A Whirlpool X Orca Shipfic by Kittyluvver
Foreword[]
I am Whirlpool.
I am not a murderer, not a traitor. I did not betray my people, I am not the enemy of my kin. I am not blameless, but neither am I wholly guilty. I am not a villain - but neither am I a hero.
I, Whirlpool, am only a dragon. No more, no less.
And I ask of you to think of me as such. Even though you may have heard my name, known of my crimes - of you, dear reader, I beg of you no more than your patience, your objectivity. Will you hold your judgement? Will you let my voice be heard?
For this is my story.
Once - oh, so many years ago! - I loved Her Highness Princess Orca of the Kingdom of the Sea. I loved her with a love that burned white and pure, so bright that it became my world, so beautiful that it consumed me.
Now she is dead, and her name is vilified in the minds of every SeaWing dragonet - she is the cruel animus Princess, she who was so consumed by lust for power that she strove to kill her own mother and future kin. She, the murderess; she, who lost her mind.
And I weep to know that there is no one left to remember her for who she was. A daughter. A friend. A lover. For I loved her. And I love her still.
Yet when she died, my heart died with her.
This is our story.
Chapter 1: Gold[]
The day I met Orca was the day my life truly began.
It was a perfect day, one of those rare spring days when the very air itself seems full of golden sunshine, when the sea and the sky sing together in perfect harmony and the winds invite your heart to soar.
I remember it all in crystalline detail; how a gentle breeze seemed to bring the sky to dance, and suddenly the dark, stale air of the Palace library was stirred with the balmy fragrance of ocean spray tossing in the pelagic tide. The breeze circled the tall spiraling marble balustrades of the Pavilion and swept through the delicate pages of my scrolls, sending seaweed-paper pages fluttering in its wake. The intoxicating perfume of paper, ink, water, and stone mingled and suffused with the salty-sweet scent of the ocean not far away; calm and azure blue under a cerulean sky.
How innocently it all began! How simple and true it all was, in the very beginning! I loved her from the start - I loved her as soon as I set eyes on her. In retrospect it all seems so clear to me, though I hardly knew it at the time. For I was only a young, lowly scribe in the Palace library, newly arrived from my home on the outskirts of the Kingdom a few weeks previously to serve the Queen. The former librarian, Mollusk, an old, myopic grey SeaWing who’d had only one good leg left, had finally retired after sixty years of faithful service. I was chosen as his successor; young, green, and wet-behind-the-ears, as the older courtiers would say. I had not yet set foot in - nay, I had hardly even begun to see - the web of tangled intrigue that the Palace that the court of Queen Coral truly was. I was just a young SeaWing, blithe and curious, who loved books and the ocean and solitude. What did I know of adventure, of politics? What did I know of love?
On that bright, golden morning I was in the library - which would hardly be surprising for anyone who knew me. As the sunlight streamed in from between the high arching pillars I was bent over my desk with the enormous scroll An Annotated History of the Kingdom of the Sea unfurled out in front of me, diligently copying out Chapter 3: The Scorching. The black ebony of ink contrasting against the pale ivory of paper, as letters formed words and words framed knowledge - oh, it was spellbinding! But so lost was I in the words on the page before me that I startled when I felt rather than saw footsteps behind me. I turned - and there she was.
I remember it all so clearly - how a shaft of daylight slanted in from the lofty windows above, how the light seemed to catch her scales just so, how she walked in the sun. I remember how her scales shimmered midnight blue, awash and glistening with tiny dew-droplets of water adorning her hide like a mantle of diamonds - it looked as if she had just emerged from a swim. Her diaphanous wings were loosely folded by her sides, and yet I could still perceive the pattern of intricate swirls that indicated royalty spangled across the translucent membrane. Her sapphire blue eyes turned too and fro, surveying the shelves of scrolls around her with a sense of ambivalent curiosity. And I knew, from somewhere deep in the depths of my heart, that she was the single most beautiful dragoness I had ever seen.
