Page 50 of Between Salt and Serenades
OH, HOW I’VE MISSED YOU
Breena
Rocks jut out all around me, but the threat wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to. The Selkie Cove was the only home I’d ever known before discovering Barthoah. While Sid may have never left her territory, I knew the pathway through the jagged rock and violent currents like I’d been made for this journey.
I cut through the choppy water with my powerful hind flippers, dodging obstacles and fighting the currents that threatened to send me headfirst into stone.
After sawing through the netted enclosure and freeing hundreds—thousands—of fish and other sea creatures, I’d pulled the rest of my pelt up so I was in full seal form. As beautiful as I felt half transitioned, I’d needed the strength that came along with being a seal.
As I swam, the intense push and pull of the water released into a soft ebb and flow, and the rocks on either side of me rounded and divided, as if they were welcoming me home.
I broke the surface and peered up at the seaside cliffs forming a circle around me, the rocky landscape never feeling so muchlike an embrace as it did now. My heart fluttered as I swam closer, diving back under the water and darting in between the legs of two kelpies as they butted heads. One of their midnight-green tails wrapped around my flipper as I swam past them, so I gave them a gentle nudge with my nose. The creature with the upper half of a horse and the lower half of a mer-person freed me, and I dashed away.
The deeper into the cove I swam, the shallower and lighter the water became. I suspected it would take a day or two to start seeing most of the fish re-enter the cove, while some would never attempt to cross the rapids. There were a few, however, that had followed me through, using the path I swam as guidance. I’d let those fish be, but I’d certainly grabbed a few to eat after I first transitioned.
Niven, where are you?
Not only did I want to see my brother after being gone for what felt like months, but I also wanted to show him what I’d brought back with me. Niven was my older brother, and I didn’t often like to admit it, but he was wiser too, given the number of years he had on me. My parents had passed on at different times in my life, my father taken by an orca and my mother from an unshakable illness. Niven had stepped up and raised me after their untimely deaths when I’d been far too young to say goodbye.
While true seals had a dozen or more pups in their lifetime, us selkies were more like the humans, as we only had a few. My parents had been gone for well over a decade, and only Niven and I remained. He was a father, a brother, and a best friend all in one. I’d missed sitting upon sun-warmed rocks with him, chatting about nonsense and watching young seals trying, and failing, to catch birds. So, when I needed to find him, our spot on the rocks was the first place I went.
Swimming past spotted and speckled seals, I watched for Niven’s distinctive silvery pattern. When I approached the shoreline, I thrust myself out of the water onto the closest rock. My blubber cushioned my landing as always, and I waddled across sea salt-sprayed stone in search of him.
Water droplets clung to my whiskers, reminding me of Sid’s little name for me. Shaking them off, I attempted to put the beautiful siren out of my mind. I had a mission, and how could I risk everything by allowing my thoughts to be consumed by her? I knew just how easily they could.
“Breena?”
I swung my head to see a brown-haired man with the silvery tail of a seal wave his two arms above him.
Niven!
Moving faster, I scooted over stones that grew progressively warmer and dryer as I continued. Seals and selkies alike chuffed and barked at me as I clumsily trampled their flippers, but I paid them no mind. When Niven was so close I could smell his distinct scent of driftwood and salt, I peeled my pelt over my face and arms, just enough that I could pull him into a tight hug.
“I knew it was you.” My brother’s embrace wasn’t one I’d longed for while on land, but now that I had it, I didn’t want him to let go, not so soon.
When he finally did, I flopped back onto the flat rock behind me, the contours in it so familiar and comforting that I cried out, “Oh, how I’ve missed you!”
“I’ve missed you too,” Niven chuckled. “Where have you been?”
“I was talking to my rock. Don’t be ridiculous, Niv,” I said with an eye roll. He slapped my tail with his own and shook his head. I released pent up air in the form of a laugh, relieved to be home, relieved to be on my rock next to my brother, and relieved to have something to offer him—to everyone.
Sitting up, both of our smiling faces faded as a more potent reality struck me, the entire reason I’d come back home in the first place.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice deepening.
I took my time talking, but hours later, he knew almost everything, starting with how I’d arrived in Barthoah, of course, and why I’d needed to stay. I gushed about Sidra, and while he made some rather distasteful faces when he found out she was a siren, he said nothing on the matter. Niven knew me well enough to know if I was smiling over someone, they must be alright.
He’d never known me to have partners, and for the longest time, I wasn't sure I ever would. Seals mated for life, and I didn’t take that lightly, even if my whole relationship with Sidra started by me telling hernotto take things so seriously. Because as much as I thought I was serious, there had never been someone as stoic as her.
There was nothing as satisfying and fulfilling to me as watching her unravel day by day, a new wall crumbled, a new layer shed. Watching her fall into her own embrace of who she once was was the most beautiful transition I’d ever witnessed. I would never stop being honored that she allowed me to be there with her while all the old parts of her started shining through once more, taking over the icy, hardened parts she no longer needed.
My cheeks warmed as I felt Niven’s attentive eyes on me. He cocked his head and said, “There’s something you’ve yet to tell me. I know you. You’re holding back.”
He was right, of course. There was something I’d yet to admit: I needed him and many of the other selkies to come to land with me to fight on the behalf of sea fae known to be our enemies.
“There is. And before you react poorly, please, just hear me out,” I said, analyzing the warm, freckled skin tightening over his features.
“Tell me, Breena. What is it?” He shifted on the rock beneath us. My flipper nudged his own in a way that said everything would be alright, and then I told him. I told him all about the netted enclosures and the pod of land hybrids. I told him why I’d come home and how Sidra was asking the same from her pod as I was of our clan.
