Deciding that just staying here isn’t going to help anything, and doubting a cave will be likely to lead you back to civilization, you decide to walk further along the beach. You head North, purely at random, not seeing anything of interest in either direction from your starting position.
You cross your arms as you walk, the cool breeze still somehow surprising you, until you finally get out of the cliff’s shadow, the difference in heat immediately noticeable as you step on the sun-baked sand. Were you here as part of a planned vacation, you’d happily step into the clear, shallow water, but you were already kicking some sand into your shoes, and you didn’t want to get your socks wet on top of that if you suddenly needed to put them back on again.
After several long minutes of walking, the soft sounds of the gentle waves and wind are interrupted by a distant, high-pitched squeaking sound further north, beyond the fallen rocks. Given you hadn’t seen or heard any signs of life until now, you feel like your heart skipped a beat. Maybe it was just a flock of seagulls, but it was still SOMETHING living, and with how weird your day has been, you would be happy with any sort of company for a little while.
Your stomach rumbles.
Perhaps they might be hanging around something edible, too.
It takes a few more minutes walking in the bright sunlight before you reach the pile of fallen rocks. (You sorely wished you’d brought some sunscreen. You were just going for a quick walk in the park! How were you supposed to know this would happen?) The pile is a little taller than you, but not very steep, so scaling them isn’t too difficult, even if it does take some careful footwork. As you pull yourself up to the top, you hear another high pitched cry, much closer now. Hearing it more clearly, you realize it wasn't seagulls.
A look out over the water from this side lets you see a group of killer whales splashing and chirping in the distance… By what looks like a pier! Indeed, a mid-sized, fairly modern boat is moored near the end,out in the deeper water.
While you want to appreciate the orcas’ natural beauty, given the circumstances, your first course of action is to trace the pier back to shore, in hopes of finding some trace of civilization. You see a ramp where the pier meets the shore, and a little further from shore you see… YES! Wooden steps leading up the cliffside!
But as you look higher, you see that a number of steps further up have rotted, with some having fallen out entirely. If you became truly desperate, you could try to climb them, but with how everything else was going, you weren’t in the mood to try your luck.
Figuring that if the boat is occupied, you can ask where you are, maybe get some help, and maybe get a little shade, if there’s a cabin or lower deck, you drop down on the other side of the rocks, and make your way to, and down the pier. As you travel down the long wooden platform, above deeper water, the orcas take notice of you. They don’t approach, but a few hover at the surface of the water and look at you, calling out with cheerful chirps and clicks. It’s oddly comforting, in a way.
When you reach the boat, you call out over the deck for a few minutes, not wanting to get on without permission and be labeled a trespasser. When you get no response, you try climbing aboard anyway, only to find that it doesn’t look like anyone’s used it in some time. The deck is stained, paint is chipped in places, and the deck chairs have had their colors bleached out. The open door to the lower deck doesn’t reveal much else of promise. No maps, functioning radios or phones, but it does at least get you out of the sun. Oh, and you found a plastic-wrapped granola bar, with an expiration date still far in the future. That’ll tide you over for a while, at least.
You rest a while, before you hear the orcas calling again, much louder this time. Getting back out on deck, you see several members of the pod poking their heads out, right near the edge of the boat. You were pretty sure orcas don’t attack humans in the wild, so you saw no harm in leaning over and getting a better look. Or even better, reaching out and patting one on the head.
The orca you pet chirps and splashes its dorsal fins in apparent approval of your petting abilities.
Suddenly, you feel a bump from the other side of the ship. You turn around to look, but another bump throws you off balance, and a few more cause the ship to turn over so far that you tumble out into the sea.
You gasp in a mouthful of bitter salt water, and flail, desperately trying to push yourself back to the surface. But you soon feel something massive pushing you back up from underneath. As you breach the surface and catch a breath, you realize that it was one of the orcas that picked you up. And looking to the other side of the boat, it seems like a few of them worked together to push you out, too.
