Dolphin Child by James Carmody

developed a taste for squid!’ joked
Summer gently. Spirit looked at her calf.
    ‘ It looks like your little one hasn’t either’ he replied with a
smile. The calf had chewed a spare tentacle cautiously, but then
spat it out in disgust. Milk was evidently much better.
    Spirit hoped that the pod would move on and find a shoal of
fish that he might actually like to eat, but they didn’t. He was
hungry but he didn’t mind. He thought he might go off again later
when they were resting in the afternoon and find something by
himself. It didn’t seem fair to drag Dancer out with him. She liked
squid after all.
    He hung peacefully in the water whilst the others hunted.
Dancer peeled away from the rest of the pod and swam up to
him.
    ‘ Let’s go out again later and find you a tasty bite’ she said
playfully.
    ‘ That sounds good’ he replied. He knew he could rely on Dancer.
It would be much more fun to go out with her than to go
alone.
    It often surprised Spirit where the day went. After the hunt,
Chaser had recited one or two of the old stories as they relaxed
and before Spirit knew it, midday had passed and the sun had
started its slow descent back to the horizon. By this time though
Spirit was even hungrier than he had been when he left Lucy that
morning.
    ‘ Come on then’, he whispered to Dancer as the others started to
doze off. ‘Let’s go.’ They made their excuses again and swam off
together companionably.
    ‘ Let’s head for the coast.’
    Soon they were swimming within a short distance of the shore.
It was a hot sunny day and as they passed by a beach, they could
hear the sound of humans nearby, splashing and shouting as they
played in the water. The two dolphins were too far out to be
spotted and it was funny for them to think that even though they
were so close, the humans were oblivious to them.
    ‘ Those humans couldn’t see a squid if it squirted them in the
eye’ joked Dancer as they swam along.
    Though Dancer wanted to swim on, Spirit was curious about the
humans on the beach and they lingered at the edges, just out of
sight. Spirit was intrigued by the noises that they were
making.
    ‘ What do you think makes them come to the water?’ he
asked.
    ‘ I don’t know. Do you think they’re looking for fish?’ replied
Dancer.
    ‘ But all that noise would frighten any fish away.’
    ‘ Maybe they just swim in the sea for fun?’ continued
Dancer.
    ‘ There’s just so many of them’ said Spirit, glancing over the
surface of the water towards the beach. ‘Why would they want to
cram themselves up so close to one another like that?’
    ‘ Well I suppose they just live in one big heap all the time.
They don’t need open space around them like we do’ replied
Dancer.
    Spirit thought that even though he was so close to Lucy, he
would never understand the ways of humans. They were such strange
creatures and much of what they did seemed completely nonsensical.
When they went somewhere, they didn’t just want to visit it, they
wanted to change it out of all recognition or destroy it
altogether. They were almost never alone and always seemed to want
to be in a big group. Humans could barely keep themselves afloat in
the water and yet they seemed to be irresistibly drawn to
it.
    Spirit might have dismissed them altogether, like Storm had,
if it weren’t for Lucy. He knew that there was more to them than
met the eye. He wanted to learn as much as he could about humans
and the world above the sea that Lucy inhabited.
     
    As Spirit and Dancer listened to the humans splashing and
playing in the water, something large and plastic floated past
them. It was clear and not easy to spot until it got close. The two
dolphins hung underneath the surface of the water and looked up at
it.
    ‘ What do you suppose that is?’ Dancer asked.
    ‘ I expect it’s just some more rubbish that they’ve thrown away’
said Spirit. There seemed to be something on top of the floating
plastic, but he couldn’t make