FFM #30: Surfside Bombardment
Teresa Amehana Garcia or LadyRainStarDrago
Set within the Selkies' Skin Continuity some summer between 1995 and 1997, most likely between 96 and 97. This is after Kirsty earns her sealskin and no longer has to rely on the past to take her seal form but before graduation and most definitely before becoming Caer Carrick's first Merstudies professor.
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She emerged from the surf with her sealskin wrapped carefully, merging the forms of seal and young woman in such a way to allow herself to drag the net carrying her harvest of shellfish, kelps, and hunted fish. Behind her trawled the little shark that had adopted her – or more accurately her boyfriend during that summer visit. Kirsty turned and fumbled a fish out of her net, then tossed it to Lemon.
Why Lemon? She had no idea why that was the shark’s name. It just was. Lemon leaped and caught it like a puppy, doing a ridiculous tail dance backward and out to sea before falling back under the water. Kirsty shook her head in bemusement.
“Silly toofer.” She mumbled to herself, then hit her knees in the sand when a furry blubber ball launched itself into the back of them. Her not as padded toucas impacted the little head, and both she and he yelped.
“Banu! Get back here!” The kelpie pounded across the sand and yanked the little white and brown specked seal pup up and out with his teeth.
Kirsty retrieved her net bag before the sea could reclaim it, then cast a bewildered eye on the coastal chaos. “I only went fishing. I do this every morn I’m home.”
“But you were gone so long!” Banu bawled, dangling and crossing his flippers across his chest at her. Another human gesture picked up from spending more and more time out of his skin and in a human shape.
Kirsty made a mental note to speak to Mani about her son again, when she wasn’t so worn from the weaving she had undertaken so the lad would have proper coverings when in human shape. His mother still had mistrust of anything obtained from human markets, Cowan or Mystic. “There was a dolphin that needed some help birthing. Odd time for it.”
“Don’t they have their own folk for that?” Banu pressed.
Byron set him down and huffed, shaking his head disapprovingly.
“Mara’s touch was needed, and I was there.” Kirsty said sadly, gently. Her eyes drifted out to sea. “I have a role to fill, you know. While I still live here, I fill mother’s while she can’t. Then later I’ll have my own.”
“I don’t like it. Mum says what a Priestess does is dangerous.”
“It can be, yes. But still needed.” She ruffled his head before pulling the hood of her skin back, allowing her face to take the form she was born with. “That’s just life, little cousin. Are you going to help me carry this now that you’ve made my knees throb?”
“Sorry. I was just so glad to see you back on shore. You know Mum doesn’t let me in without an adult.” The child wriggled, then clawed at the seam of his skin before it split open.
She gave Byron an amused look, shifting her attention to give the boy his privacy. “Hide and seek?”
“Yes.”
“Anything I ought to be warned about before getting up to the house?”
“Your other cousins are out on the boat. Your father is still at work and not home, you’ve not been gone as long as small ones think. Your mother is still seeing the Light Keeper’s daughter.”
Banu tugged on her arm lightly, then the weight in her net lightened as he lifted part. Kirsty smiled and looked down at the dark haired boy, grinning up at her proudly with how he’d learned to wrap his skin so it would stay put and still have him properly covered. “Ok, I’m dressed now.” His eyes had not settled on a color yet and still shifted, just as his coat was only just beginning to start getting the brown specks that would likely eventually fully take over, judging by his mother’s coat.
“Good job, you’re getting faster.”
“I still don’t like clothes, though.”
“Judging by some of the stories I’ve heard about younger siblings at school, I don’t think most small children do.”
“Did you at my age?”
Kirsty gave Byron a shake of her head, curtailing the memory he was likely going to ‘helpfully’ regale the boy with. “No, but I also didn’t have my skin yet, so I had to wear them anyway from very, very, very small. You’re so lucky you were born with one. Come on, let’s get this up to the cottage and see if your mum needs any help before I start the day’s brew job.”
“Ok. Can we have that fishy pie thing again for dinner, do you think?”
“We’ll see, I think your mum wanted to do the dinner tonight.”
“Aw, that means no human food tonight then...”
Kirsty snorted. “Not all human food is that great, just remember this. Be grateful of what we have. Some places don’t have fish at all.”
“That’s horrible. They must be so sad.”
“Maybe.”
Their steps slowly climbed the shore and into the village. Tiny huts and little caves now occupied what had once been grass over sleeping ruins. Kirsty wondered how many more would find their way back to Seal Point, and what she could best do for the growing number of refugee selkies.
