Chapter Text
Not only local people know the folklore shrouding the seaside. If you’ve ever been to one of the dusty, decaying museums dedicated to all of the myths and extinct races which apparently used to roam the lands then you’ll know that half of the stories in there are unbelievable and have been disproved by science since their creation. Even if you wish that some were true and enjoy imagining what the creatures could have looked like, you’d never truly believe them.
Only the young, and naïve, would entertain the thought that these mythical, unexplained creatures could exist.
And that makes everything easier for the creatures who do still exist.
You see, there used to be people who would hunt them down and butcher them for their unique traits — mermen and women would be fished out of the sea so their scales could be sold on necklaces to rich ladies, werewolves would be captured in traps and sold as household hunting dogs on iron leashes, fairies would be bought as simple lamp decorations, yetis would be butchered for their snow-resistant coats and so on — but as time went on, more of these beasts actually became extinct and so, with less sightings of them, humans began to forget about them existing at all. Their names became only words in storybooks about myths and legends and their drawn images were used to scare little children into behaving.
The only places where these creatures are still believed in now, is where strange, unexplainable things have happened like in Loch Ness where the Loch Ness Monster resides (no being has ever managed to contact ‘Nessie’ yet, though she definitely exists, that’s for sure). There are still enough supernatural goings-on in other deep cliffs and misty bogs around the world to make people less convinced that all mythical beings have disappeared.
And that works completely fine for creatures such as Tommy.
He is a selkie. A seal in water, sliding through the waves with his pelt, and a scrawny sixteen year old human on land, when his silky coat is tucked away behind a veil of magic so it is unrecognisable.
Many selkies were hunted for their pelts — apparently the oily material makes extraordinary coats for rich ladies — or were forced into lives of slavery by people who stole and hid their second skins from them. Other land-bound selkies went completely insane, resulting in their deaths either way, but culture passed down generations tells of reincarnations into full seal bodies so they can be free forever, at one with the waves.
Tommy has not gone insane yet.
Unless you’d call the constant need to be within touching distance of the ocean, the accidental, late-night trips towards the lapping waves on the beach in his sleep and the constant loneliness which is the result of not having a crash of other seals to call his family.
They don’t count. He’s fine (that’s what he tells himself, but he doesn’t know if it’s truly what he believes). He doesn’t need anyone, just himself and his coat.
Every selkie’s pelt takes a different sealskin form out of water so they aren’t so auspicious and easy to find or steal, as often happens. Tommy’s takes the form of a knee-length sealskin overcoat with a fur trim and he keeps it close by him at all times.
When he’s outside, he wears it — and considering the weather on the coast these days, having a built-in jacket with you from birth is always a good thing. When he’s too hot, he carries it with him wherever he is going (usually not very far considering the fact that he lives in an abandoned lighthouse by the sea with only miles and miles of reedy land, cattle and the odd village of which all the people who live there thinks his home is haunted). When he’s asleep, it’s under his pillow.
And right now, when he can’t sleep, was too hot inside and is now standing on the edge of the cliff his lighthouse is perched on? He wears it still, never engaging the true magic abilities stitched into the skin but still keeping it wrapped tightly around his thin body. The wind buffets him and dark clouds swiftly sweep across the brightly lit constellations, hiding them so he finally has to face the one thing he’s scared of. The ocean.
You’ll never hear of a bird who’s afraid of heights, but there is one selkie who is afraid of the sea he used to live in. Not exactly afraid of the water pulling him under (and claiming what is rightfully hers), but scared of what happened when he last used his second skin on that fateful day. Anyways, he’s survived on land, never touching the waves who insistently call out to him, for a long time now. He was ten when it happened.
He is sixteen now.
And equally as afraid of his “gift” as he was on that cold, emotionless night when his parents unwillingly left his world for another.
