Of course, not all is as pleasant as it seems.
The sharp-minded traveler might realize, once they ask around, that no one seems to carry a harvest of grain, and yet the people have ample bread. They might have a glass of the incredible wine, but search the town and find no barrels it could have come from.
Down below the temple, these questions are answered.
Criminals and heretics—sinners—are held prisoner. All of them are gagged, their muffled cries a disturbing choir in the darkness. Shackled high on the wall with their knees bound up by their chests are those without wombs, who grow so much wheat in their guts that their bellies are round and dense with the crop, heavy between their restrained thighs. They wince and squirm at the strange sensation of the stalks inside of them, but a bit of tickling is nothing compared to the threshing.
The faithful bring long tools and force them into the sinners’ holes, and thresh the wheat inside them with no care for how the sinner feels. The sinners scream until they injure their throats, then keep thrashing in their bonds as the tools torture their insides. They find no purpose or meaning in this suffering, only sobbing and shaking their heads as more tools are produced to gather the wheat, chaff, and other debris from inside them. Every little bit must be gathered, so they endure hours of cruel tools tirelessly searching their guts, sometimes going so deep that the tips tent their deflated bellies. They think no agony could be worse, but they will miss the tools if they ever try to push out the wheat on their own…
Those with wombs require no restraint. They could never get far with their bellies like this. Each one grows enormous yields of grapes, but when it comes time to birth them, they’re plugged up. Then, their contractions come, and in the course of the cramping and their desperate pushing, the grapes are crushed inside of them. Of course, a member of the faithful visits them to make sure every grape is squished, roughly pressing and squeezing their belly until it’s clear no grapes are left intact.
Then comes the fermenting.
Wombs that were once shaped by the weight of the plant matter within begin to grow in every direction, stretching and stretching as carbon dioxide fills them. Their bellies end up ballooning out, unbearably taut, their abdomens and pelvises and hips all screaming with constant pressure that only grows worse and worse. They shriek into the gags that they’re going to burst, but the faithful just chuckle as they walk by.
The joke, of course, is the evidence that they’ll never burst, even if the wine ferments in their bellies for years to come. The proof of this lies further into the chamber, where the worst of the criminals and the most blasphemous heretics groan constantly, their wombs so tight with gas that a pin’s head probably could pop them. Their spines are bowed, their lungs crushed and hearts slowed, rib cages and pelvises both forced back to make room for the fullness of their bellies. With every tortured breath, the audible sound of sloshing echoes within, wine beyond value growing rich inside them.
Even if they could walk, they’re in no state to escape. Years of wine on their membranes has left them completely saturated, every waking moment now spent effectively blackout drunk. Alcohol poisoning should have killed them a long time ago if the misuse of their organs didn’t, but the goddess’s blessing is for the survival of the people; though it may strain the body, it may not kill it. She meant this as a mercy.
For those whose wombs are reduced to wine barrels, death would be the mercy.
But they are hardly aware of their own situation anymore. One chosen from the group—a criminal, who can’t recall their crime or their name—doesn’t even notice when the faithful inserts a tool thin tool, and then the neck of a wine bottle into their pussy. A deft action with the tool, and the seal that’s kept their cervix plugged for years is removed. Air hisses quietly out, a sound not nearly dramatic enough for the sudden change in pressure inside their body. They have a moment of lucidity as the feeling of falling accompanies their wilting spine. Still, they aren’t even conscious enough to feel the relief.
Wine glugs into the bottle until it fills, then another, then another, deft hands switching them out, though precious drops still splatter on the floor. All told, it takes less than a minute to drain their womb, but in a lifetime, their belly would never return to its original shape. It remains massive and strangely round, but drooping now, like their whole frame does without the gas to hold it up. They look like a broken scarecrow, and it almost makes the faithful sad as they seal the wine bottles.
The criminal, for a fleeting moment of consciousness, misses being full.
But they don’t have to worry. The goddess will make another bounty in their belly in no time.
