Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 00:08:11 EDT
From: Tommyhawk1@aol.com
Subject: "Prince and Commoner"

			    PRINCE AND COMMONER
			   By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
		      WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
			WWW.TOMMYHAWKSROGUEMOON.COM

A world filled with high green bushes festooned with golden and red roses
aplenty, the trees filled with robins and sparrows and wrens building their
nests and singing their songs, a world with a sky clear and bright blue
with just enough white clouds in it to make it interestingly variegated. It
was a beautiful day in spring in the Palace gardens and young Prince
Phillippe (who would, upon his accession to the throne, assume the title of
Phillippe IV of Carlovain) was strolling about them rather dourly. He had
his toys, a ball which he could throw up into the air and catch, also a
ribbon on a stick he could use to make fanciful patterns in the air as he
chose, also he had free range of the grounds to play upon which were richly
grassed and smooth and even and, while there was the odd bit of statuary
about to beware of, even if he had broken something, there would only be
his rather indulgent father's dismay to contend with, a cautionary
scolding, and perhaps a withheld desert at dinner or two would likely be
his sole punishment.

Young Phillippe did indeed try his very best to play, but it was a rather
hopeless chore as he was quite alone. His usual playmates, young men from
the court more than twice his age (delegated by the king to help entertain
their future ruler and who did so with attitudes ranging from resentment to
ingratiatingly sticky-sweet manners adorned for the prospect of being
rewarded amply in the future for their behavior today) were all elsewhere
at a banquet some city elder was hosting. He didn't really want to play
their games anyway, they either would frankly throw the ball right to him
as if he were an infant, or impose their will upon him as he tried to take
it from them by simply holding it high above his head. He had asked his
father for playmates his own age before, but his father had grown somber,
shook his head and said, "Such playmates are not for you, my son." It was
true that his own father's boyhood had been similarly impoverished, but at
least his father's two brothers (both now unfortunately dead) had been
around to play with him. Prince Phillippe had none but himself!

So he walked rather than ran, the ball under one arm and the ribbon he
waved lazily about, briefly distracted by using it in a circular pattern to
"frame" a flying butterfly, but when the butterfly noticed his actions and
thought it a threat and flapped away, he let it droop again and dragged its
tip across the walk behind him. The faint voices of children at play wafted
up at times from the city below, he had heard them (not now, but at other
times) and he looked and wondered if he dared to one day shed his regular
clothes, slip into some dirty rags borrowed from some drudge in the palace,
and go thence into the streets of Heslov, be a lad among the other lads in
the marketplace, oh, if only for one day, it could be so! He had seen them,
their faces filthy, their sores running at times, but they smiled so
easily, ah, so easily!

He was supposed to stay on the walk and never go far from the garden
proper, though the grounds of the palace extended for some distance beyond
the garden. But this was a day when the heart of a rebel beat within his
eight-year-old breast, and this prince would for this one day be a hunter!
He would trod among the elm and oak and birch trees, he would stalk the
squirrels and rabbits, and perchance, if he were lucky, he might catch one
and keep it for a pet for a while before his father or his maidservants (he
had three at present) were to find it.

So holding his ribboned stick as if it were a sword, he stalked through the
brush, there were enemies about, no doubt, and he must be ready at any time
to strike and... "Oh!" he called out as he pushed aside some brush. There
WAS someone there!

A young lad near his own age, he wore the tattered, dirty ragged clothing
that marked the carefree urchins of the town. The youth had been lying
beneath one of the trees and when Phillippe made his inadvertent cry, the
boy darted upright, startled, one arm rising up to protect his face as if
from a blow.

"Who are you?" Phillippe asked.

"I..." the boy licked his lips, as he saw the ornate jerkin Phillippe
wore. "My Lord, I am nobody important and I apologize for trespassing upon
noble lands. I only wished a place to lie quietly for a time. I haven't
broken any limbs from your trees nor harmed any of your animals."

