Wind Whales

This is a story about two children watching the clouds go by, and witnessing a miraculous feat. This was inspired by Hendrik Boom, who, in a mutual writing class on brainstorming introduce the idea of wind whales. It was months and months ago, but it was one of those ideas that stuck with me, and resulted in this!

---

Sarah and Connor were laying in the long grass of the park, looking at the clouds when they first saw it.

“Oh, that one, that one looks like a whale.” Sarah gesticulated wildly.

Unlike the other 15 time she did this, Connor actually saw it. “Whoa, ya, it really does look like a whale. Its’s really detailed actually.” And he squinted a bit, it was too detailed.

The both watched for a moment, and the whale cloud opened its mouth and swallowed down a smaller cloud.

Sarah and Connor exchanged a look, was this really happening?

The longer they watched the more fantastical it became, the whale continued on swallowing up smaller clouds and then it did the impossible, it changed direction.

The whale started slowing down, and then turned and looped backwards, and then it just stayed still with its mouth open, with clouds flowing right into it.

They watched in astonishment as the whale ate more and more clouds, and in grew and grew, and then, then while they were so busy watching the first whale they didn’t even notice the second until it was almost on top of the first. They circled each other, appearing to play, and it was a spectacle to behold.

They continued eating the other clouds, becoming larger and larger and Connor and Sarah watch is silent fascination as it seemed they were going to grow until they took up the entire sky.

How was no one else seeing this?

They watched for three whole hours, the whales eating, playing, dominating the sky, and it was the most magical thing they had ever seen.

Just when they thought it had reached its peak, a parts of the first whale seemed to start to break off. Was this it, was it ending here and now.

“Connor.” Sarah asked plaintively, and Connor grabbed her hand.

The piece broke off and Sarah let out a wail but Connor shushed her. It didn’t look like a random cloud, it looked more like a, a,.

“It’s a calf!” Sarah shrieked with excitement, and Connor saw it then too. It was a baby whale. There were three of them now.

They were pretty stationary for a little after that, and then the calf began to move. Not slowly like the adults, but quick and darting in a way that was completely unnatural for a cloud. It too grew, but when it was not twice the size it started at, the elder whales grew restless.

The moved, trapping the calf between them and seemed to move as a triad, they rolled, until it was as if they were facing away and all Sarah and Connor could see were they great tails moving up and down in great strokes.

It was Sarah that noticed it first. “Where are they going?” She asked.

“Hmmm?” He muttered in reply.

“They are getting smaller, don’t you think?” She asked, and Connor realized that she was right. They were getting smaller, every stroke of their epic tales was making them just a little bit smaller.

“Where could they be going?” Connor asked, and wondered for the first time where exactly they had come from. Was there a part of the world where wind whales were the norm, or had they come here from somewhere much further away.

Sarah didn’t answer, and they laid there for another hour watching them get smaller and smaller, until they were just a small dot.

They headed home after that, regular cloud watching had lost its appeal after the magnificence of the wind whales that had graced their lives.

They told the entire story to their mother when they got home, but instead of being intrigued, she was just all Mom about it.

She smiled broadly when they finished their tale, “I am glad you two had such a fun day playing together at the park. I made some cookies while you were gone, would you like some?”

Sarah and Connor exchanged glances, it had really happened, hadn’t it?

They both reluctantly took a few cookies and a glass of milk and Connor, being the older of them, at 10, decided it was his duty to write it all down. After all, who know when it might happen again, and he wanted to be sure he remembered every detail.