In the city of Vileswe, capitol of the Tosganwa region of the northwestern Holbytlan peninsula, there is a bronze fountain nestled in a little cross street called Tesla Lossa (“Red Chariot”) not far from the Hwatla ti Gwantoga at the side of the New Market where thet sell vegetables to the artists and their patrons, and that fountain is in the shape of a wild boar. Clear, fresh water bubbles out of the mouth of the animal, which has become dark green from age; the snout alone shines as if it were polished bright; and it is made so by the many hundred children and townsfolk who take hold of it with their hands, and put their mouths to the animal’s to drink. It is a complete picture to see that well-formed animal embraced by a pretty, half-naked halfling, who puts his sweet little mouth to its snout.* Volsolno, as the halflings call him, meaning “the big pig”, is said to bring good luck when visitors rub his snout and put a coin in his mouth. If the water washes the coin from the pig’s mouth and it falls into the grate below, the giver-and-rubber will have good luck and will be sure to return to Vileswe. If the water fails to wash the coin from his mouth, people just try again; the coins are used to support an orphanage, after all.
Volsol’ino was sculpted 330 years ago, and copies have been installed in places in the Ravenlost Penal Colony across the Plateau of Leng, the troll-ruled realm of Sjǫtrungnis, Ganatje full of ghostly expat villages living aside living indigenous villages, the unclaimed forest of Huginmathathir, and Orvad where humans trade away their freedom in order to have it. There are 2 in Natsiyaasim where everyone is descended from angels, 2 in Camugaard the frozen land of survivalist philosophers, 4 in Brobdingnag the last refuge of the giant peoples, one in each colony along the Savage Coast, and innumerable throughout the Holbytlan peninsula.
There once was a Violeswino halfling couple who could not have children. The husband blamed his wife and made her life miserable. One day the city was attacked by a band of swine-elfs (a.k.a., orcs) who were slaughtered by the Violeswino guard; sent to scavenge what was useful and dispose of the bodies, the wife of this couple saw heard a babe’s cry. Following the sound, she found an orcish baby squawling under the fallen body of its mother. She lamented to herself that this babe surely would die while she couldn’t herself bear children. Praying aloud to Hwe, the goddess who rules youth and childhood, she took the child right home with her, a slaughter-field adoption. The couple was so excited they were going to be parents, but they had no idea that the infant was no typical orc, but rather one that had been fey-touched. Nonetheless and unknowing, the couple did in fact raise him as their own beloved pet/son, and did a damn good job of it, too, by all accounts.
As the young fey-touched orc matured, he spoke with eloquence and was quite clever. Then the time came when Holbytlan culture said he should begin to think about marriage. Most of the other boys steered clear of him because they were afraid. However, one young and very poor halfling boy recognised that he was intelligent and not like his barbaric cousins that roamed Aoqina so violently ~ in short, he saw Volsol’ino as a person and not a racist stereotype ~ so he took a chance and went the whole hog – he married orc who had been raised as a halfling.**
On their wedding night***, the halfling groom was pleasantly surprised when his orcish husband shed his boar-like skin and stood in the form of a handsome young halfling man. His fey heritage had finally manifested, giving him the ability to change his shape, unconsciously chosen in response to the love of a good man. He had not known this would happen, however, so he did not know how to control it. In the daytime, he changed back into an orc – and this happened day after day.
The couple, distressed, made a secret visit on a night with no moon to a certain gnomish witch who made their home in what is now the Old Market. The witch told them that the orc’s halfling husband must promise never to tell anyone, for if he did, Volsol’ino would be forever trapped in the skin, not of an orc, but of a pig ~ and the halfling would be turned into a frog for not being able to control his tongue. It was just the way of fairies and their magics.
