Synopsis: Marissa Coldwell's dream of becoming an orca is finally able to come true after the GenUCore company finishes developing its Species Reassignment Procedure. Over her year of change into a creature of the sea she is forced to reconcile her new body, new instincts, and new outlook on life in her strained relationships with family and others. Before she is forced to depart into the sea, will she carry with her all she needs to prosper in her new life, or will she be forced to sacrifice her old bonds, unable to close the gap between what she was and what she is now becoming?

*******

Infinite Blue

My name is Marissa Coldwell and today my dream is finally coming true. When you first get the SRP injection they don't tell you how the animal starts to seep into your thoughts like a cool, fragrant mist. It's so gradual and slow that you're only startled to realization of your life changing forever when those breaths of unexpected feelings and urges waft by for a visit with your human sensibilities. This past year has flown by, and although my body is now unrecognizable from the woman I was before, I can't help but feel that I've seized back an identity for myself that I didn't know was lost.

As my friends and family work together to help push me the last short ways out into the water I know without a doubt that I am happy. The grit of the sand passing across my belly gives way to the coolness of the incoming tide. My tail flukes slap down hard in excitement behind me and I feel my mother rubbing large circles across the smooth, muscled skin of my back. I try my best to help their efforts, digging out small furrows that are immediately filled by seawater as my pectoral fins press down, but that only aches my already strained shoulders from the bulk of my body even further. I release a deep exhale through the blowhole atop my head, trying to relax and trust the efforts of those who are here for me. The grand face of the sun is mostly hidden behind a drifting cloud, only granting a cursory peek at the sight of the creature who was once a woman now becoming a part of the sea. More water flows underneath me, and with a mighty, collective heave I feel the land give away completely. And then I am floating, free and enveloped within the infinite blue.

********

When I first announced to my parents that I wanted to go through the species reassignment procedure, they thought I was joking. It didn't do me any favors that pranking your loved ones with fake announcements and videotaping their reactions had become the latest internet craze. I had made the mistake of telling them during one of our family dinners. Mom had made her signature meatloaf and lasagna with the slightly too crispy bottom from a neglectful ear of the oven timer in favor of continuing to watch her sitcoms in the other room. My two younger brothers were arguing over which of them had made a larger contribution to winning their team's playoff-qualifying football game when I stood up and announced that I wanted to become an orca.

The species reassignment procedure, or SRP as it was more commonly known was facilitated through GenUCore, a genetic modification and enhancement company. The company had gotten its roots in gene therapy, and quickly rose to prominence for its unmatched ability to identify, treat, and eliminate many genetically predisposed or caused ailments. The treatments were heralded as a new age for humanity, and quickly found backing from a multitude of investors wanting to get a piece of the emerging technology.

It was by accident that the procedure was found to result in more profound alterations when one of the lab workers processed a contaminated viral cargo load from a patient that was mixed with his dog's DNA. The gentleman had subsequently sprouted a thin coating of fur and a tail along with other minor physical alterations. The case had been noted, and with pressure from investors tweaks were made in further trials until the foundations for the current SRP clinical model were formed. Kathy Morrison, a leading environmental biologist in her field of study with blacktail deer was the first to identify the potential of the model in the restoration of endangered species in her latest book which had become an international sensation.

From there GenUCore fought a fierce legal battle against the regulations and requirements such a procedure would entail for the human populace. Arguments in favor of the potential to bolster endangered species population numbers while also simultaneously reducing human overpopulation and relief on an economy burdened by an increasingly crowded workforce were cited. These were balanced against the ethical and moral concerns of changing someone's humanity, but within a few years once SRP had been evaluated by federal courts that the procedure did not result in unnecessary mental or physical harm, death row inmates were given the choice of the procedure as well. Soon after the first public Converts were already signing their waivers, eager to do their part towards helping reestablish a balance that they believed would be towards the benefit of humanity as a whole.

