“Da?”

  The now forty revolutions older Zahul Thraxes wore his long gray and green mane wild and unkempt, with scarcely a braid or two. He grew it long, long enough to blend with his beard, to compensate for his damnably large bald spot, almost as big as Yahka’s. Where old battle scars criss-crossing his viridian skin could not be hidden with olog sharku tattoos, the remodeled tissue appeared a faint tea, unable to hold as much chlorophyll as undamaged orcan skin.

  Despite his great bulk, his muscles were stringy and veiny, and he had a hard time keeping his mass, lean for an orcan so very long-limbed. The Thraxes had fallen on hard times. Despite Zahul being hailed as a Hero of the Exodus, all his smuggler’s retrofits to the Defiant had left him in dire need of the thing that really mattered now in peace: cargo space.

  Speed and stealth were of the essence when blockade running contraband, arms, explosives, trojan berserking blade masters hidden and biding their time in generic shipping containers, or of course the cargo he prided himself most on, which was delivering orcan refugees liberated from Upper Reath across the Drake Passage from the refugee camps of Protorca. It was this ferrying orcans to their new home that gave him the honor of Exodus Hero.

  But that was then, and not now. Now, able only to bring a third of the algae per trip compared to his peers, he was left at a huge competitive disadvantage. His vessel had incurred technical debt, the fuel inefficiency of the now aging Defiant, once considered a necessary tradeoff for speed, now became an unbearable running cost.

  He cursed his ingenuity for while his modifications made the Defiant faster and more versatile than any naval vessel that had ever given chase – he was convinced it was capable of any journey through the hellish waters of Reath given enough fuel and its rightful captain – he also had to spend hours bargaining for the fuel needed to satiate the hungry Defiant’s appetite. But the economy of Orca was at the end of a long growth cycle, so the price of ghash and deezel, and the coveted, ethereal, empyreal bit, it was just all too dear. He assumed it would just keep rising. Especially ferrous powder! And wood! And other such crucial materials and sundries. Meanwhile seaweed was still just seaweed. And what he got paid for it – copper, silver, and gold, just physical coins – just grew more worthless with each passing rote.

  These were the thoughts that were running through his mind as he paddled his way to the surf. He craned his neck back and watched wistfully as the Defiant belched its black plume. It might as well have been the smoke of his burning coppers, silvers and golds. The moment of anxiety triggered his acid reflux, a consequence of rev upon rev of smoking, but he swallowed the stinging bile stoically.

  It was moments like this when he could really use a good, relaxing surf.

  Zahul was not wearing a wetsuit at all. He and the ocean were one. He surveyed the remnants of the swell.

  “Sha dinnae think I was going to let the bois have all the fun, now, didja, gurls?”

  “S’way too onshore, Da!” Gith shouted back through the howling wind. “Agh how’re ya gonna fit that thing in?” What makeable sections were left were pitchy.

  “Ha! Ye lack imagination, nakaz zug!” His old water-orcan intuition had already positioned him, without even thinking really, exactly where he needed to be. He spotted the crest of the odd set with his transmogrified hawk eyes. Like clockwork the sea lifted her old friend up, already skimming across the water with the momentum of his paddles, with the caress of a gentle swell. Zahul cranked his monstrous arms and paddle-oar into the face of the mushburger just as it crested, practically digging half of the paddleboard into it.

  He knew that after many waves had broken in this one mushy, seamossy spot in Socials, it would eventually form a depression deep enough that it became a secret bombora. The gentle, weakened wave suddenly arose with scorned fury as the swell met this odd depression in the sharpest gradient of the sandbank. Yet he had paddled with such ferocity that even the suction forces of the sucky breaking wave could not help but yield to his powerful turn, and the paddleboard erupted through the steep curl. He strode forward a few steps to keep his weight on the front of the board, now as the wave hungrily devoured the tail, and crouched low to his trailing knee, five toes hanging off the board’s nose.

  Her father was racing toward her now! “Take off your leash!” he yelled. Lawrah paddled out, afraid that Githarie’s dad would crash into her precious wooden log. Orcans were often more worried about damage to their possessions than their bodies. Their bodies would heal, but possessions were hard to come by.

  Githarie unbound the velcro at her ankle and kicked her foil blade away as hard as she could, and as he and the dying wave – for it was closing out – he scooped her up in his arms. He lifted her high, and tenderly by the armpits, for to Zahul, Githarie would always just be an innocent toddler, a sweet babe pure and untouched by the evils of the world. His dear and only daughter, whose strength of character reminded him of his Githarie’s mother Gnosta, his true love. Too often did he curse the twins Zholl and Zhon for taking after his foolhardy nature, but the younger siblings, Githarie and Zhakkathan, took after their mother’s thoughtfulness.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “HAPPY - BIRTH - ROTE, DOLPHIN!”, he roared as they rode.

