Sorrow's Fall

by Helen Allan

  At least, she mused, she was comfortable now, wearing just knickers and a T-shirt that she had retrieved from her Earth pack – her gear having been returned to her by the captain months prior.

  The knock on her door took her by surprise, but forgetting her state of dress; she opened it immediately.

  “You were not asleep?” he frowned.

  “No.”

  “Do you want to go for a walk in the garden?”

  “At this time of night?”

  “I feel like I need some air,” he laughed, raising his hands in supplication, “I thought you might too.”

  “I need air,” she sighed, smiling, “and I need to get some energy out. I sat all night and watched your mating dances.”

  “Ah, so you were told of our rituals,” he laughed, holding out his hand to her.

  “Did you, uh, smell anyone you liked?” she asked, taking his hand without question, but making no move to leave the room.

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes intense.

  Sorrow couldn’t help herself; she took a deep breath and pulled him into the room, pressing herself to him and kissing him deeply.

  His response took her by surprise as he pulled her tighter to him and explored her mouth. Her fingers left his shoulders, as she ran her hands up the side of his smooth neck, gripping the large spikes that ran in a central line down his skull and opening her mouth to his probing tongue. As the kiss deepened and she bent into him, feeling the long, hard length of his body against hers, she moaned, and he pulled back.

  “This is wrong.”

  “So wrong,” she breathed.

  He laughed and kissed her again, softly, sweetly, but sweet was not what she wanted, her body afire with need for him.

  “Micah,” she tore her lips from his and whispered into his ear, “I want you.”

  “Want me?” he smirked, his hands running up her back, underneath her shirt and feeling the soft skin along her spine. “So smooth,” he murmured, “I couldn’t have imagined skin feeling this way.”

  “Yes, I know, yours feels amazing too, I want to, uh, sleep with you.”

  “I thought we just ascertained neither of us was sleepy.”

  “No, I mean,” she groped for the words she was looking for, “I want to, I suppose, mate with you.”

  “Oh.”

  He withdrew his hands from underneath her shirt and took a step back, shaking his head.

  “That is not something, not something I think you will be able to do,” he frowned, stepping back through the open door hastily.

  “But,” Sorrow reached for him, “surely we can’t have that many differences, physically I mean,” she cast a meaningful look at his bulging pants.

  He took a deep breath and put his hands on his hips, looking at her sternly.

  “You don’t know what you ask.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “I…”

  Sorrow frowned as he turned and strode away, his sentence left hanging.

  “What the?” she whispered, slamming the door and turning to throw herself onto the vast bed, “mother-fucking fuck?”

  Sorrow read through the library in astonishment. The only sounds, apart from the ticking of the clock on the wall, her occasional gasp at a new revelation and the flicking of pages as she poured over Nãga medical textbooks, stunned.

  She had been reading since first light when she had heard a tap on her door and opened it, hoping to see Micah. Instead, she found a note pinned to the panels with a hand-drawn mud map showing the way through the vast corridors of the castle to the library, and a list of numbers directing her to a shelf full of reference books. She had expected him to be there, but he was not, and it was now late afternoon.

  As she stood now, absorbed in her study, she didn’t hear the door open and was unaware she was being watched until she heard a throat clear.

  Looking up, she saw Micah leaning against the door jamb, watching her, his eyes full of laughter.

  “What has you so shocked, Earth doctor?” he chuckled moving into the room, “no, wait,” he held up his hand to stall her answer, “let me guess. You found what you were seeking, and it was not what you expected.”

  Sorrow put the book down and walked towards where he now leant on the desk.

  “I’m so sorry, Micah. I had no idea what I was asking you when I suggested we sleep together.”

  “How could you?” he said, his voice deep, but his eyes still full of humour as he pulled her to him and ran his nose and lips up the side of her cheek and back down to her lips, kissing her gently.

  She shivered as his tail ran up the back of her leg, stroking her from her calf muscle to the top of her thigh, and back again.

  “I have so many questions still,” she shook her head, looking up at him, one hand resting on his broad chest, appreciating the smooth silkiness of his scales.

  “Fire away, metaphorically speaking, alien creature.”

  “I don’t quite understand,” she ran her hand down his chest, stopping just above his pubic bone and tucking her fingers into the top of his pants, teasingly, “you don’t have sex, in the way that humans do, but you do have sex – although not for pleasure.”

  “We don’t,” he chuckled, “we only enter a female to procreate. We can choose to absorb the DNA of a mate, and we fertilise our own eggs this way. The eggs are transferred to the woman’s body at three months, for maturation and ultimately birth, another three months later.”

  “Eggs plural?”

  “We usually have six.”

  “Huh,” she chewed her lip as she thought this through. The babies, she knew, were tiny when born, no larger than a rat, and yet fully formed little individuals capable of far more than human babies were at birth.”

  “When you say, transferred….?” she left the word hanging.

  “We have an ovipositor,” he smiled gently, and the eggs are deposited internally.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No,” he laughed, “from what I hear, it is deeply pleasurable for both parties.”

