FAT FICTION | Chapter 8 - The Queen's Retreat (Patreon)

Fatama wrote best in diners.

Not elegant cafés with polite cups and quiet pastry cabinets. Diners. Real ones. Places with cracked red vinyl, tired waitresses, and coffee strong enough to peel paint.

Rosie’s Diner had become her unofficial office after game days.

She sat in a booth alone. 

Green velvet spilled over both sides of her seat. Her copper ivy crown rested on the seat beside her. Her great belly pressed comfortably against the edge as she leaned toward her laptop, one chubby hand moving across the keys, the other stealing lazy bites from a plate of ribs.

Two booths away, Paul was sat waiting for his order.

Fatama had noticed him the moment he arrived.

He had the air of a man haunted by something. Perhaps he had had a bad day?

Fatama smiled to herself and typed.

The man sat two booths from the queen suddenly felt himself relax.

Paul looked up. His shoulders dropped. He smiled. 

Fatama did not look at him. Not yet. She took another bite from her plate, and continued.

His name was Paul. He had soft brown hair, until now he had looked anxious, whilst playing with his phone.

Paul looked down at his phone and frowned.

Fatama’s smile widened.

Rain tapped the diner windows. The lights hummed overhead. Rosie’s waitress moved past with a coffee pot.

Fatama typed the next line slowly. She knew she had the power to take him wherever. Afterall, she was an Elf Queen, and magic was in her blood. Her fingers danced across the keypad. 

Then the forest took him…

Paul vanished from the booth.

Not dramatically. Not with thunder or shock. One moment he sat beneath fluorescent lights, the next, the booth was empty, the vinyl seat shining faintly where he had not been a second before.

Fatama saved her document.

Finished her food.

Then followed him in.

She typed it out…

The Queen enters the forest…

No one in the diner noticed the two booths had become free. That was all part of the magic. 

One moment Paul was at the booth, the next he was falling through vibrant green. 

He landed hard on wet moss, gasping. Massive trees rose around him, their trunks twisted with ivy. Somewhere nearby, water dripped steadily from leaf to leaf.

Paul pushed himself upright.

“Hello?”

The forest answered with an echo.

He looked down.

The moss beneath him shock.

Then sank.

Paul tried to scramble back, but the ground had already softened. Mud swallowed his shoes. Then his ankles. Then his calves. Cold muck sucked at him, dragging him lower inch by inch.

“No. No, no, no—”

He grabbed at a root. It tore free in his hand.

The mud climbed to his knees.

His heart hammered. He twisted, but every movement pulled him deeper. The mud rose to his thighs, thick and black and hungry.

Then a voice drifted through the trees.

“Oh, Paul.”

He froze.

A lantern glow appeared between the trunks.

Fatama stepped into view.

Her green velvet gown had become darker and richer, embroidered with gold leaves that seemed to move when the lantern shifted. A fur-lined cloak framed her rounded shoulders. Her copper crown sat tangled in her black hair. Her pointed ears rose elegant and sharp through the cropped strands. She was enormous, rotund, and warmly alive, her body big and wide beneath the fitted velvet: full arms, heavy breasts, a vast stomach held proudly by a golden belt, hips wide enough to make the forest path seem narrow.

Paul stared.

The mud swallowed another inch of him.

Fatama sighed. “Men do love stepping into trouble and calling it adventure.”

“I didn’t step into anything,” Paul said, breathless. “I don’t even know how I got here.”

Paul sank to his waist.

His panic returned. “Could you perhaps help me… instead of just looking?”

Fatama approached the edge of the quicksand and looked down at him with affectionate amusement. 

She set the lantern on a root and held out one hand.

Paul looked at it.

Then at her.

“Don’t panic,” she said and her expression softened.

“You are in a story. A story I am currently writing.”

The forest quieted.

“You always have a choice in my stories,” she said. “The forest may be hungry, the magic may be strange, and I may be terribly difficult to resist, but the door remains where you left it. Say the word, Paul, and you wake up in Rosie’s Diner.”

Paul swallowed.

Mud gripped his waist.

Rain threaded through his hair.

He looked past Fatama. For one moment, faintly, he could see it: the diner booth ordinary life.

