Balo drives his spear down into the beast again -- the impact spikes through his body, rippling across his back and shoulders. The tip plunges past the beast's core and into the ground below.
It spasms. Once, twice, thrice. Then, at last, the pinned beast falls still.
The young hunter slumps against his spear. His tanned chest burns with every heaving gasp; his lean body gleams with sweat. Balo is strong, but strength has limits. This journey continues to test them.
The beast is an eyeless, furless shadow in the shape of a hound. Deprived of its bloodless heart, the rubbery mass retreats -- unraveling into wispy black threads that swirl through the leaves above. It only takes a minute to evaporate.
All that remains is Balo's spear, a flattened patch of forest foliage, and the sound of the hunter's heavy, frustrated breathing.
He grunts with disatisfaction. Wrenching his spear free, Balo ventures on.
Upon reaching their twentieth year, most of his peers head to the nearby city in search of work or adventure. Balo has other priorities.
Those priorities have brought him here, to the Umbra -- a forest where it is said that the shadows conspire to obscure all light. As he walks, Balo casts his skeptical gaze up. The evening sky is visible through the canopy of trees.
Still, he cannot fault others for such embellishments. This place invites them. The umbral beasts that stalk these woods are quite real, and quite dangerous.
His thoughts drift to home. To his village, his house -- and the young man who waits for him. Balo's face grows warm.
The young hunter's earlier frustration surges. He forces himself to focus on the journey ahead.
Once the sun sets, he finds a spot and makes camp.
It is only when he is resting beside the crackling campfire that Balo permits his thoughts to drift.
They instantly go to Caleb. Like Balo, he is a hunter -- but smaller and more cunning. He would have brought his bow.
Balo shifts in the bedroll and lays atop his belly. The umbral beasts stray from fire, but they are not the only threat in these woods. He should stay alert. Thinking about Caleb right now is a dangerous distraction.
He sighs. And yet...
The thought of Caleb -- his smile, his laugh, his sandy golden-brown hair -- stirs something up inside Balo's belly. A familiar yearning swells through him; one that years of frustration have only served to refine into a razor-sharp ache.
His hips move before he even realizes it.
The young hunter reminds himself that this is neither the time nor the place. But the more he gives in, the more memories unlock. Caleb, squirming beneath him in the dark, lifting his hips back against Balo. Caleb, thrusting forward against the bedding, crying out with a frustration that mirrors Balo's own.
He closes his eyes.
Gods...
With each slow roll, Balo's buttocks clench. His back spasms. Sinew twitches as his shoulders slide apart, then pinch back together. He thrusts down against the furs -- openly humping the bedroll besides the fire.
Between his legs lies the source of his troubles -- the very reason he's come to these woods.
The black rubbery mass is made from the same substance as the umbral beasts. It is a bulge of shadow that swallows the entirety of his manhood, from its tip to its testicles and even down to the edge of the perineum. Each thrust does nothing but flatten the bulge, dragging it across the furs.
Despite this, each flattening still transmits a pulse of sensation. It's as if the contained shaft has become malleable clay. Whether it's squished, stretched, or otherwise squeezed, it sends a spike of pleasure -- but never enough for release.
During childhood, the affliction is thought of as little more than a curiosity. But from adolescence onward, it becomes a source of endless sexual frustration. And now -- in his twentieth year -- undoing it has become Balo's
obsession
.
His thrusts quicken. He bites down on the bedroll, his face burning with a mixture of want and shame.
It's as if the bulge has stripped him of his gender, leaving him as some sort of neutered, sexless
thing
. He hates how it restrains him. He hates how it teases him with a climax that will never come. He hates how
good
it feels.
I need to stop...
Balo shudders, remembering his last time with Caleb. Locked in a futile embrace, kissing and grasping at one another in the dark of night. Desperately chasing their need for hours on end. Then, when dawn at last came -- the look in Caleb's glazed eyes.
Not just frustration. Not just want. Not just need.
Surrender and acceptance.
Balo throws off his blanket and rises. He seizes the nearby spear and paces around the campfire.
The purported purpose of the device is to teach discipline, focus, and patience. Balo has never understood this. A man tethered to a boat cannot learn how to swim; how can anyone learn restraint with no risk of failure?
At 21, villagers may undergo a rite to prove themselves. If successful, the device is removed and the boy becomes a man. But Balo's rite is a year away -- and he cannot bear this denial any longer.
More than that: some part of him is terrified that if he waits for his opportunity, he may no longer
want
it.
Again, Caleb's expression flashes across his mind. Balo shudders. He needs to distract himself.
A nearby stream offers temporary respite. Balo slips in, naked; the cold water rushes past his thighs and nearly up to his hips.
The moon's silver glow shimmers over the water's surface and casts itself across the landscape of his back. A cartographer could spend a lifetime mapping out the jagged, muscular cliffs of his shoulders -- or the ridged valley of his spine. He has the physique of a young long-distance swimmer: a broad upper torso that collapses into a narrow waist and hard, dense buttocks.
The bulge is barely visible from behind; just a sliver of black that intrudes up the crevice of his posterior, with its tip barely touching the sensitive ring of his sphincter. But from the front, it couldn't be more obvious. It envelopes him just below his flat abdomen and navel. Aside from a slender silver chain snugly coiled around his throat, he wears nothing else. Despite ostensibly covering him, the bulge only heightens his sense of vulnerability -- as if going naked would somehow leave him far less exposed.
He tries not to think about it. Instead, he focuses on scrubbing himself with a pad of soap, sliding the dwindling lump across his skin. He lifts one arm up and smears the soap across his bare and smooth chest, leaving a gleaming path of suds. It isn't long before his fingers have worked up a lather across his upper body. Dipping beneath the water, he rubs away the layers of oil and grime. Beads of water whip from his hair as he re-emerges, straightening his back. He shivers and moves his hands lower.
