The Selkie of Inis Gra (closed for SlippedHalo)

He was young and handsome, blond and fair, tall and fit, smart and clever, hard-working and reliable. He was every woman’s dream. Anywhere, save for his home.

There he was shunned, shunned from the day of his birth. His mother would name no father, and no man would own to the position. Such wantonness could not be countenanced in his village, his county, not in the whole of the province of Connacht. And so his birth was attended by none save his grandmother.

His mother died in his birth, and no priest would bury her, nor would one baptize her bastard, and so those duties, too, fell to his grandmother. To her also went the task of raising him.

She was herself a widow, possessor of her father’s farm, and content to run it herself after her husband’s death. Her other children coveted that farm, and objected to her taking in her bastard grandson, fearing he would inherit that which they felt rightfully theirs.

She raised him well, teaching him all that he needed to live on his own, for she knew that none would ever have him. He learned the tasks of women as well as of men, to spin and weave as well as to fish and farm, to cook and to build. It was fishing he loved best, however. Be it from dory or skiff, he loved being on the sea, either braving the troughs and rises of the open Atlantic in his dory, or the crashing breakers around the island rocks in his skiff, he could spend day after day on the salt water of the enveloping sea.

His grandmother died when he was sixteen, still a child and unable to take ownership of the land he had worked. His mother’s brothers ordered him out, not only out of the farm, but out of human society; they would have no illegitimate nephew in sight to remind them of the sins of their sister.

They ordered him to retreat to any uninhabited isle, and, in return, they would give him the dory and all that he could take with it in one trip. He loaded it wisely, with tools and utensils, seed potatoes and sheep, and, mocking them all, tied the skiff behind along with all that it could carry.

He knew to where he would sail, Inis Gra, a lonely outpost, but with a spring and enough arable land for a single person. It was his favorite, not for its land, but for its waters. The sea around Inis Gra teemed with fish, fish of all species, and with the fish, the seals. The rocks around his isle were home to thousands of these sea mammals which he so admired, in whose lives he found his deepest joy.

He settled in and built a rough cabin, adequate to his needs, and lived there nearly four years, earning an ample livelihood from sea and land. The seals were his only companions, and they came to accept his life amongst them, and even swam besides his skiff, almost in play, as he deftly maneuvered it among the rocks and breaking waves.

Her sisters called her Wyn. Her name to those she ever properly introduced herself to was Aerewyn. Her name by the tongue of the seal was unpronouncable by human abilities and unwritable by seal standards. Aerewyn was niether human nor seal, she was a selkie. One being by day, another by night...

She lived in a large family of sisters, thirteen, including herself, wandering around the isle loking for food and comfort. But, it was the strange, lonely human male who always caught Aerewyn's attention. So much so that it was beginning to be noticed by her sisters. Shae and Sylphia, the twins, a year her junior, made her promise she would not go too close to the shore and would never follow him out of the water no matter how kind and gentle he seemed. She promised, it felt hollow to do so. She was curious about the man...

Their own aunt had been held prisoner by a human fisherman a few years ago. He made love to her on the shore and then stole her shedded sealskin, hiding it under lock and key so she could never don it again and return to her family in the water. The aunt lived with the man as his wife for almost twenty years, bore him three sons and a daughter before one day her own child stumbled upon the locked box and managed to open it to see what was inside. That day, their aunt took her sealskin back and returned to the sea, never to return to the land again. She still missed her children very much, but those children were human and would never accept their mother as a selkie bride. Shunned by her own land family, their aunt was still a shadow of herself to this day.

Shae made Aerewyn promise she would not do anything foolish like their aunt had done.

"No. I won't go to the shore to look for him. I'll only watch him from the water." she promised. Feeling even then the tug of some unseen force at work as she laid her eyes upon this beauty of a man. There was something about him she found alluring and irresistible. She would be careful but she hardly believed he was like other human men. He seemed a being unto himself. And, she felt his loneliness. It was something which called to her.

She was proven right when he'd begun swimming alongside his boat, often joining she and her sisters in their swims. Aerewyn flirted with him mercilessly but he only played with her like she was a cute pet. She knew it was the soft, blubbery sealskin suit which had him confused. If only he could see her human-like form, Aerewyn was sure he'd be quite impressed if he could just see how she truly looked when the sun set in the sky...

