Gilded Bay echoes

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Beneath the waves--far, far from the Teekon shore--there was war. Much like the story told in the Iliad, two bull blue whales sparred for the hand (or, in this case, the fin) of a woman. Only one would take the prize. And so, while she lingered idly by, large, dark eyes watching the scene in something like impassiveness, the two men did battle.

He was the smaller of the two, and younger, too--at a clear disadvantage against his rival. The youth struck first blood, but it was the older that was to be master, father of the brood.

They raced, occasionally coming to the surface,

flying, fury in each pore,

 

only one would win.

Worn down by his first contest, and injured from the fight, the young man eventually drifted off-course, more pulled by the tide than anything else. He was defeated. Miraculously, despite the bloom of crimson blood from his wound, he avoided the scourge of orcas and sharks.

No, instead, his story would have a different ending. For as the mighty blue whale entered the shallows and, with a groan, slid slowly onto the pale sand, his fate had been transferred from the bosom of the sea to the cruel, unforgiving mercy of dry land. His captor was an environment he had never visited, his tormentors creatures he had never seen.

Oh, what an undignified end for such a magnificent creature!

His line would die with him; he would never watch his children grow into kings and queens of the sea. He would dehydrate here, picked apart by predators and scavengers, until only the bones remained. And the echoes in those bones--

--perhaps there would be some that could read his tale within them.

 

Otherwise, he would be forgotten with time.

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written by Emily