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If Kylo had been on land, he might have mistaken the sudden boom for thunder. But no, he was adrift on a dinghy after surviving a ship-wrecking storm. He knew the sound could have only come from what had first lured his crew out to sea, and ultimately, their deaths: a humpback breaching.
Kylo flung away the ratty shirt he’d been using for shade and faced the glare of the sun on the deceptively calm water. If Snoke had been at his ear, he would have whispered of the money the 50-ton mammal could bring once butchered into sellable parts: blubber for oil, bones for carving, and baleen for a rich man’s mantel piece. Hux would have slavered as he stood behind whichever poor seaman aimed the harpoon. And if Kylo had been back on the ship, he’d be memorizing the grain of the freshly swabbed planks that would soon be drenched in gallons of blood, the deck dripping red tears back into the ocean that a small, weak part of himself still foolishly hoped would warn the rest of the pod away.
It never did. The first time he guided a ship to them, following their song only he could sense, he pretended the wet tracks on his cheeks were no more than sea spray when one by one, the crew silenced the ones still keening for their kin. But Kylo was alone here with thoughts on his own impending demise, and welcomed the whales shattering the silence with their play.
He slipped a hand into the water, letting it lap away some of the sun’s unbearable heat. There had been days he’d spent on deck in comparable weather, but there were always moments of shade and fresh, cool water. What would he give for that sweet taste again?
If the red-headed git had somehow managed to not become fish food, Kylo swore he would refrain from smirking when he inevitably tripped over a rope coil or lurched for balance when the ship hit a deep swell. It awed him that the man could have spent so many years at sea and still not have developed sea-legs. But then, not everyone had spent their childhood on moonlight smuggling missions on their father’s schooner. Not everyone’s father learned his son could hear the whales singing leagues away when standing on a distant beach and called it “mumbo jumbo,” nor everyone’s mother could also hear the whales but only faint as a whisper on the wind, and then send her only child to live with a hermit of an uncle to manage his oddness anyways. The memory heated him inside hotter than his blistering skin, and he smacked the water with his hand in a move reminiscent of a whale fin.
A splash no more than a dozen paces away answered.
It had been too small to be a whale, and too big to be a fish. He hastily pulled back his hand from the water as a shadow moved below the surface. It looked to be nearly as long as a sea lion though he knew one would not have wandered so far from any rock to rest upon and there wasn’t a speck of land in sight. He waited but the shadow did not come back. Whatever creature it was must have investigated his little boat then left. So he laid back down and once more placed the grimy shirt back over his weary eyes and tried to erase the image of his mother’s sad ones when she tried to kiss him goodbye all those years ago but he had turned away, his old name falling from her lips and left behind unclaimed.
He woke slowly to the sound of whales singing as they slept, the setting sun spilling orange and pink in its wake. He might have slept again but he caught another sound, a counterpoint he did not recognize. He sat up and squinted. Maybe the dehydration was finally playing tricks on him. He could have sworn the shape silhouetted in the path of the fading light was a woman’s head.
The purest of all voices stretched out and caressed his ears, funneling a vitality straight to his core. He nearly flung himself out of the boat.
“Who-
But with a flick of her sapphire tail, she disappeared with the last ray.
So he came to call her Rey. She came and went with the sun, her voice lending him strength to go on far past what he thought any man could. At night he longed for morning, and by day when he thought he could bear the sun’s torture no longer, he held out for night’s cooling and her brief returning. Her voice came without words, and though he tried to make sense of it, he could find no pattern, only the white flash of her teeth and depths of her bright brown eyes before she vanished again. He could not fault her for never coming close. If anyone had felt the torrent of red tears polluting the water, it would be her. And yet, he found he didn’t want her to think of him on that ship, only as a young man listening to the ocean’s melody from shore like he once had.
On the fourth day he could bear it no longer. When she popped up his eyes implored hers. “Please” was all he said before he reached for her.
She swam near, eyes unwavering, and reached back. Only a breath separated them.
On her exhalation, she offered back what he thought lost: his name.
This time he claimed it with a touch, and with Rey, Ben slipped into the ocean’s sound.