A Very Alien Christmas: A Limited Edition Collection of Holiday Alien Romance

by Skye MacKinnon

  You can also sign up for Michelle’s newsletter here@ https://us14.admin.mailchimp.com/account/profile/

  Melting her Snowflake

  A Sirens of Szire Short Story

  Helena Novak

  About Melting Her Snowflake

  Melting her Snowflake is an FF alien science fantasy romance. This story can be read as a stand alone, though it is a shortened version of a full novel. The full length novel version is slated for December 2022, however, if you want to read more about the sirens, the first book in this new series of stand-alones will be available Summer 2021.

  Tinley

  Christmas lights glisten off the awnings of every storefront downtown, fake snowmen and reindeer shining under a dusting of fresh, glittering snow. Little kids in red and pink puffer jackets toddle through the drifts, making angels and throwing snowballs while their parents socialize cheerily on the corner. Carols pour out of the speakers on the lampposts, wishing merry and bright days and calling for everyone to don their gay apparel as they worship their yuletide traditions.

  The word alone feels like acid on fresh wounds.

  Gay.

  I always knew it wouldn’t go well, coming out to my family. I suspected tears, maybe a tantrum or two. Even begging me to go to church, or, at the worst, telling me no. That I’m wrong, that it’s a phase I’d surely get over once I found the right man to set me straight. Ignoring my every word on the subject from there, only prompted to defend their opinion if I pushed my limitations with a pride pin or stared too long after another woman in public.

  What I hadn’t expected was to be completely disowned.

  I hadn’t expected the ice in my mother’s eyes, or the cruel laugh in my father’s voice when he sniped I’d become too political and let my beliefs take over my life. I didn’t expect to be mocked and chased out of the only home I’d ever known, to be allowed thirty minutes to collect my things and leave before they called the police.

  I never would’ve guessed I’d spend the season freezing and alone in my car.

  But here we are, taking a hot shower in the back of the gym after my work shift, stalling for time so no one sees me snatch the snack box from the break room on my way out. I’ve got thirty-eight bucks ‘til my next payday, and as much as gooey cheese pizza or a bucket of fried rice would benefit my weakened sanity, I have to be smart with how I spend it.

  Survival mode is all that’s keeping me upright since I lost it all. Six straight weeks away without contact--Thanksgiving and my birthday, come and gone without a peep from the people who were supposed to love me the most.

  So much for family first and love thy neighbor and what would Jesus do and all that crap they preached.

  This week it’ll be Christmas that goes by without a word from them, and it hurts the worst of all. I don’t share the deep religious beliefs my parents do, but I’ll miss the church service with them in the early Christmas eve hours. Seeing cousins, playing with my little sister, singing and dancing and eating the food no one was brazen enough to acknowledge was flavorless.

  After church, we’d all pile in the car and drive into the mountains, and spend the week into the new year at our family cabin on Lake Dillon. My little sister was just old enough to learn by now, and this year was going to be the first real time I got to teach her how to dance with me.

  I move my face into the stream, ignoring the tears pouring from my eyes. I’ve cried more this week than I have in my entire life. It’s finally sinking in, I think.

  I’m all alone.

  “You gonna lock up when you’re done?”

  I startle, temporarily more concerned that I’m crying in the locker room before I realize it’s Doug--my very married, very twice my age, very male manager--invading my space. I cross my arms over my chest and keep my back turned, knowing without looking he’s peering in through the curtain.

  “Yeah, I got it,” I mutter.

  He doesn’t respond immediately. The water feels cold, my whole body hot with awareness under his eye. I’d love just a moment of confidence, to be brave enough to turn the water off and shoulder past him to get to my clothes.

  But I’m not. I don’t have the energy to be anything more than uncomfortable.

  “What’re you and your family doing for the holiday, then?” he asks after an insufferably long pause.

  I close my eyes again, hugging my chest tighter. “Just the usual,” I sigh.

