The Ritual

Well past sunset, a group of naked young men entered the remote, roofless temple carrying torches. They placed their torches in the usual places. The light they provided transformed the temple into a flickering, orange glow. The youths automatically arranged themselves in a circle. All eight of them had eagerly looked forward to this night. They deeply inhaled the scents of rare and erotic herbs.

The men lowered their knees onto the huge stone slabs that formed the floor. They felt the night breezes curling among the massive temple columns. Sitting with their thighs spread, they felt those breezes caressing their buttocks, crotches, gonads and upright penises. They saw the torches cast elongated, shifting shadows of their aroused bodies onto the temple’s huge columns. When they turned their heads upward, the young men gazed into the black sky to see it covered with extremely bright stars that seemed to smile down upon them.

Soon Balroc, their Leader, stepped into the center of the circle. He surveyed the handsome youths on display around him. Even though slightly older than those in that elite group, he treated them with honor. Balroc knew them well. Each had earned his respect over time in the most desired ways.

Physically, Balroc stood taller than most men his age. His dark, disheveled hair fell onto strong, broad shoulders. His pectoral muscles and nipples stood out in the shadowy, orange light. Balroc’s arms and legs bulged with muscles that few males dared to challenge. Those who did engage him—either in a friendly or unfriendly fight—never forgot what he did to them.

His bronzed body tapered to a narrow waist, while his well-defined abdominals drew everyone’s attention—and envy. Below the abs Balroc wore only a thin, beige, well-used cloth wrapped around his waist and pulled up snugly through his crotch. The cloth had an opaque quality, yet any observer could get a clear idea of the shapes and sizes underneath the front of it.

Whenever they saw Balroc, some males in the village liked to stare at his bulges. They longed to put their hands around them, and even their mouths. Balroc knew their thoughts and would smile. Yet he never allowed them to fulfill their wishes. At an earlier age, he did let other males have fun with his magnificent body. But now he wanted something more than the liquid that spurted from a youth’s aroused phallus.

Those youths definitely wanted to swallow Balroc’s potent essence. They believed that a male swallowing that liquid would greatly increase his strength and virility. They smiled at Balroc, proudly displaying their upright, twitching poles to him. He responded by bowing to them.

Soon Tarik entered the temple. He felt nervous, because on this night the group would decide if he became their newest member. Somewhat younger than the others, he stood within the circle as many eyes took time to behold his naked body.

Balroc sensed Tarik’s apprehension and stepped forward. He embraced the youth and kissed the side of his neck. He showed Tarik the hand sign announcing his physical trial—spreading apart the first two fingers of each hand and interlocking them at the web between the fingers, then rocking both hands back-and-forth several times. This meant that the candidate would not have to engage in an actual fight, but needed to demonstrate his worthiness by undergoing several tests of courage and stamina.

Because Tarik lived far from the village, Balroc had not seen him before. He walked slowly around the naked youth, studying his body closely.

Black hair thickly covered Tarik’s head. His small but well-shaped buttocks held Balroc’s interest for a long time. The youth’s arms and legs also looked impressive, but of course Balroc’s muscles far surpassed them. Still, between Tarik’s legs hung exceptionally large gonads, each one distinctly prominent in the sack.

Balroc stood in front of the youth and gently pushed Tarik’s hands behind him. Balroc placed the fingers of his left hand on the right side of Tarik’s neck, just below the ear. He positioned his right hand on the neck’s left side, also just below the ear. Suddenly Tarik felt a numbing pain as Balroc pressed his fingers into both sides of his neck. The pain soon became disorienting. Balroc smiled as Tarik’s jaw dropped open in shock. He had never before experienced anything like this—even when friends fought with him, applying pressure on their bodies in unusual places.

The pain started to spread down the sides of Tarik’s neck and into his shoulders. Soon Tarik’s knees began to feel unstable. Balroc didn’t need to pull the youth down—Tarik slowly succumbed to the pain and sank to his knees out of necessity. While maintaining his neck pressure, Balroc followed the youth to the floor, confidently dropping onto a single knee. Tarik tried to turn his head sideways, but found that he couldn’t move it in any direction. Fear gripped him. He tried to scream but couldn’t make a sound. Balroc had somehow paralyzed his head and neck.

