Author's Notes: I'm trying to do more original works when I can as opposed to just rehashing old ideas or stories from 15+ years ago that I never finished for whatever reason. I'm trying to break that habit. Readers seemed to like the first installment of "In the Valley of the Drums" when it went up, so that was encouraging. The other two chapters were liked as well. I guess I just sort of have this personal apprehension that I don't "have it" anymore. This submission is something that I wrote in the period between 2016 and 2024 when I'd gone AWOL from the internet and only shared my works with a small circle of friends. A lot of the things I wrote in this period were "first draft" material and weren't super refined, so I've cleaned this one up and retooled it a bit.

Anyways, the idea behind this story is something that just sort of came to me "the old fashioned way". I've been wanting to write a human x orca story for a long time and was adamant about figuring out a setting other than the whole "guy who works at Sea World gets to score with Shamu when no one's around" trope. For a moment I did consider adapting the sketch from Upright Citizens Brigade where a guy gets past a marine park janitor by bribing him with a fake magic necklace in order to, uh... bang their prized show dolphin and conceive the being that will supposedly save humanity from an alien invasion, but I don't know if I should be turning comedy sketches into porn. That seems weird. With those two options off the table I had to figure something else out. This is kind of a meandering story and I'm not sure I'm 100% pleased with how this came out but I feel like it's not going to get any better than it is in this moment and further meddling will just start to diminish it.

A small group of friends had gathered at the beach to celebrate a birthday. Alan, one of those invited to the party, was in the process of helping himself to a small plate of food. He picked up the nearby bottle of mustard and shook it vigorously, the sound of the bottle's contents sloshing around mostly drowned out by the lively chatter all around him. He flipped the cap on the bottle open and carefully squeezed out a dollop of condiment onto the disassembled hamburger on his plate before putting the bottle back down onto the table and moving to the tray of diced toppings.

Minutes later, Alan made his way back over to the congregation of people while chewing a mouthful of hamburger. He returned to the idle conversation of professors and instructors who weren't so well liked at the university everyone there attended. Despite it being bad manners to talk with food in your mouth, Alan couldn't help but interject with a couple of anecdotes when the discussion progressed to the engineering department which happened to be his major. He got a few things off his chest, but as he was talking and chewing at the same time one of the people in the circle, Sarah, perked up at something over near the water and hurried over toward the shore.

Everyone looked over in Sarah's direction as she sort of half-jogged-half-walked away from the conversation.

"Eh, I forgot what I was talking about. Wasn't important," Alan said with a shrug as the collective attention returned back to the conversation.

Another topic struck up and after a few moments of Sarah's absence Alan decided to go see what she was so focused on.

"Hey," Alan said as he walked within earshot of the other student.

"Huh? Oh hey," Sarah said as she glanced back quickly before returning to face the ocean.

"So... what's out there?" Alan asked, noting that Sarah was holding onto the camera that she'd been wearing around her neck on a lanyard.

"A whale! Look!"

As Sarah spoke she didn't waver her attention from the water and right as she answered Alan's question she pointed out ahead of her before moving her hand back to the other side of her camera followed quickly by the sound of the shutter snapping.

Alan glanced out toward the sea and in the distance saw a large black fin-shaped object breach the surface of the water.

"Oh! A killer whale!" Alan exclaimed as he watched the tail fin arc upward and make a large splash.

"Mhmm," Sarah mumbled as she peered through the viewfinder of her camera waiting for the whale to breach again.

"That's your major, right? Marine biology?"

"Yeah!" She responded, still holding the camera up to her face.

Alan realized he wasn't getting anywhere in his attempts to engage with Sarah, whom he took his basic core curriculum classes with several semesters ago and developed something of a crush on.

Several minutes passed in awkward silence with the two students standing at the shoreline facing outward away from everyone else. Alan took the last bite of his hamburger and rolled up the paper plate he'd been holding onto.

"Guess he's gone?" Alan said with a shrug.

"Yeah, probably," Sarah replied, the camera that was stuck against her face having been down at her side for a while.

"Though, it was probably a female, not a male," she added.

"Really? How can you tell from so far away?" Alan asked.

