[center][h2][colour=steelblue]Mamang.[/colour][/h2] [h3]VIII[/h3][/center] In those days the seas grew lush- lush beyond measure. Vast was the expanse of blue sea that stretched beyond the clasped hands of the continent, and bright colour swirled therein as if stirred in by a paintbrush. Fish they had known, and water-bugs too, the little cyclopes, but never such a bounty as these: whirring, kicking animals, their stalked eyes black and fearful, cast about in the cold water like a muddy cloud, as abundant as raindrops. The whales gorged. Fish alone had allowed many a race of whales to make far forays into the endless ocean. Now the gift of krill had shattered the chains that bound them to shore, and there was no limit to their travel; they crossed the planet whole, freer than condors. Even the lonesome giants of the ice had come to wander south, lording over all others with their unspeakable bulk. The whales grew fat on that bounty, and the sea did not cease to provide; swallowing shoals of plankton and forage-fish without number, they became mothers, and soon they were countless. Hot with passion was the young bull then. The whale grew and grew until its very bones would let it grow no more, and then, one day, it was not a young bull at all but a mighty one, a titan of song and muscle, stoked with the fire of life and hunger. It leapt from the warm green waters of the southern summer, and the crash of its fall was an avalanche. Many were the rivals that heard it, and answered with strong song; no longer alone would this great bull be! And yet, even in the battle-season where bulls won cow and heifer, the whale did not throw itself into the lifelong company of its kind, for which it had so yearned in the north. Even now, this bull was a [i]wandering[/i] bull, a straggler, a stray, and the breadth of the unknown ocean called to it. By day the imperial Sun did rise, and the whale gave chase as it fled to the West; by night travelled the injured Moon, and the whale followed, swimming through a sleep rich in dreams. So far west the whale travelled that it circled Galbar, and arrived on the rich coasts of Orsus. [center][h3]IX[/h3][/center] There in the East the whale did play, and feed, and roam the bright coast, filled with life long before the wide ocean had ever been seeded. An abundance of rivers washed curious smells down from the forests, and strange shore-fish had grown to be shoal-fish, as they had in the sea of giants. The wandering bull met many whales there, most quite like itself, sleek blue and grey rorquals filling the water with pulses of their low, mumbling song. Skilled fishers they were, and they showed the whale how to cage whole shoals in the bubbles of its breath, a fine dance in which the joyful singing whales of the central sea had not permitted it to take part, their white-black wings guiding them to spin elegant circles the rorqual could not hope to match. Friendly were those eastern whales, but distant, and they were not its own. Their song was not the same, no matter how the whale twisted and turned its working ear, and their bodies did not bear the markings of its race. Every time it lifted its eye from the surface, the fin of their backs reminded the whale that it was not among family. Their bulls would not challenge it, nor was there any sport in challenging them, for there was no cow among them suited for the northerner, and the only tension was the far cooler matter of food. For many years already had fish filled these waters, and of ordinary size they were, though their shape be primitive. There was only so much room for yet another whale to come and forage in these populated waters. So the whale travelled on, far to the south, until the sun one day rose, and did not shine. Caught in the queer dimness, the whale turned and tossed and lifted its eyes up from the water and could find no source for the haze, not even a smell. It skimmed the water for cyclopes, and found them in plenty. It sang out to the fishing rorquals, and one answered with lazy calm. The whale returned north, a little way, and the sun soon brightened again. Most puzzling was this darkness cast by no cloud! The whale had seen quite enough sorcerous water-borders in its youth, and was wary of this one. But all was well. The shade of heaven left the tropical sea no less warm, and the whale learned those seas to be safe. It entered the shadow, and crossed it without fear, once more emerging into light. [center][h3]X[/h3][/center] The whales of the south were small compared to the bull. They were vocal, fond of repeating their curious songs, now a long string of brisk beats flowing up and down like the tide, now a drumming growl, [i]ba-brmm, ba-ba-ba-brrr...