Cerulean Cape And maybe then we'll talk

WC: 661
@Laroche

As long as there were four 
Matches in a jar 
With a screw-top lid 
I know she did not mean to hurt my feelings...
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On her second day of being alone, Thresher still couldn’t quite piece together what had happened. Her knowledge of life along the ocean was returning to her slowly, and it was noon when she realized there must have been a storm, to leave so much flotsam upon the shore. Sticks, driftwood, and long strands of drying kelp lay upon the beach, strewn here and there like long ribbons. She sniffed it, hunger making her stomach grumble, but she wasn’t terribly apetized by the dark green kelp. The smell of salt just made her more thirsty, so she hadn’t strayed too far from the river that split the shore.

She decided to hunt crabs, but the skills she had learned from her parents were still lost...All she could remember was the sound their shells made as she cracked through them, and the taste of crabmeat. But the tact that she would need to hunt a crab down was gone, and she wasn’t entirely sure how to get that back. She traipsed along the shore looking fairly pitiful and hungry, her large, doleful eyes expressing just how sorry she felt for herself. She was lost, this she knew...She was hungry, and the wind was cold. Instinct told her to go inland- but some foggy memory begged her to stay near the ocean’s edge, as it felt more like home than anything.

Though Thresher had been taught a bit about hunting, she was still quite reserved, and did not take to it as naturally as her siblings did. She was quick to spook, and thus did not always anticipate when her prey might change direction or do something she wasn’t expecting. She was used to food that lived either on the island or along the shore, so she had begun to hunt for herself, scavenging along the shores and looking for a crab to catch, but to no avail. It was only when the strong scent of something extremely...Well, it was a new scent, and it smelled of death and of fish and salt water, but it wasn’t something she’d smelled before- but she was hungry, and smells often meant something edible was nearby.

She crested a sand dune that had become dusted with snow and saw what it was, but the sight that met her was not one she ever could have expected- nor was it one that made her feel hungry. It wasn’t likely that the creature had been tossed upon the shore by the high storm winds the day prior, as they would have little trouble navigating even when the seas were churned by the winds, but for some reason, a whale had beached itself. What she couldn’t see, of course, was the massive tangle of brightly coloured, odd-textured objects that the whale had likely ingested and that had led to its chosen suicide upon the shore. Unbeknown to Thresher, the whale was still alive.

It was fairly small, for a humpback whale, but still much larger than she ever would have imagined. She approached with caution, and it was only when the whale exhaled that she realized it wasn’t a carcass and skittered back several feet. She stared at it, wide-eyed, until she convinced herself that it wasn’t going to move. It still reeked, as it had likely been there for hours; its skin was drying, and it must have been anguish, with all its weight crushing its ribs in an uncomfortable position. Its eyes, small and wise, were tired when they reflected Thresher’s image as she approached, cautious and fervent. She circled it, and uttered a soft, high-pitched whine. She looked out to the tide- even when it came in, it wouldn’t likely be high enough to pull the whale back into the water. She continued to utter soft, high-pitched whines on each exhale, pleading with the whale to do something, to do anything. But it simply regarded her with sad, drying eyes and did nothing.

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///But that's what she did.