What the Pig Promised
Written, voiced, and produced by Shawn Fitzmaurice
Voiceover Nerd Productions, Inc.
© 2025 Voiceover Nerd Productions — All Rights Reserved.
Chapter 1: Introduction to The Stitched Sky: An Assembly of Celestial Testimonies
As recorded by Ilra Wint, village chronicler and seamstress — a woman with thread and ink
We have no stars in our sky.
Others do, and some who pass through Gratch Hollow tell stories about skies thick with constellations, their names learned like lullabies. Yet they never seem surprised that ours is empty.
Perhaps they expected it.
I’ve spent the better part of two decades collecting their accounts: wanderers and traders, bards and priests, even the quiet ones who vanish before morning. They speak of lights in the night sky. Some whisper names. Others draw what they remember. No two sketches are the same, yet close enough that I believe them.
And always, there are stories.
Chapter 2: The First Time I Died
As told by The Stranger
You want the hero voice?
Fine. Let metaphor and stone lift my voice, rattle your family’s armor… so proudly on display… and make me sound twice the man you are.
You’re still paying with silver, yes?
Ladies and Gentlemen. Let me tell you the Tale of the first time I died…
Sleep began to trickle out as awareness seeped in, slow as water through cracks in stone. An itch on my scalp. Pressure in my bladder. Flesh against the cold air. States of consciousness overlapped, stuttering as they adjusted to sync with reality.
Then sound spurted in through a pinhole in the darkness… a thick black liquid gathering in the void; hatred building mass and momentum that reeked of pigshit.
The cracks of awareness burst with bloodlust as sound congealed into a viscous intention. Someone was screaming. They were right there; I could tell from the stink.
From the itch on my scalp my skin bristled outward and sparked at the energized atmosphere. Was this a nightmare?
I told sleep to release me. My hand found my weapon, my anchor, as the world crashed into place, unmoored.
My eyes snapped open… as a blade cleaved quite deeply into my skull.
The next time I died? Oh, you’ll love this one.
The Day I Dealt Death a Damning Defeat was the same day I died the first time, but this time I caught Death unaware.
The darkness receded like the ocean before a tsunami. And this time I was prepared.
The scream coagulated into something sharp and near; its curtain of stench fell before me.
I snapped sleep off me, seized my weapon, and blocked that axe blade before I could even open my eyes.
A girl stood there, stricken… and who could blame her?
And her pig-man friend… they almost turned him into bacon.
I saved them, of course. Well, I had a little help.
Well, don’t look at me like that. I did die… just a little… on the inside. Heh. I wonder if he ever goes by Chris.
Chris. P. Bacon.
They say the stars speak. That gods live among them, that monsters were slain there, that the sky remembers things so that generations never forget.
Chapter 3: Thaliriel, The Uninvited Mare Who Refused to Yield
From the Archive of Divergence History, kept in the MisArsesDolé cavern libraries beneath Bralith University of Mathmagics and Technomancy.
Read by Archivist Fr. Thed Crelith
Greatness handed down is empty.
When earned it is divine.
— Author Unknown
Thaliriel is known for her legendary stand: the mare who would not bow, the uninvited who fought to be seen, the one who claimed her place through defiance.
Those born divine were handed their stars and space. But for her it was a choice.
They named her Last of the Sky-Beasts. Last but never least, earned and not bestowed. Her wings she forged for a climb through headwinds no god had need to face. Her horn she formed in defiance of those who would deny her stars and space.
So when you see her light know this: she is not there to carry you. She’s not there for you at all. But let her brilliance remind you:
What is bestowed may fade. But what is earned cannot be denied.
Some say the stars slowly wander across the years. Sometimes I wonder if they are not merely lights, but souls.
If the constellations are memories in formation… And if the ghostly visitors we glimpse during The Moment, those flickering souls who vanish before breath or word, are on their way to join the sky and become stars themselves… then maybe our village, quiet, watchful Gratch Hollow is the seam between two worlds.
Maybe The Moment is the stitch. Maybe the heavens require a pattern. And maybe, just maybe, we are the thread.
Chapter 4: The Day the Stranger Nearly Got Me Killed before Breakfast
As told by Sara, the Girl Who Stayed
“Good to meet you. I’m Sara. Pardon the voice. I was up really early, and Mareen says I sound like an old man before coffee.
The day the Stranger showed up? I was nineteen. It was morning… first light… but the people in Gratch Hollow were mostly still asleep, even if I wasn’t. But the equations I had been studying had gotten under my skin. And Pip, here, wasn’t making it easier. He was upstairs… in Mareen’s room… thumping a mouse. Right. Above. My head. As cats do.
