What the Pig Promised
Written, voiced, and produced by Shawn Fitzmaurice
Voiceover Nerd Productions, Inc.
© 2025 Voiceover Nerd Productions — All Rights Reserved.
Episode 1.1 – The Moment: A Companion to Episode 1
Few artifacts survive from the pre-divergence era. Among them are the stitched chronicles of Ilra Wint, seamstress of Gratch Hollow. As restoration work continues on these fragile pages, more entries will be catalogued here.
What follows is one such entry.
The Moment
From the Stitched Chronicles of Ilra Wint
Every three days, four hours, forty-two minutes, and three seconds, they come. A man mid-stride. A child with a wooden sword raised. A woman leaning close, whispering to someone we cannot see. They hold for a breath. Then nothing.
We gather when the time draws near. No one needs speak of it beforehand, but we all know. The baker sets down his flour. Brother Havlor leaves his prayers half-finished. Even the pigs grow still.
The children come too. Most stand as the adults do, some curious, others restless and ready to run back to their games.
Jon is different. He arrives with purpose: a heel of bread, a flask of watered milk, a folded blanket. He sets them gently on the grass, as if they are meant for the ones who appear — in case a figure should be hungry, or weary, or wish to rest a while. He watches with wide eyes while clutching at Elira’s leg, caught between awe and fear, never certain which feeling to hold.
I have watched this for years now. The timing never shifts. Nothing in life is so exact. Seasons wander. Death arrives early or late, never when expected. But The Moment keeps its rhythm like a loom that never stops, each figure appearing as though part of a pattern — one stitch after another.
Travelers speak of machines, needles driven by wheels that sew without pause. I have never seen such a thing, but I imagine their rhythm would be like this: precise, tireless, without drift — the same precision The Moment keeps. But no seam holds forever. There must be a loose thread somewhere, though I have not found it yet.
Most call it a waystation for the dying — souls stopping between here and whatever comes after. Perhaps. But waystation souls should not follow such precise timing. The dead do not keep schedules.
I write these glimpses down, though the pattern still eludes me. Sometimes I think they are not people at all, but stars caught briefly in our field before returning to their sky. If so, then Gratch Hollow is only the hem, and The Moment is where the thread shows through.
It may be foolish to believe such things.
But I keep stitching. I keep watching.
I wait for the day a figure does not vanish.
Or for the day they all stop coming.
I do not know which would be worse.
—Ilra Wint, Gratch Hollow
