chapter 4 - the forest stuffing

I approached the cafe and checked my phone. “I’m at the table in the back corner” she said. As I walked up to the table, I laid my eyes on her for the first time. Beyond her radiant, black curls laid piercing blue eyes that looked at me with a certain kindness. She was wearing a simple, floral dress that accentuated her general calming aura.

“Hi…uh…I’m…”

“You’r e in the right place don’t worry.” She said with a small chuckle. “I’m SpringTime aka April.” She said with a slight southern accent.

“I’m LionBread aka Ryan.”
“I guess I know where your name comes from now.” I laughed. “What’s the 42 for?”

“I thought 420 was too on the nose” she said with a somewhat devious smile. “Is your name just a sound-a-like of your real name? Like Ryan the Lion?”

“Yeah and my last name is Baker so…”

We talked about ourselves for a little while. She was in a sorority. She was an avid churchgoer. She was studying public policy to hopefully make a difference. I had comparatively little to say about myself. I said I was focused mostly on trying to finish my thesis in mathematics.

“Oh wow! I could never! What drew you to math?”

“I find it beautiful I guess. It just always felt like a deep expression of the universe and I had to follow it.”

She smiled. “Niiice. It’s good to find beauty in your life! Beauty is all that’s left when all the bullshit is cut away.”

We talked for awhile longer, with me feeling like I wasn’t interesting enough. When we got up to leave, I was sure this was the end of this little adventure in feedism. Then she asked me “do you want to go to pond right now?”

I graciously said yes. I knew that more private conversations could happen outside cafes. We arrived at a small outcropping off the forest path where large rocks were assembled as if someone had been there before.

“So, I have something if you want it…” she said as she pulled a small bag of cookies out of her backpack.

“Oh! Uh, thanks!”

“Don’t feel pressured to take it if you don’t want it! I just figured that maybe you needed something besides what we had at the cafe…”

Without acknowledging what she said, I opened the bag and began eating one of the cookies. She shot back an excited smile, “oooh! I was right!”

“My appetite is out of control these days. I’ll take all I can get…”

She shot up, “is that right? I also have some cinnamon rolls if that’s the case…”

I nodded as I began to tear into the second cookie. She took a six pack of cinnamon rolls from here bag as she moved to sit down right next to me. After I finished the second cookie, she tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to see a cinnamon roll in front of my face. I instinctively took a bite out of it from her hands. She smiled, checked to make sure no one was looking, and placed her other hand on my stomach.

“Ooh! You’re certainly getting doughy! No way you felt like this when you started!” I continued eating the roll. “Oh my god! I can feel your stomach expanding! Wow!” I smiled at her and moved back to eating my cookies. She just looked at me with this face of pure joy as I worked my way through all the cookies and she fed me three more cinnamon rolls.

“Oh my god! You’re so bloated now! Tight as a drum!” I looked down and immediately noticed the pain of my pants digging into my stomach. My belly was protruding noticeably under my shirt. I looked back at her and asked “want to see?”

“Yesss, so badly! But not here. I’m getting nervous someone will pop out of nowhere!”

“I live alone. Mind going to my place?”

“Promise not to murder me?”

I nodded.

She stared at my belly. “Dope!”