His grandmother never expected him to find a wife; there wouldn’t be a girl in the whole of Connacht who’d have been allowed to even speak to him, let alone marry him. For this reason, she never saw fit to teach him about women, about what women and men might do together. In that, she wasn’t far off what other mothers did, or rather, didn’t do; sex was not spoken of, and even a nurse might be assaulted by the mother of a grown man if she so much as examined him shirtless. In spite of all, however, he did pick up a bit of knowledge.

Some came from intuition and his own longings and physical reactions as he passed his childhood. He could tell a woman from a man not just by her bosom, but also by the sway of her hips. Once he even had a glimpse of a breast, of a girl his own age who, attracted by his being an outcast, had bent over to draw him a drink of water as he walked by her house. Still, he knew precious little about womankind, save that he liked them.

The most peculiar thing about him, though, was his relationship with the sea. All the men of the coast were close to the sea, but none as close as he. The others worked on it, respected its power, and never entered into it. To swim, they felt, was an affront to their God, a demonstration of a lack of trust in Him to preserve them on the sea, an expression of unwarranted pride to act as if they needed no God to protect them, but this illegitimate son of a wanton woman had that audacity. He swam. He loved to swim, even in the chill waters of Spring and Fall, and he swam well, almost as well as any fish.

Alone on his island, swimming became his greatest joy. He swam through the breakers on the beach in the cove where he built his rough sod house, and he swam in the more open sea, diving from his anchored skiff. In swimming he also found his only company, for often he would join the friendly seals, or they would join him, as he swam from shore or boat. He quickly learned to recognize them, for each had their different features, and he learned much of how they lived.

One of his furred companions seemed closer to him than the others; while all appeared to enjoy his company, one paid him close attention. He knew this one was female; he had learned also to distinguish them by sex, and he felt as if she were almost flirting with him. She would brush by him as they swam, brushing her glistening pelt across his naked skin and even gliding between his legs as he kicked to propel himself. And at night he would dream of her, but in his dreams it seemed she was not a seal at all, but a human woman.

It was the night of the wedding celebrations.
Gertrude and Henry, their human names, were joined that very afternoon at sea and it was at night that the celebrations continued on the shore. The selkie clan all gathered to dance, sing, eat some great foods and generally have a great time while the lucky pair found a secluded place among the rocky beach, hidden away (for the most part) from the others in order to secure their union physically as true mates, of spirit and of body as well...

...All this togetherness and celebration of unions made Aerewyn think once more of her human male. The one she was certain was growing to want to know her as much as she longed to know him. Carefully, she hid her sealskin on the beach where she knew none of the others, nor a human eye, would think to look. She made her way, on pale, bare legs, toward the place she'd watched him go to sleep.

Creeping inside, he had no locks on his ports, she stood in the dim moonlit room, watching him as he slept fitfully and she wondered what was disturbing his dreams so...

The young man slept, but his repose was far from restful. The day’s fishing had ended, as often it had, with a swim amidst the herd of seals who inhabited the rocky shores of Inis Gra, but this day their swimming was unlike he’d ever seen or felt. They seemed crazed at times, overcome with an almost joyous lust for the pleasures of the sea and of each other. They leapt again and again from the rocks to the sea, and even from the sea high into the air. As they leapt and swam, they slid sensuously over each other, their fur and bodies gliding together in physical delight. “It must be some very special day for them,” the young man thought to himself, and soon found himself caught up in their festivities.

Yes, they swam around and with him as if he were one of their own, gliding their smooth wet fur over his naked flesh, leaping in the air to come down nearly atop him and then sliding off his back or front. The one that had paid particular attention to him now paid even more as she glided over his skin, more slowly than the others, lingering against him as she swam, and even swimming a pace with him, keeping in constant contact. And her dives between his legs grew bolder as she slipped up through his thighs to glide over his belly and caress his manhood with her velvet-smooth fur.

