"Really, Lord Dahlderon? You mean I would never get any older? I, Drew Altair, journalist and bon-vivant extraordinaire, would be a kid for ages and ages? Of course I'll take that deal. Oh Boy!"

The druid's interlocutor was a cute young fellow in a sleeveless tunic of white silk that displayed and flattered the trim and taut body he had obviously just recently grown into. Drew had spiky auburn hair and narrow sideburns reaching below the ear lobe plus straight eyebrows with almost no curve to them. They framed a cute face with a high forehead, chiseled jawline, and a perky nose slightly turned up at the end.

"It's a great relief to me really. One of the reasons I have such an active love-life is that I am aware of how brief the bloom of my youth would be. My mantra was 'So many boys; so little time'. Now I will have that time. I will stay just as I am now, an irresistible boy-toy for the next five or six centuries. Bring it on!"

<Well, that was an easy sell.> Dahl mind spoke to his fellow druids, Merry and Owain.

<Spouses might balk.> Merry replied. <It would be the worse kind of separation — a long goodbye as one spouse ages while the other remains young.>

"Hey, I heard that in my mind. Wait though. That's just you projecting, isn't it. I haven't suddenly developed the gift myself."

<No, you haven't. It is, as you said. We were projecting. We druids can reach just about anywhere on the continent, or in Merry's case virtually the whole planet.>

"Er, now that I am about to become one of you long-lived folks, I don't mind admitting to just a teensy bit of jealousy about the twins and Aodh, and others like yourselves who could contemplate centuries without flinching."

Owain smiled ruefully. <Our young friend is being more tactful than candid. As a person of fully human stock, I once stood in his sandals. Drew was envious all right, but, being good-hearted, he reproached himself for those feelings, though they were perfectly natural.>

"I got to thinking just now about my family: my mom and dad, my brother, my uncle, and the boys in my circle, the guys I grew up with, people I will one day leave behind. Perpetual youth has a down side, doesn't it?"

"Right away but the process takes three days. You have to take our potions for several days so that the necessary alchemical elements suffuse throughout your body before we druids invoke our healing magic."

At the appointed time, the young journalist returned, this time in the nude, as was his wont. When not on assignment Drew preferred to prance around the capital with nary a stitch, not even one of those genital pouches that older youths might wear. Nearly eighteen though looking a year or two younger, because of his small stature he was often taken for just another underage bare-assed kid on the streets. In a society without nudity taboos, younger boys went about habitually naked. Even when they moved into youth lodges at age fifteen, many youths and young men disdained clothing, not bothering with even the genital pouch they were entitled to wear.

The druids had the young journalist recline on a couch. Linking hands, they invoked their powers generating a pearly effulgence which engulfed the boy too as the druids directed their magic at him. The glow of their healing pulsed several times changing color from white to light green and back again. After it faded the druids nodded their satisfaction. All had gone perfectly.

"That is the whole point my friend. You are not supposed to feel different, not today not tomorrow, not next year, not decades from now. Also you will find that your magically enhanced vitality will improve your reflexes, double your strength and stamina, increase your resistance to disease, speed healing, and stimulate your sexual potency, as if you really needed any help on that score."

Drew stepped over to the dressing mirror on the wall and examined his own reflection turning slowly to see every inch of his trim and taut physique. It was starting to sink in that the pretty boy-toy reflected in the glass would look exactly like that, exactly the same age for half a dozen lifetimes instead of aging and dying in only a single century. That realization brought tears to his eyes.

"Actually. I couldn't be happier but this transformation is sobering as well. From now on I will have to prove, if only to myself, that I am truly worthy of this opportunity, this gift of vitality and youth. Whenever the Commonwealth has need of me, I will answer the call."

"Now the journalist in me forces me to ask a question. A process like this cannot be kept secret. People will wonder whether they could qualify. I know there are just the three of you doing it now, but what of the other druids? What about Healers? I have heard that they are really druids themselves whose talents lend themselves to healing more than to general magic. Could they do what you do?"

"Trying to keep this a secret would only make the limitations on its use seem sinister. No, we have to be candid and explain to the tens of millions of our fellow citizens that only a few hundred can benefit from this process, namely war wizards and those with powerful gifts in Firecasting or Fetching. It takes three druids working together. There are only twenty of us on Valentia and now only a single druid on the continent of Karelia, which is why we three are traveling there very soon to recruit and train new talent."

"As you know, we consider Healers to be female druids. Their healing gift is actually more powerful than our own, but their specialization limits their abilities with general magic, which is also part of the process. With time and study, we might find a way for them to take part, possibly with two female healers teamed with a male druid. But that is several years in the future."

"In any event, the sentient races of the planet have always lived with neighbors whose lifespans were much different from their own. In the Commonwealth, humans are just under one half of the population, with many long-lived giants and elves. Even dwarves live twice as long as humans. True many of those races live apart, the elves in their vales and the dwarves in their caverns. Even in the cities, they inhabit their own districts with dwellings and facilities suitable to their dimensions. Even so there is much friendly social intercourse among the races. That puts the news of our process in a wider context. Sooner than you might think, any false hopes the new process raises will fade and be forgotten."

"I take it you will be writing an article on this subject? Would you mind letting us take a look at it before you publish. Not that we are trying to control the news, but just for the sake of accuracy."

"Normally that sort of request would raise a red flag with a journalist, so don't tell our publisher, who not so incidentally is my father. With you druids it's a different matter. So yes, I will let you look at my copy. These days my editor, who is my older brother, gives me a free hand, so my stuff gets printed pretty much as I write it."

"Oh, I was thinking again about what I should do with my life now between periods of duty for the Commonwealth. It has got to be more than just one long romp with boys."

