Wings Over Ice-Wings for Oraan--II

 

as told by Luma, the Albatross

In the vast embrace of ocean's deep,
I met Oraan, wise and slow,
His heart as wide as waves that hold the world.
He sang to the morning light—
A song that trembled through the sea,
And I, with wings of white,
Flew low to listen, curious, moved.
The ripples danced. I stayed.

Our friendship bloomed like sunlight on calm water.
We shared no words, yet silence spoke for us.
I circled while he swam,
A giant heart beneath my glide.
Together we moved north,
Chasing cold winds and strange, bright skies,
Where auroras shimmered like dreams
And the stars breathed in colors I had never known.

Each day, his song became a rhythm in me—
A balm against the cold,
A promise echoing beneath my wings.
He called me kin, though not in voice.
And I called him friend, in flight.
His every rise through frozen waves
Was poetry.

But then—
The ocean darkened.
The song faltered.

The waters grew thick with things that shouldn’t float.
The warmth came, not with life, but with decay.
I flew low and saw the sheen—
Oil on the surface, choking breath.
Plastic ghosts drifted
Where fish once danced.
Oraan’s voice grew faint.

He slowed.

He looked at me, and I knew.

He dove one last time,
And didn’t return.
Just silence, rising bubbles,
And a stillness that broke me.

I screamed across the water,
But the wind only carried the echo of what was.

I flew south.
Alone.

The skies that once held promise
Were now heavy with sulfur and smoke.
Below me, reefs lay dead,
And green islands had crumbled into gray.
The sand was no longer sand—
But sharp, synthetic fragments
That burned to see.

I landed, one day, on an island choked in ash.
Children stood at the shore,
Their eyes wide,
Their world already breaking.
To them, I told our story.

Of the whale with the ocean in his soul.
Of the night skies painted in auroras.
Of a bond formed in silence.
Of joy that once danced where now the sea only sighs.

I spoke of what took him—
Not age, not fate,
But us.

Us, and what we’ve done to the water and the sky.

And yet,
As I took flight again,
Tired but burning with memory,
I knew I carried more than grief.

I carried a song.

Oraan’s hum lives in me—
Each beat of wing, a heartbeat of the sea.
And I will fly,
High above broken things,
To plant seeds in the minds of those still listening.

Let them remember the blue.
Let them mend what we destroyed.
Let friendship between wing and wave
Be possible again.

So I rise,
Not for sorrow—
But for change.