It was this that disturbed the man’s sleep, for his dreams were filled with images of her swimming besides, around, and through him. Each time in his dream that she passed between his thighs, he saw some of her pelt being shed. Bit by bit her head took on human form in his reverie, indistinct, but clearly that of a human woman. Then the fur was shed, sloughed off as she repeatedly brushed his legs and abdomen, from her shoulders, and these too took human form. Her flippers soon became arms and hands, long and lovely, each finger as graceful as a seal in water. Next her back, smooth and silken, pale and delicate, the skin fluid with the underlying movements of bone and muscle. He tossed in his sleep as she began to uncover her chest, the pelt giving way to skin, smooth, and rising to billows of flesh like he had seen on that girl so long ago.

Her chest was fully human now in his dream, and he gasped at the beautiful fullness of her breasts. His organ had been swelling with each dreamt pass of his companion, but now it sprung to full attention at the sight of this imagined apparition. He strained to see the rest of her become human, but his mind had no familiarity with it and could not conjure up an image for him. It did more, however, and conjured the image that it could as if it were real; so real, in fact, that he dreamt that it was no dream, that she was really there. His whole body became aroused at the thought, the image, the sense of substance, that he awoke with a start.

Even more startling, she was, indeed, standing before him, in his hut, at the foot of his rough bed. Or if not her, it was, at least, a woman, naked and beautiful, pale and delicate, and truly tangible.

He gained his composure as quickly as he could, and addressed her.

“A good evening to you, ma’am,” he said, trying to act as if what had happened was perfectly natural, perfectly expectable, “my name is Rohn; And what do you call yourself?”

Two embarassing things dawned on him at the same time as he spoke. He realized, possibly for the first time in his life, that his name meant ‘seal’ and that he introduced himself to a woman who in his fuzzy notions of things might herself be a seal. And he noticed that he was naked in front of her with his manhood more swollen and erect than it had ever been before. With those realizations, he froze, awaiting whatever would happen next.

She listened as he spoke, it took a few moments for her to remember what she'd been taught of human speech and language. There was a slight delay as she worked out his words and she smiled down at him in the dim moonlit chamber he slept in trying to put him at ease. She sat before him on the bed, close enough to touch him. Should she dare? She'd come this far already...

"Aerewyn...that is name they call me here on land." she replied in her strange, countryless accent. She knew her English wasn't perfect. After she'd spoken she immediately chastised herself for sounding so stupid. She tried to cover her embarrassment with another smile. "I have come...you call to me...I come."

His head was swimming in confusion, and he thought to himself it must be a dream within a dream; that was the only thing that might make sense. But then, he thought, “if it is a dream, why am I dreaming that it’s a dream?” And the throbbing of his erection seemed real enough to convince him he should do something other than sit up naked in bed with a beautiful naked woman and be embarrassed by his name and his manhood.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said, and added, “Aerewyn, that is a lovely name.” He took her hand and shook it in greeting, and felt embarrassed yet again as he realized he had no idea of the proper courtesies to follow when waking to a naked woman. Especially one who says she’s there because he called.

He didn’t remember calling for any woman, let alone one so beautiful and so bare, or did he? “Was she talking about my dream?,” he thought, and then realized the silence was getting a bit uncomfortable.

“I, um, I’m glad you came, Aerewyn,” he said as his eyes roved over her face down her neck, onto her breasts and back up again.

His hand followed his eyes as they traveled the same path again, his fingers gliding lightly over her eyelids, down her nose to her lips, where they paused, tracing the outline of their gentle bowing and their lightly colored surface. Her chin was next, and he followed the line beneath down the front of her throat, pausing to explore the dimple where breastbone and collarbones met. His eyes found the curve of her breasts, and his fingers followed there as well, lining out the margins of each rounded and firm fruit and continuing on to feel the dimpled surface of her areolae and the firmness of her nipples.

He instinctively broadened his hand and spread his fingers to embrace her breast, cupping it in his palm. The hardness of her nipple burned its heat into the center of his hand, at the crossing of the lines of Fate and Head, midway between those of Heart and Life. He gasped at the touch, but kept his hand on her as he felt her warmth flow through his hand to the rest of his body, focusing itself in his even more distended member. He looked back into her eyes, no longer embarrassed by his erection, or anything else.

Aerewyn leaned forward, her skin pulsed with warmth wherever he touched her. Her eyes closed to enjoy the touch of the man she'd been dreaming of for months. Finally, she opened her eyes and whispered, "Would you like to kiss me?"