"The dorsal fin. It didn't look very tall, though I also didn't get a very good look at it."

"Females have a... smaller one? I take it?"

"You got it," Sarah said as she looked away from the water to make eye contact with Alan.

"Have you ever seen one before?" She asked.

"A killer whale? Yeah, but only behind a giant pane of glass at Ocean Land when I was a kid," Alan said.

"Ah, that's a shame," Sarah responded. "Cetaceans in captivity, I mean."

"Yeah... I've seen the documentary," Alan said, awkwardly shifting to the side.

The two students continued their conversation for a few moments more before returning to the party. The festivities continued a while longer until the sun began to set behind the horizon. Given that bonfires were technically banned by county ordinance the sunset pretty much signaled the end of the gathering because there was little anyone could do to ward off the night in a meaningful way. Alan and the rest of the people said their goodbyes to one another and went their separate ways.

Back at his dorm, Alan found himself alternating between glancing at the television across the room and at the screen of the laptop resting on his legs. He didn't have much to take care of in the way of class work and a quick check of the clock in the bottom corner of his computer screen noted that he'd wasted most of the night and it was starting to get pretty late. He closed the lid of the laptop and set it down on the coffee table as he stood up from the sofa to go brush his teeth and start getting ready for bed. While going through his routine however his mind occasionally wandered back to the conversation he had with Sarah earlier that day and the orca she spotted far out across the water.

As Alan reflected on it he realized that it'd been a good 20 years or so since the last time he'd been to the aquarium where he saw one in person. Despite it having been so long he still remembered her name, Moiwahine. Alan's interest back then didn't make it to the point of a childhood obsession but he did recall feeling a sort of enamoration toward the animals. As he got older Alan supposed he just sort of forgot about it and the memories gradually moved to the back of his mind. He was loosely aware by living in the northern part of the west coast that he had moved to a place where wild ones did roam, though it just never clicked until today.

Alan eventually finished his routine and climbed into bed. As he laid there he continued to recall fragments of various memories from the marine park he'd been to a couple of times in his youth. One flash of something led to another, which in turn had the potential to jump to one or more random things. It got to the point where it started keeping Alan from getting to sleep, though eventually he did drift off.

A couple of days passed and it was now the middle of the afternoon on a weekend. Alan, in something of a nostalgic trance, had decided to return to the strip of beach where the party was earlier that week. He spent some time hanging around near the shore waiting to see if the whale Sarah spotted, or possibly even a different one, breached the surface. Nothing. Alan wandered around a bit and in that time a few other people came and went but there were no sightings. He did notice that the ambient sounds of the beach helped clear his thoughts though and found it easier to focus on recalling specific memories. He remembered pressing his face against the glass of Moiwahine's tank to make a face at her; he wasn't sure if the gesture registered to the orca or not. It was just something silly he did in the moment as a dumb kid.

After a couple of hours Alan decided to call it a day and returned to his car to drive back to the dorm, but as he left he took note of a long concrete pier that stretched out into the water quite a ways. The pier was peppered with a few people fishing but Alan figured if he returned when it was much later they'd be gone and he'd have the pier to himself.

He was right; later that day long after the sun had set, a little after 11, Alan returned to the beach and not a single person was around as far as he could see. He walked down the pier realizing that for as large as it looked from a distance actually walking across the entire thing put it into full perspective, it was incredibly long. Needlessly long, even. The pier was dotted with lights every few yards and the very end of it had two slightly brighter ones illuminating the little platform that was there.

Alan stood on the platform at the end of the pier long enough to lose the ability to guess how long he'd actually been there. He had nothing on his mind in particular, just that the ever present sounds of the crashing waves against the rocky perimeter of the pier were the perfect kind of white noise to relax to. As he leaned against the railing at the far edge of the platform he peered out as far as the spotlights shone which wasn't that much. Water spread out ahead of him in all directions, and aside from the endless waves there was little else to experience. He was ready to call it a night and as Alan turned around to start the trek back across the pier he heard a faint whistling sound prompting him to look back to where he'd been standing prior. He couldn't see anything, but moments later he heard another sound, a sort of click. Just at the edge of where the pier lights ended the student saw a spray of water flare up from the surface followed by a large black fin effortlessly slicing upward into view before slipping back under the water again.