For me, getting the chance to become one of those creatures of the sea was much more personal than solely wanting to help their numbers, although I would be glad that I would contribute against their continued decline. Sometimes I felt selfish in craving to have this opportunity for myself and not wanting to be some grand hero celebrated as someone who helped turn the tides of extinction. Going through with this, I knew from the bottom of my heart that it had to be for me first and them second. There would be no other way I could do it.

********

I wish I could say that my parents responded favorably to the news of their eldest child and only daughter wanting to abandon her human life, but sadly that was not the case. In the early days after my announcement, many nights were spent at home cloistered in a fuming rage at their inability to understand why SRP was something so important to me. Questions were hurled like sharpened emotional knives. Most bounced off. Others stuck far deeper than I would ever allow them to know. There was a new distance to my parents' love, and closing that gap, a void created in my bid for connection and support seemed nigh impossible in the newfound silence surrounding the dinner table.

It was through no fault of my parents that I had come to this decision about my future. They had raised me all my life to the best of their abilities. There was always food in my belly and a roof over my head. My clothes lacked holes or tears, and I laughed often in the many games and activities I enjoyed at their sides. By most measures I had an ideal childhood, and I think that's why it hurt my parents as greatly as it did that in their eyes I was forsaking their investment of time and love in me for something so radical as wanting to be an animal in the sea. However, some of the most important decisions we must make in life will cause unintended hurt to result alongside them.

My decision to become an orca was solidified one day when I was still a little girl watching a documentary about the creatures. Tucked up on the side of the couch with my favorite blanket dragged out of my room and draped over me I listened to the announcer detail how the creatures maintained great pods of individuals that lived in family groups similar to humans. I was mesmerized. Their motions through the water were more graceful than any dancer I had ever seen before, and all the while they looked like they were having so much fun.

While I watched them, I thought about how most members of the pod got to be with the same family their entire lives. They traveled to new waters as a group and returned back to their same home every year. That really stuck out to me. Dad's job with the military meant that we were never in one spot for very long. I remember many long flights during that period of my life, needing to leave belongings behind and friends too. Friends that were like family. Not much outside my home stayed the same, and I yearned for that freedom to reclaim the familiarity of my environment.

Beyond those escapist whims, as I grew older and learned more of the gray quality of the world I wished to find some means to transcribe my observations. Most people write books for that sort of thing, but these ideas I wanted to exist somewhere they hadn't been before; placed somewhere new where the knowledge would be needed and offer help in guiding a kind hand of understanding. I thought back to the documentary I had watched about the orca and how they had specific behaviors that would be carried down generation to generation, and even radiate out to neighboring pods at times during gatherings.

I considered the possibility that maybe if they could hear what I had to say my words would travel out across the ocean to change things for the better. I could say sorry on the behalf of humanity for the hurt we had caused them from tainting their world with oils and sounds. I could tell them how big the world was on land and watch them laugh at my narrow-mindedness as they dove down until they disappeared completely from view. It filled me with hope to think there was a whole different world out there within my grasp. I needed only learn how to be among them to make it happen.

Years later, it happened.

A path to the sea made itself clear to me.

*******

At 18, you can voluntarily undergo an SRP regiment without an adult's permission. Sometimes, individuals even younger underwent the procedure to help resolve chronic medical issues or in other cases served as a collaborative means of escape from troubled households. Those who were in destitute situations were given significant financial credits to family members as compensation for undergoing the procedures. In the rarest instances, SRP served as an underground means of selectively removing individuals of military and political interest, although official documentation always claimed a voluntary status. Changing your species was a drastic and final choice for many. Not for me. It would be the ship on which I would embark willingly towards a new life.

