Chapter 1 - (fragment)

When Gwailung ascended the throne and took charge of the empire, despite his precocious wisdom and a manner to the purple born, there was one thing that he was fixated upon. Like many of that age, he was stirred during the day and awakened at night by the sight and thought of female flesh. The empire stretched from the Western Sea that has never been crossed to the vast salt deserts of the east, it extracted tribute from the tropic island kingdoms of the north and the ice-bound mining towns of the southern mountains, and all lands that lay between these four extremes. Gwailung’s hand lay over the entirety of the known world so it is no surprise that his merest whim could shape that world but Gwailung did not merely change the shape of nations. He changed the shape of the world’s women to suit his own tastes and that change has rung down through the ages, bringing about circumstances charming and grotesque, delightful and monstrous. And while it may be that Gwailung would have done this regardless of the events I shall now describe, it seems likely that the nature of today’s world owes its existence to the insomnia of an emperor and the gluttony of a scullion maid.

It was the youth Gwailung’s habit to roam his palace at night when sleeplessness was upon him, his guards following at a discrete distance so as to allow him the illusion of solitude. On the night I speak of, he found himself walking through one of the vast kitchens, big enough to shelter a small village within its walls, when he noticed a narrow door at the base of a great oven and saw within it a flight of stairs the steps of which were wet and freshly scrubbed. He heard the sound of a brush on stone from within, and mingled curiosity and mischief led the emperor to enter the doorway and make his way silently up the twisty and constricted stairs.

Turning a corner, he saw the gleam of a lantern’s light reflected off the greasy stone walls, and turning another corner he saw his fate, and that of the world. It took the shape of a pair of buttocks. They were clad in a wet gray skirt whose folds clung to the flesh beneath them and showed the motion of that flesh as their bearer leaned against a brush and scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed. She was blonde and pale, a peasant of the south, and the breadth of her hips seemed to fill the space before Gwailung from wall to wall. Fascinated, hypnotized, Gwailung stared at the woman before him and felt as though he had never seen a true woman before, that the delicately plump and lithely graceful inhabitants of the seraglio he had inherited from his father and his father’s father were no more than twigs and feathers to one who desired the mountains and the sea. He reached out his right hand and lay it against the shaking globe of flesh before him.

The woman gasped, and struggled against her bulk as she started to turn, and then froze when she saw Gwailung. Too lowly to have seen his face before, she saw in the fine quality of his robe a man far above her in status, one entitled to do with her as he would. Gwailung took note of the red cheeks and heavy, pouting, petal-pink lips of her round face, the strange pale eyes of gray-green that stared out from beneath her startled brows. “Keep scrubbing,” said Gwailung, and there was a hoarse note of concupiscence in his voice. His hand sat lightly on her buttock, riding the rhythmic shimmy as she scrubbed.

“Why are you here,” asked Gwailung, “Why do you work while the other scullions slumber?” Then he grabbed at the soft flesh and gently twisted. “Answer true,” he said sternly.

“Please, sir,” she said, “It’s because I’m so hungry, sir.” And then she slightly altered her stroke, and scrubbed back and forth, so as to move her hips towards Gwailung and then away. “There’s always so much food in the kitchen and it’s all so wonderful and I know I shouldn’t but sometimes I have to have some.” Then she moved up a step, and hitched up her skirt a little to reveal some inches of thickly larded thigh while the hand of the emperor still on her, and scrubbed side to side with an exaggerated motion that brought first one hip and then the other bumping against the constricting walls, sending another wave of motion through the rippling bulk of her hindquarters. Slyly, she said, “Sometimes I have to give in to temptation. It’s not as though I want to, I don’t want to have Mistress Keslu or the Head Butler angry with me, but my hand just reaches out and grabs something.”

Then she froze as the emperor flipped up her skirt. “Keep scrubbing,” he said, and put his other hand on her other buttock and then ran both hands down her thighs, gently gripping, and then worked one hand into the crease at the back of her right knee while his left hand ran over the startling breadth of her milk-white calf. “What are you called?” he said, and began to knead her flesh.

