The Gryphon's Captivity

1. DAY 0: HONOR AMONG SLAVES

Quess awoke as the wagon clattered over another crossing, and stretched as far as his shackles would allow.  The straw was poking through his feathers again. He twitched his hide irritably for a few seconds, then shifted position -- only to find more straw on the other side. He sat up and scratched at the new itch with a hind leg, making his collar rattle. His companion in the slave wagon stirred briefly in his own corner, grumbling something inaudible, and resumed snoring gently. By mutual unspoken agreement, the gryphon had claimed the far end of the wagon for himself -- the elf had taken the corner by the air vent, and the remaining corner had been, of necessity, designated the lavatory. It was the second day of the ride, and the gryphon's "at least it's better than the slave market" optimism was beginning to dissipate.

It WAS better than the slave market: though he was shackled on a politely long chain by his collar to the side of the wagon, his talons had been unbound, and he had one wing free. The binding on the other was tight, but not painfully so, and the straw inside the wagon, scratchy though it was, was better by far than the sand of the auction pits. And he had a fair amount of space to stretch out -- though the wagon was not large, it contained only the gryphon himself and a single elf, where the holding pens had been packed tight with people of all sizes. Even so, Quess had never felt further from home. He'd left the mountains of Hyperborea to have adventures, and while he was certainly having one now, being sold into slavery to pay off his gambling debts had never been a part of his imaginined visions of the exotic southlands.

The gryphon continued scratching vainly at his shoulder for a moment. He couldn't quite reach with his foot, and the heavy collar prevented him from reaching the spot with his beak. He eyed the sleeping elf and leaned over into the neutral zone. "Excuse me," he said, "but could you do me the favor of scratching an itch for me? It's my left shoulder."

The elf turned over and stared at the gryphon before replying. "Forgive my discourtesy! I've never met a gryphon before. I didn't know you could speak, or I would have introduced myself sooner. I am Curran, of House Columbine, son of the dignified..."

The gryphon held up a talon -- he'd had some experience with elven lineage recitals. "No harm done," the gryphon replied. "I am called Quess. ...Itch?"

"Of course!" said the elf. He crawled over to the gryphon, and worked his fingers into the junction between feathers and fur at the gryphon's shoulder. "Is this the spot?"

"Oh, yes," said the gryphon, rousing up his mane in pleasure. "Thank you so much; that was driving me mad."

The gryphon settled back down into the straw, bracing himself against the corner. Somewhat to his surprise, Curran followed, nestling into the downy hollow under his unbound wing. "I hope you don't mind if I impose upon you," the elf said, "only elf-skin is thin and the straw is very scratchy." He plucked at his thin robe with slim fingers. "The clothes they gave me aren't good for much warmth, either."

"Not at all," the gryphon replied. They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the wagon squeak and jounce, before the elf spoke again.

"Where do you think we're going? When I saw I was sharing a wagon with a -- and excuse my ignorant assumption -- strange exotic animal, I was afraid we were being sold to a circus. But since you're clearly as sapient as I am, I fear we may be sent someplace even worse."

Quess considered this. "I hadn't given it much thought, to be honest," he said. "Wait -- at the auction, the one who bid for us both was an elf. Are you concerned about being badly treated by your own people?"

Curran gave a mirthless chuckle, and settled deeper into the gryphon's downy flank, shivering. "Being sold to another one of the elven Houses would be bad enough, but that elf wasn't wearing the insignia of any of them. That was a broker -- authorized to place bids for some patron." Idly, the elf began stroking the feathers of the gryphon's shoulder. The gryphon lidded his eyes in pleasure at the caress, and lost the thread of what the elf was saying for a moment. "...to one of the pleasure houses, or to a harem. That would be bad -- I've always heard that harem guards are eunuchs." The gryphon made a questioning sound in his throat, and the elf clarified: the gesture he made toward himself with his free hand left little to the imagination, and the gryphon flattened his hindquaters involuntarily.

"You DO that here?" the gryphon asked, incredulous. 

"It's something that could happen," said Curran. "And not the worst, at that. There are laws protecting slaves, but a lot goes on that isn't subject to oversight, and the harems of great lords are one of them." The elf sighed. "That we've been on the road so long worries me. I thought I knew what to expect, but leaving the city opens up all kinds of possibilities." He shivered again, and the gryphon let his unbound wing droop to enfold the elf in a near-hug.

