3. Rising Popularity - The Work Camp Earth-boy

Like the night before I slept on the floor of Savros’ hut. The preparations for today’s breakfast were faster and smoother since I was more familiar with the process. Savros brought his portable alarm clock into the kitchen so I could keep an eye on the time, and just before 8:00 I gathered three bowls and a pitcher of hot water for my newest assignment.

No surprise, Egan didn’t even acknowledge my presence as I delivered the water to his hut. Larry smiled kindly and said “Thank you.”

Jared was resting, not really asleep, when I entered his hut. He gave me a big smile and a cheery “Good morning!” As I was pouring the water into his bowl he put out a hand from under the covers and fondled my bare bum.

I grinned and wagged my penis in front of his face. “I’d love to help you take care of your morning wood, but I’m expected back in the kitchen.” I couldn’t actually see if he was hard, but he was a teenager so I was probably right.

“Maybe come a couple of minutes earlier tomorrow morning,” he said. “I know earth-boys can do amazingly fast quickies.”

As everyone was getting ready to go to the work area after breakfast, Riley approached me and said very quietly, “It’s not in the truck.”

I nodded. That meant my phone was with Egan or Martin. Probably Egan; he was the one who had told me he was confiscating it.

Mid-afternoon Riley found me in the main hut and invited me outside. We went behind the storage shed, out of view of the rest of the camp.

That got a laugh. “No, he was a little more inventive than that. He said it’s Grosvenor.” [The word is French; it’s pronounced GROVE-ner.]

I shook my head. “Wow, he really doesn’t know anything about us! We don’t even have a “J” sound in our language, so of course I wouldn’t be named John. And we don’t have “families” because everyone has sex with everyone else so nobody knows whose boy is whose. By the way, do you know what the most confusing day in an earth-boy grove is?”

He saw the obvious setup for my joke. “No, I don’t. What is the most confusing day in an earth-boy grove?”

“Anyway,” I continued, “formally, we use our given name followed by fa—that means of—and the name of the grove we were born in. Because lots of groves have the same name, if we need to narrow it down more we’ll add the humans’ city or rural name like a county. So I’m Lorinár fa Vorthsathuln. And now you know my name.”

“Pleased to meet you, Lorinár,” he replied and extended his hand. I shook it. “That’s all the proof I need to know Egan lied about you volunteering to join us. I’ll ask him to give me your phone. Also, are you sure you want to stay? I can take you back to town any time you want.”

“Yes, I want to stay! I’m having fun here! Most of you guys are great. Sure, there isn’t a huge bunch of you like my grove, but you’re interesting and I’m learning lots about humans. And I think everyone would be miffed if their new boy toy just up and disappeared.”

Riley smirked. “I’ve been with a few earth-boys in my time, but I’m just amazed at how much sex you guys have.”

“The way we view it, the Earth can’t have sex on its own, so it created us for that. And the Earth’s big. Even with all the sex we have, to the Earth it’s probably like feeding an elephant through a pipette.”

“An interesting description. Already I’ve noticed morale in the north field has picked up. They’re happier now and not nearly so discouraged at our lack of progress.”

Savros’ interaction with me changed dramatically once I started working with him in the nude. The day before he had treated me like a fellow cook, although one who needed direction because I was new to his kitchen. Today I was more like a loving pet who knew how to cook. He was forever siding up to me, giving me little hugs, and running a free hand on my shoulders, back, and bum. Any compliment was followed with a kiss to a cheek or my neck.

I enjoyed his attention. My penis did too, more than once swelling up even though there were things I needed to be doing.

In addition, at the close of lunch Savros asked Larry for a favour: could he sit on the other side of the table beside Egan and Martin? He said he wanted be beside his kitchen help. Larry agreed without comment.

So at dinner time I had a horny Japanese teenager on my left and an amorous Greek guy on my right. No surprise, Savros carried on very much as he had in the kitchen, although he was actually being discreet by doing all of it out of sight under the table. Like last night during the board game, Jared, too, kept patting and rubbing my bare behind.

I spent much of the main course enjoying a major erection, and had to quietly ask both of them to lay off for a while to give it time to deflate for when someone called for seconds or we went to get dessert. If it had been a bunch of earth-boys in a grove no one would have cared, and there would have been some orgasms as well. But for humans, there was a time and a place for this sort of play. Jared and Savros were really pushing the boundaries.