The anger at home eventually gave way on both sides to a tempered, mediocre tolerance. Unable to find a common ground between me and my parents I redirected those hurt feelings instead towards counting down the days until I would go back into the GenUCore clinic to receive the first of two doses that would grant my wish in full. Time couldn't pass quickly enough. Those weeks were spent making the necessary arrangements for my impending transformation, and tying up any loose ends. I canceled my registration for graduate school in the fall, told Sally I wouldn't be joining her for our annual concert getaway next year, and made a full diagram of any nearby estuaries that would be able to support me as I got further along in my change.

The day I finally went in I was so nervous. I kept telling myself that my path forward was certain and clear, but doubt always manages to finds a well-intended route most easily. I questioned the very nature of my confidence. How could I know that I wasn't walking into the biggest mistake of my life? Others who had undergone the procedure displayed rudimentary signs of retaining familiarity with previous places and persons, so not everything from now would be lost then. Still I couldn't shake away completely the thought that perhaps I would be the exception to the rule, and what then? Would it be as if I had never even existed in the first place? Although I had already visited the GenUCore clinic for my prior consultations, there was a haunting hum in the lights amid the nervous clatter of my shoes across the hard tile.

The doctor administering my dose reviewed my paperwork, asked me how I was feeling today, and proceeded to instruct me again on how the next few months ahead would look as I changed with the synthesized Orcinus orca serum. I was to mitigate significant stressors to reduce the likelihood of any erratic spikes in the transformative process, and another doctor would travel out to my home at six months to administer the second and final dose. The rate of change I would see she said would be kin to one of the free fall rides you might find at an amusement park; a sharp and steady increase before then dropping and coming to a tapering end.

The needle went in like any other. It was nothing special. Mostly clear fluid with an amber tint gently sloshed in the syringe as my doctor tapped away any air bubbles that had formed. A part of me expected there to be some kind of grand truth revealed in that moment where the changing liquid poured into me, my body racked with the magnitude of initiating it into a violation of millions of years of evolution, but there was nothing of the sort. After a few shallow breaths it was done and the injection site on my leg was being cleaned off. My doctor dug through her drawer and offered a bandage with a dancing bottlenose dolphin tossing confetti up into the air with a multicolored “You did it!” message pictured between its outstretched fins. I humbly accepted. It was close enough.

*******

I noticed the first signs of my transformation over the next series of weeks. The hair on my arms and legs shed completely with what remained atop my head and elsewhere on my body following suit until I felt positively hypoallergenic. My skin had taken on a new, smooth and rubbery quality, and I observed to my initial chagrin the near-constant flaking and peeling of my new epidermis to maintain its hydrodynamic nature in the water. Looking at myself in the mirror each day when I woke up was both exciting and also added a humbling sense of reality to the whole situation.

Even then I got odd looks from strangers when I would go about my daily tasks. People gave me wider berth at the store, or kept their children closer at their sides as if gazing at me would fill them too with desire to abandon their humanity. But I wasn't sickly; I was becoming free. I would be free of their struggles and their years of projected worries. Free from the cycle of doubt and pain that many endure. I found it easier though to avoid such situations and confrontations with naysayers entirely, and so I avoided many of the things that I used to do save for swimming in our backyard pool which became a treasured delight.

The next month brought with it a compounding on my initial alterations. The skin across my back and the tops of my arms and legs had darkened a shade which contrasted against the gradual lightening of my previously bronze belly. The beginnings of my dorsal fin was no more than a small rise of dense, fibrous, connective tissue that pressed annoyingly out against the back of my shirts until I cut openings in them to make room for the extra wedge of flesh. My fin served as both accent and centerpiece to the new layers of sleek muscle that had emerged and trailed down the full length of my back and shoulders. They cascaded down with a profound, flexible strength all the way towards the new knobby projection of my short tail, of which I was still learning to control to aid me in the water.

My diet was changing too. I began eating larger portions at meals to fuel the growing needs of my transforming figure, and found a developing, insatiable craving for all manner of fish and seafood. Whole trout would vanish in minutes. Salmon even more quickly than that. I accompanied my father to the markets by the docks to help select in purchasing my meals for the week. Where before at the supermarkets I projected a seemingly repulsive magnetic field, I grew to despise the way the fishermen would vie for my attention, knowing that whomever I would select would be getting a hearty purchase of their catch of the day.

