To the Summer Sweet
This is something I wrote a while ago but hadn't thought to post here before. An older draft of it was the first story I posted at y!Gallery. It's a contemporary fantasy and has nothing to do with Tales of the Tempest.
The opening scene had been in my head for a long time, but no story came with it until this popped into my head one day and I had to write it down.
Warning for an underage character in an explicit sex scene.
Above the meadow where the boy ran, a few puffy clouds drifted in the blue sky of an August afternoon. The heat and humidity brought a sheen of sweat to his deeply tanned skin, but did nothing to slow him. He was barefoot, and wore only a frayed, threadbare scrap of denim around his narrow hips, the remnant of the out-at-the-knees jeans he had cut off for shorts months ago. His eyes matched the color of the sky, and they shone eagerly. Dark hair streamed behind him.
A merry, trickling brook, the boundary of the meadow, lay ahead. Beyond it was a forest. On another day the brook would have been the boy’s destination, where he could spend hours splashing in the cool water, watching the darting minnows, or lifting rocks out of mud to find the crayfish and salamanders that lived beneath them. But today he leaped across the brook and dashed into the woods. His feet were calloused by many unshod weeks on dirt, gravel, grass and pavement, so the the litter and undergrowth of the forest floor troubled them not at all. The dappled shade was only slightly less hot than the full sun of the meadow, but the damp ground cooled his toes.
The restless energy that had driven the boy away from his house carried him farther than he had ever gone before. The ground rose beneath his feet. The trees were no longer the familiar friends he liked to wander beneath along the brook’s edge, but were larger, older, the shade beneath them darker. Still his legs propelled him forward at a pace that did not slacken until he found himself facing a grove where the trees were so dense that they formed a veritable wall.
He stopped, breathing hard. The trees were very tall and gnarled with ancient bark, and grew so closely together that their trunks had fused in places. Through what narrow gaps he could find, the boy could see an open space, and in it a brightness that piqued his interest. He followed the wall until he found a gap just wide enough, and squeezed through.
He was in a perfectly circular clearing. The wall of trees surrounding it towered higher than any he had seen before in waking life, but over the circle no branches grew. Motes of dust drifted lazily in the beam of light descending from the clear sky above. The circle was not completely closed, for nearly opposite the gap where the boy had entered there was a wide space between two trees. They curved toward each other until they met about twenty feet above the ground, giving the opening the look of a Gothic arch, like the monumental entrance to a great cathedral. Beyond it the forest continued into the distance. No sound at all, no rustle of leaf or song of bird, reached his ears except that of his own breath.
He wandered around the circle for a while. The stillness and majesty of the place quieted his restless energy, filling him with a calm he had not felt in months. When he came upon a comfortable-looking arrangement of tree roots, he nestled down into it. A reflective mood came upon him.
What a summer! As soon as school ended, the boy had hit the ground at a run and hadn’t stopped since. Everything seemed new again; everything held an endless fascination. From the water striders skittering across a still pool to the veins in leaves to the shapes of clouds in the sky. Nearly every waking moment was spent outside, far from his house. In his room his computer, Playstation, television, even his beloved books were gathering dust, ignored. He hadn’t even seen his friends very often, except for a brief greeting as he rushed toward his day’s explorations.
And he had been growing. Now in August was at least three inches taller than he had been in May. He’d have reveled in it if he’d taken any real notice of it before. But how could he? The changes in his own body, fascinating as they were, seemed nothing next to the world around him. Everything was as fresh as if he were seeing it for the first time. In his haste to take it all in he went everywhere at a run, hardly even pausing long enough to eat, never stopping until he fell exhausted into bed at night. It was altogether a magical time.
A time that would that soon end. In the few moments he was indoors that morning, his mother made some noises about new school clothes and supplies. No classroom could be anywhere near as interesting as nature itself. He had no idea how he was going to stand any of it. He sighed and closed his eyes. “I wish this summer would never end!”
