in the whales' eyes
					mindy
			"Mom," I screamed.  Horrified by what I just saw, I forced myself to swim on.  I had to find them.  I just had to find the pod.       "Mom," I was lost in the ocean and my brother had been taken.  After a while I heard a call back.       "Over here," Mom had heard me!       "They got him!  They got him," I panted out of breath.  I had swum so long, so fast.  I couldn't talk right.  I couldn't say waht I needed to.  I had to, I needed to warn them.       "It was horrible, they got him."  I was so frightened.  I was panicking.       "They got who?  Who did they get?"  Mom was trying to keep calm, and she was doing better than I was.  She had seen this before in other pods.  It had never happened in the Shi pod, though.  Not in ours.       "They got him."  I said again even louder.       "Yushi, calm down.  It's okay..."       "Sooshi, they got Sooshi..."  All the attention wason me.  I figured I'd better start explaining; the head whale stopped me, though.       "How could they?  I sounded for all to run.  What happened?"  The head whale Fooshi, asked.       "They were in their floaty things,a nd I told him not to, but he did it anyway.  He went to explore it and he saw they had the sharp sticks and went up to sound," I stopped to get a deep breath, "they threw it at him.  The sharp stick got him in the back."  Some of the pod had gasped.  No whale could imagine the pain of the stick.       "He jumped and pulled to get away but it didn't work.  He tried to dive with a burst of speeding toward me, at the bottom.  I would have helped but I was frozen!"  I was mad at myself for being unable to help my brother.       "It's alright, nobody could do anything about it."  Mom said reassuringly.       "Go on, please," Fooshi said patiently.       "They threw another stick.  He jumped and hit a boat in two.  They flew everywhere.  One landed a body lenght above me and another swam to him.  They pulled them both into the float and left.  I followed for a while and wanted to help but they were too close to him.  They could have speared me, too.  It was horrible!"       "I suggest we all go to sleep, now.  Yushi, you should get some rest.  You've have a frightening day," Fooshi said.  I was glad he didn't say anything else.  I was still crying.       I lay awake trying to sleep.  Mom's fins were comforting.  I, finally after a long time, or what seemed like a long time, anyway, drifted off to sleep.
	s t o r i e s