But as he finds himself staring out into the deep, fathomless ocean tonight all he can see is a ship being tossed around on the towering waves on the skyline. The harsh, relentless wind whips his baggy clothing around, sending goose pimples rippling up his bare arms. Storm clouds continue to brew like purple and black bruises on the horizon and if Tommy squints in the moon’s half-light he can see that the boat is not upright. It’s mast and cream sails are the only visible part left, tilted sideways with waves devouring more and more of it every second. Then a massive swell crashes over it and even that’s gone too, engulfed in one clean bite.
Whatever that ship was carrying is now, most likely at the bottom of the sea along with its crew. No dinghy motors away from the wreck carrying survivors and Tommy knows he can do nothing for the people falling to the bottom of the sea. But then his keen eyes pick up on a little head popping up out of the rolling ocean and clinging onto a few planks of the ship for dear life.
He can’t do anything for the people who have already submitted to the fathomless ocean, but he can save this one person from an equally horrible death.
His mind buffers for a few seconds in hesitance before kicking him into action and ordering his chilly legs — he didn’t realise how long he’d been standing out in the cold for — to run slowly down the path he trekked up earlier.
Down the high-up cliffside he sprints, along the cracked, storm-weathered stone path to his lighthouse which stands with its paint crumbling and lamp smashed irreparably, just as he left it a few hours ago.
He claimed the old lighthouse for his home after he washed up on the beach the morning after the day which changed his life forever. Frankly, it was a miracle nobody from the early clean-up crews or any people from nearby villages found him lying there unconscious with sand plastered to his skin and a sealskin coat tied around his torso. If they did, they might’ve pieced together what had happened to him and force him into slavery by stealing his pelt like all the selkie folk stories go.
They didn’t though, and people refuse to set foot anywhere near the lighthouse (something about it being haunted by ghosts — even Tommy knows that’s bullshit), and if they do he just has to make some shadow puppets on the wall to scare away the few children who try to trespass. All in all, it makes for the perfect place to stay (apart from the lack of company, that thought goes ignored).
The sun-bleached beacon barely has anything inside its rooms — a few bags of coffee, a table with chairs surrounding it and the odd moth-eaten blanket hidden in a corner of crates — but the one thing it does not lack is fish. Whoever lived there before Tommy must’ve been a big fan considering the mountainous stock-pile of tinned fish lying abandoned in the store cupboard. Luckily, that suits him just fine.
He runs past his home of the last six years and onto the beach where he washed up all that time ago. He yanks off his shoes and socks in one motion and stands on the edge of the water, letting it lap onto his toes.
It may not seem like much, but it’s the closest he’s been to the murky expanse in years. He hears the sea calling to him, whispering of a home and belonging and telling him about all the things he doesn’t have on the isolated coastline.
He’s managed to ignore its urging so far, but this time it isn’t about him. There’s a person out there whose life hangs in the balance; he can’t have that hovering over his conscience for the rest of his days as well as his parents’ lives.
Many ‘what ifs’ pass through his mind as his hands go to untie the sealskin knotted around his waist. What if he can’t save them? He better get a move on then. What if they find out? He’ll just have to lie… What if they steal his pelt? What if, what if, what if—
“Oh, shut the fuck up mind,” he growls quietly, undoing the last tie and shrugging the sealskin coat on over his shoulders. Once it’s zipped up around his top half, he starts to feel the magic veil hiding the real pelt slip off and suddenly a warmth is enveloping him. Pins and needles spread along his arms as he wades into the cool ocean, finally answering its calls.
The water rises over his knees, slowly covering them and the sand tries to envelope his toes in a warm, welcoming hug, like a relative that you never intended to see again who still insists on pretending to care.
Tommy wouldn’t know what having relatives is like, it was only ever him and his parents. It’s not as if he needed relatives, anyways. He didn’t need anyone when his body was spasming on the metal flooring and breaths weren’t entering his lungs. He didn’t need anyone when he was lost and alone in a foreign land. He still doesn’t need anyone but himself.
(Lying to yourself becomes easier with practice.)