"No, no, that's not what I said." Phillippe returned. "I wanted to know
your name."

The boy licked his lips again. "I am Edvar." he said. "Who are you?"

A Nestry name. Phillippe knew that if he gave his own name, the boy would
be cowed even further. So he picked another name, a name he heard one of
the pot-scrapers in the palace being called by with no hint of his French
ancestry. "I am Ranver." he said.

The boy eased at hearing the Nestry name. "I thought you were French." he
said in pure Nestry. Phillippe was fortunate in having learned it in
addition to the mixed French-Nestry language used by higher Carlovain
society. "You're wearing fancy enough clothes."

"I had to serve as page-boy at lunch." Phillippe lied quickly. He had
indeed been served by such page-boys, though their clothing, while clean
and neat, was not nearly as ornate as his own. But this street-boy wouldn't
know that. "But now they don't need me until nearly supper, so I have some
time to play." He showed his ball. "Would you like to play with me?"

Edvar's face smiled, showing a missing tooth. Not a case of it falling out
for a full tooth to appear, this one had a bit of jagged remnant left in
it, the tooth had been broken out some how.

"That would be nice." he said. "We can get up a game of goals."

"What is that?" Phillippe had never heard of this game.

"We play it in the streets, you can play with only two, or with as many as
you like."

Phillippe's face shone. He was about to learn a real game to play! "Yes,
yes, and then what?"

"Let us say..." Edvar looked about. "Those two bushes are your goal." he
pointed behind Phillippe. Then he turned around. "My goal is that bush and
that tree." He picked a spot behind himself, and the gaps were both about
three feet wide. The two were separated by only about twelve feet. "You win
a point every time you throw the ball through my goal. I win a point every
time I throw the ball through your goal."

"Okay." Phillippe nodded. "And then what."

"We keep playing until one of us has ten points." Edvar said. He crouched a
few feet in front of his goal and said. "You first, throw the ball."

Phillippe could hardly miss from this short a distance and he threw...and
Edvar jumped and caught the ball and ran to one side and threw the ball
threw Phillippe's goal. "That's one point for me!" he said. "You retrieve
the ball and get to try again."

Phillippe was puzzled. "You caught the ball I threw." He went to fetch the
ball, puzzled, annoyed, but no worse.

"Of course." Edvar said. "That's what makes it a game. I get to stop the
ball any way I can. If I can catch the ball or take it from you, it become
my ball. You see?"

Phillippe nodded. "So I don't have to stand still and throw it." he said.

"Of course not!" Edvar scoffed at that. "Everything is fair except hitting
or pulling hair or such. Try again."

Phillippe wound up to throw and Edvar ran toward him. Phillippe realized
the game plan of Edvar at once and he quickly turned to run away from Edvar
and he made a quick circle, got back around nearer to Edvar's goal and
tossed it through. "A point for me!"

"Umph!" Edvar ran into him, not hard, and his hands briefly clutched
Phillippe's body. Then he stepped away. "Okay. Score is one to one. My
ball. Get ready!"

This was a good game, Phillippe decided, as he wove back and forth. Edvar
made as if to throw the ball, then tucked down and started to run, but
Phillippe blocked him, then he made to throw again, Phillippe had to
constantly shift his own tactics to mesh with Edvar's!

But Edvar had played this game before, and soon he made Phillippe duck down
to block him and then up and threw the ball into Phillippe's
goal. Phillippe retrieved the ball and got ready and this time Edvar
tackled him, knocking him to the ground. Phillippe kept hold of the ball
and the two boys wrestled for possession of the ball. When Edvar got it
away from him, Phillippe quickly rolled the two of them over and began to
try to take it back, but Edvar managed to flip the ball into the goal
again. Now the score was three to one!

Phillippe lined up to throw again but Edvar's body made a funny rumbling
sound and Edvar grabbed his stomach. Phillippe stopped, concerned. "Are you
sick?" he asked.