Rohn needed no more encouragement than that of her question. Would he like to kiss her? The thought itself could have no negative answer.

He sat up straight in his bed, still holding her breast snug, and slid his free hand into her long red tresses to wrap his arm around her shoulders . He guided her gently towards him until the tips of their noses grazed, and then paused to take a breath, a breath more a sigh of longing and anticipation than a simple inhalation of air.

His lips pursed as they met hers, and he pressed ever-so-softly, his heart quivering in time to the trembling of her lips against his. Her heat coursed through his body anew, from lips to groin, and he felt a bleb of fluid squeeze itself out the tip of his organ. He needed no thought, no plan, to respond to her arousal, and his lips pressed firmly, now, parting hers and freeing his tongue to stroke across the pink entrance to her mouth and taste the woman of his dream. His arm held her close as his other hand began to knead her breast, and he felt his own passion rise from his groin and flow like molten lava through his lips and tongue and into Aerewyn’s graceful body.

His entrance into her was as fluid as their kissing. She felt no alarm, no pain as she thought she might. Only one moment she was empty and longing and the next she was filled with his manliness and breathless with anticipation for the moments to come. She opened her eyes to look up at him int he darkness, catching his glance in her own, she smiled and said, "Make love to me, Rohn."

Rohn had no knowledge of human love-making; all he had seen was that of the sheep and the kine in the meadows and the passes made by seals as they swam belly to belly through the beds of kelp. There was little need for instruction, however, for instinct drove him to pull Aerewyn gently on to the bed beside him and to then roll over atop her, his legs nestled snugly between hers.

His organ, swollen and pulsing, easily found its way between her warm and moist labia and pressed at her vestibule. There he met some resistance; a veil of tissue sealed her entrance and impeded his way. Her legs wrapped round him and encouraged him to press harder, until the veil tore and he slid deeply into her warm and enveloping sheath.

“Ohhhhhhhh,” he gasped in unison with his new-found mate as he penetrated her, thrusting his hips forward until his organ could go no further. He rose on his elbows , then, to look on Aerwyn’s face, on her loving eyes and inviting smile, and to kiss her again, full on the mouth, as he now drove himself in and out of her with thrusts of his hips.

Head up again, and his gaze wandered over her hair and face and breasts, captivated by the flow and ebb of their flesh with each stroke of his hips. All this was so new to him, and so delightful, that he was overwhelmed in all his senses. He focused on one sense after another, trying to sort each from the other. He breathed deeply of her perfume as he nestled his head in her hair, and in the fragrance he heard her sighs. His tongue essayed to taste her lips, and in it he felt the velvet softness of her flesh. He felt the tightness of her sheath flow over his shaft, and in it he saw again the undulating waves of her breasts’ flesh.

He gave up trying to discern her scent from her sound and her sight, her taste from her touch; all melded into one ineffable sense of pleasure. His thrusts became varied, his hips gyrated, and with each shift of stroke came a shift of sensation, and each sensation brought a new sigh or moan of pleasure to his voice. He looked on her and saw pleasure in her face, in her voice, in her movements, and he began to play his body as an instrument, sounding a concerto of sensation, a duet of delight in her response to him and in his response to her.

He drove in deep, forcing his organ in to its root, and then, wrapping his arms around her, he rolled over on to his back taking Aerewyn with him. He lay beneath her now, she astride him, and he attempted to speak. The pleasure of their joining overwhelmed him and reduced his words to a gibberish of joy.

At first, his entrance felt like a soft, slickened bit of blubber pushing inside of her, pushed by a rod...but soon that odd, squishy sensation ended as he came to the point of her virginity. She wrapped her legs around him, reminding herself to relax no matter what happened because she was in love and that mattered more...So, as he pushed through her hymen and pain shattered her pleasure into a thousand bits of sharp, heat...she bit her lip to keep from crying out. Shed asked for this after all...It was then a relief when his movements continued and the pain lessened with each thrust, melting into a more demanding sort of squishy joy like nothing she'd ever experienced before. Aerewyn wanted him inside her for all time, it felt so amazingly wonderful!