There was a snap like the release of a latch. The boy’s eyes flew open. The archway shone with a white light. He scrambled to his feet. Out of the glare a figure approached. As it drew closer the light faded a little, or maybe the boy’s eyes adjusted to it, and he could make out what he was looking at. Through the arch was the greenest meadow he had ever seen, dotted with flowers of every color, beneath a bluer sky than could ever exist in the earth he knew. And the figure was to all appearances a boy not much older than himself, and strangely familiar. He was just as slender and only a little taller, but moved with a grace beyond that of an earthly creature. Also barefoot, he wore only a scanty loincloth of soft leather. There was something eerie about his smile.
“Greetings, Ian Douglass. Your request has been heard, and your boon is granted.”
The voice was deep, containing no hint of adolescent scratchiness. The accent was from a dozen different eras and places. It was only then that the boy noticed the inhuman points of the ears, the feral cast to the eyes. Folk tales he had read tumbled through his mind. His knees shook a little, but whether in fear or because of the being’s overwhelming beauty he could not tell. With his friends he could, for the sake of acceptance, convince himself to ignore bright eyes, smooth skin, shining hair, clean-limbed form, swelling groin. But with this being he could not.
“W-what? I was only...”
The being shook his head. “In this place there is no ‘only’.” Surely you cannot have failed to discern its nature. No matter if you did. We in the Land of Youth are liable to hear anything said here. And so I did.”
“Land of Youth? What do I call you?”
“We have been called many things. To some I am fae, or elf. The Fair Folk we have been to others. The Little People to those who fear us, and would name us a thing less fearful for their own peace of mind. Others who answered their fear differently called us gods. Or demons. As you will. But if you meant you wished to know my name, you may call me Gareth.”
Ian’s eyes widened a little. “I know you!”
“That you do, lad. You have seen me before, and called out to me long before you stepped into this ring. No heart that responds so to nature’s beauty is silent to me. Thus I have been privy to the dreams that visit you in the night. Between you and me there are few secrets.”
One dream that had featured the elf leaped into Ian's mind. His loins responded to the memory, and his cheeks flushed. Gareth laughed.
“No need to be ashamed on that account, lad! You are quite imaginative! I had a splendid time with you on that, and several other occasions. For that reason among others I took a liking to you. So I not only grant your boon, but further the rare privilege of choosing how it is to be done. Come!”
Gareth took Ian by the hand and led him to the gateway. The vista of that bright land lay before them. Beyond the meadow, Ian could now see clumps of wood, and in the greenery between them frolicked wild creatures of every description. “See here now the Land of Promise, which has many other names besides. Here the summer is everlasting, just as you desire, and there is no disease, nor old age, nor shadow of sorrow. You may, if you will, return thither with me, and remain forever young. What say you?”
Ian stared, fascinated, at the place he had thought only a tale. He felt drawn to it, as if it held everything he had been seeking; as if the yearning in his breast that drove all his summer's exploration had met what would satisfy it like nothing he had yet found, or would ever find again. “What's the other choice?”
“Your choice you must decide on my terms, lad. This first you must take or refuse.”
The boy stretched out his trembling hand toward the gateway. The brightness of the land beyond illuminated his palm, and he could feel the heat, the life of it. Just a step and it would be his. Maybe not even that. Even putting one fingertip across that threshold would be to make the irrevocable choice.
He hesitated. Unbidden, lines from the last stanza of his favorite poem came into his mind. His lips moved, speaking them silently, no longer as the poet wrote them but as questions. “Hear no more the lowing of the calves on the warm hillside? Or the kettle on the hob sing peace into my breast? Or see the brown mice bob round and round the oatmeal-chest?”
Tears started in his eyes and he lowered his hand. It’s a beautiful place, he thought. But it’s not my place. His voice quavered when he said aloud, “I can’t.”
“Can’t you now?” replied the elf. “Let me show you otherwise.” He gestured toward a nearby tree trunk. A dark oval appeared upon it, smooth as glass. Ian and the elf were reflected in it side by side. “Look at yourself, lad. Even now you’re practically one of us. You have a beauty that even one of the fae should not be ashamed of.”