Egan asked for another plate simply by calling “Seconds!” Martin at least added “please” to his request. The others also asked me to serve then, but did it as a group so I wasn’t jumping up and down all the time.

Then Riley asked me, “Yesterday you said you’re thirteen. So were you born in 2008 or 2009?”

“Technically,” I answered, “I was born in 5008 by the earth-boy calendar.”

“Yes. By tradition we date it from when we first started interacting with humans, who introduced us to the idea of a calendar. When the Christian calendar took over Europe, we just arbitrarily set that date to 3000 BC. It makes it a lot easier for us to convert to your years.”

Larry smiled. “I’m guessing you’d have done something similar if you started using the Jewish or Arab calendar first.”

Riley asked, “You said ‘Christian calendar.’ Do you follow the modern Gregorian calendar or the old Julian one?”

“Actually, neither. The only similarity between our two calendars is the last three digits of the year and the fact they both start in midwinter. But we have a really quirky system of months. We start our year on the Winter Solstice, which is ten days before you do. But we want to start our first month on the day of the first full moon. I think you can see a problem with that.”

Larry added, “Right. The solstice is a solar event, not a lunar one. So what do you do?”

“We have a variable number of months in the year. The last regular month of our year is the Onion Moon. If there’s still days left over from then to the solstice, we add a short month called Last Moon. Then there’s the solstice that starts a whole new year. That also starts the Newyear’s Moon month, which lasts only until the next full moon. It can be dropped altogether if the solstice is on a full moon.”

“It depends on the year. Sometimes fourteen, sometimes thirteen. The first full moon of the year starts our first regular month, which is the Lynx Moon. We like to run our regular months for exactly 28 days, or four weeks of seven days. Well, plus the Moonday itself, which isn’t part of the regular week.”

“Right. The first week of a month typically is eight days, but numbered from 1 through 7, and a whole day just inserted in the middle on the full moon. We celebrate it as a holiday. And the solstice, the very first day of the year, also isn’t part of the first week. So our calendar starts most years with a New Year’s Day at the start of the Newyear’s Moon month, then Newyear’s Moon 1, Newyear’s Moon 2, and so on. And the month ends as soon as the next full moon comes along, which starts the Lynx moon.”

“Okay,” said Riley, “Let’s see if I’ve got this. You have a variable number of months in the year, and some months disappear completely in some years, and you have weeks that can be seven or eight days long. Have I missed anything?”

“Oh, yes,” I replied. “Every time we start a new month, we also restart the week. For you humans, it’s absolutely guaranteed that seven days from Monday will be another Monday, and the day after Monday is always a Tuesday. Not us! Every new month restarts the week. When going from one year to the next, sometimes we can take up to sixteen days to go from, say, a Monday to a Tuesday on the calendar. We joke about it. At the end of the year I ask the potter on Wednesday, ‘So, when are you going to finish that bowl I asked you for?’ and he says, ‘No problem. Thursday!’ The joke is Thursday doesn’t appear for another ten days.”

“Okay, my mind’s blown,” said Jared beside me. “With that crazy system, how do you track your birthdays?”

“We just note which moon we awakened under. In the following years, on the Moonday of that month we add a year to our age. I awakened under the Bear moon, so I’ll turn fourteen on the next Bear moon.”

“It has to do with how we reproduce. But if I start talking about that now we’ll all miss dessert.”

“Like I said, it’s on the Bear moon. Most years it’s in your month of August, but I think this year it’s in early September.” [It was 10 September 2022. —EB]

Everyone was either satisfied with my explanation of our calendar or hopelessly confused by it. Probably the latter. I had an earth-boy calendar app on my phone, but I didn’t have my phone thanks to Egan taking it when he and Martin grabbed me.

Savros and I brought out dessert, and the conversation wandered away from calendars and dates.

This evening was like the last two. We set up a board game and played through it. This one was more complicated and I didn’t understand the rules as well as the other guys, but Jared was more than happy to explain things and give me pointers.

During lulls in the play he was also playing with me under the table, feeling up my thigh and bum. But Savros went even further, putting a hand between my legs to explore my penis and balls. I quickly got an erection and he explored it thoroughly with his fingers. I got a little concerned he might start stroking it too, but fortunately he didn’t. I let him play down there for as long as I was in the game.

