"Fiss" Parts 1 Through 8

"Fiss" Part 8

"Jeb, thank you, that was utterly amazing.
I know that there were other beings out there, after you had shown me a few of them when you were taking me on our first tour.
Yet this was the first time I had the opportunity to actually talk with another person from another world.
What surprised me the most was that Zawsz was so much like me in thought.
Just because his body and world were different, he was still a person like me and worthy of respect.

As we walked along, I marveled at the landscape, so similar yet so different.
Looking at the trees, I had thought that a tree was a tree.
I expected that when we traveled to other worlds, I would see that things like trees would be much the same as those on my world.
Yet I had to revise my thinking as to the nature of things.
I was trying to judge things by my own small world view.
Just meeting Fiss as well as Zawsz should have led me to the idea that my world was just one of many.

When I thought about it, I began to understand that there was an infinite diversity of life to be found.
If a tree from my world were to take root here, the scientists would marvel at the fact that life and its various forms were not the same everywhere.
Turning to speak to Jeb, I discovered that he was nowhere to be found.

"Jeb, must you always play hide and seek with me?
Couldn't you just say "Follow me" for once?"

From the wind came Jeb's laugh.
Tuning in to Jeb, I jumped to his present location.
The second I jumped, I went into panic mode.
I was going to drown. I found myself underwater, panicking. I thrashed around looking for a way to air and dry land, yet when I spun around looking, there was no surface to be found, no place to go that had air to breathe.

Just as suddenly I realized that I wasn't drowning, in fact, it seemed that I didn't need to breathe, much like when I was on the moon that hung in the sky over my world.
As my mind became quiet, I heard Jeb calling my name.
Jumping to his location, I found Jeb in conversation with a whale.

"Mary, we are back on your world, I need to show you that there are other life forms even in your world that are intelligent.
Mary, I want you to meet ******, (the name was unpronounceable because it was a part of a song). She is the leader of her family group.

As we floated there, a smaller whale swam up to me, only to come face to face, eye to eye with me.
It's huge eye stared into mine.
Thinking about my new skill in talking to others, not human, I said hello.

What came out of my mind and voice was a song that caused the baby whale to become excited.

Turning and swimming in circles around us, I could hear the baby laughing when it discovered that we could talk to each other.

"Mary, the whales of your ocean are just as intelligent as the people who live on the land.
The Fiss have been fascinated that two intelligent species developed on the same planet.
While this is not unheard of, it is rather rare.
It is because your world is mostly water that allowed the whales to develop intelligence.
Mary the whales have been intelligent for far longer than humans.

Yet because of the barrier between air and water, both of your people never had the opportunity to learn from each other.
Mary, in the future, that will change, both whales and humans will discover each other and create a unique friendship.”

While we were chatting, I discovered that a dozen or more whales had come to join the conversation.
In seconds the water was awash with song, songs so beautiful, I could listen to them all day long.
The whales were thrilled that they could talk with me and I them.
For the next hour, the whales told me about life in the sea, how they lived in packs of family groups yet often joined with other groups to share gossip, as well as searching to find mates for those who were not mated.