“My name is Ubora, sir,” she said, “just Ubora.” And then she sucked in her breath sharply as she felt a face press against her backside, a mouth open against her flesh and softly nibble.

Gwailung lifted his face from her and said, “Ubora, fat Ubora,” and then slipped a hand between her legs to cup her thickly fleshed pudendum. At this intimate touch, Ubora gasped and trembled. Gwailung felt his arm trapped between those thick heavy legs, felt the power that it took to put her mass into motion, felt the belly that hung down against the front of her thighs and gently kneaded at her until he felt a hot slick wet line against his palm and then parted her. She froze and shuddered.

“Keep scrubbing, Fat Ubora,” he said, “Your flesh enchants me, and I would see it move.” Fat Ubora bit at her lip and dipped the scrub brush into the water with a shaking hand, and knocked the bucket over.

“Sir, I’m sorry, sir,” she said as a wave of cold soapy water flowed down the stairs and wet Gwailung’s robe. “Please, I meant no harm, sir.”

Gwailung withdrew his hand and opening his robe grabbed at the globes of her buttocks and pushed at them until her sex was exposed. Touching the head of his manhood against it, he rocked gently, wetting himself a bit at a time, entering further and further into her as his hands gripped and pinched at her more and more fiercely, sinking them into the soft white fat that grew rosy under his rough, frantic caresses. Ubora grunted and rocked back to meet him, her knees digging into the wet pad of cloth that protected them from the hard stone of the staircase, her belly slapping her thighs and her breasts slapping her belly. “Fat-U-bo-ra-Fat-U-bo-ra,” Gwailung gasped her name over and over, and it echoed sharply against the stone walls, until finally he ejaculated with a shudder, pressed tight against her, and she clenched herself tight and sobbed.

Then Gwailung pulled out of her and wiped himself with the wet hem of his robe. “Ubora, you are no longer a scullion,” he said. “Come with me.” She stood and turned and looked down at him as she pulled her skirt into place. Gwailung smiled when he saw that Ubora was as fat before as she was behind, and this fatness was laid onto a body that had the great height typical of a southerner. There had to be twice as much of her as there was of him or more. Her face was knotted in fear.

“Please, sir, what do you mean?” she said, “Am I to be cast out of the palace?”

Gwailung frowned at her, and prodded her belly, watched it sway. “You will know what is to happen soon enough, Ubora.” Then he turned around and said, curtly, “Come.” When they emerged into the kitchen, Gwailung clapped his hands twice. His guard stepped forward out of the darkness, and Ubora curtsied ponderously to them.

“Most puissant and august liege,” said a guard clad in the armor of the islands of Buram, batik cloth stiffened with lacquer supporting carved plates of mother-of-pearl and bearing a trident and net. “What is your desire?”

Ubora gasped, and fell to her knees, and struggled to knock her forehead against the floor. “My emperor!” she wept, “Forgive me! I did not know!”

Ignoring her, Gwailung said “This charming lump of a girl is to be delivered to her place in the seraglio. Tell Sastumi to keep her in the expected fashion, with one exception. She is to always have two attendants by her side whose task will be to tempt her with delicacies and coax her to eat to the full extent of her capacities and beyond. Day or night, whenever she opens her mouth, there should be a morsel waiting to fill it.” Then he looked down to where the scullion crouched at his feet and spoke to her.

“Look upon my face,” he commanded, “that you know the fullness of my intent. Fat you are and fatter you shall be. You are to regard your flesh as your glory, eating as your duty, and your growth as a sacred and inevitable condition mandated by your emperor. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” said Ubora.

“Good,” said Gwailung and then he left the kitchen, followed by four of his guard. When he returned to his bed, he found himself still unable to sleep, but instead lay awake until dawn, thinking, planning, and recalling the strange, magnificent power that invested the soft voluminous cushions of flesh forming the body of Ubora.