He continued this way for quite some time and she reveled in the feel of his cock moving within her sex....and then he surprised her, shifting to lie on his back. It took a while of rocking, and trying different movements before Aerewyn reaized it would be most pleasurable if she began to pump up and down on his cock, using her own body as a hammer, to push his piston into her over and over....and this felt even more nice! Every vein and muscle in his cock was a new sensation to her ever more sensitive cunt and Aerewyn was very vocal in her sensual moaning song as she explored these new feelings and how wonderful it felt to make love to this human.

Rohn was in ecstasy as Aerewyn rode him, and held tightly onto his bedsides with both hands to keep himself from instinctively grasping her and unintentionally impeding the realization of her desires. Each vein on his shaft felt the flowing pressure of her sheath and the tight grip of her vaginal ring, and his whole body shuddered with the percussive blows of her pubic bones against his. As she pumped up and down, he could see the effect of her actions on her self, the pleasure of the impact of their bones which squished her mons, and its hidden nub of nerves, between their pubes, the incredible smile that came over her whenever he felt the head of his organ pressed high into the roof of her chamber. Her hair flew wildly about as her body rose and fell, waving above and across him, dazzling his eyes and tantalizing his skins with its soft brushes. And her breasts! The waves that he had sent through them were calm compared to the stormy and violent swells that she herself sent crashing through them!

He could restrain himself no longer, and his hands took hold of her hips, gliding up and down her sides, then settling on her breasts, one hand loosely encircling each to feel its tossing by her wild ride. Tight, then, on each, his hands engulfing and gripping her breasts against their tosses, kneading them and tugging on them. Her nipples had become hard pillars surrounded by halos of pink, and his fingers found them, twisting and tugging on them as her breasts resumed their wild dance.

A strong tug on her nipples, and her hands slipped from his shoulders leaving her to fall against him, lips to lips. He kissed her yet again, sliding his tongue between their lips and between their moans and sighs to play with hers, twirling and dancing with it as he tasted every surface in her mouth and gave her the full taste of his. He rolled again with her as they kissed, onto their sides now, as did the seals when the passed in the surf, and he lay, still between her legs, as their hips began to pump and thrust in concert.

They never stopped their joining as they turned once more, engrossed in every nuance of what it felt like to explore another person wholly and in full. She intended to know every centimeter of his body before this night was through. She had no idea if it was to be her only chance such as this and was hungry to take it and live this night to it's fullest.

As they lay side by side, Rohn grasped Aerewyn’s wrists and drew her arms up straight up to the headboard and wrapped her fingers around its spindles. His fingers began to explore her fully-extended form, gliding over and around the whole length of each arm, slipping in and around the wild locks of her hair, and drawing her face to him to caress each feature again. Lips down her throat, now, as fingers roam over her side and back and then from her waist up to her breast, hanging languidly towards the bed, its nipple as hard as a beach pebble. On over her belly and around her hips, his whole palm caressing her full, round ass, fingers exploring the crack between her cheeks, gently rimming her little pucker, and sliding up the juncture of her thigh and her vulva, and all the time, his hips thrusting in wave-like rhythm with hers, the ebb and flow of the ocean they both love welling inside them.

Aerwyn's cries of pleasure radiated from the heat in her belly, the pulsing of blood flowing to the organs being used to swell and sensitize to his every thrust, every motion, she had never felt such a connection, body and soul, with anyone in her life. Soon, her body was sending her a confusing message, it was trembling and shaking and she felt hot as if she was going to explode into flames. Her warning to her lover was simple, "I feel something...happening..."

Rohn’s voice rose in concert with her, a crescendo of ecstasy of body and voice, and he too felt something happening. His body was trembling, his muscles twitching in random spasms, and he felt the same in her body. There was a certain familiarity in the feeling; it was not unlike what he had felt a few times before as he awoke in the night from an arousing dream to find his organ stiff and a pool of thick white fluid where its tip rested.

This feeling, though, was infinitely more intense. He felt sweat welling up on his back, and then the random spasms coalesced into one simultaneous contraction, freezing him where he lay and arching his back as if he were succumbing to tetanus’ He felt Aerewyn stiffening as well, her arms taut as she held the headboard, her legs squeezing around him, and whatever inside her that enveloped his organ tightening in waves around it.

