A Dance of Life and Death

An anthropomorphic whale sat by itself on the beach. It admired everything around: the waves, the cliffs nearby. What a lovely world it had created. That was, until that stupid creature found it’s way out of the water. The whale was supposed to be the only god around here.

But there it was, a self-proclaimed King/God Octopus, a ten foot tall blue cephalopod with 10 times the egocentrism of Kanye. Waiting for the encounter, the whale kept pondering why on earth could this be happening to it, then, the greatest idea came to its head.

“Dance off!” Shouted the whale. For a moment the octopus looked confused. Then, recognising the need for decisive action, it reared up on 6 of its legs and began a sequence of furious locking and popping moves with the other two.

Noticing the whale’s squint, the octopus paused. “Ok. You’ve heard of armageddon, well this is tentaclegeddon” and without breaking pace launched into a four way floss with an Astley head roll fusion. The whales relatively tiny jaw dropped, releasing a cloud of relieved krill

which swam off as quickly as they could. The octopus, striking a ridiculous ta-da pose, grinned at the whale expectantly. But the whale, still slack-jawed, was still attempting to process what he’d just seen. The octopus held the pose, continuing to grin, though the grin

was becoming more strained. Finally, the octopus dropped its tentacles and sighed in exasperation. "Why," it asked the whale, "is this so hard for you to comprehend? I have done a glorious thing!"

"What one creature sees as glory is gory to another," said the Whale. "It is the nature of things for it to be so."

But their own life is cherished by only them and not the other. A fox and rabbit underwater would hate each other for pushing each other in before they drown even if the fault is of no one but the tide.

The bear would not eat meat from other parts than what he would hunt, and so on, but for these small scraps their lives have a meaning in this world. These animals would have only loved for themselves and have no more love for other creatures if they would have survived.

The fully nourished bear would be destined to plumply roam the forest, day after day, until it too was hunted. And not just by anyone, but by Larry Van Hoorn, who needed to feed his family that wretched winter, especially Larry Junior who would one day invent ursine taxidermy.