#whale facts illustrated

[splatatattat]

https://x.com/oceanx/status/1709311362885644538?s=46&t=HJT0AiBW4bv8qxTovZYFBA

Today I learned that whales play with kelp.

[venusforfran]

Had a lot of fun with this! A poem zine about whale falls because frankly I'm obsessed. Do contact me if you'd like to purchase a copy, I'm hoping to put them online if people like it enough!

[paintingsbykf]

Whale Shark (01) Watercolor Print

Whale Shark (01) Watercolor Print Card

Both the watercolor print AND card of the Whale Shark (01) are included in the PaintingsByKF Etsy shop wide sale! All prints and cards are now 20% off! Check out the shop for the Whale Shark (01) original design and more!

https://paintingsbykf.etsy.com

[jormation]

A blue whale's heartbeat is so loud that it can be heard from 2 miles away.

[ranticore]

the whalers

This is the most 'modern' cast of characters on Siren, at a time when technology is equivalent to about the 1900s in Earth. Their ship is a cutting-edge coal-fired hydrofoil with a metal hull (i'll have to decide what type of metals are abundant & available to them but it is likely iron). A hydrofoil ship lifts physically out of the water using the underwater foils, which generate lift similar to a wing, vastly increasing the speed of the vessel. These foils are specifically designed to penetrate the denser layer of water which can more easily support the ship, and they can be raised and lowered at will. This ship is the Seerkaseer, the same callsign (Sierra Oscar Sierra) as the visor worn by its astronavigator, so that it can be tracked using the global telecommunications array.

They hunt giant siphos, which also propel themselves out of the water using the same hydrofoil principle (i was going through a hydrofoil phase last year when i designed these things...). The translucent shells are used to create a transparent glass-like material which has particular applications in pelagic villages, and the meat is eaten. But it's the hydrophobic oil produced by the tail glands, which reduces drag in flight, that commands the highest prices at the market. It's one of the most precious liquids on the planet, in fact.

When a giant sipho is sighted, the ship raises itself out of the water and gives chase. The crew uses a battery of harpoons and bow chasers to hook onto the creature, though it can take several shots to penetrate the shell. The ship can only fly above a certain speed, and this is achieved by propellers as well as its simple sails. When it makes a kill, it can sink back into the water and unfold a floating platform on which the entire body is butchered over the course of a few days (or weeks if it's a big one). Close to shore, the body might just be towed to a land-based processing facility, but the largest and most valuable siphos are only found in the unbroken sea, away from the ridges and mazes of land.

I named each of the crew and also made a few more guys which I didn't illustrate. I wanted to have a sort of slice of life story on board this ship. The main conflict lies in the kattakati (one of which is illustrated there, the lookout) presence on board the ship, as this would be rather rare at the time. I'll make a big post later (I need to draw updated art, I don't like the old art I did) but essentially a kattakati is, legally and culturally speaking, a single person with two bodies. It's a quirk from the dry breaks area of the Eastern continent and almost unique to the zeta type of people, which have a very different history to all other lineages. Other people struggle to comprehend the kattakati and don't really Get It, but it is exactly what it sounds like - two people who enter a permanent pairbond such that they become one person, total and complete extensions of a single being. But I'll talk more about it later.

Being sooo honest here I was deeply, deeply inspired by reading the manga Drifting Dragons at the time lol it made me want to make a whaling crew story so badly, and given all the other whaling references in Siren as a whole it felt appropriate

[even-in-arcadia]

Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales

In my very informed opinion it is absolutely essential to read Chapter 55 with visual aids. Here are some highlights pulled from Ishmael's Most Hated depictions so we can all be on the same page about what whales definitely don't look like.

Guido Reni & William Hogarth get the benefit of the doubt on account of the fact that it never says Perseus's sea monster is a whale. We can all agree that these definitely are not:

2. Robert Sibbald was the first naturalist to officially describe a blue whale and I'll give him a pass on being first and blue whales being incomprehnsibly large even now, but this really is not accurate in pretty much any way.

See below the cut for more "monstrous" depictions!

3. Physeter or Spermaceti Whale by Captain Colnett. Allegedly drawn from "life" but, getting out our scale rule will show that its eye is the size "a bow-window some five feet long. Ah, my gallant captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking out of that eye!" Truly a missed opportunity from the captain there.

4. Oliver Goldsmith's An History of the Earth and Animated Nature is truly a treasure. Per Ishmael "I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow". The illustration on the right isn't directly mentioned in here but honestly it's a treasure and I feel obliged to share it with you. There's too much going on there for me to possibly pick out highlights. They're so bad they're perfect. No notes.

