The world’s a tremendous place for any one person to explore – no matter how tall, no matter how small.
It was a pretty common saying back in Brookside, when I was growing up. Most of my friends considered it wise words of warning; all a justification to stay comfy in their childhood home until they had children and grandchildren of their own to call it home. For others, it inspired stories. Holed up in their burrows, they dreamed endlessly of what could await beyond the crops and livestock of our farmlands, what adventures they could experience if they ever chose to leave those homesteads.
There weren’t a lot of us willing to even take those first steps on the dirt paths out of town.
I won’t act as if it’s an easy life away from family and friends. Travelling the vast landscapes that make up our world has taken its fair share from me, but even on the hardest of days, I’ve always kept my chin up and reminded myself: I’ve gained more than I’ve lost.
Even still, I’ve spoken ill of those who inspired my wanderlust in the first place – the writers and storytellers of Brookside. While many were more unwilling than incapable to make such a journey themselves, I can’t deny their pondering and romanticizing gave me courage to see what the world truly held in store. In that, they’ve inspired me further: if they can’t learn for themselves what the outside world has in store, perhaps I could jot down even a few scrawled notes and loose thoughts to bring back home one day. Perhaps I can be their eyes and ears, to inspire newer – slightly more accurate – stories for the next batch of intrepid vagabonds. With any luck, they’ll learn much from my hard-earned victories and my scathing setbacks.
I’ll write that version of the book later, though; this version’s for the adults!
Perhaps the most pressing matter to address regarding the outside world is... our frustrating reputation. Rarely do we get visitors in a small town like Brookside, and even among those are chiefly other halflings much like us, from the next town over or so. Many people I grew up with were frustrated and confused with our name in the common tongue. What kind of demeaning term is that, after all? How could we possibly be half that of anything else?
So to put it in perspective, a quick word on myself: I’m one of the taller folk from back home. A fair bit over 5 chickens tall. Not a whole head taller than anyone, if I recall, but no one would consider me short back home.
I was consistently – CONSISTENTLY – the shortest member of any travelling party I joined.
And always by a good margin, too. Given the coarse difference in heights, I’d have to assume the name was given to us just by comparing to the average tallmin. I’m rarely much higher than crotch-height around them – a fact many party members looked to exploit in one way or another. In most cases, I can hardly blame them; I personally enjoy playing around with men taller than me, and I’ve definitely had the lion’s share of those. Some of them, though... Whether they forget, or wilfully ignore the fact, they don’t exactly acknowledge me as an adult all the time. It’s led to a fair share of awkward discussions on the matter.
I’ve threatened at least one particularly disgusting offender that I’d turn him into a pincushion if he didn’t watch how he talked to me.
Outside of such encounters, though, I’ve done my best to keep an open mind. Our reputation is likely built on limited contact with other cultures; what little they know of us – and what little we know of them – comes from how scarcely our people can be found in the wider world. I’ve done what I could to coax stories from my companions on what they know of us. Not everything they know of us is incorrect, so much as exaggerated.
For example: our Leaf. Tales of Halfling Leaf seem to be rampant through the realm, rumored by many to be devastatingly potent and debilitating. Smoking it leaves the consumer in a state of hallucinogenic stupor for a full day, incapable of convincing their body to move, and at the same time arousing them more than any aphrodisiac on the market. All of those effects lead some people to believe our people are perpetually inebriated slackjaws who’ve only survived because all we care to do is fuck until dawn.
Our Leaf’s good, but come on.
I’ve done quite a bit to dissuade those I’ve met of such notions. Demonstrating not only my level-headedness and awareness, but my passions beyond such botany has dispelled the worst notions of those around me – and I didn’t have to give up smoking to do it, either! It’s opened the gateway to tell more of our culture: our skill and dedication to advancing agriculture, including thoughtful crossbreeding of certain crops; our respect for the life teeming all around us; even a little bit about our impeccable interior design skills!
Now if only I could have those conversations while my party was sober...
The greatest difficulties I’ve found in connecting with other races came with dwarven companions, strangely. Dwarves are a hardy and stout people. The tallest I’ve encountered was a head taller than I am, but every single one was a mountain of tense muscle built upon bones of iron. And their beards – hells, their beards! Forests of dark, lengthy hairs billowing down as far as their bellies! Dwarven women grow out beards as well, just not as long as the men tend to go. And here I am just trying to make sure I have stubble...
I can hardly be shy about this: I think dwarves are fantastic to look at. It’s strange for me to find myself interested in the women too, but comparing to our own constructs of gender, they exude our idea of masculinity beyond any man I’ve met at home!
I can hardly be too surprised to find, though, that the sentiment doesn’t go both ways.
“Dwarves are made of the stone and iron of the mountains; gnomes and halflings are merely the soil and dirt of the soft lands.” One particularly difficult dwarf told me as such. It seems it’s an idea ingrained in their culture since days of old. There’s a stubborn air of superiority among them, and even the most well-meaning of dwarves have insisted on acting the mentor to me, even on basic tasks I’ve repeatedly shown to have more skill and efficiency than them...
