Chapter Text
Two months, three days, fourteen hours, ten minutes. That’s how long it had been since Simon’s portion of the pod had been ripped from him and the pod. The extra scars inflicted on him by the pod of orcas had just faded into whiteness like the ones on the older hunters. His pod was one of a series of several that lived off the west coast of England between the Isle of Man and the coast between Blackpool and Liverpool, and the orcas had been passing through. It wasn’t something that happened often; yet, when it did, it was still a mix of heart wrenching pain and acceptance of being one of Mother Ocean’s children.
The knowledge of where he lived didn’t stop Simon from grieving his family and the single calf they had currently. It wasn’t fair that Simon couldn’t have stopped it from happening - it wasn’t! This was a familiar refrain in his mind, even as time passed and the pod seemed to be moving on. At least, faster than Simon was. Simon was still on a hunting ban due to his injuries and to allow him to fully grieve, though some folks were wondering why he was still grieving. Things like this happened in the sea! So why would Simon need extra time?
Of course, there were always those who liked to talk. Simon wasn’t sure when it started, but there were whispers that there was a shadow form seen before the orca attack. One of them; mermaids so old or so terrifying that they weren’t spoken of in more than a whisper. Mers who took after the aquatic dinosaurs, or even those who were formed along the lines of squid or octopi. There were the oral stories passed down to warn and to scare calves into good behavior. Don’t go into this territory alone or in a small group; don’t misbehave or the Plesiosaur or giant squid mers will get you.
Then the whispers turned a bit more insidious. Why did Simon survive, and everyone else die? What did he do to allow himself to be let go? The looks he started to receive were both suspicious and menacing. Some of the calves who had been friends with his nephew Joseph started to be scared of him, especially since he had received massive scarring on his human torso and face. It got so bad that he began to withdraw from the pod, only appearing for pod wide gatherings and to drop off any excess from his hunts or raids of human wreckage.
When he did appear, Simon caused more of a stir by what he had begun to wear. Most dolphins wore at least two to three necklaces, as well as bracelets around each wrist and occasionally something around their upper arms. Simon had already incorporated the shells and stones from his family’s necklaces on his own, but he had taken to wearing a skull mask on his upper face. It was picked clean and white, the front upper part of a human-like skull. The thing that indicated that it was not a land dweller skull was the teeth - just the upper teeth, as the mandible has been removed. They come to a row of blunt points, with the canines being sharper. When pressed, Simon grunted and said it was from a seal mer’s skull.
The final straw came just before one of their yearly celebrations. It was the start of spring, when winter finally drew back her skirts for good and let them feast on the returning shoals of fish. It was also the start of the courting and mating season for their people. Simon was there, floating near the back so as to not disrupt any of the proceedings or cause a large stir. His wounds had finally healed fully, leaving the scars behind. Normally they would be a sign of his prowess against predators and would indicate his strength, courage, and fortitude. Now, with all the whispers going on, none of the females (or males who might have been interested in a fling or two) were even glancing at him, let alone looking at him. He was also indirectly not being included as part of the group, others not grouping near him.
That is what made up Simon’s mind, and had him recognizing that the shunning had already begun. He had been thinking about leaving to find a new pod somewhere new. A month or two previously, he had remembered something that his brother Tommy had told him. Tommy had gone to another pod further north, in between England and Scotland, to find his mate Beth. The pod that she had come from was a mixed one; not just porpoises, but other mers like seahorses, seals, and a variety of fish types. He even remembered Tommy saying something about a gray whale mer who had just arrived before they left, accompanied by a goliath tiger fish mer.
Simon knew that if he let it go for too long, he would be driven out and possibly hurt more in the process. He decided to take the initiative and leave himself. Over the course of a few days, he had gathered up what he wanted to keep (the jewelry from his mother that she had received from his father and her own family; the shells and jewelry from Tommy and Beth; and the teething necklace and toy from Joseph, as well as a few knives and his repair kit for his knives). During this, before the annual meeting started, he noted movement around the corner of the rocks by the outcropping where he kept his things. It was one of Tommy’s friends making his way furtively towards Simon. Simon slung the bag of things around his torso to lay across his back and faced Norman. His hand flexed around the handle of his knife made from the end of a narwhal’s horn.
Norman nodded at him, twirling through the water to show he came in peace. Both swirled around each other in a typical porpoise greeting, bumping their foreheads together with some quiet clicks and squeaks reminiscent of actual porpoises.
“I came to warn you, Simon,” Norman said, his voice a murmur but quite easily heard as they had kept close.
“Are they going to try something at the gathering?” Simon asked. Norman nodded, clicking out his sadness at what things had come to. Norman was one of the few who didn’t blame Simon for what had happened, as he had been close to Tommy throughout their calf phase. They each gripped the other’s forearm, nodding their goodbyes.
“I won’t tell you where I’m going, just in case they think to ask you,” Simon said. Norman agreed, noting that he understood why. As Norman left, making his way back to the pod after they had heard the conch shell horn being blown, Simon took one last look around. Anything that wasn’t personal or that could feasibly be made out to be communally owned was to be left for the betterment of the pod. Everything else, including the things with sentimental or personal value, was either worn by Simon or in his bag. He used the movement of the others towards the gathering area as an excuse to go a bit west (they were all swimming the other way, and wouldn’t see him) before heading north.
It was time to find Beth’s home pod and see if he could make a fresh start.