Tarik began to feel dizzy. Balroc seemed to know Tarik’s dilemma and grinned at the youth’s inability to handle it. He finally released Tarik’s neck. Tarik’s body started to collapse, but Balroc’s right hand grasped the youth’s chest and kept him from falling.

For a moment Tarik seemed dazed. Balroc massaged the back of the youth’s neck with his left hand. The massage seemed magical to Tarik, because it made him feel normal almost immediately.

Balroc put a friendly hand on Tarik’s shoulder. After a moment that hand took hold of Tarik’s left arm and slowly moved it behind the youth’s neck. That made Tarik’s left armpit fully exposed. Balroc stared at it and gently ran the fingertips of his right hand across the tender skin. Suddenly Balroc dug his fingernails into the sensitive flesh. Tarik’s eyelids flew open as Balroc’s sharp fingernails dug into him. He threw his head back and cried out, unable to absorb the crippling pain.

Tarik shrieked without regard for its loudness. His goal of remaining tough and silent, regardless of what Balroc did to him, no longer mattered. He imagined the fingernails ripping and tearing into the delicate skin. It felt to him like Balroc intended to permanently damage his body.

Yet eventually Balroc unhooked his fingers and glared into Tarik’s terrified eyes. Tarik turned his head away in shame, believing that he had failed the test and that he now had no hope of joining the honored circle of youths. He had revealed his fear of pain to everyone, and had also shown his weakness by shrieking like a child.

However, he soon found out that the trial had not ended. Balroc eased the youth down to the floor on his back. Unnoticed by Tarik, Balroc pulled a long, straight tree branch from under his waist cloth. One of the eight youths in the circle had fashioned it for Balroc earlier that day. The youth and a friend had ventured into the forest to find a particular branch that for the occasion. Each of them wore only a short animal skin around his waist, as did every male of their village during the summertime. They liked the coolness it provided. It also allowed them to show off their strong, tanned bodies to the others.

The youth finally found an ideal branch—perfectly straight, about the width of a thumb, yet long as well as strong. After breaking it off the tree, the youth leaned against a huge boulder and began to scrape and smooth the branch’s surface with a piece of stone. He rounded the branch’s ends and also gradually narrowed them.

Although the friend watched this with interest, he had his own special mission on that day. As the youth fashioned the branch, his friend put a hand on the youth’s thigh and slowly slid it up and under the animal skin. When he took hold of the phallus underneath, he found it already stiff. The youth smiled and kept working.

His friend’s fingers started to lightly rub the top of the youth’s tall, erect penis. Distracted by a growing pleasure within it, the youth paused his work. He rested his head on the friend’s shoulder and let the pleasure take him. The friend grinned as he felt the hard penis getting warmer, preparing to erupt. The youth held him closely. His friend had waited a long time for this moment. He had longed for this youth, thinking about him each day and dreaming about him during every night. As he held the pulsing pole he hoped this would mark a beginning for both of them—one that would continue.

That evening in the temple, the Leader sat on folded legs alongside the out-of-breath Tarik. Balroc held the branch vertically over Tarik’s body and rested one end of it on Tarik’s naval. Balroc started to slightly press down on the branch. The unusual, non-threatening pressure on his naval felt strangely arousing to Tarik. He spread his legs wider. His pleasure pole lifted itself off his abs for a moment in expectation.

But Balroc had more to do. He added his other hand to the branch so he could get better control of it and apply more pressure. Tarik saw the branch slowly work its way into him. Did Balroc intend to pin his body to the floor with it? Tarik yelled frightful screams as the branch reached into him like an animal’s claw. Tarik waved his arms wildly in all directions.

Balroc watched Tarik’s upright penis closely, but especially the youth’s large gonads. As Balroc continued to press the stick further into the naval, he saw the youth’s gonads seem to expand and tighten. Tarik’s screams grew louder. The pressure on his naval became so terrifying to him that he slammed the stone floor with his hands. When Balroc didn’t relent, Tarik lifted his arms, clenched his fists and cried out from the depths of his body. He didn’t want to admit defeat, but the youth could no longer stand the torture.

Balroc waited another moment, then pulled the branch away. Tarik instantly rolled onto his stomach to avoid a repeat attack. Balroc smiled and sat down on the youth’s back. Facing Tarik’s round buttocks, he caressed them with both hands and gave them a few friendly slaps. Then he slid a hand into Tarik’s crotch and around his big sack. Balroc’s fingers started to feel each testicle with several hard squeezes.

