Horizon Ridge pride comes before the fall

Akhlut was more familiar with the orca than most, having possessed a fascination with his namesake in his childhood. Long before he'd been permitted to participate in pack hunts, he'd watched at a distance as the dark whales seized seals from the beaches and dragged them into the surf, staining the white sea foam crimson. Always an unnatural silence fell upon the shore when the great hunt was over and their curved fins showed their retreat into deeper waters, and it was this incongruous stillness that had haunted Akhlut for some time afterwards. Seals were by nature a raucous and noisy and bustling creature, but when their own young, or their nursing mothers, or their bravest and strongest males succumbed to the black hunters beneath the waves, they were all compelled, it seemed, to melancholy reflection of their own mortality. It had taken much coaxing, later, for an even-quieter-than-usual young Akhlut to tell his mothers what was bothering him.

He remembered their tales, told to soften the harsh reality of what he'd witnessed. It was difficult for him to now expell the mental image of Pied's form tossed upon the sand as the plaything of a killer whale who'd been either hungry or bored. He didn't wish to imagine her dragged into the deep by sharp teeth, her blood billowing up from below, and yet the mental image came to him unbidden. Swallowing hard, he said, "I'm so glad you're okay," and meant it. He met her heterochromatic gaze with a gentleness in his own pale blue eyes. He realized now he could have done nothing to prevent her injury, but still his guilt lingered. To make himself and perhaps Pied feel better, he said, "Perhaps it was a reminder of the fleeting existence we are all given. You lived, and live still, because you have much more yet to accomplish." Indeed, she had a mate and the future pups of Horizon Ridge to mother, but Akhlut saw more in her than that, a bright potential and keen intelligence that he admired.

A fleeting smile touched his lips as he aimed to ease what he imagined was quite a lot of fear of the great whales. "I have seen killer whales at the hunt before, and it is a gruesome sight, but then, they are known as the wolves of the sea. They live much like we do, in packs with mated pairs and pups. Have you seen them jump clear of the waves? It is an awe-inspiring thing." Surely the prey of wolves saw them as equally heartless, mindless killers. It was all a matter of perspective--not that he meant to minimize Pied's trauma, but there was symbolism to be had and a message to be gleaned, and they were not, after all, monsters. "I am named for a mythical orca who became a wolf at night to hunt on land, the Akhlut. In the northern traditions of my mother, they are honored as the reincarnation of deceased relatives, and seen as the symbol of family, protection, and long life." He paused, hesitant. "I don't know what it means that you've been touched by this blackfish, and in such a way, but I do know that their chosen prey rarely escapes. It is a blessing from somewhere that your life was spared." The Sea, Akhlut privately thought. The Sea tends to its own, a Nereides devotion lingered in his mind and he wanted to speak it, but held back, unknowing if Pied had a faith or if she might dislike his interjection of his own.