Well, he tried to keep the secret but the story was just too incredible and he told his mother who in turn told her friends and by nightfall everyone knew the orc’s secret. So the halfling turned into a frog and his husband was reduced to a boar. Well, “reduced” is how the Holbytlans tell it; the orcs got the way they are by seeking to emulate the Sow Mothers they worship, so it is possible they tell the story differently. None of the Violeswini have ever asked. The halfling/frog lived in the pool where the boar went to drink every day and chat with him. It is said that he came to atone for the tongue he spread wide over his city, and the result was the grippli race, but that is an entirely other story. A fountain in the form of a boar now stands in the same pool as a memorial to this doomed couple. And as a lesson that one must learn to control one’s tongue.
Many years later, I will say, on a late winter evening, the mountains covered with snow, in the Dotle’s yonder palace garden, a thousand lilacs bloomed as they did every winter, a little ragged, androgynous halfling child had sat the whole day long, under the pine-tree’s roof. They were a child that might the image of Holbytla ~ so pretty, so laughing, and yet so suffering. They were hungry and thirsty; no one had given them even the smallest coin; and when it became dark, and the garden was to be closed, the porter chased them away. They stood long on the bridge over the Olno river, dreaming and looking at the stars as they glistened in the water, between the child and the noble marble bridge, Ti Tlinita.
They bent their steps toward the fountain of the bronze hog, knelt half down, threw their arms around their neck, placed their little mouth to its shining snout, and drank a deep draught of the fresh water. Close by lay lettuce salvaged from the remains of an orgy****, and a few chestnuts: these were the child’s supper. There was not a person in the street; they were quite alone. They sat down on the swine’s back, leaned forward so that their little curled head rested on that of the animal, and, before they themself knew it, was asleep.
It was midnight, the bronze figure moved; the child heard it say quite distinctly, “Hold fast, little androgyne, for now I run!” and away it ran with them. It was a laughable ride.
The first place they came to was Hwatla ti Gwandoga, and the bronze horse which bore the statue of the Dotle neighed aloud; the variegated arms on the old Council Hall shone like transparent paintings; and the statue of the Heroic Shepherd swung her sling. It was a strange life that moved! The bronze groups with Holswus, and the “Seizure of the Savi,” were but too living: a death shriek from them passed over that magnificent but solitary place.
Volsol’ino stopped by the Halatlo ti Uvvitli, in the arcade where the nobility assemble during the pleasures of the Satolslwa.
“Hold fast!” said the animal, “hold fast! For we are now going up the stairs.” The little child said not a word; they half trembled, they were half happy.
The two entered a long gallery; the child knew it well, for they had been there before. The walls were covered with paintings; here stood statues and busts: everything was in the brightest light, just as if it were day; but it was the most splendid when the door to one of the side rooms opened. The little androgyne remembered the splendor here, yet this night everything was in its most beauteous lustre.
Here stood a beautiful naked minotaur female, as beautiful as nature and marble’s greatest master could make her. She moved her fine limbs, those strange beings from the Hemeya Sea with the front halves of rabbits and the back halves of fish played around her feet, immortality shone from her eyes. By the world she is called the “Mirtiin ti Netitli”. On each side of her were numerous marble groups, in which the spirit of life had pierced the stone. These were naked, half-formed men: the one sharpening the sword, is called the Grinder; the wrestling Gldiators form the second group; the sword is whetted, the combatants wrestle for the Goddess of Scientific Beauty.
The child was almost blinded with all this lustre: the walls beamed with colors, and all was life and motion there. The double image of Mirtiin was here seen ~ that earthly Mirtiin, so swelling and observant, whom Titwas had pressed to his heart. It was strange to see. There two beautiful genderqueers; their handsome, unveiled limbs were stretched on soft cushions, their bosoms rose, and their heads moved, so that the rich locks fell down on their round shoulders, whilst their dark eyes spoke the glowing thoughts within; but ot one of all the pictures ventured to step entirely out of the frame. The Goddess of Scientific Beauty herself the Gladiators and Grinder, remained in their places, for the glory which beamed from Natsiyaasim’s dawn-blooded founder and the angels which followed him, had bound them. The holy images were no longer images ~ they were the sainted beings themselves.
