Section Two
as sung by Laughter Ring
CHAPTER TEN
The others may sing, and we may listen, but best of all and
always, we laugh.
It is we.
The two of us, for always — forever and a day.
We are dolphin. He is Little Brother and I am Laughter Ring.
But I am before the story, and the Song of the Sea must be
sung clearly to all those who will listen and understand.
This song cannot be sung as some of the other songs have
been sung. Those other songs are long in melody and rich in
voice. I can barely carry a tune — my voice squeaks and twitters.
The other was whale and he is great in philosophy and purpose. I
am dolphin, and we have little philosophy. Our purpose as dolphin
was and is to laugh, to giggle — to bring mirth and merriment to the
cloudiest of days.
This then is my singing of the Song of the Sea.
I was born long, long ago in a happy time, a time of joy in
the waters of life. I grew, like all birthed creatures, for some con-
scious time in the darkness of my mother’s womb, listening to her
silly stories about the mysteries of life. “You will be different,” she
whispered, “You will be special. Your laughter will ring the world
over and cause rainbows to kiss the waters that flow.”
“Who, me?”
Then, in a blink of an octopus eye and the pop of a sea foam
bubble, I was suddenly one with the world. Oh, and how the sights
and the sounds assailed my senses, but I wasn’t shocked or fright-
ened. Like all dolphin, I was amused. The world made me laugh,
and laugh I did. I laughed and laughed, rolled and giggled in delight
at all I saw and felt. My mother, as tradition dictated named me what
first came to her mind –Laughter Ring.
The mother and daughter intimacy was lost in the riot of
colors that danced upon the waters of life. In the silliness of all that
is, I immediately joined with others my own age. How the seas
rolled with our laughter as we danced on the waves and leaped over
the wind. We chased our tails which made us laugh all the merrier,
for there were many of the young in those days, and even the older
dolphin loved the sound of our laughter.
Time, like the tides, rolled on. We traveled all about the
great circle of our sea, from crystal ice to balmy blue. From our sea
we watched the golden light as it rose in the dawn over the Dryside
of Burning Rain. We followed the golden light across our sea to
the dryside where it finally set smoldering into the steamy fields of
dryside kelp that waved so oddly there.
Fate always calls to those who listen, and fate sang to me
in rapture. Hundreds of tides after my birthing, my joining with
the laughter of life, I met my life’s mate. I was sneaking up on the
tuna-tails and tickling their bellies from beneath, causing them to
scatter in fear, when I found myself the victim of another’s teasing.
Somewhere, somehow, someone had slipped beneath me and tick-
led me in the most ticklish of spots between fluke and fin. I giggled
and rolled trying to escape as laughter in bubbles fair burst in rain-
bows in the surface air. Try though I might, I could not escape this
demon of the untimely tickle.
“Stop!” I cried as my tears squeezed into the already salty
water. “I can laugh no more, or surely I will die.”
His voice called to me with a final tickle on my tail. “Be not
I the one to cause your death, Laughter Ring who sings so sweet.”
And there he was — sleek and silver with streaks of black racing
back from head to tail.
“Who are you?” I cried, stifling the laughter that yearned to
giggle more, “who tickles those who were made for tickling?”
“Just me,” he sang in his sing-song fashion.
“And just who under the seas is ‘just me’?” I asked in
mock disdain.
“My name is Little Brother,” he exclaimed in all seriousness.
Whether by reason of his serious tone or perhaps the silli-
ness of his name (I know not which), I again began to laugh. “Why
are you called Little Brother?”
He became more somber still and said, “I must warn you that
I am very good at riddles. Why would I not be called Little Brother?
Can the answer be a question: Did not my mother and father already
birth an older child?”
“And I suppose,” I laughed, that his name is Older Brother.
Tides forbid that your parents should birth another son for he should
be called Littlest Brother. Then there would be room for no other
brothers and your mother would have had to begin on the daughters.”
I think at this point the joke had turned a bit sour and my
companion of tickle had become indignant at the laughter pointed
at his name. “For your information,” he retorted tartly, “my other
brother is not called Older Brother, but rather something else.”
“Like what?” I asked. “Olderest Brother?”
I truly expected Little Brother to answer that his brother was
named a regal name like Prince of the Sea or Radiant Splendor,
but he retorted in a very somber tone, “My older brother is named
Bubble Butt.”
Like the pest I was then, I persisted and swam after the bait,
“Bubble Butt? Your older brother is called Bubble Butt?”
Indignantly, he turned tail to me and I surely felt I had hurt
him to the quick. “I am sorry,” I sang. “I meant no harm.” I followed
but stayed behind in consolation.
“Yes,” he sighed, “you meant no harm but great harm you
did cause.”
I was hooked, saddened by the laughter turned sour, by the
hurt to another. “I truly meant no harm. It was just that the name
Bubble Butt seems a bit odd.”
He still had his back to me and, I felt deep remorse from my
dark humor. Never is a dolphin’s laughter to cause pain. “His name
really is Bubble Butt. He got his name because he was born butt
first in a bubble and his butt is monstrous round and smooth and
does look like a bubble.”
