8 comments/ 28381 views/ 26 favorites The Boy from the Sea Ch. 01 By: Cruel2BKind *Hello! and welcome to my new series, The boy from the Sea. All characters are 18+ One of my pet peeves is annoying exposition, so to avoid confusion, this series takes place in a world similar, but not equal, to Victorian Great Britain. I do this because I am not historically accurate, and that is my other pet peeve. Please Enjoy!* The township of Haven was small, and only had one noble family. It was a small fertile valley at the end of a rich delta that fed into the Ocean. If you were born in Haven, you would most likely become a tobacco farmer, an oat farmer, or a fisherman, or you would marry someone in those professions. There were advantages to such a small township. The royal tax collectors came only one year in five, and the youth were allowed more freedom then the youth in the cities. Young women rarely wore corsets or stockings, especially in the summer. Young men only bothered with their stockings on formal occasions. Wigs were laughable, not status symbols. And a man could take his shirt off in the field, and a woman could take off her shoes to wade in the surf without breaching etiquette. Not to mention, the parties were Fantastic! --- Christopher Angler was on fire. The band, a collection of young men; one with a fiddle, one with a hand-drum, two with mouth-harps, and one with an accordion, played faster and faster, trying to keep up with the frantically clapping hands. The young men and women of the town had formed a ring on the wooden dance floor, clapping their hands and whistling for the young man in the middle. The dance floor was set in the patch of scrubby land that the sheep had eaten bare behind the only tavern. During the day it was a dusty wooden floor in the middle of a patch of dirt, but at night it was magical. Lanterns covered with brightly colored shades hung from poles, the beer flowed freely and the air was filled with laughter and music. And in the center of it all, sweating and laughing and gasping for air as sixty-two people and the band cheered him on, was Christopher Angler. He had stripped down to only his open-throated white linen shirt and his calf-length breeches. His leather shoes were kicked aside and his bare feet thumped on the wooden floor. His chest was half-bared to his audience and the sweat-slickened expanse of muscular skin and hair had the girls in the crowd gasping for breath. His brown hair flopped around as he twirled faster and faster, his bare feet a blur. His hands were on his hips and he was the last contestant in the contest. He had been dancing crazy-fast for nearly twenty minutes and was only now starting to flag. With a theatrical cry he lifted his arms in a V and shouted, "Oh my good friends, if I dance anymore you will have to tear up some of these boards for my grave-box!" They screamed with laughter and enfolded him into the fray. The band gave a flourish and started a fast foxtrot. Laughter and music floated up into the night and dissipated like smoke. --- "May I have the honor of this dance Dear Fellow?" Max Tailor looked up, startled into the solemn, twinkling eyes of his adopted brother. Chris was doing his 'snooty gentry' voice, with his nose in the air and his mouth in a slight sneer, but he couldn't stop himself from breaking out into gales of laughter. Max snorted and broke into a snobby falsetto. "Oh my, is that entirely proper?" Chris snorted with laughter, "Who gives a shit, come away my love!" Max coughed on his mouthful of beer as Chris grabbed his arms and forced him to do a clumsy dance with him, both trying to lead and laughing like jackals. Anna, Max's wife clapped her hands on the bench, giggling so hard that she had to clutch her swollen stomach. Her scream of pain and surprise cut through the laughter like a cold knife. The music died with a wheezy cough from the accordion and a screech from the fiddle. Anna was clutching her pregnant stomach and crying out with pain and surprise, gasping for air. Max was there in a moment, the light gleaming in golden lines on his mussed sweaty hair, his blue eyes wide with panic and excitement. "It's here Precious! Oh Lord in Heaven it's here! Come quickly, and we'll get you to the Spaewife right away!" He looked up, deliriously happy and scared at the same time. "I'm going to be a Father!" Everyone cheered and Max led his gasping smiling young wife along to go to the Spaewife. For a moment, Chris stood there, looking strangely lost, like a puppet with the strings cut. Then he forced his face back into a smile and followed along, bending his shoulder for Anna to lean on and murmuring encouragement into her ear. --- The Spaewife was a woman healer. She was a midwife and a surgeon and an apocrathy all in one, and far from calling her witch, the town of Haven loved and respected her. Anna was gasping and panting on the one bed, and the only people allowed in her one-room hut were Anna's mother and Max. Christopher sat on a worn white rock near the surf, scowling at the waves. Under the angry look, he fought against the overwhelming frustration and confusion and sadness. Christopher had never lusted after women. He liked women, he had several friends who were women, but he had never felt anything for them other then a platonic light. Who he had dreamed of, masturbated to, cried into his pillow for, was Max. Chris had been born about four months after his fisherman father had died in a storm. When he was four years old, his mother had died of a wasting disease that had grown a tumor in her womb the size of a man's head. The Tailors had taken him in, and he had grown up with Max as brothers and best friends. He had never done anything with his adopted brother but jerk off together, and then he had married Anna and knocked her up. Christopher rubbed his eyelids with his fingers and spoke softly to himself. "Don't get angry at them you dumb pile of pigshit. Let them be happy, and wish them well on their child, and their life. I bet you're just angry because you lost a net today." He frowned sourly. Not only was that a lie, but it just reminded him that he had lost a net and made him even grumpier. He sighed, slapped himself lightly and got back to the entrance of the Spaewife's hut with the other friends and well-wishers. --- It was a short healthy birth. Shortly after moonrise, the waiting friends outside the hut heard the loud wailing of a healthy infant. The Spaewife, a petite curvy woman with tired eyes and a triumphant smile opened the door. "Come in one and all, but be quiet. The mother is resting." Chris crowded in with the others and saw Anna resting exhausted on the bed, cradling a tiny swaddled infant next to her breast. The infant was suckling. "It's a beautiful baby girl." The Spaewife cooed. Max looked anxious and exhausted but tremendously happy. His golden hair was ruffled from nervously running his hands through it, and his smile was so huge it barely fit his face. Christopher nearly felt like crying. He slipped out quietly. No need to ruin the mood with his presence. He walked along the surf to his dead parent's home near the sea. He had lived there since Max got married. He slipped inside the wooden one-room home and collapsed naked on his bed. It was a long time before he could sleep though. --- He was at the dock, preparing his one-man fishing boat for the sea when Max found him. He was dressed finely, in knee-length wool pants and silk stockings and shiny black shoes with a buckle on top. He wore fine linen shirtsleeves and a vest and a bit of lace at the throat, his fine coat was over his shoulder. The reason for his finery was clear, they were going to baptize the baby and name her. "I'm sorry I can't come Max." Chris explained. "I already skipped four days earlier this week to fix up the house, and I'll get home in time for the naming ceremony." Max smiled wryly. "Well, you've got me figured out. I was just coming over to guilt you into it, and you already have your excuse. Listen, I know what's going on, and I know why you don't want to come." Chris froze with his hands on the rope. Max sighed and shuffled his feet. "Anna says that you knew she had a thing for you. Maybe you had similar feelings towards her, and if that's true I am surely sorry, but that's no reason to leave us alone with our baby girl." Chris felt his shoulders relax. "Listen Max, I really do have to fish today, and I really mean it when I say that I will be able to make it to the little one's christening. Just trust me. And I know that Anna held a torch for me for a few months, but I never harbored any feeling towards her." He grinned at his best friend. "She's all yours brother, and your little girl is just as cute as a button. I'm an uncle now, and I wouldn't miss it for the world." --- His craft was a handmade deal. Most fishing boats took two or three men to handle, but Christopher's boat was the envy of all fishermen. It was a light canoe-like craft with a single narrow sail, a rudder and an oar for him to steer manually. The craft was made of a rare kind of imported wood that floated on the water like a leaf. When his craft was laden with fish it still moved quickly, and when he was unburdened it skimmed like a seagull coming in for a landing. He handled his craft with a light efficiency. She was named Windward, and she was the fastest watercraft he had ever seen. Sometimes, riding in her was like flying. He skimmed out to his bay, a secret little alcove in the rough white cliffs that was a resting place for the shoals of fish he followed. He thought he was imagining it at first, but then he grinned with his luck. Losing the actual net was a nuisance, but no real problem, nets were cheap enough to make or mend or buy. The pain of the loss had been the large green blown-glass floats woven in. Christopher squinted past the splinters of light thrown by the lapping waves and saw the sun glitter green off at least one of his floats. Chris ignored his secondary nets with their cheap inferior floats of carved wood and sped across the bay towards the green glitter. At first he had only dared to hope for a single unbroken float, but as he got closer he saw all five of the head-sized floats bobbing in the water. Then he got even closer and the cheerful, lucky smile on his face faded. Something was caught in his net. Something white. Too small to be a porpoise, too large to be some strange fish. It looked dead. He pulled on the rope and twisted the rudder minutely, teasing Windward for every degree of speed she could muster. He only started to panic when he was close enough to see the limp arms tangled in rough hemp cords. When he could see hair floating like kelp. A young boy was tangled in his net. The boy's face was towards the sky, burned and swollen and cracked by the sun. His body was feebly twitching, badly tangled in the net. The green floats were the only things keeping this poor creature alive. Christopher threw out the sea anchor and the boat skidded to a halt by the tangled nets. Chris peeled out of his shirt and pants and dived naked into the ocean. The water was cold and salty and refreshing and his eyes burned like hellfire as he swam strongly to the boy in his nets. He threw one arm around the trapped boy's waist and swam him and the net back to Windward. He could feel the boy feebly kicking and moving his arms, trying to help him swim. Chris slid into the boat like a wet tanned fish. Sometimes on the open sea he had stripped naked and while his arms and shoulders were darker he had a protective tan over his entire body. He heaved the heavy nets and their entwined cargo out, the muscles in his shoulders and back writhing under the skin. The boy slumped, badly tangled in the center of Windward, jammed between the two cross-supports, gasping feebly for air. It was only then after the red fog of adrenaline faded that Chris saw exactly what he had caught in his nets. The boy jammed in the bottom of his boat was tiny, small and fragile of limb and figure. His skin was as white as the belly of a fish, and so was his hair. His hair was a bright silvery color with not even a minute trace of yellow or gray to define it as either. His face and shoulders were badly burned by the sun, and if Christopher's ears were not deceiving him, the young boy had just started to cry. There was something eerie, and alien about the boy in his boat, and a million questions filled his mind and his mouth, crowding on the tip of his tongue. But then the boy lifted his head. The silver hair fell to the middle of his back and partially obscured his face as he looked around, utterly bewildered. The look in those deep indigo eyes was utterly lost. Chris bit back his questions, compassion came first. He yanked his discarded shirt down over the boy's skinny burnt shoulders and pulled on his breeches before taking flight over the ocean. The shirt covered the boy down to his knees, and before he hopped up to take hold of the sail rope, he saw something that chilled him. The boy's genitals were big, despite his fragility and size he was older then he looked. But his genitals were completely hairless. Other then the thick head of silky silvery hair, the boy had not one hair on his body. Not even on his legs or chest or groin, not even eyebrows. The boy looked at him with those lost helpless eyes before vomiting seawater on the bottom of his boat. Christopher leapt up to the sail and pulled in the anchor. He stroked the mast lovingly. "You're the only woman I ever loved Windward, and if you've ever loved me back you will get me to the Spaewife in haste." It was almost as if she had listened, and they skimmed across the waves so quickly it seemed as if they barely touched the water. *That was just a teaser, but more is on the way!* The Boy from the Sea Ch. 02 *All characters are 18+* The town of Haven was very quiet at this hour. A few of the shops were open, such as the blacksmith's and the dry goods store and the textile shop. But even those shops were lazy, chatting with a wife here to pick up a few essentials, working slowly around the store, or sitting in front, enjoying the rare March sunshine. All of the men were either in their fields tilling the earth, or out at sea sweeping their nets for the early cod. Those that weren't were all gathering in the chapel for the baptizing and naming of Max Tailor's baby girl. Only three people saw the light craft Windward speeding into the harbor at breakneck pace. One was a child playing in the mud puddles at the edge of the cobbled main road, one was a plump fisher wife trying to decide between a bolt of blue fabric and grey fabric, and the last was the old proprietor of the tannery. They watched out of boredom as the light craft halted crazily (but skillfully) at the dock and the shirtless young owner tie it up frantically. His boat was empty. 