Alan hurried back over to the end of the pier to get a closer look. As he reached the guardrail he saw the fin emerge from the water a second time along with the upper back and fluke of the orca it belonged to. The student smiled to himself as he looked onward at the large animal passing by realizing how thrilling it was to actually see one in the wild where it was meant to be, outside of the confines of a giant aquarium tank. The whale made another pass in front of the concrete deck coming up out of the water a little more to get a better look at the human standing at the edge of it. It ducked back down and a few moments later surfaced again, this time its head poking up from the deep. It vocalized a click and waited a while before diving under and repeating the motion.

The orca's behavior confused Alan. He figured the whale knew he was on the pier because it was looking right at him and literally stopping in front of where he was standing to "say" something. He thought perhaps it came to the pier because it had learned that when other people were present they might toss it one of their catches resulting in an easy snack. Alan had no such treats, yet the orca was persistent in trying to get something from him. As it resurfaced to look up at him, Alan returned the gesture and stared back. The whale was practically at the edge of the dock. He could probably touch its snout if he wanted to. As soon as the thought crossed Alan's mind though he wondered if that was something he shouldn't do, it might be dangerous.

Alan knelt down at the edge of the pier and reached through the generous gap in the horizontal bars toward the whale. It was an orca, not Jaws. It probably wouldn't bite his arm off. Seeing the human's hand extending out toward it the orca raised its head up a little further to shorten the distance. The cetacean's rostrum nudged up against Alan's open hand letting his palm touch its face just past the tip of its snout. Alan shivered for a moment as his hand felt unexpectedly numb, likening the brief sensation to the times he fooled around with his friends touching the contacts of 9-volt batteries together when they were kids. The "shock" was brief, after which Alan was able to feel the smooth texture of the whale's jet black skin. He'd never touched an orca before, though to his dismay he wasn't able to get a good register for it as after a couple of seconds the whale pulled back and sank below the water's surface, breaching the water briefly several feet away to take a breath a while later.

He waited around for several minutes, but the orca didn't return. Alan shrugged to himself and considered it fortunate that he was even able to get as close as he did in the first place. As he walked down the pier towards his car Alan made a mental note to come back soon, he wanted to see her again.

Her. It was too dark for him to have gotten a proper look at the whale's dorsal fin like Sarah had mentioned at the party, but the student was certain the orca was female. Alan wondered how he suddenly felt so assured that assumption was correct.

Alan reached his car, the only one in the nearby lot, and headed back to his dorm. In mere minutes he was miles away from the beach, but even with the radio on he was convinced he could still hear the waves.

Several days passed. In that time Alan occasionally had fleeting moments, usually no more than a couple of minutes, where he found himself feeling wistful about the beach. He couldn't quite place his finger on a word to describe the emotions, though. "Nostalgic" wasn't right, he wasn't pining for another era or time. The slight yearning he felt was something more akin to loneliness, but a different type of it where he felt the absence of a feeling, not a person. At times when he would try to sleep he also felt the inverse of that feeling, as if he himself was somehow the "thing" that someone else was missing?

It didn't make any sense.

Alan made another trip out to the beach hoping that getting away from the congested atmosphere of the university would help clear his mind. Midterms. Tests. Application deadlines. Maybe those things were eating at him more than usual and he just didn't have the wherewithal to handle it all at once this time around. As he parked his car and stepped outside he took in a deep breath of the cool salty air. He felt a little better, though he couldn't tell if that was just a placebo because it felt nice outside. There was one other vehicle besides his in the lot, an old beater truck. As Alan walked past it he spotted a rack of PVC pipes haphazardly mounted across its front. He recognized them as makeshift fishing rod holders and as Alan turned his attention toward the pier he saw two other men standing at the dock's mid point holding onto the rods that presumably went with those holders.

The student walked past the fishermen as he made his way down the pier, one of them turning his head to the side slightly to nod. Alan returned the gesture as he walked, wondering if the presence of people reeling in fish might attract the orca he saw earlier. He didn't have any fish to toss into her mouth, but they certainly did.

