I'll be seeing you

“I’ll be seeing you, Melina.”

“Thank you, Professor Randall.” She paused before she walked away. “And then you’ll tell me where I can find God?”

“Yes, Melina.” He didn’t know why he said that to her. He taught biology, not philosophy.

He waved goodbye to his student and walked out of the classroom.

Windows. Lockers. A piece of crumpled paper, being blown through the hallway like tumbleweed in a Western.

The afternoon sun threw its rays through the windows, pulling on the shadows, making them grow sleek, just like his dreams had become.

Randall walked out of the high school he had started working at five years ago. It had been a temporary solution to a temporary problem after the government had stopped funding his research. But now, five years later, he was still stuck in the temporary solution that had grown to be less temporary than he thought it would become.

Today wasn’t going to be any different from another day. Going home, correcting assignments. Putting A’s and B’s and C’s underneath the works of students, potentially destroying hopes and dreams, just because the young adult that filled the blank lines had a bad day. A bad week. Possibly suffered from some mental health condition they didn’t get help for because it was frowned upon.

Frowned upon not being able to function like society wanted them to.

How many dreams did I destroy while putting two lines of ink on a piece of unimportant paper? D.

How many D’s did he collect while he was in school? There were countless.

Countless, before he met that one professor that ignited that spark in him that changed everything. That gave him back what he never thought he had in the first place.

His gaze fell onto the fine art print on his office wall. Three dorsal fins glistening pitch black in the evening sun. Oh, how much he missed being out in the field. Being where he belonged.

Instead, he sat down on the squeaking office chair and pulled a stack of paper out of his weathered leather bag. He didn’t know when, why, or how it happened, but he had turned into one of those shadows of themselves he had been taught by. Teachers that used to have their own dreams, but had to give up on them because… Yes — why?

Because life got in the way?

Because they hadn’t been courageous enough to pursue them?

He had been courageous. Thrown everything in he had known. Everything he used to have — to follow his dreams. To be courageous. To do what none of his friends, who chose to study boring things, had done. So, how did he end up here?

At this desk?

At dusk?

With nothing better to do than go through assignments.

He thought back to Melina and wondered why he cared about this student so much. Maybe it was because she reminded him of all the things he had left behind. All the things he had never been able to live up to when he left in the Pacific Northwest. When he had been forced to.

He fished for the smartphone in his pocket and carefully placed it on his desk. Should he do it? Should he call her?

The device glistened in the light of the setting sun. His eyes went from the screen to the papers and back again, so many times he couldn’t count them anymore.

He turned back to the stack of paper, thinking that none of what he was pondering made any sense. Five years. It had been five years. He would never return to the work that had once been so fulfilling.

This was what his life was now. And nothing more than that.

Before he continued his work, he pulled out a bottle from underneath his desk. The best whiskey he had been able to find in this god-forsaken town. He thought about getting about and getting himself a glass from the kitchen, but eventually just unscrewed the cap and took a sip.

Then another.

And another.

One sip after every page he went through.

Every page that seemed so meaningless while his eyes glitched back to the framed photo on the wall. Then to the framed photo on his desk. His daughter.

Maybe she was the reason why he couldn’t erase Melina from his mind after he finished work a lot of the time.A

Melina. The spitting image of what his daughter had looked like when he had seen her for the very last time.

Of course, Melina wasn’t his daughter, but he still promised he’d be seeing her.

Another sip.

One more, before he’d go back to work.

One more, before his cellphone’s display lit up.

He couldn’t believe it. The name he read on the display was a name that he hadn’t expected. He never thought she would call him again.

Tonight felt strange, like the world he had left behind tried to extend his arms and pull him home.

“Hey, how is it going? I haven’t heard anything from you in ages,” the female voice said after he answered the call.

Randall sighed. “You have no idea, Sophia. I’m drowning in paperwork and bureaucracy. The sea feels like a distant memory.”

Silence fell on the other end of the line until… “Maybe it is calling for you.”

“The sea?”

“Yes.”

It was dawn when he got up from his much-hated desk to leave the apartment.