'What's the rush?', all three of his watchers wondered curiously. Then they saw that the boat wasn't empty. The lean sun-browned back of Christopher Angler bent low in the boat and came out with a limp figure. All three of them instantly thought it was a girl because of the distance and the long whitish hair that hung in a curtain over Chris's arm. The young man fled, the person in his arms bouncing and flopping lifelessly. Even from the distance the person looked strange, very pale, and with a God-awful sunburn. Rumors began to spread as Christopher ran to the Spaewife with the strange boy in his arms. --- Christopher was panting with exhaustion. It took strength to hold the flapping sail taut against the wind, and he had not taken a single break while fleeing across the sea. Every meter of the way he had been tugging the sail out further to catch another iota of wind and another whisper of speed. He had never coaxed the Windward so fast and his arms felt like bars of white-hot lead. The boy was bundled up in his arms. His legs were long and girlishly slender, and with that odd hairless skin that he found so eerie. The boy's arms were locked firmly around his neck and those eyes wouldn't leave his face. The boy's eyes were also eerie. They were as large in his face as a child's eyes, almost abnormally large and a strange shade of the deepest blue-purple he had never seen. His eyes didn't even seem to reflect the light. They were shiny with tears and the skin around them that was paler and not so damaged by the sun was red and swollen with weeping. The cracked and blistered lips had not opened once, and he had not made any noises. "You'll...be okay...boy..." he gasped between gasping for air. He was running up the rocky path to the Spaewife's hut and the rocks cut his bare feet but he didn't care. When he was at the doorway he shouted. "Spaewife let me in! Its an emergency!" The Spaewife came running from out back, wearing a knee-length gardening dress, her hands and knees and feet black with dirt and her eyes wide with surprise. She saw the burnt silent boy in his arms and did not ask questions. "Come in Christopher." --- The Spaewife's hut was small and filled with herbs. A cat perched on a dresser that had been made from worn salt-blown driftwood. "He was... in my nets I have...no idea where he...came from." Chris was still gasping for air. She pointed to the bed. "Get that shirt of him and put him on the bed. There is a pitcher on the dresser, so try to give him some water slowly, I can get some ointment for his sunburn and those marks on his arms." Marks? Christopher looked at the arms that were feebly clinging to his neck and saw that the net he had been tangled him had caused several raw angry welts on his arms and legs. He swore softly and went to the bed to set him down. The boy refused to release him and he made his first noise. It was a wordless begging whimper. So much fear in that one little sound... "Hush... I wont leave you boy. Please, please let me go." He spoke softly, as if trying to soothe a spooked animal. After that the boy let him duck out of the circle of his arms and gently pull off the shirt. There he got another shock. The boy's torso was blank and featureless. He didn't even have nipples or a navel. There was nothing but smooth white skin that was a little burnt near the collarbone. He quickly covered up the boy before the Spaewife could see. He poured the water into a small bone-china saucer before cradling the boy's limp head in one hand. He nudged the thin edge of the saucer between his swollen blistered lips and tilted it. The boy weakly sucked at the edge of the saucer. It was as if he hardly knew what to do with it, and despite Christopher's careful tilting of the saucer most of it dribbled down his chin or dripped onto the bedspread. Christopher waited for a few moments; if the boy drank too much right away he would vomit. The boy reached for the saucer, making soft mewling noises. By the second saucer the strange young man was able to take about half of it. By the third he was only dribbling a little. The Spaewife came back with a thick club-like branch of a spiky green plant. "Chris, I'll take over, peel the skin away with your knife and try and scoop out some of the clear jelly, it's really good on burns. Christopher dug into the aloe plant with his knife and fingers when he felt a soft tingling sensation on his arm. He looked over and the boy on the bed was reaching with one weak arm, touching his upper arm in a touch so light it was like a breath of wind. Those glassy indigo eyes never left him. The Spaewife pulled down the coverlet and gasped softly, her eyes going over the unmarked skin of his torso and the complete absence of body hair. Christopher tensed and the boy mewed softly, grasping Chris's arm with clammy cold fingers. "I wont tell anyone." The Spaewife said in a shaky voice. "I wont be the one to make sure they burn this poor creature at the stake. But you have to hide him, too many people come in and out of my hut." "Yes Ma'am." Chris whispered. He scooped his fingers full of a clear cold jelly and smeared it on those red shoulders and the reddened blistered mess of the boy's cheekbones and forehead. Touching the red skin was like touching a stone left by the fire, and the jelly dissolved instantly, bringing coolness and relief. The lost young boy on the bed wavered in and out of consciousness as the two humans nursed his fragile body. --- Christopher wrapped the boy completely in a quilt, preparing to bring him back to his hut. The Spaewife looked at him with glittering eyes. "Repeat back what I told you." Chris took a deep breath. "Keep him well hydrated, lots of water. Don't give him solid food at first, just broth. Take him outside, but only at night and in the early mornings to work on getting a protective tan." Chris looked at her hopefully and hefted the boy up in his arms. His bare feet poked from one end of the rolled-up blanket. "Almost all of it." The Spaewife murmured. "Everyone in the township is going to be nosing around your hut. If you go fishing, take him with you, and if anyone sees him make sure it's in a dim-lit room and he's fully clothed. From the neck up he looks strange, but at least he looks humanly strange." She sighed. "I don't know what he is, but tell me if you figure anything out." --- Chris managed to scurry back to his house with no one noticing him. He was thankful that his hut was a mile away from the township, it had made it hard to carry the boy (who was light, but seemed to grow heavier with every step), but at least it would discourage a few of the visitors. The hut was dim and small. All the windows and the door were open to let in sunshine and breeze, because he had nothing in the hut to steal. A few nets he had been mending were hung over the rafters and a few hens ran and scratched in the coop outside. Christopher set the boy down and unwrapped him. He was awake again and looked relieved when the blanket was taken off. Chris couldn't help but stare at that featureless torso and hairless body. He was shocked when he felt stirrings of life below his hemp belt. He had only ever felt that way towards Max. He shuddered and went to get some water. He poured it in a cup and the boy reached for it. He put the cup in the pale boy's hand and watched as he slurped messily, spilling water over his chest. It was so strange; it was as if he had never used a cup in his life. Chris sat on the four-legged driftwood stool next to the bed. "Hello boy." The boy looked at him with those eyes, and it was impossible to know what he was thinking. "I found you in my nets, and I have no idea how you got there, or even...or even if you're human. I don't care, you're just a hurt kid and I wont let anyone hurt you. You may not understand me now, but I just want you to know that." Chris put his hands on his chest. "My name is Christopher." The boy cocked his head slightly. "Chris-to-pher... you try it, Chriiiiisssstoooopheeeer." He repeated his name several more times and was about to give up when the boy reached out to touch his chest and whispered something that sounded like, "Kissafer." It was so hard for him to speak that word; his face was twisted with concentration. "Good!" Chris encouraged. "Try it again, Chris... toe....fur." Saying every syllable like it's own sentence." "Kariss... toe...fur." "Christopher." "Christopher." With every repetition, the boy's face did not twist so much, it became easier for him to warp his tongue around the foreign sounds. Soon he was saying the name over and over the right way. "Very good!" "Christopher!" Chris laughed and the boy smiled weakly and joyfully, the smile crackled some of the thin scabby skin on his cheeks and he winced with pain. "Alright boy, now what is your name?" "Christopher!" Chris frowned. "You can't have that name, it's mine. What is your name?" "Christopher!" Chris started laughing, he couldn't help it. The boy giggled with him. In a burst of inspiration, he reached out and touched the boy's thin nipple-less chest. A burst of understanding filled the boy's face and he spat out a gargle of at least a dozen unpronounceable syllables. Christopher's brow furrowed. "Adrinalaleitafel?" He was guessing wildly, half of those weren't right. The boy giggled and said his name again. "Aderelaleritianafel?" a little closer, but still very wrong. The boy thought for a moment, and them spat out a very simplified version of his name, something that he thought his new caregiver could pronounce. Chris understood that he was given a dumbed down version, so he promised himself to say it right. "Adriel?" The boy nodded and shrugged as if to say, 'eh, close enough.' "Adriel." Chris murmured. "Christopher." Adriel agreed. *Sorry for the briefness and lack of sex, I plan to remedy that for the next chapter.* The Boy from the Sea Ch. 03 *Sorry for the delay, I was on a weekend trip and I wasn't able to write for a few days. All characters are 18+* * Adriel slept. The new addition to Christopher's household was exhausted, and moments after their brief friendly 'conversation' he had started crying again. Christopher didn't know where Adriel had come from, how old he was, or even if he was human, but did know that something terrible had happened to the feverishly dozing boy on his bed. He didn't feel safe or in the mood to go out fishing again, so he merely waited. He cooked up some fish broth for if the boy woke again, played with the spiny branch of aloe the Spaewife had given him, and waited. After a while he mended his nets and a few items of clothing that he had worn out. Eventually he got so stir crazy that he even cleaned the house. As the sun was setting he got his first visitor, and it was Max. He stood in the doorway with his formal clothes and his frustration and his beauty. Christopher ached for him so badly that his first impulse was to just grab his shoulders and kiss him. It was an impulse that he thankfully restrained. Max was furious. "First you reassure me that you can come, and then you reassure me again, and even though you reached home about an hour before my child was christened, you still felt too uninspired to even show your face? What kind of a brother are you?" Near the end, Max was nearly shouting. Christopher opened the door. "I have a guest Max." He said quietly. Max deflated, no longer looking furious, but only confused and peeved. "Who is that? I've never seen her around the town." Christopher closed the door. "Not a 'her', a 'him.' I was out fishing and I found my lost net. There was a... a shipwrecked boy in the nets. He's a foreigner and doesn't speak our language. The Spaewife sent him to my hut so he could have some peace and quiet. He is very badly burned." Max looked suddenly stricken. "God in Heaven, oh shit I'm sorry. Shit! Shit! Shit!" Max was nearly writhing with humiliation and self-loathing. Chris felt guilty anyway. Guilty for hiding the truth, guilty for playing his emotions, and guilty for being in love with his own brother. But he had to keep up the charade. "Shh... He's sleeping. Now is a bad time, and I have to stay here to watch him, but I swear to God, if you bring your beer and your family here tomorrow, we can celebrate your little angel in style." Max laughed a little shakily, still looking stricken and trusting. That look tore at Christopher's heart. "I'll be there." Max promised. --- When Max left and Christopher closed the door he felt exhausted; physically, mentally, and emotionally. He sagged against the door with a sigh, and he jumped about a foot in the air when he saw the dark eyes of the boy were open and watching him silently. "Nice to see you awake Adriel." He sighed and walked over to his tiny woodstove. "Let's get you something to eat." He took the pot of cold broth from the stove and scooped a bowlful of it into a hand-carved wooden trencher. He sat on the stool by the bed and held a spoonful of it to the boy's cracked lips. Chris frowned and blinked; it was probably his imagination, but it almost looked like his lips were noticeably less blistered then earlier. Adriel sniffed the oily broth and tentatively nibbled at the spoon. Again, it was as if he had never used a utensil in his life. Chris wondered briefly if he had lived like a wild animal, but that made no sense, his skin was so pale. After wetting his lips with the broth and dribbling more on his chin, Adriel wanted more. "Christopher!" He yelped. He looked so hungry. "Soup. It's called soup." "Zoop" Chris laughed tiredly and continued to feed the strange little man in his bed, offering him words and soup. It was only after the last drops of broth had been consumed and Christopher was smearing aloe jelly on his face and shoulders that he realized he had been right. Adriel's skin was still terribly red and blistered, but already well-healed. It looked as if days had passed, instead of hours. The skin was starting to peel and the pink patches on his chest were nearly gone. "I'm pretty sure you're not human Adriel." Chris spoke softly, gently, and wondrously. "Zoop, Christopher." "Alright, you hungry little man, I'll get you some soup." --- Adriel learned very fast. Christopher spoke with him for a few hours; about Max, Haven, fishing, and life. To his shock and delight, Adriel was parroting back his words with better pronunciation, and even grasping the meaning of a few of them. After Christopher had wrapped his mind around the knowledge that his ward was not human, his strange features were easier to accept. When it got too dark to see, Christopher lit the fat beeswax candle stub he left on the table near his bed. After a brief smoky flare it burned with a sweet smell and bright light. In the firelight, Adriel's unburned skin was nearly translucent. He stared at the small flame, and Chris could see small yellow sparks reflected in those curious dark eyes. Then before he could stop him, Adriel reached out and touched the dancing yellow flame. "Eeeee!" Chris winced. The sound was high-pitched and painful, barely human. Adriel put the wounded fingertips in his mouth, scowling at the candle. Chris had a sudden revelation. Adriel had never used a cup or a spoon. He spoke a strange language with sounds he couldn't even hear, too high or low for his hearing range. He had never been exposed to the sun, or fire. And Chris had found him in his nets. He jumped up, nearly speechless with excitement. "Jesus, you're one of the Merlee!" Merlee were fishermen tales. Drunken old men talked about how they had seen Merlee girls sun themselves on the rocks. Stories about women who had been raped by male Merlee and had given birth to sharks. The young men and women in the village had always scoffed and said that the men were drunk and had seen dolphins or swimmers. Merlee were supposed to be eerily beautiful and lure fishermen to death on the rocks, they had long fish tails in some stories, and in other stories they had the long scaly tails of water snakes. Adriel was looking up at him curiously. Chris bit his lip; intelligent or no, the boy still understood very little, so how would he be able to ask if he was a Merlee or not?" He got up and grabbed an old patched shirt and a pair of trousers. "Come on Adriel!" He panted. "We're going outside!" "Christopher?" The boy sounded doubtful and wary. The boy weakly moved his arms to go into the shirt holes, but when Christopher took hold of his frail ankles to put them through the trousers he growled and kicked hard. "No! No!" He looked so firm that Chris just shrugged and got up. He coaxed the frightened boy to his feet, trying to calm him and hurry up at the same time. Adriel's thin white legs trembled as he stood on the hard wooden floor. The white shirt billowed around his slight body. The boy was weak, and Christopher had to act as a crutch for him. Adriel's thin arm was slung around the older boy's neck as they stumbled outside. The moon was huge and low and silvery on the horizon. When it was that close, the superstitious called it 'the Demon Moon.' Inland, the high white cliffs gleamed in the light of the moon. The moorland in between was dull and colorless. Nothing but windblown clumps of weeds and stones, land that was good for nothing but raising sheep. Christopher's home was on the ridge where the moor cut off and turned into a beach of gleaming snow-white sand. A ribbon of that sand shone like beaten silver, the strip where the small breakers beat upon the sand. The sea stretched out in a dark, light-stippled expanse that was only broken once by the