[/i] They ate what they could find, be it krill or forage or cyclopean plankton or prickly rock-fish roaming the shallow shore in schools, and were little troubled by the large stranger, though it swept up at once forage-patches that would take them three passes to clear. The whale had encountered them before, and knew that their lot was a troubled one. Small enough to thrive on seas that would starve a giant like itself, they were small enough, also, to fall frequently prey to the all-conquering hunger of the orca. Perhaps it was that hunger which had chased them to travel so far south, in some vain and desperate hope to run from the invincible rip and tear of those hunters. To the wandering bull, they were like children, perhaps trapped forever in the calf's nightmare of drowning and death- and yet, they travelled alone, swift and fearless, their hearts as bold as the great titans of the icy north. Strange indeed! Still, they were rorquals, like itself, even patterned in much the same way, and it was grateful for their occasional company. Having lived in the open waters of the far south for longer than itself, the whale faintly expected their range to continue as the southern waters became cold again, the winter nights long. It swallowed down krill and fish at leisure at that far latitude, uncontested, singing its low beat all on its own. A fell current found it there, alone in those waters, and the whale's appetite began to wane. It did not cease its journey south, seeking another clear bright shore among the well-salted ocean, as it always had before. The sea remained quiet, and the krill was bitter in its mouth. The wandering bull would have journeyed far, even alone, even on an empty stomach, as it had done when it was young. The memories of that hungry voyage to the island-of-air grew clearer and clearer, poisoning its dreams until they became real. Once again, a sorcerous barrier corrupted the waters in front of the whale. There was no celestial enchantment casting this haze. It hung in the waters before the wandering bull, a noxious green stain that mocked life. It was like a cloud of silt that did not settle, but rose instead to loiter at the surface, another cruel trick of demented gravity. The water there was foul in the whale's mouth; its blowhole burned when it surfaced, and even the lice on its skin, grown thick again from its long journey uncleaned, seemed to writhe and die at the touch of the cloud. The wandering bull did not touch that streak of corruption. It followed, cautiously, the westwards path of the cleaner waters beyond the cloud, occasionally circling to turn its good ear towards the cloud. The only sound came from far ahead. It might have been mistaken for the song of some still more bizarre race of whale, had it not been so relentless, and so stationary. It clicked, and growled, and moaned low, unspeakably angry and pained, horribly un-alive. Wary of sorcery, yet afraid of nothing in these orca-less waters, the whale approached, and as it did so the cloud grew ever lower, tighter, darker, its corruption concentrated in one narrow stream- a single line of monstrous pollution billowing from a deep reef, a stunted island that had never grown tall enough to touch the surface, or feel moonlight. Anger! The noise was deafening. The shape was unlike anything the whale had yet seen. The whale dived deep into the blue dark, shielded by its ruined ear. It dared not approach this growling monster, shuddering and breathing yet sunk like a carcass. Such a poison that had been laid upon the ocean by a curse no larger than its own body- Anger! Pain! The whale levelled its eye at the light of the blue ocean beyond the curse, beyond the cloud, beyond the reef. There, somewhere, was a new sea, a clean sea, on the other side of the barrier. The whale twisted and twisted and listened for something it did not know, something it knew lay there where the night was so long the sun never rose, for the alien song of eldritch whales that knew no shore at all- -but the sound of the curse was deafening, and the whale had only one ear. [center][h3]XI[/h3][/center] So ended the journey of the wandering bull. Starving and sickened, the whale fled north to the bright waters of the central sea, where green meant life, and so did song. Its appetite returned with a roar, and its flaking skin grew back clean. By the time it returned to familiar shores, the summer call of mates had lit fires in its heart, and young bachelors flinched back from the song of the bull who had travelled the world. It was a wanderer, like no other whale- but it was a whale, still, proud! Great was that whale, and is still, crossing these oceans to this very day! Aye, it is a whale! [hr] [hider=hope u weren't expecting any more Ea Nebel posts] Phelenia seeds the oceans and the whales, which were already doing pretty well, rapidly expand to fill the entire ocean. Mamang reaches his full size. He circumnavigates the world and finds himself on the east coast of Orsus for a while, which whales have already filled thanks to fish from Tuku Llantu's coasts. When he travels south, he finds the shadow of the ring, but it's not too big a deal to cross. Far in the south, he encounters the cloud of marine pollution generated by Coolmachine #1, which local whales have learned to avoid. Circumpolar currents have drawn its pollution into a long ring around the south end of Galbar, forming a barrier between the natural seas and the chaos around the Tree of Harmony. At this stage Mamang is easily large enough to destroy it, but he lacks the intelligence to identify this course of action, and that might be a suicide mission anyway... for now. With this post, Mamang's story has now featured every major classification of baleen whale- can you identify them all? 0 Vigour gained. 0 Vigour spent. 1,696 whale points awarded for still being a whale Total whale points: 5,757 [/hider]