  “And to gather the DNA?”

  “We lick our mates, all over, regularly. We kiss – as you humans do, we sleep together, our bodies entwined, and we stay together day in and day out for three months. It is called The Bonding.

  “Huh,” Sorrow smiled, leaning in and kissing him deeply, and pulling away reluctantly, “it sounds similar to our honeymoon on Earth. The man and woman, after marriage, spend some time together away from friends and family, getting to know one another physically. Of course, you and I have already been together for months now…”

  “Yes,” he nuzzled her neck, his long tongue snaking out and licking from her collarbone to her earlobe, “but until now our bodies have not touched; although I confess, I have wanted to feel your skin for some time.”

  “And I yours,” she laughed.

  He kissed her again, gently.

  “Can I see it?” she whispered against his mouth, her hand reaching down to touch his bulging crotch.

  “No,” he laughed, pulling away and shaking his head, “you may not.”

  “It is purely, you know, for scientific purposes. I mean, I am a doctor,” she laughed gently at his amused expression.

  “My organ is not for viewing,” he snorted, still laughing, “it is not a thing to be studied.”

  “Kissed?” Sorrow smirked.

  “Woman, your mind is strange and temptingly dirty,” he stepped back and moved to leave the room.

  “Wait,” Sorrow held out her hand, resting it on his hard bicep, “when will you return?”

  “Tonight,” he smiled, “you said you would read to me from your book of Earth poems – but I think instead I would like you to tell me what this Earth sex is all about. Purely for scientific purposes, you understand.”

  Sorrow smiled.

  “It is a date. But Micah,” she said, her voice suddenly serious. “I think after I have told you all about our kind, knowing what I know about yours, you will come to agree
that I can’t stay here. I can’t,” she paused, “I can’t stay feeling the way I do, the way I’m starting to feel about you.”

  “Yes,” he turned for the door, his expression now serious, “I know exactly how you feel, Sorrow.”

  She watched him leave, her face puzzled.

  ‘Does he know how I feel because all women feel this way about him? Or does he know how I feel because he feels it too?’

  Shaking her head, she turned back to the wall of books and headed to the resource book section marked ‘The Bonding.’

  11

  “I know what I want, but I know I can’t have it,” she sighed, her eyes rolling and breath hitching as his long tongue licked up the length of her stomach, from her bellybutton to her breasts, before encircling her nipple.

  He massaged one breast as he sucked the other, his spare hand snaking up to cover her mouth and prevent more words that neither of them wanted to hear from being uttered.

  Pausing to look into her eyes, he removed his hand and kissed her lips before moving his mouth to her ear.

  “You can have it; you can have everything, all, all of me. Just stay, Sorrow.”

  “Micah, there is only a week, perhaps less before the portals open. I have to go back; I have to save those I can save.”

  “They are war-like creatures, you though, you are made for love – we have bonded, can’t you feel it?”

  Sorrow sighed and arched her back as he moved his head down, past her belly button and between her legs. But her mind, although suffused in pleasure, was a million miles away, above ground, imagining the children and babies being burnt to death in a nuclear explosion that only she had the power to prevent.

  “Micah,” she gripped his head spines and pulled him back up so that she could look into his eyes, “I have to save the children. They are innocent in all this and have had such horrible lives – I have to do something.”

  He sighed and looked at her with soft, loving eyes and Sorrow’s resolve began once more to melt.

  In the months they had been back at the barracks they had rarely been apart. They had left his parents’ castle the day after their discussion in the library, much to the disappointment of the debutantes who would still attend several more weeks of dances and garden parties in the hope of securing a mate.

  For Sorrow, being with him was as natural as breathing.

  The evening he came to her room, ostensibly to hear about Earth mating and sex rituals they had not been able to keep their hands off each other – very little talk had occurred that night. Neither had again raised the issue of their feelings or the need to leave the castle; they had simply done it. When he knocked on her door the following morning, she was already packed and waiting.

  No firm commitment was made between them in any way on the journey back to the country, but he did not ask, and she did not object when they reached the barracks, and he put her bags in his room and began to undress her.

  The fact that the captain, a prince, was involved with a creature from another planet had gradually leaked from the barracks to the real world. News organisations had sought and been denied interviews; his parents had communicated their objections and received no reply. But luckily for Sorrow, she was very popular with the cadets and firm friends with most of the other trainers, so life at the barracks was supportive and kind – and Sorrow knew that part of this was because all understood that she was not planning on staying.

  Seeing her resolve now, Micah rose and poured himself a glass of water, his back to her.

  “And what of our babies, Sorrow?” he asked quietly.

  She laughed and sat up, pulling on her clothes, but frowned when she looked up to see he was still staring at the wall, his shoulders strangely stiff, his back to her.

  “Micah?”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Are you saying?” she swallowed hard, “are you saying that somehow, someway, my human DNA has fertilised your Nãga eggs?”

  “If that were the case,” he said quietly, his voice level and devoid of all emotion, “would you stay and give birth to my children? Would you carry my babies?”

