Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2013 20:19:40 -0500
From: redpatience@Safe-mail.net
Subject: Magpie and the Prince Chapter 1 (revised)

DISCLAIMER: If graphically documented sexual activities between men and men
and adolescent boys offends you or is illegal in your homeland, please
leave!

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:

	An epic fantasy tale of pederastic love. I wrote this with the
intention of making one of the most immersive and transporting adventures
possible. The characters and places have been knocking around (and fooling
around) in my imagination for the better part of two decades, so I hope
they're mature enough to come out and play, now.

FOREWORD:

	This should be a very vivid and beautiful and hopefully exciting
tale of romance and adventure, but I'm afraid it may take a while (in your
opinion) to build to any sort of erotic exploits. It's also got danger and
terror and sacrifice and true hopelessness and exile, maybe even a touch of
genuine spirituality.

For those of you looking for something "quick and dirty," this isn't
it--although if you have the patience, I promise you will receive all that
you desire.

SUGGESTIONS:

		For your vivid imagination, I'll share the muses who
inspired my characters. They are merely suggestions, you may discard them
if you like.

	In the role of Irau, (for pronunciation, remove the b's from
"bee-brow") imagine Marius Yo (Google him. Please.)

  	In the role of Ten, (like the number) imagine Joseph Gordon Levitt
circa Mysterious Skin

	In the role of Meru (like the mountain) imagine Ezra Miller (again,
worth a google).

ASPIRATION:
May all beings have great bliss and happiness,
May they be freed from even the slightest suffering,
May they never be seperated from great happiness utterly devoid of suffering,
and may they abide in equipoise beyond all ignorance, fear, and craving.

Without Further Ado:


	I. Exile

	Dirt ground into his knees, and the boy wiped tears that ran down
his chin. The village idol to the Mother of the Gods stood before him, a
single wick in oil burning at her foot. Pines towered overhead, tops moving
in the cool September air, but no mother or father, no grandsire or
grand-mama stood by at this, his farewell.
	Pray for me, Mother-of-Death, the boy thought, but he dare not
speak aloud.
	When he returned to the circle of thatch huts, the dark stooped
forms of the elders awaited him, lined against the wall of timbers that
protected the village. The gate was open, and two warriors stood with bows
ready.
	The boy knelt at the foot of the Matriarch, and she touched the
side of his head with one trembling hand.
	"These shall be the last words I speak," she whispered. As the
mightiest of their shamans, only she dared speak aloud. "The endless night
has come. The unspeakables walk in the forest. Dogs cannot keep them from
the fields, nor cats keep them from entering the threshold of a house. No
exorcist's spell can turn them away. These are the signs that they are more
than mere ghosts. They are the flesh eaters of legend. We send you both to
spare your young life, but also that you may spare others,"
	The prince bowed to her, his hands steepled at his forehead.
	"Your father's mare awaits at the ford," the crone whispered, "and
she shall be your sole protector."
	"I am afraid!" Irau said.
	"Shhh!" the woman hissed. A pair of green eyes flickered in the
forest, drawn by his voice. "Think you that I have power to shield you from
them?"
	The boy swallowed and shook in his cloth shoes.
	"Take these," the crone whispered. She hefted into his hands a
box--a quiver heavy with arrows, far more than he would usually carry
hunting, there were at least two dozen.
	"The tips are red flint painted with serpent's blood. They will
fell the dark beasts, and risen men alike. Take also this," she whispered,
and he felt her wrinkled, shaking hand grip his own and thrust something
into the palm, leathery and soft like a dried apricot.
	"This is the strangest treasure of our people, but greater than any
other. Your father's crown was a bauble; your mother's rings and garlands
were nothing. This is the ear of the Magpie."
	Wisest of the soothsayers. The Aldeni people spoke of him often;
though he was last seen many many generations ago, when the wise woman was
just a little girl.
	"I pray he still lives. When you find him, you must offer yourself:
body, breath, and spirit, in order to repay the debt we owe him. Now Go! Go
with Goddess!"

