by Matthew Lang
“Ooh, that’s cold,” Duin moaned as Adam slid first one, then two fingers inside him.
“Is it?” Adam murmured, bringing his hard member to rest in the crease of Duin’s ass. “Let me warm it up for you.”
The first push was gentle, and Duin yelped into Adam’s kiss when the head of Adam’s cock popped inside.
“Scales!” Duin swore. “That feels so much bigger than I thought it would.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No, just… go slowly.”
“Okay,” Adam murmured, kissing Duin’s forehead. “Just let me know if you want me to stop.”
He slid in deeper, slowly, and felt Duin’s cock stiffen between them when his cockhead rubbed against the right spot. With a grin, he pulled out a little before sliding all the way in, relishing the clench of Duin’s muscles around him as he slowly dove into his lover’s body.
“Oh yes,” Duin groaned, grabbing Adam’s thighs and pulling him in so Adam was buried to the hilt. “That’s so nice.”
Cradling his lover in his arms, Adam moved his hips slowly, relishing the way Duin’s body moved with him, twining together in a jumble of limbs and hot, sweet kisses. He kissed Duin’s collarbone, up his neck and back down along his jawline, before losing himself in Duin’s lips, all the while moving, thrusting, and finally, climaxing with a cry that he muffled in the hollow of Duin’s neck. As his hips slammed against Duin’s ass, he felt Duin spasm, and the wetness of his creamy load filled the space between their bodies.
“I don’t want to move,” Adam said, panting slightly as he lay atop his lover’s recumbent form.
“Then don’t move,” Duin mumbled, kissing the side of Adam’s head and wrapping long arms around Adam’s body.
“I’m not too heavy for you?” Adam asked.
“Not that I noticed,” Duin said. “Although I sort of think you’re… um… oh… yes… sliding out.”
Adam chuckled. “Feels different, huh?”
“Ah, yes, I would say it does,” Duin said as he watched Adam peel off the condom. “What do you do with that now?” he asked.
Adam paused, looking at the semen-filled rubber. “At home we usually throw them away.”
“A material that stretches but does not burst like that and you throw it away? Surely it can be cleaned and reused?”
Adam stared at the wrinkled and very unsexy bundle he held in his hands. “I’m sure it could be,” he said reluctantly. “I think they were originally reusable, but apparently the more you use them, the greater the chance of them breaking, which isn’t very safe, so we don’t reuse them back home.”
Duin sighed. “All right, but it should be buried like everything else—we don’t want to leave clues to our whereabouts.”
“Yes, sir,” Adam said with a grin. “At least it’s biodegradable—eventually.”
“What?”
Adam smiled. “It will rot eventually,” he said. “On the other hand, these won’t,” he added as he rolled to the side of the mattress and picked up the foil packet that the condom came in and the empty—but mildly sticky, lube packet. “I guess I’ll keep them with me on the off chance that I’m ever able to return home and dispose of them properly.”
Adam could feel Duin’s eyes upon him as he rose and moved over to his gym bag once more, grabbed one of the plastic bags he used to keep his dirty laundry in, and dropped the litter inside before tucking it all away in a pocket. He turned to see Duin lying on his side, supporting his head with one hand.
“Is that what you’d want to do?” Duin asked. “Go home?”
Adam stilled. “Eventually, yes,” he said. “I don’t belong here.”
“So this… you here with me now… what is it exactly?”
Sighing, Adam came back to bed and snuggled up next to his lover, holding Duin close enough that their foreheads touched. “You and me right now is you and me here, right now,” he said. “I don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to get home, or if you or I will die before that becomes an option, but to not be with you because I’m afraid of what the future might or might not be seems a bit silly, don’t you think?”
Duin smiled weakly. “I don’t know, Adam. Now I feel that if I don’t lose you to Esmeralda, I will lose you when you return home.”
“Assuming she’s still alive and there’s a way for me to get home,” Adam said.
