The Town of Nrfle

Nrfleherder Valley was a strange place. On the darkest, cloudiest days when rain soaked the rest of the country, the sky above the valley was blue and clear. It was conveniently situated above the river Nrfle, an easy week's ride from the capital and a day's row by boat from the coast. But tax collectors, invading armies, and door-to-door salesmen never seemed to be able to find the place. They always found themselves back where they started, confused and travel-stained. But visiting minstrels, traveling confectioneries, and Santa Clause always arrived, and sometimes more often than they intended.

The river Nrfle sprang from a small, button-like pool in the north that was very hard to find. It ran south through a deep cleft through the middle of the town and valley. Around the edges, a double line of mountain ranges ringed the outside. The people who lived there were spirited and happy. Their smiles made them seem young, the ground was so fertile, crops grew themselves, and everyone was healthy and fit from climbing up and down the steep cleft every day to fetch water. If they had any complaint, it was that there were too few men.

The dearth of men had become so bad that they had to court and marry multiple brides each because there weren't enough to go around. To make up for all the extra effort on their behalf, wives doted on their husbands, hardly letting them do any housework. Every generation of men overcame the demographic handicap with grit and determination, so there was never any shortage of young people ready to get married and carry on their way of life. The fields and streets were full of them dancing, playing games, and copulating. The most adventurous of them searched for the hidden pool to the north. They rarely found it, but everyone had a good time anyway.

The village's mayor was a large man who sometimes seemed old and occasionally young but was always energetic. He was very handsome, very charming, and very rich, but he never married. The oldest residents claimed he had been the mayor when they were children. But no one believed them because the mayor was sprightly and their eyesight was terrible. He spent his day traveling from houses, to farms, to shops advising and visiting with his constituents. He was an eccentric man, and, what's worse, his eccentricity was catching.

For example, many years ago, on a typically bright Tuesday morning, he stopped by the Guilden's dairy farm and chatted with the estate patriarch, Stratton Guilden. They stood looking into the barn where Stratton's wives and daughters were busy filling pail after pail with thick, wholesome milk. The cows lowed to each other conversationally.

"Hard work, is it?" Asked the mayor.

"Aye," said Stratton. He was a laconic man,

"I imagine you milk cows because they produce the most milk?" asked the mayor.

Stratton blinked; he hadn't thought about it. "I s'pose," he replied.

"Big animals," said the Mayor watching Stratton's youngest daughter, Emma, almost twenty, nearly tip over a pail trying to lug it around. She was wearing overalls and chewing on a stalk of hay. For festival days, she had a beautiful blue and white Dirdle she'd sewn herself.

"Yup," said Stratton confidently from more familiar footing.

"Lots of work to get them in here every day?" Asked the mayor.

"Yup," said Stratton.

"You know, the midwife told me our women produce milk as well," said the Mayor. Stratton looked at him sidelong. "No, it's true," insisted the Mayor. He whispered, "I've seen it with my own eyes."

Stratton shuffled a step away. It was a bizarre thing for the mayor not to have known about.

"It just seems," said the mayor, "you do a lot of work to bring in extra teats."

Stratton furrowed his brow, trying to find some words. Failing, he said, "hrmph." He noticed how healthy, ruddy, and well-endowed Emma was. The observation felt unusual, but turning it over, he couldn't find anything wrong with it.

"A bit strange," said the mayor, "drinking milk for calves. I wonder who did it first."

The mayor visited the farmer and milkmaids every day for a week, leaving them feeling confused and troubled each time. But they could hardly turn away the mayor, especially after he brought the maids special valuable potions from his private cellar. "To help milk production," he told them, which is what milkmaids are all about.

No one was sure exactly how it happened, but by the following Tuesday, the cows were scheduled for a holiday, and the maids had volunteered to take their place. When the mayor arrived, Emma and her sisters were each in a stall as farmer Stratton rushed around, wondering how he would have time to milk his wives and daughters.

"Good girl," Stratton said to Emma as the mayor arrived. "Just lean your chest into the stanchion; I'll take care of the rest."

"Very sensible setup," said the mayor from the door to the stall. "You have a fine milking farm."

The farmer felt resentful of the mayor, although he couldn't pinpoint why. Emma leaned forward with her ample bosom ready for milking and feeling it was embarrassing for the mayor to be there. But after all the potions she'd accepted, she knew it would be rude to ask him to leave.

"You look sore full," said the mayor cheerfully to Emma.

"I am," said Emma blushing. Stratton put down his stool and positioned himself on it, pail before him.

"You're doing great work for the town," the mayor said to Emma. "I expect plenty of people will want to thank you after the milkman tells them what good girls you all are."