dark hulk of a small grassy island. Christopher felt the boy in his arms go limp for a moment. The pale burnt face was twisted with sudden ferocious grief. Then Adriel got a sudden burst of strength and Chris was not prepared for it. The slender boy twisted and fought in his arms like a hooked fish before breaking free and fleeing clumsily to the edge of the sea. His running was weak and awkward, he crawled at times, sending up splashes of sand with his clumsily pumping knees and elbows and feet. Chris ran after him, suddenly terrified that the poor creature would drown himself. Adriel was kneeling, and up to his waist in cold breaking water. Chris stopped a few feet away to watch. Adriel looked down at where the wet shirt was drifting and clinging to his thin legs, and then he started to weep. The crying sent shivers up and down Christopher's spine. It was a series of long high-pitched wails of pain and loss. Adriel's matted silvery hair glowed softly in the moonlight, whipping around his face in baby-fine strands as he put his face in his hands and sobbed wretchedly. Then he cried out a name. The name was like his original name, unpronounceable, and filled with a dozen or more syllables, but still unmistakably a name. Chris waited for a few minutes, getting his toes wet in the surf as he waited for Adriel's weak frantic sobs to subside. He felt stricken. He felt hurt. Christopher Angler felt like a monster. Why had he done that? It didn't matter if this boy wasn't human, and he had just hurt him badly. He scooped his strong arms under Adriel's thin knees and the other around his back. The wind blew the long silky hair into his face and mouth and he sputtered. In his arms, Adriel let out a weak sob that sounded almost like a giggle. --- He had dried off the boy, taken off the shirt, and was now tucking him in. He plumped up the single feather pillow he owned, wrapped the blanket warmly around his tiny body and gave him a cupful of water. Adriel pushed the blanket away and Chris had to guiltily avert his eyes from the slender torso and those shapely pale genitals. He gritted his teeth at the traitorous throb in his groin. "Christopher?" The boy's voice was hoarse with grief. "Hmm?" "Please...please." Chris gasped as those small hands tugged with surprising strength at the front of his shirt. He had been relaxed and now he was off balance, teetering on one foot. Adriel tugged again and he had suddenly fallen on top of the frail boy. Chris blushed and began to babble an apology, trying to get away so the boy wouldn't feel his growing erection. He froze when he felt something that he had never expected to feel. He felt the hard prong of another man's arousal against his thigh. Adriel was weak and infirm, but he would not be denied. Suddenly a small cold mouth was against his own, a small cold tongue writhing in his mouth. Chris lost all control. It was fast sex, and it was hard sex, and it was desperate sex. It was sex through Christopher's trousers and breechclout, but it was still sex. Christopher was on top, panting and gasping and kissing with the clumsy desperation of someone denied and loveless. Adriel was underneath, gasping and crying and moving his body in ways that were completely and frankly erotic. They rubbed their stiff and aching cocks together through two layers of cloth, and it only took a few minutes to reach climax. Chris panted softly, laying on top of this strange beautiful boy, careful not to crush him with his body, his mind still reeling gently. "Please." Adriel begged softly. To illustrate his point, he caressed the surface of the bed with one small pale hand. Christopher decided not to think about it. There would be plenty of time for that in the next few days. He had suddenly become a caregiver and a lover to a boy that was not human. The only boy he had ever desired besides his brother. For now, he didn't want the guilt or confusion, he just wanted to enjoy it. He slipped out of his soiled clothes and eased into the bed. Adriel pressed softly into his side. The small boy buried his face into Christopher's broad muscular chest. Adriel huddled into him needfully. He needed touch, the most basic of human needs. And Christopher was there to provide. The Boy from the Sea Ch. 04 *All characters are 18+* He woke up before dawn, as he always had. He rested for a few moments with the limp warm bundle of the strange boy in his arms. The boy had to be one of the Merlee; it was the only thing that made any kind of sense. The boy had also wept while screaming someone's name, right before seducing Christopher. Adriel had known exactly what to do, while Chris was fumbling along. Adriel had guided him. Christopher was not an idiot. Something bad had happened to this boy's lover, and he had fled. Somehow, he had shed his fish-tail and gotten tangled in his nets. He kept thinking about it, trying to make sense of it. His rational mind kept trying to deny it, but the more he thought about it, the more this seemed like the only way. Adriel's hair was stiff and matted with dried saltwater. Chris rubbed his cheek against the softness of it. Just holding the sleeping boy in his arms made his cock hard and insistent, so he had to cautiously hold his hips away from the sleeping boy. Last night had been some sort of freak accident. There was no way this could be real. --- When Adriel woke up, he was alone in the bed. He looked around sleepily and felt the indentation near him with one small sleep-warmed hand. The indentation was still warm. Adriel felt safe. He had never thought that he would feel safe again. He rolled into the slight dip in the fabric and fell asleep surrounded by the warmth and the smell of Christopher. --- Christopher came inside after a quick masturbation and wash by the well. He was clothed only in a pair of knee-length cotton pants and his sun-gilded chest was bare and shining subtly with trickles of water. Adriel was sleeping, sprawled over the entire bed. Chris smiled a little at the sight and warmed up his griddle, a flat piece of metal with a handle, over his small wood stove. For breakfast he fried up four eggs from his two laying hens and a bit of dough made with coarse brown flour to make rough flat cakes. Since it was a special occasion, he crumpled a bit of brown sugar over the cakes. Sugar of any kind was expensive, for it was shipped from the Americas. "Christopher?" He nearly jumped at the sleepy little voice behind him. He looked behind him to see Adriel yawning and stretching like a cat. The covers had slid off of him and he was unashamedly naked on the bed. His skin was paler then the linen ticking of the mattress, and it looked soft. His hair was a matted silver halo around his head and his eyes were dark and sleepy. Christopher couldn't stop his eyes from sweeping over that narrow muscular torso and those lean triangular hips with the genitals hanging between his slender thighs like mouthwatering fruit. Chris had to swallow and turn away, hiding his erection behind his body, feeling his cheeks burn. The flush in his cheeks made him realize something and he whirled back around. He felt his jaw drop. Adriel's sunburn was gone. Twenty-four hours earlier it had been so bad it looked like a real burn, and now his skin was perfectly healthy except for a little bit of pink peeling skin at the cheekbones and forehead where the burn had been the worst. The skin on his face, instead of being pearly-pale was now the faintest shade of gold. On any human it would be called white, or pale, but on Adriel's pearl-colored body it looked gold. It was the very tender beginning of a protective tan. Adriel cocked his head curiously. "Christopher?" The cakes were starting to burn, so Chris quickly turned back to them, still a little shell-shocked by how fast he had healed. "It's alright Adriel, you just gave me a little shock." "Shhhhooock....shock!" Christopher burst out laughing at the parroting behavior of the boy as he set the singed griddle cakes on a battered tin plate. "Breakfast." He explained, gesturing to the meal. Adriel copied him. They began to eat, with Chris pointing to every individual thing on the plate and explaining what they were. He was beginning to tell Adriel colors by saying 'Brown' and then pointing to every brown thing in the cabin. Adriel understood and they had gone through red, blue, brown, and yellow when Adriel snuggled under Christopher's arm. Chris couldn't stand the allure of Adriel's slender ripe body, so he scooted away and covered Adriel with the sheet as well as he could. Adriel looked up at him, confused and a little hurt. Chris wilted under that look. "Christopher no...want Adriel?" He spoke slowly and deliberately, using the few words that he knew already to make the clumsy sentence. His eyes were filling with tears. "I want you Adriel." Chris whispered. "I want you very much, but what about, about him?" Chris tried to pronounce the babble of syllables that Adriel had screamed into the ocean. He found that he couldn't, so he repeated the first two syllables of that long name. "What about Theo?" Adriel started to cry a little. "Theo...no. Theo is no." Adriel lacked the words to say it, but Chris understood what he was trying to say. "Dead. That's the word you're looking for. Theo is dead." Adriel started to cry in earnest, and this time when the frail boy leaned against him Chris didn't push him away. Instead he wrapped his arms around Adriel's tender white shoulders and murmured soothing nonsense. His cock was limp, grief didn't turn him on. After a few minutes Adriel's sobs tapered off. Chris kept his arms around the small boy and shushed him quietly. After another moment Adriel looked up with those big indigo eyes of his. "Please Christopher. I hurt...Theo is dead...I want you." Twenty-four hours and he was speaking at the level of a four year old. But Chris could no longer notice that, not when a small hand was clumsily fumbling with the leather tie that served as a belt on his pants. Adriel's voice was raw with need, and he was stiff and needful elsewhere as well. "Adriel, are you sure you want to do this?" Christopher's voice cracked like that of an adolescent boy. "I want Christopher." The boy said simply, before nuzzling his mouth into the older man's neck. After that there was very little conversation. Christopher couldn't stop a small moan from escaping his mouth as Adriel sinuously slid his body into the older boy's lap. The young boy's hands clasped around Christopher's wrists and led them to his body. Christopher groaned softly when he felt Adriel nudging his fist around the slender hard point of his pale hairless cock. "Please Christopher." The boy begged softly. Then he lifted his head to press his soft warm mouth into the older boy's numb lips. Christopher was still stunned by the sudden seductive attack, but with Adriel's soft mouth nuzzling his, Christopher's heart melted and his cock became rock-hard. He tightened his right arm so the young Merlee was clasped tightly in his grip and he gently caressed the pale throbbing member in his hand, amazed by the feel of another man's cock. He tongued the softness of the boy's lips, lips that had been badly chapped not even eight hours ago. Adriel's clumsy hands had finally figured out the knack of Christopher's belt. Chris couldn't stop a soft groan from escaping his lips as his cock sprung out of it's confines of cloth and rested against Adriel's tender inner thigh. Chris couldn't stand it. He took Adriel and moved so they were lying on the bed facing each other. Adriel's eyes were still glassy and red from the tears. Adriel needed the sex like a drug, to dull his grief. The slender boy moved forward and suddenly their naked bodies were rubbing together gloriously. Adriel gasped at the strange rough feel of Christopher's hard furred body, Chris groaned at the soft velvety feel of the other boy's cock against his stomach. Their mouths pressed together with a roughness borne of need. Chris knew he was stronger, he was holding himself back, treating the sweet boy in his arms like glass though he lusted for him like no one else. Adriel gasped in pleasure and it sounded like a cry of pain. Chris backed away, his eyes glazed with terror, thinking he had somehow hurt the boy. Adriel's lips were reddened and a little swollen from the force of their kiss. "N-No!" He stammered. "More... Please Christopher more!" Chris lunged back at him and kissed frantically. Chris was so close when Adriel pulled away and down. He couldn't stop letting out a frustrated groan of need, but then his brown eyes opened up so wide that they looked like they might fall out. Adriel was lying on the bed further down, and he was holding Christopher's cock in his small white hands. His face was nearly level with his cock, and he was caressing it slowly and looking at it with a sort of curiosity. His hands kneaded, feeling the soft tender skin slide over the rock hardness of the engorged shaft. Feeling the texture of the organ that was so similar, and trailing his fingertips in the soft bush of dark tangled pubic hair that was so different from him. The only noise Chris could make was a strangled little moan. He let out another moan when the beautiful boy leaned forward and nibbled softly at the pulsing pink head with his lips. His cock looked so big in the boy's small hands, and the feel of those soft nibbling lips was feather-light, and heavenly. Carefully, gently, Chris tangled his hands in the soft silkiness of his matted hair. He could feel the warmth of the scalp beneath, and his little finger could feel the muscles in the side of the head and jaw working very gently as the boy moved his lips and tongue. Chris closed his eyes, and somehow that made it better. The soft velvety nudges from the lips gave way to hot little licks from a hot moist tongue, and then those soft lips hardened as the muscles in them flexed to make a ring and the ring of hot muscle slid down his shaft in an imitation of another area. The head of his cock trembled and throbbed inside this sweet creature's mouth, which was hot and wet and yielding. Chris opened his eyes, feeling sweat bead on his forehead and back and buttocks. He saw his hands cupped around the head of this boy, and Adriel had somehow made the length of his cock disappear. His mouth wasn't big enough to fit it, but those pink lips were now buried in the bush of his pubic hair. He moaned as he felt the hot rough tongue caressing his length, and saw the tip of his cock making a small bump in Adriel's throat. That sight was enough to put him over the edge. He cried out and climaxed into Adriel's mouth. He couldn't help it, and when he was done, he blushed and smothered his face into the pillow, feeling his face burn and his eyes sting with shame. He felt Adriel gag a little and withdraw his mouth. He was cringing with shame at having come so early, and in his mouth! He felt a feather-soft kiss on his cheek and when he looked up Adriel was kneeling near his head and holding his cock in his hand, the slender pale head poking from the fingers. "Please." He said quietly. Sweat was shining in a soft sheen on his shoulders and unmarked chest. There was something powerful and animalistic and alien about the way the muscles writhed under that smooth nipple-less, navel-less skin. Christopher leaned forward. In that moment his shame and naïve confusion were so great that he would have swallowed powdered glass, or thrown himself from a cliff if Adriel had requested it. But he also felt a strong urge, like a sexual hunger, to taste Adriel's cock. Clumsy, and unsure, Christopher leaned forward and wrapped his lips around Adriel's cock. The flesh was warm and smooth and hard under his lips. Unlike anyone Chris had ever seen, Adriel was uncircumcised and the skin was soft and loose on his cock. Chris tentatively touched the tip of Adriel's cock with his tongue and he could taste the faint wetness of precome at the tip. He was able to feel the faint vibrations through the tip of his tongue as Adriel moaned softly. Chris moved onto his hands and knees, his face buried in the other boy's crotch, suckling clumsily. He copied what Adriel, a far more experienced and skilled