The answer seemed to be "no". Alan hung around at the end of the dock for a while, long enough for him to completely lose track of time. He just blanked, stared at the ocean for what seemed like forever. There was nothing in particular on his mind which may have been why he stood around for so long; the absence of mental noise was refreshing. But there were no orcas around. Alan turned around to start walking back, noticing that the two men who were there earlier had left. He made it a couple of steps before stopping with an unshakable feeling that if he waited just a little while longer he'd see something. Alan shook his head slightly to snap himself out of it and started walking again but the sound of a distant call caught his attention and prompted him to spin back around.

In the distance, in the dim light of the moon and short range of the dock lights, Alan saw a brief spray of water and the fluke of a whale breach the surface.

He rushed to the edge of the dock and a couple of moments later the head of an orca emerged from the water as the cetacean made several passes to look up at the dock. Somehow, Alan recognized the orca. He recognized... her. The orca's rostrum pushed out from the surface close enough to the dock where Alan could touch her again. He knelt down on the dock and reached forward, touching his hand to her snout again. Rather than another jolt, which he was kind of expecting, Alan instead immediately found himself overwhelmed with a feeling of intense warmth. Not physical warmth like heat, but an internal feeling of it. A fondness, like being hugged by someone you loved. The sensation persisted, even as he withdrew his hand from the cetacean.

The orca pulled back slowly and ducked under the water, resurfacing nearby the dock several feet toward the shore. Alan walked over to where she'd appeared only for the next time her fin rose from it water to be another several feet further down. The compulsion Alan felt to follow her grew each time he walked down the pier and saw her always one step ahead of him. As he neared the last third of the dock Alan realized that after a certain point the cetacean would have to hit shallow water and be unable to go any further. He was right; with a few yards of dock left to go the orca stayed relatively close to where she currently was, but with the shoreline so close Alan figured he could perhaps get nearer to her if he double backed and got in the water himself.

Alan exited the dock and stood on the beach just a few inches short of where the crashing waves reached the sand. As he looked out to the water he could see the whale's dorsal fin several yards away, the cetacean also breaching the surface to take in a breath of air every so often as well. He could go out there, he thought. It wasn't too deep; he could just kick his shoes off where he stood, roll his pants up, and that would be good enough to at least make it a few yards into the water. Maybe he'd get close enough to touch her again, maybe not. The thought of it however filled the student with a strange excitement that he couldn't really explain. At no point did the notion cross his mind that wading out into the water alone in the middle of the night to try and play with a whale was perhaps a ridiculous idea.

Not even a minute later Alan was several steps past the shore's edge, the water hitting about the middle of his shins. Every click and croon the orca made felt like some kind of beckoning to Alan. He couldn't understand her in literal terms, but he still could in some other way? The whale's sounds hit his ears and just skipped straight past the part of his brain that processed language. He knew it, innately.

The water was just below his knees and almost touching his bunched up pant legs. The orca was only a few feet away from him now, very clearly resting against the sand under her but still seemingly maneuverable enough to scoot back far enough to swim away if needed. He could almost touch her, if he went just a little further he'd be able to. His gaze caught the cetacean's eye on the side of her body that was facing him. As she looked back at Alan he felt a kind of shared curiosity, that perhaps she wanted him to get closer as well and the sandbar she was on was about as close as she could comfortably come to the shore and still make it back into the water.

Alan's concerns over getting his clothes wet vanished. He took several steps forward, the bottoms of his rolled up leg sleeves dipping below the water's surface and soaking them entirely until the water level was part way up his thighs. He was next to the orca now, just behind her pectoral fin. Standing so close to her he was able to get a better appreciation for just how large she was, at least 11 or 12 feet long nose to tail and nearly twice his size. He placed his hand on the side of her body and gently ran his fingers along her skin feeling how taut and smooth it was causing the orca to arc her tail just a little bit in response. Alan's fingers slowly became a full open palm caress, a gesture he ran up along her back and onto the grayish-white saddle patch behind her dorsal fin. He thought about touching the fin but second guessed himself, unsure if perhaps that was too sensitive of a location. He really didn't know much about cetacean anatomy and didn't want to risk it. Though, as the thoughts of apprehension crossed his mind he felt them fade just as quickly as if there was an unspoken assurance that touching her fin was okay.

