@eightyfivegrackles is a delightful and sweet partner in crime, I had a wonderful time doing collab with you! Your fic brought me many laughs and joy, I loved Heart Pirates' pov so much XD They are silly. And menaces.
♥️ Happy Valentine’s Day from Rosinante Corazón Donquixote ❤️
I honestly can’t explain how excited and happy I am with how this photoshoot turned out ✨
I found the inspiration almost by accident a vintage couture red dress covered in red hearts and I immediately fell in love. I knew I wanted to recreate something like that with Rosi. The dramatic silhouette, the romantic red, the soft vintage glamour… it just felt right.
Everything about this shoot carries that classic Valentine energy I adore. The heart-shaped backdrop, the curls, the theatrical pose... it feels like stepping into an old love letter sealed in crimson wax.
I’m completely in love with how it all came together. Truly everything about it.
And the Queen of Hearts card for Rosi? I drew that one myself 💗✨
At some point, Cora ran into some humans who hurt him very badly, badly enough that he won't be able to swim very well until he heals. He ends up hiding out in a little island cove, and then he gets fascinated by the kid who plays on the beach.
The kid's interesting! He doesn't play the same kinds of games other human kids usually play; he does less yelling and a lot more catching animals and cutting them open. Cora approves; hunting is a good life skill to have, and one that every selkie pup ends up learning sooner than later.
Eventually, the kid starts noticing the seal who's hanging out. One day, when he finishes cutting open the fish and frogs and whatever else he catches, he glances over, then throws the guts out in Cora's direction.
Cora gets a snack.
Cora... loves snack!
He makes a happy bark and is enthused to see the kid laugh in response. It becomes their thing. Cora will hang out on the beach, sometimes even herd fish or other animals towards the kid's traps, and then the kid takes them out and cuts them up, and when he's done poking around at their insides and making notes, he throws the guts to Cora to snap up.
===
Over time, Cora starts swimming closer and closer to the kid, out of familiarity, but also because he waaaants the fish guts! Being closer means he loses less to the tide, he tells himself! Certainly he's not at all interested in this quiet kid with his quick hands and his wheezing chuckles!
Eventually, Cora slips up, and gets close enough to be within arm's reach. He doesn't notice until he feels a small hand touch his head. It's startling! He hasn't been touched by another being in a very long time!
He barks and flips in alarm, and the kid yelps and startles back, and they both go tumbling into the sea and onto the beach respectively. Cora stays underwater for a bit, circling, nervous. He likes snacks and entertainment, but... this is a human. Humans are scary and potentially cruel and... he surfaces for air a little ways away, out of sight of the cove that the kid plays in, and he can hear frantic yelling.
"Hey! Seal! Come back! I didn't mean to hurt you!" And he thinks, "Oh." Because this is a human, but he's also just a kid. Just a lonely kid who spends most of his time playing alone on the beach.
Cora knows what it's like to be lonely
He swims back. He sees his kid sitting on one of the rocks by the bay, trailing his hand into the water and staring out into the grey skyline. He thinks "okay."
When he butts his head up against his kid's hand, the little guy yelps again, but then he sees Cora's head and he grins.
"You came back!"
Cora "whuff"s, which is enough of a yes for his kid, who grins even wider and reaches out. Cora lets him rub his nose as an apology for scaring him earlier. And that's how the two of them become friends.
===
The days pass, the tides come in and out, and the summer starts to truly heat up. The cove is still empty, but for his kid, whose name is Law, apparently. On offering Cora his own name, Law had proceeded to offer Cora names which Cora had gagged and made disgusted noices about, until Law had landed on 'Corazon', supposedly because of the heart-shaped patches on Cora's hide. Cora figures this is good enough and gives Law a singular seal clap and a bark. So now he's Cora to Law as well as himself. It's all very good, until... Well, until it's not.
The island, with its little bay and its small population, is a quiet one. It's a good place to send you sick child over the summer, a good place for a slowly healing selkie to heal... and a good place for smugglers to dock on their way to other places. Said smugglers generally want their travels to be secret, and don't care who they have to silence to ensure their safe passage. So, when Law comes down to the beach to check his traps, only to be caught by two ruffians, Cora has a choice to make.
Humans are still scary. They have harpoons and nets and they hurt. Cora hurts. But if humans might hurt him, these ones look like they're ready to hurt Law, and Cora doesn't like that either.