At first you freak out. Were they going to eat you? They didn’t normally do that, but maybe they were starving? But then you realize you would have been an easier meal if they let you drown. This orca was being pretty gentle with you right now… so why did they knock you out here? Was it some kind of prank? It wasn’t unheard of for captive dolphins or orcas to mess with their trainers’ expectations.
Before you can give it much more thought, you feel an odd tingling in your skin, followed by a growing heavy sensation all over your body. Not only that, your clothes are starting to feel tight. While you’d first assumed they were just being weighed down by the salt water, you’re having more and more trouble comfortably moving in them.
You look down at your body, and gasp as you see that every part of your skin that’s touched the orca has both become incredibly smooth, and more worryingly, changed color! Your hands and arms have turned the same deep black as the orca you’re riding on, and your legs have turned black on their back, and white in front. Not to mention your fingers seem to be… merging? No, they’re just swelling up from something, it has to be…
You start hyperventilating. Best case scenario, the discoloration is caused by you breaking something, or getting hypothermia, or something, and without anyone to help treat it, you’ll die out here in the middle of the ocean. Worst case scenario… as impossible as it seems, the orcas are somehow making you into one of them!
Panicking, you try to slip off into the water, but when you do, none of your limbs seem to want to move the way you’re telling them to. You can’t seem to move your legs or fingers separately anymore, your feet feel like they’re being bent at bizarre angles, and . It feels so hard to move right as your body gets heavier and heavier, meanwhile, your clothes feel tighter and tighter. You hear a distinct tearing sound, then get a sudden sensation of relief from the tight restraints of your clothing. Your eyes widen and you turn your head around (with some difficulty, your neck feeling less responsive and… thicker?) and see some tiny tatters of cloth drifting away, confirming your fears.
If you weren’t underwater, and had better control of your limbs, you’d be trying to cover up but-
…Wait, how long have you been underwater now? It dawns on you that you’ve been holding your breath a LOT longer than you’ve ever managed before. While your lower risk of drowning does ease some stress, it also confirms your fears. You madly flap your arms even as you feel them flattening and becoming smaller. (Or are they staying about the same length, while your body just keeps getting bigger? The boat you fell off of looks too small to hold you now.) You kick up and down with your completely merged legs, and flattened, spread out feet, propelling you forward, up toward the water’s surface, but still struggle to direct yourself consistently. Luckily for you, two of the other orcas swim up below you, their once massive looking frames now only slightly bigger than your own, as they push you up. Your skin feels as smooth as theirs now, and you can imagine that, if you could turn your neck to look, you’d see you’ve got the same black and white pattern they do. Your whole body feels.. Rounder, and fatter, but also much, much stronger than before.
As you breach, you find yourself opening a hole on the back of what had been your neck, and taking a long, deep breath through it, before closing it again as you dip below once more.
The oxygen gives you a little more mental clarity to start properly panicking again. How in the world did this happen? How can you undo it? Did the orcas know this would happen?
You let out a groan as you lose the last of the motion in your neck, your hair drifting away as your skin becomes completely smooth. Your nose seals shut, and your teeth all become larger and sharper as your face grows out into a short, round snout. Your vision becomes wider, as your eyes grow larger and move to the sides of your head. Your ears ring, then seal up. Things seem quiet for a second, before suddenly every sound in the water, seemingly for miles, comes into sharp contrast. Instinctively, you let out a series of clicks, and suddenly, as the sound travels out then comes back, it’s as if a map of seemingly miles of ocean ahead of you, including the locations of hundreds of (tasty?) fish, lights up in your mind.
It would be awe-inspiring, if you weren’t terrified of what’s going on.
Lastly, you feel a stretching sensation on your back, as a dorsal fin slowly pulls out. With that in place, it becomes much easier to control your swimming on your own, and the other orcas drift away from you, letting you attempt to get your bearings. The motions to keep yourself afloat begin to come instinctively, and you breach and take a breath on your own.
The change over, you try, with great difficulty, to calm down, take in your surroundings, make sense of what happened to you, and figure out what to do about it.