“If I hope her dead, I have failed her, and if I wish there is no way for you to return, I fail you,” Duin said. “But part of me wishes I could wish both. What does that make me?”
Adam smiled and kissed his lover’s cheek. “Human,” he said simply. “It makes you very, very human. Anyway, you’re not going to lose me to any woman, and assuming there’s a way back, you could always, you know, come with me.”
“Me?” Duin said. “Go with you?”
“Sure,” Adam said. “There’s a moon in my world,” he added. “And as far as I know, no real magic, or curses, or anything of the sort. You’d be you, just you. No more Duin the Wolfman.”
“Wolfman?”
“Sorry, is that rude?” Adam asked. “I just can’t help thinking that you’re a bit like a wolfman. A werewolf or something.”
“What’s a werewolf?”
“A person who, under the light of the full moon, can transform or must transform into a wolf—a hairy creature with a muzzle and a tail and that hunts in packs and scares the living bejeezus out of people,” Adam said. “Of course, according to popular legend, the werewolf often has an in-between form that is really powerful where they stand on two feet like a man but have the fur, head, and claws of a wolf—and often the tail as well. TV writers really like that one.”
“I see,” Duin said. “What else do these recorded theater stories say?”
“That if you’re bitten by a werewolf, you can become a werewolf, like you mentioned earlier,” Adam said. “And that they can only be killed by silver and cured by belladonna, which is poisonous to people, so I don’t want to think about how many people must have died trying to cure lunacy.”
“We have much the same legend here,” Duin said. “Although I have never heard of ‘wolves.’ I am told that once this curse was a gift of the moon goddess, Selune, and of course we had three forms, the man, the haerunwoln, and that which was in-between the two.”
“Haerun… what?”
“Haerunwoln,” Duin said. “The sacred forest tiger that my form imitates. They’re very rarely seen now, but if we come across one, I’ll introduce you.”
“You can speak to them?”
“Not really, but we usually understand each other, in a fashion,” Duin said. “I am told, of course, that only silver could slay a haerunwoln or chosen of Selune, but I have not wished to put that to the test.”
Adam hugged him close. “And I for one am very glad you have not. I like having you here, even if I don’t exactly know….” Adam sighed and closed his eyes, breathing in the reassuring scent of Duin, the funk of sex, and the lingering smells of crushed bracken.
Duin sighed. “I do not really know what the future will bring either.”
“So let’s not worry too much yet, then,” Adam said. “We have each other, and let’s enjoy it while we do.”
Chapter 11
ADAM AND Duin stayed in their makeshift love nest for a few more sleeps than strictly necessary for recuperation, but eventually they decided they should press on toward Blackwater. Duin wasn’t certain if he had given Darius clear enough directions on how to get there—or even if the man yet lived—but both he and Adam agreed their chances of survival would be higher if they could find the rest of their little group. Returning to Earth, or even the relative safety of the Aergonite caverns, would, after all, be nearly impossible without Esmeralda’s patronage, and Adam had to hope the princess had survived.
Finally, with their packs replenished through judicious foraging and their belongings mended as best they could manage, Adam and Du
in set out again, heading back toward the marsh that they hoped would be Blackwater. For once, the jungle they traveled through was benign, and they passed without incident, their biggest worry being avoiding the occasional giant centipede or spiderweb. More than once, though, they avoided the spiderweb only to hunt down the spider with a spear of sharpened bamboo. The hunting process itself was one that Adam soon grew proficient at, although the first time he had to kill for his supper was not one he relished.
“You’d have thought this was your first hunt,” Duin noted when Adam scrambled to the ground, dry retching into the grass.
“It is,” Adam said.
“Oh. Sorry.”
Their conversations in that time of relative peace were light, and they both refrained from discussing anything of major significance, wary of invoking a future neither of them could be certain of. Similarly, neither offered much insight into their pasts. For his part, Adam could certainly understand Duin not wishing to dwell on his period of exile from Aergon, and Adam himself lacked the words to explain his home to Duin in any way that would make sense. After a brief attempt to explain the concept of electricity as “tame lightning,” he had given up and instead mined Duin’s knowledge of how to survive in the landscape they passed through.
