Afloat in the Dark

What are we... doing?

"Being," she eventually heard Kaito answer. Somewhere, impossibly far off, there was the sound of a bird in the forest. "I... love feeling human."

I love feeling siren, Marina replied and flicked her tentacles joyfully.

Swimming around the icy ocean, exploring her sensitive new body with delight, she began to gain a deeper understanding of what pleasures the siren Kaito had experienced the night before... and how restricted he must have felt in that human shell of his.

Somewhere, Kaito had reached the end of his path up the mountain.

Already?

Marina the siren was looking at the now-familiar darkness through the eyes of the woman she'd been on Earth: above her, the eternal night appeared pregnant with distant galaxies.

"Do you want to feel what I felt last night?"

How strange it was, having those words spoken to her in her own voice!

Yes.

Marina sensed the dark ocean ripple against her skin. It was her human skin and she was floating at the surface now, where the rippling waters tickled her human ears, sparking a smile. Normally she didn't like swimming, but this was different: she felt at one with this ocean on Enceladus, and that vast emptiness beyond... She had a deep sense that this was home, that she was each place and every thing, and that she could not be safer and more deeply herself.

Utterly at peace, Marina drifted in the darkness.

There came a moment where her fingertips inadvertently brushed her thigh. It was a sensation that changed everything: she wasn't just the wholesome primordial darkness--she was a body!

Her nails scraped the skin of her thigh again. Pleasure rippled at the sensation of her own touch--literally. As though someone had dropped a smooth pebble just below her navel, the dark waters flowed out from her figure in concentric circles.

Something stirred deep below, in her body and in the water.

As one they broke the surface. They rose from the waters, dripping in the dark, having taken the first step in a tentative dance: her hand... and the tentacles.

Marina's fingers grazed the skin of her leg again, moving a little further upwards.

Dark, almost unnoticeable so in the starlight, the tentacles followed her movement. They flicked curiously over her naked body, as if they had never encountered such a thing.

They were hers, but not entirely; both human and siren were beholden to some deeper desire over which neither had much control.

Marina's fingers began to play around, invitingly circling her bellybutton and drawing trails along her abdomen, waiting to see how the tentacles would respond.

One of them, especially curious, touched her toes.

The sound of her laugh echoed into the eternal night, and an abundant joy radiated from inside her. The tentacles felt it, too; more emerged from the depths below, so many that they became a canopy covering whole parts of the night sky. High up in the air they danced, resonating with the pleasure of her laughter.

Still they did not touch her.

Like a lotus flower with her body at the center, they swayed outwards and onwards. Dark plum heads, still shiny from the water, awaited her desire.

Marina's fingers trailed down from her bellybutton. Eventually, they reached the pubic area just above her clit, where she began massaging herself, so tantalizingly close. She bit her lip, teasing herself, momentarily closing her eyes as she moaned.

Her call was heard. The dark mass around her rumbled in harmony, a primordial vibration that made the stars flicker more brightly. They wanted this. Her body.

She herself wanted her body.

So very badly...

She knew she'd crossed the point of no return when she was certain that it was her own sensuous tentacles anticipating the touch of human skin. She had anticipated the turn and welcomed it.

The woman's other hand came up her thigh, creeping towards her mouth. The tentacles sensed the vibration in the waters around her from a distance, as she made to lick her fingers. Then the woman's hands changed position. One moved up to grab her breast, while a pair of wet fingers gently lay to rest on her vagina.

There, she began to move.

It was an invitation. Those rubbing, tickling, quavering fingers were preparing the way in for this ravenous beast that Marina felt awakening inside of her.

All around the woman she swayed her tentacles, dancing a little closer with each moan.

The woman was masturbating with abandon, her moans humming deep in her throat as she bit down hard on her lips.

Marina wanted this body--now.

All around her, the waves began to rise and fall, lifting her up and down and up again. Cradling her, the ocean itself moved with the waves of her pleasure. On one such wave--the final one--they carried her so far up that the woman thought she might hit the stars.

At the crest, she was put to rest on a bed of tentacles. Having come at her own hands, the water retreated and the woman was left at the mercy of the siren.

"Lift me up," she whispered.

Marina the siren fulfilled her desire perfectly. The tentacles knew, or sensed perhaps, what the human needed and offered it to her gladly.

