Write a story from the perspective of some kind of whale.

(I’m so tired. But happy?)

Write a story from the perspective of some kind of whale. (Exactly 300 words is the challenge I’m setting for myself this week)

Water. Everywhere I look. When my people decided to leave the water a gazillion years ago, step on land, and hang out for a bit and-it didn’t work out for us-and come back into the ocean, no one asked me if I was going to want to swim all day, and float about and sing beautiful songs that even I don’t understand half the time. My mom always says, if you’re feeling claustrophobic and like the weight of the world is crushing your giant whale bones, go up to the surface and breathe. 

I’m not her first kid and she doesn’t have a lot of patience anymore. She’s been floating around this great blue orb a lot longer than most and she’s tired. Like, I know she loves me, and tells me all the time, but I have the feeling she dreams about being on land and leaving the ocean too. 

I don’t have a lot of friends. Scratch that. I don’t have any friends. I think I’m lonely. I’m my mom’s twelfth calf. She’s been having babies for sixty years. Every five years. Can you imagine?

I think she’s looking forward to spending the next and last forty years of her life alone. She tells me regularly how much she’s looking forward to it. I don’t think my mom wanted kids. I think it was just something she did, because it’s what we do. 

I’m not sure I want to do the same thing that’s always been done. If I get a hundred years. I want to get off this planet. 

Tonight I’m going to go to the surface, take a deep breath, I’m going to put out a call and if I find a friend we’ll swim straight into the sky. We’ll make friends with the stars. 

Heart,

Wake

(This whale card is painting I did for my friend Sarah E. Miller, a real gem of a human. She wanted a space whale. I painted 42 whales in 14 days based on different suggestions. This was one of my favourites. The story is based on how this particular whale may have gotten there.)