When I was just a calf, my great-grandmother told me this tale. It has been passed down through the generations, not just by our kind, but through the lineages of our cousins too. From the deep, frozen seas at the ends of the world to the warmer, shallower waters where the colourful fish swim, this story is known by all of us. And though we may be different, and even sometimes mortal enemies, this tale binds us together. We are Kin.
It is said that many generations ago, we were all of one people, following a single Matriarch: the Great Mother Elipeka. Now, Elipeka and her pod did not look as we do now, because she lived on the land, and she had legs instead of fins. She and her children hunted all the small creatures that crawled on the land and all the birds in the air.
But the Great Mother and her pod were not the only hunters on the land. They shared the endless fields with the wolves and the lions, and Elipeka was forced to compete with them, because they would not cooperate with those unlike themselves. Whenever the wolves and the lions found the Great Matriarch's children, they would attack and kill them, because they could not distinguish between their natural prey and those who had the Knowledge.
It so came to pass that there were not enough small creatures on the land for the Kin of Elipeka, the wolves and the lions to feed upon. The Great Mother, because she possessed the Knowledge, understood that the land was not large enough to support her children as well as the other hunters, and so she cast her senses out to the world around her, beginning the first Great Migration. She sought a place where her children could live and feed well.
Elipeka lead her children to the mountains, the highest peaks in the world, but she found them barren and rocky, and there was nothing to eat.
Next she went with her pod to the desert, the empty plain of sand, but she found it hot and dry, and her Kin suffered beneath the heat of the sun.
Her journey continued into the swamp, where the land and the water met, and here she found hope. The wolves and the lions could not run in the swamp, but there were many small creatures to hunt. Elipeka settled there with her Kin, and they used their Knowledge to survive in that strange place. They learned to wade through the water, hunting both the fish and the land creatures, and there they found safety from the wolves and the lions, who disliked the water.
In time, the Great Matriarch and her children found that they liked the water better than the land, and preferred the taste of fish to that of the creatures of the land and the air. They used the Knowledge to exchange their legs for fins, and then left the swamp behind, travelling into the river. Here they found all the fish they thought they would ever need, and they were content to leave the land behind forever.
The river was bountiful, and the Kin of Elipeka increased a thousandfold, spreading out into every stream and tributary. There are many stories about their adventures in the river, of course: Ritarikai and the Dark Caves, the Seven Frogs, Hesaeka's Voyage, and all the others. There are more stories than even my great-grandmother knew, I think. I sometimes wonder how much of the Knowledge has been lost in the innumerable generations between then and now. A great deal, I think, but we can never know for sure.
What we do know is that after many generations, there were too many of the Kin of Elipeka to survive in the river; there was no longer enough fish to feed them all, and there was barely enough room to swim. Once again, the Great Mother lead her pod in a Great Migration, following the course of the river as it flowed through the land. She hoped that she would find a new home for her children, a place where they could truly flourish.
Eventually, she came to the estuary, where the river widened and the freshwater was mixed with the saltwater of the sea. I can barely imagine how it must have seemed to Elipeka; a great expanse of water that stretched from the land to the very end of the world, an endless blue, so unlike the land and the narrow river to which the Great Mother and her children were accustomed. It must have been incredible to behold for the first time, must it not?
Elipeka saw the sea, and she knew that it was the perfect home for her children. But in order to reach it, they had to go through the estuary, a river delta where the water was shallow and divided into many channels. Prowling the beach and showing no fear of the water were the bears, solitary but powerful hunters, though like the wolves and the lions, they did not have the Knowledge.
That did not make them any less dangerous, however, and Elipeka knew that as the Matriarch of Matriarchs, it was her duty to venture first into the estuary, to lead the way for her children. She swam forward through the deepest of the channels, staying close to the bottom and only surfacing when she needed to breathe.
When she was not attacked by the bears, some of her children began to follow. They were in such vast numbers that they could not all fit into the deepest channel, and many had to swim down shallower, more vulnerable ones. It was only when Elipeka reached the ocean with the first of her Kin that the bears struck. They did not work together as a team; each one leaped into the water and slashed a different one of the Great Mother's children with their savage claws.
Immediately Elipeka turned back from the ocean, surging through the water to ram the nearest bear with her head, trying to drive it away from her Kin. Others of her children fought too, while those who could not swam swiftly past them and into the sea. A few were afraid, and they turned back to the river.
The bears were eventually driven away, and most of the Kin of Elipeka reached the deep blue sea without harm. The Great Mother herself and her eldest daughters were slain by the bears, leaving the Kin without leadership as they ventured into the endless sea. Without Elipeka to guide them, each of the remaining matriarchs thought that she knew best, and so they each took their daughters and their daughter's daughters, leading them away from the rest of the Kin.
Separately, the matriarchs of the Kin of Elipeka explored their new home, and found that it was all the Great Mother had dreamed it would be. Life was not easy, because there were sharks, jellyfish, eels and other dangerous creatures, but the Knowledge held by the Kin allowed them not only to survive, but to thrive.
Over time, the pods changed, each family becoming unique and different from the others, because they were no longer one people under one matriarch. Some became large by feeding on vast quantities of shrimp, and they gained baleen to sieve the krill from the seas at the end of the world. Others became small and swift, darting amongst the shoals and snatching fish one at a time. Some became hunters that specialised in pursuing others of the Kin. Some learned to live in just one part of the ocean, while others claimed all the seas as their own. Those that fled from the bears remained in the river, and they still live there to this day.
But despite our differences, we have one thing in common: we are all Elipeka's Kin.
~Liresha, Bottlenose Dolphin matriarch
Unless maybe you could template a bunch of really tiny parts missing and mix and match?