Adam also spent a fair amount of time practicing his swordplay, for although he had lost his favored spring-steel long sword during their flight from the kanak village, he still had a heavier broadsword and the curved Aergonite sword Darius had been teaching him to wield. His foam swords had been lost to the slasherclaws, and he hoped they’d tried to eat them. He wasn’t sure what happened when a dinosaur tried to eat fiberglass, but he hoped it wasn’t good.
The more Adam thought about everything that had happened, though, the stranger the dragon’s persistent attacks on the traveling group had been. While he could certainly appreciate the possibility of it coming across them at random and attacking opportunistically, for it to have gone ahead to set up such a carefully thought-out ambush made Adam uneasy. How could it have known which direction they were heading when they themselves barely knew? Was the dragon truly so clever as to be able to pluck such knowledge directly from Duin’s mind? And how was it that they had escaped without it attempting to use its brain-crippling thought magic against them?
At camp that night, Adam found himself staring moodily at the coals of their fire, glowing red against the red of the sun, worrying the questions back and forth in his mind.
“Are you all right?” Duin asked. “You’ve been very quiet today.”
“I’m fine,” Adam said. “Thinking is all.”
“They must be some very deep thoughts,” Duin said. “I think the water beetle has been well and truly cooked.”
Adam stared at the oversized beetle leg he was holding over the fire and smiled sheepishly, leaning over to kiss Duin’s cheek. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m just worrying needlessly.”
THEY ENCOUNTERED the river again that day, running much wider and shallower here than when they had set off on their raft, and while it had proved much too shallow for the cokudrillos, it was still full of silver scarabs. It was also inhabited by water beetles nearly as large as Adam himself. Some of them were herbivores, but Adam saw others feasting on the scarabs. The beetles had proved remarkably easy to catch and subdue, and had a vaguely peppery taste, especially when eaten with a purplish watercress that Duin had indicated as being safe—and rather tasty.
“I think I’m full,” Adam said. “But I hate to waste all this food.”
Duin chuckled. “I know what you mean. I’m about full up to here,” he said, indicating his throat level. “And even Zoul probably couldn’t manage another bite.”
On the far side of the fire, the lizard hissed indignantly before haughtily taking a tiny bite out of the remains of the second water beetle they had brought down after it had shown slightly too much interest in their first hunt.
“Don’t be a greedy guts, Zoul,” Adam admonished. “I know you’ll eat even if you’re not hungry, but then you could get ill, and where would you be, then? Neither Duin or I know much about lizard illnesses.”
Zoul ignored him and pulled off another bite.
“It always amazes me the personality that lizard has,” Adam said. “And his vocalizations. I never thought I’d hear a lizard chirp.”
“What sound is he meant to make, then?” Duin asked.
“I don’t know,” Adam said. “I’ve never really thought about it, but I’ve always associated chirping with birds.”
“The small feathered slasherclaws you have in your land that fly like flitterfish?” Duin asked.
“Yeah,” Adam said uncomfortably. The entire notion sounded really silly when Duin said it like that. Sometimes he felt as though Duin was just humoring his crazy insistence of being from another world with condoms, cars, birds, and a day-and-night cycle. Sometimes he wondered if he wasn’t just deluded. Of course, then he stared at his gym bag for a while until he felt better.
Then Duin was rising carefully to his feet, his eyes glued on a clump of tangled shrubs on the other side of their camp. “Stay very still, Adam. Don’t frighten her.”
Adam froze, remembering the giant crablike creature Duin had pulled from the waters at his feet all those sleeps ago. “Is it… is she dangerous?”
“Probably not,” Duin said slowly. “But she will run if she thinks you’ll attack her.”