The boy hadn’t even glanced in a mirror all summer, and he was astonished at what he saw. His dark, shaggy hair, bits of leaf and bark caught within it, glistened in sun-bleached auburn streaks above eyes that looked far brighter than he remembered. Between his growth and constant running his body had become hard and lean, without a trace of baby fat remaining. His chest swelled, his belly delicately rippled, his arms bulged, his legs were sleek and sinewy. Clad almost as scantily as Gareth beside him, if he didn’t know himself he would have thought the reflection was of two elves. The difference in kind was hardly noticeable.
But it was there, in the eyes and ears. Gareth shifted his weight, and the startling grace of even his smallest movement shattered the illusion. Ian felt ungainly and awkward by comparison.
“But I’m not one of you. And I’ve read the stories. Will I be like Oisín who aged 300 years in a moment when he touched the earth? At least he had his years. What about the ones who thought they were only in Faerie for a single day, but it turned out centuries passed on earth?” He shook his head although his heart ached. “No. It’s not a place for me.”
“Are you sure, lad? That poet of yours was right, you know. The world truly is more full of weeping than you can understand.”
“I know.” A tear ran down Ian’s cheek. “But I also know what I can’t have.”
“Poor lad.” Gareth turned him gently by the shoulders to face him, and wiped the tear away with a finger. He stroked Ian’s cheek down to his chin as he spoke and lifted, tilting his head up. “’Twill be the other way then.”
The elf kissed the boy on the lips, as softly as a breeze. Ian’s lips parted in surprise, but his exclamation was muffled by a kiss that was deeper, invasive. The boy struggled for a moment, but when Gareth pulled him in close, chest to chest, and moved a hand down to his buttocks, his arousal would not permit him to resist. The elf’s back was strong and hard beneath Ian’s hands, and the taste of his mouth was like the morning dew. Reflexively he ground against the elf, and the rod beneath the loincloth pressed urgently against the boy’s own erection.
Gareth drew back. He touched the front of Ian’s shorts. They unfastened of their own accord and fell to the ground. The nearly adult-sized cock, framed by white skin against the tan, looked almost too large for the body from which it jutted. It was adorned with only a sparse fringe of hair at its base. Ian didn’t see what happened to the the elf’s loincloth, but it was gone too. The uncovered erection was larger than Ian’s, but there was no hair anywhere on Gareth’s body, and no tan lines.
Gareth pulled Ian back to him. The feel of their naked cocks pressing together ran like a shock right down to the boy’s toes, and his knees almost buckled. He fell back against the elf’s grip and was eased slowly to the ground. Gareth lay atop him and their lips joined again. Before long the elf broke off and began working down Ian’s body with small kisses to his chin, throat, chest. He lingered for a while on each nipple, teasing one with tongue and teeth while stroking the other between his fingers. Ian writhed, moaning, his cock now leaking, puddling into his navel. Gareth resumed his downward journey and eagerly lapped up what had collected there. He lifted his head and sighed.
“The taste of a passionate human boy in the flesh. Such a rare pleasure for my kind! Not like that thin dream-stuff.”
With that he engulfed Ian’s cock, taking it completely down his throat all at once. Ian screamed, his back arching, fingers clutching the ground, and he came like a flood. Gareth pulled the throbbing cock out of his mouth and watched its seed shoot into the air, then clamped down on the head and caught the rest, swallowing greedily. When it finished, he licked up the streams he had missed.
Ian’s breath came in ragged gasps, his erection undiminished. “Don’t worry, lad.” Gareth’s voice was husky. “We’re a long way from finished yet.” He paused for a moment straddling Ian’s thighs. The boy struggled to sit up. Strings of golden fluid ran from the elf’s cock. Ian leaned forward, licked up the shaft, encountering a taste as sweet as honey. Gareth shuddered, then pushed the boy back down. “Aye, you’ll take it. But not that way.”
