Chapter 3: Lost (2/2)

The illness unfortunately did not vanish on its own by a miracle, nor was anyone able to heal from it. What was strange though, was that no one died from it directly. I observed the illness since it first appeared in the herd, and it didn’t seem to be killing anybody, but what it did was slow down physical and cognitive functions. Suddenly, conversations became to get more and more shallow and the traveling speed slower. The routes were led in a disoriented manner and searching for food became harder; not just for a few individuals, but for the whole group seemingly. I too began to notice the same symptoms in myself, but their advancing speed was very slow. This was how I was able to survive longer than all the others.
Slowly but surely, our colony decreased in number. The deaths were mostly caused by accidents, like tangling oneself in large fishnets or swimming through an area proclaimed as dangerous because their orientation sense was failing them. I don’t know why I didn’t die, as I behaved not differently from them. I remained unharmed, for unknown reasons.
I was able to witness all the remaining whales slowly turn into unresponsive, floating masses that appeared in my brain after locating them by echo. It wouldn’t be right to call them obstacles; after all, they were still alive. But it was harder to locate them, and harder to differentiate them from actual obstacles because their responses would continue to become barren or hard to decipher. More difficulties when trying to communicate were present, as they hardly responded to any attempts. I also felt that within my abilities appeared errors from time to time; that didn’t make it exactly easier to check up on my companions.
And then, life just became a blur. One by one the few whales that were left died, of various reasons; some got tangled in said fishnets, some stranded and died on land, some disappeared without a word, as if erased from the face of earth. Until one day I opened my eyes to discover that everyone had ceased to exist; everyone except for me.
When that happened, it didn’t surprise me in the slightest. Not that I was happy about it, of course, but with time I accepted that something like this happening in the future was inevitable. Towards the end, I even found myself wishing for some sort of salvation; that I was ready to accept anything as long as it ended this. Of course, I reprimanded myself for thinking something this atrocious. I was stuck in a plight; was I glad, for I finally escaped a pod I felt more and more unfamiliar with; or was I glad, for my companions stopped suffering indefinitely, no matter how their death might have looked like? I wasn’t sure. Both options felt acceptable and simultaneously gruesome, so I stopped wondering about it, to not forever try to solve something that mightn’t have a solution. There was still a long way I had to go, I thought. And that’s where my journey began.