It was a well-known fact that the finest pigs in all the open world came from the plumpins of the Hillocks. It was a well-guarded secret that they were also the tastiest. This requires explanation.

Once upon a time and for centuries, plumpins indulged in every porcine delight, raising hogs of a monstrous size that they slaughtered for slabs of bacon thick and sturdy as stone walls, endless coils of spiced sausages, and the juiciest cuts of everything from hoof to snout that could be charred, roasted, slow-cooked, braised, seared, smoked, stewed, pickled or barbecued. Whether it was the steady diet of berries and passed plumpins (they had long given up on burials, as the hogs always dug the bodies right back up anyhow) or the generally comfortable clime and lack of predators in the Hillocks, nowhere could a larger, more handsome or sweeter-tasting pig be found. And though the plumpins maintained a poor understanding of commerce and were far and wide known to be horrible traders and easy marks, the plumpins saw it differently and could parade through the Hillocks with the broken buttons and old door-knockers they had traded three full-tusked bull hogs for and be utterly convinced that they got the better of the deal. So the merchants got rich, the plumpins got knickknacks, and the wider world had bacon for breakfast. All told, it was a winning situation for everyone involved. Except the pigs.

Then one day a plumpin fell in love with a pig.

Not in any carnal or deviant sense. Without getting into the finer details of plumpin anatomy, it can be said with a considerable degree of certainty that such a congress would be impossible. The genitaliac geometry simply would not make sense. No, this was the kind of deep and abiding love and friendship that can transcend language and appetite to link two lost souls and so change the dietary habits of an entire species.

His name was Gertie Boggs and he was a less than decent maltster and a more than fair brawler. Whether he was famous for his Three-Berry Moonshine or notorious for it was a matter of general debate, as it stood equal chance at making your teeth fall out as getting your brain proper soaked. And while a plumpin’s teeth will grow back with enough time and an appropriate diet, losing all of them at once still presents a bit of a predicament and more than a little discomfort for the affected plumpin, not to mention the condition giving the whole mouth area a rather sphincterous look that can be downright off-putting for company.

She was a piglet with red and brown harlequin patchwork fur and a tongue too large for her mouth that stuck out the side like she was always concentrating on something. Gertie named her Elizabeth, which is a fine and respectable name in many lands, but in the spikier dialects of the Hillocks translates roughly to “future food.” And though he first raised her as such, somewhere along the way the pig snuffled its way from Gertie’s stomach to his heart and when it came time to make his future food a present feast, he found he lacked both the appetite and the conviction.

It didn’t happen all at once and it wasn’t on purpose, Gertie would say, though he didn’t rightly know what ‘it’ even was. He’d raised many hogs and slaughtered them all and even enjoyed naming his meals after them while the meat lasted, but something about Elizabeth both unsettled and intrigued Gertie. Maybe it was the eyes, fiercely intelligent. Maybe it was the way she would break free from her corral at night only to sit in the dirt outside his nest until morning and watch for his waking.

The pair became inseparable, joined at the hip. Where he went, she followed. And when she wandered off, he found himself trotting beside. They ate together, walked together, waded the streams together and some even suspected they learned to converse in their own way. At the very least, Gertie would talk to her, telling the secrets in his heart when he was sure no plumpin lay within earshot. And Elizabeth would listen and, as the years passed and she grew to her full prodigious size, even let Gertie ride on her back. In this fashion, they traveled the Hillocks and, though all they encountered were initially skeptical, each came away with an unsettling feeling that something had changed and they had crossed a bridge they had never meant to cross and from that day hence had difficulty eating morning sausages with their usual relish.

The story of Gertie and Elizabeth is well-known even to all plumpin children, but the particulars are too numerous to delve into here. Indeed the longest song in all the Hillocks is a day-by-day recounting of this momentous friendship. But it is also widely considered the most boring and only performed at parties when guests overstay their welcome. Let it suffice to say that within a generation, the pigs of the Hillocks were seen as equals among plumpins and their slaughter strictly forbidden. And though the pig farmers continued their art, they became as stewards paying penance for past wrongs, fattening the pigs and seeing to their care but letting them roam freely over the Hillocks and even through their homes. And it forever remained a duty of every plumpin to minister and tend to any pig whose path they might cross in their wandering.

Of course, none of this had much of an effect on the various races and peoples who traded with the plumpins, who all promised they would never eat the many pigs they bartered for every season but most definitely did.