The elf ran his tongue down Ian’s shaft to his smooth balls. Moaning, Ian spread his legs wide and thrust out his hips. Gareth seized his buttocks and lifted them higher, now licking further and further down until at last he reached Ian’s asshole. He began to probe, thrusting his tongue past the clenching muscle.
Never in his life had Ian felt anything so intense. His fists pounded the ground and tears sprang once again from his eyes, now in an ecstasy of pleasure instead of heartache. His cock was leaking furiously. With his hips raised, the clear, thick liquid was running down to his chest.
Gareth shifted, and now Ian felt another pressure at his asshole. Instinctively he relaxed. He gasped at the fullness of it when the head of the elf’s cock penetrated him, but then it reached a spot in him he never knew existed. Beyond any vocalization, his vision swimming, he came in an uncontrollable fountain.
Ian never could recall how many times he came after that. One was while Gareth was pumping into him slowly as they kissed, Ian’s cock squeezed between their bodies, his seed spreading over both their heaving bellies. Another time the elf was fucking him hard and fast, pinching Ian’s nipples until he erupted, screaming. Yet again when Gareth, incredibly limber, sucked the boy off while keeping him firmly impaled. Ian came, and came again until his belly and chest were covered with his seed. It ran down his flanks muddying the ground on either side.
All the while Ian was vaguely aware of a music surrounding them. It began quietly but clearly, with the sweeping sound of a harp. As Gareth fucked him it became louder and more clear. More instruments became audible, a pipe blowing wildly, a dulcimer hammering out an ever-increasing tempo, a trilling whistle, a drum beating softly but rapidly. Louder and faster and wilder it grew as at last Gareth lost control of his breathing and his thrusts, and he began muttering in a language Ian could not understand. The elf slammed hard into Ian once, twice, and that same language he shouted aloud. The music reached a deafening crescendo. His cock spasmed, filling the boy’s ass with seed warm as the summer sun and the air with a sweet scent like honeysuckle. It sent the boy over the edge one more time, and his semen, now thin and only faintly milky, added to that already covering his body. The music faded into the background.
Gareth remained motionless for a few minutes, then he kissed Ian one more time and pulled out. Ian cried out at the emptiness, and his asshole twitched. “More,” he begged. “Please. More.”
The elf shook his head. “Ah, you tempt me lad. It has been more years than you can count since I had a human boy who gave me so much pleasure as you. But more would not be good for you, and I have done was had to be done to grant you your boon.
“Because I have a liking for you, and because you chose well, I have given you what you wanted instead of exactly what you asked for as often foolish mortals have received. Aye, in the Land of Promise you’d have had an everlasting summer, and your bloom of youth would not fade. That is well and good for us who are immortal, but for mortals it becomes a burden ere many years pass. In time they come to grief, as you know.
“Do you long for more? Then long you shall. Love you may find, and lovers you may have, but you will never find anything to satisfy you. That is not my doing. It is your nature. In most men this would turn sour, and drive them to despair or desperate, pathetic excess. But I have placed in your heart the music of Faerie. Listen to it. In this ever-changing mortal world it will drive you, cause your longing to feed your passion, and keep all things new in your eyes. In this way the magic of this summer will never stale for you. And now who knows what will be within your power?”
He took Ian’s hand and kissed it. “Farewell, lad. If we meet again it will be in dreams.” He turned and walked through the gateway. As he crossed the threshold, both he and the Land of Promise faded from view.
Ian lay there for a time unmoving. He put a hand to his ass collecting some of the moisture there and brought it to his lips. His own taste mingled with that of honeysuckle. Regret nearly overwhelmed him, and a single sob tore out of his chest. But then the music sounded in his ear once more, distant but clear and with all the instruments in play. A summer’s worth of wonder filled his heart.
He rose and scooped up his shorts, then walked toward the arch, every movement displaying an unearthly grace. Just before he passed through, a sudden exuberance made him leap high into the air. With a joyous whoop he dashed for the brook at the forest’s edge. Leaves rustled in the wind of his passage.
