1.

‘Honeysuckle, my dear. I am deeply troubled.’

‘I know, Seville. I’ve been waiting for you to say something all day.’

Honeysuckle floated in towards her partner, and rubbed her snout against his cheek.

Seville was such a sensitive whale. He was the most famous blue whale in the whole of the Pacific Ocean. He was the composer of thousands of the most loved and memorable whalesongs ever created. His compositions included The Silent Sea, Blue Hurrah, and Beluga Bay. For sixty years, he had been delighting the oceans with his tunes, crashes and floats.

‘I feel I am dying inside.’

2.

‘What is it you are worrying about, Seville?’

‘I can simply no longer create whalesong.’

‘No. That is the symptom. There is an underlying cause you seem not to be aware of. We need to find out what it is.’

Seville grunted.

‘Do we need to dive down into the Mariana Trench, then?’

‘For inspiration? I don’t think so, not yet.’

Seville grimaced.

‘That’s a shame.’

Honeysuckle frowned.

‘Be serious. Do you have any idea of what is really causing you so much heartache?’

He thought carefully about this for some minutes. Finally, his answer surfaced.

‘I have no idea.’

3.

Seville looked at Honeysuckle with such a melancholy expression that she was deeply moved. She thought for a moment.

‘Imagine that you are composing a song of deep sorrow. Burrow into your mind, and try to find the source of your sadness.’

Seville began to hum. An ethereal melody of indefinable beauty caused her body to sway gently. A tenseness bit into her in spite of the fragility of the sound.

As Seville’s humming transformed into a sublime whistling, an image began to form in Honeysuckle’s mind. She could not make it out for a while, and then she saw.

4.

‘It’s Babongly, Seville! Today is Babongly’s birthday.’

The composer came out of his trance. The whalesong lingered in Honeysuckle’s ears. It was as though the sound lived in its own ocean, and rippled through their marine universe.

‘Babongly! Our son.’

‘That is why you have been so unhappy. You are remembering Babongly, who came into our lives so briefly all those years ago.’

Tears of pain suffused Seville’s eyes as he acknowledged the cause of his suffering.

‘Babongly loved you, Seville. You know that, don’t you?’

‘And we loved him, didn’t we, Honeysuckle?’

‘We still do, Seville. More than ever.’

The end.