The Song

Right, appologies - this'll probably start out being semi-well written and become dreadful by the end, but I've decided to use this blog as it's meant to be used - to air an idea. This is because I am lazy, and fed up of not writing anything, so I wrote this all in one go, and I haven't read it back to myself. It will most likely be awful, therefore. But there we are. I don't know where I'm going with the idea, though, so feel free to make suggestions.


Silence, as thick as a blanket, coated the forest, oozing into every crevice and pressing inexorably downwards. Nothing moved; not even the wind breathed through the canopy, leaving every branch, leaf and twig utterly still, almost as though petrified in the slanting golden light of the sunset. No animals stirred, not even microscopic species, and in the centre of Village the water column ceased to run until not even a drip was left. In the clearing, gathered into a circle, a hundred faces stared upwards motionlessly, past the carved, twisting stairways, past the woven walkways that webbed the trees above them and into the yellow sky, now pale and slowly turning green in the west. No one moved. No one spoke. They waited.

Presently, the pale green became suffused with a paler pink, and the crowd gathered below seemed to absorb some of the unusual tincture. Their bodies began to softly glow, in a strange, eerie echo of the sky above them, and the rosy light reflected off them onto the surrounding trees until the clearing almost seemed aflame –

And then, quite suddenly, three moons were picked out in the sky, illuminated by the colour changes, a vibrant, burning orange. They formed a rough semi-circle in formation, the left a crescent, the right full, the middle gibbous. It seemed to be the sign that the watchers had been waiting for: as one, they mimicked the searing shade of the moons, and then softly, so softly, began to sing.

**********

It was during the Dusksong that Lanalil heard it, felt the odd disturbance. It unnerved her. The Faces were in the Cup, already an ominous sign, and they were warning of change. She knew it was change from without and it worried her. She had to focus hard on staying in the Song, picking up the melody only just in time and weaving it carefully amongst the harmonies. It soothed her, and within moments her mind was back in the Song, was the Song –

And then as it crescendoed, the Song buckled and roared around them, tearing at their minds. Lanalil had half expected it; with the Change Portent, the Song had been known to react badly. Steadfastly, they prepared to Sing it back into calm, but as they began it died down to a murmur, and Lanalil realised with a thrill of horror that it wasn’t just a reaction, born of their own nerves and ill discipline. It had been a message.

They ended it, and looked nervously around, expressions changing to shock.

They had all spoken. Every last one of them had turned black.

**********

“Well?”

“Imperfect but breathable atmosphere. Oxygen’s a bit higher than desirable, but we can compensate for that, it’s only just shy of three percent above Earth average.”

“Excellent. Anything that needs filtering?”

“Well, I’m not picking anything up yet, but this is only one spot. I’ll try by the forest we saw as we were coming in, trees are usually a good indication of what an atmosphere is aiming for.”

“Understood. How long will it take you?”

“Twenty minutes? Half an hour? Shouldn’t be longer, it’s not far. How long’s a minute here? We’ve landed on the night side, it could get dark.”

“Approximately one point three of an Earth minute. Take your time.”

“Understood.”

The holo-link clicked off, and Rechel quickly mounted the Explorer. She loved moments like these. It was that thrill of exploration, of discovery, of finding the answers that only she could find and being the first to know them. The Explorer powered up and glided quietly over the rolling terrain, its grass apparently a dark green-blue. Idly, Rechel wondered if she’d find any interesting animal life. The last planet they’d appraised hadn’t had much in the way of life of any kind, since it hadn’t long come out of an ice age, but she had found a six-legged lizard that had promptly been christened a salamander, and was now being studied by scientists the universe over as the first known example of a vertebrate with more than four limbs. Apparently, it had had three bones that looked much like a cross between a pelvis and a shoulder blade. It wasn’t much, but it did mean that when they’d assigned it a scientific name, it had been christened Saurus Salamandus Rechelus.

The forest reared up before her, and she realised that it was taller than she’d first thought. The trees were tall and straight, but with thickly woven branches at the top that bore a variety of red and purple leaves. Rechel sped up. It was odd how few planets tended to have trees, and yet whenever they did they seemed remarkably similar. Some things, it seemed, nature had hit a winning formula with.