How light she was!

With ease, strong limbs lifted her body up, squeezing her breasts and groping her ass, finding the woman pliable under their grasp. Instinctively she realized the foundation of her own desire: to hang there in the arms of the siren, suspended, utterly helpless as she was fucked from below.

Marina proceeded, and the human clasped her legs around the big tentacle that was offered to her, smoothly sliding down against it, to be caught by two or three smaller tentacles that tentatively stroked her vagina.

The human clasped the siren more tightly, biting into the tentacles with a fierce longing that contrasted the gentleness with which they approached her opening.

Humming deeply, one of them slowly made to fill up her pussy.

Patterns of curved golden lines burst out across the siren's tentacles, as the woman enjoyed the tightness of their grasp and the playful hump of the ribbed, eager tentacle inside of her.

The woman felt herself come close, but the siren sensed how she desired to come... differently.

Let me offer my body to you.

Marina the human was placed back into her nest, where she surrendered to her lust.

"I want you to feel even colder," came the whisper, even though the tentacles were already freezing to the human touch. Lowering herself onto the tentacles, the woman closed her eyes in concentration. How wet she was, they both thought, as she began to sway back and forth, steadily riding the siren's limbs harder and deeper.

The tentacles felt it all, paralyzed with pleasure. A small one rubbed up against her clit, relishing the shiver of the human's desire, desperate to take it all in.

The woman rode the siren as if her life depended on it, allowing herself to be driven mad with lust by teasing touches from all sides. Her pace was increasing to its limit, her butt lashing back and forth as her cries filled up the starry night. She dug her nails deep into the soft tentacles and cried out, until at last she tensed up.

Siren and human collapsed onto each other as she came.

Marina was left speechless by a familiar realization of utter unity.

For a long while, she remained there.

Such bliss...

Then out of the emptiness, her human eyes eventually became aware of something: all around her, the ocean was turning to a vague pink that slowly turned brighter. Some part of Marina's mind remembered that the primordial oceans on Earth had been this color... Earth's oldest color had been pink.

Marina opened her eyes.

In front of her, a brilliant sunset colored the skies.

She was home.

She felt overwhelmed by a deep sense of gratitude, and wept.

Up on the top of the mountain, the air was crisp and here she had an unparalleled view over the approaching night. Kaito had brought her to a truly magnificent place.

Only after a while had Marina collected herself enough to speak.

"Kaito?"

She could still feel him, she was sure of it.

Someone approached her from behind, and she turned around, startled to find the driver that had first brought her to the ryokan. Gently, Ms. Tanaka wrapped a blanket over her shoulders.

"Where is he?" Marina asked, overcome by a sudden sense of foreboding.

Ms. Tanaka quietly helped her up, and Marina was alarmed by the sadness in her look.

"I'm to help you back down the mountain and take you home," she explained, putting a thermos can of steaming tea between her hands. "You've got to warm up first, though. Kaito was careful, but you may still have come quite close to your physical limits out here."

"Where is he?" Marina repeated, refusing to give into the dread growing inside her. He was still there, in her heart and in her mind. She could feel him--she was sure of it! Crouching in agony, she covered her mouth and the silent scream sparked by their abrupt separation.

"Don't do this to me, don't leave me when we've only just met," she finally whispered into that space that Kaito had left behind. "Don't leave me."

"He's gone back home," the driver said curtly, but not unkindly, helping her up again. "Please accept my apologies for how I treated you before, we were all very worried. I did not expect you'd be able to, but it seems like you succeeded in making him feel human just this once."

"No," Marina shook her head. "That was not the point."

She called out for the siren, her voice echoing off the mountain slope.

No answer came.

* * *

Marina stirred her coffee, fighting back her tears.

Again?

She almost laughed, finding that her longing was beginning to make some place for a measure of annoyance. She had cried more in the past few weeks than she'd had in the past few years. Not even after her mother died had she cried this much.

Now these tears threatened to cause a scene in the bookstore.

She wiped her cheeks and turned her gaze outside.

Down below, a mass of people periodically crossed the famous Shibuya crosswalk. Less than in the old days, perhaps, but still enough to make for an impressive scene.

