Fission and Fusion
Disparate cultures rally together against a common enemy, while for others a cohesive thread begins to fray.
News of talking whales travels quickly, and it caused an incredible stir among the social gravediggers, as it was the fulfilment of their own mythos, just as it was the fishers’, to meet another intelligent species. They gathered near the spot of first contact in their thousands, from all across the coast, over the following days and weeks, as the fishers too gathered in numbers. But it was a lot to take in, and a language barrier still existed with most of them, requiring the constant work of few available fisher translators. There was urgency involved if there was not just a gentle race of whale-persons, but also a sinister and invading force of cannibal whale-persons. Many of the gravediggers were at least tentatively interested in providing aid, and they did not seem to be asking a lot.. yet. They believed that they were incarnations of a creator spirit that would unite their people against a common threat. Their ideologies were not that of the gravediggers, but the fishers lived their lives by a shared connecting thread of overseeing other living things, and the gravediggers found much in common with it. The fishers foremost expected them to call together all of the daydreamers, of which they learned there were other factions. Pastoralists, who raised livestock. And warmongers, their new enemy, were also their same kind. The former abided by a different lifestyle and didn’t get along with them, and so a long feud had existed between their cultures, but the fishers seemed to feel there was still potential for good in them. The latter, however, were villainous and evil creatures, clearly irredeemable, and utterly corrupted by chaos. And the gravediggers were inclined to agree, for a culture that hunts people for food, even with all the alternatives available in such a rich ecosystem, seemed inexcusably cruel.
So they agreed to fulfill the fisher’s prophecy and to attempt to call the pastoralists to join their forces against the warmonger menace. And so they went out upon their boats in great numbers, as the fishers and their assimilated young pastoralist expats swam along and loudly announced the coming of the second counterpart, and to hear the wisdom they spoke. This news too spread far and wide. The pastoralists heard, in a chain from one clan to another. Whether or not they wanted anything to do with those who had abandoned them for their enemies, they listened. Some curiously ventured toward the spectacle and saw it with their own eyes, returning home and insisting it was true. The fishers really were cooperating with the second counterpart - a tiny daydreamer with the creators’ hands, that shaped the world to suit its desires. Chaos and uncertainty followed, the fishers and pastoralists alike forced to reckon with a once-in-all-history event that most expected to never come in their own lifetimes. It was an event a fair percentage of them may even have determined was probably not even true, and yet now it was unfolding in front of their eyes. Their counterpart called upon them to work together to overcome the rising threat - the evil that was taking both of their people. For the pastoralists were also being predated upon by the warmongers, which took their young as well as entire herds of their livestock and so threatened both life and livelihood. And in the days and weeks which followed, a tentative truce developed. Called together by a mutual ally and facing a shared threat, the fishers and the pastoralists started to speak, and to listen, focusing talks on their common ground and the danger they both faced.
But the gravedigger’s importance to the situation at hand was not only apparent to the pastoralists.
~~~
The warmonger authorities, at the leading edge of their expansion, were the first to observe the strange animals that spoke to the other daydreamers. With the majority of their population stationed at the perimeter of the coastal shallows, their matriarch realized the dangerous variable the gravediggers would present to their plans. Their highest in command instructed her army to kill them - all of them - on sight immediately as they expanded into the shallows.
And so the war officially began when the first gravedigger boat was overturned, just one of countless on that first dark day. The gravediggers were caught largely unaware, for they hadn’t expected the enemy of the daydreamers to systematically target them instead. Many lives were lost. Their new allies initially panicked when the army swept in. At first they fled, trying to protect their children, their own people. Chaos reigned, and the seas were stained in red. But then they returned, fisher and pastoralist side by side. Their brothers had come to unite them… they were succeeding, and it was now time to assist the second counterpart. They had advantage of number, if not size, for the warmongers could not risk the survival of their young and dependant or their caretakers. Further, the leader sought to prevent most of her people from seeing the gravediggers, lest they be influenced away from her... their goal. The controllers, those second in command to the matriarch, each dictated the actions of their own clans within the greater population as they migrated. Only some of the army could be considered proper soldiers; mostly younger males with strength but little experience, and older females with lots of life experience but no more child-bearing capacity, they traveled ahead of the rest and so were given first intel. Further behind and secured behind such forces, the mothers and the young were protected. Even in their society - perhaps especially - the children were to be protected at nearly any cost and not exposed to the brutality of conflict before they were able to reasonably defend themselves. For the warmongers, for all they were shaped to believe in their culture, were not inherently evil. Fundamentally, many of them only wished for a secure life and ability to successfully raise their offspring.