***

“Oh, my. I didn’t believe it when Dhonea told me, and now that I see it before me, I cannot credit the sight and must deny my eyes.” Ubora looked up at the woman who spoke. She was small and dark like Gwailung, with an elaborately coiffed head of glossy black curls that glinted blue and made her seem taller than her inches. She was shaped like a temple carving, billowy breasts and buttocks linked by a slender waist, overwhelming her fine-boned figure, and she comported herself so as to make it seem as though she were thrusting her charms into the face of anyone who viewed her.

Ubora was being prepared for her new role as a concubine. Her legs, arms, the hollows of her armpits and the mound between her legs had been coated with a thick oily syrup that emitted a fragrance of rare balsams. While it hardened, the three girls grooming her rubbed at the calluses of her feet with small blocks of pumice and trimmed the ragged edges of her nails. They had already stripped her of her clothes and bathed her twice, long soaks in a tub on the surface of whose scented waters floated blossoms whose perfumes rose up with the steam until Ubora felt as though her very flesh was sweetly scented through. The maids grooming her spoke as little as possible and did not look her in the face. Ubora wondered if they disliked her and then came to realize that they were treating her with the deference she herself might have shown to an assistant cook or a chambermaid and Ubora found herself enjoying their services even more.
And then this woman, more beautiful than any Ubora had ever seen, entered the chamber where Ubora reclined on a bed of cushions, and looked at her, and laughed sweetly and cruelly, and extended a dainty hand to prod at Ubora’s belly, to see it jiggle. “It is true, then. The light in the eyes of Heaven has decided to place a barnyard animal among us and I cannot decide.” The woman poked Umbra’s belly again, this time leaving a scratch from her carmine-lacquered nail. “Is she cow or pig? She has the belly of the pig and the udders of a cow. Could we roll her over and decide to which beast her hams belong?”

“My Lady Haarami, please,” said an attendant, “We have been instructed to make Our Lady Ubora ready for the Son of the Scarlet Throne’s evening delectation, and –“

“I see, I see,” said Lady Haarami. “Ubora, you may address me as Lady Haarami. I am chief among the ladies of pleasure at the Central Palace and for as long as I must endure your grotesque presence you are to follow my every command and attend to my every whim. It’s ridiculous but for the moment you are a concubine of the Scarlet Throne and so for my part I am to give you some instruction so that you may give the Silver Lion some measure of carnal pleasure.”

Two more attendant maids came through the door, pulling and pushing on a cart loaded with bowls, trays, pitchers, and pots. Some were set in ice, others simmered over oil lamps, and the smell of meats, breads, and spices filled the chamber. The taller of the two maids bowed her head, and said, “It is the command of the Son of Heaven that we bring to our Lady Ubora these delicacies and more, and that she be given all her belly can hold.”

So saying, one maid sat down at Umbra’s head with a tray of steamed dumplings in her lap and the other took a pair of tongs and lifted a dumpling, dipped it in a sauce of deep red-brown, shook it lightly, and placed it at Umbra’s mouth. Ubora took it between her pink lips and, chewing, discovered the soft, rich dough to be filled with pork and scallop minced and mixed, while the sauce was sweet, slightly spicy, and freshly touched with ginger and scallion. She chewed, swallowed, and spoonful of soup was at her lips, dark and full-bodied from the roasted bones of fowl, thick and heavy with cassava flour, speckled with green shreds of fragrant herbs.

“When I go to the Panther of the North,” said Lady Haarami, using the name for the Emperor designated for casual use with his concubines, “he is usually laying in bed, having retired for the evening. I come in dancing, so as to excite him with the sight of my body in motion, like so,” and here she raised her arms over her head and taking tiny cross-footed steps that spun her in circles, she moved back and forth in front of Ubora, tossing her hips and shoulders so as to send fleshy oscillations through her bosom and buttocks. “Of course, were you to display the gross hillocks of your flesh in this fashion, it would be a horrid sight, daunting even the bravery of the Panther. And I doubt you have the strength to move your burdensome weight with grace. So I would recommend that you knock your head to the floor on entering, and then go to his bed on hands and knees as I have heard he found you. That may please him.”

