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Her cargo was full of something that hummed and buzzed in her resonance. This was not all that strange. Lots of cargo did interesting and strange singing things. It was a mild and tickling curiosity to have them carried along with her.

But most were a fizzy little hissing whisper. Even her crew had to work very hard to be heard above a soft little squeak. Which of course was ADORABLE.

Not that they spoke that way much anymore. They had crew tools to help with it.

Even with the assistance of crew things to make the voice a little louder and deeper for Tunie and her own voice quieter and higher for her Crew Tunie thought the way that crew sang to her was like the tiniest little peeps of little calves.

Sometimes she couldn't hear the resonance very well, but there were other extra things that let her listen and hear things bigger then they were inside herself.

Although her crew almost never needed to use those.

Well to be precise it was how she imagined calves sounded when they had just hatched. She had never met another ship so young. At least not directly, they were usually kept away from the main shipping docks by their nest cities.

She supposed this was responsible and proper but next time she stopped at a creche she decided that she would ask again to see the little fluffy shiplets!

Yes resonance was not unfamiliar to Tunie.

However this cargo was full of dense little hums that rose and fell as she departed the stress of the stupid fat always pushing fish.

She thought about it a bit with her aft eyes. Between the sweeping scans for predators sneaking up from behind.

For a ship resonance was song, it was sung to one’s peers and one’s crew. It was a vague feeling in the holds. And a sign of healthy feathers and strong cores.

Meaning and message. But not everything lived the way Ships did.

She knew that many ports needed a kind of background noise of resonance to survive. Like the pulse and dance of her own fleshy little motiles moving and squeezing through her halls almost imperceptibly to her.

For proper port health some needed a special kind of resonance.

A song which sung itself instead of being another’s message, and when many of those songs sang themselves they made harmonies and even deeper richer self singing songs. The patterns she could just barely sense of those reminded Tunie of the weft and weave of the Aether on her feathers and the stars twinkling within The Reef.

And the humming pulse that came again and again like a pulsing of her core was of that kind of resonance.

It was quiet most of the time but rose up in rippling waves with a consistent rhythm and for what sense she could make of it the whole flow seemed very healthy.

She supposed that the pulsing rhythm had something to do with her passengers. But her crew had not mentioned much of anything about it.

Tunie was not a foolish little calf of course. She knew that resonance could be dangerous, that it could be a vector for disease and injury.

But while she was less aware of her own resonance defenses then the vague presence of her motiles she knew she had them. And she felt healthy and safe in herself.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Her feathers protected her and carried her forward.

She supposed she would either find out what was up with her gently singing mass of cargo and its strange pulse of activity or she would not and it would go on the pile of little riddles and mysteries that slowly filled ones memories as they traversed the reef.

Oh she just got a promise from her crew to get Brushies when they arrived at the next port!

She was looking forward to it.

However there was only so much to do with all of herself in a transit like this. Very few predators lurked near stupid space fish and their feeding grounds. There was no real signs of danger anywhere she could look. Just the sparse traffic of traders departing or set to arrive at the stupid fat ever-pusher.

So her aftmost eyes had a lot less to think about than her forward ones.

Thus they turned attention inward as the stars failed to show any sign of dangerous occlusions or distortions from improperly bent light.

After a while she started noticing extra nuances and flows. There was one pulse which struck and embraced the entire thing as a single rising crescendo. And then there was a softer and gentler one that meandered and riggled back and forth bringing and lowering the voices in meandering little journeys.

They were both in the whole the same amount of song, but spread out along their trajectory in very different ways.

It was an interesting problem. For fun Tunie decided to plot the sounds as if they were positional. She knew vaguely what hold the song came from but with only her least focused aft eyes doing the part it was hard to get a spacing on the exact position inside herself.

She was meant to plot courses between stars! The fiddly distance of resonance signals inside her own body was engrossing and difficult.

But it kept her eyes sharp and awake and that was important because that way they could spot possible dangers.

Like that! What was that right there?!

She noted the position and let her tumble shift so she could pass over it with several eyes. Rally her memory with what her foremost saw when the particular location of the reef had last been visible to them.

Something had occluded a star and made its light dim and wobble in timbre and quality.

It might be just dust or something.

It might be the first signs of a predator swooping up behind her.

She peered intently for a moment longer and built up an idea of what she must have just seen.

She panned one eye and then another over the star.

Finally she huffed and fluffed a few of her feathers to arrest the subtle tumble.

It was just some reef skeleton that had broken off and drifted between her and a star. It’s course was far too slow and in the wrong direction to be concerning.

She let her eyes drift, meander, think idly about things. She mused on the way that star light was a lot like resonance and yet totally different.

She considered how good it would feel to get a good brushie after the awful stupid fat pusher fish.

Life was good.