cocksucker, had done to him. Adriel's hands cradled his head and the boy groaned and whimpered softly. Chris gained a little confidence and began to bob his head up and down a little faster, slurping on the hot hard member in his mouth. Adriel was about six inches long, and slender, so when Chris lunged down on him, Adriel's cock poked the back of his throat. Chris let out a muffled cry as Adriel's cock spasmed and began to spurt. The ropes of come in his mouth were earthy and somehow delicious. Adriel fell back, panting and sniffling a little. "Christopher?" Chris slid sinuously so he was lying next to the sexy boy he had found in his nets. "Sh... I'm right here." He murmured, burying his face in that heavy fall of silky hair. "I'm right here." --- The first of the busybodies came when Chris was fixing his nets. He was doing a little mending where they had been ripped and attaching them more tightly to the green glass floats that had saved Adriel's life. Adriel was lying on the bed and pointing at objects, wanting to know their names, and learning them with his scary-fast intelligence. The knock on the door made them both jump. Chris quickly got up and covered Adriel up to the nose with the blanket. The boy squirmed a little, uncomfortably hot, but he stayed under the blanket, knowing, or at least guessing, the risks of being caught. Chris went to the door and opened it. It was the Spaewife, looking harried, and she was followed by Bertha, a large cheerful wife of one of the other fisherman who was as nosy as she was cheerful. Her honest features were twisted with curiosity and an eager sort of lusting for knowledge. It made her pleasant face ugly and childish. "I've told you Ber', the little castaway is very sick. He needs dark and rest and isolation!" I could tell that they had been arguing all of the mile-long walk from the outskirts of Haven. I decided to take a different approach. I smiled my most winning smile at them, and by Bertha's somewhat breathless giggle I knew that we had been lucky. Bertha was one of the women in the village that thought that I was very handsome. Several of the women thought that way, and it had been a source of constant amusement and depression since I was about fourteen years old. "How are you doing Ber', I haven't seen you since the last council meeting!" I moved in to sweep her up in a bear hug. She was far shorter then me but we weighed about the same. The Spaewife was giving me a look that wanted to be sour, but she couldn't stop the corners of her mouth from twitching. Bertha was blushing and giggling. She was ten years older then me, and she loved her husband, but I had a feeling that if I actually pursued any of the women in Haven I could probably get at least half of them to share my bed, husband or no. I turned my face grave. "I'm really sorry Ber', I personally don't think you would do any damage, but the boy is pretty badly burned. He's been talking, moaning in his sleep. He hasn't told me much, but what he did tell me was that he was so scared to fall asleep, because the nightmares are so bad." This of course, was a carefully plotted piece of bullshit. It answered none of her questions, made her think that he was still burned, and made her feel guilty. I could see her face twist in sudden sympathy, though she was still staring into my face avidly. "And besides, it's the Spaewife's orders." Bertha looked down at the dust for a moment. "Ooh, alright! Just take care of the poor thing for Bertha!" she gave me a look up and down that made me suddenly feel like a chunk of meat at the marketplace, or maybe a prize fish. "See you around..." She was twelve years married, and she had borne three children, and suddenly she was batting her eyes at me. I bit my lip before smiling warmly at her. --- "Is that your master plan?" The Spaewife asked me dryly. "To act like Adonis whenever women come over? To bat your eyes at every nosy bitch in this town?" I was startled. She was joking, but there was some real bitterness in her voice. "Every person in town it seems, and nine of ten of them are women, have been at my front door, curious about the strange 'girl' they heard of. This is the first time I've been able to break away in hours." Feeling stupid the minute the question left his mouth, Christopher asked, "They think he's a girl?" She rolled her eyes. "That isn't the most important question, now is it?" Chris tried to stop her from going into the house, tried to warn her of what she would see, but as soon as she came in, Adriel recognized her and sat up, smiling a sweet little smile. "Spaewife!" he called, looking proud that he had remembered. "Spaewife help me! I like Spaewife!" She dropped her basket with a crash of something glass breaking inside and covered her mouth with her hand. Chris ran forward, ready to catch her if she swooned, but the Spaewife was made of tougher materiel then that. She straitened and looked at him, awfully pale with hard spots of red dancing high in her cheeks, right under her eyes. "Christopher?" Her voice was very soft, and somehow childish. "Why is that boy, who didn't know a word of any civilized tongue, why is he talking to me. More importantly, why does he not have a single burn on him?" her voice cracked a little. "Why Christopher?" "Christopher!" Adriel parroted, smiling uncertainly. "Calm down, Spaewife. It's a long story, and you need to relax." For a second, Christopher thought that she would scream, or hit him, or both. But then she just took a very deep breath and let it out slowly. Chris saw with amusement that Adriel had also taken a very deep breath and let it out, and Chris had to bite the insides of his cheeks to stop himself from laughing. The Spaewife still looked very angry and he thought that laughing would be a very bad idea. *There was going to be more to this chapter, but I'm getting a new computer and I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't lose anything, so here it is.* The Boy from the Sea Ch. 05 *Quickly, I just want to apologize for the last chapter, because near the end I accidentally switched back and forth from first and third person. I am VERY sorry about that, and I have made sure to keep things neat in this one. On the other hand, if anyone liked it in first person point of view, or has any opinions on how they want me to tell the story, please leave me some feedback or put something in the comments section. All characters are 18+ Enjoy* * He told the Spaewife about the quick healing, and the rapid acquisition of language. He told her about the unknown lover named Theo, and with his cheeks a brilliant red he whispered to her about how the boy had seduced him not once, but twice. He was surprised at how easy it was to tell her, and even more surprised at how easily she accepted it. "I always suspected." Was all she said. When he gave her a look full of surprise and suspicion, she sighed. "Many people are ostracized and even punished for daring to love within their sex, it is far more common then you think." She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "Lets go in to see him then." As they entered the hut, Adriel looked at them with an uneasy expression. "Christopher? Spaewife?" Chris couldn't stop a small chuckle from escaping his mouth. "It's just fine Adriel, you gave her a bit of a scare, especially when she saw how quick you healed." Adriel smiled a little, but also looked uneasy. It was the first time that his unusual healing had been mentioned outright. Really, it was the first time that his inhumanity had been mentioned outright. The Spaewife ended the awkward moment in her usual brisk way. "Enough of this chitchat! Adriel? Is that your name? Alright, move the blanket down and let me have a look at you." She spoke clearly and used a few gestures to make sure that Adriel understood. "Yes Spaewife." When he spoke simple replies and sentences, he sounded so normal, almost as if he had spent years learning the language instead of twenty four hours. He pushed the blanket off of his body and Chris couldn't help but watch. During his brief seduction their hadn't been any time to really look at him, and it was interesting to study his strange body in the light of day. Adriel saw him looking and a faint pink flush spread through his slightly tanned cheeks. "I'm still here boys." The Spaewife said dryly. Adriel flushed harder and his cock, which had given an eager little twitch, went limp. The Spaewife looked over his newly healed skin and inspected his strange chest, touching the places where his nipples and navel should have been with small hands. "Wow..." She whispered softly. "Wow? What is Wow?" Adriel looked puzzled and absolutely adorable. "Just an expression... I was surprised Adriel." The Spaewife bit her lip. "I think you owe us both an explanation. What are you Adriel? And why are you here?" Adriel looked down at his hands, and Chris could see tears beading in those large midnight eyes of his. "I... I tell you. I will." He looked up at Chris, as if for reassurance and he patted the side of the bed, inviting them both to sit. With a glance between them, Chris and the Spaewife did. --- "I live in water. Christopher call me 'Merlee', and I no know what 'Merlee' is, but... is what you call me." Adriel looked frustrated. "I no talk right! You no understand!" "Hush, it's fine Adriel, I can understand you and Chris can too. You lived in the Ocean, and we call you the Merlee, please go on." Adriel looked pacified. "Yes, I please go on. There is... a group. I no know word, but many 'Merlee' live same place." "A town? How many are there?" Christopher was curious. "I no know numbers, but many, many more then... town... here. Live in a town under water, and I am..." Adriel struggled to find a word. "Family controls town, family lives above town, above people in town. Tells people what do." Neither the Spaewife or Chris understood and they puzzled over the word until Christopher's eyes lit up. "Royalty! He means Royalty! Like king and queen and wearing crowns!" Christopher mimed the actions out to Adriel and the boy nodded. "Yes. I, father was queen." The Spaewife giggled. "Queen means a woman silly." "Woman?" The Spaewife burst out giggling and Chris blushed furiously. He gestured to the Spaewife, and then to himself. "Woman, Man, She, He." Adriel blushed. "Father was king, mother was not queen. Mother was town woman, common woman. Father not like I, made mother and I live out of town." Adriel's eyes softened slightly. "Mother and I not only ones made to go out of town, five moon ago, I saw Theo." "You and your mother and Theo were all exiled from the town?" "Exiled mean told to stay out?" The Spaewife bit her lip. "Yes Adriel, that's what it means." "Theo caught at surface. Is against... what Father say to be at surface." "Rules?" Chris supplied helpfully. "Laws?" "Yes. Is against laws to be at surface. You might see, and law no want us to be found. Theo chased a fish, jumped above surface, and was exiled. Exiles still hunt, and town takes some. Every..." He held up five fingers. "...fish we get, town takes biggest one. Theo and I hunt together, we catch more and bigger." Adriel's eyes softened even more and began to glisten. "I never like woman. Theo never like woman. One day, we hunt and Theo hold I in arms, kiss I on mouth. Merlee cannot..." He was searching for a word, and used a gesture, making a circle with his thumb and forefinger and putting the forefinger of his other hand in and out. He meant it only to illustrate, but the dirty gesture had both of his human listeners blush. "Sex. Or lovemaking. Or fucking." Christopher offered this, cringing a little at the dirty look the Spaewife gave him at that last synonym. "Merlee cannot sex in water. Merlee go on land and change to this." He gestured to his pale shapely legs. "Merlee go to sand in open Ocean, far from human, and in dark. Merlee do sex on sand, then have young. Theo took I to hidden sand. Theo no know what do, I no know what do... I teach Theo, Theo teach me. It was beautiful." His dreamy face broke and he started to cry softly as he spoke. "Theo and I, like much, like too much. Both stop watch. Both stop careful. I not careful, and a man and woman who came to make sex saw Theo and I. Man and woman take Theo and I to Father, and he mad. He very mad." Adriel cried harder. "Father have Theo dead. Tie hands to tree root and tail to rock in water. With tail in water, cannot change, with head in air, cannot breathe. Chris flinched. What a horrible way to die, it was the equivalent of slow drowning. Mother go to Father, beg him to live I. Father give me...live or dead." "A chance." The Spaewife said thickly. Chris looked over and through his stinging eyes he saw that she was far from tearing up, she was already sobbing. "He gave you a chance." "Father give me chance. Steal nets with glass, tangle I in nets. Force not to change." "How did he force you not to change? I thought you just said it was impossible to change when you were in the water?" "Father have power. Power turn me, something not 'Merlee' not human. I cannot change ever again. I exiled, I exiled forever." With that, Adriel fell apart and collapsed, sobbing onto the thin mattress. Both the Spaewife and Christopher tried to comfort him, but to little effect. --- The Spaewife brewed some tea, and she had put some herbs into Adriel's cup that she said would calm him down a little. They sipped tea, Adriel was getting better but he still dribbled tea on his chin. "You need to bring him with you on the boat. Bertha was just the beginning, and the entire village is curious, and some are less polite then Bertha. I've heard ridiculous stories about how you've held a girl captive and are keeping her and forcing her every night. If they find out that he's a shipwrecked boy, his appearance with make them uneasy. If they ever see his chest, or even inspect him too closely to see he doesn't have hair, he could made them nervous and angry. I've seen people get lynched for less." She sighed. "I don't know what to do in the long run. We can't keep hiding him, and we can't reveal who he is. I'll think about it and so should you, but we should keep him safe for as long as we can." "Yes Spaewife." Chris answered softly. He had a heavy sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He wrapped a protective arm around Adriel's thin shoulders. "I'll keep him safe." --- After the Spaewife left, Christopher dug around in a driftwood chest. The chest contained all that remained of his biological parents, and deep in the chest was a comb made from whalebone. "Come here Adriel... Lets fix that mop of yours." Chris sat cross-legged on the bed and Adriel obediently sat in front of him. The silky hair was hopelessly matted and tangled down to the middle of his back. Chris wet the comb in some water and got started, apologizing quietly whenever he tugged too hard. The activity was simple, and surprisingly intimate. Chris ran his calloused hand a few times down that sweet and vulnerable curve of his neck, sometimes traced the delicate pattern of those shoulder blades. When Adriel's hair was as strait and combed and light as silk, Chris began to braid it into a thick plait that reached just between his shoulder blades. Adriel touched the plait, puzzled. "Why Christopher make I hair a rope?" It took a minute or two to make Chris stop laughing. --- Christopher dressed Adriel in his smallest clothes, but they still hung on his short slender frame, and the calf-length breeches had to be rolled up so they didn't drag on the ground. Adriel hated the breeches. He kept looking down at them and clenching his legs together, repulsed and fascinated by the feel of cloth separating a part of him which had always been connected. He bore the breeches only for Christopher's sake. He also brought a light linen cloth that had belonged to his mother to set the table on holy days. The cloth was light and cool, but it would protect Adriel's vulnerable skin from the sun while they were in the boat. Most of the fishermen were already out when they walked to the pier. Adriel walked slowly and unsurely, leaning on Chris the whole time, but he was a fast learner, and he was walking short stretches