whale

I was standing at the edge of a wharf which wrapped around an old wooden building. The floorboards under my feet and the planks of wood that made up the walls of the building were dark grey and damp with sea spray. The ocean was deep under the dock; the building was built on stilts, sitting out over the water. My friend was standing at the opposite end of the wharf, similarly positioned at the edge of the wooden structure. We were each holding a long, flexible stick with a foam casing over the end and we were playing a game where we tapped one another gently with the foam, edging each other toward the sea. We tapped a passing man wearing a safety vest with reflective stripes crisscrossing his chest and knocked him into the water. We all laughed as he climbed back onto the jetty; it was just part of our game. I tapped my friend she dropped off wharf, but just as her feet touched the water I saw an enormous whale passing. I hoped desperately that she would see the whale and be safe from harm; that the weight and speed of such a huge animal travelling through the water beside her would not drag her under. I could not see where she had gone and I ran up the edge of the wharf, peering into the black water. The whale turned and instead of simply passing by, swam as if to swim under the building, directly where she had entered the water, and suddenly there was not one whale but four mammoth dark grey whales swimming about the wharf. I ran up to the end as the first and biggest whale leaped out of the water, its great bulky body emerging above the waves that crashed on the jetty. I was not sure if the whale was angry or if it only appeared that way because of its sheer size and power. I could see the striped grey underbelly of the whale, a giant wall of flesh, before it plunged back down into the sea. I ran inside looking for my friend. She was there, lying face-down on a mattress on the floor, wet and shivering. I looked around for something to cover her with but, seeing nothing, I asked her if she would like me to lie on top of her, to warm and comfort her. She nodded and I woke.