The Siren's Soil
In a world stripped of song, not all silences mean peace.
Still - Prelude
Nothing moved.
The land breathed.
And for a time, that was enough.
Incursion
It arrived without sound.
But the silence changed shape.
He came wearing tech spun from old wars, with a drone’s eye and a satellite’s hunger. Said nothing, heard less. The valley had sung for centuries, but his ears only heard the promise of profit.
He called it a survey. The elders called it the hush before the wound.
He had maps that layered time—vegetation loss, water retreat, mineral shadows. His boots left no prints; his scanner left no secrets. Everything he saw became numbers. Everything he touched became a plan.
The forest knew better than to greet him.
The Valley & Her Presence
Not seen. Not heard.
But always there.
The valley did not roar, or hiss, or tremble. It shimmered.
Mist clung to the low ferns longer than it should. Lichen on the stones glowed faintly in the shade, pulsing like breath. Trees bent toward each other as if in private conversation. Birds flew in spirals over one stretch of water, then vanished.
There was a presence here. Not a figure, not a face. Just a weight in the air, like memory. The kind that makes you pause before stepping forward, unsure why your heart has started to race.
To the elders, her presence had always been here. Before words. Before borders. A voice the soil remembered even when the surface forgot.
To him, it was just data.
He marked the basin. Logged its mineral anomalies. Set a drone to map the canopy drift. He did not feel the eyes that watched him—not eyes like his. Not even eyes at all.
Contact & Violation
The shimmer did not move.
He did.
He found the shimmer just before dusk.
There, among a ring of stone so smooth it seemed carved by thought. The undergrowth thinned. Light pooled on the surface of a shallow spring.
Then he found it—a ripple in the water where no wind blew. Beneath it, something flickered. Not solid, not shape, but light moving like a thought. It hovered, just out of reach, as if aware. As if deciding.
His instruments struggled—readings danced, sensors flickered. He recorded anyway.
A tremor passed through the reeds. The shimmer paused—then darted backward into the deep.
He catalogued the readings, bottled the disturbed water, packed his gear. He never saw the shimmer behind him pause once more before fading, fully, from the world above.
The land exhaled.
The silence didn’t bother him.
He’d grown up with noise-cancelling everything. Quiet meant progress.
But even the quiet carry warnings, and beauty breaks those who take without listening.
The Turning
The ground spoke in pressure.
And he could not translate it.
That night, sleep broke him open.
Not dreams—pressure.
His skull rang with a low-frequency hum, too deep for his ears but loud in his bones. The air was thicker. His tent fabric twitched in still air. He checked his monitors. Nothing. No wind. No seismic activity.
Just that vibration. Everywhere. Nowhere.
He stood outside, bare feet on moss. The ground pulsed—subtle but certain. Like a heartbeat.
He pressed his palm to the soil.
The hum surged, and with it came something else: images. Not his own. Fire without flame. Root systems recoiling. A stag standing still for hours, waiting for a death that never came. Thousands of impressions. Not visions—remembrances.
His chest tightened. He staggered. Dropped his scanner. The earth seemed to push him back, gently but without question.
He left at first light.
But the humming did not.
Collapse
No trace. No ripples.
It ends where it always ends—in stillness too deep to name.
He made it halfway down the slope before the silence took hold.
Not quiet. Absence.
The kind of silence where sound feels smothered. Where even your breath seems unwelcome.
He staggered. Dropped his pack. The vial—her fragment—had cracked. Silver bled through the seams.
The hum returned, not as vibration now, but gravity. Each step heavier. His muscles slowed, his lungs narrowed. The forest watched with stillness sharpened to a blade.
He reached the basin again. The spring shimmered once more, not welcoming, not angry—just inevitable.
He tried to speak, but there was no mouth for what he felt. No word for being emptied.
The ground softened beneath him.
He sank.
Not fast. Not like drowning.
Like being accepted.
And when the surface stilled above him, it looked the same as before.
No trace. No ripples.
Just a shimmer.
And around the basin, a stillness so deep it felt like memory deciding not to remember.
This was The Siren’s Soil. A story in fragments, a warning in shimmer. Thank you for listening.
Afterword – A Closing Whisper
This is not a fable.
There are no lessons.
Only patterns.
And memory—when we allow it to speak.
Inspired by Jibaro.
Guided by the ancient song of the siren.
Robert Hoehne – 2025