A spoonful of soup, a mouthful of dumpling, while her other maids groomed her with gentle hands. “My lady,” said one, “I am sorry, but this will hurt for a moment.” The spoon and stick were drawn away, and the now-hardened syrup was stripped from her skin with quick ripping motions. Ubora gasped, and as her shock and pain faded, the maids gently ran their fingertips over her now-smooth flesh and Ubora found herself growing aroused by the sensation. A spoonful of soup, a mouthful of dumpling …

Haarabi continued. “While I have grown able to judge the moods and whims of the Panther of the North, his lust is most predictably aroused by teasing his mouth and eyes with the tender flesh of my body. Let me demonstrate.” With a birdlike fluttering motion of her hands she shooed the maids back from Ubora, and then stretched herself out on top of Ubora’s body as though it were a mattress. “Breast and belly, buttock and thigh, these are what he loves best,” crooned Haarabi. She placed her hands on the pillows at either side of Ubora’s head and as her breasts swung free she moved so that her nipples traced gentle curves against Ubora’s face, softly brushing lips and cheeks and brow. “Ah, were you the Panther I would feel you hard beneath me now,” said Haarabi, and she slowly lowered herself, increasing the contact of breast against face until Ubora felt as though she might smother.

Haarabi drew herself up and stretched, first this way and then that. “Oh, how he loves to look while I jiggle,” said Haarabi, and laughed as though considering the mischief of a child. “Then the belly,” she said. Her knees dug painfully into the sides of Ubora’s own belly as she leaned out further over Ubora until the pretty convexity of her midriff hung over Ubora’s face, the deep socket of her navel a little mouth waiting for a kiss.

Ubora felt strange. It was not as though she desired Haarabi but the grooming and feeding she had received had lulled her into a state of passive receptivity and now she felt a diffuse arousal. It was not the keen desire that Gwailung had awakened in her when he took her on the staircase, not a longing for release, but rather a sense that every touch, every taste and scent was erotic. It was as though the atmosphere of the seraglio was permeating her being. Haarabi was simply a part of that atmosphere and her words, her arrogance, seemed distant. Trivial. Small. Ubora unthinkingly squirmed against the painful pressure of Haarabi’s knees.

Haarabi slipped, and her belly briefly pressed against Ubora’s face until she was able to push herself up. She slapped Ubora sharply, twice. “Stay still,” she said, “do you think I find it comfortable trying to straddle you? Were you the Panther I would be kneeling on the mattress instead of having my legs forced from their sockets by your girth.” She rolled off of Ubora, and smirked. “Oh, this is funny, to think of such as you having congress at all, let alone with a charming youth such as our Panther.” She reclined on her side and said, “Now attend.” She braced herself with her arm, stretched one leg behind her, and with her free hand she patted the inside of her upper thigh. “Sometimes he rests his head here,” and then Haarabi lifted her upper leg, and lowered it, then moved it smoothly back and forth.

Ubora said nothing. Then there was the spoon at her lips, and then a dumpling. She ate without thinking, and wondered about Haarabi, and what her place would be in this new world.

Haarabi smiled at her, and then ran a hand down Ubora’s body. “Of course, you could do none of the things I have shown you. It would be dangerous; worse, ludicrous. No, I think you should rely upon your natural tendencies and make use of your mouth. Here, show me what you can do with that thick-lipped mouth of yours.”

Haarabi went to the food card and selected a white bowl divided into three parts, snow pears in three different syrups, red rose, blue borage, purple lavender. Taking a breast in her hand, she dipped a nipple in rose syrup and leaned over Ubora’s face.

Ubora opened her mouth and her tongue flicked out, nd then she fastened upon Haarabi greedily, liquid noises coming from the contact of teeth and tongue and lips with tender flesh.

“Oh,” said Haarabi, “oh, this is good.” She flushed, and smiled, and pulled her now-slick breast out of Ubora’s mouth. “You suck like a hungry baby. I will see that you are provided with an edible paste to apply to the skin of the Panther of the North. If you do that and then clean him with that greedy mouth of yours, you will please him.”

And with that, Haarabi rose and departed.