The unicorn liked the way the elf had kept up easily as he loped along. The elf was light on his feet with a good running stride that carried him over the ground efficiently, arms pumping, butt cheeks flexing, the rhythmic breathing steadying him emotionally as he put distance between himself and the only life he had ever known.
The unicorn appreciated the trust the elf had put in him, going off without money or weapons or the clothing that humans put entirely too much store in. Elves had the right idea: live just as nature made you - in your skin.
The mismatched pair, unicorn and elf, traveled all that day and the next. That gave them time to get better acquainted. Dahl learned out that the unicorn was hundreds of years old and had been just about everywhere. Merry told fascinating tales of the strange lands and even stranger peoples he had traveled among.
For Dahl, the stories he wanted most to hear were those about druids and wizards and magic in general. The elf wasn't sure yet that Merry would make a good friend, but he certainly was good company.
For his part, the unicorn took a real liking to young Dahl. The elf wasn't just a pretty face and sexy body. He was intelligent and friendly and keen to see what lay over the horizon.
From what the elf told him, his was one of the few family of elves in the area. If he had not made close friends with the human men his age, that could not have been the fault of the personable young elf.
After two days the travelers came to a large village. On the outskirts of the prosperous settlement, outside the palisade, the travelers passed the usual cluster of tin smiths, pottery kilns and glassblowing sheds, hives of activity as men naked against the heat of kilns and ovens assisted the master potters and glass blowers.
Like the palisade that enclosed it, the village was built of wood and shingle with the main street corduroyed with split logs to provide wheeled traffic with a firm roadway. The settlement was almost large enough to qualify for membership in the League of Independent Towns.
Originally, an alliance formed to build trunk roads between the major towns, the loosely organized League provided basic government services for the region including militia, law enforcement, and commercial courts.
The continent of Valentia was the last settled of the three straddling the equator which is why politically it was the most free and socially the most egalitarian, not only in the towns but in rural areas as well.
All elves and almost all humans were free persons, bound neither to the land nor to some lord or landowner. Nor did they owe allegiance to an acquisitive monarch.
No one on Valentia had any use for the institution of monarchy. Most land was owned by those who worked it. They did not pay rent or crop shares to grasping landowners. Slavery was confined to benighted corners of the continent and to several island countries far out to sea.
"You are right about that, Merry. I am starving, but how can we pay for those things? We have no money."
"Let us seek an inn whose clientele prefers lissome wine young men rather than pretty young women as servers. You would fit right in as a new pleasure dude. There are many men who would gladly pay a silver penny for a tumble with an elf man. We'll let the proprietor keep the silver; we need just lodging and sustenance."
"What? So I am to be pimped out like some escort of the stews?"
"Oh, quite a cut above any street escort. Think of yourself as a much sought-after courtesan. Pretty human men are commonly available nearly everywhere to those who appreciate a likely lad, but lusty men rarely encounter an exquisite elf such as yourself, or at least one who is available for coin. As a young elf, you would be no stranger to sex with males. It is in your nature."
Which was only true. Back home, the elf nobles in their village took him to bed and disported themselves with him regularly for coin.
For reasons going back to their origins and deeply rooted in their biology, elven males only rarely consorted with the female of their species, focusing their sexual energies on males.
Elves are a long-lived race, with a span of life of half a millennium or more. The trade off for longevity was a slow reproductive rate and a skewed sex ratio -- four male births to one female -- nature's way to ensure that elves and their kind would not out-breed the carrying capacity of the land.
Elvish females were receptive and fertile only briefly and only twice a year, and even then, conception was not easy. By contrast, elven males have strong sex drives and are always able and even eager to indulge their appetites with males, many of whom prefer the submissive role in sex anyway and continue that way their whole lives.
It helps that thanks to their magical natures, elves are not only long-lived, but they do not age steadily like humans. Their innate magical nature lets them stay youthful-looking long beyond the first bloom of their true youth. At twenty-three, Dahl was manly pretty, a vision of youthful male pulchritude and would stay that way for centuries.
So Dahl was sexually experienced with males, almost always taking the receptive role. Not just merchants and nobles, but his elf friends and their human friends would seek him out when it was time for sex play.
Inevitably, Dahl would surrender himself to the few elf and human friends he had, as their eager hands touched him everywhere, taking rude liberties with the trim nude body, fingers boldly tweaking his nipples, squeezing his butt cheeks, rolling his balls in their hands, weighing his manhood.
Soon enough, someone would press the young man's face into his armpit or manly chest, letting the elf's nostrils take in his manly scent, a composite of sweat and farm smells, and male pheromones. That always set Dahl's pulse racing; he went weak in the knees in the embrace of a powerful male.
Strong hands would hold him in place, his legs spread apart, preparing the complaisant elf for penetration. Soon he found himself impaled on cock after cock after cock, often with another male member thrust into his mouth for oral service.
Dahl's submissive libido responded strongly to such assertive treatment from dominant males. He loved for men to feel him up, to touch him everywhere, and to use his body for their pleasure.
Though he sometimes wished for a bit more tenderness from his suitors. A few of the humans he had taken to bed had treated him gently, but his fellow elves took him very much for granted, taking their access to his lush manly body as only their due.
The town judge, in particular, had been paying for his services for more than a year now, such as it was. Unlike his much taller relatives or human friends who topped him by a head or more,
Dahl was slightly built and quite short by human and elven standards. Dahl was just five foot seven (170 cm) and weighed just seven and a half stone (105 pounds or 48 kg).
Dahl sighed, wishing yet again that his male suitors would be a little gentler with him, maybe take him one at a time instead of two or even three at once.
Trapping his body between theirs, the older males stroked and grappled and contorted his lithe torso and slender limbs however they wished.
Sometimes, they played rough. What was so urgent about sliding two cocks up his butt at the same time? That was his elven friends' specialty. Couldn't they just take turns? Good thing his anal ring could stretch as far as it did. Then, too, limber as he was, there were limits.
Didn't they realize that a young man's legs would spread only so wide or that a young elf, no matter how supple, could bend backward nowhere near as far as forwards.
And why must they continually invite their friends among the humans, not only to watch but share Dahl's charms.
How often he had had to start his morning chores with sore muscles and a bottom tender from a frolic the evening before, yet they still expected a full day's work from him. Not that Dahl was a lazy elf, not by any means. He worked with a will and to the limit of his strength.
Shaking his head at how casually his new friend the unicorn was ready to whore him out to human males, Dahl went inside to speak to the proprietor.
The elf turned heads as he entered, as well he should. It is not often a beautiful nude elf walked into such an unremarkable rural establishment.