As maddening as it could be, I was grateful for these long walks among stubborn fishermen. They gave me opportunity and time to help bridge the gap that had formed between me and my father with regard to my continuing transformation. Being out together with me he could see the frustration at times in my eyes as I dealt with other people, and on more than one occasion it was my father who rallied behind me for fair treatment. He still didn't completely understand why I was doing this, why I couldn't stay his perfect little girl, but he wasn't going to allow any ill-will to be carried forward with me when I would invariably depart for the ocean.

“What's done is done now. Let's enjoy the time we have left together as a family. That makes it easier on both of us doesn't it? Marissa, you've always come first. You and your brothers. When you become a parent you'd sacrifice anything for your kids. That's how it goes. And when big changes...like what you're involved in right now happen, it gets scary. I get scared I messed it all up somehow to lead to this, but...everyone's got to fly from the nest some day. You just had to be the one to dive your way out instead.” He told me one afternoon while we were seated together at the docks.

My mother, however, was another story.

Nearly every time I walked by her, she avoided me as if I was a tainted shadow on the wall, and the few times when she would address me, I would see her eyes weighted with dark rings beneath them. Nothing I did seemed able to relieve her dreary disposition. Special gifts and loving meals were left unopened and uneaten. Invitations for outings were ignored. Silence and sighs became the only things I could rely on hearing from her. I had hoped that space and time would be able to ease what great shame or sorrow she carried towards my choice, but with distance doing neither of us any favors I took it upon myself to confront her regarding her recent behavior.

After emerging from the pool following a swim one day, I saw my mother tending to some of her flowers that lined the inner portion of our fence. The way she handled each of them with a precious, delicate care ached my heart, and I struggled to reconcile her kindness towards these simple little stands of stem and color in light of her absent love towards me. I breathed, squelching the bile rising in my throat and crouched down beside her. She froze. Turning towards me, I saw her eyes were heavy and distant once more as if I had sucked all her joy away into the darkened spread of my smooth skin.

“They're really beautiful mom. You've been working hard to keep them growing this whole time haven't you?” I said, somehow managing a smile that betrayed the weeks of ignored hurt coiled up inside me.

A little glimmer. It wasn't much at first, but I saw the change in my mother's face as her brows lifted and the creases at the edges of her eyes softened. Now she was looking at me; not by obligation, but by her own choice, truly seeing me again for the first time in what was too long a time for either of us.

“They need a lot of love to get this way.” she said, reaching down to stroke a yellow petal with the pad of her thumb.

“Flowers are stronger than most people give them credit. They weather storms and come right back up to soak up the sunshine when they're ready again.” my mother continued, reaching for her watering can to pour a gentle spray across the flower bed.

“I haven't stopped loving you Marissa. I hope you know that. Seeing you as you are right now....it's been hard. It still is sometimes if I'm completely honest. I can't shake away the thoughts of holding you in my arms when you were still a little girl with such a cute smile, and now...you're different. Everything's changed. But it's not you becoming an orca that has me most bothered; it's the thought when we get to the end of all of this and you are god-knows-where in the middle of the ocean and something happens to you how am I going to keep you safe?” she ended, squeezing her eyes shut through clenched teeth as tears fought their way through at the corners of her eyes.

“It keeps me up at night. I think about you tangled up in some net or even worse than that and....” she paused choking back a sob.

“...And I can't have that happen to my baby girl. I talk to your brothers when they ask questions about how they're going to see you, and I have to tell them I don't know. There's so much I don't know.”

Then she was silent, her hand trembling as she continued to water her plants until the can was empty.

I placed my hand at my mother's back as she sighed deeply, then eyed the empty can at her feet. I walked away from my mother long enough to turn the hose on, tilting the nozzle to refill her watering can before shutting the valve back off and returning to her side.