"It'll be all right," Quess said. "The collection agent told me a bit about slavery here -- we can't be killed or disfigured against our will as long as we obey our orders and don't try to escape. We'll be fed and sheltered, and we'll have conditions we can meet to earn our freedom back."

Curran turned and gave him a slightly pitying look. "And you really don't see all the room for horrible things to happen to us within those conditions?"

The gryphon shrugged, rattling his chain again. "Well, yes. I suppose. But we'll deal with that if it happens, won't we? No sense borrowing trouble, or worrying about what can't be changed." 

Curran sighed, and stroked a hand over Quess's beak, curling his fingers under the lower mandible and scratching beneath the feathers. "I wish I had your calm," he said. "I just keep thinking about all the things I haven't gotten to do with my life yet, and how I might never be able to. Or the last time I ate chocolate, or made love... if that was the last time, was it worth it? That kind of thing."

Quess leaned into the elf's caressing hand. "You know," he said softly, "if you're disappointed with your last amorous encounter... it needn't be the LAST time." He flicked his tailtip at Curran's bare thigh, and rumbled a low, inviting growl.

Curran pushed away from the gryphon's flank, surprised. "Are you really suggesting we... hah. I knew an elf-maid once, a long time ago, who told me her deepest fantasy was to be seduced by a gryphon."

"We're a seductive people," Quess affirmed. "So. Seize the moment?"

Curran smiled. "In memory of time spent with her, and in reflection of opportunities missed, I am inclined to accept your offer."

Quess's chains took some getting around, but after a little experimentation, they were able to mound up the straw to make a little hollow that Quess could recline comfortably on his back within, and still be able to see -- and reach -- Curran. The elf knelt gracefully between the gryphon's spread thighs.

The gryphon's quiet breathing took on a thrumming sound in anticipation. Before leaving the eyries, he'd heard a lot about the amorous inclinations of the hairless, two-legged races of the south, much of it unflattering: "too fragile", "cold-blooded", "easily intimidated". Personal experience had decided him that elves, humans, and orakhi were an acquired taste as bed-partners, but a taste worth acquiring. Their cool mouths and soft hands were capable of all sorts of clever things, and Quess's tastes sometimes ran toward the subtle. Elves, of course, were the most subtle of all. 

He reached for the elf, and was rewarded by a faint flicker of eyelids. His beak parted slightly in a gryphonic smile -- Curran's self-control was nothing short of heroic, but even an elf couldn't help but react to the sight of those enormous, curved talons reaching for sensitive anatomy. Though capable of great delicacy, sensitivity and precision, Quess's huge beak and foretalons were murderous weapons: a human bedmate of his had once compared making love to a gryphon to being lovingly caressed with a battle-ax. "It might feel interesting, and the danger's part of the pleasure -- but it's STILL A BATTLE-AX," she'd told him. But she'd smiled when she said it.

The jostling motion of the wagon was enough to discourage Quess from trying anything really clever with his claws. His questing talons reached past Curran's slender neck, just barely grazed through his hair, and hooked into the collar of his robe. Quesse pulled his hand back, giving Curran the option to shrug off the robe, or to be dragged forward and off balance. The elf chose the graceful option, and let the robe slide over his head and arms. 

The elf was beautiful, as elves mostly are: lean, fine-muscled and pale, his skin unblemished by tan lines, pigment spots, or scars. He bore the tattoo of a columbine flower on his right upper arm -- a clan mark. Another, perhaps personal, tattoo, adorned his hip, but it was nonrepresentational, to the gryphon's eyes, just a series of bold angular lines, tracing a path from the point of his hipbone to the tuft of pale hair on his pubic bone. And below that, the gryphon flicked his tail in pleasure to see that Curran's cock was already stirring to arousal. Quess leaned back into his makeshift nest, unmindful of the poking straw-ends now as the elf leaned forward and combed his fingers through the dense, soft fur of the gryphon's inner thighs.

