Pale Fragments

"The Thin King[WIP] - by X. W. Wilden"

"Xadrin very highly considered himself a Writer," Grace said. "Although he rarely finished anything he began. He was an ideas man. When I got him talking, it was clear that it was just a bit less pretentious than it sounds; he made real connections in his mind--well, when they were real and not just his inner-child desperate for a single epiphany which would completely resolve every element of pain in his life, all at once! He demanded of himself an unbreakable will to move mountains, to force sin and pain away as he'd been taught in the Mormon church.

"But he was a principled man, deeply committed to what he believed to be true, even if that truth was incomplete. He didn't like to be wrong, and this was clear in his face always initially upon correction. He would ride that defensiveness with shame, and then he'd ride the shame until, eyes somewhat glistening, you could see the wheels turning in his head--"

"Wait," I said, "do you literally have wheels that turn in your head when you are doing a lot of processing?"

She looked at me with a straight face for an admirable space of time, then smiled half-grimacing with an eyebrow raised, dimple flashing provocatively.

"I used to," she relented. "But no longer! I've grown, I've matured. I'm proud of this body."

"As you should be. You really are a Goddess..."

"Thank you, queen," she said, the magnitude of her uncertain humility moving me even before her compliment made it hard to breathe for a few heartbeats.

"Anyways. Here is one story he began and never finished."

-

Once there was a thin king among a country of obese people. He was too young to properly be considered a man, but too old to be treated as a child. And he didn't quite know how it was that he had become the king. Yes, he knew the laws; he had read the books many times which laid out what the law should be, and why. But the why given wasn't enough of an answer, so he continued to ask why. And he didn't know.

He did very little ruling, as all of his time was spent pacing his room, sitting in his room, or lying on the bed in his room. He did these things as he thought.

One night he had a dream. He was standing in line somewhere next to a pretty stranger. They stood awkwardly there smiling before she turned to him and asked him how was doing. He told her that he was doing quite fine, although within him he felt a great discontent which he felt must be apparent by his unconvincing reply. Then she asked him what he had done the week before, and he said, "Hm. I honestly don't know what I did this week." And she frowned, and before she could say anything the thin king reached the front of the line.

"Do you have any of the things left that I was waiting in this long line for?" he asked the person standing there at the end of the line.

"No," she said, "We just ran out."

"Damn," the thin king said.

He thought often about his weight and figure. He didn't mind necessarily, but he felt worried because everyone around him seemed to be worried about it.

(It wasn't that he sat up in bed and decided to stand and think about his weight. He didn't decide. His body only moved from place to place and his thoughts were fireworks in his mind. As the thin king walked from his bed to his closet, which was, granted, quite a long ways in his kingly bedchambers, a thousand years passed as all of the points and lines of thought were created in his mind. There were said, in the thin king's country, to be tiny fairies which lived their entire lives in the act of a firecracker breaking. Their substance contained, ready within the powder and casing, and whoosh, birth. Then they traveled along the lines of the firework, growing and changing and loving the other fairies which lived there. And then as the pattern in the sky faded, so too did all the thousands of fairies die, a whole lifetime lived in a small, infinite bubble of Time. This was what his thoughts were like; and entirely unpredictable unlike what fireworks could be.)

(He wasn't sure that he believed in this myth. He would have to think and read more about it, if he ever found the time to read.)

(Though, too, it was interesting to consider the lesson contained there. Did he have free will? Or had the explosion of his life been orchestrated by some fire-god outside of his perception? In the myth, did the fairies know they lived on what was called a firework? Well, even if they did exist, their life would seem to have free will, wouldn't it? And even if they knew about fireworks and humans and the shape which would be created, would even that break the seeming-illusion? And what if those fairies themselves had fireworks happening in their own heads? And did those fairies consider the possibility that—and then, he wondered himself if perhaps there was someone outside of his perception, someone writing the tale of his life—and then, he wondered, does that writer know how his story would turn out? And did the one writing the writer's life? Did anyone know? It very much did feel like he had been placed in an unoriginal story where he, being so different from everyone else,—)

Right, yes, everyone seemed to be very worried about his weight. Rather it seemed that he should be worried about it, and many of his thoughts seemed to be contained—no, perhaps interrupted by the understanding that he really should be concerned about the problem of his weight.

And then he stood from his bed as he realized he'd forgotten to eat.

As he walked to his table where his cold breakfast sat (it was in front of a grand window which he often stared out of as he thought, and the third sun was higher than the highest rim, the second halfway following the first beneath the planet. Had he been thinking that long?) he—well, he'd forgotten why he'd walked over there in the first place and he stared out the window and he wondered if there was a pretty girl somewhere out there who was just as thin as him, and how that would make a great ending to his story.

And then for one of the first times he could remember, his mind was clear. Then he thought, "I should go on an adventure," and he turned and walked past his cold breakfast (which he laughed at, remembering, as he passed) and he regally pushed open the heavy double doors of his bedchambers and walked down the hall to his mother's room.

Surprisingly, everyone was incredibly fit. His mother wasn't in her bedchambers. He found her in the gardens, walking with a straight back. Her fat and her clothes seemed one; she wore a grand robe of some kind of animal fur, despite it being a rather warm climate. The fat around her head melded with the collar which came up to her ears. She pushed her head back into it, warmly snuggled against it. She walked with difficulty, yes, but still she walked—and this is how these people remained fit, I suppose. She walked as if a bow, and her feet arrows; she leaned into her fatness and this seemed to propel her feet forwards.

"My(khc)king, my(thkch)son," she said—her words slurred together in a way that was seen as graceful. They were connected together by the spit which lived always at the back of her throat and by the lips which had trouble parting and by the fat of her cheeks which were deeply in love with her tongue, which had hardly enough space to move about.

In this kingdom, they had cars just like we have.

(And why not? Somewhere out there in the infinity of our universe and the infinity of universes outside our own, there is a kingdom where all but one (or two?) people are obese; it is what might seem like a good-ol' medieval kingdom of knights and flowing capes and gold for the few and disease and poverty for the many. In this one they have cars. How did they get them? I don't know. How did we get cars here? It was something like that, except different.)

(Not very believable, is it? Well, if it's my job to convince you that the story I'm telling you really happened, I'm sorry to inform you that all of the fiction you read and have ever read is made up. Those writers you've read just value realism more than I do. Or maybe I'm just more honest in my lying.)