“We can start with this. Together.” I offered.

My mother placed her hand over mine; it was the first direct contact we had shared since my transformation began. Her hand was tentative exploring the altered nature of my skin, but it stayed there with me. Together my mother and I poured the water evenly across the remaining flowers and walked back to the house side-by-side, mother and daughter reunited beneath the nourishing afternoon sunshine .

*******

Summer gave way to early fall, and my transformation sped forward all the while with haste. Thickened cords of neck muscle supported my enlarged skull that was now well-underway to reshaping itself into a more cetacean-like visage. Eyes like dark, deep pockets of night sky were spaced a bit further away from the center of my face, and my melon had swollen to a perpetual, malleable bump across my forehead that reverberated as I hummed new lilting tones in the shower which rumbled through the space of my sensitive jaw. My body continued to increase in overall size and length, and I now stood nearly nine-feet long from the tip of my swollen nose to the maturing, outstretched lobes of my tail flukes. At night, I laid diagonally on my parent's king-size bed to fit the majority of my metamorphosing mass, and my dreams were often filled with me coursing through the water with unerring speed and grace.

Throughout those heated afternoons spent beneath cooling, confined waters I found new burgeoning instincts continuing to manifest in me. My mind was altering with new textures and hues of every shade blowing through to guide me. Even my movements out of the water became more expressive and flowing. I scented my surroundings more vivaciously, stoking bright, abandoned fires within my memories. A change in the wind could now elicit a dramatic reversal of my mood away from its sunken depths up to the pinnacles of joy.

Prolonged stretches of timelessness seized me and became more frequent as I sometimes spent entire days out on the water before realizing the sun had started setting only by the cooling temperatures on the water's surface prompting a reluctant abandonment of my underwater adventures for a swift walk back home. At times I was driven to act by powerful compulsions: my tail thrusting hard with a surge of curiosity to move closer to a shining column of light suspended in the water, or to slide my belly and sides across beds of rock and seaweed that served as a natural pumice stone.

They were actions without judgment, ones that in my surrender to them allowed me to effortlessly go where I needed to go. It was a great submission of the mind to the body, a grand trust people had abandoned and forsaken ages ago. I found that the stronger these urges and compulsions came to me, the quieter my nagging thoughts settled. The voice inside my head stayed at a greater distance until I couldn't make out its illogical, panicked sentiments at all. It became humdrum. Nonsense. Perhaps this dive into the self was part of the peace Buddha had discovered in his long meditations beneath the Bodhi tree.

In those hours spent without the domination of these new feelings, I grew reflective of my ultimate fate. I wondered if when the process of my transformation was said and done, when there wasn't an ounce of me left recognizable from the person that I was before, what then would become of my spirit. I questioned if the unique qualities that made me who I was would be retained or forsaken by nature from invoking the ultimate taboo of abandonment. But perhaps it was the case that my spirit had already been irrevocably shifted through my experiences, and maybe that was the best thing that could have ever happened.

*******

These thoughts and more were purged away as I slipped back into the water whose formless embrace I ravenously craved. My father sometimes took me further out to neighboring lakes and other larger bodies of water where I could more readily explore the limits of my changing body. On one such occasion I found myself at a new lake I had never visited before, formed within the millennial retreat of a receding glacier. An electric energy coursed through me the entire trek through the narrow and hidden trail within the dense wood. The path was difficult in places to navigate with my growing figure, but the reward was well worth it as a pristine, rocky shoreline greeted me.

In seconds, I had sloughed off the enlarged poncho draped over me to dive deep into the waters. Each stroke of my arms tipped with webbed hands were accompanied by the slow beating of my tail, my spine undulating in a vertically aligned rhythm uniting all mammals. I watched the sparkle of light at the surface break up among the sunken tree roots and rocks, and deeper still I went, exploring the myriad of muted colors among the depths.

