Bella Burrows's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

Bella came to the roadside before the sun was high. She wanted her belly full and loud before the half-elf turned the bend. She had hauled a picnic table out at dawn and dragged it under the fence post where he could not miss it. On the boards she stacked plates of cheeseburgers from the kitchen, double patties, melted cheese, buns piled three deep. Beside the table she set up a metal rack she had bought off a peddler last spring, the kind with baskets that held dripping tubed plants and curled tentacle pods. The pods leaked salt water onto the grass. She had heard they swelled a stomach faster than anything else on the farm. She sat on the bench and started with a burger. She chewed fast and washed it down with a long pull from a fat bottle of burp soda. The label was bright and silly. The fizz hit the back of her throat and her belly answered before she set the bottle down. Burp one. She had not even started counting yet today and already she was loud. By the third burger her belt was tight. She loosened it a notch and kept eating. She bit into a tentacle pod and the brine made her eyes water. The pod went down in two swallows and her stomach pushed against the table edge. She drank again, this time from a darker bottle with a red cap she had been saving. The bubbles climbed harder. Burp four came up so sharp it rattled the plates. Burp five followed before she could close her mouth. She ran a hand under her belly and felt it sit heavy on her thighs. It was rounder than it had ever been by midmorning. She pictured the half-elf walking up the road. She pictured his hand on the side of it the way he had set it yesterday, light, waiting. She wanted the next burp ready for him before he could even sit down. She drank the rest of the dark bottle and started on another burger. By the time the sun cleared the high field she had eaten six burgers and three pods and emptied both bottles. Her belly stuck out past her knees when she sat straight. The burps came every minute now, some short, some long enough to make the sparrows lift off the rail. She lost count somewhere past fifteen. She did not try to catch it again. She leaned back against the post and let her hands rest on the curve of her stomach and waited. The bend in the road stayed empty. Then it did not. A figure stepped around it with the sun behind him, tall and lean, ears showing through his hair. Bella felt the next burp build before he had taken three steps. She let it come. It rolled out across the grass and he heard it and he smiled, and he started walking faster.