Chapter II
Ah! Kanada! To speak of this! A moose! A cow! A kow! Listen to me, and heed what words are to come, oh ye, ye who would pick the pockets of the earth and consume what ye have found and call it your own. I will begin with a container which has a volume which will contain one half gallon of liquid and which presently holds one half gallon chocolate soy milk, and as I drain it, I will spin a yarn for ye. This chapter is a timed chapter. When the milk is gone, I intend the chapter to end. Go!
It all begins with a woman stepping into her shower with the dual purpose of engaging in hygienic rituals and of delivering a message to the dolphins which reside in that vicinity. Trust me, these adventures are worth a diversion from our main character, and the twain will eventually converge, this I promise to you. This was the discourse our secondary protagonist had with the dolphins:
“Sean says hi”, is what she said.
This was, in fact, the full extent of their conversation. You see, English and Echolocation are languages of rather disparate natures, and the vast majority of speakers of one do not speak the other. So, when someone says “Sean says hi” in English, it is understandable enough that one who is primarily proficient in Echolocation would interpret that as “Ocean’s mine”.
Imagine you are a dolphin, and you hear a human assert that the ocean is in fact theirs. Humans are always asserting such things, and it can become quite irritating, both for the humans who occupy the areas that other humans desire to conquer and rule and for the animals (such as dolphins) whose habitats most humans would love to rule. But this woman certainly meant no affront to the dolphins. See, she had uttered the line “Sean says hi”, because she knew a fellow named Sean who wanted to greet the dolphins, and inquire about some information that only they knew. In short, he wanted to know about the whereabouts of Don Henley, for it was rumoured that he was to be found in the shower of this woman. And certainly if Don Henley was not present there himself, surely the dolphins, who were known to keep watch over all the Earth, would know of his present whereabouts. Let’s give our newly introduced character a name now. She’s a major character, and certainly deserves one. So, henceforth she shall be known has Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen. Perhaps it’s a bit much, but that’s her name, and we shouldn’t denounce her on that basis. All we can do is attempt to learn to pronounce it, if we have the time.
Now, let’s make it clear that where Don Henley is and what he’s doing isn’t so important, because that is his own business, but it was just out of concern that this “Sean” character wanted Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen to ask the dolphins in the shower about his whereabouts. It had been rumoured that he had been frequenting the vicinity, and this “Sean” guy cared about Don Henley. The man had been an important part of his development as a teenager. To hear that he was with dolphins was an unexpected surprise, though a good one, for I, at least, regard the company of dolphins as amongst the best company any creature on this planet could offer. In fact, in elementary school, they made us read a book about a girl who was royalty, or maybe she wasn’t. But I think she was. Anyway, pirates attacked her boat or maybe a storm made it sink. I think it was pirates, but everyone died except for this young child, who ended up being raised by dolphins. Eventually she was “rescued” by humans and returned to “civilized” life and was raised to be “normal”. But, the truth is she seemed happier with the dolphins. So I won’t make much ado about the subject if that is where Don Henley is spending his time, it’s just a sort of a shock that a major pop star would be consistently found in such company. But, Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen, so sorrowful for the grief she had caused these poor dolphins, went to the edge of the sea and became your choice of the following three cetaceans:
1)Sperm whale (physeter macrocephalus)
2)Long-beaked common dolphin (delphinus capensis)
3)Dall’s Porpoise (Phocoenoides Dalli)
Upon having completed the aforementioned transformation, she set out to sea to remedy the current schism she had so inadvertently created between the human race and the dolphins. After several months of campaigning and Echolocation as a second language classes, all was well, the miscommunication was corrected, and with a clean conscience, she took to the air to join her cantallifibrious cousins, the cloud porpoises.
Before we continue any further in our plot, I feel that it is essential to enlighten you as to the history and nature, the society, and the everlasting plight of the cloud porpoises, the most amiable, sentient, cetaceans to ever grace the skies of the planet Earth. In deciding how to inform as regards these creatures, I came across a conflagration in my own nature. Should I attempt to describe them myself, or sacrifice originality in order to provide you with higher quality information. For while I’ve always had an interest in them, I am by no means a scholar as regards the cloud porpoises. In the end I believe that when it comes to nonfiction, accuracy and detail are the most important components, and as such I will refer to a recognized expert. What follows are excerpts from Face Tennis’s celebrated volume, “A Brief History of Cloud Porpoises.”