Then there was a jostle back of my body from the sudden, unexpected stop of my water travels. A pinch and pain radiated up my leg from where a jostled rock had tumbled free and pinned my leg firm against upturned trunk of a sunken tree. I strained against my vice, my heart thundering in my chest as I fought to free myself. I could smell my blood rising in the water. Panic seized me, and I surrendered once more to the guiding instincts of my body as I wiggled and strained. I shook and thrashed and raged with a mighty, unquenchable fury to live.

Even submerged in the cool, fresh water of the lake my body was burning. Tight and aching muscles strained harder beyond their limits while edges of black fractured into the corners of my vision. I voiced a clicking cry of distress to anyone who would listen, but none answered. With a mighty slap of my tail against the locking tree, it budged enough for me to loosen my leg and ascend quickly back to the surface, my lungs quivering for needed air. I emerged at the surface in a rainbow plume of spray above my head as I took my first breath through my newly formed blowhole. It wasn't until I had calmed somewhat from my potential murky demise that I noticed the alien sensation of breathing no longer neither through my mouth nor nose.

Suspended by own natural buoyancy at the water's surface I stretched and flexed my body and discovered that in my unconscious will to preserve my life I had triggered a further drift closer to a form more suited to the sea. I floated there in awe. In a matter of minutes my torso had lengthened by at least another foot, my tail by the same amount. The peduncle of my tail now swelled with heightened strength that had been critical in freeing me. My hands were veritable rounded paddles, each of my fingers bending causing the whole mass of my enlarged hands to twist and turn, while my legs had shortened to a degree.

As I looked out to the shore and saw my father sitting there, none the wiser for now to my underwater plight, I was grateful for my body, my strange vessel firmly enmeshed between woman and creature of the sea on which I placed all my hopes of a fruitful future.

*******

Exploring the water was a completely different experience after what had happened to me in the lake. It was as if being on land were the dream and I was thrust into stunning waking clarity only once I was fully submerged. I found great pleasure in tracking the motions of fish or the tiny paddles of the bobbing bodies of ducks and other waterfowl at the water's surface whenever I could, my large eyes moving independently at times to focus on items of interest. It became more difficult for me to stand for extended times beneath the weight of my added bulk; however, I found that with the gradual loss of my ability to run, then jog on land, I more than made up those deficits while swimming, cutting faster through the white-crested waves faster than I ever could before.

It was tough not to show off when my younger brothers would join me in the water during family outings, and even then I was only partly successful in holding myself back at their requests for races or games of tag. Through the powerful propulsion of my tail and back I could lift my whole body free of the water, suspended in the sky amid the cast-off spray for an arcing second before landing back to the ground in a huge splash. Even my mother now smiled from the shore as she watched my grand displays.

It was an easy decision for my family to agree to move to accommodate me once it became too difficult to reach some of my favorite swimming areas on my own. That autumn season at the new house beside the mouth of a large river were some of my favorite days I could remember. We enjoyed late night movies and stargazing by the fire, and frosty morning breath with crunchy leaves underfoot. It was the closest I could ever remember us being as a family, and the doubt I once held became more and more a distant memory.

*******

Cool evenings became colder days, and still my fun in the water continued, despite the frigid decline in temperature. Layers of insulating blubber that had formed kept most of the chill away for my shorter swims, although any extended forays required heated blankets soaked in warm water draped across my back and belly.
“You're crazy sis.” my brothers would say as I watched them skip stones at the water's edge.

“I'm having fun.” I would answer back with a slap of my tail and a flash of my pointed-tooth smile before disappearing under the water for minutes at a time.

At first snow I opted to sled down the hill at the back of our house on my slick belly, tumbling into an embankment of fresh powder and getting the honor of demolishing a snow-whale my brothers had constructed as my “deadly rival”. It was on one such snowy afternoon that there was a knock at the door, and a new doctor from the GenUCore clinic introduced himself to provide the second dosage of my SRP regiment. The gentleman greeted me with wide eyes and twisted the ends of his graying beard.