Which wasn’t really that long. The game’s more complicated rules and reliance on strategy in lieu of dice rolls meant I lost badly and was eliminated in the first half hour of play. I had to wait a few minutes for my erection to subside before leaving the table. As earth-boys we have a lot of control over our rear receptacle, but not so much the front pointy one. It goes up really fast and comes down more slowly.

I played with the darts for another hour until the game wrapped up. Egan had won, a fact he announced loudly and with some fanfare. Then it was on to cards, beer, and poker. Larry sat out as usual and I didn’t bother him while he read through some back issues of a financial magazine. Instead I found the box of dominoes and started setting them up on end so I could topple them. I quickly ran out of tiles. There was just the one set with only 28 of them in the box. So I simply experimented with setting up different patterns and watching how they fell.

After four or five patterns Larry started chatting with me. He started by asking, “Do you know how wealthy earth-boys are?”

“No,” I replied. “I understand money only as far as it lets groves buy things from humans. Where it comes from, how it’s stored, and how much we have, those things I don’t know.”

It seemed Larry was intent on improving my education. “Well, working in financial circles I’d heard rumours that earth-boys control a lot of wealth. Originally I thought they were conspiracy theories like the ones about Jews secretly controlling all the money in Europe. Then I started looking into it. I was shocked. Earth-boys, at least through their human agents, have vast investments in everything all over the world. I’ve heard numbers upwards of a hundred and seventy trillion dollars.”

“It is! To put it into perspective, it’s about seventeen percent of all the wealth in the whole world. Except earth-boys account for less than two percent of the population. So you guys could have considerable influence over human affairs by where you decide to invest your money.”

I thought about it. “Well, money’s not really something me or any other earth-boy really understands. We don’t need it much except for when we deal with humans. Which is why I’ve heard we always hire humans to look after it for us. And I know whenever the grove needs to buy something from humans like food or a truck or even my cell phone, the grove just pays for it.”

“I can see that,” said Larry. “Each grove individually has more money than it knows what to do with because you don’t need to spend very much. You live simply and the grove does a lot for you that humans have to spend money on in order to survive. And it’s been like that for a very long time. The roots of your wealth go back hundreds of years. From what I’ve been able to gather, mostly you made money by selling food and your incredible pottery to humans. And being able to heal a lot of diseases helped, too.”

“Oh, that much I know. Back before the industrial revolution humans were always buying stuff from us. It worked because we needed human things like metal, especially knives. And we preferred to buy potter’s wheels from humans because they were so much better than the ones we could make ourselves. But like you said we didn’t need to buy a lot of things—the grove gives us shelter and we don’t wear clothing—so our money just kept growing.”

“And you didn’t go to war, either. War can be good for inventing new things and keeping people busy, but it’s very expensive. So, yes, for centuries you were always taking in far more money than you were spending. There was quite the network of people looking after your money in Europe going all the way back to the twelfth century. And very little of it was stolen. I have no idea how you managed to find so many people you could trust with that sort of money.”

“Oh, that’s one thing I know. It’s one of the gifts the Earth’s given us for dealing with humans. We can sense if you’re being truthful, or are hiding something, or are just telling lies. We have to use some eren to do it, though. So if we’re talking with humans indoors like you prefer to do things, we can’t check out everything you say because we’d run out of our stored eren pretty quickly.”

“Stored eren?” asked Larry. “What’s the difference between that and what you’d normally call eren?“

Briefly I wondered why he was asking the question; the answer was obvious to me. “Eren is earth-energy. We usually have be in direct contact with the earth to use it. Like, this hut’s made out of metal and it blocks eren, so I can’t get it from the earth. And when we’re dealing with humans we’re almost always inside so we’re cut off from the earth. I have a small supply inside me, enough to use my gifts two or three times before I can’t do anything more.”

“Yes. In fact, that’s why you often see earth-boys in town carrying a staff. It stores eren, too. The better the staff, the more eren. But even they discharge.”

“Sure, the same way we restore our eren, by being outside on the ground or in a tree. Except when we’re outside, we can get a continuous supply because we’re in contact with the earth. Like getting electricity out of a wall socket. Except we don’t have to worry about blackouts.”

