I was reading this post, which is quite long and on a barely tangential topic, so I’m linking instead of reblogging from @squarebracket-trickster.
It’s about how whales are able to sing at such a frequency and volume that it’s audible across the ocean, to a degree that nearly every whale on Earth might maybe be only a few degrees of separation from being able to communicate with every other whale. It’s also about the nature of science, and of war, and of belief, but I will leave that in its original context.
I want to talk about She Who Swallowed the Sea, my whale character. If this is also true of my world, there are some interesting wrinkles, because of the Desert Ocean. The tides of my world are so dramatic at the equator that the entire ocean seems to disappear into the sand twice daily. But at high tide, it spans far enough that whales from the oft-disconnected northern and southern hemispheres would be able to sing to each other.
When She Who Swallowed the Sea lost her calf to the whalers, she would not have been alone. A tune of mourning would have spread throughout the oceans, reaching her ears as the crews got themselves together well enough to flee. It would only begin to die out as she caught them, crushing one boat to bits and swallowing its glowing prize.
I do not know if she would have understood much of what the Southern whales were singing about; some of their language would be the same, but some not. They can hear each other, but only in echoes, no real space for conversation. And one tide is not long enough to cross the Desert Ocean.
Unless you have the Heart of the Sea, which she does, now. There is no word for “whaler” nor one for “dragon”, only danger and loss and victory and food.
I do not know for sure what she might have learned from the whales to the south, that prompted her journey southwards, but those songs of empathetic mourning sounded the beginning of a new era for all of Globe.