He ran his hand along the side of the whale's fin finding it surprisingly flexible. He recalled in the past seeing photos of orcas that had drooping fins so it made sense to him that it'd be somewhat pliable, but he didn't know if that was painful or not and didn't want to press against it too hard. Alan resumed running his hand along her back for a couple of feet, though as he neared the spot where her white belly patch was its highest he felt a little embarrassed as he wasn't sure if he was technically putting his hand on her butt. In an effort to be modest, Alan moved back in the other direction and carefully stepped around the cetacean's submerged pectoral fin.

He knew that the giant white spots on an orca's "face" were not its eyes, just patches of skin that looked that way presumably to scare would-be predators or something when the animals were young and potentially still vulnerable. He'd never actually seen what one's actual eye looked like though, and now that he was up close he could just barely see the whale's dark iris and a little bit of the lighter part surrounding it. As Alan's eyes looked into the orca's he again felt that strange inner warmth, a sort of fondness he still couldn't pin down.

Without really thinking he leaned forward and gave the whale a soft kiss on her forehead. In the moment it just seemed like the right thing to do. Unexpectedly, a rush hit the student that reminded him of his awkward first dates when he was still in grade school. The first time he worked up the nerve to hold someone's hand. The first time he asked someone out. The first time he kissed a date. His heart skipped a beat, this felt just like that... even if he did just kiss a marine mammal.

As he stood back up straight the cetacean vocalized a very low call and for a moment the only sounds to be heard were the rhythmic crashing of the waves in the distance. Slowly, the cetacean ungrounded herself from the sandbar and shimmed back far enough to become buoyant again. She drifted backward slowly, one of her eyes keeping on Alan for the couple of passes she made to regain her bearings, and turned back to swim out into the ocean. Alan watched until the light cast by the moon was too weak for him to make out where she was any longer.

Alan turned around and waded back toward the shore, eventually hitting the shallower water where he could walk mostly normal. When he finally reached the sand he fiddled with his wet rolled up pants and as he struggled to unbunch the soaked denim he made a mental note to himself that next time he'd just take his pants off and go in the water in his underwear.

Next time. He realized he was already making plans to come back yet again.

Alan took in a deep breath and sighed. He laid in his bed, restless and unable to fall asleep. It was late, how late exactly he didn't know however because he knew that looking over at the clock was a surefire way to make him anxious about how much sleep he wasn't getting. He rolled over to face the other way, tugging the comforter on his bed with him as he turned. After a few more minutes passed he grabbed the pillow on the bed that he wasn't using and hugged against it to see if perhaps holding onto something helped ease his mind.

He hadn't been able to sleep for a couple of nights now. His thoughts wandered, but he kept feeling pangs of that "emotional loneliness" that he had a hard time defining. To ward it off he tried replaying memories that made him feel good, notably the fleeting experiences he'd had those nights at the beach. As he reflected on touching the orca and even sneaking a kiss on her snout Alan realized that as those things happened these feelings of yearning practically vanished. He focused on picturing the whale in his head, clinging to the pillow a little tighter. He wondered what it would feel like to hug a cetacean the way he was holding the pillow, replaying the sensory memory of how her skin felt as he slid his hand across it.

Gradually, his weariness faded. If he focused on it, he swore he could hear the ocean. He could also see that orca as clear as day in his mind. Perhaps his memory was just that good.

Alan awoke the next day rough around the edges, though that was to be expected given that he lost a chunk of the previous night to tossing and turning around in bed instead of actually sleeping. His lack of energy combined with another trudge through university classes made for a day that felt as though it took twice as long to get through as it normally did. But, he kept his head up as once the sun set he had plans to make another trip to the outskirts of town and spend the twilight hours of the evening at the beach again.