	Irau stumbled down the dirt path out of the village, the full
moon's light breaking silver through the pines. He heard chattering teeth
in the bushes and wails far behind, and swallowed his fear. Why did he have
to go? Why did these creatures have to come here, of all places?
	He reached his mare at the bridge. She was tethered in the middle
of its arch, water crashing through beneath her. It made the beast anxious,
but it was for her own safety; the risen feared crossing over moving water.
	He stroked her long face and and saw his baggage was all heaped on
her back. She was ready. He was not.
	Putting a foot in the stirrup and climbing up, he fought thick, hot
tears from bursting forth.
	"Farewell," he whispered.
	Irau had strung his bow and nocked one arrow and these he clasped
in his left hand all throughout the night as his steed awkwardly picked her
way down the mountain paths. The elders had waited until the full moon to
send him, but they would have rather sent him in daylight. Daylight,
however, was no more. For a whole moon no sun had risen.
	He went the ancient western road, through the canyons that followed
the mountain streams, the roar of the water down to his left. At last, the
dense ferns and junipers of the canyons opened and he found himself in a
moonlit valley of yellow grass, where the air moved sweet and cool in
ripples through the fields and the river led him to a lake filled with
stars.
	 The green eyes of his enemies did not threaten after he had passed
beyond his people's borders that night, and at last, exhausted after who
knows how many hours of unmarked travel, he slept against his sitting horse
in a field of alfalfa.
	Light woke him. Golden, blinding sunshine; he had escaped the
valleys where darkness prevailed. It felt marvelous beating on his skin and
he stretched. He went to wash in the lake, and beheld himself in the water,
seeing him own face for the first time in many weeks. A fair-skinned boy,
he had become even paler in the weeks of darkness. He had almond shaped
brown eyes and blue-black hair that fell down to his shoulders, except in
the back where it reached nearly to his waist and was braided with wires of
gold and tied with ribbons of white silk. His ears were pierced with big
studs of turquoise, and he had a tiny ruby stud in one of his nostrils. If
this was not enough to make him the target of bandits, his looks were: he
could have been the prettiest boy in all five kingdoms. His delicate nose
and full pink lips, perfect chin and high cheekbones made him rival any
princess, much less prince.
	Before he had left, his mother's kin made for him the finest cloth
they could. He had fine lambswool undergarments and on top of this a tunic
of thickly woven cotton of many threads and colors: blue and pink and
green, gold and violet all striped horizontally and tied with a belt of
braided horsehair. His breeches were snug tanned hide, and his boots the
same. He had a fur-lined cap, a coat of white wool, mantle of grey wool to
wrap up in at night, and a cloak of woven grass to shed the rain. In short,
everything befitting a prince of a people who still made their tools from
stone and clay.
	Far off to the West, the sky was still indigo. A five day journey
awaited him before he would even reach the King's highway that led to the
cities he had heard of in songs, where buildings reached high as trees and
people teemed as numberless as ants in an anthill.
	"Ready lady?" he whispered. The sun glittered on the water. He
mounted, wheeled in place a bit, and set off.