Randall found the path down to the sea, which was so different here than what it had been back at home. There were no sea lions. No bald eagles, shooting down from the skies majestically to grab a fish from the water and rise back up to where they came from.

But most importantly, there were no black dorsal fins cutting through the waves.

No distinct sound of the blackfish shooting their breaths into the air, ready to draw another one, just to vanish back into the dark abyss, maybe to be never seen again.

There was no sound, no complex dialects to be studied here.

All there was was black water without fish.

No black and white creatures emerging from the deep.

Until there were.

Randall couldn’t believe it.

Glistening backs in the morning sun that kept becoming warmer the longer he stood there and watched the spectacle of fins and flukes hitting the water’s surface. Vocalizing in a way that even he could hear it right here, standing on the shore, with his mediocre ears.

What would he give to be a part of it.

What would he give to understand what they were saying.

To be as gracious as they were.

As emotionally capable.

Hadn’t he told Melina he’d be seeing her?

Before Randall could further explore his doubts, he noticed one orca splitting from the group, coming closer to the shoreline. Her dorsal curved, not standing straight like a sword, told him that this whale was a female.

The closer she came, the clearer could he hear how she vocalized, and it took his breath away.

What he was used to in the presence of these magnificent giants was how insignificant they made humans feel. Sometimes, they wouldn’t even do so much as looking at a person, acknowledging its existence — and rightfully so.

But this one was different.

The female floated in front of the rocks, squeaking and whistling to Randall.

To him, it felt like she was extending some part of her world to him. As if she wanted to give him a break from the headaches and boredom living on land brought.

He stepped closer, fearing he would scare her away, but she was much more courageous than him and didn’t even flinch as he, the two-legged creature from Earth, stepped closer to meet the finned shadow-light creature from the deep.

She whistled again and moved her head up and down as if she was nodding.

What if?

He didn’t ask himself twice, just jumped in before he could change his mind. Before his senses, numb from all those years behind a desk, could hold him back.

Randall dove in headfirst. Slipped beneath the waves and couldn’t believe his own two ears.

This was what life was about. This was a world of sound. Of sensations, tickling his skin, making him feel like these creatures from ocean’s abyss scanned him without needing machinery humans needed to look into the innermost parts of someone, without ever reaching their depth or understanding what was going on within their heart.

Without ever understanding how intense all those emotions were — or not existent at all.

Randall reached out his hand, not expecting much if anything. But so much more happened.

The orca closed the gap between them. With a flick of her tail, the female was almost in front of his face, turning her head to allow her eye to look into his.

Randall couldn’t speak, but he thought as strongly as he never thought before.

Take me with you.

Please take me with you.

Please don’t make me return to this dusty desk — because nothing else is waiting for me up there.

Please take me home.

She whistled once more, passed close before him, presenting him her dorsal fin like an intimate invitation. He reached out his arm, grabbing the erect triangle-shaped body part. She pulled him up to the surface and breathed right as they both broke the surface. The fog her blowhole shot up in the sky created a beautiful rainbow in the sky that Randall watched vanish with his mouth wide open.

Then, his head turned as if by itself. Like the land tried to remind him where his real home was. But Randall strongly disagreed. He never had felt more alive than in these past few minutes, since the orca decided he was worthy of her attention.

It felt like ripping his gaze from a strong magnet. But before the orca started her descent, Randall noticed a figure standing at the shore.

Melina.

He took a breath, feeling the orca’s muscles tense as it arched its back.

A part of Randall wanted to look back another time. Breathe and call out: “I’ll be seeing you.”

But he kept it in, knowing it was irrelevant.

He was not part of her world anymore.

He was part of theirs.

As the pod started moving, he moved with them.

As they started diving, he dove with them, clinging onto the female that had chosen him.

When they started playing in a kelp forest, Randall looked up to the surface, white light stretching out above him, rays reaching far into the deep.

He had never felt so alive.

He had never felt like he belonged anywhere the way he belonged down here.

With them.

They had called him home.

The sun shone onto the ocean while he stayed with the species he had always looked up to the most.

This is where you find God, Melina, he thought.

I’ll be seeing you.