Emma hadn't thought before of all the people she knew who would be drinking her milk. Stratton stroked her bare sides with his hand to calm her and then pulled down on her breasts, a stream of milk splashed into the silver pail. Emma, to whom the experience was new, said, "Oh!" The sensation was delicious, and she wondered if this was how cows felt when she milked them. She thought she might try to see how mooing felt after the mayor had moved on.

"The thing is," said the farmer while he squeezed his daughter's teats," with the girls being milked, I have to do all the milking. And there's just the one of me."

The mayor put a finger to his nose and said, "You're a good man; let me think on the problem."

Early the following morning, the milkmaids arrived at the barn to find a tall, handsome boy by every stall. "Good morning, good farmer," bellowed the mayor where he was standing on a hay bail, "I only had to mention that the Guilden Farm Maids needed assistance, and our best and strongest young men volunteered.

"Oh," said Stanton weakly, "Good." But he wasn't sure about it.

Many of the young men were already friends with the family, so the maids hesitated to disrobe in front of them, but they reminded themselves it was for a good cause. Soon everyone was chatting in a friendly way, and the situation's awkwardness evaporated.

"A very natural way for young men to engage with beautiful bosoms, don't you think?" asked the mayor.

"Hrmph," said the farmer, who thought there was a chance it wasn't.

The boys, primarily shopkeepers' sons, had to learn from the maids how to milk. "It's ok," said Emma encouragingly to Hans, the boy at her stall. I need to be milked, I'm too full right now, and it's making me sore. Hans was a shy, gangly carpenter whose large size in small houses had taught him to move slowly and carefully. He looked at Emily doubtfully. This was not at all where he had thought milk came from.

"Put the stool down there where you can reach me," Emma said gently, and the bucket right there under my nipples." She guided him to squeeze her chest like a pump until the bucket was full. "Go on, have a taste, she said afterward, proud of the both of them, "You've earned it."

Hans was about to try and pick up the pail and drink from it like an oversized cup, but Emma stopped him. "No, silly, just squeeze some right from the source." And when he hesitated, "It's perfectly natural." Emma smiled to herself at how silly Hans was being. So little milk remained that he had to put his mouth right on the nipple and suck.

After a few weeks, everyone in the village had learned about the new milking process, and people started to take the day off work to see it. So many people visited that chores were missed, the town began to get filthy, and all the commotion frazzled the milkmaids. After a month, the mayor had declared that the milk from the milkmaids was too much of a good thing, and farmer Stanton had to go back to using cows, which he found wasn't that much more work after all. But to this day, for one week out of the year, the Mayor declares a holiday for the cows, distributes his special potions to a new crop of unmarried women, and the village enjoys their sweet, youthful milk.

Then there was the strange incident at the Blue Beetle Bar and Distillery. John Jacob Kenigsberger had owned the Beetle bar for as long as anyone could remember, except when his father had owned it before then.

Despite its name, it was painted a handsome red, and a golden lion emblazoned the sign. It was conveniently right in the middle of the town square. The patrons brought their own baguettes because it had no kitchen, but it had the best and only beer in town, so it was always packed.

John J K was a good bartender and a great tactical joker. Hardly anyone entered he didn't make a fool of, and hardly anyone left with a full wallet and straight face. So when the mayor stopped by on a lazy Friday evening, John J K couldn't believe his luck.

"Ho there!" Said John, "What can we get for you?"

They sharp shot the breeze joking and gossiping about the usual topics--"Loose" Lucy and her over-affectionate brothers, farmer Lovelady who preferred sheep, and finally, the extraordinary young pig breeder Noehans Justin Johnson. Madison, the pretty barmaid and John J K's niece, perked up. Noehans was handsome, well-built, well-to-do, and said to be looking for a second wife. His boars were famous around town for their size, vigor, and technique. Madison was famous for her ample cleavage, flirty smile, and capacious tip jar.

"An extraordinary boy," said a thin-faced and thin-witted farmer from behind his mug. "If he would share his prize-winning boar, the whole town could have first-place piglets for the fall fair."

"Why does he earn money for making the sows grunt, and the madam earns money from making us grunt?" joked another.

"Cause you're a sow," joked John J K, and the room dissolved into laughter.

"It's a shame we can't pay him to stud more than our pigs," said the mayor seriously, "We could use another two dozen men like him, big strong boars for our young sows."

There were scattered chuckles; the mayor was known to have some bizarre notions. "How would you like that, Madison?" Asked John J K, "How much should it cost to get you gotten by Noehans?"

Madison, always with an eye to what would fill the tip jar, winked back at her uncle, "I reckon we'd have to buy him a couple of beers first," The farmers and shopkeepers guffawed at her sauciness.