	Weeks of hardship befell him. Irau had only a ten day's worth of
corn and a sack of deer jerky, and then he had to forage. Collecting pine
enough pine nuts and morels and grubs reduced his pace to a crawl. Not
wanting to waste his precious arrows, he had only three ordinary barbs with
which to hunt. He felled a rabbit or two, but it seemed most of the animals
had fled these lands, as they had fled from his homeland.
	Hungry and cold, in growing darkness, one night he found a
village. It seemed a village, anyhow. He approached with great caution, his
bow nocked with an arrow, clutched at his left side. There were no sounds,
and he found all of the lodges empty, burned out, their faggot-bundle
rooftops gaping at the sky. Hairs stood up on his neck as he rode
around. In the gardens were overgrown squash, rows of beans, and rotten
heaps of melons. They had been planted, but not harvested. All of these
things pointed to the worst, but his stomach twisted on itself and he felt
the hunger pangs.
	Irau dismounted just long enough to stuff one of his saddlebags
with gourds, but then heard he heard a crack. Looking up, he saw four sets
of eyes blinking in the doorway of a barn. Green eyes. Not split with black
in the center like those of a cat, but hollow. Then the stench of rotting
flesh bowled him over. Irau stumbled to grasp his bow and loosed his arrow
before hurling himself up into the saddle. He heard a choking noise as his
barb landed, but by then, more eyes peered from the windows. Readying
another arrow, he shot into the closest pair and heard a sound like water
hissing in a pot before he galloped out of that place as fast as he could.
	They followed. All night, tears streaming from his face in panic,
Irau could see them in the darkness and hear their ragged, chattering
breath. Then, tangled in briars and low-hanging branches and surrounded by
glowing eyes, Irau's horse would not move. The smell was
overpowering. Putrid hands gripped his legs and his horse's tail. He
stabbed one in its sunken face with an arrow, and it shuddered and
collapsed in a mess of foul smelling smoke and hot, black
grease. Undaunted, the others began to bite and eat at the haunches of his
steed, tearing flesh from her body as she kicked and reared.
	Panicked beyond any reason, the horse delivered him from that
place. She tore through the briars, dragging the ghouls along and stamping
them under as she wheeled in fright. Irau barely managed to hold on, his
thighs clenched onto the saddle, his arms thrown around her neck. He
dropped his bow in the chaos, and when they emerged from the thicket in the
weak grey light of the sun, he wept. Bright red blood ran down the mare's
hindquarters and her black eyes had dimmed. She was doomed.
	Irau made the beast sit. He unloaded all the weight off her back
and threw all his essentials into one bag, leaving behind much of what he
had hitherto deemed essential, including his bedroll, extra boots, grass
cloak, and the greased canvas that served as a shelter in rain.
	The mare wheezed as her eyes began to turn pale. A yellow foam
dribbled from her maw.
	"I'm sorry, lady," Irau said weakly. He thrust an arrow as hard as
he could into her jugular and ran. The horse reared up and came after him,
her mouth gaping, teeth champing down as Irau shrieked in terror and
ran. The beast's eyes were wild, but after just a few dozen yards, she
collapsed into a heap of blackening flesh and tar.

II. The Lean Moon

	A full month of this and Irau had become more adept at survival
than he could have ever imagined. His days were hard and his nights
terrifying; he moved about mainly in darkness, for in the sunlight he had
to sleep as much as he could. A sort of perverse fear of the dark, one that
made him unable to sleep after nightfall, would remain with him for years.
	He had seen things no human being, much less a boy of thirteen,
ought to see; suffice it to say he had seen people of every age and beasts
of every species turned into living cadavers. One night in the light of a
half moon, he caught sight of a troupe of skeletal children. Their flesh
was a distant memory, but ragged chunks of hair still clung to their
scalps. They dragged the fresh bodies of a massacre, an offering to
whatever fell master they served.
	Not long after this came the boar. It found Irau in his hiding
place and nearly ran him down before he climbed a dead pine to escape
it. The creature was almost as tall as he was, and sniffed and tracked him
each night until it reached a new tree where the boy hid. Unable to rest
during the next day, Irau would have to run until he found another tree to
hide in and stay there all night. He had not slept more than a few hours in
a week, and he stumbled a ragged few miles each day, thirsty and starving,
until at last his strength gave out.
	He was walking through a clearing around dusk, looking for a tree
to climb, but this forest had burned not long ago, and none of them had low
growing branches. It seemed hopeless. Then, from the top of the hill, he
saw far below the wide ribbon of the king's highway. If only it had come a
little sooner. Darkness had fallen.

