Unsib

"we played music together and the sky lit up with melodies and love and fireworks."

author's note: when i wrote killer whale, i most definitely thought of it as a standalone fanfic. i never expected i'd write a sequel, but somehow i found myself here. amber's story was just too good not to be told. again, this fanfic is set in 5,003 AS (in the wof world). you can absolutely still read it if you haven't read killer whale, but everything will make a lot more sense if you do. as ever, ty for reading! ~riley

for orca

i have never written a poem before. i’m crouching on a wet rock in a dark cave to write this. i’m not sure why i felt the need to do this. i should write a log or a report or something i know how to do. but this seems right, somehow. i’m doing this for orca.

is that a bad beginning? it probably is. i really don’t know how to write poems. i’m hopeless, aren’t i? i am, actually. i don’t think there’s enough hope in the world to get me out of the mess i’m in. but i need someone to tell her. i have to write it all down before it’s too late. i need orca to know i loved her till the very end.

beginnings

aspen always told me i should start at the very beginning, so i guess that’s what i’ll do. i think it began when i met orca.

that’s a lie. why can’t i erase this ink?

it began with queen moorhen. actually, it might have begun with my job application. maybe even my sibs deaths. that hurts to think about. i won’t think about it. i won’t.

it’s dark in here. cold, too. the only light is coming from a small crack in the rock. water is lapping at my tail and the whole place is slimy and wet. i always liked small places but now i understand what orca meant when she said she was claustrophobic. it’s like the walls are caving in around me and i feel sick and it’s hard to breath and i want to go back home.

i can still hear aspen’s voice in my head. maybe i will think about her. maybe i’ll think about them all. it hurts, but it is a beautiful sort of pain.

sibs

there were five of us in the beginning. aspen, cinder, silt, tadpole. and me. amber.

aspen was our bigwings. she was kind and strong and brave and wonderful in every way. cinder was the cautious one. silt was the funny one. tadpole was the “charming” one. i was the youngest and the weakest. i never expected to be the survivor.

war

when we were three we were told to become soldiers. we were told we were special. we were told we were going to fight for our queen, our tribe, our life. we were told we would be heroes. i can’t even describe the hell we went through. the pain. the agony. the screaming. the death. it didn’t stop when we closed our eyes. it only got worse. i watched my sibs die in front of my eyes a thousand times every night and each day i had to get up and fight again.

the war tore us all apart. we’ve never been whole since.

ashes

cinder was the first to go. we had only been fighting for a month. he disappeared in the middle of the night. left us a note saying that he couldn’t go on. that he loved us and he was sorry but he couldn’t go on. he never came back.

we fantasized about his perfect life, far away from the battleground. wondered if one day, after it was all over, he’d come back to us. none of us wanted to accept the truth.

blood and tears

i’m crying now. i can’t help it. it’s been a long time since i thought of them. i can see us there still. hear the screaming. smell the decay. feel cinder’s tail twined around mine. aspen’s breath on my neck. tadpole’s arms gripping my neck. silt’s warm smile.

they made every day worthwhile. they were the reason i kept living. they were my island in a sea of blood and tears.

martyr

silt’s death was maybe the hardest to bear of that first year. he died to save us. fitting, for him. a blast of frostbreath streaked through the air. he darted in front of aspen. the ice hit him in the chest. he died almost instantly. i’ve never been able to look an icewing in the face since then.

quiet

it was very quiet without silt. we all missed his jokes. there was a lot less smiling. a lot less laughter. it all got real after silt died. horribly real.

survivors

tadpole was stabbed in the chest by a sandwing. he died three days before he would have been promoted to lieutenant. then there were only two of us left. me and aspen. the survivors.

left over

we barely scraped by on the leftover scraps of food. we shivered in the cold every night because there wasn’t enough space to go around. we were always on the move. every dawn brought another fight. every dusk brought another nightmare.

we survived because we had each other. we were all we had left.

sister

she had the warmest eyes, the color of hazeltnuts or melted chocolate. they sparkled when she smiled. moorhen said beauty was gemstones embedded in your scales, and a glint of gold in the air around you. she’s a queen, so i guess she’d know.

but i think beauty is eyes that sparkle when you smile.

swan song

it lasted a month but it felt like a year. it was on that last night that i heard aspen singing. first time she’d sung anything in a long time.

i read, much later, the concept of a swan song. the melody that a swan sang seconds before it’s death. a beautiful performance. a final bow. the graceful fall of a curtain. a candle flickering out.

aspen left in the night. she never came back.

i was an unsib now. all i could think was that i had failed her. i hadn’t been enough. i made a silent vow to always be enough.

unsib all my life, it had been about us. we would do this. we should do that. we were always there for each other.

now it was about me. i was on my own. just another failed unsib.

they sent me to division sixty-two. i met twenty other dragonets. i do not remember their names but i don’t think i’ll ever forget their faces.

a job offer came up. queen morhen’s personal messenger. i took the interview because it made me feel like i was doing something. two weeks passed.

i got the job.

moorhen she was very persistent. she never gave up and she never gave in. she liked to quote famous sayings. “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” “success doesn’t just find you, you have to go out and get it.” no-one dared to point out that success had been stalking her since the day she hatched.

she sent me around the kingdom. i met generals and vagabonds and even skywings. and then she sent me to the sea kingdom. and then my world turned upside down.

seawing princess

she was young. just turned seven maybe. my age. she should have been out playing in the sun. happy. free. not down there, where it was cold and dark and wet.

she was pretty. beautiful even. her scales caught the sun. they glinted in beautiful shades of dark green and gray. her eyes were blue. startlingly blue. but it was her smile that made me warm inside.

