Wheeling Gull Isle we’ll get together, have a few laughs

The wind and the rain are starting to pick up!

Perhaps the whales were a warning.

The blue spruce had no way of knowing about the beached whales in Gilded Bay and Cerulean Cape, but the Athelas weeping at her skirts certainly did. The ancient ones, called kohola, were revered by the Cortens, perhaps even more fervently than their beloved sea lions. Kirynnae had traded stories with dogs from far off places with lilting names — Aotearoa and Tahiti and Hawaii, to name a few — and many of her favorite (and therefore most frequently recounted) tales involved the great shapeshifter Kanaloa, a primordial god of the ocean. Whaleshape was the largest and most majestic guise he wore.

Seelie had never seen a beached whale before — she had only ever seen the gentle giants of the sea from far, far away. To be so zoomed in and see the rents in the hide and the dull, dead eyes was a haunting, terrifying thing, and for the first time she admitted to herself that maybe Thresher had gone the way of Doe and Poppy.

Maybe her little treasure wasn’t coming back.

The prospect was crushing. Immobilizing.

“Oh,” groaned the Mother, her voice echoed by the Old Ones. They creaked arthritically with a sudden fierce gust of rain-misted wind: “…ohhh nnnooo…” The air tasted curious — a brackish mix of salt and sweet, with an electric quality that fizzled like POP ROCKS — and at last, the little dog discovered what the trees already knew. The storm wasn’t just coming — it was at their doorstep! —

(and Thresher still hadn’t been found.)

posted by coelacanth.