"No." Edvar shook his head. "I'm just hungry. I didn't have anything to eat
so far today."

"Nothing at all?" Phillippe was astonished. It was nearly mid-afternoon!

Edvar shook his head. "There wasn't anything in our room for breakfast,
then my older brother woke up and he was angry and he had still some to
drink in his bottle and he got angrier and I slipped away to wait until he
finished his drinking or went out. Maybe he'll come home with something to
eat tonight for him and me."

"I can get you something to eat." Phillippe said. "You wait here for me,
I'll be back in a few moments. As the Prince, of course the cooks were
quick to fix him a quick snack, making jokes about growing boys and having
a hollow leg. Phillippe pretended it was for him, because he wanted the
snack to be a nice one, and they wouldn't have done it so nice if they had
known it was for a Nestry street-boy.

Edvar's eyes grew wide at the small repast Phillippe brought him
back. "What is all this?"

Phillippe explained the dishes, which were fancy bite-sized things partly
left over from his lunch and partly prepared for their supper. Edvar didn't
seem to recognize the names of the fruits and fish in some of it, but he
bit into it and then ate eagerly. When only two bits of finger-food were
left, he said, "Don't you want some?"

"I'm not hungry." Phillippe said. "I had my lunch and will have my
supper. Please, eat it all."

Edvar did, and then washed it down with the juice Phillippe had also
brought in the small flask he had been given. "Oh, my, this is so good. Do
all page-boys in the palace eat like this?"

Phillippe nodded. "Oh, yes, all the time." Actually, they didn't, Phillippe
knew one boy who had been severely beaten for daring to eat a tidbit from
one of the trays he had carried. The page-boys in the palace ate bread and
whatever items were left over after the rest of the staff had picked it all
over, which wasn't much. A valet might taste such treats sometimes, but
never a lowly page!

"Oh, I shall have to rest a while after that fine meal." Edvar
said. "That's more than I've had to eat at one time in many days."

Phillippe hadn't brought out that much food at all, a mere snack for a
hungry lad. "Don't you get enough to eat?"

Edvar shook his head. "Only my brother and me, he's old enough to work and
does, but doesn't always buy food with it. My brother likes his drink too
much for that. I have to be careful and beg him for money when he has it,
so I can buy food for myself. It isn't easy."

"Well, you can eat like this every day if you come up here to play with
me." Phillippe said. "I am happy to give my friends food to eat."

Edvar smiled. "Are you my friend, then?"

Phillippe smiled in his turn. "Of course. Oh, Edvar, let us be the best
friends of all!"

That was but the first of many wonderful, wonderful days for Phillippe. He
took to quietly stealing bits of food from his meals, putting them into a
small pouch he took to carrying, so that he could give it to Edvar when
they first met during the afternoon. After that, he and Edvar could play
until nearly dinnertime, when Phillippe would again coax food from the
cooks. The young men assigned to be his playmates were well happy enough to
take him out to the garden and then depart for their own games, leaving
Phillippe free to scamper off to the bit of the garden behind the flower
beds and before the tilled lands, the trees and bushes that gave the royal
grounds their privacy and beauty, those were the places when Phillippe and
Edvar played, prince and commoner, two boys playing and acting as
equals. Edvar's ribs became less pronounced than they were at first, and he
fleshed out until they were nearly as brothers, save that Phillippe had the
fair light-brown hair of his French father and King, while Edvar's hair was
the usual Nestry coal-black.

One afternoon, as they rested from their play and were lying side by side
upon the sward under the tree where Phillippe had first surprised Edvar,
Phillippe said, "Edvar? I saw something in the palace today."

"What was that?"

"Two of the men who...live there." Phillippe began. He had almost said
"used to play with me before you came along" and that wouldn't do! "They
were talking in the corridor late at night and I heard them, though they
talked softly. I got up to see what they were doing."

"So what were they doing?" Edvar asked. He knew so much more about the
things that adults did that the very sheltered Phillippe, that was the
reason Phillippe was asking him.

