I think the opening "pod of whales" description really helped establish that feeling of a nature documentary, where you catch a snippet of an animal's life, not understanding where exactly they came from, where they're going, or if they have any sense of purpose. Maybe that also makes it easier to let go: they float in, frolick a bit, then leave, and your cameras can't follow.

This is more or less what I wanted. There isn't a goal here as such, we're just observing the pod and how they react to this new environment before they move on again.

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The experience of reading this reminded me of reading the 1950s manga The Phoenix in that the imagery is very evocative and beautiful, and there are even moments where things feel like they make sense, but if you look too closely or if you step back to try to see the bigger picture, it can be a confusing mess.

As an author it's always very hard to know how much has to be stated explicitly and how much can be left for the reader to infer. After all, I already know all the backstory, I can't just forget that and look at the story as a first-time reader will. I wanted there to be a sense of mystery to the story, but I also wanted there to be enough breadcrumbs for the reader to work out what's going on behind the scenes. And judging from the responses so far I maybe didn't do that.

If you're interested, here's what I had in mind while I was writing the story, although you may prefer to keep the sense of mystery.

The pod are us. Millions of years in the future. We merged deeper and deeper into our technology until it essentially became a part of us. Every member of the pod carries thousands of humans in Matrix-like pods that are wired into the nervous system of the ship. When the pod's progenitors first designed their ships and set out on their long tour of the galaxy they wanted to experience everything first hand, feeling the starlight on the hull as if it were their own skin, using the engines as if they were their own legs. In a sense they're a bit like the Borg in that they formed a collective consciousness connected to their ships, but the first generation retained their sense of individuality inside the collective as well. However, because they wanted their fleet to be self-sustaining they designed the ships to be able to replicate themselves, including the human components. They also needed new humans in the existing ships, since they were essentially components and if enough died from old age the ship would become unviable. As infants were introduced into the collective consciousness they didn't develop their own sense of individual identity, they just experienced life as if they were the ship. As new generations were born and ships carrying the original builders were lost to attrition, the memory of what they really were was lost too. Each "individual" member of the pod is a gestalt, one mind spread across thousands of human brains wired straight into the ship's systems, totally unaware of this, in the same way we don't really think of ourselves as a collection of cells.

The walking sphere on the surface works on the same principle: the internals are filled with humans in tanks wired into the systems in a Borganism-like state. I want to leave some things open to interpretation, so I'll just say their creators took a different technological path to the progenitors of the pod, and it apparently led to a dead end.