But their leader carried the torch of an ancient and respected family lineage that promised that this could only be attained through aggressive combat and dominance over all others. And there was no outside influence for anyone to be exposed to that offered an alternative… until now. For these coastal daydreamers, with their strange allies, seemed to live a life unlike anything they had known. Children were in abundance. They suffered no scarcity. The matriarch knew what she wanted for her people, but she began to worry whether, if they saw the better lives lived by their prey, if new ideas might bubble up in their heads. She couldn’t let her own people be deluded into falling back upon the old fables like the weak-minded smaller daydreamers. And they could not allow these crawling rat-birds to organize their new targets as the pelagans had done… time was now of the essence to stamp it all down before it flared too big to control. She would not let them ruin everything she wanted... what was best for her people, whether or not they might agree.
She was the matriarch. She dictated their future. And their future was reclaiming their place as gods.
~~~
The pastoralists and fishers knew the landscape better than the invaders, and how to use it to their advantage. With only some of the warmongers fighting, they may have had an upper hand, but they were much less skilled in physical combat. Lives were lost on both sides of the battle, but at the end of the battle the fisher-pastoralist union successfully saved the lives of hundreds of gravediggers caught at sea, giving them time to escape to the shore. The warmongers retreated when evening came, bearing new scars. These were to be viewed as a badge of honor in their culture, which also utilized intentional scars to tattoo themselves with symbols which told stories and accomplishments. But for a group which had already lost one war, the biggest scars of the first battle effectively ending with a draw were felt in the warmongers’ pride.
And their leader felt the sting strongest of all, for she realized now she had made a mistake that might cost her all she strove to achieve. The decision to target the gravediggers first was a dangerously impulsive one, for they had little understanding of them. They were very small, so from the limited life experience of the warmonger people, they should have been a basically defenseless prey animal and to be considered no threat at all. When knocked off of their seaweed icebergs, or whatever it was they floated about on top of, they didn’t swim quickly enough to escape gnashing jaws and were so easy to kill that they could have trained their infants on them. But the warmongers didn’t understand just how independent of the water this creature could be. For after that battle, all those that managed to escape to the land now vanished. They communicated the danger far and wide, the message burning down the coasts east and west at a faster clip than the invading front could swim. The gravediggers were not from this realm. Though they could traverse along the surface, they were fundamentally of the land and could retreat beyond the shores... and none could follow, or know what they had the means to accomplish in that world, that might as well be a million miles away from their own. Even skimming the surface of the shore was impossible for a daydreamer… and they were left in the dark about what, if anything, the second counterpart - the shaper of their world - would return with to face them.
Both factions retreated to lick their wounds and plan their next move. The leader of the warmongers was quiet, retreating into her own thoughts… the cat she foolishly hoped to keep in the bag was out. Her people would soon all know of the counterpart’s arrival. Mothers and children saw fathers and old aunts and grandmothers return from the shallows with grievous injuries. The soldiers would speak of what they had seen, and what they had done. And she had little way to prevent the fall-out. There were already so few of them left, and less after today. Severe punishments intended to make a statement, which she would have considered in other circumstances to any which spoke against her decisions, would only reduce their numbers further and there just weren’t enough soldiers left to lose more. It was hard to deny what those animals that allied with the other daydreamers were.
As she floated alone at the edge of her people, those she had taken responsibility for and who had trusted her, she knew that the seeds of dissonance were already sown.
~~~
“They resemble us, but they build with the hands of God.”, spoke one soldier to his mate in the dark quiet of the night.
“But that cannot be true, we are the only -” she interjected.
“The matriarch knew, and she did it anyway.”
“She knew what? What did she know?”
“That we were wrong.”
...
"Will we ever be able to keep our son safe?"
"There might be a way."