5. Bernard Germain, defying the laws of physics here. "Not only incorrect" but also does "not to have its counterpart in nature"

6. Cuvier's Sperm whale is "not a sperm whale but a squash." Succinct and shady. Perhaps my favorite description in the entire chapter.

[forgottensibiria]

Amphibian Perucetus and giant scissor sharks

In previous posts, we considered Moropiton and Poseideongenia, two groups of animals that migrated to Siberia through the Ural Sea in the Late Carboniferous. Before moving on to the actual descendants of these Seymouries - the Angarians themselves - we can distract ourselves with the creatures that the Moscow settlers could encounter on a vegetable raft.

The Dynasty of marine amphibians

Let's start with a strange speculative kind that shouldn't exist. Ichthyocetus, the "whale fish", is a large animal reaching a size of up to 2.5 meters and is a direct descendant of tetrapods of the Moscow Sea, primarily tulerpeton. The latter is known primarily for its six-toed limbs developed relative to other modern tetropods, as well as for its location. The fact is that the remains of the tulerpiton were located 200 kilometers from the supposed shore: this and the very structure of the body of the tetrapod under discussion suggest that the animal lived in shallow water, breathing atmospheric air (no bones corresponding to the gills were found, and the head was separated from the body - i.e. the tulerpeton could lift its head) and moving forward using the legs, pushing them off the bottom (their strength would not be enough to allow the toolerpeton to move on land). It is possible that some tetrapods could have stayed in this habitat, becoming the main predators of shallow waters, where larger predators like eugeneodonts or placoderms could not move normally.

Tulerpeton, 360 m.y.a. Art by Dmitry Bogdanov

Tulerpeton found fossils

Ichthyocetus is the last representative of this hypothetical clade, whose population was almost completely destroyed by the decline in sea level due to the new peak of the Karoo ice Age. His basic diet is benthos, which he can find in the buried ground: echinoderms, starfish and lilies, as well as, if luck smiles, the corpses of marine animals that the surf brings. He could also purposefully hunt for moropitons if they swam too deep. The bones of ichthyocetus are incredibly dense; this allows it to stay in the water during strong waves. This animal is able to sense the approach of a storm - then it tries to find the shore and crawl out onto it, burrowing into the sand; then they are most vulnerable. If it is impossible to find the shore, then the ichthyocetuses go to depth, swallowing air, where they can stay for 3-4 hours. Sometimes this tetropods go deep in search of new food sources, where they can catch young eugeneodonts or small fish. Surprisingly, ichthyocetuses are not the largest representatives of their clade (let's call it Ichthyocetusae): some species could grow up to 3 meters and lead a more pelagic lifestyle.

They usually appeared during periods of intense glaciation with a reduction in their original habitat. Unfortunately, this time climate change has become insurmountable.

Something about scissor sharks

If the meeting of protoseimurians with their "cousin" was unreliable, then the same cannot be said about eugeneodonts. The largest animals of the sea were the edestus, or protopirates. Although the largest protopirate species, E. vorax, could reach 6 meters (making it the largest predator of its time), the Moscow species were somewhat smaller and reached a maximum of 4 meters. These sizes correspond to the modern white shark and mako shark.

Edestus, 313—307  m.y.a. Art by Dmitry Bogdanov

Comparison of the four species of Edestus. Authors of this illustration is Leif Tapanila and Jesse Pruitt

Both poseideonogenes and moropitons encountered these cartilaginous fish - most likely, they were four-meter E. heinrichi and E. triserratus commensurate with ichthyocetus. Most likely, the edestus hunted numerous nautiloids and other soft-bodied prey and could well attack rafts, mistaking them for a dead cephalopod with a spiral shell. The protoseimuria themselves would not be of interest to the edestus - they are too small. That's what saved them.

[murasaki-cha]

As a Witra enjoyer, how do you feel about the fact if in the webtoon she's ever put in a corset due to time period materials she's a Whale wearing whale bones. Does this make her the equivalent to if a human worse a human ribcage as a corset?

Proto from the bottom of my heart and soul what the legitimate fuck

But also I don't actually believe Witira would ever wear a corset for more reasons than one and that would be one of the reasons. A reason would be that it's not combat appropriate as she strike me as someone who wears battle ready clothes or clothes that do not hinder or restrict your movements and PAN4 also gives you that idea with the clothes she has illustrated Witira in. But it would mostly be the first one ethically.

But also I wouldn't really hold Roan to our world time period standards. Like a lot of Cale's clothes look too modern for certain time periods and they use magical materials for lighting and other stuff, they appear way more modern than some settings in their world would indicate. So who's to say they don't use more advanced materials for their clothing and corsets?