The opening scene had been in my head for a long time, but no story came with it until this popped into my head one day and I had to write it down.
Warning for an underage character in an explicit sex scene.
Above the meadow where the boy ran, a few puffy clouds drifted in the blue sky of an August afternoon. The heat and humidity brought a sheen of sweat to his deeply tanned skin, but did nothing to slow him. He was barefoot, and wore only a frayed, threadbare scrap of denim around his narrow hips, the remnant of the out-at-the-knees jeans he had cut off for shorts months ago. His eyes matched the color of the sky, and they shone eagerly. Dark hair streamed behind him.
A merry, trickling brook, the boundary of the meadow, lay ahead. Beyond it was a forest. On another day the brook would have been the boy’s destination, where he could spend hours splashing in the cool water, watching the darting minnows, or lifting rocks out of mud to find the crayfish and salamanders that lived beneath them. But today he leaped across the brook and dashed into the woods. His feet were calloused by many unshod weeks on dirt, gravel, grass and pavement, so the the litter and undergrowth of the forest floor troubled them not at all. The dappled shade was only slightly less hot than the full sun of the meadow, but the damp ground cooled his toes.
The restless energy that had driven the boy away from his house carried him farther than he had ever gone before. The ground rose beneath his feet. The trees were no longer the familiar friends he liked to wander beneath along the brook’s edge, but were larger, older, the shade beneath them darker. Still his legs propelled him forward at a pace that did not slacken until he found himself facing a grove where the trees were so dense that they formed a veritable wall.
He stopped, breathing hard. The trees were very tall and gnarled with ancient bark, and grew so closely together that their trunks had fused in places. Through what narrow gaps he could find, the boy could see an open space, and in it a brightness that piqued his interest. He followed the wall until he found a gap just wide enough, and squeezed through.
He was in a perfectly circular clearing. The wall of trees surrounding it towered higher than any he had seen before in waking life, but over the circle no branches grew. Motes of dust drifted lazily in the beam of light descending from the clear sky above. The circle was not completely closed, for nearly opposite the gap where the boy had entered there was a wide space between two trees. They curved toward each other until they met about twenty feet above the ground, giving the opening the look of a Gothic arch, like the monumental entrance to a great cathedral. Beyond it the forest continued into the distance. No sound at all, no rustle of leaf or song of bird, reached his ears except that of his own breath.
He wandered around the circle for a while. The stillness and majesty of the place quieted his restless energy, filling him with a calm he had not felt in months. When he came upon a comfortable-looking arrangement of tree roots, he nestled down into it. A reflective mood came upon him.
What a summer! As soon as school ended, the boy had hit the ground at a run and hadn’t stopped since. Everything seemed new again; everything held an endless fascination. From the water striders skittering across a still pool to the veins in leaves to the shapes of clouds in the sky. Nearly every waking moment was spent outside, far from his house. In his room his computer, Playstation, television, even his beloved books were gathering dust, ignored. He hadn’t even seen his friends very often, except for a brief greeting as he rushed toward his day’s explorations.
And he had been growing. Now in August was at least three inches taller than he had been in May. He’d have reveled in it if he’d taken any real notice of it before. But how could he? The changes in his own body, fascinating as they were, seemed nothing next to the world around him. Everything was as fresh as if he were seeing it for the first time. In his haste to take it all in he went everywhere at a run, hardly even pausing long enough to eat, never stopping until he fell exhausted into bed at night. It was altogether a magical time.
A time that would that soon end. In the few moments he was indoors that morning, his mother made some noises about new school clothes and supplies. No classroom could be anywhere near as interesting as nature itself. He had no idea how he was going to stand any of it. He sighed and closed his eyes. “I wish this summer would never end!”