Swiveling only his eyes, Adam looked into the shadows where Duin was crouched, his hands held carefully in the air before him. Slowly, and displaying great reluctance, a lean four-legged animal crept into the light. It looked like a short-furred wolf, with the build of a greyhound and fur to match Duin’s own. Like Duin, it had dark brown stripes over its back, and its tail was long and thin, tapering to a sleekly furred point. Making a comforting crooning noise, Duin slowly reached down and picked up an uneaten section of the beetle and held it out to the creature. Never taking her eyes off them, the animal reached forward and then with a sudden lunge, grabbed the meat and retreated back to the edge of the shrubbery’s gloom until she was just a silhouette and a pair of glowing eyes. Then, to Adam’s amazement, there was a soft chorus of mewling, and a number of pups crept out to gnaw at the carcass.
Carefully, Duin backed away, pushing the remainder of the beetle over toward the mother and pups.
“That’s a haerunwoln,” he said softly, coming back and wrapping an arm around Adam’s shoulders.
Adam, however, was still staring at the almost mythical creature he had only ever seen in grainy black-and-white footage padding around a concrete cage, or in art like on the label of his favorite beer. Okay, there was that one time it was fighting monkeys on the television, but that had been an ad for said beer and probably didn’t count. “That is what your other form is?” he breathed.
“Yes,” Duin said.
Adam turned and buried his face in Duin’s shoulder and held him tight. “Thank you,” he said.
“My… pleasure,” Duin said uncertainly. “I did not know it meant so much to you.”
“I didn’t either,” Adam said, looking up into Duin’s eyes. “Do you know what we call them where I come from?” he asked.
“What?”
“Thylacine,” Adam said. “And as far as we know, there’s none left.”
“None left?” Duin asked. “What do you mean, ‘none left’?”
“I mean, to the best of our knowledge, every last thylacine in the world is dead.”
“Dead,” Duin echoed hollowly.
“Yeah,” Adam said softly. “For nearly a hundred years, I think. I’ve always wished I could see one alive, but well… I never thought it would be possible.”
Duin smiled. “Well, I’m glad I was able to show you one, then.”
Adam sighed. “Me too. Do you think she’d let me touch her?”
“Probably not,” Duin said, shaking his head. “Most haerunwoln won’t come near humans at the best of times. Aergonites will kill them
on sight for their fur, although supposedly they started hunting them in retribution for Selune abandoning our skies.”
“Some things never change,” Adam muttered.
Slowly, Adam reached out to his gym bag and pulled out his phone. The thylacine glanced up at the new light source but went back to her food as Adam brought up his camera and started recording some video, Duin watching the small glass screen in amazement. After a few minutes, Adam stopped the video, and he and Duin sat there long after the coals of their fire had died down to ash, just watching the thylacine and her pups. Then with a long look in their direction, the mother led the way off into the forest, her litter of three following her into the undergrowth. As soon as he could no longer see them, Adam was over at the bushes they had been hiding in, combing through the litter carefully.
“What are you doing?” Duin asked.
“Looking for fur,” Adam muttered, pulling bits of it off twigs and leaves where it had snagged.
“Why? Do you really need that to remember?”
Adam shook his head. “No, but if I do get home… people in my world have been trying to bring thylacine back—cloning them. If I can bring them some intact DNA from a real living thylacine….” Adam stopped and looked up at Duin, his eyes shining. “Okay, bottom line, we could have them in our forests again.”
“And fur will help you do that?”
Adam shrugged. “Maybe. It couldn’t hurt. I just need something to carry it back in so we won’t lose it.”
Duin laughed. “I told you we should have kept that… what did you call it? A condom?”
Adam shook his head and then paused. He still had the little ziplock bag the condom had been packaged in. “Duin, you’re a genius,” he said, springing to his feet and kissing his very surprised lover on the muzzle. It took almost no time to grab the bag, and soon the precious fur was safely stowed away.
“What is that?” Duin asked finally, pointing at the phone Adam still clutched in his left hand.
“My mobile phone,” Adam said. “It doesn’t work here, but it normally lets me talk to people very far away.”