Idea: Witira in a corset made of a human ribcage as a countermove and she would absolutely slay in it

[myrmyrtheorca]

ding ding ding! After more than one month in the making, I'm finally dropping the fourth character sheet upon you, plus a little announcement! My scanner isn't really the best and I hope Tumblr doesn't butcher the quality of the illustration, but I'll put a photo of it at the end just in case

After this one, I'll start focusing on making "longer" versions of the existing character sheets through the Atlas expansion of Notion. So we can consider these Tumblr posts as "short versions" for now!

More on that soon hopefully

---------------------------

Your commitment... is misdirected. Your efforts, misplaced.

-Tristam, Ch.7

Tristam Cavalieri

Gender: Male

Pronouns: he/him

Age (at Ch.1): 15

Nationality: Italian

Height/Weight: approx. 160 cm/49 kg

Flame type: Pallid Flame

Affiliation: Cavalieri Family (Mother Branch, heir)

Birthrates among the Cavalieri family are extremely low, and even lower when it comes to biological males. One would say it’s a curse, but it is in fact a blessing: children born male among the Cavalieri are destined to either a destined death, or oblivion.

If born without the Pallid Flame, they’re considered useless, a waste of flesh, and are normally relegated to low-level jobs among the family. If born with flame, their bodies are doomed to give out early in life, some not even making it to see their adult days. This “event” - because defining it desease would be underestimating it - is called the “Chiamata alle Armi” (Call to Arms).

But the coming of Tristam was truly a miracle. Born with the Pallid Flame and without the gene that causes the Call to Arms, he’s been treated like a gift from heaven itself ever since early age, a ruler fated to bring new life and glory to the Cavalieri Family. The result of his upbringing is a proud, gracious, and seemingly courteous boy who’s been his mother’s most faithful follower and apprentice.

He takes his role very seriously. The young lord has been gathering consensus quickly, and has made strong allies among the family throughout his teenage years. Before him, there's only one documented case of a male-born Cavalieri who possessed the flame and yet lived to old age - the Cavalieri Fifth, Bonfante.

His future is bright, he knows it. And nobody doubts it.

------------------------------------------------

Please feel free to hit me up through asks, DMs or Discord with any kind of questions, feedback or general thoughts on Killer Whale you might want to bring to my attention! Answering questions (while avoiding spoilers) is of immense help to me to develop my OCs more efficiently, so for anything, I'm all ears!

Previous character sheet: Anemone

Preliminary Info on Killer Whale: update post

My Ao3 account: myelltheorca

photo versions:

[gal668]

Introduction post!

🌊hello and welcome everyone, my name's gal!🌒

i was born at the age of 0 in 2006, brasil, but not in the beach side or the rainforest side... apologies in advance for any english mistakes!

anyways, i usually draw my ocs or special interests of mine! some of them are tally hall/hawaii part ii, steven universe, world history in general, sansara (a project of a whole world i'm creating with my friends), gravity falls, jack stauber, paranormal order (cellbit's rpg), melanie martinez, the ocean, atarashii gakko, witchcraft/paganism, marble hornets, junji ito, and of course, jojo's bizarre adventure :D

always good to mention that i know some people among my special interests are really problematic, but it goes without saying that i just really enjoy their work. as a radical leftist i'm absolutely against anything that involves misogyny, imperialism, racism, transphobia, homophobia... yeah, you got what i meant ;) i'm anti-capitalist in general.

here's my tiktok account if you wanna see my unproportional face!/hj

twitter is banned in my country right now so i decided to come back here and make my account a more comfortable and organized place, since i'm gonna use it more from now on.

some fun facts about me: my mbti is infp, i'm a scorpio, my favourite colours are lilac, black, naivy blue and wine red, i'm genderfluid, my favourite shark is the whale shark, i'm goth despite also liking metal a lot, i'm neurodivergent and go to therapy but I'm not quite diagnosed yet, my biggest kinnies are fugo, ghiaccio and jotaro (from jjba), dipper (from gravity falls), sasha and marcy (from amphibia), lake (from infinity train), blue diamond, amethyst and spinel (from steven universe), sal (from sally face), rika kawai (from wonder egg priority), and last but not least, jay (from marble hornets).

thanks for reading y'all! XD here's an illustrated introduction i did a while ago, see y'all soon! :)

(bob is my nickname btw, you can call me that too of you'd like)

[marigold-tmbg-archive]

fact: this is actually the hat in the album cover for apollo 18! no, it's not an illustration from a magazine or whatever. it's john linnell fighting a whale

[affixjoy]

I’ve read a few fics lately with some great timey wimey premises so if that’s your jam you might also enjoy them!