There was a snap like the release of a latch. The boy’s eyes flew open. The archway shone with a white light. He scrambled to his feet. Out of the glare a figure approached. As it drew closer the light faded a little, or maybe the boy’s eyes adjusted to it, and he could make out what he was looking at. Through the arch was the greenest meadow he had ever seen, dotted with flowers of every color, beneath a bluer sky than could ever exist in the earth he knew. And the figure was to all appearances a boy not much older than himself, and strangely familiar. He was just as slender and only a little taller, but moved with a grace beyond that of an earthly creature. Also barefoot, he wore only a scanty loincloth of soft leather. There was something eerie about his smile.
“Greetings, Ian Douglass. Your request has been heard, and your boon is granted.”
The voice was deep, containing no hint of adolescent scratchiness. The accent was from a dozen different eras and places. It was only then that the boy noticed the inhuman points of the ears, the feral cast to the eyes. Folk tales he had read tumbled through his mind. His knees shook a little, but whether in fear or because of the being’s overwhelming beauty he could not tell. With his friends he could, for the sake of acceptance, convince himself to ignore bright eyes, smooth skin, shining hair, clean-limbed form, swelling groin. But with this being he could not.
“W-what? I was only...”
The being shook his head. “In this place there is no ‘only’.” Surely you cannot have failed to discern its nature. No matter if you did. We in the Land of Youth are liable to hear anything said here. And so I did.”
“Land of Youth? What do I call you?”
“We have been called many things. To some I am fae, or elf. The Fair Folk we have been to others. The Little People to those who fear us, and would name us a thing less fearful for their own peace of mind. Others who answered their fear differently called us gods. Or demons. As you will. But if you meant you wished to know my name, you may call me Gareth.”
Ian’s eyes widened a little. “I know you!”
“That you do, lad. You have seen me before, and called out to me long before you stepped into this ring. No heart that responds so to nature’s beauty is silent to me. Thus I have been privy to the dreams that visit you in the night. Between you and me there are few secrets.”
One dream that had featured the elf leaped into Ian's mind. His loins responded to the memory, and his cheeks flushed. Gareth laughed.
“No need to be ashamed on that account, lad! You are quite imaginative! I had a splendid time with you on that, and several other occasions. For that reason among others I took a liking to you. So I not only grant your boon, but further the rare privilege of choosing how it is to be done. Come!”
Gareth took Ian by the hand and led him to the gateway. The vista of that bright land lay before them. Beyond the meadow, Ian could now see clumps of wood, and in the greenery between them frolicked wild creatures of every description. “See here now the Land of Promise, which has many other names besides. Here the summer is everlasting, just as you desire, and there is no disease, nor old age, nor shadow of sorrow. You may, if you will, return thither with me, and remain forever young. What say you?”
Ian stared, fascinated, at the place he had thought only a tale. He felt drawn to it, as if it held everything he had been seeking; as if the yearning in his breast that drove all his summer's exploration had met what would satisfy it like nothing he had yet found, or would ever find again. “What's the other choice?”
“Your choice you must decide on my terms, lad. This first you must take or refuse.”
The boy stretched out his trembling hand toward the gateway. The brightness of the land beyond illuminated his palm, and he could feel the heat, the life of it. Just a step and it would be his. Maybe not even that. Even putting one fingertip across that threshold would be to make the irrevocable choice.
He hesitated. Unbidden, lines from the last stanza of his favorite poem came into his mind. His lips moved, speaking them silently, no longer as the poet wrote them but as questions. “Hear no more the lowing of the calves on the warm hillside? Or the kettle on the hob sing peace into my breast? Or see the brown mice bob round and round the oatmeal-chest?”
Tears started in his eyes and he lowered his hand. It’s a beautiful place, he thought. But it’s not my place. His voice quavered when he said aloud, “I can’t.”
“Can’t you now?” replied the elf. “Let me show you otherwise.” He gestured toward a nearby tree trunk. A dark oval appeared upon it, smooth as glass. Ian and the elf were reflected in it side by side. “Look at yourself, lad. Even now you’re practically one of us. You have a beauty that even one of the fae should not be ashamed of.”