“Interesting. Uh, would you mind if I tried out your gift to tell if I’m lying or not?”

“Alright.” He paused for several seconds, then said, “I used to work for Steark Global Financial—“

I held up my had to stop him and process what he’d told me. “Okay, now something else.”

“The part about being a manager for the western region is true. You didn’t work for the company you mentioned, but I can’t tell which one you really were with.”

“You got both right,” he said. “Do you want to know what we’re doing in the north field?”

“We’re setting up a secret surveillance grid to eavesdrop on spy satellites as they cross overhead.”

“No you’re not. That came across as a total lie. Besides, if it was true you wouldn’t have told me that. And now my eren’s all gone, so now I won’t be able to tell if you’re being truthful or not.”

I shook my head. “No idea. I don’t have any eren left, so I can’t tell if you were telling the truth about how many children you have or their names.”

“Still, what you did was pretty impressive. I can see how that would be really useful when finding people to look after your money.”

“It is. And now I have to go outside and get some eren into me or I’ll start feeling sick and won’t be able to sleep.”

Which is what I did. It was actually an enormous relief to be outside in the cool of the evening air, in contact with the earth that I loved so much.

Suddenly I felt lonely. For the first time since I was brought here I was actually missing my grove. I was feeling very much sex deprived and I found myself longing to be part some group action with my earth-boy brothers. Earth-boys are rarely without company, and I was at a loss as to what to do without others to play with.

Maybe I could ask Riley or Savros or Jared for ideas. I resolved that for as long as I was here I’d wait out the poker game here in the outdoors. Perhaps I could set up the dart board out here, and look through the collection of games for something. I recalled Larry reading magazines, and thought maybe I could ask for some books.

With everyone else inside and not watching me I was tempted to go to the north field to see what I find out there. But I stayed near the hut in case Riley or Egan noticed my absence and came looking for me.

Finally the poker game came to an end and Larry did the balances. Just before we headed out for the night, Savros quietly said to me, “If you don’t mind, I won’t bother with your bedding tonight. You can just sleep with me.”

Tonight I was headed for Martin’s hut. I wondered what he’d be like; of all the guys in the camp he was the one I had talked with the least. He didn’t seem at all interested in me. About the only thing he’d said directly to me was a warning to work with Savros when he took me to the kitchen the first day.

I decided should hedge my bets. While on our way to his hut, I put a hand on Martin’s arm. Instinctively he turned to look at me. When he did I met his gaze and called on eren from the ground to send him calm. If he was planning to give me a rough time, he would now simply neglect to do that and be normal. If he wasn’t, I’d set him up to enjoy it all the more.

Earlier I had retrieved some paper towels from the kitchen, and discreetly as I could (I was naked, after all) carried them with me to the hut.

Martin was, well, straightforward. He didn’t ask for consent, but he didn’t jump me the second we were inside. He undressed while I lay on my back on his bed, fighting to keep my penis under control. I figured doing anything that might be seen as gay could upset him.

Once he’d undressed, still not saying anything he rolled me onto my stomach, then gently pulled my bum cheeks apart to expose my hole. He tested it with a finger, and it slipped in.

“Did you lube yourself up before we left the main hut?” he asked. It was the first time he’d ever spoken to me in a normal tone of voice.

“No. We have a natural lube. It’s always a little slippery back there and we produce more when we know someone wants to go in.”

“Okay. Put your ass in the air—I’m doing you doggie-style. You’re so small I can’t lay on top or you’ll suffocate.”

I did so, going on my hands and knees. He lined himself up and pushed in, then started humping me. Too gently, in fact. Maybe he was afraid he’d hurt me? At this rate he’d have a nice time, but I wanted to give him something to remember.

A little eren and some muscle flexing had the desired result. He moaned and started going faster and harder. Now I could feel him when he bottomed out against my bum. We kept it up for a couple of minutes until I stepped it up another notch.

“Ohh!” he cried, and really started going at it. I tightened the muscles back there, forcing him to work harder but also ramping up the sensations. I knew the extra effort wouldn’t tire him. He’d always given me the impression he was a strong man, and seeing him naked had confirmed it. He was mostly muscles; he must have spent the last fifteen years of his life at manual labour.