  “Well, no,” he chuckles at me, like I’m glaringly stupid and it’s so adorably humorous to him. “There’s no getting through the tunnels for at least a month, they said.”

  Yikes. I don’t recall an avalanche of that proportion in my lifetime, not around here anyway. I want more details, but Doug is not the one to ask, so I merely shrug and mutter, “We’re devastated.”

  And I’m sure they are.

  Seems fitting. Selfish as that makes me, it gives me a little bit of sunshine. No one can enjoy the holiday now.

  “You’re always welcome at my place,” Doug continues. “With or without your family, if you know what I mean.”

  He laughs. I don’t.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he says, the humor dying on his tongue. He’s annoyed now, but I couldn’t care less.

  “Every day,” I mutter back.

  He stomps out, and I quickly turn the shower off and make a beeline for my towel. My hair is still dripping wet when I flee the building, and it freezes in clumps the instant the snowy air touches me.

  My car takes an eternity to heat up, and I curl up in a ball, breathing into my hands and fighting back shivers. I’ve left the parking lot and am halfway to the rest stop I’m illegally squatting at before my stomach rumbles viciously, and I realize I forgot to steal the snacks.

  Damn it all to hell.

  “Tonight, we’re listening to non-stop Christmas tunes from the 90s. Who doesn’t love a throwback, eh?” The radio chirps mockingly. “Happy Holidays, everyone!”

  And I’m crying again.

  What a happy holiday indeed.

  Łin

  Of all the planets Haerlo could’ve crashed into, Earth has got to be the most exciting.

  Humans are one of the most fascinating little breeds I’ve read about, but never seen in person. They’re practically identical to the handful of species in our galaxy, with similar skeletal structure to the Szirish of my planet, but softer. Simpler. They don’t have magic, in the sense I know it--no brute strength or mind reading abilities, not even capable of calling an object across the room.

  They’re descended from the same original mold we all came from, I believe. But the whole planet is millennia behind the rest of the universe, and they’re adorable enough to think they’re all powerful.

  But regardless of their horrendously underdeveloped lifestyle, they have a magic that draws me in like magnets.

  They sing.

  Again--simple. Right?

  No.

  This is where we differ immensely. We are sirens, of course we can make music. Like the waterfolk of Earth, we lure enemies to perilous deaths with the melody of our voices alone.

  But that’s all it is. Melody. Hypnotizing, beautiful… but merely a melody.

  Humans write stories. They create whole artworks out of their songs, paint scenes and tell days, months...even years worth of folklore in their tunes.

  And we’re here, in the flesh, on this colorless, freezing planet. By happenstance, no less! No one from home will be looking for us for weeks, which means we have all the time in the world to sit back and observe this planet in person.

  “We are going to die!”

  Clearly, my sister is not half as excited about this as I am.

  “Haerlo, you’re supposed to be the sane one here,” I chide her.

  “How am I supposed to be sane right now? We’re on Earth. Or don’t you remember what humans did to the vars? Dyrkri? Hm?” Haer rages, electricity sparking off her fingertips and piercing into the snow at our feet.

  “Pr
etty sure if humans really did abduct the Prince of Var, the planet would’ve been decimated long ago,” I say. “And the Dyrkri killed themselves, the human pets weren’t responsible.”

  “Łin,” she hisses, “just because you think they can sing, doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous. We have no back up, no contact, no ship. We’re stranded on this endlessly gray planet with no escape. Now is a perfectly good time to freak the fuck out.”

  I can’t argue with her on the palette of this place. The scenery has drastically changed from the colorful galaxies and blinding stars speeding by the gondola shields. Now, things are muted. Purple black rocks covered in fluffy white ice towering miles into the dull pearl skies, only dotted with jagged, deep green triangles every few meters.

  Trees. That’s what these are. They look vastly different here than home.

  “What were you doing so close to the ground, anyway?” I grumble from behind my hands, rubbing my eyes against the harsh white colors.