This time, Alan prepared accordingly. As he parked his car in the empty gravel lot he emerged from the vehicle wearing a pair of sandals and some loose fitting athletic shorts that he'd bought for all the days he said he'd go to the gym but instead wore around his dorm when he was lounging about. He skipped walking around on the dock and instead went straight to the shoreline nearby, peering out into the seemingly endless water ahead of him for movement. It seemed crazy to just show up at the beach and assume that the cetacean he was thinking about would also be there at that very same moment. That was a thought that didn't come close to crossing Alan's mind; he knew she would show up. He couldn't exactly explain why he was certain of that, just that a deeper part of him knew that to be true.

Alan sat on the edge of the shore in such a way that the last foot or so of the waves hit his feet. In his thoughts he pictured the orca again, not really thinking about or imagining any specific scenarios or actions, just her as an idea. After several minutes of daydreaming outside of daylight hours, the student heard a familiar distant call reverberate across the ocean in his direction. Quickly, he roused himself from his seated position and took several steps forward into the water to look ahead. As usual visibility was low with only the ambient glow of the moonlight filling the air but even in the dim light Alan could make out the unmistakable slicing motion of a dorsal fin and accompanying spray of water. For a moment, he felt his heart flutter. She had come to see him again, just like he knew she would.

The whale made her approach toward the beach coming about as close as she had before and stopping on the bump of a submerged sandbar. Alan meanwhile had taken a few steps back and out of the water and proceeded to take off his athletic shorts and place them on top of his flip flops in the sand. As he turned back toward the water he paused again just before taking any steps. He thought for a second, and also took his shirt off as well and tossed it onto the pile of clothes. If he was going to go all the way back out into the water to interact with the orca he wanted to make the most out of it. He didn't just want to touch her fins or kiss her snout, he wanted to swim with her too, to be in her world if only for a little while.

Alan hurried back out into the water kicking up large splashes with every step he took. Seeing, and likely also hearing him too, the orca vocalized several eager clicks. Upon reaching her the first thing Alan did was give her rostrum another gentle kiss followed by awkwardly trying to hug the front of her body as best he could. He couldn't explain why he felt as excited as he did, nor why he came to the realization that he'd missed her as much as he had either. Alan shifted himself to the whale's side and placed one arm around the top of her body, resting his head against her just behind the large white spot on her face.

He wondered if the orca felt similarly; like, a similar eagerness to see him. He didn't know enough about cetacean behavior to understand what their thought processes were or if a concept of that complexity applied to them. It had to though, even in his limited knowledge at the very least he knew they were smart creatures.

Unknown to Alan however, he was right. Part of the inner warmth he felt as he touched the orca was his own response to interacting with her and the curious but pleasant feelings that brought, but a larger slice of it was a manifestation of what she was feeling as well. The strange emptiness he attributed to emotional loneliness was a mutual one made up of both his physical distance from the cetacean all the way on land and hers from him near leagues under the water. It was why if Alan really focused on it he could hear the ocean even if he was nowhere hear it; he heard it, because she was hearing it in that very moment. And, though he was unaware of it, on her end the cetacean could also vaguely hear things such as the sounds of the wind and the chattering of people if she focused on that too; sounds from the world above the surface.

Alan rested against the orca for several minutes innately aware of how his apprehensions and baggage seemed to lift away even if only for the time he spent in the water. He felt calm, and after a few moments he roused himself from his spot and traveled further out into the water past the whale, glancing back at her to watch as she kept her gaze on him and shuffled off of the sandbar to follow. Alan wasn't a strong swimmer, but he knew the basics well and was able to stay afloat relatively easily given how calm the water was. He smiled as he watched the cetacean join him in the slightly deeper area he was in, shallow enough where Alan could safely regain his footing but also deep enough where the orca could leisurely swim alongside him.

The student stayed close to the whale, or perhaps she was the one staying close to him? Alan wasn't sure, he was simply too distracted living in the moment to care. He ran his hand along the entire length of the orca as she passed him, after which she disappeared under the water for several moments. Alan felt a sudden nudge under his body that rapidly turned into a push and in a matter of only a couple seconds he found himself resting on the cetacean's white belly as she cruised for several yards upside down. Alan laid against her soft skin and placed his arms out around her as far as he could. An overwhelming sense of ease washed over the man as he let the orca ferry him forward. Though it only lasted for a moment, he felt at peace. He could feel her inner peace, too, just as she could feel his.