by himself by the time they reached Haven. Chris hustled him on the boat before anyone could approach him. Once on the boat, Adriel covered his body with the linen sheet and sat on one of the cross supports. Chris climbed on top of a cross support and teased the sail so the wind rushed them out to sea. --- Chris had been worried that being out in the ocean would distress the strange boy, but thankfully, his fears had been in vain. Adriel was a little listless, but he quickly cheered, dipping his fingers into the water as Windward hurtled through the glassy swells. His first order of business was to quickly unrobe. He disliked the heavy feeling of the shirt and he hated the breeches. Chris had to smile at the look of loathing he gave the breeches at his feet after he tore them off. He threw off the sheet for quick moments, letting the sun quickly sear his pale skin. Just thirty seconds of sunshine was enough to make his deathly pale skin begin to flush. Quick as a flash, he would cover up, and then it literally took about ten minutes to heal. The second time, he was able to stay in the sun for about a minute before burning. Needless to say, it was a bit distracting to sail the boat whenever Adriel (innocent of any affect he was having) kept flashing himself every few minutes. Chris had to close his mouth tight and try not to drool at the sight of those silky buttocks and that lean torso and long shapely legs. Chris managed to make it to a cove bare of other watercraft before breaking in. Adriel gave a delighted little squeal as Chris dropped down to the bottom of the boat and lifted up the linen cloth. His face was almost a caricature of need and lust. He was careful to make sure that the linen cloth protected them from the sun before lowering his head and covering that hot smooth abdomen with eager nibbling kisses. "Christopher!" Adriel panted, cradling the young man's head in his hands and throwing his head back as he felt a hot eager mouth wrap around his cock. Chris moaned at the intimate pleasure of holding Adriel's soft cock in his mouth, but it hardened in mere moments. Chris sucked eagerly, hoping to please Adriel and at the same time desperate to have that luscious gasping mouth devouring his own cock. "Slow Christopher! Please slow!" Adriel was panting, Chris looked up to see those gorgeous indigo eyes shut, and the lash-less lids fluttering. He slowed, and moaned at the sensation of that hot cock stretching his lips, bumping the back of his throat. He rested his hands on the slender hips, feeling the bony wings of Adriel's pelvis with his fingers and stroking the smoothness of the perfect hollows in his buttocks. 'He's too thin' Chris thought, 'I need to feed him up a bit.' He moved one hand to cradle the vulnerable sacs of Adriel's testes. The skin there was perfectly hairless and smooth, and the delicate skin felt like satin. "Christopher, look at I, please?" Stifled in a tent of linen, breathing the same air twice, feeling the trembling heat and sweat and sex rolling off their bodies in waves, no sound but the gentle lapping of waves and the shrieking of gulls and the desperate sweetness of their breathing. In that uncomfortable boat, hard edges and awkward crouching, stifled in the protective tent, it was absolutely perfect. Christopher slowed down, and began to tongue Adriel's cock with increasing confidence and skill while the slender exile moaned in ecstasy. All the time he was looking up into those wide indigo eyes. --- Adriel had reciprocated, of course. Christopher's high mewling cries had been enough to scare the gulls away. Chris rested his sweaty head on Adriel's chest while the boy cooed wordlessly and played with his hair. He got up with a hoarse chuckle. "I really do have to fish, It's almost noon and I have to get back in time to meet Max's baby girl." Adriel shrugged, giggled and kissed Christopher's hand before hiding under the sheet. The tangle of lustful limbs had been a little too forceful on the sheet, and it was ripped in places. Adriel carefully pinched the largest rip, about five inches long, closed and arranged the sheet around his body. Chris laughed wryly and threw out the nets. --- He only had about three hours to fish, but considering the time limit he made a pretty good catch. Adriel helped him. Whenever he pulled in the nets after dragging them behind the boat for a bit, Adriel reached into the net with one hand and into the burlap sack full of salt with the other and quickly salted the fish. The fish needed to be salted to last in the hot sun, and then to last all the way to the inland markets. Out in the boats they were merely rubbed with salt and some stuffed in their mouths, and in the village the traders would store the fish in barrels filled with brine. Adriel's hands were quick and clever with the fish; he never fumbled or dropped any, and he even knew how to stun them quickly with a jab behind the flapping, bleeding gills. It just shocked Christopher a little when two hours in, Adriel got hungry and took a bite out of one. Adriel's clever hands ripped apart the fish in moments, peeling off the thin skin and eating the filets off of the struggling cod in neat voracious bites. The cod was still twitching feebly after Adriel had eaten away one side. He saw Chris looking at him and held out the fish in a shy smile. "Christopher want fish?" His pale cheeks were dusted with silvery scales. Christopher imagined what it would look like for Adriel to have a long tail covered in those scales. He managed to shake his head, and Adriel shrugged and devoured the rest of the small fish. --- The fish were salted and stacked like firewood, the net was folded with the glass floats wrapped in protective layers of cheap wool. Adriel was sunning his naked body, and he was still pale, but not translucent. His skin was the color of a human's skin who had spent an entire winter indoors. He wasn't tanned, but he had a bit more resistance to the sun. Christopher pulled in the sea-anchors (two floats that went out on long lines to each side of the boat, having three points made it drift less) and began to tease the sail to bring Windward back home. The boat followed a golden trail of water that was reflecting the sinking sun. Adriel sat upright suddenly and his eyes grew wide with absolute terror. "Christopher! Christopher! They are coming!" Chris heard nothing, but Adriel had better ears then him so he heaved his weight out to give the wind more surface on the sail. The wind made the sail taut and his arms trembled with the strain of holding it out so far, but the light craft began to skim across the water, even weighed down with fish and an extra person. Adriel took the rudder, allowing Chris to pull the sail out as far as possible, not having to slow down to use the rudder. Now Chris could hear it. The strange garbled speech that had sounded so cumbersome and awkward on land sounded alien and eerie in the water. It rose up all around them, and it sounded high and beautiful, like sped-up whalesong. Adriel saw a glimpse of a pale furious face in the water. The face was cold and furious and dim, and a gigantic muscular SOMETHING was thrashing the water into foam even from three feet below the surface. Though the Windward was skimming quickly across the surface, the thing below the water kept perfect time with them. The face turned and the tail briefly flicked above the surface as the Merlee propelled itself downwards. It was not a fish tail. Even from the briefest glimpse that Christopher had seen through splashes of foam, he was able to tell what it was. It was the muscular flattened scaly body of a water snake. A huge water snake. Christopher could see the town. Adriel was moaning in fear, cowering near the bottom of the boat as the eerie underwater howling got closer. Suddenly two pale slimy hands had caught the lip of the boat and Chris could feel the sudden drag. The skin on the pale webbed hands was translucent and tinted green. The face rose and Adriel shrieked. It was an angular woman's face and the limp silvery hair stuck to her shoulders and hollow cheeks. Her eyes were dark purply-blue and furious, and her thin lips were bared to show teeth that were small and neat and well-fitting, but as sharp and narrow as pencil-tips. Gill-slits flapped and trembled at the sides of her neck. "I cant slow down Adriel! Hit her!" Adriel moaned and grabbed one of the smooth green-glass floats. He smashed it over her head and she sank with a screech and the water was streaked with blood. The garbled whalesong was fading. Fading as the water got shallower and the town got closer, but before they left entirely Chris saw a small group of them head and shoulders above the water. They were furious and alien. He pulled into the dock and saw several curious townspeople coming in to finally see the strange boy (girl?) that the young fisherman had caught in his nets. "Put your clothes on and don't speak a word. They can't know how fast you learn." --- They managed to get through the throng of people. Christopher's story was that the burns had been on his back, for he had wrapped his shirt around his head to protect him from the sun, that's why he didn't have burns on his face. He was from another country, that's why he was so pale and didn't speak a word. He was frightened and homesick, that's why he had gone with Chris to the boat in the first place. The Boy from the Sea Ch. 05 The villagers weren't happy, but they were satisfied enough. One thing a small town loves is gossip, so the ten or so villagers that had met him at the docks went to spread rumors to their friends, and with each telling of the strange boy, something was added or omitted. Some hinted that Chris was fucking the boy. They had no real evidence, but they wanted to spice their stories up. Others insinuated that he was holding the strange boy against his will, while yet others became convinced that the boy was a witch of some sort. Not a benevolent witch like the Spaewife, but something far more frightening. Later on, Chris would regret not staying longer in the village, introducing Adriel and convincing people of his harmlessness, or tricking them into believing he was human. If Christopher had done that, maybe things would have been different in the end. But at that time, he was stressed and harassed and terrified of the Merlee. He wanted to hurry up to the house to see his best friend and sister and niece. After that, he wanted to go to bed with his new lover, and learn new things. So while the two of them walked to their house, and the whole night after, the town hissed and buzzed and whispered with secrets and lies. Malicious things that could burn like fire or poison. Or sunlight. The Boy from the Sea Ch. 06 *Sorry for not submitting anything for a while, I have been suffering from a pretty bad case of writer's block recently. I foresee two more chapters, but there may be three. Please enjoy, and rip it to pieces in the comment's section. all characters are 18+* Adriel and Christopher were oblivious to the strange and terrible things that happened in the town that night. They were too far away. The Merlee king, who had exiled his mistress and illegitimate son once before exiling his bastard to the mainland, was not responsible for the attack on Windward. The Merlee who had orchestrated that attack, was a young female with a name unpronounceable, and even unable to be written by humans, so we will call her Shia. Shia had been in love with a young exile. She had defied her mother and father to go out and be with him. She had followed him and hunted with him for over a year. They had gone onto the sand-flats out of sight of the mainland and made love countless times under the brilliant night sky. Then her lover, we call him Theo, left her in a heartbeat for something forbidden and perverted. Shia was heartbroken, and then enraged. Shia was a beautiful and powerful Merlee of an ancient powerful line. She had gone up to several young males to enlist them in her cause, and they followed without complaint. Shia knew that Theo must have been tricked and misled by that perverted little bastard. And now, Theo's body had been picked bare by sand fleas and crabs, while that little bastard was alive, and fucking a human. A human man! Her head was still sore from the blow that the bastard had given her, and with the very float that had kept him alive. Shia and her gang had been separated and guarded on that day. The little traitor was to be given his chance of survival that day. Shia knew about humans. She had swum up their rivers and watched them curiously where the royal guards couldn't persecute her. She was disgusted and fascinated by their dark hairy bodies. By the strange pink markings on the men's chests. The women had them to, on the tips of strange pendulous bags of fat. Shia shuddered, disgusting. Merlee laid eggs, and did not lactate. Shia, and all other females of her race had no breasts. Shia knew human's fear of the unknown, so even after she had missed her chance at snatching the little traitor, she stayed in the uncomfortable, shallow, and dirty water of the harbor, two or three of her dedicated following by her side and she shrieked all night long. She was screaming promises of revenge. To the townsfolk of Haven, it sounded like the gateway to hell had been opened. In Haven, the livestock went mad. Deep fear was bred into them from the days when Merlee had stolen cattle and goats and sheep that wandered too close to the shore. Passive sheep screamed like dying women and battered their bodies against the fences until either the fence broke, or their ribs and skulls. Gentle cows gave soured milk and tore up their stalls with their horns and feet. Horses screamed and broke their legs trying to kick the stall doors down. Cats became wild and aggressive, attacking dogs, livestock, other cats or humans. Dogs whined and moaned with fear, cowering in their houses, or in ally-ways if they were strays. Land-dwelling birds like robins and crows fled the shoreline. Only the seagulls were unaffected. In the cacophony of shrieks of frightened and maddened animals, humans cowered in their homes. Bitten and kicked and scratched. The whimpers of their frightened dogs and children filling the air. In the home of Bertha, the plump wife who had flirted with Christopher, she was tending to her children. She had four. Becka, the oldest was six and she had a broken leg from being kicked by the placid old cow. The Spaewife was too busy, and Bertha hadn't been able to find her, so the flustered woman had just bound it herself and given the screaming little girl a gulp of her husband's moonshine liquor to calm her. Josiah was four, and had been bitten by a sheep on his shoulder, clumsy bandages and a gulp of liquor for him as well. Elsie was two, and had been badly clawed by the cat. Ingrid, the baby had bin bitten on her feet and knees by two huge rats, right in her crib. Bertha was weeping and terrified. Her husband would be one of the fishermen that wouldn't return that night. Shia's gang would sink four boats, and his would be one of them. All she knew was that all of her children were crying and injured, her baby was now missing two toes, she had been forced to kill her cat with a chunk of firewood, and her husband was three hours late. Underlining the chaos on land, was a high-pitched demonic shrieking that came from the water. Bertha cried, rocking frantically on the chair that her husband, Harold had made for her after Elsie was born. Harold, who would never see the new fifth baby he had planted in her stomach. Her children were sleeping or crying in blankets spread on the floor around her, afraid to go to their beds in case of the rats that had mutilated the baby. The brown and white mutt that herded their sheep was whining and trembling at her feet as she rocked faster and faster, holding her screaming, whimpering babe tight. "It's that boy," She whimpered. Her face was a hard-set snarl of fury and terror. "It's that fucking witch-boy from the sea." Inside every house, the thought was pretty much the same. --- Christopher was at his hut, and the trembling exhausted Adriel was lying in his bunk. Adriel's face