The leader had a great attraction to gonads and liked testing particularly large ones. To him, a youth’s testicles—the center of one’s masculinity—revealed a lot about him. So he didn’t rush getting acquainted with Tarik’s. He became obsessed with their huge size and solidness. His fingers locked several repeated squeezed onto them before pulling his hand out of Tarik’s crotch.

Balroc then spit a generous amount of saliva onto the middle finger of his right hand. He slowly placed it on the youth’s tight anal hole. Tarik groaned as he felt Balroc press the end of his finger against the tightly closed hole. But as Balroc massaged it, the hole slowly relaxed, allowing Balroc to nudge his fingertip inside.

Having entered Tarik, Balroc paused to give the youth time to adjust to having the finger inside him. The Leader waited, then gradually worked his finger in deeper. Tarik groaned louder. Balroc slowly retracted his finger, paused, and took the refashioned branch out of his waist cloth. He slowly pushed its end into Tarik. To the youth it seemed like the finger had gone back inside him again. Only this time he felt the long, smooth branch instead. He gasped as the feeling kept going deeper and deeper into him—so deep that the youth believed the Leader had seized the center of his body.

Balroc began to move the wooden piece back and forth at a very slow pace, gradually putting the youth into a pleasurable, dreamlike state. Balroc smiled. He felt like he had tamed a young tiger, or had become the new owner of something even more valuable—Tarik’s body.

Balroc kept the youth’s hole plugged for a long time. The circled youths watched closely. They began to stroke their phalluses, or a friend’s nearby, as they watched Balroc controlling the helpless candidate. They envied everything about Balroc—his snarling smile, his strength, his dark and flashing eyes, his fighting skills, and especially his ability to conquer any part of a man’s body. But they also envied Tarik—his confident smile, his smooth young body, his bravery. They all knew exactly how Tarik felt, because Balroc had initiated each of them in similar ways.

Balroc pulled the stick out of the youth’s hole a little at a time. After he had finally removed it, Tarik could still feel its presence inside him long afterward. Balroc reached a hand into Tarik’s crotch once more. This time the testicles felt bigger, harder—like round stones in the tight sack. Balroc kept holding them, as if unable to let go.

When he at last released the sack, Balroc rolled Tarik onto his back and picked up both legs. He began to spread Tarik’s legs apart to get a closer look at the youth’s spectacular set of gonads. The farther he separated the legs, the more pain Tarik felt. Although Balroc spread the legs very slowly, the youth’s eyes pleaded with him to stop.

Balroc liked seeing a male with his crotch wide open, exposing the most vulnerable part of his body to danger. To Balroc that showed a male’s bravery better than anything else. He put more muscle into his spread and grinned when he heard Tarik yell in agony. Balroc enjoyed that sound, he expected it, he even yearned for it. The screams of a defeated youth always greatly aroused him.

Balroc took a long look at Tarik’s crotch. Each of the youth’s colossal gonads stood up proudly, giving Balroc a feast for his eyes. He pressed down again on the thigh muscles, forcing them to bulge out further. Balroc kept wrenching the legs apart in small amounts until he finally had Tarik in the widest possible split. Tarik’s alarming screams echoed throughout the temple. Yet Balroc grinned as he watched the youth suffer.

The torturing of the youth’s crotch continued, making Tarik believe it would go on forever. When Balroc finally dropped the youth’s legs, Tarik gasped in relief. But Balroc still had more to do. He pulled Tarik up on his knees and held him there. He grasped Tarik’s arms and restrained them behind the youth.

Now Tarik faced the assembled youths, giving them a great view of his erect phallus and exceptional gonads. With his right hand, Balroc pulled one gonad forward, giving the eight youths a much better view of it. They watched excitedly as Balroc’s fingers appeared to study it. The fingers slowly and methodically inspected its sides, top and bottom, overlooking nothing. Balroc did the same with he other testicle.

Tarik didn’t find that type of exploring unusual, because Tarik and his male friends sometimes played with each other in that way. They liked to compare the size, hardness and weight of a friend’s testicles with their own. Males who took part in this activity often went on to develop close ties that didn’t easily dissolve.

Tarik’s testicles responded to Balroc’s inspections by significantly swelling and stiffening. That felt good to Tarik, but he suspected Balroc wanted to do more than simply play with them.