If I missed your fav please share in the comments! I love this sort of thing and will always want to read more.

Some Version Of You by @ncc1701ohno

Summary: Bones is stuck in a time loop and stuck in his room. With Jim. He's forced to admit how intense this thing between them has gotten, how much he feels for Jim, even as he's been falling in love with Spock.

Does what happens in a time loop stay in a time loop?

Thoughts: I’m a sucker for time loops and this is just such a great short look at it with academy era McKirk.

Highlights: the angst! The longing! THE END!

It Ends Or It Doesn’t by @muirmarie

Summary: McCoy dies, and Kirk breaks his hand on a wall. Kirk dies to save McCoy, and McCoy breaks his hand on Spock's face for not stopping him. Spock dies, and he doesn't have to see what happens next, because the day resets. The day keeps resetting. McCoy keeps dying.

Thoughts: these self sacrificing idiots just love each other so much and I love THEM!

Highlights: there’s a loop towards the end where they accept what is happening and it’s probably my favorite part of this fic.

Grief As A Four Dimensional Figure by @jennelikejennay (moreta1848)

Summary: "One might arguably say it is not fully logical to care whether I cannot return to Vulcan because it no longer exists or because it is separated from me permanently in five-dimensional space.”

“No, I think I get it,” said Jim. “Like, I haven’t gone back to the old house in Iowa in years, but I do like knowing it’s there. If my mom sold it and it got knocked down, it would make a difference to me.”

The ambassador nodded. “Likewise, even in four-dimensional space, we are separated from the things we have lost only by distance—by the fact that we cannot easily travel along the timeline.” He marked out a section of his timeline, then a dot further back in the bottom timeline—Jim’s timeline. “My marriage is here. I am here, in a different timeline and at a different time. But my marriage exists. It is a figure in four-dimensional space which will continue to exist, in that sense, eternally. So long as the timeline does not collapse, it is a permanent part of history. So although I do not have my spouse with me, I know that he existed. That somewhere, in a time and a dimension I cannot go, we are meeting for the first time. That somewhere, I am asleep in his arms.”

Thoughts: I rarely like aos as much as tos fics, but this one worked so so well for me.

Highlights: every reference to the one with the whales, all the feelings about Amanda, all of Spirk’s big feelings about each other.

Way From Within by @gunstreet and @justveeing

Summary: Jim and Spock are assigned together for a rescue mission, and in the exhilarating aftermath, their attraction to each other comes bubbling to the surface. But the next day Spock is surprisingly distant, and the rest of the morning starts to seem eerily familiar to Jim...

Written by gunstreet and illustrated by lorvee, this is a K/S timeloop story in the vein of Palm Springs or Groundhog Day.

Thoughts: pretty sure we all collectively lost our minds about this one when it came out a few months ago, but if you haven’t read it yet it is GREAT. All the fun time loop tropes I love with Kirk and Spock at the center.

Highlights: the art is so good! I love seeing these scenes illustrated!

Happy reading everyone! 🖖

[errantsquam]

Why Donald Duck is a Duck Centaur

Or rather, a thorough analysis on the anatomy of anthropomorphic ducks.

So I'm playing a certain Nintendo game ahead of time, and a duck character's anatomy caught my eye. It was interesting, and ripe for the ol’ art brain to overthink to the logical extreme.

Naturally, I don't want to get struck down by the Nintendo ninjas, so today we'll be talking about Donald Duck.

Behold.

Standard cartoon duck anatomy, right? Well, there’s more to it than it seems.

We’ll be breaking down his anatomy using the human anatomical structure, since he’s anthropomorphic, and going down from there.

And for reference, we’ll be using a diagram of a real duck skeleton.

I will also be adding on with my own diagrams, though the skeletons illustrated are in no way perfect. I also do not claim to be an expert on animal or human anatomy, and this is purely for fun and morbid curiosity.

Let’s start with the head.

The Head

Donald Duck’s eyes are front-facing, and from existing material, we can conclude that his neck connects to his skull from below, not from the back (as with real life ducks).

Therefore, it’s safe to say that Donald has a mostly-human skull structure, minus the beak. Since his eyes are so large, he likely doesn’t have much of a forehead at all.

The Body

We can conclude that his ‘chest’ area is similar to that of a human’s. His arms are very identical to human arms (besides the four fingers), and is stylized to look like wings. There should be a ribcage to give his chest that shape, as well as to connect to his arms.

In many animals, the clavicle/scapula helps articulate the forearms, and is located next to the ribcage, so we can conclude this is the same for Donald.