was grey and his eyes were haunted. "I did not... understand. Did not understand that she... that she try hurt us." Christopher was worried sick about him, Adriel was terrified of those things that had attacked them, and so was Chris, but he was more worried about Adriel, and he felt safer now that they were on land. Chris didn't understand why Adriel was still scared. They were safe now, weren't they? Chris went up and kissed Adriel gently on the cheek. "We're going to be okay Adriel. I wont take you out again, and we'll be okay, trust me." Adriel gave a weak smile, but looked unconvinced. They both jumped when banging came from the door. "Hey Chris! You aren't ditching out on me again are you?" A huge smile nearly split Christopher's face in half. He tucked the covers around Adriel's body and ran to the door. He flung it open and saw Max and Anna. Anna was holding their new baby girl in her arms, wrapped in layers of soft white cloth printed with yellow flowers. The baby was gurgling and staring cross-eyed at her fingertips. First Chris hugged Max in a big bear-hug, and then hugged Anna more gently because of the babe in her arms. Max had a huge picnic basket slung on his elbow. "The boy, his name is Adriel, he is sleeping right now. I took him out in the boats and the villagers exhausted him. They keep asking him questions that neither of us know!" Christopher hated lying to Max, but Max only shrugged. "Hope you kept him well covered, you said he was burned pretty bad. He can sleep as long as he wants, I just want to have a beer and some dinner with my family!" Chris laughed, and they set up the picnic dinner out in the moor by Christopher's hut. --- The little girl's name was Moira. She was a sweet happy baby who only cried once when she was getting hungry. Chris adored her, and loved the way she played with his fingertips. Something was strange, and for a while Chris couldn't figure it out, but then he realized. He wasn't jealous of Anna anymore. He looked at his brother, waiting for the choked-up feelings of longing and need to come up, and they did, but only with a shadow of their former strength. His feelings for Adriel, that strange beautiful boy from the sea, were now stronger then the forbidden lust he had felt for his adopted brother. Christopher took a deep drink of the cold dark beer that Max had brought in a covered jug. For the first time in years, everything seemed perfect. --- Max and Anna went back to Haven to find Hell, but Christopher and Adriel were unaware. Christopher and Adriel were only aware of each other. Christopher had closed the door, just to find it dark. He fumbled with his tinderbox and lit the stubby beeswax candle. In the sudden flare of yellow light he saw Adriel. Adriel was lying on his back, his long legs extended and the ankles crossed, his thin chest thrust out and his hands under his body. The pose was sexy and confident, and he was unashamedly naked, his pale prick already hard enough to stand up from his body. Those dark eyes smoldered in the dull yellow light. "Christopher." Adriel whispered. Chris stripped out of his shirt and trousers, baring his body without any sort of teasing or coyness or guile that usually comes with sex. Just an ernest lust. His own cock had been soft, but was hardening quickly in it's thick patch of dark brown pubic hair. Chris slid into the bed sinuously, enfolding Adriel in his arms and groaning softly at the feel of his cock pressed against the heavenly hollow of Adriel's pale left buttock. Christopher took over. Adriel had been leading him for all of their encounters, but the boy gladly relaxed and let his new lover take the reins. Adriel gasped and mewed as Christopher used his hands and mouth, one hand rubbing the flat vulnerable plane of the Merlee's stomach, one hand stroking his hips in seductive ever-shrinking circles towards his genitals, and his mouth nipping and sucking at his sensitive neck. Adriel clung to Christopher's neck, whispering his name in a low seductive moan. Christopher's breath came out in an uncontrolled gasp as his hand carefully circled Adriel's pale slender cock. Adriel whimpered with need and turned so that the two young men were facing each other in the bed, their cocks rubbed together. Adriel kissed the human's chest, rubbing his soft cheek against the roughness of Christopher's pubic hair, and nibbling the soft pink buds of his nipples. Chris moaned softly, needfully. Adriel's hand fumbled with his cock and Chris growled, humping the air. Adriel wrapped his slender legs around Christopher's lean waist. Their cocks rubbed together. Chris could feel hot loose flesh over a hard shaft. He could feel the damp spot of precome on the slender tip of that sweet pale cock. For Adriel, the sensation was not familiar, it was alien and exciting. The human's cock was shorter, but thicker then Theo. Chris had the strange mutilation that he had described as 'circumcision', so the tip of his cock was a brighter pink then the rest of it. The feel of wiry hair was unusual and rough and arousing. Christopher's skin was so dark, his eyes so strange, not the normal Merlee variety of shades between dark blue and dark green, but a pale cinnamon brown. His hair was dark and short and wiry, his body covered sparsely with a pelt that grew thick on his legs and crotch and chest and under his arms. Adriel couldn't stand it. He needed it. He needed it so badly. He rolled onto his back and panted harshly with need. "Please Christopher!" He begged, spreading his thighs wide open and reaching to touch his lover's side. "Please sex me Christopher, please make love me!" Christopher moaned deep in his throat, but Adriel wasn't done speaking yet. "Get oil, get lamp oil! Hurry!" The last word was nearly a scream. Christopher fumbled out of bed to one of the cabinets, and he found the clay jug of vegetable oil that he used in the small lamp. He ran back to the bed, and kissed Adriel hard on those full gasping lips. "What do I do Adriel?" He whispered into the young man's mouth, nibbling the full lower lip. "Show me how, love..." The word felt so ridiculous and so right on his tongue. Adriel whimpered and kissed his neck, nipping with his small white teeth. "Use your fingers Christopher, here." He led Christopher's hand in between his buttocks. Christopher crouched over Adriel's trembling little body, and gave that pale throbbing cock a few strokes with a slick oily hand before lowering his hand. Adriel heard the human's harsh breathing in his ear, heard it match his own as that slick hand gently caressed the tender pouch with the two vulnerable sacs resting in his palm. Adriel whimpered when Christopher's slick fingers found a tiny opening. Chris moaned and pressed one oily finger against it, feeling warmth and tightness and a trembling of muscles. The muscular ring softened at his touch to allow him in, and the boy in his arms wailed softly with sensation. Chris dipped his fingers in the jug of oil, slicking them anew. Adriel's opening was tight, but softened from use. Adriel screamed when the human used two fingers, feeling the muscles writhe and contract and ripple against his digits. Then feeling a hard spot behind a sheath of muscle, a hard spot that made Adriel melt and moan with delight. Chris moaned and stroked his cock, covering the warm velvety skin with a slick coat of oil. "Please Christopher, please sex me, please, please, please!!!" Adriel whimpered and bit Christopher's shoulder hard enough to make little indents in the human's sweaty skin. Christopher moaned and his eyes fluttered as he slowly pressed his cock into Adriel's hole. Adriel was not a virgin, not for a long time. Christopher was able to press his cock in almost all the way to the pubic hair. He gasped and sweat ran down his tanned sleek body in trickles and rills. His eyes were wide and full of lust and need and an innocent sort of love for the boy under him. Christopher put his hands on Adriel's slender white hips and began to move. He threw his head back and cried out with how good it felt to bury his cock in Adriel's hot slick asshole. Adriel let out mewling little cries whenever the head of Christopher's cock brushed that hard little sweet spot deep inside of him. Adriel raised himself so he could cling to Christopher's neck. He wrapped his thighs around the human's taut waist and groaned with pleasure when gravity pushed Christopher's thick cock even further inside of him. He felt so full, so complete again. They moved together, their flat stomachs clapping together with each stroke, Adriel's cock bobbing between them and constantly fondled by the human's dark hand. They climaxed and their cries mingled. Christopher felt Adriel's come bead on his sweaty chest, and felt a hot little tongue lap it from his nipples and chest hair. Adriel let out a hurt little moan when Christopher pulled his softening cock away. He had felt so good with the human filling him up. Christopher's fingers nudged his loose opening, feeling the trickle of thick come. Chris wiped his lover clean with the sheets, and held him very close, with his softening cock against Adriel's ass and his hands around his vulnerable taut stomach. Adriel's long white hair feathered against his lips as he placed tender kisses all over his lover. Under the shell of his ear, at the line of his jaw, on the sweet curve of his neck. Adriel started to cry as Chris kissed him, cry and curl up tighter. "Shh," Chris soothed. "It's okay, I'm here... I'm here... Just cry it all out love. I know you miss him." "Not cry about Theo!" The little exile whimpered. "I cry about Christopher!" Chris winced, wounded. "Did I hurt you? I thought you liked it. I'm so sorry..." Adriel started to cry harder. "No! Sex was beautiful, but I a monster!" Christopher's brow furrowed. "Shh... You're not a monster, it's not your fault! Never think that it was your fault." "No, not that! I used you!" Adriel was barely understandable. "How you still hold I, still call I 'love'. I only sex you because I miss Theo, and you call I 'love'. I am terrible!" Christopher didn't say anything, and held the crying exile close. "I knew that Adriel." Adriel cringed at the pain in his lover's voice. "Don't you think I knew that you were just having sex with me because you miss Theo?" Chris took a deep breath. "But that doesn't matter to me." He sounded so vulnerable. "I love you Adriel, and I think that maybe, someday you'll come to love me too. I have loved men since I turned twelve years old, and I fell in love with Max. You are the only other person that I have ever loved like this." "I am grateful for you, and I love you. I want to protect you, and I hope that one day you will love me as well." Adriel turned around and kissed the human hard. Chris could taste the tears on Adriel's cheeks. They were freshwater, another of the differences that separated them. --- The young men fell asleep, exhausted from sex and emotion. One mile away, hell was still breaking loose. A group of ragged, terrified townspeople had met in the town hall. They had their families and children with them. The Spaewife was there, pale and haggard. She had two helpers that were brewing a pain-killing concoction out of poppy-seeds. The concoction was mixed with strong corn liquor and fed to the injured in spoonfuls. Five ships were missing, and four in Haven had died. A man trampled by cattle, a teenage boy who climbed a tree to escape the livestock and fallen to his death, and two very young children, their necks gnawed by crazed rats. It was a group of bleeding shouting people that filled the town hall. The Mayor tried to call over them, but no one could hear him. Instead the priest climbed to the top of a table and started to rant about demons and witches. The townspeople surrounded him, and they shouted out to him, interrupting his sermon. "The demon lives with Christopher Angler!" "Christopher Angler has been fucked by the devil and is a demon!" "It's that boy!" "That boy is hellspawn!" "That boy has poisoned our town and killed our men and children!" And more along those lines. The rumors spread like a virus, until the words hovered on everyone's lips. "Christopher." "Christopher Angler." "That boy..." "That fucking boy from the sea." The fear of the dark and the fear-maddened animals and the unearthly terrifying shrieks from the ocean kept them trapped inside the town hall. The sun rose, and two young men slept peacefully, nestled vulnerable and trusting in each other's arms. The shrieks stopped. Shia, the Merlee lover of a man named Theo listened and she could hear the town in chaos. She could hear shrieks of pain and rage and fear. She would stay close to the coast, and watch. She watched with delight and a savage sense of justice as a mob of humans ran the mile-long path to the small hut of Christopher Angler, and that boy who had taken so much from her. Shia did not understand the languages of men, but if she had, she would have been even happier. "Kill them! Kill them both!" "Hanging is too good for that perverted demon, burn him and bury his ashes in dung!" "Carve out their eyes and let them rot in a dry well for what they did to my child!" And more of the same. The Boy from the Sea Ch. 07 *I want to apologize for both the shortness of this chapter, and the lack of sex. One thing that I should know by now is NOT to leave cliff hangers, because they make people angry O.o Anyway, one more chapter to go, and please give me advice on anything I have to fix, no matter how small. All characters are 18+* Christopher was just groggily beginning to wake up. The seagulls were very loud today, maybe some fish had washed up. Sunlight streamed in a soft gold curtain down on the bed, and the blanket was tangled around their legs. Christopher stretched slowly, trying not to wake the snoozing boy in his arms. Adriel's hair fell in a soft white fan over Christopher's arms and shoulder. His face looked so relaxed, and so happy while he slept. Chris yawned. The seagulls were getting louder. Alarm was just beginning to spike through Christopher's sleepy brain, and Adriel was just starting to stir when the first blow hit the door. "Wh-What?" Chris muttered, struggling to get up and untangle his legs. "Christopher?" Adriel lifted his groggy head, hair matted with sleep. The second blow hit the door, rattling the doorframe and breaking a hinge. The seagull cries were shouts, chants. The third blow hit the door and it collapsed. A flood of people poured into the tiny hut. A huge farmer wielding a rusty pitchfork snarled at them. "Don't you FUCKING move!" Christopher wrapped Adriel in his arms, Adriel cried out deliriously and cringed into Christopher's protective body. They were both naked, both terribly vulnerable. Surrounded by men that Chris had known his entire life. Adriel cried out in terror when a lean white-haired wire of a man lunged forward and swung a fishing gaff at the side of Christopher's head. Chris moaned and went limp. A huge gash leaked blood on the side of his head while Adriel sobbed his name over and over, hugging his shoulders and cringing from the men who came closer with rope and weapons. --- Chris was semiconscious. Blood leaked from the side of his head as he stumbled naked across the rocky path. Ropes were tight tight around his wrist, and another rope was tied around his neck. The man holding his rope was Matthus, a fisherman he had known his entire life. They had been friends, exchanging dirty jokes at the docks, and sometimes eating dinner at each other's huts. Now Matthus was kicking him to his feet whenever he swooned from the terrible throbbing pain in his head. Matthus's face was a pale and bloodshot mess from weeping and fury. Adriel was sobbing. The weak cries kept the beat of the viscous pain in Christopher's skull. His sight was half-blinded by blood, but he could see the fragile naked form of his lover limping and crawling across the path. Blood was dribbling down his shoulders and arms from where they kept prodding him with a pitchfork. They were calling him a demon, calling them both demons. Chris stumbled. His feet were swollen and cut and burned on the sun-splashed rocks. Adriel's shoulders were a bright warning