The boy hadn’t even glanced in a mirror all summer, and he was astonished at what he saw. His dark, shaggy hair, bits of leaf and bark caught within it, glistened in sun-bleached auburn streaks above eyes that looked far brighter than he remembered. Between his growth and constant running his body had become hard and lean, without a trace of baby fat remaining. His chest swelled, his belly delicately rippled, his arms bulged, his legs were sleek and sinewy. Clad almost as scantily as Gareth beside him, if he didn’t know himself he would have thought the reflection was of two elves. The difference in kind was hardly noticeable.
But it was there, in the eyes and ears. Gareth shifted his weight, and the startling grace of even his smallest movement shattered the illusion. Ian felt ungainly and awkward by comparison.
“But I’m not one of you. And I’ve read the stories. Will I be like Oisín who aged 300 years in a moment when he touched the earth? At least he had his years. What about the ones who thought they were only in Faerie for a single day, but it turned out centuries passed on earth?” He shook his head although his heart ached. “No. It’s not a place for me.”
“Are you sure, lad? That poet of yours was right, you know. The world truly is more full of weeping than you can understand.”
“I know.” A tear ran down Ian’s cheek. “But I also know what I can’t have.”
“Poor lad.” Gareth turned him gently by the shoulders to face him, and wiped the tear away with a finger. He stroked Ian’s cheek down to his chin as he spoke and lifted, tilting his head up. “’Twill be the other way then.”
The elf kissed the boy on the lips, as softly as a breeze. Ian’s lips parted in surprise, but his exclamation was muffled by a kiss that was deeper, invasive. The boy struggled for a moment, but when Gareth pulled him in close, chest to chest, and moved a hand down to his buttocks, his arousal would not permit him to resist. The elf’s back was strong and hard beneath Ian’s hands, and the taste of his mouth was like the morning dew. Reflexively he ground against the elf, and the rod beneath the loincloth pressed urgently against the boy’s own erection.
Gareth drew back. He touched the front of Ian’s shorts. They unfastened of their own accord and fell to the ground. The nearly adult-sized cock, framed by white skin against the tan, looked almost too large for the body from which it jutted. It was adorned with only a sparse fringe of hair at its base. Ian didn’t see what happened to the the elf’s loincloth, but it was gone too. The uncovered erection was larger than Ian’s, but there was no hair anywhere on Gareth’s body, and no tan lines.
Gareth pulled Ian back to him. The feel of their naked cocks pressing together ran like a shock right down to the boy’s toes, and his knees almost buckled. He fell back against the elf’s grip and was eased slowly to the ground. Gareth lay atop him and their lips joined again. Before long the elf broke off and began working down Ian’s body with small kisses to his chin, throat, chest. He lingered for a while on each nipple, teasing one with tongue and teeth while stroking the other between his fingers. Ian writhed, moaning, his cock now leaking, puddling into his navel. Gareth resumed his downward journey and eagerly lapped up what had collected there. He lifted his head and sighed.
“The taste of a passionate human boy in the flesh. Such a rare pleasure for my kind! Not like that thin dream-stuff.”
With that he engulfed Ian’s cock, taking it completely down his throat all at once. Ian screamed, his back arching, fingers clutching the ground, and he came like a flood. Gareth pulled the throbbing cock out of his mouth and watched its seed shoot into the air, then clamped down on the head and caught the rest, swallowing greedily. When it finished, he licked up the streams he had missed.
Ian’s breath came in ragged gasps, his erection undiminished. “Don’t worry, lad.” Gareth’s voice was husky. “We’re a long way from finished yet.” He paused for a moment straddling Ian’s thighs. The boy struggled to sit up. Strings of golden fluid ran from the elf’s cock. Ian leaned forward, licked up the shaft, encountering a taste as sweet as honey. Gareth shuddered, then pushed the boy back down. “Aye, you’ll take it. But not that way.”
