Bella Burrows's Arc

Chapter 5 of 9

The morning after the pavilion, Bella walked back to the pasture before sunrise. She wanted the half-elf to find more than he had left. She wanted him to find the biggest belly and the loudest burps she had ever made. She set up at the edge of the field where he would see her first. She wheeled a long banquet cart out from the shed and parked it beside the metal chair with the vines on its arms. The shelves held everything she could carry. Cheeseburgers stacked four high. Brine pods in glass bowls. Fizzing drinks in tall glasses. Cold soda bottles lined up like soldiers along the bottom rail. Next to the cart she set a ribbed metal podium she had dragged from the barn loft. Her father had used it once for auctioning bulls. The panels along its sides hummed when she touched them. She set a trophy cup on top, a tall thing of pink and green crystal her uncle had won at a county fair. She meant to drink from it when she beat her own record. She started eating at first light. She worked through three burgers before her belly began to push against her shirt. She drank a full soda bottle and felt the gas climb. The first burp came up loud enough to startle a crow off the fence. She kept count out loud. Four burgers. Two bottles. Her belly rounded out past where it had been the day before. By the eighth burp she was tugging her shirt up to give the skin room. She heard footsteps on the road and did not turn. She picked up another bottle and drank it down in one go. Her stomach groaned. She gripped the edge of the cart and let a burp rip out that bent her forward. She lost the count there. She tried to pick it up again and another came right after, then another. She could not stop them. They rolled out one on top of the next, each louder than the last. The metal podium picked up the sound and threw it back across the pasture. The half-elf came around the cart and stopped. His mouth opened. Bella reached for the crystal cup and could not get a word out before the biggest burp of her life climbed her throat. She let it go. It shook the cup in her hand. He laughed and crossed the grass in three steps. He put both hands on her belly without asking and pressed up under her ribs to coax the next one out. He told her to keep going. He told her she was the loudest thing in the county. Bella beat every count she had ever kept. The half-elf stayed at her side through all of it, hands on her belly, calling out each number. When she finally sat down in the vine chair, he knelt in front of her and asked what she would eat tomorrow.