Tonight I didn’t need the phantom amoryn around my penis to get the full experience. Martin was going great all by himself and through his cock in my rear I felt his pleasure almost as much as he did. We were rocking each other back and forth; he was moaning and breathing heavily. I was too. I kept it at this level, thinking he might get aggressive if I increased his pleasure.

Five wonderful minutes later he came all on his own without me having to do anything to trigger it, letting out a long “aughhhh!” as he emptied himself inside me. It was so unexpected that I hadn’t picked up the paper towels I’d brought with me to avoid making a mess on the bed. Frantically I searched for them, but my feeling his orgasm very quickly started my own. Even if I’d wanted to, I didn’t have time to direct my emissions back inside me (and I didn’t want to; it’s uncomfortable and really reduces the pleasure.) It all came spilling out on to the bed.

When it was over Martin stayed inside for a minute while I used my amorial muscles to gently pull the last of his cum out of his cock. Finally locating the paper towels, I cleaned up the bed covers as best I could and wiped my penis tip.

Martin pulled out. He said nothing, but turned me around and pulled me into a tight embrace. When he let go he even gave me a little kiss on the cheek. Knowing we were done for the night, I left his bed and the hut, taking the damp paper towels which I threw into the garbage bin behind the main hut.

As expected, my makeshift bed wasn’t there when I entered Savros’ hut. With a little effort I managed to make it into his bed. Fortunately he was sleeping on his side. I went on my side too and snuggled my back up to his front.

He was wearing a t-shirt and underwear. I’ll have to see if I can change that, I thought to myself, then drifted off to sleep.

Appendix: Earth-boys’ Calendar

Following is a more formal discussion of the earth-boys' calendar. If you're not interested in the gory details of how earth-boys track their weeks, months, and years, you can safely skip this section and go on to the next chapter.

Earth-boys use a lunisolar calendar starting on the Winter Solstice and counting months roughly by the new moon.

The calendar era is AC, or Anno Contactu, regarded as the year they first made contact with late neolithic and early bronze age humans in Central Europe. The era was fixed at 3000 BCE when the Anno Domini era for the Julian calendar became popular in Europe in the eighth century AD, to align the final three digits of the year in both calendars. Earth-boys were undoubtedly interacting with humans prior to this, but 3000 was chosen for ease of conversion with the human calendar. Thus in 2023 AD the current Earth-boy year is 5023. (Compare this with 5783 for the Hebrew calendar, which is based on their determination of the date of Creation.)

The year begins on the Winter Solstice, which is an intercalary day (in this context, a day that is additional to the normal seven days of the week.) The Lynx full moon, which marks the start of the first month of the year, rarely falls on the Winter Solstice, so an intercalary month called Newyear’s Moon is used to span the days between the solstice and the first full moon of the year.

Following that, months are fixed at 28 days, plus an intercalary Moonday on the day of the full moon for that month. The Moonday gradually moves forward through the first week as the year progresses.

The last month of the year is either the Onion Moon, which can range from 18 to a full 28 days, or Last Moon, if there are days remaining at the end of the Onion Moon. Due to the way the lunar period differs from the solar year, it is possible for Last Moon to have its own full moon, which happens in about half the Last Moon months.

Calendar for 5022 AC (2022 AD)

The calendar for 5022 AC has 365 days. It has eleven full months and two short months: an almost complete 26 day Newyear’s Moon, a short sixteen day Onion Moon, and no Last Moon.

The weekday names are Erday, Starday, Forsday, Waday, Groveday, Fielday and Solday.

In the calendar below, the left-most column of each month records the day of the year for Erday, and �"� and ◯ denote intercalary days—the solstice and Moondays, respectively.

Months in 5022 AC compared to 2022 AD

Months

Earth-boy calendar	Western Calendar
Newyear’s Moon 1	December 21, 2021
Lynx Moon 1	January 17
Chestnut Moon 1	February 15
Wolf Moon 1	March 16
Melon Moon 1	April 14
Boar Moon 1	May 13
Wheat Moon 1	June 11
Bison Moon 1	July 10
Koy Moon 1	August 8
Bear Moon 1	September 6
Apple Moon 1	October 5
Deer Moon 1	November 3
Onion Moon 1	December 2

Odd numbered months are typically named after animals and even numbered months after plants. A notable exception is the final month of the year, appropriately named Last Moon.