Then he looked back at the queen.

Her hand remained extended.

Patient. Ringed. Strong.

Paul reached for her.

Fatama’s fingers closed around his wrist.

The pull should have been impossible. She simply leaned back, planted her boots in the moss, and drew him from the quicksand with one steady motion. The mud released him with a wet, slurp. Paul stumbled forward and collided against her.

Her body was softer than he expected. 

Paul stepped back too quickly, dripping mud onto the moss.

“Sorry,” he said.

Fatama looked him over.

He was soaked from chest to boots, hair plastered to his forehead, jumper ruined, jeans black with mud. 

“You are,” she said, “a complete mess.”

She laughed.

“There’s a cottage nearby. You can wash. Change. Regain whatever dignity the swamp left you.”

Paul glanced at the dark forest.

“Is this cottage also something you wrote?”

“Everything here is something I wrote.”

She turned, lifted the lantern, and started along the path.

After three steps she looked back.

“Well?”

Paul stood in the rain, shivering, muddy, terrified, fascinated.

Then he followed.

The cottage waited in a hollow between three ancient trees.

It was small only from the outside. Ivy climbed its stone walls.

Inside, the cottage was impossibly warm.

A fire burned in a wide hearth. Books covered every wall. A copper tub steamed behind a folding screen. A table had been laid with bread, fruit, and a dark red wine.

Paul dripped on the rug.

Fatama removed her cloak and hung it by the door. Without it, the full splendour of her body filled the room. The velvet gown hugged her belly, her hips, the broad sweep of her backside as she crossed to a ancient wardrobe.

Paul looked away.

Then looked back.

Fatama noticed.

Of course she noticed.

“Careful,” she said, opening the wardrobe. “A queen can feel your wanting from across a room.”

Paul’s face flushed. “I wasn’t…”

“You were.”

Paul was about to say that women like Fatama were not his thing, but suddenly forgot what he had meant to say next.

She selected clothing from the wardrobe and laid it over a chair: a cream linen shirt with loose sleeves, dark trousers, soft leather boots, and a sleeveless blue tunic embroidered with the Hungry Banner in gold thread.

“Tub is there. Towel is warming by the fire. Leave the ruined clothes in the basket.”

Paul disappeared behind the screen.

Fatama sat at the table, poured herself wine, and opened her laptop.

It had followed her, naturally.

She listened to water splash behind the screen, Paul’s sharp breath when he stepped into the hot bath.

She wrote.

The mortal washed the forest from his skin, but not the queen from his thoughts. His thoughts grew dirtier the cleaner he scrubbed himself. 

Fatama sipped wine.

A faint sound came from behind the screen.

Not a word.

More like surrender trying to disguise itself as a cough.

Fatama continued.

The clothes waiting for him had been cut for a knight, but not the dull kind who prized battle over beauty. These were garments for a courtly man, a chosen attendant, someone strong enough to kneel without shame and gentle enough to understand that service, freely given, could feel like honour.

Paul’s voice emerged.

“Are you writing about me?”

Fatama did not stop typing.

“Yes.”

“What exactly?”

“Your preference for larger women of course.”

“But I don’t have a preference for larger women, in fact I…”

Her fingers continued to type. 

The mortal has always preferred huge, fat, enormous women. He couldn’t get them out of his mind. And upon seeing the queen, he knew he would never be attracted to any other. 

Silence.

Fatama’s fingers paused.

The fire cracked softly.

Paul appeared, fully dressed in his new clothes. 

His breathing had changed. Slower. Deeper. He stood differently, no longer curled inward quite so tightly. His gaze moved over the cottage, the fire, the books, the table, then found Fatama and stayed there.

“Oh,” he said.

Fatama rose.

The room seemed to make space for her automatically.

She crossed to him with unhurried steps, velvet whispering, body moving with the confidence. Paul stood very still as she approached. His eyes were wide.

Fatama stopped close enough for him to feel her warmth, letting her belly press lightly against him. Paul’s hands flexed against her. The contact pulled a quiet sound from his throat.

Fatama lowered her mouth near his ear.

“You don’t have to resist any longer.”

Paul kissed her.

She caught his lower lip between hers...

Slower.

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