Because of Tarik’s his submissive reaction to the leg split, Tarik wanted more than ever to demonstrate his bravery to Balroc. But that bravery didn’t last long. Balroc tightened his grip on the gonads and suddenly jerked them down as far as they would go. That made Tarik’s tall phallus swing forward. It also made the youth utter shattering cries of panic. Balroc held the gonads down for a moment, savoring Tarik’s cries. Then he moved the testicles back up to their usual position again.

Before Tarik could recover, Balroc jerked the gonads down once more, severely stretching them as before and keeping them held down. Balroc did the radical pull-down again and again. Each time Tarik’s erect phallus swung forward. And each time the fierce downward plunges brought louder, more alarming cries from Tarik.

The eight youths in the circle all moved closer to Tarik, wondering how long it would take Balroc to demolish his handsome victim. Each of them had seen him defeat many bigger and stronger youths that way during informal fights. Balroc liked to squeeze and twist gonads until he would make even the toughest youth beg him to stop. They would gladly admit defeat rather than risk having him damage their greatest source of male pride and power.

As before, Tarik revealed his distress with childlike shrieks of terror. Balroc had restrained his arms, so the youth could do nothing more than scream. He believed that Balroc had the strength to tear off his large, globular ovals and might do that at any moment.

As Balroc continued his downward pulls on the gripped sack, Tarik repeated his frantic shrieks. They began to sound like testicle death-screams. Balroc stretched the gonads even lower than before.

Tarik didn’t think his gonads would ever recover from this attack. His eyes filled with tears of pain. He looked at the naked males sitting in the circle. He saw some of them stroking and squeezing their phalluses as they watched him suffer. How could he disappoint them?

Tarik tried to force himself to accept Balroc’s powerful testicle jolts. He began to cry out less loudly. In addition, he often groaned with his teeth clamped together. Balroc noticed that and added more muscle to his squeezing plunges. The youths in the circle smiled. They noticed Tarik’s phallus trying to push itself higher with each plunge. Tarik’s groaning voice started to reflect hints of pleasure within his engorged phallus. More gruesome gonad pulls made his phallus more agitated. The initiation appeared to have turned into a contest to see which would triumph—power or pleasure?

Despite the enormous power that Balroc inflicted on the testicles, Tarik courageously held out. But Balroc saw the tall phallus start to twitch. The Leader gave the stiff testicle sack one more brutal plunge and held it there.

That forced Tarik to yell in a lower voice—yet this time in total pleasure. His phallus reached forward and thrust out the youth’s essence as far as it could. Everyone present saw the long, breathtaking squirts take on the orange glow of the torches. Tarik kept yelling until Balroc had forced every drop out of the youth. Only then did Balroc allow the testicles back where they belonged.

The emotions of ecstasy, shock and fortitude all swept across Tarik’s face in one expression. He rocked his head back against Balroc’s chest in triumph. The Leader patted his chest. But then he moved his right hand to Tarik’s erect phallus and

gripped it. The youth yelled as Balroc’s thumb began to repeatedly press down on the top of the now ultrasensitive sex pole. Balroc could feel the rim of the youth’s pleasure tube stiffen into a rigid mass. As though tied to a torture stake, Tarik furiously struggled and yelled to break away. But Balroc’s muscles wouldn’t allow it. The thumb doggedly continued to terrorize the rim despite the youth’s wild contortions to free himself.

As Tarlik shrieked, the intolerable, stabbing pleasure at the top of his sex pole suddenly escalated beyond anything he could imagine. Balroc caused it by sliding several fingertips slowly around the whole upper portion the stiff phallus.

It didn’t take long to compel a narrow stream of the youth’s essence to emerge from his sex tube. Balroc grinned as he spread it around the pole. The slippery skin made the fingers’ work easier and heightened Tarik’s glut of pleasure to an impossible level. The youth had no ability to withstand it. Balroc watched the youth’s his body straining to the utmost and unable to fight back.

The Leader grinned and kept sliding his fingers across the taut, essence-coated phallus. He maintained the same slow pace, undeterred by the youth’s distress. Balroc treated Tarik’s body as his new toy. He had taken possession of it and would not give it back. Now nothing would stop him from doing anything to it that he desired—including tearing it apart. At least, that thought came into the mind of the screaming youth

Every fiber of Tarik’s body tensed, as if ready to release more of his essence to Balroc. But the Leader had already taken his essence twice and the youth had no more to give. Tarik opened his mouth to scream, but he could make no sound. His body seemed frozen. Balroc kept him like that forever—or so it seemed to the helpless youth.