red. "Adriel! Don't fight them, don't--" Chris let out an anguished shriek and fell as someone jabbed him with a pitchfork in the upper back. He felt the hot trickles of blood dribble down his back from the five deep punctures. "Shut the fuck up Whore!" Adriel was crying, sobbing his name. To Chris it sounded like someone was shouting his name from a long ways away. --- Neither of the young men understood the trial. One was not human, and the other was barely conscious. They had been given rough white smocks that barely fell to their thighs. Their wrists were tied behind their backs. The trial was held in the town square, with them on the stage like freaks. Adriel cried for the whole trial. His world had been torn to pieces, and the young man who had loved him and cared for him was swaying and moaning, a large sheet of blood drying to maroon on the side of his face. The names of the two young men were not used. They were called the demon, and the demon's whore. Witnesses were brought up. Fishermen who saw ships sink, family members of the deceased, wounded showing off their scars. A mass hysteria had taken over the town. Like the witch trials in salem, they all accused the dazed and weeping pale boy on the stage, and Christopher was blamed as his accomplice. Christopher cracked open the eye that was less swollen, and he saw Max and Anna in the crowd. Anna was holding Moira tight and looking at him with absolute hatred. Max was weeping, his eyes bloodshot. At the end of the trial, they were sentenced to hanging at dawn. They would be kept in the two rickety cells that held the town drunks when they got too rowdy. Adriel was charged of Sorcery and nine counts of murder. Christopher was charged with Sodomy, Perversion, and Sorcery. --- Christopher was thrown in one cell, and Adriel in the other. The cruelly tight cords on their hands sunk into their flesh. Christopher collapsed where he was thrown, moaning feebly. Adriel wormed his way over to the bars and whimpered Christopher's name. Crying weakly for the man he had started to love. --- They were both badly injured. If it were up to the town, then they wouldn't have gotten any care or food at all, but with some lobbying from the Spaewife and Christopher's adopted family, not to mention a sizable bribe, they got a visit from the Spaewife. The guards carefully checked both her and the basket she was carrying, confiscated her sewing scissors and her knitting needles, one copped a feel, and then they let her in with a measure of privacy, the key to Christopher's cell, and a single oil lamp to keep away the darkness of the windowless room. She moaned when she saw the two young men. Christopher was slumped on the floor, the side of his head caked with brown dried blood, and his smock stained with more of it. Adriel was huddled into the corner closest to his fallen lover. His face was blistered from the bad sunburn of the outdoor trial. His left eye was swollen shut from a massive purple weal. Blood streaked his smock. She didn't have the key for the Merlee's cell, only Christopher's. She entered Christopher's cell and took out her basket, wiping tears from her eyes. Adriel watched her dully. "Spaewife?" He whispered. His voice was a dry cracked thing. She swore in a clogged teary voice. She went over to the bars between the cells and took out the leather water-bottle she had brought. She put the reed nozzle to the boy's bruised and swollen lips and Adriel drank greedily and gratefully, with little sobs of relief. "I have to take care of Christopher, I will help you as best as I can." She whispered. Adriel nodded, and watched her, tears leaking from his huge dark eyes. The Spaewife heaved the semiconscious boy into a sitting position against the wall and he stirred, moaning softly. She managed to get him to drink, though he dribbled half of it over his lips. She got a cloth wet with vinegar water and started to dab at his many wounds, taking off the smock when it got in the way. They had jabbed him with a pitchfork, with a trident. Smashed his shoulder with a hoe. Someone had given him several bleeding welts with a horsewhip. He moaned drunkenly with the antiseptic pain of the vinegar water, but didn't wake up. Adriel whimpered his name. She had brought a half-loaf of sourdough bread, and a lump of cheese, and a strip of dried mutton. She got up and bodily dragged Christopher to the wall, so Adriel could reach out and touch his shoulder, his face, smooth his matted hair. She gave the water-bottle, the rag, and all of the food to Adriel. "Eat about half, and give the rest to him if he wakes up." The Spaewife started to cry. "I am so sorry Adriel." She let out several hoarse sobs. Adriel flinched when she looked up, her eyes dry and shiny. She glanced at the doorway, and whispered in a low hard voice. "There are some people that will try to help. Try to wake him up, give him the food. You will both need your strength. Good luck Adriel, and goodbye." She kissed the boy's small hand and got up, leaving. Adriel watched as the guard let her through, and came back to lock Christopher's cell. The guard spat through the bars at them and went back to the bench that he sat on guarding the entrance of the cell room. Adriel didn't move for a moment, feeling hope, flutter in his chest, like a bird's wings against a cage. Then he took the rag and dabbed his numerous wounds, flinching with the vinegar sting of the rag. --- Adriel flinched at the first scraping noise. It came from the wooden ceiling, and suddenly he realized that someone was trying to cut through the ceiling, to get them out. He waited, breathlessly. The sawing got louder, and he broke into a hacking cough, to cover the noise. Christopher stirred feverishly. Adriel had been dabbing the wound on his head, removing as much of the scabbed blood as he could. Adriel had managed to feed Christopher all of the soft cheese, but the other food was too hard for him in his semiconscious state, so Adriel had eaten the meat and most of the bread. The scraping noises continued. Whenever it got too loud, Adriel coughed to cover it up. The two guards shouted at him to shut up, but they were too tired to be bothered with checking up on him. They were deep in a simple gambling game with dice and pence, and deep into the jug of dark beer that one had brought along. Adriel saw the shining tip of the blade pierce the roof, and then begin to laboriously saw perpendicular to the direction that the wide boards crossed the ceiling.. The sound was louder, and Adriel hacked out his sick-sounding cough. Christopher stirred feebly. "A-Adriel?" Adriel stroked the cheek of his lover through the bars, faint with a day's worth of stubble. The saw cut about three boards across, and then was withdrawn. The scraping sounds came from about four feet away, sawing parallel to the first cut. The section of boards removed would lay halfway over Christopher's cell, and halfway over Adriel's cell. The first board was nearly sawed through, and then carefully lifted out. Adriel looked up and saw four faces squinting down at them, outlined against the velvety midnight blue of the sky and the diamond crust of stars. He could not make out their faces. They sawed at the second board, and Adriel coughed and shook Chris, trying to wake him. He was moving sluggishly. "Where am I?" His words were faint and slurred. The second board was lifted away. One more to go. "Adriel? What is that noise?" Adriel shushed him gently. "Friends save Christopher and I. Look up Christopher!" He whispered, tears running down his face. The third board was lifted away. A rope dropped down into Adriel's cell. The rope had a rough harness at the end, two loops to put his arms through. He did, and he grabbed the rope at the center. The rope chafed at his chest and shoulders as he was pulled up, but he gritted his teeth and handled it. It was freedom. He was pulled to the roof, and he saw his rescuers. Four of them, pulling at the rope. The Spaewife, her teeth bared, Max, an older balding man with Max's facial features, and an older woman with Max's eyes. "Christopher not awake, send I down into his cage." The Spaewife nodded. In the starry stillness of the sleeping town, they lowered the boy into Christopher's cell. Adriel fastened the rough harness around his lover's arms. He wrapped the rope around his lover's waist and tugged it quickly to let them know that he was ready. Christopher hung like a sack of meat, and he outweighed Adriel by fifty pounds. They took longer to pull him up, but once he was at the surface, his adopted mother ran to him and pulled his body up. For a terrible moment, Adriel thought that they were going to leave him, but then the rope came back down, and he was pulled up again. As soon as he was up, Max and his father were at the hole in the roof, fixing the boards so they would go back into the hole and give the appearance of being part of a smooth ceiling. The Spaewife was tending to Christopher, holding something under his nose that made him gasp and come awake. Max's mother tended to Adriel, helping him to stand and put on some clothes. A pair of the hated breeches and a linen shirt and a vest and a cloak. Some boots too, which Adriel hated even more then the breeches. They made his feet feel heavy, and dead. The town was asleep, nursing their wounds, and the four men and two women were able to cross it unseen. --- They barely stopped at the home of Christopher's adopted parents. His mother gave them both bowls of soup, which they fell on soundlessly. There was very little talking. Both of the young men were bruised and hollow-eyed. Max came in. "Come here Chris, and... you come too." Adriel got up and stood next to Chris, supporting his weight. Chris was awake, but groggy and very weak. They went to the stable, and there was an old grey mule saddled and loaded with two packsacks on either side of her. "Betsy is a gentle old mule." Max whispered. "If they think that you both are demons, then maybe they will think that you both disappeared. Betsy will come back if you unsaddle her and take off the bags. Do you remember our old fort Chris?" Christopher nodded. "There are supplies to last you two for a couple days. Hide out there, and when things calm down, I'll find you." He helped them up on the mule, Adriel behind Chris, to hold him in case he went unconscious again. "I love you brother." Max whispered. Christopher's eyes filled with tears. "Thank you brother." He whispered, squeezing Max's hand. Then Max slapped the mule's rear, and Betsy took off at a fast walk, Adriel clinging to Christopher so he didn't fall off. --- The fort was an old ruins that they had found high in the mountains. Fifteen miles away from the village. They made it there just as the horizon was beginning to lighten. Adriel fell clumsily off the mule, feeling more sore then he had been in his entire life. Betsy patiently waited as the clumsy, inexperienced boy took his semiconscious friend off, and spent several minutes figuring out the knots to release the packsacks and saddle. Betsy began to trot off home, eager for breakfast oats. Adriel looked around the ruins. It was the remains of three stone houses, a stone storehouse, and the foundations of a church. None had roofs, most of the walls were knocked down with weight and time. When Max and Christopher were kids, they had found the ruins while wandering far off the beaten path hunting squirrels. They had made a project of it, and their father had been with them, teaching them how to build a low stone wall without mortar, and how to make a lean-two, and getting them old boards from a ceiling that had been remade. The fort was built with the sturdiest remaining corner as two of their walls. They had made their own clumsy wall with loose stones, and the last wall was open. The ceiling had been with nailed-together boards that kept out the worst of the rain and sunshine. They had played here every day as kids, it was worth the fifteen-mile ride, and their father usually let them ride a placid mare up as long as they were careful. Adriel helped Chris limp over to the little 'fort', and then went back to get the supplies. There were two bedrolls filled with loose wool and straw as padding. There were two loaves of bread, dried meat, cheese, and a covered earthen pot of cold seafood stew. There was a quilt, and a cloth sack of apples. Adriel rolled out the bedrolls, and Chris crawled onto one unsteadily. "Gotta sleep." He slurred. "Don't feel so good..." Adriel hadn't had a wink of sleep for twenty four hours. He lay on the bedroll beside his lover and put the quilt over them both. They were safe. The Boy from the Sea Ch. 08 *Whew, another story line done! Please tear this to shreds, I know it wasn't my most inspired work on this site, so please give me some criticism, and enjoy! All characters are 18+* In the waves, Shia watched. First she was disappointed. They were erecting a makeshift gallows, while she had been hoping for a good burning. Then she was angry and annoyed, because they needed to keep the two alive for a night so they could build the gallows. She waited, a foot below the waves, popping her head up every hour or so to watch the construction of the gallows. Her consorts had left her hours ago. It was too risky, the wailing, being above the surface, being within sight of the shoreline! Every Merlee broke the rule about breaking the surface, it was a rule that was meant to be broken by playful younglings, and mischievous young adults. But within sight of numerous ships, and land itself, it was a crime punishable by death. Shia was too far into her revenge, that she barely noticed when her two most devoted suitors left her. She was crazy, she was dangerous. She had sunk all of the human ships, done most of the wailing. Her eyes were surrounded by dark sleepless shadows, and her teeth were constantly bared. Her muscular tail thrashed at the water, and her thin strong unfeminine torso flexed, looking strangely asexual without breasts or nipples or definition. The sun rose, and Shia kept her head above water, regardless of being less then three hundred yards off the shoreline, regardless of the sun that burned her fish-pale brow and cheekbones. She watched with disbelief, and then fury. Her mind went into a numb furious blank when humans came in and out of the building that had caged Adriel and Christopher. The humans looked stunned and terrified. The hole in the ceiling had been expertly patched, and word filled the village, word that they had disappeared through the cell walls. For years to come, Christopher and Adriel would become a ghost story, and then they would fade altogether. Shia gathered herself. She would attack this village. Excite the animals until all of the humans died or fled, march on land herself and set fire to their houses. She would attack it until there was nothing left! She would exact her revenge, if it was the last thing she ever did! Then hands came from the deep, fixing on her tail and arms and hair, pulling her into the riptides. Shia took nearly half an hour to slowly die. Her hands were tied to a root that dangled from a rocky cliff face. The sand in this hidden cove was sprinkled with the bone dust of her old lover, and the dust of generations of traitors and crazies and Merlee who couldn't bear to live without the sun. Before she died, her face burnt black. --- Adriel was clumsy, especially with human food and utensils. He nursed Christopher back to health with bumbling, but devoted care. Christopher was very weak, especially on his left side after the blow to the head. Adriel carefully sponged the wound clean every hour. He fed Christopher soup and mashed-up cheese. He helped hold Christopher up when he relieved himself, and when he took short walks to strengthen his body. They spoke very little. They had been captured for less then 24 hours, but it left a deep change on both of them. Adriel had been hopeful and accepting of humans. He had seen the kindness of the Spaewife and Christopher, and assumed that humans were just gentler then the Merlee. He was deeply afraid of most humans now. It was only Christopher that he trusted now. Chris, and maybe the Spaewife. Christopher had also