“In the time before Charles Darwin invented evolution, and the Earth was still in a neonatal stage, and the seas were raging with a newborn’s vivacity, there was a day where a flock of clouds descended to the surface of the ocean, curious to see up-close what exactly what it was that was making the great racket they could hear down below. The sea, conversely, was fascinated by the shapes they saw descending upon it, and with the wide-eyed wonder of the whippersnappers to whose category it belonged, rose up to meet the clouds as they descended. Swimming through the section of sea that was rising at the time was a group of porpoises, otherwise known as a pod, herd, or school. At the point in time when the water and the condensed water vapor intersected, the aforementioned porpoises found themselves stranded upon a cloud as it was rising up with its curiosity fully satisfied. This, of course, separated the porpoises from their homes, but the clouds were more than happy to give them shelter, a new home, sweater vests, and fertile cloudsoil from which a variety of delicious, edible crops could be grown. Thus was born the race of cloud porpoises.”
“So it passed that evolution eventually reached the sky, and in the course of the one hundred and fifty years or so that had passed between the advent of evolution and the time in which our story takes place, the society of cloud porpoises changed in some very astounding ways. At first cloud porpoises were provided with sweater vests by the clouds. This became such a staple of their form of garments that newborns, they found, were often born with them already on. Over time, this became more and more common, and in fact, eventually it was the standard. Of course, nothing in life is static, and as time wore on, those sweater vests developed into full-blown sweaters. Only a few were born on average per year with underdeveloped sweater vests, though there were more in some years and in the fortunate ones, there were none, but the standard fare in the clouds was that in most cases the sweater vests would grow into sweaters by the time the porpoises hit adolescence. Being that the cloud porpoises were and remain to be a peaceful and benevolent society, with a continued track record of tolerance towards diversity, those cloud porpoises who went through life adorned with sweater vests were merely treated as objects of curiosity. The common philosophy was “oh well, they can just put on sweaters made of clouds if it gets too cold.”
For the time being this will be all the quoting of Face’s work that I engage in. I hope those scant details will interest the reader in perhaps picking up that particular volume, and further their studies on these cetaceans. At the same time, I hoped that adherence to the “kill two birds with one stone” philosophy might prove to be of some avail, and while you are hopefully interested in cloud porpoises more than you were at the beginning of the above paragraphs, hopefully you’ll also understand more the plot of our story as it continues below.
When a sweaterless cetacean ascended to the clouds, it was a surprise, but not a shock to those who had lived there long enough to be referred to as in
digenous. This is the backstory on that:
The object of a previous discourse we were having regarded a woman named Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzenand how she had a conflict with the dolphins in her shower over some misinterpreted words. Therefore, she walked to the nearest beach and became an oceanic mammal herself, and set about remedying these problems. It took a while, but eventually she came across a coral reef and there enrolled in an Echolocation as a Second Language course taught by a hard-nosed bottlenose dolphin, who had heard all about our heroine’s escapades. Thusly, he was initially inclined to fail her before class had even begun. Such are often the failings of education systems, where teachers might alter grades based on their opinions of the students. But our student earnestly voiced her contrition and insisted that whatever strife had been created was a result of some misunderstanding. Perhaps he could just tell she was honest, and perhaps it was because dolphins have always been known to be forgiving creatures given the chance, and perhaps he was just an honest educator, but whatever the reason, class began with a lack of grief on either side.
