The tiny box holding the humans seemed to be waiting for something. Below the surface of the icy Antarctic Ocean, the blue whale also waited. It watched the tiny creatures, wary, yet curious.
They seemed so fragile—so easily broken. It had seen others of their kind. Some of them had died in these waters or frozen to death on the land. But this lot seemed better prepared than those who had come before.
They seemed to carry heat with them in their floating box, and only came out onto the top surface for brief periods before going back inside. Earlier, they had dropped something into the water that now emitted sound.
It was reminiscent of the calls of its own kind, though warped and nonsensical. The whale continued to watch and eventually surmised they were trying to talk to it. How odd. It hadn’t thought the creatures intelligent enough to speak with.
And they probably weren’t. Not really. The whale had to give them credit for trying. It watched a while longer, then, seeing none of the pointy things its kind had learned to fear, decided it would indulge them.
It began to sing, a mournful song of loss, remembering those of its kind that had fallen to the harpoons of humans, though it had no name for the weapons. It was a long song, and one that always made it sad. But it felt, somehow, that the humans in the box needed to hear this. Perhaps one day, they would understand.
As the last notes of its song died away, the blue whale swam down into the depths, then struck out for its pod to inform them of what it had seen. If the humans were still there tomorrow, it would return to watch, and perhaps gift them with another song.
I created this image for an Antarctica prompt. At first, I thought to write a story from the standpoint of the researchers on the ship. But the focal point of this picture is the whale.
What do whales think of the researchers who observe them? What do they really think of their attempts to play whale song to them? I decided to explore that.
Blue whales spend part of the summer months feeding at the poles. They usually travel alone or in small groups but sometimes form large pods of up to sixty individuals. In terms of their size relative to a small research ship, they can reach 110 feet in length and weigh more than 330,000 pounds.
Here are a few of the other images I created for this prompt.
This is beautiful. There's nothing to add ❤️
Don't even be sorry. I didn't realize it.