Thankfully, that’s not just reserved for shorter races; they act like that with elves and tallmin pretty often too.
Even still, plenty of dwarves have a terrible habit of treating me like a child. I spent nearly a year in the same travelling party as one, and he wouldn’t stop babying me until maybe the last month or so. He was certainly kinder in his approach, but his treatment of me was still abrasive; if ever I showed the slightest sign of struggle, he pushed his way in to try and teach me how to operate the situation. Everything from pitching tents – which I did better than him every time – to skinning rabbits – which I had done a hundred times without taking half the meat off like he did – to sharpening arrows and restringing bows – I don’t mind that last one as much, but he did push my bow far enough to make a concerning cracking noise once...
Each time, he put such an effort to get up close to me, clasping his rough palm over my own hands, firmly guiding me along his mislaid path. Each time, his thick beard rested on my shoulders like a dark cloak. Each time, I tried to keep my arousal hidden away – not because I didn’t want him to know I was into him, but for the speech on how natural it is for “boys my age” to feel a certain way around father figures...
It took a lot of carefully worded conversations, not just to express how much older I was than he realized, but to realize my own desires with him. One night finally saw him showing me “a different way of relieving stress”. Naked in our tents, I was ecstatic to finally give myself to him, but... I don’t think I can recommend the experience after my own attempt. “Made of stone and iron” indeed... Every part of his body – his dick, most of all – felt so goddamn hard against me, it just felt uncomfortable to get my body to flex and relax on him! I could barely sit down for a few days after that night, and all the while, he couldn’t help but insist I call him “daddy” all the while anyway...
In spite of all that, though... If I run into him again, I might give him another ride...?
Ah yes, our closest brethren, apparently. “Gnomes and halflings are merely the soil and dirt of the soft lands”...
Though, the one gnome I was companion to was perhaps my fastest friend on my travels! I suppose it has to do with a similar set of cultural interests, as well as the outlook many other races tend to have on our peoples. We both came from smaller settlements made of a populace generally content with the smaller lives they could peacefully lead at home, while both of us were more interested in exploring more of the map. We both also experienced a lot of people confusing one of our races for the other’s, often in hushed tones.
I’m convinced they don’t think we have ears; not only are those the easiest way to tell gnomes and halflings apart, but they genuinely think we can’t hear them when they mutter that shit under their breaths.
Gnomes have a few other peculiarities in their culture compared to us: particularly apparent is their love of gadgetry. While dwarves have a history of working on tremendous and imposing weapons of war, operating them with huge cogs and wheels, gnomes keep their scope significantly smaller, working more on clocks to tell time, musical instruments that work off combinations of strings and hammers and levers, and even replacement limbs that need less magic from the user to operate! There’s plenty more devices that I’ve only heard excited ramblings about – in words and phrases that I question being in the common tongue – such as automatons meant to assist in multiple areas of gnomish life. I can only imagine all the innovation they could bring to our home, if I could convince the right gnome to travel back with me!
Work with such gadgetry takes immense dexterity and precision, if you can imagine, and I guess many gnomes grow up training their fingers to meet an impeccable standard. I say this, because their fingertips and palms might just be the most sensitive parts of their bodies.
It was probably the first time my gnome friend propositioned me, after we both had a few puffs of Leaf. He hadn’t smoked before, and the high of that first puff already got him curious. He pulled up my shirt himself, and the way his hands moved up my torso, I almost didn’t feel them at all! They grazed up my skin so gingerly, smooth as the river flowing on a sunny day. It makes me think gnomes might instead be made of sand, or something else soft and granular and delicate... Of course, I returned the favour, and helped him undress with each piece of clothing he took off me, and soon enough, he was rubbing his body against mine, cocks hard and frotting below us.
His hands stayed roaming over my body, coaxing over every hair on my body, measuring the curves meticulously and sensually. He had only started running his hands down the curve of my cheeks before groping hard at my glutes, and I felt him unload on my belly. I was a little shocked he came so soon, but clearly it didn’t deter him, as he kept running his hands all over me – almost never touching either of our dicks, for the record.
With such a delicate touch fiddling with my nipples though, I got my turn to fire off hands-free. It wouldn’t be the last time his magic hands would do their work on the two of us~!
Did you know tallmin refer to their race as “human”? You know, the same term used in the common tongue to refer to all beings accepted as people? And did you know that – probably relatedly – they view themselves as a sort of “default” compared to other races? As in: they consider themselves to be a middle ground in capabilities in all fields and potential to learn? As if the rest of us are incapable of learning fields outside the usual boundaries of our culture?
Just an interesting thing I learned about them!