Then her eyes fixed on me, and all of a sudden I could not breathe.
“Oh, hello there,” she greeted me casually, waving a slender paw in my direction. Her voice was soft and mellifluous, a silken mezzo soprano, not unlike the tinkle and chime of falling water. “Are you the librarian?” she asked.
I was staring at her, staring shamelessly - the droplets of water on her damp scales sparkled hypnotically in the sun, and I was dazzled by their light. Silence - the silence stretched out and quickly became uncomfortable as I struggled to form an articulate response with an unworthy mouth that had suddenly gone mute. The knowledge that she was speaking to me - me! - and wait - she had asked a question - she expected a response! Oh Moons! Panic filled my lungs like bile, and all of a sudden I remembered myself. Tearing my eyes away from her glittering scales, I did my best to disguise my moment of impudence with a forced cough. “Yes, I’m the librarian here,” I replied breathlessly, once I had remembered how to speak again. “Your Highness.”
Maybe she had missed my gawking, or maybe she was just too polite to dwell on it. Her gracious smile did not waver, so I relaxed a little. “Good! So then maybe you could help me,” Orca announced, gesturing carelessly at the rows upon rows of scrolls all around us. “I’m looking for some reference scrolls. You see, Mother wants me to start reading about the other tribes and the other Kingdoms, now that I’m getting ready to take on more responsibility.” She laughed, rolling her eyes, and made talon quotations around those last two words. Somehow, I got the subtle impression that Orca neither knew nor cared about the other tribes and their kingdoms.
In any other dragon such a callous indifference towards knowledge would have irritated me to no ends, but I was so wrapped up in the warm glow of her photophores that her disparaging tone barely even registered in my mind. I wished that she would stop smiling at me - each time she smiled, every last thought in my head seemed to scatter, like a shoal of baitfish darting for cover under the eye of a hunting gull.
“Scrolls about the other tribes?” I repeated, shaking my head slightly as I desperately tried to focus. “Sure. Okay. I think I could help you with that. If you’d come with me…”
Leaving my desk and An Annotated History of the Kingdom of the Sea, I made my way down one row of shelves. As I walked I was acutely aware of her presence behind me - each footfall, each rustle of her wings sent warm shivers down my spine. My footfalls seemed unnaturally loud and clumsy, compared to her soft tread.
“Here we are,” I said, coming to a halt beside one tall bookcase. Rearing up on my hind legs, I pulled three scrolls off of the shelf and handed them to to her one by one. Somehow, as she clasped the scrolls in her arms, all I could think about was how magnificent her deep blue scales were against the pale seaweed parchment - such a contrast from my own sickly green, ink-stained paws.
“You must be new around here. I’ve never seen you before. I’m Orca,” she noted conversationally, as the two of us made our back to the front of the library. As if I had somehow missed that she was Princess Orca, the only daughter of Queen Coral! As we neared the entrance she smiled at me again, and asked; “What’s your name?”
My name? Orca wanted to know my unworthy name? What was my name? How did I not remember? For a few moments I only gaped at her, my mouth open like a fish’s.
“Um, w-w-Whirlpool,” I finally stammered out.
Her eyes glittered with mirth. “Thank you,” she said, inclining her head so that the beads of water on her scales gleamed even brighter in the sunlight. “Until we meet again…. Whirlpool.”
My name had never sounded better. All I could do was nod my assent.
And then she opened her wings and soared off, winging away on the gentle breeze, the sunlight gilding her scales in silver. I watched her go, and little did I know that in those few minutes, those first precious moments, our lives had become irreversibly entwined. She was not flying away into the golden day with just my scrolls - she was flying away with my heart.
I had read in books that there were three types of love in this world. The love you had for your family, the love of your tribe and kingdom. And the third type, the greatest of them all, the truest and most elusive; the kind of love you gave to someone else. The kind of love that burned stronger and more glorious than the sun - the love that could consume you, cast you down from the sky, drown you in sorrow and then leave you reborn, all anew.