Now, moving on to the lower half of Donald’s body. It looks something like this.

It does kind of look like Donald has a thicc booty, but we can see something similar in the bodies of real life ducks.

They don’t have a human upper-body, so it’s less like a fat ass and more like…a duck.

So, how does this look like in the skeleton?

…uh oh. It’s another ribcage.

But wait! If Donald’s anthropomorphic, maybe it’s just a pelvis? Well, maybe, but that distinct shape is hard to replicate with *just* the pelvis of a duck.

The duck pelvis, if you will. ^

Maybe it could be fat. Maybe he does have a really fat ass. Maybe it helps cushion his weird duck spine when he sits, or keep him warm while swimming. Well, maybe. But it would be odd to have such a fat distribution without a skeleton to give it that shape.

For context, the blue whale has the most body fat out of all animals, and you can see how its skeleton guides its shape:

(Unfortunately I had to get this diagram from Shutterstock, which is not a very accurate anatomical resource, but just look at a blue whale skeleton and at an actual blue whale.)

But I digress. Since we’re taking this essay to the logical extreme already, it stands to reason that, if we’re comparing to real life ducks, Donald Duck does, in fact, have two ribcages.

Excuse how tight the drawing is. I’m not very good at ribcages. You can tell I’m the kind of artist who uses shorthands whenever they sketch a ribcage.

Anyway.

A centaur has a human upper body and a horse lower body. Donald Duck has a human upper body and a duck lower body. Therefore, he is a duck centaur.

However, we are not done with this analysis yet. We still need to talk about his legs.

The Legs

So, duck legs, right? Well, we already know they connect to the pelvis the same way as a duck. They’re kind of shoved to the back, because that’s where the pelvis is located. Still, they’re not quite actual duck legs.

From existing material, we see his knees bend the same way as a humans, and therefore, we can conclude that Donald is plantigrade. What does this mean? Well, his ankles stay planted to the ground, basically.

Here’s an example diagram, going in the order of: Plantigrade, Digitigrade, Unguligrade. Plantigrade is mostly primates, like humans. Digitigrade is most common amongst animals, like dogs or birds. Unguligrades are stuff like horses. (Unrelated, but did you know that this means that horse legs are just advanced fingers?)

Anyway, the advantages of being plantigrade is a better balance as a tradeoff for speed. (Source, because I am a cool person: https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=190923)

This aids animals in fighting, as opposed to fleeing.

Which checks out, because Donald has canonically been shown to fight, especially since he’s not very good at healing:

The Conclusion

By analyzing Donald’s anatomy and comparing it both humans and ducks, we get this:

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Image Citations: Well, I was actually going to cite my image sources, but Tumblr only allows me maximum ten links per images, so I'm just going to leave what I put into Google Images.

"digitigrade vs. plantigrade"

"duck"

"duck skeleton"

"indian runner duck"

"donald duck"

"donald duck kingdom hearts"

"blue whale skeleton"

[saranilssonbooks]

Best whale wishes to you from little old me and my BFF. Thanks for being awesome and making me happy, folks!

Had something more realistic in mind, but the illustration style apparently got the better of me. (I should in fact be working right now.)

Bonus story: a group of little boys stopped by my table and wanted to take pictures of my drawing. I let them, since the thought of someone out there being shown one of said pictures and identifying the characters amuses me.

Bonus bonus story: Teenager stops to stare at the skeleton, reads the plaque and exclaims "shit, I didn't know they still existed!"

[vibratingskull]

Mermaid!Thrawn x f!reader part 5

Part 1, 2, 3, 4

"You're searching something in particular, miss?"

You turn to the Librarian, a nice short lady with round glasses that comically enlarge her eyes.

"Well, yes... In fact I'm searching several things : I would like a book on sign language, a book on the legends of the town and the gazette archives around the 50's. I don't know if you would have all that..." you explain. She seems to think for a second. "Wait at this table, I will give you what you need." she says as she walk away among the shelfs. You let your gaze travel on the covers of the books, leafing through some by curiosity, those are illustrated books for children about fairy tales. You realize you've never heard Thrawn sing like in the tales, maybe this is just folklore... You pick up an old illustrated edition of the Little Mermaid and read it again. How long since you last read it? Years, most probably. You sit at the table and let yourself carried by the tragic tale of the adolescent.

You're fully immerged in the story when she came back with the books. "The archives are on microfilms, if you want to see them we will need to take out the machine. Is it urgent?"