  “This planet has unusual levels of gravity, alright?” she snipes back at me. “Leave me be, brat.”

  I huff in response, squinting out the shattered window. What a boring little planet to home such musical beings. I’ve never seen so many shades of silver all blurred together in one plain slab--and the snow flurries make it even worse. Almost a complete whiteout. I can’t make out where one mountain ends and the other begins.

  Wind whistles ominously by my ears, the chilly air breaking through the wrecked ship. My body tenses in response, and I swallow down a string of panicked questions for Haer. Her cyan hands are white knuckle gripped around the control panel, her jaw and eyes tight while she desperately tries to coax it back to life. It’s futile--the thrust is lost somewhere in the downpour of the mountain she hit, the best her ship is going to give is hovering barely thirty feet in the air.

  She almost looks afraid, but I can’t even begin to think about that. She’s not afraid of anything.

  “Well, we can’t just sit here,” I say, struggling to maintain some sense of composure for the two of us. “It may be too warm for the average ice brute, but our lappets are going to freeze right off in no time.”

  “And where do you suggest we go?” Haerlo asks, eyeing me like she’s giving serious consideration to moving her chokehold from the dashboard to my throat. “Go find a lil human diner and hang out? Don’t mind us, mortals, just a vicious alien fish!”

  “They live the same span of time we do,” I quip. “Also, they haven’t delved deep enough in their oceans to know what kind of fish we resemble. They’ve only gotten to jellyfish, for comparison, and those are very...wet, still.”

  “I don’t even want to know how you know all this,” she sighs, smacking her head against the steering panel.

  “Doesn’t matter anyway,” I say. “Pull over. I’m driving from here.”

  Tinley

  Nostalgia gets the better of me the following morning, and I trade shifts with Sasha at work. This means I’ll be stuck with Doug for twelve hours straight, no real break, but I can’t pass up the golden dawn over the lake.

  Lacing my skates up my ankles hurts my heart more than words can say. I strap them tighter and tighter until my toes are numb, and then push out onto the open ice. It crackles under my weight, just barely hard enough to coast over. The water shifting under the surface sends tingles up my calves, a panicky feeling creeping deep in my bones that says I’m putting myself in danger.

  But it doesn’t matter right then. I lose myself in the rhythm, digging the blades into the thin ice and letting the wind move me in circles. I close my eyes and pretend I’m home, listening to our favorite songs, my sister’s tittering laugh like bells flying on the wind.

  I pretend I’m their ideal daughter. Their normal girl. That I could love a man, and be fulfilled by that.

  A daydream where they accept me as I am is too distant a fantasy to even consider right now.

  I hear the rustling of the bushes, but write it off as a bunny or a deer. I am in their home, after all, encroaching on their territory with my weird little hobby. I’ll leave them be if they do for me.

  But then I hear the whispers.

  “C’mon.”

  “Just a second.”

  “Łin, damn you, let’s go.”

  I lower my arms, gliding out of my lazy lutz and turning my ear toward the noise. But neither of them speak again, well aware of my eavesdropping. I consider ignoring them, but I know they haven’t left. I feel their presence like electricity, standing too close to a phone wire.

  It’s not...human.

  I turn on my toes, and freeze. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but the women frozen at the edge of the lake are not it.

  They’re of average height, with sharp feminine features and long, thick hair. One is slightly shorter and heavily muscled, her eyes a neon blue pigment I’d only seen in Vegas. The other is taller, frail, her eyes wonderstruck and deep blue like a twilight sky. They both have ten fingers and full mouths. That’s where the humanoid features end, though.

  Both of them are blue, somewhere between a morning sky and frostbitten flesh. They wear simple clothes, a sports bra type of shirt with lacy chains holding it together, the same foreign fabric making up floor length pants. And their arms, glowing vibrantly like fallen stars, covered in strings of light that move like free, living organisms attached to them.

  It’s not human.

  They are not human.