"They were behind one of the tapestries that hang a bit away from the
wall. I looked in and they were holding each other in a funny way."

"Holding each other how?"

"Down here." Phillippe pointed at the junction of his legs. "They had
pulled their hose down and were holding onto each others'...thing." He
didn't have a word for it.

Edvar grew interested. "Just holding it? Or were their hands moving?"

"They were moving, and their things were all big and sticking out like a
branch on a tree might. Their other arms were over each other's shoulders
and they were looking into each other's eyes and smiling and talking softly
to each other."

"And what happened then?" Edvar wanted to know.

"One of them saw me and they pulled the tapestry over themselves quick, and
then slipped away out the other side."

"I saw my brother and one of his friends doing that, but they were both
lying on his bed." Edvar said. "They seemed to like it."

"What did they do?"

"Moved their hands up and down on each other real fast." Edvar said. "Then
my brother sat up and was starting to lean over his friend and he saw me,
and got very angry. I had to go sleep in the street that night, he wouldn't
let me inside at all."

"I wonder what they do that for?" Phillippe said musingly.

"I don't know." Edvar agreed. "I asked my brother about it some days later,
when he was in a good mood, and he just said it was something friends do
with each other sometimes, and to leave it alone and not ask any more
questions."

"Oh." Phillippe said.

A brief silence passed, then Phillippe ventured. "Edvar? If that is
something friends do, and you and I are friends, maybe we should do it?"

Edvar's smile said he was thinking much the same thing. "I have put my hand
on my own thing and done as my brother was doing. It feels very good, even
doing it all by yourself. But I bet it is more fun doing it with a friend
instead."

"Oh, let us do it!" Phillippe exclaimed. "Let us do as these others do, and
make each other feel good! I know it must feel good for they were moaning
so much how much they liked the other man's hand doing it for them!"

"We'll have to pull down our hose." Edvar judged.

The two boys as one lay on their backs, untied their hose, and pushed the
leggings down their bodies. Their hose were in two parts, one to each leg
with a wider part at top, and the tie kept it bunched together over their
privates, the folds themselves preventing any important-sized gaps arising
in the mid-space. But with the hose pushed down to mid-thigh, they were now
bare from there to the tops of their jerkins, and for Edvar, that was a
mass of cloth easily pushed aside, Phillippe had to undo his belt to do the
same for his clothing was tailored to his body and new clothes made as he
outgrew them.

"Look, mine's all hard like those men's were!" he said excitedly when he
saw it, his proud young prince's staff standing tall as a miniature tower
to the sky, a regal three inches of male pudling.

He looked over and Edvar's own prick was in Edvar's fingers, and it was
somewhat longer than Phillippe's, though more slender and Phillippe looked
at it, at his own, and felt a new kinship with his friend...they were alike
in this as well!

Edvar shyly reached over and took hold of Phillippe's young cock and
Phillippe gasped from the simple touch of the other boy's fingers on his
dick. "Oh, that does feel good!" He said. "Ever so much better than mine
when I'm holding it in the privy!"

"Take hold of mine, now." Edvar asked him, and Phillippe eagerly grasped
the hard boy-cock, his fingers wrapped it around and Edvar's low gasp made
him feel very important and powerful. So wonderful a gift to give a friend,
the touch of his hand upon the friend's cock, such a simple thing and it
gives so much joy!

"I think the two men were working each other like this." Phillippe said and
began to slide his hand up and down Edvar's pricklet.

"Ah, ah, tighter!" Edvar advised him. "My brother's cock was having its
outer skin held tight enough that it slid up and down with the hand."

"Okay." Phillippe shifted his grip to get a new hold, and holding on
tighter, began to pump his friend, who now groaned in earnest!

"Oh, yes, oh, Ranver, that feels so good!"

"Do mine for me, please, Edvar, please!" Phillippe begged. By now, he was
used to his pseudonym and answered to it easily.