lost faith. He and his lover had been falsely accused, beaten, hurt. They would have been hung in the morning. All by people he had known and trusted for his entire life. He had aged noticeably in one day. Even Adriel could see faint bewildered look in his eyes, and the grimness of his mouth. It would take a long time for them to heal. --- On the third day, Adriel was leading his lover around the courtyard of the old ruins. Chris was able to walk far better, but his left leg was still a little weak. His brow was furrowed with concentration, and they both heard the hooves clopping on loose stones. They hid behind a low stone wall, and Max rode into the clearing. He was riding a heavy Clydesdale gelding named Teeg. Heavy saddlebags dangled from the horse's massive flanks, and Max jumped off, looking around. "Brother?" He called, hands cupped around his mouth. Chris and Adriel crawled out of their hiding place and went to Max. Max stared at the young man who had gotten them into all of this trouble. His skin was a pale gold now, and his slender legs and feet were bare. Max looked away and spoke softly. "This was the first time I was able to get away. For a while they searched for you two, but no one really wanted to find you. They never found the hole in the ceiling, so they think that you two vanished into thin air. They think that he is a powerful sorcerer, and they are afraid to find him." "Father and Mother, are they suspected? Does Anna suspect?" Max took a deep breath. "She suspects, but she doesn't want to get me or our family hurt. She is leaving it alone. That's what the whole town is doing. People got killed, children got killed. Whatever happened, I just hope it doesn't happen again. Enough people have died." The brothers turned in surprise when Adriel spoke. "She is dead." Adriel's eyes were downcast. "It was only a matter of time. She love Theo, Theo love me. She want to kill me, and hurt me. She scream, she try get on boat. She kill humans." Adriel took a deep shaky breath and started to cry. "She will die where Theo did, and she will die in disgrace." Christopher was still a little weak, but he was perfectly lucid. He embraced the sobbing boy from the sea in his strong arms, and Adriel let himself go. He cried on his lover's shoulder, and Chris looked up at Max. Max only looked down at him, not saying a word. Though nothing would ever be said, Max knew. He finally understood his strange adopted brother, understood the deep primal feelings that Christopher had felt for him. Max couldn't comprehend such a strange urge, but he could understand it. Tears ran down Christopher's still face. Part of him was crying for their situation, Adriel's frailty, the dead villagers, the exile that had been forced upon them. The larger part of him however, was crying for what had been lost between him and Max. Things would never be as simple, or as loving as it had been on that wooden dance floor. --- Christopher and Adriel rode the heavy drayhorse, and Max lead them. They rode to a moor high in the mountains. It was a wild desolate place that none of the villagers had been to in living memory. However, a century ago, there had been another village here. Max stayed with them for three days, helping to get them settled, and to rebuild. --- SIX MONTHS LATER It was late fall, and Addie was barking at the woolly backs of the helpless bleating sheep. They were stupid, and even after a month of frozen nights they still couldn't understand that the shed was far warmer then their summertime corral. Addie was a sharp-nosed mutt-puppy that was an expert herder, even at barely two years old. Max had brought her, as well as the sheep, up the to the moor. She nipped at the heels of the stupid sheep, and a bundled up figure watched, waiting in the driving snow with a heavy staff to get any sheep that broke away. The bundled-up figure went and closed the shed door. Heat from the eighteen bleating sheep baked through the cracks. The bundled up figure and Addie ran through the blinding snow to a hut that was smaller then the sheep-shed by several feet. Adriel gasped with cold as he closed the door behind Addie's curled tail. The hut was one room, but unlike Christopher's old hut by the sea, this one was insulated to last a furious mountain winter. The walls were of stone, the roof was of thatch and mud, and the woodpile on the north side of the house extended several feet to both sides of the wall, and above the roof. The hut was wall-to-wall with the sheep shed, and the only thing separating the two was a loose board wall with several wide cracks in it.. The sheep stank, but they kept the hut warmer, and the fire in the hut helped to warm them. Adriel looked different. His skin had a natural tan to it, that had faded somewhat as the days got colder and he bundled up more. He had kept his hair long, and he liked to braid it as Christopher had done on his second day as an exile. His hands were callused, and his arms and torso were ropy with lean wiry muscles. Adriel put a pot filled with clean snow on the fire to melt. Max came up every month now, to bring them news from the village, and to replenish the stores that Chris and Adriel couldn't grow themselves. Adriel went down to the frozen cellar to take an armful of potatoes and onions and dried carrots up the stairs. Addie was curled up at the colorful rag rug by the fireplace. She gnawed contentedly on an old bone from a deer Christopher had killed a week ago. Adriel started to cut up the vegetables with a short iron knife and toss them into the stewpot. Adriel looked up, his eyes bright with relief, as the door creaked open. It didn't matter how often it happened, he was always anxious when Christopher was away. Chris stumbled in, his heavy wraps encrusted with snow. He dragged the carcass of a mountain goat by the sharp-hoofed feet. The smile on his windburned face was huge. Adriel went up to him and hugged him tight, the goat lying awkwardly between them. "I...I was so worried." His voice was glad, and grateful. "I'm just happy that you're home." Christopher kissed him gently on the mouth. "Thanks for waiting, Ade. Just let me put this thing down-cellar, so it will freeze. I'll butcher it tomorrow." Adriel helped him to unfasten his bulky wraps, and then shook the snow out of them. He was dressed in his house-clothes. Even after all this time, he hated wearing shoes and breeches. He did when he was outside, out of necessity, but in the home, the wooden floors were all covered with woolen rugs to keep his bare feet warm, and he wore what could only be described as a skirt. It looked silly, but who was there to see it? Adriel brought in another armful of logs as Christopher came back up the stairs with a hank of dried meat to chop up for the stew. After putting in a few cloves of garlic and a bit of sea salt, Christopher couldn't stand it any longer. The stew simmered on the fire as Christopher sat down on the low hay-filled mattress. The heavy wool covers were soft and brightly dyed. "Come here Ade, help me warm up." Adriel's smile was as sweet and rich as a dollop of cream. He casually shucked the shapeless wool jacket he had been wearing around the house. He unlaced the linen shirt at the throat, and threw the shirt carelessly over his head, baring his lean muscular sheath of a body. The cold raised goosebumps on his hairless skin. The ridges of his ribs, as well as the hard layers of muscle on his stomach, were very visible. He had always been thin, and always would be. His hard nipple-less pectorals appeared to glow softly in the flickering firelight. He dropped the shapeless wool skirt he had been wearing, and he stood there in the firelight, naked among the heaps of his discarded clothing. Christopher's mouth was dry, and he felt the warm surge of affection in his chest, and a darker, more animal surge in his crotch. "Addie, go to the shed!" The dog sighed where she had been lying on the rug, and loped over to a small square hole in the wall between them and the sheep shed. She squeezed through it, barked once, and then they were alone. Adriel smiled and went over to the fire to give the stew a quick stir. He bent over more then he really needed to, to show off his taut white buttocks. He shivered with delight. He loved the way Christopher looked at him, made him feel. They were both exiles here, but they had each other. Christopher was Adriel's whole life, and vise versa. Christopher stripped off his shirt. His body was still shivering from the cold of being outside. His dark pink nipples were puckered into hard little points from the cold. His skin had lost the uniform fisherman's tan. He was naturally more muscular then the boy, and his stomach was hard and ridged with muscle. His arms were thick and strong. His brown hair was longer, down to his ears in unruly waves. His smoldering brown eyes followed Adriel's naked body. Adriel's pale cock jutted from his body. That beautiful slender head bobbed as the Merlee exile walked to him, that rich little smile on his face. Adriel carefully climbed on top of his lover. His legs straddled Christopher's slender hips, and he could feel the hard point of Christopher's cock against the inside of his thighs. Christopher wrapped his arms around the slender boy and slowly sat back. They lay down on the bed with Adriel on top, gently humping his lover's crotch. Adriel pressed his lips into Christopher's mouth and prodded his lover's lips gently with the tip of his tongue. Chris didn't open his mouth for a moment, and then he yielded with a soft moan. Adriel's tongue was so wet and slippery and erotic in his mouth. Their bare chests were together, and the friction of their shivering skin made warmth. Beads of sweat began to stand out on Adriel's pale slender back. Adriel moaned softly with the delicious friction of Christopher's body hair and nipples. The front of his body had neither, but he had an erogenous zone just below his sternum that felt delightful with the stimulation. Christopher lowered his head and started to nip and nibble at Adriel's slender sensitive neck. He swirled his tongue gently over the pale skin. Adriel rolled them over, so he was underneath. He kissed Christopher on the forehead, his eyes were dilated with arousal. "Christopher..." He purred, burying his hands in his lover's thick brown hair. "Pleasure me Christopher..." Christopher kissed him passionately, and then started to run a line of kisses down Adriel's slender throat. He ran his lips across that pale featureless chest, swirling his tongue around the sensitive area below his sternum. Adriel moaned and ran his fingers through Christopher's hair. He whispered Christopher's name over and over, in a soft croon. Christopher kissed Adriel's flat vulnerable belly. Christopher ran his lips down the bony lines of the V of his hips. He could feel Adriel's erection against his chin. Christopher cradled the throbbing erection in his hand, running his fingers lightly down the warm side. Adriel moaned softly and stroked his hair. Christopher ran his tongue up the length of his pale cock, swirling the tip of his tongue under the throbbing glans. He stroked Adriel's cock, covering it with sloppy kisses and kitten licks. His lover whimpered and bumped his thin hips. Christopher teased his tongue into the slit at the tip of Adriel's cock, tasting warm salty precome. Adriel trembled. Adriel mewed with how good it felt, until he couldn't take it for another second. He rolled over onto his stomach and heaved his sweet little ass into the air, keeping his chin on the coverlet. Christopher kissed each beautiful cheek twice, and then spread it to kiss the little pink pucker in between. Adriel was so loosened, they had made love so often, that they no longer needed the handfuls of grease and oil that they had needed earlier on. He leaned in and gently probed the little hole with the tip of his tongue, feeling the tight ring soften and relax, hearing Adriel whimper softly. He leaned down and licked the tender pouch of his testes, caressing them with his hand, and cupping them while he went back up to Adriel's anus. Adriel gasped and pushed his ass back when Christopher lapped at his anus with his warm wet tongue. He whimpered with need, and moaned with gratitude when Christopher penetrated the hole with his tongue. Adriel had been longing for penetration, even just his tongue. Adriel felt safer, better, more loved whenever Christopher was inside him. He needed it. Christopher didn't disappoint, he was human, and he was so hard that he was about to burst. He spat into his hand and rubbed saliva in and around Adriel's anus. He spat again and again until Adriel was slick, and his cock was dripping. He moved up onto the bed, leaning over Adriel's prone body. Adriel whimpered sweetly, so sweetly when the wet tip of Christopher's long cock poked him, missed, and then started to plunge deep inside of him. In one long smooth stroke that had them both gasping, Christopher buried himself up to his pubic hair. He rested for a minute, their balls resting together. Then he started to move his hips, Adriel moved back, gasping, his air coming in rapid pants. Christopher reached around and stroked Adriel's cock, still wet from his mouth. Adriel gasped and begged for more. Chris delivered, dripping with sweat in the cool room. His hips pumped in and out, sweat dripped down his lean lunging body, they both gasped for air. Adriel yelped as Christopher's cock scraped against his prostate skillfully. They knew each other's bodies, knew them like an extent of their own. Adriel scrabbled for grip on the shifting bedsheets as the force of his lover's flexing hips dislodged his hands. He cried out in breathy gasps at how good it felt. Christopher bent low over Adriel, knowing that this was Ade's favorite position. His chest cupped Adriel's back, his cheek was against the back of his neck, he reached around with one hand and started moving his hips in long slow strokes. He pulled nearly all the way out, and then all the way back in, stroking Adriel's cock in time. Adriel couldn't help letting out a long exhilarated moan with every thrust. --- They came, Adriel a moment before Christopher. They lay, exhausted, on top of the coverlet. It was chilly in the room, but their exertions made it seem to warm. Adriel eventually got up, holding his hand between his legs, blocking the twitching gaping hole with two fingers, trying to hold it in until he squatted over the chamber pot and let it out with a sigh. What felt like a quart of semen dribbled into the clay jar. Chris was smiling wryly at him. Adriel stuck out his tongue, and walked naked to the fireplace. He stirred the stew, and ladled two bowls full. They huddled on the bed, and ate their simple supper with a chunk of rye bread. They were exiles, but this wasn't a bad life. Not by a long shot. Still, Christopher was restless. He waited until the stew was finished, and then he snuggled Adriel close under the covers. "Ade? Adriel, my love?" Adriel turned and kissed him on the lips. "The very same." He murmured, his deep midnight eyes gleaming in the firelight. "Perhaps when the spring comes, we can travel. We can go inland, and see the mountains. What do you think love?" Adriel buried his face into Christopher's chest. He could feel the wiry warmth of his lover's chest hair against his lips. "As long as I'm with you." Snow continued to fall, as it had fallen in winters past, and as it would in the long and numerous winters of their future. THE END *I know that this isn't a perfect ending, but it's the only ending that worked. I don't believe in the hollywood ending. Shy Jared ended knowing that their love couldn't last forever in the times that they lived in. The bottom tier ended without a government upheaval. The only story I can be accused of giving a hollywood ending is Poor Simon. All and all, I hoped you liked it. If you've stayed with me for eight chapters, I hope you like me well enough by this point, so if you like my work, then please check out my new story, 'Alone at the End of the World' The Boy from the Sea Ch. 08 Thank you for staying with me, and I'm sorry for any delays during the writing. Love you all, --Cruel*