CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT

Illustration: "Flying Whale" by @anikekirsten

She breaks the surface gently, the waters of the Pacific parting across her rostrum, soft and warm. She blows brief and hard to clear her airway, then fills her lungs. The taste of air is always welcome after spending deep time, but in this place the taste of it is bad, like the water in the northern swirl, and the currents from large harbors. The human toxins. She breathes again then, and again, the strain in her fin muscles relaxing. She breathes again and dips and blows and dips and blows, entertaining herself.

Aaranu is passing Mahah Trench, telling his brother a story about the ice floe south of Mega Minor. They are making plans to meet west of Mega Major in two days. She sings that she will join them. “I must come around the north of Major through the pass,” she says.

“Stay deep,” says Aaranu. “There was a boom ship there two weeks past.”

“I will,” she answers, weaving undertones of affection with assurance.

She fills her lungs and pulls her tail in, raising a fin for a luxurious rotating dive. Saluous and Emeelen are in the channel below, thirteen miles west, already headed for the pass. She asks for them to slow and pumps her tail to catch them, feeling the pleasant rush of cool on her flanks.