Edvar's fingers began to dance upon Phillippe's cock and Phillippe
moaned. "Oh, oh, Edvar, yes, this is very good, yes, it is very good! Do
mine faster now, please, even faster!"

"Mine, too, faster." begged Edvar. "I think now I feel a little of what
made my brother and his friend do it in their bed all night long." Prince
and commoner, they pumped each other's dongs with delightful abandon, in
the unabashed, unashamed ease of youth!

"Oh, we could do it in my bed all night long." Phillippe schemed. "It would
be so nice to have you in my bed, the two of us holding each other as we
slept."

"Ah, ah, something is happening." Edvar gasped. "Mine is feeling even
better than it has ever before. Oh, oh, OH, OH, OH, OH, OH, OH, OH!"

Knowing his friend was in the throes of joy and not pain, Phillippe pounded
his buddy's prong the harder, and only when he stopped moaning and the
grunts turned to that of pain, did he stop as Edvar, grimacing, slid his
cock from Phillippe's hand. "Oh, that was so very, very good!" he breathed
at Phillippe.

"Oh, do mine like that now, please!" Phillippe was still quite a ways from
his own glory, though now he knew it was there, he felt he knew the path to
it well enough. Just more of this, a little more, and his body would know
the joy Edvar had felt, he would himself tread the same blindingly ecstatic
road to his satiation.

And Edvar looked into his face as he pumped Phillippe's pud, and Phillippe
looked back, his eyes lovingly into Edvar's and he closed them only when
his climax clawed at his young brain and he fell for the first time into
that blithe oblivion of joy that is orgasm, though only the small one that
boys can enjoy, it was far and away the most glorious thing he had ever
felt, without a doubt!

"Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!" he gasped when he was done, and he vaguely remembered
some very loud shouts of his own joy while his body was wracked with
climax, and he let his voice go silent, saving his energy for refilling his
lungs with much-needed air. Edvar was still looking right into his face and
he smiled in a sort of half-happy, half-helpless way at the youth who held
his joy-tool in hand and had brought it to such a magnificent fruition!

"All right, who is out here where he shouldn't be... Oh!" came a male
voice.

The two boys looked up, frightened. The gardener! He had heard their cries
of joy and come to see who was here, upon land where none were to come!

"Oh, Edvar, run!" Phillippe cried out. "I shall stop him from catching
you!"

Edvar got to his feet, but he was hobbled by his hose, and Phillippe was no
match for the broad-chested gardener, who fended him off long enough to
snatch up Edvar by the back of his jerkin. "Well, what kind of little
raggamuffin is this?" he said.

"Let him go! Let him go!" Phillippe ordered.

"Your Highness, you know I must report all trespassers to the Captain of
the Guard." the gardener said.

"No, he's a friend of mine!" Phillippe pleaded. "We've been playing for
months now. You have to let him go, you can't lock him up in the jail, you
just can't!"

"I am so sorry, Your Highness." the gardener said. "I have my orders. You'd
best go back inside and get cleaned up. Your father the King wouldn't like
to see you like this.

And he let Edvar down onto the ground and Edvar was led away, but not
before giving the grieving Phillippe a look of astonishment.

"Oh, oh, oh!" Phillippe mourned. "It isn't right! Not right at all!"

He went back inside, and his father sent for him less than a half hour
later. His father was in his private study and that meant that Phillippe
was in for a punishment.

"Who was that boy you were with?" he started in. "Cemerel said the two of
you were in the middle of the royal grounds outside the garden when he
caught the two of you."

"He's my friend, father." Phillippe told the King. "Please, you must not
punish him. Don't whip him and don't, please don't hang him!"

"How did you meet him?" the King asked.

And Phillippe began to cry and the entire story burst forth. The King
listened very gravely and nodded from time to time.

"My son, you are young and you must understand, that when people meet up
with us they often pretend to a friendship they don't feel. Especially
people as poor as this Edvar seems to be, here he had you stealing food for
him and probably giving him coppers as well."