I confess, at that age I barely knew that this trapped-butterfly feeling in my throat was called falling in love. All I knew was that something had changed - somehow, the world seemed just a little brighter. I looked out at the spot where Orca had disappeared into the sky, and somehow, that beautiful spring day was a little more beautiful. The sea and the sky seemed just a little more blue, the sandy shore a little more white, the sun shone a little warmer against my scales, and the joyful laughter of the dragonets playing in the lagoon rang in my ears like music.
Because I was in love - thought I did not know it, and even if I did I would hardly have been able to bring myself to admit it. But a world with Orca in it was so much richer, so much fuller, so much more beautiful than a world without her.
Chapter 2: Silver[]
Over the next few days, she was all that I thought about. No more could An Annotated History of the Kingdom of the Sea weave a spell to capture my attention for long. Sometimes the words, which had been so clear, so rapt with meaning, blurred in front of my eyes, and I would remember Orca’s sapphire eyes, the spirals on her wings, the dazzle of water on her scales. Sometimes I caught myself staring out the Pavilion window at the palace below, looking for the glimmer of her midnight blue scales in the SeaWings going about their business in the lagoon below. Sometimes I would hear footsteps at the door of the library and turn around hopefully, listening for her dulcet voice calling, “Whirlpool?”
But it was never Orca. It was usually Moray, another literary student and an aspiring publisher, come to alphabetize scrolls. Or maybe Urchin the messenger, or Lagoon the cook. Every time footsteps approached I would drop whatever I was doing and look towards the entrance, wishing to see Orca’s slender silhouette. But it was always somedragon else - and after that initial burst of hope, my heart would, without fail, sink down to the general vicinity of my paws.
Over the next few days it seemed to me that every last dragon inhabiting the Summer Palace of the Sea - even dragons who’d never before had cause to visit the library - found time to stroll in through that library door just to vex me. Footsteps - I would turn - and it was only Piranha. Then, a few short hours later, it was Tortoise. Then it was Pearl. Then Shark. Even Her Majesty Coral herself made an appearance one day, strolling down the quiet aisles to peruse the growing collection of her own literary works. Under any other circumstances I would have been beyond honored to have the Queen herself visit my little kingdom of scrolls and seaweed, but the day she came, flanked on either side by a column of attendants and guards, my reception was rather lackluster. Queen Coral was not, after all, the dragoness I wanted to see the most.
I did not see Orca again over those next few days, and yet I saw her everywhere. I saw the gleam and flash of her photophores in the flickering sheen of algal bioluminescence that suffused the Palace lagoon at nights. I saw the color of her deep blue scales in the star-strewn sky at dawn, and the clear sapphire of her eyes in the gemstones that studded the thrones in the SeaWing council room.
Get ahold of yourself, Whirlpool, I would berate myself, burying my face in my paws whenever thoughts of Orca intruded upon my concentration, circling and darting through my mind like dolphins harassing a school of mackerel. She’s just a dragoness. Just another dragoness. What’s gotten into you?
And the real irony lies in that on paper it seems so clear to me and any other reader exactly what had gotten into me. But at the time, the word love never even crossed my mind. I would find the most outrageous excuses to rationalize how I was mooning over her. These scrolls aren’t going to copy themselves, I thought to myself, staying late one night in the vain hopes that Orca might chance by again. I’ll just take the long away around the lake, I reasoned, dawdling one afternoon beside the central lagoon in the hopes of running into her. And when all of my intentions came to naught, I dragged my heavy paws back up the library, in despair of ever laying eyes on her again.
She borrowed three scrolls, I reminded myself one lonely evening, to keep my spirits up. She’ll have to return them someday.
And then the cynic in me just snorted, and pointed out that during our brief encounter Orca had shown little to no interest in the content of the scrolls I had handed to her. Who was I fooling? They were probably lying unread and untouched in some moldy corner of Orca’s private quarters at that very moment. Moons knew when she would bring them back to me - if she ever did. It wasn’t as if I could charge the Crown Princess of the Kingdom a late fee.