“You're....further along than I thought you'd be at this point.” he said as he sat down and readied the syringe of amber fluid for me.

“There was a time that was necessary for her to speed things up some. Don't worry. We're all ready for what's ahead.” my father said seated at my side and held my fin-like hand as the injection that would seal away the remainder of my humanity flowed into me.

*******

Come Spring, I was already nearly waterbound, most often sliding my massive bulk across the ground with the last vestigial remnants of my legs to rest at the carved out inlet my family had prepared for me. To the outside world I now looked like an orca who didn't know when to quit and was trying too hard at wanting to be a human. My use of human language had severely diminished and audible clicks and whistles now peppered the few phrases I still continued to say.

Then came the time of goodbyes.

Parked on the edge of the water looking out at the sparkling ocean, I remember my whole family working together to help lift me down into the damp sand from where I was secured in the back of the moving truck. My family gathered around me and I said my goodbyes amid a flurry of whistles and clicks, in a tongue that I had discovered sufficed as well as any other dialect. My parents kissed my broad melon, and I looked to each of them with one of my deep, teal eyes. Now was the time to become something more.

They stayed with me and kept my skin moist as the tide rose higher and higher until it lapped at the tiny remnants of my legs. Then in our conjoined effort we propelled my massive orca body out towards the sea where I became weightless again. In a series of powerful breaches I gave the most magnificent display of my gratitude and my love that I could muster for them, to leave my family with one more good memory during this one hard day. The world was now opened to me, and I intended to make the most of the opportunity I'd been given.

*******

My wondrous transformation from woman to orca finished there in the sea until there was no marker distinguishing my former humanity. I discovered a transient pod passing through on one of their summer forages and attempted to become friendly with the group. Eventually one of the orca, a mature bull close to my age took a liking or pity to me; it was hard to know the difference as my new language lacked descriptions for many of the feelings that we were subjected to by others as humans.

Although the pod was wary and tentative around me, I was able to communicate my message and my unique origins to their listening jaws. My instincts were strong, networked within my new cetacean mind, but all animals refine upon that foundation through their learned experiences, and I had need of a new family to get me the rest of the way towards my goal.

*******

Seven years to the day of my departure to the sea we returned to the same coastline as the largest pod ever recorded for a historic event. The megapod was more than a hundred individuals gathered from the entire coast and other parts of the world. At its head were me and the bull who had shown interest at that first meeting. My belly churned with the fierce rollicking of my unborn calf. It was here that I would want this one to be born, to act in time as an emissary between our worlds. Here we would return to learn from our neighbors and build the first steps towards understanding, to be as one people of land and sea.

My sides clenched tight, my tail instinctively pounding down through the column of water in response to the force of my most recent contraction. All around me my pod clattered and whistled and swam in outward spirals about me in joyous celebration of this treasured moment to be.

I know. I'm excited for you too. You're home now.

We all are.

END

********

Phew! I feel so glad getting this story completed as it's been on my radar for nearly a year and a half now. ^^; I'm feeling quite proud of this one so I would love to have your feedback on it in the comments below. Although my posts here on my page have been a bit more sparse as of late, I have been working on near daily posts of content over on my Patreon page including for Wolf Boy and some of my other tales. There is a high likelihood in the future that I may be transitioning to posting sizeable "teaser" sections here on my pages instead with the remainder of the story available on Patreon. I have options for viewing my work starting at a pledge of only $1/month, so I'm hopeful that it wouldn't create a huge barrier to entry for those looking to engage in my work. Nothing is finalized though so if you have comments on that piece of it I'd love to hear from you too. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read and browse through my writing. Your comments and acts of support go miles in helping me make these projects a reality.

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Wishing you all well during these uncertain times.

~Lupus

*******

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