in a somber black dress and white bonnet and Tobias wearing a matching suit, away they went to the nearest baker with bellies rumbling. This baker happened to be a Tubbian, himself, and once he realized who these two individuals were, he was put under strict orders to contain himself and stay quiet, as this was a most necessary relief from everyday affairs.

The tubby little baker agreed and gave them free access to everything they wanted for the day.

Now, with the man's stores nearly fully emptied, the pair of portly folks find themselves back in their bed for an afternoon nap, with her dressed in a gown and him clothed in one of his usual pajama jumpers.

"Tobias, darling," Lucy coos as she cuddles up to her huffy-breathed husband, "that was silly and fun! I don't know of a time I've ever stuffed myself like that on sweets! Why," she pauses to rest one hand on both of their gurgling middles, "I ate like a pig!"

Tobias's face merely slips into a grin as the drowsy Tubbian slips a hand under hers. "I should know, love, mmph mmph! I'm quite the expert on pigs, with good reason!" With those words, he reaches out a fat finger to poke Lucy in the belly button with a cute little, "Oink!", prompting more merry laughter from the pair and easing them both off toward an afternoon's sleep.

[Treadwell]

Afternoon of the seventh day of the fifth month.

Aloisius and Alice Treadwell, transformed physically into Aloisius's ancestors Tobias and Lucy Treadwell, spent a good portion of the day, as Alice put it, eating like pigs at the local bakery. On returning home, they joked briefly about such before nodding off for a nap together.

What else would Aloisius slip into in his dreams, then, but to the muddy, slop-food-covered fields of Porcus?

This time is different from his other visits to this shape, though. This time, the porcine mother finds herself caught up in laborious agony as she toddles slowly through the sludge, her usual retinue of fat piglets scurrying after her. A squeal escapes her tusked jowls as she feels a mighty bump from within, and there she slumps, huffily breathing as she hears a familiar rolling laugh and squeaking voice: that of Libri the scholar, who stands a few feet away up to his knees in a muddy mess.

"Poppa. . . Glutton. . . I guess we do have to remember that this is your first time birthing more piggies again since you came back to your senses!"

The pig rolls her eyes up at her round-bodied, scholarly son who is stroking her fur along her middle.

"It's simple, you know. Let me remind you, you great, fat, motherly pig! You're always pregnant--this you know!--and, well, with that comes the need to not only bear children when your babes in the world do but to birth those children, too!" Another whump from within the great sow sets her to wheezing and squeeeeeeing! "My, my, my! You are a big one, aren't you? Either way, you don't just have them all at once, you know. You'll have this litter now, and the rest will stay in you safe and snug and sound 'til they're due to come out--in about another month, but you'll surely be carrying more to go with them 'tween now and then!"

Another squeeee shakes the piggie before him!

"Oh, don't take it so hard!" A belly laugh shakes the scholar. "Lie still and enjoy yourself! You've done this thousands of times, and you know it. Now, shhhhhh!"

So the time passes until the young are born of their still nervous, still pained, great mother, who will immediately, sleepily flop to her side to allow them room to feed. And, as Libri noted, Porcus stays aware all the while of more little piglets being formed somewhere, piglets mirrored spiritually in her endlessly productive (and expulsive) womb.

Aloisius Horatio Treadwell, however, still in the guise of his ancestor Tobias, wakes soaked in cold sweat, shivering and shaking in his bed despite being curled into the warm, flabby body of his enlarged wife. To his feet he toddles achily, a hand going to his behind that mimics, phantom-like, in its throbs the pains of Porcus's labor and birth.

His best remedy for this situation is a hastily poured mug of ale from a cask in the corner of his room. . . and then another mug. . . and then a third! Then, back to bed he wobbles, flumping back into place without disturbing his beloved too much.

Luckily for Treadwell, the rest of his evening's sleep is much more relaxing for him: though his dreams again take him into the ever-maternal Porcus, this time the pig is blessed with a long, easy rest in cool mud with her many babies snuggled up close and warm.

So it is that Aloisius snores on into the night, finally beginning to relax. Tomorrow, the eighth, will be a very busy day--a day of returning him and his wife to their proper bodies with ease, and a day of hurrying about town checking in with his subordinates about the taxes collected in recent months during his absence.