  “Aliens…” I hear myself saying out loud.

  “Wait,” says the taller, softer one. Her voice is melodic, and my body leans forward like there’s a string in my chest. “Don’t be afraid.”

  I panic, unable to wrap my head around the sight, and rush off the ice. I don’t even try to get out of my skates when I get on land, making a beeline for my car.

  The shorter of the two is standing in front of my door before I even know she’s moved. I open my mouth to scream, and all the air is sucked out of me. The lights on her arms are sparking wildly, and with each violent crack they make, a new pain pierces my lungs.

  “Haerlo!” the softer one yells, grabbing her friend’s arm and trying to break her concentration.

  “Back off, Łin,” the smaller one, Haerlo, snaps back, her voice quieter but laced with anger. “She’s seen too much.”

  I’m looking through a layer of my own blood, red tears staining my cheeks and pooling on my tongue. I sputter uselessly, my ability to breathe fading completely.

  I can’t move. An invisible force holds my body in position, the lights flashing on Haerlo’s arms like one massive cobra wrapped from my ankles to my throat.

  I’m powerless. I can’t even blink without her permission.

  Łin shakes her head, clutching her throat and looking back at me. Her body shivers at the sight, and she comes forward, hands hovering in front of her before awkwardly settling on my cheeks.

  She catches her breath, and the pain is gone. I collapse in a heap, and Haerlo swears when Łin catches me easily.

  “It’s alright,” she whispers, that seductive voice a balm to my frayed mind. “Just a bit of shock. You’ll be just fine.”

  “You’re a damn fool,” Haerlo hisses.

  “What would you rather do, hmm?” Łin barks. “Sink her in the ice and hope for the best? We’ll never get away with that.”

  Haerlo shudders, and I feel her displeasure poking at my nerves. I whimper and instinctively curl into Łin, feebly clutching her stone of a shoulder.

  She cradles me closer, lifting me off my feet like a child.

  “What are you doing now?” Haerlo hisses.

  “We can’t just leave her here.”

  “Now you want a pet?”

  “You didn’t leave us any choice,” Łin hisses, like it’s a non-issue.

  My heart lurches into my throat, but I haven’t regained enough energy to speak. I push against her shoulder, but she just holds me closer until she’s lying me down carefully on a soft, downy blanket.

&nbs
p; What’s happening? Did I fall, crack my head? That would be better than this.

  I’m being abducted.

  “She’s coming with us,” Łin says definitively. “Now get on the ship.”

  Łin

  I was enchanted, caught in a trance at the sight of her. Sun-kissed olive skin shining in the winter daylight, her long brown hair billowing around her small, round face as she turned her eyes to the ethers.

  It was like a ballad embodied, the way she danced without music in the air. I only wanted to savor it for a moment, pretend how she moved was meant for me.

  Kidnapping her and stowing her away in a ship wasn’t part of the plan, but here we are.

  Haerlo is the older sister, so obviously she knows best.

  “Is that really necessary?” I grumble, watching my sister chain the little human girl’s arm to the metal bars at the head of the bed. They’re meant for flight, something to grab on to should we face turbulence.

  “I’m not taking any chances,” Haerlo grunts, wrapping the chains securely to the fixture. She pauses, tucks the key between her breasts, like she hears my thoughts I’ll let her go right when she looks away. “She’ll run off and find some bigger, meaner humans to attack us. And then--you guessed it--we die.”

  “Right, right,” I say. “Because the vehicle we abandoned at the lake won’t give anything away. No, and all the marks of her running away, or you scorching the grasses and leaving the snow untouched--”

  “I get it, mmkay?” she hisses, waving her hand dismissively. “I’m handling it.”

  “And how are you handling it?”

  “I’m heading out for a bit,” she says. “I need a quiet place to work, and a plane. Or maybe a jet...or three. And I’ll probably use this thing’s car, see if there’s anything useful in there. It was old, you know, I hear they had decent frames back in the day.”