"No." you shake your head with a smile "No, I can come back next week.", "It would be preferable, indeed." You thank her and opens the legend book "Legends of our region" and pass everything until the aquatic creatures part. It speaks of a monster toad that haunts the swamps and a little undine that died for a pearl, you skim over the unnecessary text until you find the mermaids, and your thoroughly disapointed : The text is one page long with a childish drawing of a siren. You sigh. You choose a second one, to find out that they don't speak of it at all you take the last one with little hope but you're more lucky.

"The mermaid is an antique sea creature, existing through multiple form in multiple cultures, but the siren of our region is a bit more specific and have capacities her cousins lack." tells you the author. You install yourself comfortably and start reading. Your mermaid specie is especially sociable, helping the fisherman and the shipwrecker victims, they would have guided the fish to the shore with their songs, commanding them. They used to be nomadic tribes, following and hunting among the great whales but became sedentary as humans took the roles of the whales, providers of food. Magical creatures, they can metamorphosis in sea lion, daulphin or walrus, and even human for a brief amount of time. They say they also posess a potion to transform a human in a mermaid. The tales of the shipwrecks by singing mermaid would be a pure invention, the sailors simply choosen to take the potion and disapear into the sea forever and the desesperate partners staying on land shared the tell to mourn their relationships. Once every millenial, the tribe would get on land to enjoy a hunt party and taste what the land as to offer different than the sea and then go back into waters. They would be a second tribes that didn't help humans but eat them, drowning sailors and careless swimmers, they would be hideous creatures screetching in the night, obsess over blood and flesh. They live in the deepest layers of the ocean, where the light can't shine, in contrary of the good mermaid that higher in the layers. Today the mermaid disapeared, never to be seen again, like every mythologic creatures.

Your smartphone rings, you received an sms. It's your mother telling you that your father will sleep at a friend house tonight because they argued again.

You sigh.

You exit the library with your books, saddened. You wish you could come back in time, when you were young and your parents didn't hate each other... When they would laugh and play with you. Today they only scream and break dishes. When was the last meal you ate with them that didn't end in an argument?

What started all of this? Did they fall out of love? Did your mother cheated on your father before or after the first major argument? Before or after your father started drinking? Did he start because of that or because of his work?

You remember one night he came in the dead of night into your room, drunk, and wake you up to cry...

"Why are you crying, child?" a voice rises next to you. You raise your head to an old men in a cassock, on the front steps of the church.

"Huh... Nothing." You wipe your tears, blinking "Just bad memories."

"Would you want to tell me? To alleviate your heart." He proposes. You look at him, he looks stern, uptight, dead serious and cold. "No, i'm not really religious. It would not be-", "I didn't mean in the chapel or anyting of the sort, just have you talk would maybe ease your trouble by putting it into words." He corrects.

"Ho!" you're suprised "That is really nice of you, but I don't like talking of my problems to strangers, that is not really their cross to bearn, y'know." You try some humor, but it doesn't work, his face remains rigid and stoic. His eyes look like they could see your soul, making you feel a bit uneasy. "Then speak to a friend, maybe they would be of good advice.", "Yes sir." you nod, timidely.

"Can I see your book?" he asks politely, but his gaze is hard. You hand him the book in silence. "You try to communicate with your deaf and mute brothers and sisters? That is a good thing." You smile politely "Something of the sort." You observe the church as he leafs through it, you remember loving visiting it. Your familly isn't religious, you just like visiting old buildings, maybe you should try urbex, it could be fun! Him however, you've never seen him before

"You're new here, father...?", "Father Tarkin." he gives you back the book with a nod "In fact I came back, you must have been a infant when I was first here.", "Oh. It was a will of yours?" His hard gaze travels across the streets like he could see sin just by looking at it. "I felt a sensation of unfinished business here." You feel you won't have any more info than that so you politely thay goodbye "Well, welcome back father" and start to walk away

"One moment please." you stop dead in your tracks, turning to him with wondering eyes "Your necklace..." By instinct you grip it "What?", "It reminds me of something, is it a family heirloom?", "Yes" you lie, "Oh... curious." He seems to think, holding his chin and frowning. You feel yourself shivering. What if he knows?

"It looks like the tiara exposed at the museum.", you sigh relieved "Oh? Really?", he nods "Yes. Maybe it was inspired by the same art style?", "Probably"

He looks at it some more and shakes his head "Anyway, the night will soon fall. Go home.", "Yes father!" And you go off, you pedal to the beach and jump off your bike, run to the shore and push a bark into waters.

You paddle towards the setting sun, craddled by the waves. You paddle along the cliffs in search of one particular cavern... When you found it you enter it, when the sea will rise again, the entry will be completely hidden and you'll be stuck.