"Don't sell yourself short, Drew." Owain counseled. You already have made quite a mark for yourself as a journalist and war correspondent."

"And you are friends with Artor Klarendes, one of the Dread Hands of the Commonwealth. Those fellows are notorious for enlisting young innocents in their schemes and dragging them off on wild adventures. They recruit their young allies for their magical gifts like Taitos's Firecasting and Arik's Fetching. I suspect that history will repeat itself. Artor's father Taitos aided Balandur. I suspect you will help Taitos' son."

The druids smiled indulgently at the naivete and optimism of youth. Everything with this kid was "cool." Where their own years or centuries of experience saw peril, youth saw action and glory. Maybe it was better that way.

"I know this calls for a celebration, but the twins are out of town just now so I am at loose ends."

"Well perhaps one of us can help fill that empty slot in your social calendar and tie up those loose ends." Dahl suggested.

"Ha! Ok, I do like the idea of bedding all of you, but one at at time, please. Please remember I am practically a virgin."

"Oh that would be you, Merry," Dahl conceded. "Age before beauty, as they say. Oh and Drew, go easy on our Merry here. He's not getting any younger you know; just look at all that grey hair."

"Nonsense! Pay no attention to that clown." Merry retorted. My hair is not grey at all but snow-white, the same as when I wore the form of a unicorn. And as a matter of strict chronology, this elf-boy body of mine in younger than either of theirs."

As Dahl and Owain left the room, Merry threw off his druidical robe, held his hand out to the human boy, and drew Drew's nude body into a close embrace, their stiff members pressed between their bellies.

"Now I know you really want me, Drew. Nothing says hello and glad to see you quite so sincerely as a soldier standing at attention."

Their first kisses were tentative, even shy, but their hormones soon took over and they went at it with a will. Drew just loved sex with a boy of his own sort, small and slender and preciously cute. He felt energized as they jumped onto the couch and rolled around kissing and laughing and touching. Unlike with a big guy like Finn the Frost Giant, it was easy to breathe no matter what their relative positions, since the small bodies ofboyish lovers do press down so much on each other. As Drew liked to describe it:

"When I have sex with another pretty boy, we pleasure each other equally and reciprocally, trading active and passive roles or mutually sucking cock. Both of us like the taste of a boy's cum or just having it splash usin the face. That made us both feel very sexy and desired. You know you have connected with a boy when he splooges on your face and after that you kiss you, dueling tongues probing deep."

"Now I also respond to powerful males who use their size and strength to dominate me. Sex with an older male, especially one taller and powerfully built is a need and a craving. With a man I go all weak in the knees and submissive, ready to drop to my knees and worship as a supplicant. The fact is that I am a bottom boy at heart, a natural submissive. That describes what it was like between me and Finn."

"That's enough words from you, my young friend. Too many in fact. I dare say you talk as much the twins, which is really saying something, er, no puns intended."

Merry's hands and lips caressed the exquisite boy he felt privileged to finally be able to make love to. He stroked the red-head's slender legs, cupped the small buttocks, and delved into his cleavage, making love to Drew's body with his hands but touching the boy's proud cock only with lips and tongue. Merry engulfed him to the root in the wet warmth of his mouth, then bobbed his head up and down its full length sucking and slurping.

He pulled off just in time as Drew's ball sac drew up tight against the fork of his legs, its globularity contrasting with the cylindrical shape of his virile member. The helmet turned purple, its tiny lips spreading open. Abruptly, just after the boy took a deep breath, his proud cock engorged beyond its previous impressive girth and began spurting and spitting his white seed onto his belly. After several strong spurts, the gism continued to drain from the softening shaft but slower, creating a limpid pool in the hollow of his hairless belly.

Now in the amatory arts Drew was more an enthusiastic amateur than an accomplished lover. Merry had centuries of experience, while Drew was a boy who had been sexually active for just a few years. Still he acquitted himself well and Merry had no complaints. Quite the opposite. Whatever their shortcomings in technique, teenagers make up for it in enthusiasm and athleticism. The pair disported themselves for the rest of the afternoon, took a break for a shower and a light supper, then went at it again.

Poor Drew's bottom wound up sore from Merry's lovemaking, Merry's erection was large — no longer literally a horse cock, but still big, and it was repeatedly thrust into Drew's pert bottom, a stallion riding a filly. But the druid's healing power eased Drew's pains leaving only post-coital lassitude and the satisfaction of intense pleasure.

Over the next two weeks while the druids were in the capital, the red-headed teenage journalist bedded Merry and his colleagues several times. With their impending mission to the eastern continent of Karelia, they would be away and out of his reach for several years.

In their encounters Drew almost always bottomed. He loved to be treated as a boy-toy. That was why, except on business, he never wore clothing. He wanted people to see him, to admire him, and to dream of intimacy with his incredibly sexy body. Drew was a generous lad, eager to share his youth and his sexuality with the world.

Authors deserve your feedback. It's the only payment they get. If you go to the top of the page you will find the author's name. Click that and you can email the author easily.^* Please take a few moments, if you liked the story, to say so.

[For those who use webmail, or whose regular email client opens when they want to use webmail instead: Please right click the author's name. A menu will open in which you can copy the email address (it goes directly to your clipboard without having the courtesy of mentioning that to you) to paste into your webmail system (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc). Each browser is subtly different, each Webmail system is different, or we'd give fuller instructions here. We trust you to know how to use your own system. Note: If the email address pastes or arrives with %40 in the middle, replace that weird set of characters with an @ sign.]

^* Some browsers may require a right click instead

Elf Boy's Friends - I

by George Gauthier

Chapter 11

Long Life