In truth, I think that might be the largest misgiving I have with tallmin in general. Their cultural identity as an alleged average among the races leaves them a touch more open-minded. For me, that means for every tallmin I travel with, that’s one less person that’ll treat me like a child with oversized ears and stubble. I have yet to find a tallmin barkeep that’s rejected me a drink, and that’s more than I can say for even the dwarves and elves I’ve travelled with! They almost never bat an eye at me smoking outside my tent when we’re on the road, either – hell, they’re usually the first to ask if they can get a puff!
All of that means: it’s also quite easy for me to get in their pants.
I’ve actually managed to court a couple of different tallmin in much the same way. Both men were clearly frustrated with the day’s journey. I don’t remember exactly what we faced on each day, but I was outside my tent for a while taking a puff, so clearly I was just as tired. Already feeling a buzz in my head when they joined me, I was more than happy to tease them; play up just how powerful the Leaf was, just to see how they’d react. Apparently, “shrinking their brains” and “a risk of their erections never going down” was not a deterrent for either of them, which was good news for me!
The first of them, I was eager and overconfident. Why wouldn’t I be; he was willing to entertain the horny fantasy I sold him, and he had a rugged handsome rogue look to him that only got me harder. I was happy to play around a bit, taking a puff and kissing him as I gave a bit of an exhale into his face... But each cute tease I gave him earned a feisty response. He wouldn’t let me just flirt with him for long, because eventually, he was ready to tear down my pants.
He ripped down his own just as fast, and what I saw beneath was tremendous! I learned later that – even by tallmin standards – that man was well above average length. Even riding the high I was on, I couldn’t help getting a bit nervous over a cock almost twice as big as my head, knowing that was probably going inside me before the night ends.
I’m glad I remembered that much from the night, as it helped me understand why the rest of the night felt like such a blur. Whatever we did, the evidence was clearer in my body than my mind. My legs barely moved, and I couldn’t take seat for days afterwards, so it was fortunate he was willing to carry me along for some of the trip. I think he felt guilty, because I couldn’t so much as convince him to smoke with me again after that night.
We both learned our lessons from that night, I suppose. Even though the next tallmin was of a much more comfortable size, I didn’t let him get inside me the first time we smoked. Or the second time, either. I might’ve tied him up the third time, just so I could keep things at my pace...
I found myself stumbling onto a goblin keep once. I’m sure it sounds shocking when I say it aloud, but they aren’t particularly fond of trespassing.
Admittedly, though, tales of goblinkind’s barbarism and fatuity are pretty exaggerated. Many of their systems of governance, law, agriculture, so on and so forth... They still exist, and their judicial practices aren’t quite as unforgiving as one might think to outside races. When I was found and brought to their court, I was seen by their chief and a couple of their guards that had found me. They explained the charges – clearly enough, and in the common tongue, even – and the sentence they offered was quite lenient: about five days worth of community service to the keep, of which the means of serving the community was also quite lenient. Thinking back on it now, I wagered I could have offered my services in hunting game, and found them a good amount of food to stay their rounded bellies.
The problem being, I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time... What many people have heard is that goblins have a particular stench to them, one that most folks don’t enjoy entertaining for long. Perhaps because of their quick escape from that smell, they don’t tend to discover what lies beneath it. I’ve yet to find books documenting the matter, so I can only assume there’s some kind of pheromone goblins release over time that takes a moment before it really affects those around them.
And by the time I was asked how I’d be serving the keep, I was around those guards for quite a while... Them and their skimpy loincloths, barely concealing the meat beneath...
I had barely given my answer before one dropped trou – no doubt he was eagerly waiting – and stuffed his fat cock in my still-open mouth. The chief seemed to chastise him for it, but I hardly cared in the moment. Feeling him start to harden as I tasted the salt on his foreskin... I never felt so aroused from blowing someone before! I thought I might cum in my own trousers then and there, had the other one not pulled them down to get at my ass.
They were just the start of an exhausting but exhilarating week. I was given free rein to travel the keep, but every move I made was in pursuit of whichever goblin wanted to get his rocks off next. They kept my clothes and gear neatly folded up and in arm’s reach of my own tent, but I waddled through the camp nude the whole time, eager to bend over at a moment’s notice. They offered a generous share of food each meal, which I did naturally take – I may be stuffing my face with meat either way, but a guy can’t subsist off seed alone!
Perhaps the most shocking thing I found about goblins was the sheer size of their dicks. The tallest of them at the keep still wasn’t quite as tall as I was, but they all had shafts at least twice the size of mine – a lot of them were three or four times bigger! They honestly looked ridiculous, drooping down from beneath their tummies like a third leg. Were I not high on whatever aphrodisiac they give off, I probably wouldn’t have been half as eager to take those monsters. I wonder if goblin women are affected the same way?
By the end of the my sentence, they took some time to clean me up and have me back on the road, content with my services to their community. Once I was away for long enough, reality seemed to set in again, and I recognized I ended up whoring myself out to a whole drove of goblins...
I’m not as disgusted about it as I think I should be, though.
Skimming through the remaining pages, it seems there's still more chapters of similar exploits ahead...