Mullaby was lost somewhere in the sixth stanza of the 17th verse of the song of Gertie and Elizabeth, the lyrics looping in on themselves and trapping the singer in a recursive rendition that was both maddening and somewhat easier to tune out, when Philbert spotted the hog. It was a beautiful boar, with a soft chestnut coloring mottled with dark browns around the shoulders, long sharp tusks and a wild black mane that tapered to a bristling ridge down the center of its back. Tall as two plumpins and broad like an aged gargantortoise, it paid the peeping pair no mind as it rustled happily through a tangle of honeysuckle, grunting and snorting merrily.

The pair watched the massive creature tousle the honeysuckle with its great tusks, rearing back its head and snapping its underbite at the flowers as they rained down around him, running sticky with their sweet syrup. They would not approach before sunrise, as surprising a full-grown boar in the dead of night could bring a certain literality to the phrase that Philbert thought best avoided. So they watched, Mullaby wide-eyed and salivating at the sight of wild honey, and Philbert took the opportunity to set a few things straight.

“Alright, now Mullaby… Mullaby! Here! Look here!” Philbert drew the little plumpin’s eyes to his own. “Now, I’ve enjoyed your company, or put up with it as much as any, I’d expect, but we are presently and without stopping rapidly approaching our parting of ways. Come morning, I’ll be on that pig and headed due south on business all my own and you’ll have to get yourself back to whatever it is-”

Mullaby raised his arms full of eggs towards Philbert, offering them, so it seemed, as price of passage. It almost worked.

“Yes, those are eggs, Mullaby. Listen. Listen. Oh, alright.”

Philbert took two eggs and placed them on the ground by his traveling sack, then continued. “The rest of these are your eggs, ok? Now take them back to that horrible beast of a mother. Go. Shoo.”

“But can’t I come with you?”

“That is a strange and unsettling question, Mullaby. No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would feel a bit too much like kidnapping, for one. How is someone not looking for you by now?”

Mullaby’s eyes cast to the ground and he pawed at the dirt with little motions of his little feet.

“I dunno,” he said.

“Mullaby.”

Philbert put on the best stern face he had. He had never been good with children nor wanted to be, but he figured they were best handled as one would a particularly stupid adult that he was not trying to get killed. Or trying to not get killed. It was kind of a balancing act. And after a minute or two of raised eyebrows and expectant tones that said, “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed. Ok, I’m angry too and it’s definitely in your best interest to come out with it now and not make me even angrier, at which point my disappointment will be the very last concern on your very long list of troubles,” and Mullaby broke, falling backwards on his bottom and spilling the truth along with one or two eggs. And as the little fellow told his story in disjointed and distracted fragments, eyes in the dust and brimming with salty tears, Philbert realized that when Mullaby had found his eggs in the Bramble, he wasn’t so much pretending to be a bumbly-bee, as he was pretending not to be a plumpin whose family had abandoned him.

It was a sad side effect of the paradisical nature of The Hillocks that, having the necessities of life so readily provided, plumpin parents were uniquely capable of casting off any obligation to unwanted offspring and leaving them to their own devices, secure in the knowledge that the thing would surely find enough to eat, and that the notion of childhood trauma had not yet entered the lexicon of plumpin psychology.

And so young Mullaby, small for his age and perhaps quite stupid for several, time would tell, found himself quite alone in paradise, which ought to be a contradiction.

Philbert dragged his hand across his face in frustration, perhaps hoping that when his eyes refocused Mullaby would no longer be staring up at him, watery eyes and big toothy smile. But, of course, he was. Philbert crouched to get more on his level.

“It’s hard, Mullaby, I know. Trust me. But-”

“Can I come with you pleeeaaase?”

“Mullaby-”

“You won’t even know I’m here.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.”

“But I want to be a toadstool farmer too!”

This, Philbert had not expected. It was an odd sort of flattery and not one that he was accustomed to. He opened his mouth to say no but nothing came out. Instead, he was thinking that they really wouldn’t need much sleep that night, as they had spent much of the day snoozing. And it really wouldn’t hurt to brush up on his skills, he reasoned. And his sack was getting a bit light, he supposed. Besides, it’s not like teaching the little chap a few tricks about night farming meant they were partners, or even friends. But would a partner be that bad?

Leaving the last of their eggs under a pile of broad leaves, the plumpins wandered into the night as light-footed and silent as wraiths. They found great shelves of meaty Phoenix Tails clambering up the tree trunks and unearthed patches of Night Slobbers, thick and tuberous fungal growths that sprouted from the ground at night like sticky purple-black tongues, lolling about the creekbeds in search of small reptiles and rodents to ensnare and absorb. They tasted like chewy squirrel.

There would be plenty of time for the pig in the morning.