#couldn't resist adding a little irish thingy in there

[queermarzipan]

Ooooooo!!

Teams of people are sent periodically to collect the moltings, both to keep tabs on the skin balloons currently floating and to make sure they aren't just wandering aimlessly, getting in the way of both man-made aircrafts and the sky whales themselves.

There are different conventions for skin balloon versus sky whale travel. Firstly, the skies are the whales' domain: Everyone else is a visitor. Therefore, unmanned sky whales have right of way over manned sky whales, and manned sky whales have right of way over skin balloons. You are also always polite to the sky whales. Tamed, wild, yours, others'—doesn't matter. Sky whales are perfectly aware both of what the little peopke are doing and of the fact that they could make them stop doing it very, very easily.

...People talk about 'taming', and on a practical level that is what it is, but also what you're really doing is building up enough of a rapport with this one specific whale that it doesn't mind you basically moving in. You'll hardly have a problem convincing your whale to come stock up on food, and you can go on journeys, long and short, with it, sure—but it will be with your whale. If the whale is not interested, the journey isn't happening.

If your whale sees its friend, it greets it, and so do you—and in the event that said friend is also 'occupied', you are very likely to become friends with its occupiers. There is a thriving community of whale-tamers and their descendants—sky whales have much longer lifespans than mostly everyone, after all. Except the faeries. And the Dubhain. But they're already the exception to everything, that's nothing new.

every so often I remember that whales molt

I’m not sure why I feel this way, but imo this is the most cursed marine mammal fact I have ever heard