"Two beers," said the mayor. "I'll put up two beers for every willing girl in the town. A couple of drinks is a swindle to breed another of that boy." The townsfolk in the bar bent over double with laughter, but the mayor was serious. And rich, thought John J K to himself. He calculated how much he would make at two beers per girl plus sales to the audience. A plan hatched in his mind, and he pulled Madison aside for a chat after everyone else had gone home.

Before work the next day, she stopped by the Johnson farm to talk with Noehans. And that evening, Noehans joined her at the bar where she loudly proclaimed that night he would drink on the mayor's tab. Word spread like fire, and before the mayor arrived, the bar was so packed they had to pull in pews from the town church for enough seating.

"Oh, ho ho," said the mayor when he saw Noehans. "Just the boy I wanted to talk to. The mayor asked all about how to breed a sow, and Noehans was happy to tell him.

"The boar nuzzles and pushes the sow to see if she's ready," said the boy, "If she arches her back and cocks her ears, he mounts her." But all the listeners heard a curious thing as he continued. Although he said "sow," his audience at the bar began to think of Madison.

"Not to be indelicate," said the mayor, "but the same thing could work for a woman, couldn't it?"

Noehans coughed nervously, but Madison had warned him about the mayor's odd ideas. "Sure," he said, "but most women find it more dignified to relax on their backs." The farmers nodded around the table knowingly.

"But this time, seeing how I've retained you as a breeder," the mayor looked meaningfully at Noehans's second beer, "you'll make sure to mount Madison as a proper boar would."

Noehands had trouble meeting Madison's eyes. But the barmaid, used to drunken banter, wasn't so easily embarrassed. "Yes, of course, Mr. Mayor. I'm sure every girl in town would be happy to do it frontwards, backward, and upside down with Noehans." She winked at him, and he blushed scarlet. The men around her cheered and whistled. Several heavy coins dropped into her tip jar.

"Can you demonstrate?" Asks the mayor. "A dramatization of how it will go to ensure this is a good investment."

A few minutes later, Madison was on her hands and knees in the middle of the bar, down to her petticoats and bodice, so her dress wouldn't get filthy from the floor. From behind her, Noehans explained every little thing to help her behave like a sow. She arched her back, presenting her rump for him while the patrons, young and old, watched, drinking to and laughing at the marvelous joke. Only the mayor was silent and serious, watching the display with critical eyes.

No one knew exactly how it happened, but as the act became more and more refined, they lost their clothes; the pretty barmaid was bare, and Noehan's prodigious instrument was waving in the air like a fishing rod. No one minded too much, although John J K wondered if his joke went too far.

"And you'll nuzzle me between the legs to make sure I'm ready?" Madison confirmed matter of factly.

"Yes, ma'am," Noehans nodded politely and put his nose in her privates, which made her giggle. It was dark outside now, so they cast a shadowy silhouette by the flickering flames of a yellow lamp. Usually, there were only a couple of patrons left by this time, but today the crowd extended into to street, where people stood on their tiptoes to see in.

"I'm sorry," said Noehans, "but the pinning of the sow is rough."

"That's enough of your bores," chastised Madison, "It's time to give the mayor his two beers' worth."

Everyone had to admit, when Noehans's pole slid into her, that the mayor was getting a great deal. It was an impressive achievement, and Madison had to make a lot of room inside herself for it to fit.

"Hush!" said the mayor to the bystanders, "don't spook them!" And for a few minutes, the only sound was the rhythmic slapping of pelvises in the night as the two gave it their best shot.

"Hng!" said Noehands.

"Oh! That's it!" said Madison with pleasure feeling the punchline in her, and the crowd erupted in a congratulatory cheer. The two hosed each other down outside before putting their clothes back on, and the other patrons filed out, chatting about the incredible joke at the Blue Beetle.

The next night, to keep the gravy train running, Madison invited her sister, Avan-Nue. And after that, unmarried women across the village volunteered when they heard how much fun was being had at the mayor's expense. Noehans had the time of his life explaining in detail his profession to every young lady who came.

But then the problems started. For one, the Blue Beetle ran out of beer, and for another, the Noehans had no time for his boars, and they became weak and lonely in their sty. Finally, so many women fell gravid that the fall festival's judge's pavilion for the best farrow contest couldn't fit a quorum, which was the straw that broke the camel's back. The mayor regretfully admitted his error, and the joke was over. But to this day, when an exceptionally handsome pig breeder brings his boar around, the farmer often sends his wives and daughters to keep him company. And if, in a few months, they are all showing, the Friday evening crowd at the Blue Beetle has a good chuckle.

There are dozens of tales like that--the time women went naked to save on laundry, and for that reason, it's still customary to hang clothes nude. The time the town built stocks to punish bad cooking--some men still punish burnt toast with spanking. And the fair's kissing booth has a little extra private room for over-enthusiastic philanthropists.

These are the stories of the curious town of Nrfle and its eccentric and charismatic mayor.