The Belly of the Sorceress

Chapter 1

Deanna was one of the most powerful and accomplished magic workers of the city of Holme, and therefore of the whole land of Nemnis. Her speciality was weather magic, of which she would one day be proclaimed the world’s most adept practitioner. The secret to her success was the fierce intelligence of her mind – and also, the ravenous excess of her appetite, because the source of her power was gluttony. All magic workers required sensation in order to practise their art, and in her case, the sensations that activated her prodigious gifts were those of the feast: a succession of delightful flavours passing through her pretty mouth, combined with the gathering warmth and weight of an oversized meal within her, and – best of all, though these days it took a substantial amount of time and effort to achieve – the glorious discomfort of a mighty stomach when stretched beyond its enormous capacity. As a child and adolescent, Deanna had often been made to feel ashamed of her greed, and she still remembered the joy of her first realisation that it was through greed that she would realise her full potential as a sorceress. For her, overeating was not just a way of life. No, the truth was that she was at her most powerful when struggling to contain a veritable mountain of delicious food.

Today, however, the sorceress had had only two customers by mid-afternoon, and she was feeling a little under-nourished: all that she had eaten since breakfast (her customary breakfast of a large bowl of porridge followed — after two or three helpings of bacon and eggs and a stack of fried bread — by an even larger plate of pastries) was the whole roast chicken demanded by her first spell, to bring a shower of rain to a particular village near the southern borders of the country, and the three pounds of sweet dumplings demanded by her second spell, to protect a merchant vessel against storms on its forthcoming voyage. Well, then there were also the numerous well-buttered bread rolls that she had eaten with the chicken, and the generous quantities of cream and sugar in which she had submerged the dumplings — but those things hardly counted, being only accompaniments. To count them as part of her day’s intake would be like counting the box of chocolates that she had grazed on throughout the morning, or the five cinnamon buns that she always had with her 11am coffee.

The truth was that, although there was no denying that — in strictly objective terms — she had overeaten quite spectacularly, there was a great subjective distance between the feeling of having eaten a very large quantity of food and the feeling of having stuffed oneself very nearly to the point of exploding. To reach the blissful discomfort of the latter state with a stomach like Deanna's required that one do more than merely overeat: it took hours of determined gorging, which was something for which the day had simply not afforded her the opportunity. To put it bluntly, Deanna couldn’t escape the thought that she should have been eating more – that she truly deserved to have eaten more. She knew that she was already carrying enough food within her to give three or four heavy eaters of the normal sort the most appalling indigestion — but she was far from being a heavy eater of the normal sort. How could she be expected to do her job on such meagre rations? An hour after she had swallowed the last of the dumplings and drunk the last few mouthfuls of sugar and cream from the basin in which they had been served, she had begun to be visited, not by the agonising stomach pain that would have plagued any normal person after such a quantity of food, but by nagging and regretful thoughts of the treats that she might have eaten, had more customers required her services. Reclining in her chair, Deanna dreamt of sandwiches so tall that they had to be taken apart to be eaten, of golden-crusted pies, domed like her own bounteous belly, of overflowing plates of noodles, of stews big enough to feed a whole hunting party — of chocolates by the spadeful, of stacks of pancakes shining with syrup, of waffles piled high with sundry toppings, and pudding after pudding after pudding — all the while stroking what she could only think of as her poor, neglected stomach, whose prospects of being stuffed to the absolute brim appeared to diminish with every passing minute. In her mind, she filled a great serving bowl with mashed potatoes, gravy, and breaded pork, and gorged herself until her belly ached and her jaw muscles were exhausted. In her mind, admirers clustered round her to massage her straining abdomen and spoon desserts directly into her mouth — every one of them passionately convinced that she deserved to be fed to her absolute limit.

At last, the sorceress could tolerate these thoughts no longer, and shut up shop to pay a visit to the inn up the road, leaving a handwritten sign in the window to explain where she could be found. On the way, she passed the neighbouring shop where Drian – a famous healer whose magic was said to have a sexual source – plied his trade. She glanced at her reflection in the leaded glass window – a definitively large woman, despite her short stature – her belly and breasts bulging proudly in front of her like the sails of a splendid ship, her bottom not quite balancing them out behind (large though it was). She was proud of her curves — and rightly so, for they were the fruit of a very conscious decision to overeat. For her, there was a distinct satisfaction in falling asleep each night knowing that she had eaten, not merely enough, but too much — and, moreover, she made a point of gorging herself absolutely senseless whenever the inclination took her. And right now, that inclination was most definitely taking her.

Today, the sorceress somehow knew, would be the perfect day for putting her darling belly through its paces. So what if work hadn't provided her with an opportunity for the epic binge that a woman with her appetite and abilities was rightfully owed? She would take matters into her own chubby hands.