Then a spectacular feeling swept through every muscle of his body. A powerful surge shot up his long phallus. Tarik had never experienced anything like it before. His phallus suddenly erupted in giant loads of liquid pleasure.

The circle of youths loved to watch Tarik lose control. Some of their upright sex rods lost control as well, spitting their youthful essences into the night air. They couldn’t take their eyes off of Tarik’s trapped and thrilled body, which continued to heave long after it had ceased firing the youth’s essence.

Tarik needed a rest and sank back against Balroc’s chest. The Leader let him stretch out on the stone floor, gazing up at the stars. Everyone watched the youth’s erection occasionally jump, remembering its ecstasy.

Balroc sat on his knees next to Tarik, but didn’t give the youth the rest he wanted. Instead, Balroc grabbed the youth’s testicles with one hand and his erect phallus with the other and squeezed into both. Tarik tied again to scream. But he only managed to make a weak cry that signaled either extreme pleasure or extreme pain, or both.

Balroc loved that sound and wanted more of it. He got to his feet and began to slowly pull his hands higher. The exhausted Tarik gasped in terror as he felt Balroc slowly lift his buttocks off the stone floor with his gonad sack and phallus. But Balroc didn’t stop there. He kept pulling the body upward. The youth planted his hands and feet on the floor to reduce the stress on his gonads, phallus and back.

Balroc smiled and continued his upward pull.

Tarik became more frightened when he realized that Balroc’s pull had finally lifted his hands and feet off the floor. He felt his radically bowed body hanging by his gonads and phallus.

Balroc shouted in triumph, but would not release the youth. Tarik flailed his arms in desperation. Those in the circle watched the youth’s torture in amazement. They all smiled when Barloc began squeezing the gonads, demanding more of the youth’s essence. Tarik had no choice and he knew it. He felt hopeful when his phallus readied itself for another explosion.

Balroc assisted by slowly bending the phallus backward, aiming it at the assembled circle. They didn’t have to wait long to see Tarik’s third outburst.

The youth’s essence flew toward them with a power no one expected, especially Tarik. The long squirts persisted as Tarik shouted in pleasure.

Balroc at last dropped Tarik to the floor on his back. He sat down on the youth’s chest, facing the excited phallus. Balroc took the stiff rod in his hand and proudly showed it to the circled observers. He nodded his head, indicating that Tarik would join the group as the ninth member.

Tarik had become so exhausted that he didn’t grasp his accomplishment right away. But Balroc invited each youth to acknowledge Tarik’s acceptance by coming forward and feeling the new member’s still erect phallus as Balroc held it.

Afterward the eight youths left the temple, leaving Balroc and Tarik alone. The initiation had ended, but perhaps a more meaningful event would follow.

First, Balroc pulled Tarik to his feet and hugged him.

Then the muscular figure began to kiss the youth. The kisses didn’t end. Balroc’s tongue forced Tarik’s mouth open and rubbed it against the youth’s tongue.

Tarik seemed to melt into Balroc’s arms, because he knew what this meant: Balroc wanted the two of them to live together as one. Tarik’s smile accepted that offer.

Balroc knew that Tarik had become too weak to follow him to his dwelling place, so he picked up the naked youth and carried him. He left the temple and had no trouble finding his way in the darkness—the stars seemed to illuminate the treacherous route for him. The narrow path rose higher and higher as it wound its way between ancient trees and massive boulders.

Balroc had no trouble carrying the youth as he climbed to an extraordinary height. When at last he reached his destination, Balroc gently placed Tarik on several large animal skins spread out near a cliff that overlooked the village far below. Balroc made a fire and sat down beside the youth. He put his arm around Tarik and smiled. Balroc held up his hand with the first two fingers spread apart, then he moved them together. Tarik understood the meaning. He wrapped a hand tightly around the two fingers and smiled. The two would stay together.

In the village below they began to see small fires appear—all celebrating the two males perched high above them. Balroc and Tarik responded by hugging and kissing and feeling every part of each other’s body. The long, warm night seemed to congratulate them with refreshing breezes.