"i’m amber" i said. my voice sounded hoarse.

"we don’t care about your name, mudwing"

i suppressed a giggle. coral trying to be intimidating was about as scary as a toothless alligator.

i sometimes wish i had taken her hint and run as far away as my wings could carry me.

she was watching me. i caught her eye and grinned. she looked away.

"alright" i shrugged. "i’m here to bring you this." i flung the scroll at her feet. an act of rebellion. i am not afraid of you.

i watch coral’s face as she reads it. scornful. then frightened. then pale. she ran out of the room, leaving me alone with orca.

orca

we talked a lot. i learned so much about her. i fell in love with her, a little. maybe a lot. i hoped she loved me.

she was always so kind. she was so caring and so funny and she always had interesting things to say. we toured the bay of a thousand scales together and the sun shone down on our wings and the air tasted of salt. we made plans to run away together and make one of the islands our home. i told her stories and old legends and she made them come alive. we cast shadow puppets on the walls and made masks out of palm leaves. we caught fish together and i lit them on fire for her and she spat them out and we laughed and laughed and laughed till the tears rolled down our cheeks. she gave me an emerald necklace. it shone and glinted in the sun and made colors dance across the beach. i gave her a wooden flute and taught her how to play it. she told me she’d treasure it forever. we played music together and the sky lit up with melodies and love and fireworks. we sang and danced until we couldn’t any more and we collapsed on the beach.

one day, almost six weeks later, i asked her to be my girlfriend. the words came out of my mouth before i could snatch them back and the shame burned on my skin and when she said yes it was like the whole world was on fire. we carved our names in a palm tree and made solemn oaths to return there every day.

music

love and music, intertwined birds of a feather yet one of a kind the stars light up, the heavens dance the moons are bright, the clouds romance to a sound- a sweeping symphony two beating hearts in harmony.

sibling

orca introduced me to her sibling the day after. their name was plankton. they kept our secret and helped cover for us when we were gone. when i returned to queen moorhen, they smuggled letters in and out of the palace. plankton was like a sib to me. they played the drums, sometimes, when orca played her flute and i strummed along on my banjo. the wind whistled through the trees as though it was trying to join the party.

“i love you,” orca whispered, and that was all the music i needed.

more

orca asked me, more than once, whether i would rather go home. eventually i told her about the war. how terrible it was and how it had killedmy family and how every time i went back there it reeked of death. i told her how i was just an unsib. orca looked at me for a second. i thought i had offended her but she grabbed my talons and held them in hers.

“don’t let their words define you. you are so much more than just an unsib to me.”

late

we never expected to be caught. it hadn’t really crossed our minds until that day when we got back late. whirlpool, queen coral’s chief advisor, grabbed me and dragged me out of the room. the ground scraped against me and it hurt, but not as much as much as the knowledge that i might never see orca again. whirlpool sneered at me. he snatched the emerald necklace from my neck. i watched, powerless, as they fell one by one to the ground, a metaphor, maybe, to the final end to all our dreams.

there was no light in the room. the emeralds looked like cold gray stones.

i was drowning in midair and there was no-one to throw a lifeline.

letters

of course, orca didn’t give me up that easily, and nor did i. we wrote letters daily. she told me all the things she had never told me before. she told me about whirlpool. she told me what her future was supposed to look like. she shared her poetry. it was beautiful and powerful and it made me cry every time. i would look at it every day, roll it inside my scroll and take it on every mission i had. it gave me courage and it gave me hope.

she told me that if her mother ever found our letters, i was as good as dead. i did not care. nor did she, really. we were both dizzy, blinded by love and stupidity. so i kept writing and waiting and hoping

and then one day, this morning, really, though it feels liek an age ago, there were two seawings at my door with a warrant for my execution.

death death is like an old friend. it has been by my side for as long as i can remember. it took my sibs and my friends and my family and my commanders and everyone i ever loved and everyone i ever hated. i have always known that one day it will take me.

it’s an old friend but it has never been a way out. i see that now. i see that perhaps in many ways i was the strongest of my sibs even though i was the weakest. i see that death is not just an end, it is a beginning. i see that i am about to die and i accept my death. i am not afraid of it. i will look it in the eyes and smile.

the seawings are searching the cave below me right now and i am struggling to get everything down.

orca, if by some miracle you are reading this, i want you to know that i love you. you’re beautiful and special and wonderful in every way and if i were to write everything good about you i would be here till the moons collided. you came into my life when i had no-one else and you filled it will joy and happiness and love. you made me more than just another unsib and you deserve so much more than this. i love you. i love you. i love you. i love you. i love you.

and i am so, so sorry.