He keeps wading, memories trying to resurface with every step further out to sea. Every breath that he manages to suck in brings him back to moments he doesn’t want to relive. He relives them every night anyway, knows the events back-to-front.
Another person will die if you don’t fucking hurry up.
With a final breath of air in his lungs, he propels himself off the ocean floor and dives into the water, arms raised in a torpedo position above his head. Then his legs are gone.
In their place is a beautiful seal tail that tapers smoothly up streamlined skin and flippers are where his hands were. The memories push at the wall separating Tommy from them with a renewed ferocity to escape but he focuses his mind elsewhere. He has a mission: save the sailor.
He uses his whiskers to find a general direction of where the ship is slowly sinking to the seabed and powers his tail towards it, using his flippers to steer between strong currents. Gliding through the waves like a bird flying in the sky is strangely freeing and the adrenaline pumping through his body helps to soothe the threatening memories.
Time passes differently while in the water and he arrives at the wreckage in what feels like no time at all. There’s scents of blood mixed with splintered wood climbing into his nostrils but Tommy can already tell from the ocean’s silence that the rest of the crew is dead. The only noise interrupting the deathly quiet is the groaning of the ship’s remains giving in to the sea’s insistent dragging to the floor.
Manoeuvring around the drifting floorboards of the sinking ship and upwards to the surface, he listens with his head poking just out of the water for any frantic splashes that could mean the sailor is nearby.
No other smells find his nose except one that he can’t quite place the familiarity of.
He shakes the questions from his mind and just as he is about to give up and assume everyone as dead, a small stream of air bubbles rises next to him. He didn’t make those.
That can only mean one thing.
He flicks his tail up in the air and dives, pulling himself downwards and trying to discern anything even relatively human-like in the murky water. Nothing, nothing, nothing, until there is something.
A pair of legs peek out from the darkness, still floating down along with the rest of the body. The difference between this person and the rest of the sailors is the fact that this one’s heart is still beating, possibly not for long.
Tommy swims under the man (he presumes), noticing his white shirt and black, knee-length britches, and presses into the guy’s back. A different type of pins and needles prick the place where their bodies touch but he ignores it (again) and beats his tail powerfully. Within a few strokes, they’re breaching the surface.
The man gasps, heaving in deep breaths while Tommy fetches the nearest piece of driftwood, a door, for him to lean on. The man is burly, his shoulders weigh down the large door, and his hair — the lighting is too dark to tell what colour — is plastered to his face. He doesn’t look too bad for somebody who was on the brink of death mere seconds ago.
Then he must realise what’s wrong with the situation. Tommy can see it in his eyes, the realisation that he should be dead and then the confusion of why he isn’t and then fear? The sailor’s eyes move towards where Tommy is hovering next to the floating door but his selkie reflex to hide isn’t quick enough. Their eyes connect for a split-second, searching hazel meets his cloudy-black, then Tommy disappears under the waves with a little flick of his tail.
The swim back to the beach is nerve-wracking, his heartbeat thrums in his veins louder than the crashing waves hammering the cliffside but being back in the water soothes his worries and he can only focus on the now. Cutting smoothly through matter like a knife through butter, it’s almost as if he’s meant to be here (he knows deep down that everything will be more painful when he leaves).
Thoughts of what he just did rise up as soon as his pelt is safely retied around his waist. What the shit? What the fuck was he thinking!
The sailor knows there’s a selkie on this coast now, what’s he going to do? What if—
No. He’s not thinking about possible and probable realities. Tommy’s got to just feign oblivion and pretend to be a completely different person to the one who saved the man.
So he shakes all trepidation from his body and smothers bravado over the cracks, hoping that the thin tape and drawing pins holding himself together don’t crumble.
He rounds the headland to the beach below his lighthouse, and immediately catches sight of the sailor. He’s lying on the now-grounded, sand-sprinkled wooden door, bent double and hacking up saltwater. The man collapses back in exhaustion with his eyes closed, clearly not having noticed Tommy’s presence.
All he can think is: what the fuck is he supposed to do now?