A little more than half an hour had passed since Alan waded past the sandbar to swim with the orca. The exertion was starting to weigh heavily on him and even though he wished he could stay out in the water for longer, forever in the moment, he knew it would be wise to make sure he made it back to the shore safely. Sensing this, the whale nudged herself under him again just as she'd done several times by this point and helped bring him further in. As Alan rode alongside the cetacean for the last time that night he felt the fondness he had for her grow just a little stronger. It felt strange to admit, but he felt as though perhaps he had feelings for her, not unlike the way he felt toward his classmate, Sarah, who was studying marine biology.

For just a split second an intimate thought crossed Alan's mind. He buried it quickly as a pang of embarrassment came over him, though that reaction itself only survived a split second too. In the absence of it Alan realized he was also feeling someone else's yearning, the orca's. His stray fleeting thought flashed in her mind as well and now because of it he felt a sudden flood of her desire being projected onto him.

She carried Alan back to the sandbar but as the student regained his footing he turned back to the orca. It was another sensation he couldn't explain, but he realized that something strange was happening. He could feel the things she was feeling. Or thinking. He didn't know. It sounded crazy but in an abstract way Alan had slowly clued in to how it almost felt at times that they were "thinking" in unison, how his emotional state bled into hers and vice-versa to make a sort of feedback loop of warmth that ebbed and flowed the more they interacted. He could feel her need now, and he wanted to sate that for her.

Alan didn't know how to convey that to her though. He stooped down a bit and gave her snout another kiss, a little longer this time, and tried to picture in his head the concept of intimacy hoping that the way his human-conditioned mind interpreted gestures like kissing were clear enough to... well, he wasn't sure; that was the problem. Match whatever the cetacean equivalent of kissing was? He just knew that thinking about concepts in words and phrases probably wouldn't do him any good as this strange bond he seemed to share with the orca was built around more basic identifiers such as raw emotions.

As his lips left the whale's rubbery skin Alan watched as she moved a little further toward the shore, almost dangerously close, and shifted herself around to face him. The orca flexed her head and tail toward the side and with a sudden maneuvering of her weight managed to roll onto her side. Alan approached her slowly, scanning her from the underside of her mouth to her fluke. He placed one of his hands on her white belly and for a moment swore he felt her twitch ever so slightly. It was shocking to him to see the orca intentionally beach herself in a way that made her so vulnerable, but the action was also something of a very deliberate act of trust. Alan placed his hand on the whale's belly again and gave her a very slow and loving rub, watching and feeling as her body flexed inward just a bit in response.

His hand moved further down, past where the cetacean's pectoral fins met her sides, and as he glanced down toward her tail Alan noticed he could see her underside there as well, her slit visible in the moonlight. He let his caress continue down the length of the orca's body, stopping just short of touching her intimately. Alan glanced back up toward the whale's face but realized she probably couldn't see him from her position, she could only feel him and as he nervously slid his fingers and palm across her slit he could tell she definitely felt that because for a split second the orca's tail flinched slightly.

The feeling of ambiguous desire that hit Alan as he was swimming back to shore just a few minutes prior quickly became much more pronounced and direct. He wasn't just feeling her desire, he was feeling her arousal now as well. The man focused his attention back to the cetacean's genital slit. He'd never really seen one before, let alone this close up; "certainly feminine" was how he described it to himself, though as his eyes traced the cleft in the orca's belly another thought crossed his mind: What, exactly, was he going to do here? Alan had never seen a female orca's slit before, and he'd also certainly never seen a male one's cock either but he knew it was very obviously several magnitudes larger than what he was equipped with as a human. She would not feel him if he were inside of her, he was convinced of that.