My little hunter… so I took the hint from the Universe… yes, and you too, Pip: coffee time! I decided I wanted to try using the resonance stones Sr. Tephra made, to manifest my time-recursive equations… big concept, I know, but not important to this story. Not yet anyway.
So I ran into the chapel and grabbed the stones. And when I stepped back out: I saw four of them, standing in the field. Like they appeared out of nowhere.
The Cult of Swillborn. Armed. They didn’t see me, thank the Seven Children, so I ducked behind the door, while Tansi… Tansi thinks she’s a tiny panther, crouched in the grass, ready to protect me from the death cult. Too many cultists around those days. I should have connected the… well… you know… the stories.
And I despise the way they twist Brinna Swillborn’s work. And for what? Power? Some unholy math scam? Who knows. No one’s ever sat one of their vicious little asses down for a chat over tea… or a biscuit…
From what I could tell they were mostly around my age. But there was one sitting in a wheeled chair. I assume he was their high priest. He had a heavy-looking black collar around his scrawny little neck. It had a huge, something like a purple gem. Which seemed familiar…
His voice croaked out Brinna’s High-Mathemagics, spoiled with foul forbidden variables that twisted into some kind of dark prayer. Then the others repeated it back. Like a chant. “It’s as if poison could become holy… if you only drank enough.” As Mareen would say.
Those kids… No. It wouldn’t be the first time good people were grifted into a “holy truth.”
The tallest one lifted a ceremonial axe, real over-dramatic, like. Seriously, I think it glinted… it was etched with dangerous Old-Swillcode Symbols. I guess they needed the instructions.
And Jon! Gods. Jon meandered! He meandered along, humming, and squealing away, so happy with himself, like a pig in… you get the point. He had a flowerpot. Probably a sprout had come up… it would be the only miracle that mattered to him. He lit up when he saw me, snout snorting, squealing with glee, probably dying to show me his little plant. I tried to wave him away. But instead, he waved back. Not quite what I was going for.
I looked back over at the Cult, afraid Jon had caught their attention, gods know what they would do to us. But there was someone new there… The Stranger. He wasn’t flickering like they do during The Moment. You’ve seen it. He just appeared. When I wasn’t looking. He was solid. Armed. His armor looked… normal. Except the color. That same dull black as the High Priest’s collar. And the wall surrounding Gratch Hollow. You see what I mean.
You know, if I wasn’t “The Girl Who Stayed,” it might have shocked me. Then… the scream that I will never forget… the terrible shivers up my spine. The axe fell, splitting the morning in two like a fruit, and I thought the Stranger’s skull would split in two too. But… no. A giant clang practically tore the air wide open. It echoed even around the top of The Hollow’s wall. The man blocked the axe with his sword. But just barely.
Jon squealed, dropped his little pot, and bolted, ears back, curly tail straight as a stick. And then, the Stranger, Prince Valiant, starts screaming at me: “You! Girl! Get help, help, help.” Smooth, right? Well, that caught the attention of the high priest… He sent one, a woman… well, girl after me… I froze… I just froze.
Jon was running over to protect me, fastest I’ve ever seen his hooves move. Gods, she’d have butchered him on the spot.
Her blade began to swing. I was sure I was dead… at 19 years old. But! Out of the chapel, along comes Sister Tephra… my mentor. Precise as a clock. Staff in hand, graceful, balancing every step like one of her equations.
Each blow struck precise. Her staff and body moved together like gears in a watch, calculating time in perfect blunt force trauma.
And then it was over. Brother Halvor came out of hiding and we prepared the bodies for burial. Those kids… they never had a chance. You don’t leave the Swillborn cult. Not alive.
There could never be another Sister Tephra. She solved the problem elegantly, like she already knew the solution. Of course she did…”
I see truths in the stories, and in the faces that flicker… glimpses of who they were, a moment ago. Perhaps their final moment.
So I record everything. I sew pages like cloth, each connected to the next by a thread I long to untangle.
If I cannot follow the thread, I will at least hold the needle.
And if any souls get lost along the way… if one of them, like our precious Sara, chooses to stay… then let them find what I’ve gathered. Let them study these scraps, sketches, and stitched-together skies.
Under Sister Tephra, Sara is learning more than I ever could.
Maybe she will see the pattern I’ve missed. Maybe, one day, she will help the souls of The Moment find their way.
What the Pig Promised is written, performed, and produced by Shawn Fitzmaurice.
A Voiceover Nerd production. © 2025. All rights reserved. voiceovernerd.com