Of course, Orca and I were destined to meet again - otherwise this narration might have come to an end rather prematurely. But as it was, our next chance encounter was nearly two weeks - two agonizing weeks! - after when she had first stopped by the library. As you might realize, two weeks is nearly an eternity for a young dragon with a pretty dragoness on his mind, but a little distance gave me some time to cool off, think things over, realize that I was obsessing over a Princess - a Princess who I barely knew, no less. Eventually my pragmatic side won out, and I tried to turn my mind to other things. I’d almost succeeded, too. In the space of two weeks my recollections of Orca’s face and voice, once crystal clear, began to fade and fray with time. Soon I began to hope that, with time, my obsession with her might become no more than a distant memory.
How wrong I was! Fate is a fickle thing - of course, the very day I finally gave up all hope of ever seeing Princess Orca at all was the day that I finally ran into her once again. And then all the butterflies in my stomach, all the herring-shoal clouds in my head - returned, swarming in full force. I was in love, after all, and love has proven time and time again that it is very hard to kill.
It all happened on one sunny morning - the sunlight was more silver than golden on the first glorious day, as that day sky was strewn with billowy white clouds riding the wind alongside the SeaWings wheeling and turning over the lagoon below. I had woken early from my quarters on the far eastern side of the Pavilion and was making my solitary way around the waterfall and the lagoon, a trek that I had made countless times before. And yet this time, something was different - something made me pause, as I was passing outside of the armory, where the Royal Guards lived and trained.
Normally a librarian like me tries to give the guards a wide berth, as the nature of our professions don’t usually allow us to see eye to eye. On any other day I would just duck my head and trudge on by the armory without a single glance back, but this time something caught my eye. A flash of midnight blue scales, a clarion war cry in that voice I remembered so well.
Could it be her? No, certainly not! I had spent two weeks entertaining the vain wish that I might see her again, and after my dreams had been dashed over and over so many times, I was not eager to get my hopes up yet again. I shook my head violently, as if I had water in my ear. This was all just more wishful thinking that would get me nowhere. I should keep walking, I told myself, frowning at the sand between my inkstained paws. And yet, something held me in place… Those scales. That voice… I had to make sure. I had to.
Against my better judgement, I hurried over to the low wrought-iron fence ringing the armory compound. Wrapping my paws around the metal bars of the fence, I peered in - and saw her.
She was glorious. Her midnight scales rippled and flashed in the sun as she spun around, her star-strewn wings flared and mantled. Her bright eyes were narrowed in concentration, her teeth bared in a ferocious snarl. All at once she moved with the white-hot speed of a striking viperfish, leaping forwards in the blink of an eye and aiming a flying kick at a guard advancing on her. The poor SeaWing was barely able to raise his iron shield in time to block the strike. The clatter of claws on metal echoed in my ears, and yet I had eyes only for Orca as she followed through with a heavy blow from her tail, tearing the shield from the guard’s paws and sending it flying across the courtyard.
“Hold!” The shrill command came from the other side of the courtyard. My attention had been so fixed on Orca that I had barely noticed Piranha on the other side of the compound, watching the combat. Now the female SeaWing came hurrying forwards, and it was the first time I had ever seen her pleased. The scarred commander was smiling; a grisly sight, as most of her teeth were either broken or missing. Dreading that she’d see me and send me packing, I ducked a little lower behind the wrought-iron fence - but Piranha, like me, had eyes only for Orca.
“That was very good, Orca!” she praised. With her mouth so mangled, Piranha had a strange, hissing, lisping speech that sent a cold thrill of dread down my spine. I, and indeed every other dragon in the palace, tried to keep out of her way as best I could, because in all honesty, she gave me the shivers. It wasn’t just her looks that made her so ghoulish - it was her eyes too, how blank and grey they were, how she never seemed to blink. Piranha had eyes like a dead shark.
WIP - more coming soon!