From saloon to saloon what splendor! What beauty! And the little androgyne saw it all. The bronze hog went step by step through all this magnificence and glory. But one sight superseded the rest ~ one image alone fixed itself in their thoughts: it was caused by the glad, happy children who were there on the walls: the little child had once nodded to them by daylight.
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= Astinwu, just to give you an idea of what he looks like, at leastMany, certainly, have wandered carelessly past this picture, and yet it incloses a treasure of poesy: it is Astinwu, boyfriend of one of the emperors of old, who descends into the netherworld by means of a watery grave; but it is not the tortured nor the forgotten nor the dreary shades we see around him; no, they tell of hope and immortality by means of the Beautiful Boy’s mysteries. Nahwolo Bwostlino, the Violeswino, painted this picture. The expression of the children’s certainty that they are going to be transformed into celestial beings, is excellent; two little ones embrace each other; one child stretches its hand to another below, and points to himself as if he said, “I am going to walk amongst the angels!” All the gods stand nearby, sad, the one melancholy part of the picture, as they mourn these delicious morsels who have stolen themselves away from the plate.*****
The child looked longer at this picture than at any other; the bronze hog stood still before it; a gentle sigh was heard; did it come from the painting, or from the animal’s breast? The child extended their hands toward the smiling children; then the animal started off with them, away ~ through the open front hall.
“Thanks and blessings on thee, thou sweet animal!” said the little androgyne, and patted the bronze hog, who with an amiable grunt sprang down the stairs with them. “Thanks, and blessings on thyself!” said the animal. “I have helped thee, and thou hast helped me, for it is only with an innocent child on my back that I have strength to run. Nay, I dare now enter under the light of the lamp, before the image of Natsiyaasm’s founder. I can bear thee away everywhere, only not into the temple; but when thou art with me I can look in through the open door from the outside. Do not get off my back; if thou dost, I shall fall down dead, as thou seest me in the day at Tesla Lossa.”
“I will stay with thee, my blessed animal,” said the little child; and away they went with a whizzing flight through the streets of Vileswe, and out to the open square before the temple of Nasta Gwotle.
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* No joke, this sentence is lifted with but a single excepted word from Hans Christian Andersen’s story about the pig fountain in Firenze. I exchanged “halfling” for “boy” in an attempt to tone down how creepy it read to modern people . . . .
** Yes, I am deliberately making the situation muddy. It is quite likely that the only one to see Volsol’ino as a person could only do so because he had been raised outside of orcish culture . . . which would be racist, y/n? I am uninterested in fantasy that addresses issues like racism only to give simplistic answers and shallow thought ~ I will not write such. Racism is complicated, and sticky, and often shows up to plague us just when we think we have solved it. Our fantasies can help us do better, but only if we depict it accurately and openly.
*** That said, same-sex marriages (or rather things similar enough that modern readers cock an eyebrow) existed within the Christian church(es) from the 8th, maybe the 2nd, all the way until the 16th. Well, for men anyway. Read John Boswell’s Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe for the same introduction to such that I got. Accordingly, none of the gossip accompanying the marriage involved in the gender of the grooms. Just their race.
As the sticker on my computer says, being queer doesn’t give you a free pass to be racist.
**** Of course my Roman-inspired halfling culture has orgies, but more importantly: lettuce was considered an aphrodisiac throughout the Ancient Near East, from Khemet (Egypt) to Kiengir (Sumer; southern Iraq). I suspect that it is because its white sap can seem similar to semen. This is simply too good an association to not add to Holbytlan culture!
***** Holbytlan religion says that mortal beings were created as delectable treats for the gods to eat, and that life is the process of seasoning and cooking (or pickling or what have you) one’s soul to maximize your deliciousness. Astinwu’s mystery cult is sometimes seen as blasphemous and dangerous because the transformation it promises results in the gods not getting fed properly.
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