It was as she approached the edge of the wood that Rechel suddenly realised that something was deeply, deeply wrong. Nothing was moving, anywhere. And there was absolutely no sound, none at all. It was like some kind of vacuum had descended across the world, and, quite suddenly, Rechel felt very alone and very scared. Had she gone deaf? Was that possible? Couldn’t be, surely? Hurriedly, she ran a systems diagnostic, but it returned a perfect working order verdict on her audio circuits. A further check proved that they were still correctly attached to the cyberneural transmitters, and that her brain was receiving all signals. What the sod was going on?

And at that moment, the red flush in the sky picked out a trinity of moons, sitting low over the horizon. Rechel stared at them, momentarily distracted from her rising panic. They were so beautiful, she thought. So perfect, and delicate and powerful…

The music rose, soaring above the trees, almost a physical thing that Rechel could see in a swirling, rising column, despite the fact that visually speaking there was nothing there. And her eyes were organic. Definitely no problem there, she thought grimly. She began a full area scan, and started into the forest.

It was beautiful in there, a fact that Rechel would have appreciated considerably more if she hadn’t been unnerved beyond all reason. How could there be music? How was that possible? Music suggested some form of sentient life form, and they were remarkably rare – not every planet that was even capable of supporting life actually managed anything approaching sentience. And until now, only humans had achieved musical knowledge. What was she getting herself into?

And what was that music? It…felt…alive, almost. Could it be the life form? Living sound waves? Impossible, Rechel reasoned. Not unless it had some way of being held together physically, but the way it was dancing… It had a sound quality all of its own, a sort of cross between a voice, a cello and an oboe, and yet nothing like any of them. And the notes! Such intricate harmonies!

Ahead, a vivid orange glow suddenly lit up the trees, and Rechel climbed off the Explorer. She crept closer, forgetting that she was making no noise, and realised that the light was coming from a large clearing up ahead. It was so bright it almost hurt her eyes. Cautiously, she hid herself behind a tree trunk and peered around.

The music was almost deafening this close, but within moments the sight that greeted her had all but driven the sound out of her head. Thronging in a circle around the clearing stood around one hundred aliens, entirely motionless and just staring up at the sky. They were tall, around seven feet, although as with humans they didn’t have a uniform height. They were, however, roughly quadrupedal, but with the build of something like a giraffe – their ‘arms’ were far longer than their hind legs, making their bodies deeply slanted instead of horizontal. They were incredibly thin, and didn’t seem to be wearing clothes, but they were covered in massive, plate-like scales which seemed to do the trick. Their faces were long and elongated, their mouths almost funnel-like; but they had the most prehensile lips Rechel had ever seen, which seemed to be the only parts of their bodies moving as, Rechel realised, they sang. They were singing.

But far more shocking was their colouration. The vibrant glow she had seen was emanating from them, from their bodies, and as she watched the colours swirled, deep burnished golds, angry reds, the occasional tear of blue. And suddenly, Rechel realised that the music had changed. It seemed to scream, although it sounded as beautiful as before, and she realised that something had been in her mind as it raged about. It made her recoil, panicking as it flew from her head to join the rest of the music, but she could feel that something was wrong, as though she was somehow connected now, every thought and emotion she had. She forced herself to look again at the aliens, and gasped.

The beautiful colours were bleeding from them, almost into the air as they strove to soothe the music, and a deep black was stealing across them. Rechel watched helplessly, knowing that something was wrong. Abruptly, the music died down to a whisper, and she shivered. It wasn’t right. None of it was right. And she had to leave now.

The whispering stopped, and normal sound returned in a rush, the spell broken. The aliens looked down from the sky, and saw themselves. For a moment they all just stood and stared at each other, creatures brighter than the sun reduced to dark in seconds. And then they seemed to panic.

The sight of it nearly broke Rechel’s heart. They all began singing again, but not as they did before: this time the tunes were separate, flowing over each other and occasionally jarring as they fought. Quickly, Rechel checked her scan data of the sound, running an analysis. It was music; but also speech. Tone, pitch, volume, time signatures: they spelt out a complex mathematical code that created a language. She wondered if she’d have time to translate it-

They saw her.