Up until now, he's been a seal 24/7. It's comfortable to stay in his skin. He's got an escape route at all times that way, able to flip into the water and swim off wherever he fancies. But seals don't move well on land. They don't have hands, they can't hold weapons. They're not nearly as intimidating as a huge man rising from the rocks, hollering "Leave him alone!" with bared teeth and blood-lust in his eyes.
The smugglers take off, and quick. They're not brave after all. No, they're the type to attack the small and the weak, but faced with true violence, their tactic is always to run away. The sailors pile back into their shadowy little boat and take off from the bay, leaving Cora standing on the beach, panting. Law is sprawled at his feet, looking up at him with eyes so wide that Cora can see white all the way around his irises.
"Uh. Hi," Cora says, waving his hand awkwardly.
"You're not wearing any clothes," says Law, in the blunt manner of a child who is stating the obvious.
"Yeah, uh. I don't. Have any of those," Cora says, feeling distinctly hunted.
"You've got hearts," Law says, pointing at Cora's chest, "All over."
"Uh..." Cora looks down at the scars littered across his skin and realizes that yes, the V-shaped harpoon injuries do look like hearts when he squints at them. "Yup."
And then, in a leap of logic that only a child could make, Law squints at him and says, "Are you Cora?"
And Cora says, "Oh thank god," because he hadn't known how to bring that up until now. And now that Law knows, he can run away, back to the rocks, to pull his hide back on.
"Hey! Wait! Cora!" Law shouts, scrambling after him. By the time he catches up, Cora is back in his sealskin, still naked, but more comfortable about it than he'd been before.
===
They start playing a weird kind of game of chicken at that point, where Law tries desperately to get Cora to admit that he's more than a seal, and Cora refuses. He did the human thing before. Tried it. Hated it. Got the scars to prove it.
Also, it's funny seeing what Law gets up to, trying to get Cora to "slip up" and shed his seal form again. The little shit is driven.
He "coincidentally" brings a gigantic blanket down to the beach, one that would be big enough to wrap around a very tall man. Then, when that doesn't work, he brings oversized clothes; sweaters and drawstring pants and, one time, a very silly red hat that Cora steals just because he likes the look of it. He wears it for the rest of the day... as a seal. And then he doesn't let Law take it back from him for a while, playing keepaway for well over an hour.
Law gets so mad that he stops bringing clothing around and starts trying other tactics. He'll bring food down to the beach and talk loudly about how it's delicious, but he couldn't share it with a seal (Cora is fine with fish guts), and he brings books with him and says "This is soooo cool! Too bad seals can't read!" (Cora can read as a human just about as well as he can as a seal: he can't. Selkies don't go to school.)
And then, one day, Law shows up at the beach without his surgery set. He starts picking up his traps. When Cora swims up, he sighs and says, "Sorry, Cora. I'm leaving tonight. Summer's over and I have to go home." He'd only been out here over vacation, he explains, and now that August is ending, he has to go back to the city—to his parents and his school.
Cora, who has long since healed from his injuries and has only been sticking around because he's so entertained by Law, finds himself in an awkward state. He'll miss Law, of course he will, but ultimately, he's a creature of the sea, not the land. He won't give that up just for some kid who he's played with for a couple of months. That would be ridiculous.
But though he won't forsake the ocean, he'll leave it for a moment. He heaves himself up onto the beach and bumps Law's hip with his head until Law leans over with a sniffle and gives Cora a hug. It's a very good hug. Cora gets sea water all over Law's clothes, and he pretends not to notice if a little extra wetness ends up dripping from Law's face onto his back. He's a good friend like that.
Before he leaves, Law pulls a floppy red piece of fabric out of his bag.
"You seemed to like it before," Law says.
It's the hat. It's the stupid hat that he and Cora played with before. Cora bows his head and lets Law settle it on him with a little pat, just to make sure it's sitting right.
"Bye Cora," Law whispers, stroking Cora's nose one last time. And then he walks away, up the beach and over the hill, carrying his bag and his traps and a little piece of Cora's heart.
The fabric on his head is so light that he'd tossed it right over Law's head a few weeks ago. It feels so heavy now. Cora lies on the beach for a long while, unmoving, watching that little form get smaller and smaller, until it's gone.
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