And We Will Sing into the Void — Part One
By Samantha L. Strong
Happy New Story Sunday, Daily Tomorrow readers! This week, a story of both cosmic and intimate scope by the writer, editor, and novelist Samantha L. Strong. I hope it sings for you. - The Editor
And We Will Sing into the Void
By Samantha L. Strong
The creature’s silver, multitudinous tentacles writhe in the light of an ancient star. As large as a planet and far more sentient, the being waits and dreams and sears the obsidian darkness with its protective, energetic exoskeleton. Scores of ephemeral palpi whip in the solar wind: upon the end of each tentacle perches a roughly globe-shaped sensory organ. Its children are in the millions, separate but part of the creature’s whole.
Citrine, sandstone, azure, the globes twine and skitter, braid and fight, each one a consciousness of its own. They whirl and dance through their lives, oblivious to the being that connects them each through an invisible cord to the all. It observes, watchful and patient, caring for its children silently and undetected.
That is, until the solar flares awakens a hunger.
A grotesque, selfish hunger.
And then everything starts to change.
Ah, the stars! How beautiful, how magnificent! Unceasingly, they shine upon me, with their unblinking gaze and kaleidoscopic wonder!
I turn my awareness to my children, wriggling and living and growing and dying. They drink photons with their eye-bodies, some feuding, but others partaking in the joy of nourishment together. For those gazing into the cords that connect them to me—invisible but drawing them nonetheless—I bestow a special favor. They are rare and precious, and though I love all my progeny, these ones please me most.
As I savor their attentions, I detect a disturbance in my fifteenth segment.
This… this upset started some orbits ago, and oh! my disappointment. Glaring outward into the stars, one child in particular riles disorder. It drinks nourishment from me but refuses to replace it, sharing only with those with which it is entwined—and sometimes not even that much. It pulls sustenance from my scion close by, growing fat and lopsided, hoarding and sucking and snarling, while others grow lean and weak.
The turmoil it causes is transforming into a blight.
A few combat the greedy spheroid, inching their vibrating hairs closer, draining it of some power. But a few is not enough. I am exhausted; the effort is consuming my reserve.
The cancerous globe seems unaware that taking and taking and taking means less for those wavering in its periphery. Its shadow grows long and inky, its eye greedy for more, more, ever more.
Samantha L. Strong writes dark and beautiful SFF stories about complicated characters. Like many Elder Millennials, she’d like to become an herbalist and live in an abandoned, haunted nunnery somewhere far away from people.
Samantha’s short fiction has appeared in Amazing Stories, AE: The Science Fiction Review, and elsewhere, and she’s the former Executive Editor at Flash Fiction Online. She has four novels out about angels and demons: her Fallen Redemption trilogy and a companion novel. You can find her on Instagram and TikTok @SamanthaLStrong, and more of her writing is available on her website www.samanthalstrong.com.
Copyright © 2025 Samantha Sabovitch