  Githarie flailed her arms wildly as she was struck by something that was either terror or exhilaration. Her father was certainly trolling her because he was aware of her fear of heights, and so he lifted her up ever higher, but always ensuring a firm hold.

  “AI-EE!!!” she squealed.

  Charging along the peeling pocket, the wave now having grown into a shoulder-high hurtling wall, the father flew his daughter aloft in his hands. The children rarely surfed here, for it was shallow and a wipeout here would hurt badly. But held secure in her father’s arms, fear gave way. Now she was whooping with joy, and he could not help but give a tusky grin. It was just a moment but treasured to eternity. Finally, the oncoming section began to slowly collapse, as the onshore wind finally broke the back of the rogue bombie and began to form a so-called closeout barrel. A closeout barrel is no barrel at all because there was no exit.

  Well, there was no way they could both fit in there, agh he couldn’t let the lip of the wave hit his daughter…

  “Welp,” he said, and he hurled Githarie over the wave far enough into the outside where he knew she would land safely.

  “DA! WHAT THE FAHK-” Gith screamed as she sailed over the white-water wake of the wave, dunking into the deeps with a sploosh.

  Zahul grabbed his left rail to force his right like a shovel against the onrushing water, his legs folded up to his chest in a backside stall, his big meaty paw shoved into the wave and ripping through the rip so he could push himself just a little bit further back, just a bit…

  And like that, he was slotted. The wave closed just barely over his hunched and crouched figure. For just a moment the splashy sounds of the surf became a strange echoing gurgle, enclosed in the bubble of white water, but it was brief. The wave finally yielded to the rider in its final closing gasp, breaking apart into foam, giving his long mane a good rinse and his sore back a good pound. Before the wave could flip his board and knock him into the now dangerously shallow, thankfully kelp matted shore, he had to do a barrel roll into it, emerging from the bubbly foam ball laughing.

  He surmised that whether it was, in fact, a legitimate barrel, or whether he had just merely surfed into a closeout, was debatable. But there were no haters to observe and dispute, so a barrel it was. He guffawed as he climbed back over the shoulder. As he did, he was struck by Orca’s great mountain ranges looming in the distance. The dotted villages, smokestacks sprouting along the barren rocky horizon like grass. The haze drifted through the beams of sunlight and the clouds, refracting out rays of aerosol tinted vermilion, fiery amaranth, swirled with dollops of smoky burnt umber. He had to kick back and relax, laying his back on his paddleboard as he folded his palms behind his head as a cushion, to soak in the moment.

  It was so beautiful.

  This was it. Zahul Thraxes thought. This is what he fought for, all these long revolutions ago.

  This was the world that would be. No, the world that is.

  This was home.

  Which would make him sixty-four revolutions old, but he would have been terribly embarrassed for you to know that. He was so very young at heart, and as well he should be, the orcan lifespan’s upper limit had not yet been determined.

  Before he was dipped, he was known as the mutant Raoul Thales, his ancient heritage traceable back to Lost Brazilian and Lost Scottish roots, living in the fringes of Protorca near the desert ruins of the once great Morquarran empire, a poor, forsaken wretch surviving on scraps and thievery for he had fled from the elvan labor camps. Only at the edge of starvation was he found by Ghorto and recruited into the Horde. And when he was dipped and reborn he was given his new orcan name so that he would never feel connection to his enslavement again. The dipping cleansed him of his mutantness, so that Zahul could not remember anything from before he emerged from the vat. He was now orcan, through and through.

  Formerly known in the Lost Age, and still referred to by the elvans sometimes, as ‘Patagonia’.

  You ain’t got the answers, Sway. But the Godlike who spoke this was best forgotten.

  ‘Nakaz’ - orcish for ‘little’, often used as a prefix for a nickname, as in the manner which ‘Lil’ is used.

  Although he wasn’t really sure what a hawk was.

  He knew this because he always dumped his toxic and rotted algae here.

  Orcans were more often worried about damage to their possessions than their bodies. Their bodies were guaranteed to heal in time, but for them possessions were much harder to come by.

  “Please do as I say, and not as I do!” he would tell his firstborns, but alas, that command has never once worked. Not in the Lost Age, certainly not now.

  A “closeout barrel” is no barrel at all for it had no exit. A barrel, a tube, a green room, a tunnel, a pipe, all these terms for a curling wave implied a way out, an escape.

  No longer called a turtle roll, for turtles were lost cryptids.

  With no witnesses, it was up to him to remember. And he could embellish. And edit. And perhaps after many times regaling a fiction he would indeed construct the memory of him actually getting a barrel, and then who is to say that he did not, save but us all-seeing, all-knowing spirits? But the truth was that it wasn’t a barrel, it was just a closeout.

  And yet, they seemed so short, for these were revolutions of peace, revolutions of watching his children grow and his home – Rothera village – prosper.