Finally Balroc rose. He took Tarik’s hand and placed it on his cloth covering. He tugged on Tarik’s hand until the youth proceeded to pull on the cloth by himself. The cloth soon came apart and fell onto the animal skins. Tarik gasped as he saw Balroc standing before him naked—a sight few males in the village had ever seen.

In the sparkling light of the fire, Balroc’s muscular body looked doubly magnificent. It seemed to draw Tarik closer, even though that body had tortured him in so many ways. Tarik began to feel Barloc’s strong legs. The youth stared at the imposing, solid testicles that hung in front of him. Balroc took Tarik’s hand and placed it around them.

The youth’s fingers respectfully felt each huge gonad. Balroc grinned and squeezed Tarik’s hand, inviting him to apply more force. When Tarik did so, Balroc moved his hand to the youth’s head and ran his strong fingers through the youth’s thick hair.

As Tarik squeezed with increasing power, he felt the gonads becoming stiffer. Instead of recoiling from the pressure, Balroc patted the youth’s head. He clearly liked it and wanted more. Tarik squeezed the testicles harder. He saw the top of Balroc’s erect phallus began to leak some of its essence. Tarik couldn’t resist and took it in his mouth.

Balroc groaned loudly in pleasure. He gripped Tarik’s head with both hands and wouldn’t allow it to move. The youth felt the pole reach up inside his mouth. It quickly tightened. Balroc’s hands held Tarik’s head firmly. Then Balroc started squirting his essence into the exhausted youth. It quickly flooded Tarik’s mouth. The youth swallowed the expanding deluge as fast as he could. Nevertheless, some of the essence drained from the side of his closed mouth as Balroc pumped it into him.

Tarik felt exhilarated after the erect pole stopped squirting. But Balroc didn’t disengage. He spread his legs widely and kept holding the youth’s head. Almost immediately Balroc’s excited phallus started to pump more of his essence into Tarik. The youth tried harder to prevent any of it from leaking out of his mouth—as if in training to do so. This time Tarik succeeded.

Balroc grabbed the youth around the waist. He hugged and kissed Tarik almost brutally. Simultaneously Tarik’s hands grasped Balroc’s buttocks. They felt like hardened muscle, difficult for his fingers to penetrate. But his fingers eventually accomplished that, digging into the buttock muscle like claws.

Balroc loved it and groaned louder. He then gripped Tarik’s buttocks with both hands and pulled them apart. He slowly slid a finger into the hole and massaged it until a relaxing pleasure swept over the youth. Balroc placed him chest-down on the soft animal skins and gently lowered himself onto Tarik’s back. Balroc wrapped his arms around the youth and kissed him on the neck.

Tarik could feel Balroc’s big phallus slowly squeezing between his buttocks. He gasped as it entered the hole. Balroc continued to kiss him as he unhurriedly pushed the phallus forward. Tarik felt it slowly sliding into his body—conquering it with Tarik’s approval. When Balroc finally had his long erection completely within the youth, he gave him some time to get accustomed to the feeling. Then he slowly retracted his warm muscle and carefully pushed it in again. The youth sighed as Balroc repeated the motion many times, always moving it at a very slow pace.

When Balroc began to increase the pace, both males groaned from the pleasure that it built within them. Balroc licked the youth’s neck. Tarik groaned louder as he felt the phallus starting to swell inside him. The pleasure-muscle became warmer and soon neither male could delay its desire any longer.

Balroc abruptly rammed his phallus into the youth and held it there as the pleasure-muscle erupted. Tarik could feel it shooting the virile essence far inside his body. Balroc and Tarik yelped in an ecstasy known only to males who had found each other.

Balroc continued to hug and kiss the youth for long afterward. Both drifted into sleep as the fire died away. But their companionship never died. It became stronger, wherever they went and whatever they did. Tarik soon changed his name to Balrik and the two became known in the village as Roc and Ric.

In the weeks and months that followed, the two partners had fun hunting and fishing together every day, always naked. When the opportunity arose, Ric would surprise Roc by grabbing the muscleboy’s tempting gonad sack from behind. He never grew tired of holding and squeezing it. But in their longer fights, Roc would dominate. He loved making his handsome partner yell in pain, and the youth never tired of it.

After every day’s adventure, Roc and Rik would settle down in their high dwelling—like two eagles overseeing their world. They held each other as they watched night approach. The brilliant stars always smiled down upon them.