In the end, Echolocation proved to be fairly easy to learn. Sonically, of course, it sounds nothing like Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen’s native language of English, which also happens to be mine, which is why , as you can tell, I use mostly what the Spanish refer to as Inglés and the Germans as Englisch, and the English as English, and the Canadians and Americans as English as well. Now, though Echolocation sounds nothing like the language which I shall hereafter call English, there are certain similarities between humans and dolphins that make the Dolphinian Echolocation easier for any human to speak than the dialect spoken by the flying mammals known as bats (mostly, of course, the variety of bats known as microbats). Both species have similar sized brains and are known to fornicate for pleasure, as opposed to reproduction. In addition, there is an ancient Greek legend that states that the first dolphins were actually humans that jumped overboard from a boat to escape the wrath of the god Dionysus. Hence, there has always been a sort of friendship and a generally positive working relationship between the two species. Not so much can be said for the state of the relationship between humans and bats. Not that it’s a strained one, though wars have occurred, but not since the far distant past. It’s just not so congenial. Aside from the relative ease with which a human might pick up Dolphinian Echolocation, there are some problems, namely with the words themselves. See; take a word like “watermelon”. In English that combination of syllables when spoken forms a word that stands for a delicious type of fruit. In Echolocation that same word translates into an entire phrase that being “get pregnant and die.” However, it is the relative ease of learning this strain of Echolocation, combined with the occasional hurdles, that makes it so fun for people to attempt education in this area. Besides, the payoff is usually great, as dolphins have always made for great friends, but are even better when conversation can be held.
And speaking of hurdles, our heroine leapt into action, bounding over many of them, both proverbial and physical, and swam at full speed through whatever language barriers she encountered, and passed the course with the proverbial flying colours, colours which also taught her to fly.
Upon receiving the certificate of completion and a bag of party favours, she threw a party in order to have a use for the favours, which included various balloons, candy, and those cone-shaped hats that have strings that you tie under your chin. But alas, party time had to end eventually, as it always does. In this case it was roughly three hours after the beginning of the party, for so eager was Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen to repair what she had so inadvertently broken. Tirelessly, meaning she did not become weary nor did she carry any tires with her, she swam about, apologizing to every dolphin she came across, and asking them to spread the word of her contrition on the part of herself, but also for any affront any human might have done to the dolphins, such as ensnaring them in the nets they used to catch tuna. See, the dolphins too loved to consume tuna, but they could grab it right from the sea and eat it fresh.
“Oh, would that we had such capabilities,” she lamented. “We would drown in that sort of process, and by no means do we intend on bringing any dolphins up with the tuna.” She hoped that last part was true anyway. But being the forgiving beings they are, the dolphins forgave her, and after this, human-cetacean relations were at an all-time high, and many collaborative efforts were undertaken. This led to cleaner oceans and ones that were generally better places to find oneself at any given time. Another consequence of the reduction of strain on this interspecies relationship was that dolphins became willing to share some of their recipes with people, and some great cuisine came out of this. Now, it came to pass that in these travels, word of the existence of the cloud porpoises came to the ears of Hkmjaahumikimltgrchjzzen. What an intriguing world it seemed! Full of wonder and delight and the prospect of adventure it seemed for sure. For at this point there seemed to her three options. First, she could return whence she came, to her human home, and once more become human in a manner just as unexplained as her transformation to cetacean. Second, there was the option of remaining oceanic and exploring the underwater realm for a while. Surely many fascinating escapades were to be had here. But the third option was the one that really caught her attention. For here was a world that she had not heard of until this day, which she had the prospect of visiting. They would not miss her at home, as her house had been visited by a squad earlier in the day, who had deemed it a suitable location for a rave, which showed no prospect of ending in the near future. It was presumed that she had turned into a cake anyway, and no human has ever shown sympathy for a cake. In fact, it was in the midst of a famine in which a French Queen who was told that her peasants were starving was said to say “let them eat cake.” We could lament the fate of cake eternally, but that would not be conducive to the continuation of our chronicle. Needless to say, she chose to visit the cloud porpoises because the humans assumed she was cake and were preoccupied with a rave and the sky seemed like a more fitting adventure for the time being, and there seemed to be a greater prospect of accomplishing her original goal of finding Don Henley, as the dolphins would surely have told her he was amongst them if he indeed was. She could always visit the sea again and see her friends. For now she yearned for the open air, but to still remain in her current form. As she left the sea for the sky, she waved to her newfound friends and hoped that the human race would be so willing to maintain positive relations as the dolphins were.
Empty my container of chocolate milk now is. Others shall soon come.