He cried out in pleasure as his body exploded, all its force focused through his penis, and erupting from its tip in jets of hot, white lava. He held Aerewyn tight against him as he erupted again and again, subsiding slightly with each eruption, himself ejaculating a litany of joyful sounds with each eruption.

A smile of ineffable pleasure spread over his face as he looked into her dreamy, half-closed eyes, and the spasms left his muscles, collapsing his arms and legs and torso into a flaccid mass by her side.

She sighed, her own eruption had come at the same time as the spurt of his heat within her. Once she took a calm moment to think about it the realization dawned...it was his seed. He'd shot his seed into her womb. She smiled a secret smile, wondering what that would mean, what sort of offspring would it make if they were to successfully mate, she wondered...Then, she shook the thought away, only half serious as she decided not to worry and to simply enjoy her time with her man. He seemed satisfied and she defintely was. She lie in his arms contentedly for a long while and soothed him to sleep with soft caresses and kisses, and a wordless lullaby mother seals sing to their babies. Once he had fallen deeply asleep she too dozed.

It was light when she awoke. Her man still slept peacefully. She panicked realizing the ceremonies on the beach were likely close to over if not already finished and her relatives would be looking for her by now. In a hurry she kissed his sleeping form once more, hoping it was not their first and last time ever coupling as they had that fateful night. She then slipped away into the dawn, careful not to let anyone see her as she found her sealskin and slipped into it.
Aerewyn was back to swimming with her cousins in the sea before anyone had even thought to question her absence. Her body was present with her seal family but her mind and heart remained with Rohn. She knew he'd be so sad when he would awaken to find her gone.

She hoped someday she could make it up to him, hoped they'd have time together again in the future so she could make him understand. But, she never thought he'd ever be able to love her if he knew what she really was.

Rohn awoke after long after sunrise, long after his usual start of day. His limbs felt as if they had already done a full day’s work, and, as he tried to imagine why, images of his night with Aerewyn filled his mind.

“It must have been one of those dreams,” he said to himself as he noticed the dried fluids on his groin. “But it seems so real,” he added. Had he made love to a woman that night? Was she a woman? Where did she come from? How did she find him? His mind now filled with a myriad of unanswered questions. But he did have one answer, at least.

“If she was truly real, truly not a dream,” he resolved, “then she is the one I want, be she seal or woman or both, and I will search until I find her.”

He dressed and ate, and then searched around his hut for signs of her. No footprints were to be found, just some indistinct marks in the sand. Off he went to his skiff, now. Not fishing this time, but searching. He scoured the island’s rocks but found no one; not even the seals. He landed in a sandy bay and searched the land. Still no one was to be found. He hiked the length and breadth of Inis Gra in vain. As the sun began to set, he returned to his skiff and rowed for his own bay.

The seals were back now, from whatever secret convening they had attended, and Rohn could not resist joining them in the channel between their island and his bay. Off with his clothes and into the water, and the seals, as usual, seemed to recognize him and joined in his play.

One stayed away, though, and he thought he recognized her as the one who always had swam close to him, the one who had swam between in his legs. “The one,” he thought, “of whom I dreamed last night, if it were, indeed, a dream.”

He wondered why she held her distance now, and began towards her with long pulls of his arms.

Aerewyn wasn't sure if she could stand the heartbreak if her dear Rohn found out what she really was and rejected her for it. How could a man love a seal? She thought this as she watched his gorgeous form swim through the water, lithe and quick as a fish, and then he began to approach her. She startled and swam away, hiding behind some large rocks on the beach.

Rohn swam round the shore, searching in vain for the one who had been close to him. Her new reluctance confused him, and he wondered what could have driven her away. He knew how easily the seals could outdistance him, no matter how good a human swimmer he was, if they wished to, so he returned to his skiff. His little boat was swift with the pull of his oars, and he sped to search all the rocks held dear by her kind in hopes still of finding her.

As he stroked, he thought on his dream or his reality, whichever it might be, and the thought entered his mind, and fixed itself there, that she was the seal and the woman of his dream. He rowed to the outer reaches of the wave-tossed crags without a sight of her, and, with heavy heart, turned back towards home. When he closed in on his island, about to turn for his own cove, he caught a glimpse of seal behind some rocks on a beach.