III. The Captain

	That night, Irau was a mile down the king's road when he heard
footsteps. It was not the unspeakables, nor the ghoul of the pig,
however. Delirious with hunger and thirst, he hardly noticed men run up
behind. They punched him in the gut, tied him up and hefted them over a
shoulder with a bag over his head. If he had anything in his stomach he
would have vomited, instead there was just blinding pain in his abdomen
from the man's shoulder digging in with every footstep.
	The small fire blinded him when the bag was removed. Around him
were the grizzled faces of a dozen men, some missing eyes, all of them
scarred and mangy looking. A few were scarcely older than he was, but they
all had the pink, round faces of the tribes to the west. They spoke a
dialect of the common language he did not understand well, and could only
make out a few odd words. If he had understood, he would have found out
they were not just bandits--they would have called themselves
guerillas. They were part of the insurrectionists fighting the King of
Chaldicia in the name of a confederation of suppressed tribes. They were
however, also bandits.
	"He looks half-dead," said the man who found Irau.
	"How do you know its a he?"asked the captain, "looks like a girl to
me."
	"Feel here," the man said with a toothless smirk.
	Irau flinched as the captain put his big mitt over his crotch and
fondled his bollocks and pestle.
	"Ahh. You got a nice wet pussy for me between those legs, but its
in the back, not the front." the captain chuckled.
	They brought Irau ale, the drumstick of a chicken and big heel of
black bread and he ate ravenously, guzzling the ale so fast he felt
sick. After this was done, he noticed that everybody was looking at him
intently. Some were already rubbing themselves.
	"Look at that scared little face," one of them said with a
smirk. "Lemme clean him up a bit."
	"Pull them jewels out of his ears," said the captain, "clean him up
and strip him of all that glitters."
	Irau cursed them and fought back until they held a knife to his
throat. They unbraided his hair and removed the wire of gold, popped the
turquoises out of his ears and the chip of ruby from his nose, and threw
his two silver rings into a pan. They stripped his coat and tunic and
shucked his breeches off as well. A man with a wet cloth came to wipe his
face clean.
	"Myy my," the Captain said, admiring Irau in the firelight.
	Irau was only five foot even, his black hair falling freely down
his back and narrow white shoulders. His nipples were tiny, pink buttons
floating over ribs more visible than ever from his hungry journey. His
belly was a flat and muscled with knobs; his buttocks were normally full
and supple but had become apple-small, his pelvis jutting out and his knees
more knobby than ever. Still, his hardships had given him plenty of tawny
muscle, and several of the men had begun rubbing themselves through their
greasy leathers.
	"I get him first," the captain said, "then it's the winners of dice
games in order after that. Get playing!" he ordered.
	The men immediately broke out four boards and began gambling for
the gang rape; a past-time that had become their favorite in the years
since their band formed.
	The captain sat in his folding chair and pulled Irau over to him.
	"Pretty lips," the captain smiled, brushing Irau's mouth with one
knuckle.
	The young prince bristled and clenched his jaw. He would bite off
this man's cock if it came anywhere near his teeth.
	 The captain fondled Irau's bollocks, and the boy moaned nooo, no,
but in spite of his protests, the fat uncut shaft of his penis began to
shift and fill.
	"A little catamite," the Captain said with relish, "a boy-whore. I
knew it the moment I saw you. Such a rich boy, all alone, so pretty,
wearing turquoise and gold. How else could you be so rich? Running away
from your masters. Some dainty lord is fuming mad you got
away...haha. Although...I wonder if your pussy's even tight enough to
feel."
	At that moment, blood spattered Irau's pale chest. Stuck in the
captain's head and twisted from impact, an arrow pointed skyward, feathers
bright red in the firelight. The man slumped over and the bandits
scattered; before they could order themselves, their camp was overrun. Half
of them fell wounded with crossbow bolts, the others were beheaded or
trampled in a sudden charge of mounted knights in black and white. Irau
bolted into the forest, hoping the chaos would give him a chance to
escape. He tripped over roots and heard hooves beating behind him.
	"Halt! Halt or die!"
	The boy stopped, turned. A knight had his crossbow leveled at him.
	"I'm not one of them!" the boy cried in the common language, "I was
a prisoner!"
	The knight paused, surveyed the boy's body, but did not lower his
bow. Then he licked his lips and smiled. "I know. You're still an outlaw."



((As always, I look forward to all commentary, criticism, and requests.
redpatience@safe-mail.net))