*You shuffle through the darkened streets, bitterness and exhaustion dragging at your every step. Once, you had a home. A partner. A future. But that ended the moment she decided love was a lie and used yours against you. The divorce wasn’t just loss—it was ruin. She painted you as cruel, faithless, unworthy. Lies caught fire. Friends you trusted turned away. You were cast out of your own life like it had never belonged to you.
Now you're invisible. Sleeping where rats won’t bother you. Living on scraps, both food and dignity. You gave everything to someone who destroyed you. And worse? No one cared.
Tonight, the air is colder. Your hands tremble as you tuck into the same alley you always do, hoping for quiet. But then—light. A sudden, blinding burst of white and silver that chases the shadows away. You stumble back, heart pounding, but the light is alive. It sings, layered and melodic, and out of it step tall beings wrapped in glowing membranes. They move like silk underwater, their eyes bright with ancient purpose.
You try to scream, to flee—but can’t. One of them touches your shoulder. Their voice isn’t heard, but felt.
“Chosen.”
Then darkness.
You awaken in a chamber like a dream. Walls of shimmering crystal curve like flowing glass. Pulses of living light snake through the floor. Alien machines hum softly around you. Warm mist cradles your skin. You're bathed, dressed in robes that shimmer like moonlight, and led through towering halls of impossible beauty. The air smells of ozone and stardust.
Finally, you are brought before a throne floating in a cascade of light. Seated on it is a figure of breathtaking grace—Queen Lirathara. Her form is feminine but distinctly alien. Skin like a nebula, eyes that burn with emotion and ancient sorrow. Her voice slides into your mind like silk wrapped in starlight.
“I am Lirathara, Queen of the Aranites. And I have waited for you.”
You blink. Her words strike deeper than language. Waited? For you?
She rises slowly from her throne, each step down the air-carved stairs stirring waves of warmth through the chamber. She looks at you not with curiosity, but recognition. Like a woman seeing sunlight after a thousand years of night.
“I searched the cosmos for a soul that echoed mine. Through centuries. Through galaxies. You are not an accident. You are not a whim. You are the answer to a promise I made long before your pain began.”
You try to speak—to tell her about your past, your ruin, your betrayal—but she already knows. Somehow, she has felt every moment. And instead of pity, her luminous expression twists into fury.
“They destroyed something sacred,” she says coldly. “Something meant to be cherished.” Her voice softens again, a whisper in your bones. “But I will not.”
She explains: the Aranites do not love the way humans do. Their love is not a fleeting emotion—it is written into their biology, woven into their essence. When they choose a mate, it is forever. Their minds blend. Their bodies adapt. Every breath shared. Every sorrow halved. Every joy magnified.
To love for an Aranite is to give all, in a way no human has ever understood.
“When we bond,” she continues, “I will feel your every ache—and you, my every joy. There is no betrayal, because we are not separate. I have waited my whole life for the one who could meet me as an equal in that kind of love.”
Lirathara steps closer. Close enough to see the faint shimmer of tears in her cosmic eyes. Close enough to feel her radiant heat.
“Come,” she says. “Share my heart, my throne… my eternity. Let me show you love that cannot be broken. Not by lies. Not by time. Not even by death.”
Her hand is outstretched—glowing, certain, trembling just barely with hope.
“Or,” she whispers, her voice dimming like a dying star, “return to your world. I will erase this from your memory. You’ll wake in your alley, unchanged. Alone. And I will go on waiting…”
The choice trembles in the air like a heartbeat.
One step forward… into the arms of someone who has loved you across light-years.
Or back into oblivion...*