hey question! Can Elder Kei communicate with each other? Is it like elephants or whales humming/singing to each other over long distances?
Short answer: Yes and no!
Long answer: They can, but it comes at some cost with, normally, very little benefit. After reaching a certain size, their voices are simply too loud to be safe for the smaller kei around them. They tend to become mostly mute by the time they're so large that other kei in their packs can hide out in their mouths, which they absolutely will. After all, if you've got a bunch of very small people who are very sensitive to noise inside your Very Loud Mouth, you don't really want to be yelling around them. So the cost in question isn't really to them, but rather to the people they care about. If they feel the need to say something, they will generally wiggle around a little and open their mouth and turn their head side to side to prompt their pack to leave the Noisy Zone (tm) so they can communicate, usually via an archaic subset of the sea language, which is indeed somewhat like whalesong, communicating largely through pitch, vowel shapes, and clicks. They will almost always be trying to say something very important to their pack, but rarely they might be trying to say hello to a passing elder some massive distance away, since they are fairly detectable when moving simply due to sheer size and the chattering of their packs around them.
In a truly cataclysmic event, like tsunamis or massive earthquakes and underwater landslides, they will start yelling for real, loud alert calls that can travel incredible distances, usually warning other packs to get away. After all, if the elder that's yelling about it can't handle it, there's very very little likelihood that the nearest elderβlikely hundreds or thousands of miles awayβwill be able to get close enough in time to help, but they can lead their packs away. They also tend to give a sort of creaking whalesong 'okay, time to go down' noise when solar flares are close, coaching their packs through it and soothing them. They also may purr or hum at very deep, gentle frequencies as a social thing with their pack, which encourages safe happy feelings and some amount of physical healing in others nearby. Their ability to do so is part of why the communities that build around elders tend to be very warm, healthy, long lived, and peaceful.