The elf ran his tongue down Ian’s shaft to his smooth balls. Moaning, Ian spread his legs wide and thrust out his hips. Gareth seized his buttocks and lifted them higher, now licking further and further down until at last he reached Ian’s asshole. He began to probe, thrusting his tongue past the clenching muscle.
Never in his life had Ian felt anything so intense. His fists pounded the ground and tears sprang once again from his eyes, now in an ecstasy of pleasure instead of heartache. His cock was leaking furiously. With his hips raised, the clear, thick liquid was running down to his chest.
Gareth shifted, and now Ian felt another pressure at his asshole. Instinctively he relaxed. He gasped at the fullness of it when the head of the elf’s cock penetrated him, but then it reached a spot in him he never knew existed. Beyond any vocalization, his vision swimming, he came in an uncontrollable fountain.
Ian never could recall how many times he came after that. One was while Gareth was pumping into him slowly as they kissed, Ian’s cock squeezed between their bodies, his seed spreading over both their heaving bellies. Another time the elf was fucking him hard and fast, pinching Ian’s nipples until he erupted, screaming. Yet again when Gareth, incredibly limber, sucked the boy off while keeping him firmly impaled. Ian came, and came again until his belly and chest were covered with his seed. It ran down his flanks muddying the ground on either side.
All the while Ian was vaguely aware of a music surrounding them. It began quietly but clearly, with the sweeping sound of a harp. As Gareth fucked him it became louder and more clear. More instruments became audible, a pipe blowing wildly, a dulcimer hammering out an ever-increasing tempo, a trilling whistle, a drum beating softly but rapidly. Louder and faster and wilder it grew as at last Gareth lost control of his breathing and his thrusts, and he began muttering in a language Ian could not understand. The elf slammed hard into Ian once, twice, and that same language he shouted aloud. The music reached a deafening crescendo. His cock spasmed, filling the boy’s ass with seed warm as the summer sun and the air with a sweet scent like honeysuckle. It sent the boy over the edge one more time, and his semen, now thin and only faintly milky, added to that already covering his body. The music faded into the background.
Gareth remained motionless for a few minutes, then he kissed Ian one more time and pulled out. Ian cried out at the emptiness, and his asshole twitched. “More,” he begged. “Please. More.”
The elf shook his head. “Ah, you tempt me lad. It has been more years than you can count since I had a human boy who gave me so much pleasure as you. But more would not be good for you, and I have done was had to be done to grant you your boon.
“Because I have a liking for you, and because you chose well, I have given you what you wanted instead of exactly what you asked for as often foolish mortals have received. Aye, in the Land of Promise you’d have had an everlasting summer, and your bloom of youth would not fade. That is well and good for us who are immortal, but for mortals it becomes a burden ere many years pass. In time they come to grief, as you know.
“Do you long for more? Then long you shall. Love you may find, and lovers you may have, but you will never find anything to satisfy you. That is not my doing. It is your nature. In most men this would turn sour, and drive them to despair or desperate, pathetic excess. But I have placed in your heart the music of Faerie. Listen to it. In this ever-changing mortal world it will drive you, cause your longing to feed your passion, and keep all things new in your eyes. In this way the magic of this summer will never stale for you. And now who knows what will be within your power?”
He took Ian’s hand and kissed it. “Farewell, lad. If we meet again it will be in dreams.” He turned and walked through the gateway. As he crossed the threshold, both he and the Land of Promise faded from view.
Ian lay there for a time unmoving. He put a hand to his ass collecting some of the moisture there and brought it to his lips. His own taste mingled with that of honeysuckle. Regret nearly overwhelmed him, and a single sob tore out of his chest. But then the music sounded in his ear once more, distant but clear and with all the instruments in play. A summer’s worth of wonder filled his heart.
He rose and scooped up his shorts, then walked toward the arch, every movement displaying an unearthly grace. Just before he passed through, a sudden exuberance made him leap high into the air. With a joyous whoop he dashed for the brook at the forest’s edge. Leaves rustled in the wind of his passage.