  Sorrow gasped and sat back down heavily on the bed, covering her face with both hands as silent sobs racked her body.

  Micah, hearing her muffled distress, strode back to the bed and knelt before her.

  “Is it so terrible?” he asked, his voice full of pain, “would it be so terrible to stay with me, Sorrow, to marry me and birth my children?”

  “No,” Sorrow sobbed, her voice barely coming out as a squeak.

  He gripped her hands and pulled them from her face as she turned aside, shamed by the power of her emotion, embarrassed for him to see how deeply she was affected by his news.

  “Tell me, please,” he groaned, “why you despair? Is it because I am so different from you? Could you never love one such as I? Because I love you, Sorrow, more than anything in this world, in any world.”

  Turning back to him she threw her arms around his neck and allowed her sobs free reign as she tried to get out her words, to tell him her thoughts, her voice choked with emotion, her tears running down his neck and torso.

  “Micah,” she started, pausing to hiccup a few more sobs, “I love you too.”

  He breathed out deeply, holding her as she began a new round of sobbing.

  “Then why?” he murmured, shaking his head, “why this reaction? Please, Sorrow, you’re killing me, speak your thoughts.”

  As her tears wound down, just a few hiccups jolting her frame like small electric shocks, she haltingly tried to voice her feelings.

  “I, I once lost a baby. I miscarried after a terrible shock; a terrible thing happened. And I never thought I would be able to have another child because I have been transported back and forth in time using the gods’ scarab time transmuters, the ones I told you about. To hear,” she began to cry quietly again, “to hear that you have conceived my children, six eggs – the happiness I feel is too great to bear, too great.”

  She began crying again in earnest as he kissed the tears from her cheeks and pulled her back to his shoulder.

  “You have made me the happiest male on the planet,” he said gently, “our babies will be unusual, but beautiful, with you as a mother, how could they not be so?”

  “Micah, Micah,” she groaned, gripping him around the waist, pulling herself to him as though she would never let him go, while her mind did exactly the opposite, pushing him away, “it changes nothing, can’t you see, I still need to go above, I still need to save those I can.”

  “Then I shall come with you,” he said, his voice firm, authoritative, “but Sorrow, when we have succeeded at saving those you insist upon giving salvation to, then you will return, you will marry me, and accept my eggs into your body.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” she laughed, raising her head and kissing his face, light feathery, quick kisses all over, before he gripped her face and looked deeply into her eyes, forcing her to do the same.

  “Do you promise me this, Earth woman?”

  “I do.”

  12

  “Are you sure you feel alright?” Sorrow asked again, as they looked to the distance where the mountain range indicated the refuge of the resistance, at least another two hours’ walk away across the hot desert sands.

  “Will you stop asking that?” Micah laughed, “I carry eggs, yes. They are fertile, yes, but I have at least a week before I must impregnate you, “in the meantime, it feels as if I have eaten a rather large meal, that is my only discomfort.”

  “I know,” Sorrow shook her head, “but I don’t want you to overheat my babies.”

  “Your babies,” he smiled and leaned across to kiss her on the top of the head, “you have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that.”

  “And you have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say you plan to impregnate me,” she laughed, “I’ve wanted to experience that ovipositor ever since the first time I saw it bulging in your pants.”


  “After all the pleasure I have given you with my tongue, my hands,” he shook his head, “what kind of a creature are you?”

  “The kind that you enjoy pleasuring, and, let’s not forget the pleasure I have given you, oh great captain, with my tongue, my hands…”

  “Yes, you are truly an imaginative little monster,” he sighed, shaking his head, “and if my ovipositor gives either of us even a quotient of the pleasure we have already enjoyed, I have no hope of ever leaving the bedroom again.

  “Oh, I’m sure it will,” Sorrow smirked, “and if it does, you may not have to give up your army career entirely, because you will have a squadron of your own children to train.”

  “What have I done?” he fake moaned, as Sorrow giggled

  Their laughter was interrupted by the site of a brown blur on the horizon, heading towards them.

  Micah raised his binoculars and shrugged before handing them to Sorrow.

  “It’s Ib and one other findaile, I’m sure of it,” Sorrow said, after studying the shapes for some time, “they must be coming to get us.”

  “And we will ride these creatures?” Micah asked, taking Sorrow’s word for it that the approaching findaile were friendly and sheathing his weapons.

  “Well, it beats the hell out of walking the rest of the day.”

  “Agreed,” he nodded, although still looking uncertain.

  “And if it is not them,” Sorrow shrugged, “and they look like they might attack, we will shoot them.”

  “Agreed,” he shrugged.

  Taking her hand, they continued walking towards the findaile.

  “And they didn’t mind you leaving? A prince? A captain?” Judgment asked again, frowning hard at Micah where he sat close by Sorrow, their thighs pressed firmly together, his arm thrown casually around her shoulders.

  “I simply told them we were going to gather Sorrow’s things because she plans to return with me after the battle,” he said, spacing his words out quietly and carefully in light of the obvious aggression Judgment was feeling towards him, and his tenuous grasp on their language.