Alan glanced back up toward the orca's head not really sure how to proceed until he looked back down in front of him, spotted his fingers still resting just below the cetacean's slit, and a strange thought came to him. His manhood wasn't comparable to that of a suitor from her species, but his arm probably was. Slowly, Alan pushed his fingers against the orca's slit and watched as all four of his fingertips gradually dipped into her. He pressed on, tucking his thumb up into his palm as his hand continued to push further in until all of it was inside the whale. She clenched up around him, her soft inner walls tightly enveloping the man's hand for a couple of seconds as she acclimated to his gradual penetration. As she relaxed, Alan pushed his hand deeper, letting his arm sink further in. He shuddered, discovering that he was able to literally feel the pleasure that she was experiencing in that moment. Not the physical sensation of it, but the warm bliss of erotic stimulation; the neurons clicking in the cetacean's head were bridging with his own even when it came to sexual pleasure.

He cautiously eyed how deep he was getting, now almost up to his elbow, and wondered if he should stop. Was this far enough? How deep did male orcas usually go? His entire forearm was engulfed in the slick depths of the cetacean, her canal very gently clenching around him every few moments or so. Alan pulled his arm back slightly and pressed it forward, as his arm reached elbow depth again he felt the whale shudder softly as she vocalized a barely audible coo. He smiled, realizing just how much his unlikely partner was enjoying herself. He pulled back just a bit and slid his arm into her again, picturing in his mind the orca being taken properly by someone more her size. The mental images in Alan's head immediately resonated with the ones in the cetacean's, it's what she was imagining too. Like singers in a choir their thoughts harmonized, both beings feeling everything the other was.

Curiosity. Passion. Pleasure.

Alan closed his eyes and caressed the orca as he continued to work his arm inside of her. He knew her climax was approaching because he could feel her urgency welling inside of him as if it was his own. His pace increased, the cetacean's inner walls twitching and contracting around his arm until in an instant her entire canal tightened up around him. Her entire body shivered as she squeezed Alan hard. The orca let out a siren song of pleasure as Alan moaned with her all the same.

The student took a moment to catch his breath. He could feel the fuzzy afterglow that followed release, but that usually intensely relaxed state of mind was at odds with Alan's own arousal. The orca had reached her peak, and he felt it too, but even as she reached orgasm Alan only felt the intense rush of pleasure that came with it, he didn't actually experience the physical side of that climax himself. His cock was almost painfully erect. He carefully pulled his arm out from the whale's relaxed canal and with both hands quickly yanked his soaking wet underwear down around his thighs. He needed release as well.

Without a further thought crossing his mind, Alan pressed his manhood against the orca's slit and moaned softly as her generous vagina swallowed his entire length. As he took the cetacean he felt her thoughts blend with his again. When he was pleasuring the whale with just his arm they both shared the mental image of her with a male of her kind, but now with his shaft inside of her proper she was very deliberately picturing Alan as that same male orca. The act of experiencing the orca's climax by proxy already had the man on a hair trigger, but knowing that she was picturing him as one of her own was enough to instantly push him over the edge. Even if he couldn't take her the way a male of her species could Alan wanted nothing more than to give her his love nonetheless.

He moaned again, collapsing atop the orca's lower body as he reached orgasm. Alan grinded his hips against her soft belly as he felt his manhood throb powerfully, each flex of his muscles releasing a shot of his human seed into her. He could tell she felt his climax much in the same way he felt hers because the cetacean arched her tail just as she'd done before and let out another soft coo in unison with him.

The two remained there in the shallows of the sandbar for several minutes, each of them very slowly coming down from their shared high of multiple orgasms, each of them also processing and appreciating the unique closeness and intimacy that no doubt was still continuing to build between them. Alan withdrew himself from the orca and as he stepped away and fixed his underwear the cetacean flexed her form again and rolled back over to lay on her belly.

Alan brought himself around to the whale's front and gave her another kiss on her snout. He wrapped his arms around her as far as he could and held her for several moments, letting his emotions continue to blend with hers. Despite it being such an abstract concept, he recognized the feeling as love. He loved her; he loved this orca, and he could feel that she loved him as well. It was a different kind of love than the simple fascination he recalled feeling as a young boy at the aquarium. Even if the woman before him wasn't the same cetacean as the one that had captivated him all those years ago he still loved her as if she was.

She was his queen. Her name was Moiwahine.