Why couldn't she let go? It had been three months since Kaito had left her... Of late, even Kawashita was beginning to sound worried, no doubt concerned about her long-term clients: ever since Aomori, Marina had refused to take on any job and feigned illness.

A sickness of the heart, what a silly affliction for a courtesan...

It was hard saying goodbye to someone you'd bonded with. She knew this. It was part of her job, and she'd gotten better at it over time. She used to tell herself that she was open to losing even the best of people, for it merely meant she'd been lucky enough to have met them in the first place. Kaito had changed all that.

Once again, she returned to that climax on the mountain. She'd grown convinced that neither Kaito nor Marina had existed at that moment. Both had been merely that underlying, raw, playful energy, an essential nature that the sirens were much closer to realizing--and which those who came to Earth were struggling to retain. So many humans at their core believed themselves to be disconnected individuals... only to become that very thing.

With Kaito, for the briefest of moments, she'd experienced true unity. It was a mixed gift: the sadness of his departure, deeper than any she'd remembered feeling, was accompanied by a sense of peace and the memory of a deep realization that they had never been separate.

But at times she wondered if he had truly gone home... or if he'd seen enough altogether?

Of one thing she was certain: on Earth, the siren had not felt lost and alone for not finding a way to be more human--he'd felt this way because he'd slipped into his human persona far too deeply. The feelings that came with an unfamiliar body, the disconnection, the loneliness, that experience of being thrown back onto yourself: they were all distinctly human experiences that sirens arrived unequipped to cope with.

Maybe walking up the mountain in her shoes had helped Kaito realize that; maybe through her eyes he'd seen all that he had lost when leaving Enceladus.

Breathing away those pesky tears, she whispered into her coffee cup a fundamental truth: "It would not have worked." It would have been too bizarre, and possibly forbidden: a relationship with a siren. Marina sought solace in that thought and sipped at the warm liquid in her cup.

She resolved to finally focus on her book.

Yet it was only on her fourth way through the same paragraph that something on the darkening streets outside drew her eye. Although the crossing lights were green, the Shibuya intersection was rapidly emptying out to make place for an extended motorcade. A foreign official...?

The commotion outside began to reach inside the bookstore, and Marina heard a table topple, then some shouting, as multiple phone cameras pointed outside to document what was going on.

Marina slowly got up, too shocked at first to comprehend what she was seeing.

Flanked by police cars and motors, a Titanic-sized siren elegantly slithered out onto the center of the Shibuya crossing.

Grinning widely, Marina ran down two escalators, dodging perplexed onlookers, and sprinted out the door into the cold winter evening.

"Kaito!" she yelled.

The great siren turned to face the front of the bookstore, tentacles crawling, surrounded by cries of surprise and terror. The thirty or so policemen that had accompanied him kept at bay the crowds, as Kaito approached to raise one of his tentacles to Marina's chin.

Marina... I'm so sorry.

She felt his guilt, his sadness--his apology--like a physical tremble in her skin. She caressed the tentacle. How she had missed his touch.

"I'm so glad you came back," she cried, caressing that dark body of his.

I realized back on Enceladus that you were the thing that I was missing here.

His words sunk in to make her feel like dancing, yelling, and jumping up into the air as high as she could--and she could that tell Kaito, sensitive as he was, was rapidly beginning to feel the same way.

"Not here, though," she said, laughing through her tears.

Around them, the crowds began to quiet down, captivated by the interaction that was taking place in front of them. Terror progressively turned to fascination and even some hoots of admiration, as several onlookers realized this was the siren Kaito they were looking at.

"I'm glad you gave us a chance," Marina whispered. "But how did you get the government on board? Wouldn't it jeopardize the peace between humans and sirens--what about the political implications?"

There is no politics without equals, not in the true sense of the word. I insisted on showing myself as I was. Even a cultural ambassador can only do so much to adapt to Earth... and I think humankind deserves to see their neighbors for who they really are.

"I'm so proud of you," Marina whispered into the siren's embrace, as she held him tightly.

There, amid the falling snows, surrounded by the buzz of police officers holding back the crowds, with her coffee cup still curiously clasped in her hand, she asked Kaito the question.

The siren's rumbling answer sent a tremor through the whole square.

I do.

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Many thanks to Kenji Sato for proofreading this story.