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I have borne witness to many natural beauties in my time, but none of them have done anything more than arouse my instinct to conquer. I was made to see beauty and to claim it, ravage it until there is nothing left. This female arouses an entirely different instinct in tandem with the need to conquer: the desire to protect.
Strange. Scythkin possess. We rarely need to protect anything. It is not the way we work. We conquer, use, and move on.
Another thought is worming its way into my mind, slowly, because I am distracted by the woman’s beauty, and charmed by her song.
This is Earth.
I can feel it in my bones, though I do not understand how it could be here. There is nothing logical to suggest that Earth could exist here and now, given that I was just in battle around the empty space where it once was. But everything about this place speaks to the cradle of human life, and none so much as this singing girl, who sways gently with the breeze, closing her eyes on occasion with an ecstatic expression. She is sweet, and innocent, and graceful, and she is full of natural beauty. I feel a pang inside my chest, a region of my body which is very much not given to pangs, when I realize that she, and everything else in this place, are inevitably doomed to terrible tragedy. We have seen the end of Earth, but now, caught in the dewy glow of a world made fresh in the morning light I can feel the hand of eternity on my shoulder, as if this woman has always stood in the field and sung her song, her fingers drifting through the soft heads of grain planted in uneven rows.
Nothing in my biology allows me to appreciate natural beauty with anything more than the desire of a predator spotting prey. Our kind is made to seek out nutrient rich planets and destroy them. But our kind is also made to travel in clutches. And I am alone. There is no such thing as a lone scythkin. Even when we separate from the clutch, we are in constant contact, but since I was thrown from my ship and sucked into a temporal void created by the reappearance of this planet I have felt the full force of my unnatural solitude.
Earth should not be here.
I should not be here.
But she is here, and that makes everything perfect. It turns all wrongs into rights. It makes the fact that I was dragged out of my life, through an unseen barrier in space, thrust into what feels like a past which does not belong to me, perhaps marooned on a temporal island where I am sure to never see those who share my blood or brood ever again, almost seem like a sacrifice worth having made.
I breathe this fresh air in, and I watch this woman and I wonder what I did to deserve this beauty. Was I good? Does the universe reward the most brutal along with the most virtuous? I make a little snorting sound at the idea of the universe rewarding anything. Creation as I know it is nothing other than a meat grinder designed to spawn life and snuff it out almost as quickly.
The wind picks up a little and parts the swaying grain. I am gifted a better view of the woman who sings. I see the light dash of freckles over her nose and cheeks, I see the flash of her amber eyes, the way her red mouth moves with the song. Everything about her is beautiful and pure, untouched in every way.
Virgin.
The word rises inside my mind. That is important, somehow, though I do not know why. I have never cared if the females I plunged myself inside were pure or not. It was better if they weren’t. A scythkin’s rutting is best reserved for a female who already has full possession of her erogenous capabilities.
The wind changes. Instead of carrying her song to me, suddenly the breeze blows it away. And instead of me listening to her, she senses me instead, my scent carried by the wind. She turns, her eyes widening as she stares up at me, a looming creature of horns and fangs, standing dark and ominous in this perfect place.
I stand my ground, not bothering to try to conceal myself. It is too late. She has already seen me, and I was never made to hide. Nothing about me is small or subtle, and nothing about me blends in with this soft world of grain and femininity.
The song dies on her lips.
I have killed the music, and the absence of it feels like pain.
Tres
They told me not to sing. So many times. They told me my songs bought ill-fate and misfortune to the tribe. That is why I sing out in the fields away from the village. They cannot hear me out here, cannot tell me to close my mouth and return to preparing myself for sacrifice.