Phillippe had, a time or two. "Yeah." he snuffled, wiping one tear-stained
cheek with the back of his hand.

The King sighed. "It's a curse of being who we are." he said. "You have to
know that everyone who looks at you sees only your title. You are the
Prince and my heir, and everyone, everyone will treat you differently
because of that. It's why you can't be friends with anyone like Edvar."

Phillippe HAD left out that part in his explanation. "But he didn't know I
was your son." he said. "I told him I was a page-boy in the palace. I told
him my name was Ranver. Oh, please, father, he was really and truly my
friend, I know he was!"

"You told him you were a simple page?" the King said. For a moment, a
dimpled smile passed his face, then he sobered it. "That was a lie. We
cannot lie even in little things to the people whom we trust to trust us."

"But you see, he wasn't being nice to me because I was a Prince." Phillippe
said. "He was nice to me because he and I liked each other. And we had ever
so much fun, playing games, not like those men who you make play with
me. They're all either grumpy because they have to play with a child, or
they are mean to me because they are bigger, or they smile at me no matter
what I say or do and say I'm clever and wise and all those words those
horrible, horrible people tell you all the time."

"Yes." the King sighed. "It is a curse we bear who wear the crown."

"Please, father, let Edvar out of the jail and let him go back home."
Phillippe said. "I know you can't let him play with me anymore, but he
didn't do anything wrong, honest. I won't see him ever again, I promise! I
promise!"

"Such words, I must listen to." the King said. "You have made your first
promise to me as a royal heir. Will you keep your promise."

"Yes, father, I swear." Phillippe now raised his hand like men did to swear
allegiance to the King upon receiving their sword as a Royal
Guardsman. Then his face crumpled. "Oh, but I will miss him so much."

"You are a good child and will do what is right." the King said. "Now go to
your room and stay there the rest of the day and all day and night for the
next three days. That will be your punishment. I'll send in someone to care
for you for those three days."

"All right, father." and Phillippe went to his room. It wasn't quite a
purgatory, all his toys were here in plentitude, and the rooms themselves
were larger than most people's houses. Still, only one servant to keep an
eye on him...it would be lonely.

Phillippe got into his bed and waited for his dinner to be brought though
that would be hours still. He could play...but playing alone was no fun
once you'd had a friend to do it with!

He lay there and and was nearly falling asleep when he heard a knock. "I
can't see anyone." he called out. "I'm being punished."

"I know." came the King's voice. "I am bringing you your servant. If you
play at all the next three days, it'll have to be with him."

"Yes, father." Phillippe said.

And he waited to see the servant enter. Who would be the one face he would
see for the next three days?

It peered around the curtains of the bed at him. "Hello." said the voice.

"Edvar!" Phillippe jumped out of his bed. "You're all right!" He embraced
his friend, then stiffened. "I promised my father I'd never see you
again. You have to go, quick. Did you escape from the jail?"

"Yes." Edvar said. "I escaped by promising to be the King's newest servant,
specifically to serve the wishes of his son and heir, Phillippe."

"You...and me?"

"Right here for the next three days." Edvar agreed. "My brother was sent a
nice pouch of money for my services and I get these new clothes" for he was
decked out in servant's clothes, simple but clean and unpatched "and all I
can eat. And my job is to do whatever you want to do."

"You know what I want to do." Phillippe said and his hand took Edvar's and
drew him into the bed. "You are my own personal valet. And more."

"We Nestry have a word for it. We call them a 'mignon.'" Edvar said. "It
means that you and I shall never be apart, not ever, for as long as we
shall live."

They would not be disturbed at all for three full days. Phillippe had
wondered just a short time ago how to fill up so much time... and now he
and Edvar, prince and commoner, would fill that time together.

"A 'mignon.'" Phillippe tried out the word. "I know what that means now.
Best friends forever."

				  THE END
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