You get out of the bark and walk inside the large cavern , familiarizing yourself with the place. Then you take your flashlight and study the sign language book, waiting for him

An hour passes by when you feel a claw grazing your tighs, you raise your head from the text to see Thrawn looking at you intently. You can't help but smile. "Hi!" you wave at him surexcited, he imitates your gesture slower, like he wonders what does it mean.

You take out a fish container and he hops on the bank to seat next to you "I hope you like salmon!" you sing. You open it and give him some of the fish and you eat it together, sneakily you robbed your mother of some soy sauce and put some on your piece. He looks interested, "You want to try?" you smile. He takes the bottle and traces the text on the tag with his claw. "I doubt you can make sense of it." you mock gently. He opens the lid and inhale the scent. He frowns severely and you burst out laughing, "You're surely not used to it under water!", he looks at you like he understood you were mocking him. Nevertheless he tries it, lets a drop of it fall on his tongue and taste it. His face is indecipherable and he puts down the bottle without letting an ounce of expression twist it. He eats his salmon silently and with dignity, while you do your own cookery, slicing it and dropping it in the sauce. "Usually I eat it with sesame too." You mundanely explain, you start talking to him about your day, about every little things that happened to you. He lays down on his elbow and listen, letting his codal fin resting in water, you see his ear-fins-things wave at some moment, and his dorsal fin undulate. Once again you vent all you can, he remains still, unmoving as you both can see the sun finishing to set and the water slowly raising. You'll soon need to exit the cavern.

But you feel so good here... with him. You can't speak together, but you feel connected on an intimate level. Like you knew him for years.

You let your eyes wonders on him and you notice he's wearing your old plastic bracelet. "Ah!" you smile, you take out the necklace and show it to him, he nods slowly.

You lay beside him, letting your feet in the water, grazing his fin.

You remain silent, watching the stars through an opening in the stone of the cliff. You point at one star "Ursa minor." you indicate. He points another "Cha'fh." he murmures, "Antares." you say, "Strech" he responds, "Perseus", "Me'ro"...

You redo the wole sky like that, you giggling and him all serious. "I probably shout note everything you say, so I can remember it all my life. Oh wait!" You take out the sign language book and a mini-moodboard with markers out of your bag, " I think about ways to communicate better!" you exclaims. He raises back his torso with a raised eyebrow.

You're about to explain to him when your smartphone rings. He growls at the sudden sound. "It's okay, it's a smartphone, it won't do anything" He relaxes when he see the small machine but looks puzzled when you start speaking to it.

"Where are you?!" bawls your mother. You wince. "I'm out... with a friend.", "You didn't warn me about that! I was worried dead! Come home this instant!", "Mom, I'm an adult, I can do-", "Huh,huh, young lady! As long as you live under my roof you will abide by my rules!" and she hungs up.

You sigh, Thrawn looks at you, curious. "I have to go..." you grumble. You gather your stuff and enter the waters, you'll have to swim the sea rose. Thrawn slides next to you ready to follow you but you hesitate, you got your flashlight to look in the dark but in salted water you won't be able to open your eyes. You wince "Crap." Thrawn seems to notice your hesitation.

He gently takes your hand and pulls you gently. You take a deep breath, close your eyes and go under water. You feel him swim next to you with his powerful tail, pulling you towards the exterior. You let him guide you, swimming with your legs, he pulls you with an assured hand.

Finally you pierce the water with a gasp. Thrawn is next to you, holding your hand, waiting for you to take back your breath. You'll be drenched at home. Great...

"Thank you." You gasp, he nods and you go back to the shore together. You part with him almost reluctantly, but he let go without difficulties. You walk on the sand as he remains in shallow waters, looking at you walking away, you turn to him and wave him goodbye, he imitates you and you look at him swiming away.

Who knows when you'll see him again, he comes and goes as it pleases him

@blueninjablade3 @al-astakbar @thrawnspetgoose @readinglistfics

[sixminutestoriesblog]

witch balls

When I was a child visiting little tiny New England towns was different than it is today. These days when I walk down a carefully curated Main Street in some wind swept, coastal town you can barely smell the salt in the air anymore and every shop you step into is pristine air-conditioned and smells like a department store used to, all faint traces of new plastic and underlying pungent scent of whatever it is they paint large shipments of clothes with to keep them during shipping. Most of them are still set up to look old, in fact many of them are in old buildings, but the weight of all those years isn't really allowed to show through. It's all ocean cottage core now, neat and white painted and artistic sea glass and sandpipers in simplified wooden statues, wire legs frozen instead of blurring with motion. Don't get me wrong. I love ocean cottagecore. I would decorate my whole house in it if I had the money. And the little shops, pristine and pretty, absolutely have a sweet appeal to them, not willing to give up their personality for the sterilization of 'Big City' box stores. I do miss however, what tourist shops in those same little towns used to be. Less plastic magnets for the refrigerator shaped like whales and sweatshirts of labrador retrievers declaring them a specific colored Dog and more -