It was then that Little Brother turned toward me, and I could
see the mischief in his eyes. He was not hurt at all; he was teasing.
He was the master jabber of jabs in the ribs of some unsuspecting
squiggly-finned creature.
I was shocked and surprised, and a bit dizzy as one who has
been turned round and round. “Why, you . . . .”
“Besides,” he laughed, “I really don’t have a brother, but I do
have a sister called Older Sister. I was to be Little Sister, but nature
always causes the rain to fall on those who seek fair weather.”
With a flip of his tail under my chin, Little Brother was gone
in a flash, and feeling angry at being duped I quickly chased after
him. He breached from the waters as he raced along slicing smooth-
ly into the dryside, gaining speed and distance. I followed, and our
spray traced lazy patterns back to the sea.
We chased and chased until my anger turned again to ex-
hausted blowing of misted laughter from the tonal vent on my
head. We finally stopped in a cove of coral, living rock and there
we looked long into one another’s eyes. It was a deep soulful look
that merged and melted all our reserves and, like others before, we
became one — in our own way we were mated for life — bonded by
that which must be. Shyly we turned away and joined the others, but
we were one, soul mates — forever and a day.
In the sea, the tides change, and with changing comes the
growth to adulthood. It was strange as I grew how I never felt the
change, but rather observed.
Little Brother and I bonded closer and closer in friend-
ship until we nearly thought alike. In many ways that was a scary
thought indeed, Little Brother being silly as he was.
Together we played, laughed, and teased the world unmer-
cifully. The feathered-furies were a delightful prey and the subject
of a great many jokes and games. At times, we would slip slowly
beneath them as they floated in the waters of life. Then gently, like
a rising tide, Little Brother would slowly rise until one of them would
be standing, quite confused, on his back. Not very intelligent were
they. They would stand there, these dryside, feathered tunas, while I
would rise under another one until the two were standing eye to eye.
With wide eyes, they would screech warnings to each other and
then lumber up into the wind-swept sky. My friend and I would roll
in the seas, bathed in our own laughter.
One of our favorite ploys was to slip into a great gathering
of these feathered-furies and skim the surface with our fins jutting
from the water like some great sharp-fin, which are known to have
devoured a dryside meal or two. This cruel joke was played many,
many times, but like all jokes, it finally ran its course and became
less amusing when the pretend became reality.
One day as we were playing our little child’s game, knifing
through the waters pretending to be other than we were, scaring
the very feathers off them, I noticed Little Brother, who was silkily
slicing through the water on my strong-fin side. “How smooth he
glides,” I thought. “Almost like a real sharp-fin.”
I swam for a time in this manner with Little Brother at my
side, when I dove to change sides and make a new run at the feath-
ered furies. To my amazement, Little Brother had shifted sides, too,
and we were still swimming side by side. I blinked and realized that
there was no way possible that he could have gotten from one side
to the other.
“Oh sweet coral crap!” shouted Little Brother, “A sharp-fin is
swimming at your side! It would not please me to watch you be-
come a meaty meal.”
I breached and as quickly dove, glancing behind to see if
I had eluded that which I had moments before striven so hard to
imitate. To my great discomfort, I discovered the sharp-fin had tired
of snacks of feathered-fury and decided to follow me. Not only to
follow but also to intercept and perhaps devour a small meal — a
meal that was composed of a plump young female dolphin who was
far too young for such a fate!
I twisted and swam deeper, and yet it followed on behind in
that icy way that sharp-fins do. He slid by, as if I weren’t there at
all, and then turned to face me, jaws open wide, glistening teeth in a
sickening smile. His eyes rolled and the lids locked in the evil eye of
death. This was it! I was soon to be a lump in his stomach. I twist-
ed and lurched to one side as he attacked, knowing too well that my
defenses were hardly any defense at all.
My prayers of finality, the beginning of the end, were rudely
broken as my eye caught a flash of diffused light on yet another
sharp-fin. But this was not simply another mortal fin; this was none
other than Little Brother, and he was throwing himself at my attack-
er. His body rammed the sharp-fin full in the side, and there was a
burst of bubbles as the creature lost a rib or two from the collision.
Quickly, Little Brother raced off and attacked, again and again. The
sharp-fin soon lost all desire to taste my sweet meat, and beat a
hasty retreat into the deep.
I surfaced, my tail quivering in the aftershock of fear that
touches all of us at the closeness of a meeting with the beginning
of the end. Little Brother soon leaped above and then fell back into
the water. His showing off, which normally irritated me, this time did
nothing more than ingratiate, as I watched my hero bound about in
the waters of life.
Finally he tired of his game and swam to my side and gently
asked, “Are you okay, Laughter Ring?”
Surprised by his gentleness, I responded in kind, “I am all
right. Thank you. For what you did was very brave and very sweet.”
“Not so brave nor for the reason as you would think,” he
laughed with his eyes twinkling merrily. “For if the sharp-fin had
tasted you, he would have spat you out such a bitter taste are thee.
And then he would have come looking for me. It is the talk of the
sea that I am the sweetest dolphin around.” With that, he splashed
me full in the face, and the chase was on.