Tribal: Part 2 (Patreon)

Each morning, Gwen was woken up early and taken to breakfast. It turned out that Mama Yumna’s celebratory feats was only the first of many meals that she and the women of Kiba village would prepare multiple times daily for themselves as well as their blonde new addition to the family. Every girl under the age of 25 would eat with Gwen in the feeding huts starting from as early as 4 years old and up until they were considered past marrying age. Any woman who couldn’t find a husband was destined to become an elder matriarch, which was fine for Gwendolyn since she had no plans on marrying any of the tribesmen anyways. She just wanted to find some purpose and guiltily, a job to help her relieve some of her boredom. The idea of coming to do humanitarian work in a place where people just sort of sat around and lazed together while refusing to bother learning anything new was the dullest, most inopportune thing that could have happened to Gwen. Trying to become an elder made her feel like what she did there actually mattered….and it wouldn’t hurt to be able to go back home and tell everyone that she was the first white woman to become a tribal elder. Things were looking up and she finally felt accepted.

(1)

What she wasn’t ready for was how much she had to eat. Every morning she was pulled to the feeding tent and stuffed to the gills, then told to nibble on those purple fruits the tribe seemed to farm in bulk while she waited for the next meal to be ready. By the afternoon heat hit, the girls would all be ushered back to the hut and another sumptuous feast would be sitting in front of them, waiting to be devoured. What was strangest to Gwen wasn’t the feeding houses. It was the fact that she could eat an entire bowl of food and even though she was barely able to keep that much down, she’d be starving again by the time lunch hit. She surmised that it was either something in the food itself or those purple fruits she was constantly having to slurp down between meals. Her attempts to get up and move however were not successful in the least. More often than nit, Gwen was finding herself sitting in the hut even after the women her age were finished and the younger girls came in, far too stuffed to move despite her desire to be productive. Instead, she just leaned against the walls and breathed slowly as she waited for her food coma to wear off while everyone else ate, periodically taking another nibble for herself when something looked or smelled especially good. The other girls were especially happy to give her whatever she wanted.

(2)

Gwen knew full well what the feeding huts were for, and while she wasn’t exactly told that they were fattening her up, she wasn’t overly excited by the idea of her body changing too much. Then again, she’d always been insecure about her body. Whether it be her small breasts or her freckles or the size of her forehead, Gwen always had a hard time looking in the mirror without finding something to hate about herself. It didn’t take long for her to start feeling the changes little by little. Her arms began to feel huskier while her hips began to swell.

“Who knows, maybe a little more curvage is what I needed all along.” She said, pinching a small roll that had begun to form as she dressed more and more in the flowy tribal outfits.

There were no mirrors in the village and no stigma against weight gain, so everywhere she went, girls and even several of the men began to compliment Gwen’s figure to her delight. She felt free of societal conventions and even more importantly, liberated from her own insecurities.

(3)

But weeks passed and she continued to eat and eat all day, every day. The village was free of mirrors, which meant that there wasn’t a scale around either. Gwen felt herself slipping more easily into a sedentary lifestyle despite herself. Her belly began to double into two pudgy rolls when she sat down and she knew that she was having to tie her wraps looser and looser as the days went by in a haze of gossip and food. It was nice to just hang out and be one of the girls, especially since they were all so excited to support her bid for elder.

Finally, after about a month, Gwen was invited to sit with the elders as a listener. She was forbidden to speak, as the meeting was normally for elders only. Gwen was the first exception in years having been quietly allowed to sit in on the meeting and learn. The women talked about boring, regular things like finances and the state of trade with the larger cities or even other tribes. It was a refreshing, if not lengthy ordeal to be around women who actually had something important to talk about for once. And Gwen was beyond happy to be included. The last order of business included the “progress” of the younger women in the tribe towards being fit to marry….as well as glowing reviews and happy smiles when it came to the matter of their newest addition to the elder council.

(4)