The Siren Song

An alien story of forbidden love.

It wasn’t that he didn’t love her. He couldn’t love her. The pain of her absence was as real to him as the scar running down his neck and across his shoulder. His existence without her seemed empty. Purposeless. But the pain of her presence, the painful intimacy they shared, the embrace that gave him the scar, was far worse. His anguish at his predicament was overwhelming.

Damn this corpus! How weak is this flesh that its spirit sought out the one being in the entire universe whose love was forbidden to him? His torment at the thought of the inevitable union that will transform him into something other was absolute. Until that time, he could only suffer in solitude. In space there is no sound. In his mind, the universe screamed with the echoes of his pain.

She didn’t think. Not in the sense that a human or other sentient might. She didn’t know either. Nor did she doubt or question. She existed as a symbiont, dependent on the mind and soul of another sentience. She was a NuVahn. Her dark leathery skin, covering a bipedal frame was unique among her kind. She was an aberration born of a union between her clutch mother and a species known to them only as Uman. Her siblings were properly limbless and lung less, granting them the freedom of the ether among the stars. She was bound by her biology to the planet’s surface.

Although she was bound her song was free. She sang to the heavens of her need. She sang of the emptiness she felt but most of all she sang for him. In time her song had reached out and found him. So long had she sought out her host and lover whom she would inevitably join, transcending together to become Nirgal. The United One.

Now, he was here and she had nearly killed him, scarring his flesh in her passion and haste. Her initial connection to him was far stronger than any song her kind had sung before. Responding to her song had changed him in a way that made her fear for their joining. She knew he loved her in the manner of his species. He had explained to her the complexity of the Uman heart and the connection to its mind. He had shared with her, or she took from him an understanding of his Uman soul; a soul that was tormented by pain.

She understood that love to the Uman was the same as the song of bonding for her. It wasn’t that she didn’t desire the bond of transcendence with him. She couldn’t transcend with him. For, if they embraced, gave into their need for each other, the Nirgal they became would kill them.

Author's Note

This is a piece I presented on myouterspace.com in answer to the question, "What form might a true interspecies love story involving at least one non-humanoid take?"

Reviews

[writernubbin]

"It wasn’t that he didn’t love her. He couldn’t love her." ...and...
"It wasn’t that she didn’t desire the bond of transcendence with him. She couldn’t transcend with him."

Letting go because of love...I think it's a beautiful piece. I love the imagery, and I felt their pain in not being able to unite without hurting the other.

You painted a picture with words. Every word had a purpose, and led me where you wanted me to go. I want to read more.

[Sean Allen]

It sure puts a new light on the mixed race relationship discussion. This caught my eye because of the title and then I remembered that I had written a poem called 'Aglow' about the Siren's song a while back when I met someone that I could not love!