Weeks

Month	Name	Days
	Newyear’s Moon	Variable, 0-27 days
1	Lynx Moon	Moonday + 28
2	Chestnut Moon	28 + Moonday
3	Wolf Moon	28 + Moonday
4	Melon Moon	28 + Moonday
5	Boar Moon	28 + Moonday
6	Wheat Moon	28 + Moonday
7	Bison Moon	28 + Moonday
8	Koy Moon	28 + Moonday
9	Bear Moon	28 + Moonday
10	Apple Moon	28 + Moonday
11	Deer Moon	28 + Moonday
12	Onion Moon	Moonday + 16–29 days
13	Last Moon	Variable, 0–17 days

A month is divided into four weeks of seven days. The actual day of the full moon—Moonday—is an intercalaray day: it is separate from the week and the Earth-boys set it aside as a day of rest (and partying.)

Weeks in the Earth-boy calendar are malleable. There is no hard and fast rule saying, for example, Starday must always be followed by Forsday. This contrasts with the Gregorian calendar where weeks are sacrosanct. Even during the switch from the Julian calendar, when the Catholic Church removed ten days in 1582, Thursday 4 October was followed by Friday 15 October. Protestant countries followed piecemeal over the following centuries; Great Britain and its North American colonies did the change 170 years later in 1752. They needed to remove eleven days, and Wednesday 2 September was followed by Thursday the 14th.

In addition, the Winter Solstice and Moondays are added to weeks as needed, so in most months there are three weeks of seven days and one week of eight days. Such days are always viewed as holidays where Earth-boys do even less work than normal. They are not considered holy or sacred, so there are no rules for mandatory or forbidden activities.

Weekday	Name	Represents
1	Erday	The Earth
2	Starday	Stars
3	Forsday	Forest
4	Waday	Water
5	Groveday	Groves
6	Fielday	Fields
7	Solday	The Sun

Earth-boy weeks always start on the first day of the month without regard for how the previous month ended. For example, here’s the tail end of 5007 AC and the start of 5008. Groveday is normally followed by Fielday, but it's sixteen days from the final Groveday in 5007 to the next Fielday in 5008. (In the calendar below, the left-most column of each month records the day of the year for Erday, and �"� and ◯ denote intercalary days—the solstice and Moondays, respectively.)

5007’s Last Moon has only five days, from Erday to Groveday. 5008’s Newyear’s Moon starts a new week with an intercalary day followed by a single day (Erday). Then the Lynx New Moon starts a new month and restarts the week again, once more with an intercalary day and a new Erday. Therefore, from the last Groveday in Onion Moon to Fielday in Lynx Moon, which in the Gregorian calendar would follow immediately after, is actually a span of sixteen days!

Birthdays

Earth-boys do not track their birthday down to the exact day and month as humans do. Instead, they say they “awakened under a Name Moon.” This is always reckoned using the full moon of the month. For example, an Earth-boy who emerged from his boll on the first day of the Deer Moon will say he awakened under an Apple Moon, because the Deer full moon usually follows the fourth day of that month.

Earth-boys advance their age by one year on the Moonday of their birth month. Earth-boys born in a Newyear’s Moon month are included in the previous year’s Onion Moon or Last Moon group.

Earth-boys who awakened under a Last Moon and before the Winter Solstice are considered especially favoured by the Earth. (Scientific studies conducted by humans generally fail to show this is the case.)

Length of a contract year

A consequence of the lunar month format is the number of days between identical dates a year apart varies: it can be as much as twelve days shorter or twenty days longer than a full year. When setting up formal contracts, a relative rarity among the easy-going Earth-boys, they often don’t worry about not getting a full 365 days of value. Vendors likewise often aren’t concerned they may be providing more than 365 days of service over the course of a year. Larger contracts will either use the calendar date 365 days from the starting date, or keep the same month and day but adjust values based on the elapsed days. Because of this, most Earth-boy calendars have the number of days from the beginning of the year displayed at the start of each week.

Earth-boys are careful to avoid starting contracts on dates that aren’t available in all years, such as any Newyear’s and Last Moon days, and following day 16 of the Onion Moon.

The Work Camp Earth-boy