Quickly he shifted course and made straight for the beach as fast as his oars would propel the skiff, hoping to land before he was even seen. If it were her, he’d be there before she’d have a chance to flee and he could...

“I could what,” he said out loud, “she is a seal, and I could hardly ask her if she were the woman who visited me last night. I must be mad to do this.”

But mad or not, he continued, intent on finding his friend, intent on finding out if she were also his lover. As he neared the beach, he found himself wishing more than anything that this seal was her, and that she was the one of his dream, and he knew that heloved her no matter what she might be.

Aerewyn felt confused, she saw the pain in Rohn's eyes when she swam away from him and his pain hurt her too but she didn't know how to tell him the truth. He'd hate her for it, she knew it...

The sun was at the horizon as Rohn approached the beach, and the long shadows it cast highlighted every feature of the rocky outcrop. As he drove his skiff through the breakers, he saw the elongated shadow of a seal slip from behind the stones and into the water. No time to bring his little boat about, no matter how lithe and responsive it was; he leaped from his seat and into the sea, letting the skiff dart over the waves and up on to the beach.

His dive brought him in line with the seal’s path of escape, and he stretched to wrap his arms around her. His arms encircled seal; that was for sure, but beneath the pelt, beneath the fur and the insulating layer of fat, his hands discerned a different form. Was that a human breast his right hand grasped? Was his left fixed on a slender waist? In his surprise at the touch, he lost his grip and she slipped away from him.

He knew the strategies of the seals, though, the tricks they used to escape both shark and orca, and he anticipated her every move, swimming almost as fast, but far more cunning than she. He turned her towards the shore, towards land, where he could better hold her.

No path left to her now, as he drove her between two rocks, and onto the beach she lurched. He had the advantage now, even in the dark of twilight, and he dove to seize her again. And again he felt that form beneath the skin. As he grasped her tightly, she began to wiggle and squirm to escape. Of a sudden, Rohn was left with naught but an empty sealskin in his grip and the sight of a naked woman, a beautiful woman, running from him across the sand.

“Aerewyn,” he called, “Wait!” and he leapt to his feet in pursuit.

He'd been a maniac in his pursuit. She just couldn't get away from him! Aerewyn cried out as he tore the sealskin from her but her instinct still told her to flee. He couldn't possibly understand this. He probably thought she was some monster and had no idea she was his lover from the other night, his friend and companion from the water...Then, he'd called her name and she froze and turned to look at him in shock. What would he do now? Get angry? Hurt her? Be sad? She wasn't sure but if he knew it was her she thought she had to at least give him an explanation. She stood and let him catch up to her, the tears were streaming down her face so quickly now.

As Rohn caught up to her, he wrapped his arms around her and fell with her onto the soft sand. His lips found her tearful eyes and caressed them, seeking to assuage her sorrows. Her breaths blew warm on his cheeks with each of her sobs, and brought her scent back to him, the fragrance of the woman he had found and loved in his bed.

Yet he had caught up to her as a seal; he still held the sealskin that had shed from her in his arms. His grandmother had told him stories of selkies, of the seal people, and he thought these were only tales of the imagination. Living alone and swimming with the seals and led him to consider that the stories might have some fact behind them, particularly when he had found the one seal that played with him more than did the others. He knew now she was Aerewyn, but still he needed to hear her story from her own lips, not from his conjectures.

“Don’t cry, Aerewyn,” he said softly as he held her tight, “there’s no need to cry.”

Still she sobbed, and he wrapped a leg around hers to hold her close to himself, trying to calm her with his tenderness. Did she know the tales, he wondered. In the old songs, the selkie was always a male, and he always killed the maiden after he seduced her; was she worried that she do the same to him?

His grandmother had told him that the murdering monster part of the story was made up to frighten girls away from the selkies, that the selkies were great and loyal lovers who were the envy of human men. She had even hinted that his mother’s unnamed lover, Rohn’s father, may have been a selkie.

As her sobs began to abate, he spoke to her again. “Please, Aerewyn, stop this needless crying. I’ve known you as seal and as woman, and I love you as both. Now, tell me your story, let me know you.”