Jayne lay in the roiling dark for a time.  As the waves bashed the whale, it rolled and thrummed.  Jayne rolled and thrummed with it.  The beating of the sea was all around.

Then a calmer time came, as the whale rolled out deeper and sank beneath the storm.  Jayne could hear the first trickles of water pushing their way in through the puckered gut-slit.

"Damaris," he called, into the black.

The whale was silent but for the trickling of water, flooding in slow.

"That's your name, ain`t it? Damaris?"

The child stirred, somewhere in the dark.

"It's alright," said Jayne.  "I know it ain`t easy."

The child splashed in the black.

"I killed your whale," said Jayne.  "You got reason to fear me, I understand that."

A hiss of gas bubbled, the intestinal jut squeezing out the last vapours with the deepening pressure.  The side-slit began to burp water in faster.  Jayne took a deep breath.

"I've a lad of my own," said Jayne.  "Somewhere out there, what hates me, like you must hate me, for what I've done.  But it's all done now.  The whale`s dead.  It won`t breathe for us anymore, so we gotta breathe for ourselves, and swim."

The child didn't answer.

"I can swim us out," said Jayne, "and once we`re out, I can call us a whale.  It`s what a Hammerhand does.  But you gotta go with me.  Try swimming off without me and you`ll drown.  You`ll not make it to the surface from here."

Another burp of foul gas swelled into the gut, another rush of water flumed in through the slit. 

"Not long now," said Jayne.  "Breathe deep.  It`s gonna burst any second."

He breathed in.  The child breathed in.

Then the whale imploded.

The sudden rush of water tore its corpse in half.  Jayne was smashed inwards with the violent influx.  He slammed into the child, held him tight, and they rode out the gas bubble burst together.