half forgotten not-quite-antique shop, hidden down some narrow salt smelling alley where the stones that make up the road are uneven and there's a dusty smell to the cracks of the wood floors that never goes away. As a child going to a 'tourist shop' in one of these towns was like walking into a magic shop, a true magic shop, with books of breathtakingly beautiful paper dolls as detailed as any old fairy book illustration, imitation scrimshawed whale teeth, old time candy, books about lady pirates and clever glass marbles full of painted fish. The things those old shops offered felt local, magical, impossible to find in any other town in the entire world. Childhood colors everything more vivid than it probably was but I still think of longing and a child's minor spending money in a world of treasures when I remember those shops.

In one of those shops, as a child, I saw my first glass fishing float.

At the time it was being sold as a Portuguese fishing ball, a better buoyant for nets and lines than cork or wood. I remember, distinctly, the surprising weight of it when I picked it up. I was used to glass being fragile, light, airy. The fishing ball was none of those. It had a weight to it and a solid feel to it that said it was fit to ride the choppy waters of the icy Atlantic and do its duty, tide in and tide out. Storms weren't going to break and drown this glass. It would ride the waves forever and when it finally broke free of its net, it would find the shore, in itself or in pieces as polished sea glass. These balls were sturdy and I fell in love with them. The first time I could finally afford one was a triumph and the rare times I managed to find them in shops, as the years and the advance of more proper 'souvenirs' advances, I snatched them up even if it meant my spending money for the rest of the trip would be lean. Finally, eventually, the balls disappeared from the last shop and I thought my meager hoard was all I'd ever see of them again, an old relic that was already being phased out before I'd even discovered them as a child.

Imagine my surprise when, years and years later, a friend, helping me fix my bathroom from some water damage, saw one of them where I had it hanging in the window and seemed surprised to recognize it. He called it a 'witch ball'. I corrected him but he was adamant. And so, thanks to the internet, I rediscovered my glass fishing floats - with a new name and a new story to go with it.

Witch balls are hollow glass balls. They can range in size, I've seen some as small as rounded shot glasses and the older ones seem to be about as large as my fishing balls, which is about the size of a cantaloupe. Like fishing balls, they're not made for perfection, in fact, the bubbles and imperfections in the glass blowing process are considered part of their selling points. They tend to range in colors, with modern day witch balls being an absolute riot of colors or a beautiful gradual shift from one color to the next. They've been around for quite a long time as well. There are accounts of witch balls hanging in English houses, especially sea-faring ones, as far back as the 17th and 18th century, though they were often known as 'watch balls' back then and not quite as riotously colorful as modern ones, tending to be more often made of green or blue glass. Sometimes they would have salt or herbs put in them before they were sealed but the main thing witch balls needed were stands. In fact, something I just learned, the way to tell a kugel (friendship) ball and a witch ball apart is to look for the glass strands inside the ball. Witch balls need those strands to be effect. Witch balls are, after all, created to be traps.

The idea was that you hung your ball inside your house, often in an eastern window but sometimes from the rafters or set on top of a stand. Than, when evil things tried to enter the house in the night, they would be distracted and then captivated by the way the light of the moon played against the glass of the ball. Sometimes, the evil had to touch the glass, sometimes being ensnared simply happened automatically once their gaze was fixed on it. Either way, the evil would find itself pulled into the glass, trapped in the maze of the strands inside and unable to escape. There it would remain either until the morning sunrise burned it away or until the glass ball was broken, freeing it to continue its harm. Not all witch balls worked that way. In some cases, the glass was made to be more reflective with the idea that evil things, as we've already read, didn't have reflections and couldn't bear the reminder or that the glass would turn aside the evil gaze and reflect it back on its creator.

There is some speculation that glass Christmas ornaments may be tied into something similar as well, although, humans also simply like hanging sparking objects up for no reason but 'pretty' as well.

Bottle Trees serve the same general purpose and can still be found in parts of the Southern US, a tradition brought over from the Congo during slavery times. The belief is that blue bottles hung on tree branches will entrance and capture evil spirits inside their depths and hold them there where they can't cause any harm until the morning sun burns them away with its rising.

As a last note, I should point out that calling my collection 'fishing balls' wasn't necessarily wrong. While some of my later purchases did have strands in them, my early ones from childhood didn't. Apparently there's a very invested set of people who collect Japanese fishing floats on the West Coast of the US and Canada as well.