Curran ran his hands over the gryphon's sheath and scrotum. Gryphons apparently had more in common with horses than with lions in those particular details of their physiognomy, and Curran could just about heft one of Quess's balls in each hand. He did so, marvelling at the softness of the skin and fur, and gathered it in his hands, stretching the skin tight over the gryphon's testicles. Quess moaned, suddenly feeling every jerk and sway of the wagon as a fiery line from his testicles to the pit of his belly. "I'm so sorry..." Curran begin, but broke off his apology at the sight of the gryphon's pointed cock-tip beginning to unsheathe. "Oh, you LIKED that, did you?" He found his grip again, and this time, gently pulled Quess's balls away from his body, stretching the soft skin and making the gryphon gasp.

The wagon rattled over a crossing, and the gryphon howled in pain -- but in the span of three heartbeats, his cock was fully erect, flushed red and nearly as long as Curran's forearm, if not as thick. Curran grasped the tip of the gryphon's penis, and swept the clear fluid there back over the shaft in a long, practiced stroke, then back to the tip again. Quess trilled softly and moaned, well past words, and the elf set up a rhythm that made him gasp: a long smooth stroke with a twist at the end, which pulled his cock in one direction and his balls in the other. It was a flood of sensation, and the gryphon panted in pleasure.

The elf watched the gryphon intently, the huge predatory creature at his mercy, and made adjustments to the speed and contact of his stroking to maximize Quess's reaction. He'd never tried this on anyone so big, but the technique was sound, and certainly seemed to be working -- Curran had only started to wonder what gryphon jism would taste like, when he felt the gryphon's scrotum tighten and the base of his tail began to pump. The elf had enough presence of mind to tip his chin back and close his eyes before Quess, with a rapturous raptor scream, demonstrated another anatomical similarity between gryphons and horses. The first pulse of fiery come splashed the wagon roof and rained down on himself and on Curran; the rest flooded over his belly, chest and thighs in a faintly ammonia-scented fluid gush.

The elf didn't need to look down to know that he was achingly hard. He swept a hand over the slippery mess on the gryphon's belly and sheath, and anointed himself. "May I...?" the elf whispered, and Quess felt something press against his anus. He arched his neck and looked down his beak to see the head of Curran's cock, skin flushed a duskier shade than the rest of the elf's body, pushing firmly under his tail.

Quess nodded and arched his spine, lifting his hips to give the elf a better angle. Curran wrapped his arms around one leonine hind leg and slowly thrust forward. The gryphon's own fluids provided enough lubrication for the elf's firm erection to sink gently inside him, with almost no resistance. Curran, for his part, gasped at the gryphon's body heat, and at the impression of powerfully wringing muscles allowing him to slip past. Quess's own cock, which hadn't quite retreated into his sheath, throbbed again, powerfully, at the elf's intimate intrusion. "Yes," the gryphon growled, "do it harrrrrrd."

The elf obeyed. There were a few moments of frustrating not-quite-right before they found a rhythm of thrust and counterthrust that suited them both. Curran clenched his teeth and pounded the gryphon's ass as hard as he could, harder than he'd dare with another elf, harder than he'd ever fucked anything or anyone before. The gryphon's clenching heat would make short work of him, he realized. The elf gave a moment's thought to pulling out and spilling himself on the straw, but Quess's powerful hindquarters wrapped around him, clutching him close, and by then it was too late to do anything but come.

Quess opened his eyes again to see Curran thrust into him one deep, final time, quivering like a plucked bowstring, and then felt the strangely slippery twitch and pulse of the elf's cock within him. He thrummed, a deep, vibrating purr, and the elf collapsed onto the gryphon's belly, heedless of the mess. He whispered something in his own language, then looked up. Quess was suddenly aware of silence outside.

"Has the wagon stopped?" Curran whispered, just as a shaft of light pierced the steamy gloom -- the light of someone opening the cargo door.

Unforgiving sunlight splashed over the sweaty, sticky lovers, the elf still balls-deep in the gryphon's ass, although his erection was shriveling rapidly. Covered in sweat and more intimate fluids, rolled in dirt and straw and reeking of sex, Quess had no opportunity to enjoy the afterglow. 

Peering into the wagon bed, the elf broker and his two assistant handlers stared at the pair with obvious distaste. "Oh, LOVELY," said the slave broker, in an exasperated tone. "Get these cleaned up; I'll tell the buyer we're here."