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He had wiry hands, did Keppa. If you saw his hands first, you’d never guess he had only just turned eighteen. They wore the unmistakable signs of physical labour and general wear. Callouses. Bruises and blood blisters. Cuts from when he had to handle rope and open big sacks of grain on his own. Burns from yanking on a particularly stubborn horse’s bridle, though Keppa always won out in the end.
“Got hands like a geriatric,” he’d chuckle while raising his right one to his face, cut on the thumb, blisters in his palm, spitting in it, loudly in the silence, so also Timachus’ breath faltered for a second, “but they still make pretty sweet music, don’t you think?”
With which he’d reach down between them and stroke Timachus’ hard cock, straining against his abdomen, wet at the tip. And he would be right, of course, because the sounds Timachus made while the older boy jerked him off, groaning noisily against the side of his neck, leaning in on him with his whole weight, were truly sweet.
Beautiful.
Melodic.
Trembling against him, his moaning drowning in the cavity of Keppa’s mouth as the other boy caught his lips and kissed him deeply, Timachus seems to recall that he thought up a poem at that moment, but time has eaten most of it, the way time eats most things. All that’s left of it now is a chorus of, don’t stop, don’t, don’t.
The most dangerous request you can make of anything in this world.
~*~
They had to keep it secret, their relationship. Slaves weren’t allowed to own anything in their own name, not even another person’s heart or body, least of all that, so they met at dusk behind the neighbour’s stables, Keppa tumbling Timachus over in the nearest pile of hay and, laughing raucously, because he respected very few of Efith’s rules, least of all the unspoken ones, jumping him, crawling down his body, lifting his tunic out of the way, pushing down his trousers.
Let them see, he seemed to say with his mouth, tongue following the trail of hair leading downwards to Timachus’ crotch, see what they’re gonna do about it.
Afterwards they’d lie with their arms slung around each other. Timachus bigger physically than the other boy, but three years younger. More afraid. More unsure. “Aren’t you nervous about what they’ll do if they find out,” he asked, inching down the other boy’s side until he could rest his cheek against the strong bulge of muscle in his upper arm. He had muscular arms, from wrestling with all those horses. Muscular arms and wiry hands.
“No,” Keppa replied, immediately, as if it needed no moment of contemplation at all and with him, it probably didn’t. “The worst they could do would be to kill me,” Timachus frowned, bit his lower lip and shut his eyes tightly, “and people like us, Timachus, we’ve been dead since they took our real lives away.”
Timachus didn’t know what to say, so he rolled over on top of Keppa wordlessly and took his mouth.
What do you say to the truth?
~*~
It took a long time before Keppa told him about his life before coming to Efith. It escaped him fragmentarily and when you’d least expect it. Its real name isn’t the Eastern Mountains, he’d mutter one day a diplomate from the border territories to the east was visiting his master and Timachus was hanging out near the gates, waiting for his own master to call after his daily class. We call the country Keidur.
Keidur, Timachus repeated, trying to match Keppa’s pronunciation, but he’d spoken Efithian since he was ten, he only knew one accent at this point. Keppa looked across the back of the horse at him, eyes quieter and more pensive than usually. Less laughter. Less sparkling fun. Is that where you’re from?
All he got for an answer was a nod. It would take additional weeks before Timachus realized that Keppa had only been abducted from his home two years prior, that he’d had no masters before the old man’s neighbour and that he had refused to take a slave name, but instead corrected his master and called himself Keppa until the man tired of it and sent him to the stables, rather than have him serve inside.
He didn’t know why Keppa kept this information from him, why he was guarding it so much, but when he heard what eventually happened to him, he understood a little better.
Fewer who’d have enough clues from which to track him down, supposedly.
~*~
The time they were given was short, as you’d expect. Someone was bound to find out, though it didn’t happen as dramatically as it could have. Timachus’ master discovered their secret first – and, it turned out, as the only one. He took Timachus aside one morning before the daily classes were about to commence, gave him parchment and a quill, ink, and said: “You’ve been distracted lately, so I’m giving you something to focus on.”
Timachus looked down at him, realizing that he was being offered a place into a society he would otherwise always be second ranking in. He clutched the parchment and the quill to his chest, getting ink stains on his work tunic and caring very little. It wasn’t acceptance, but it was a road to acceptance. The old man raised his chin and looked him straight in the eye.
“I’m giving you this choice,” he continued, “use it wisely.”
You’re giving me freedom, Timachus thought to himself while, behind him, the young men of Efithian heritage, leaner than him and shorter, too, were gathering, talking animatedly with each other and greeting the old man as he left Timachus’ side and strolled across the courtyard. But you also expect me to pay the price.
As the bell rung to indicate the beginning of class, Timachus looked over his shoulder towards the roofs rising above the stables on the neighbour’s grounds.
~*~
“I know what you’re gonna say with that face,” Keppa told him at sundown when they met behind the stable buildings. Timachus looked down at his feet. “Besides, the old man sought me out and warned me away from you, but I told him it was gonna be your decision. I can tell what you’ve decided.”
Slowly, Timachus raised his gaze again and met the other boy’s eyes, frowning a bit as he took in this order of events. Maybe freedom, in the end, was not a clear-cut concept. It was not earned or even given. It was only ever procured through all the pains you could possibly think it was worth. Maybe there would always be that many different factors playing into it. An unequal amount of pros and cons.
Pros and cons.
“Sorry,” he began.
“Don’t be,” Keppa told him, reaching up to retie his hair into a tighter ponytail. “That’s your freedom. I would never take it away from you.”
“What’s your freedom?” Timachus flexed his fingers at his sides a few times, just feeling how he could still ball his hands into fists and release them, without any catastrophes happening. After all, he could kill a grown man easily, he was tall and broad and had the strength of two regular Efithians. But the price to be free for just that brief moment of time would be too great. He would rather be owned and alive.
“It’s far away from here,” Keppa replied. “In Keidur, we call it oni wigur oy sinw.”
~*~
Later, around the same time when he heard that the farm in the East State where Keppa’s owner had sold him off to was now a slave down, Timachus found a merchant from the Eastern Mountains who agreed to translate the sentence for him, oni wigur oy sinw.
It means, a place where you can grow your wings.