4. Milo
Milo
Humans weren’t supposed to know about us. It was a solid rule. The less they knew, the better… however, the goddess usually warned us when they were near, letting us know to keep our distance. Keeping us safe from them. But she was silent now. No, that wasn’t quite right.
All my life, I had felt the weight of her blessing, of being her chosen.
After my grandmother was no longer fit to be the leader of our colony, that responsibility would fall to me.
I didn’t want it. I never had. I’d prayed to my goddess so many times, asking her to choose someone else.
She never answered me. There was a weight and pull I felt always.
Any time I was away from the colony, it was a tether home, a resistance that I fought in favor of exploration.
It was absent now. The pull at my soul to be somewhere else had eased.
For the first time I could remember, it felt like I was allowed to be somewhere else.
Like maybe she actually wanted me here, the same way she’d wanted me to find him in that storm.
I didn’t know what it meant, but I was going to find out.
I ran my fingertips over the shiny item with weird symbols on the front of it. Everything in this human’s home was so cool and different to the human things I’d found on the sea floor. I wanted to explore them all. I wanted to know how they were made, or where they’d come from.
He wouldn’t look at me now. His face was a little pink as he took a deep breath and sat down across from me. He seemed to be acting strange, but I hadn’t interacted with humans before. Maybe they were all like this.
“First of all…” He inhaled slowly. “How are you feeling? How’s your head?”
At the question, my hand raised, finding the bump from where I’d collided with his boat and wincing at the throb that echoed through my skull as I poked it.
Waking up in a strange new place, my priority had been locating my coat, and once I’d discovered it was not only safe from the human but that he’d actually mended it for me, I knew I could trust him.
Then I’d been so preoccupied by all the new things, I had pushed the low ache in my head down in favor of exploring.
“Little sore, but okay,” I answered him.
He nodded. “Right. Then I have to ask. What were you doing out there?”
I waited for instinct to warn me, for the goddess to guide me away from this conversation and him. She didn’t.
“Scouting,” I answered.
His eyes switched from staring out the window behind me to my face. “Do you… live out there?”
I nodded.
“The whales… they were chasing you?”
I grimaced. “Technically, we were in their territory.”
“We?”
I nodded again. “Me and my friend Raq.”
The human paled. “I… I didn’t see your friend.”
I smiled. “He’s alright.” I knew Raq was alive through the bond all seal folk shared.
I knew it in my heart the same way I’d known the moment my parents had died, years ago, the sudden absence of them tearing out a piece of me.
I felt them disappear, just as I felt it every time one of us was lost. Raq was alive, strong, safe. He’d know I was as well.
The human nodded. “So, uh… what… are you?”
“I’m Milo,” I teased, knowing it wasn’t the question he was asking, but figuring we could start there.
His brow furrowed and his cheeks flushed a deeper pink. His facial expression looked like he was angry, he had since the moment I’d laid eyes on him, but he was kind, and he seemed gentle. So that must just be the way humans looked.
“Right. Thanks. I’m Rowan.”
“Rowan,” I repeated, tasting his name and deciding I liked it.
Though not as much as I liked the way his brows sank deeper and the blush across his cheeks grew darker at hearing me say it.
What I could see of them anyway. The lower half of his face was covered in hair or fur or something.
Selkies were hairless when out of their coats, besides the hair on their head. Did all humans have that?
I was suddenly desperate to know, and I placed the new things I’d found in the other room with my stash on the soft fabric so I could investigate.
Rowan didn’t seem to know where to look as I approached.
The fur wasn’t as soft as I’d hoped as I ran my fingers through the coarse strands over his jaw.
They were a deep orange color, just like the hair on his head.
That was softer, though. I ran one hand through it as the other continued to feel the fur on his face.
His hair wasn’t as long as mine, but long enough to comb my fingers through.
His eyes were beautiful. White sclera with blue irises and expanding black pupils as he looked up at me.
Did my eyes frighten him? I tilted my head to the side as I examined him, blinking as I felt mine mirror his.
Morphing into a more human appearance, my fingers followed, the gray receding with my claws until my hands looked human.
Rowan gasped. “What…” His words were a whisper that trailed off.
What… was I? “Selkie,” I answered.
The lump in his throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Okay.”
I chuckled softly. Just okay. Why was it that we weren’t supposed to interact with humans? They were fun.
As my eyes dropped lower, I realized with delight that the fur wasn’t just on his face.
There was more of it peeking out from beneath the odd fabric at his chest. It didn’t seem to be part of him, like our seal coats were part of us, but rather just secured around his skin. How much of it was there?
My hand left his jaw so I could hook a finger in the front of the fabric and pull it away from his skin to get a better look.
“Woah. Okay.” Rowan’s large, rough hands circled around my wrists as he pulled mine away from him and quickly stood up.
I was tall for a Selkie, but he was still decently taller than me. Were all humans big like this?
He marched over to the things I’d collected, picking up some of the fabric he’d handed me earlier. “Put this on,” he instructed as he turned back to me, finding an opening and shoving it over the top of my head.
I hissed as it pressed against the bump, and he quickly let go.
“Sorry, just… you need to cover up. Do selkies not wear clothes? You can’t just be naked, and you can’t just take someone else’s clothes off.”
Naked? Clothes? I frowned at him as I pulled the fabric back off me. Was I supposed to wrap my body in these like he did with his? “Why?”
“Why?” He huffed. “Because… its… just what we do. We don’t just… expose everything to each other.”
“But why?” I asked again.
“Because. It’s not allowed.”
They weren’t allowed to show their bodies to each other? That didn’t make any sense to me. “Who says it’s not allowed?”
“Everyone. So while you’re here, you need to cover up.”
There was that term again. Cover up. What did that even mean?
Cover what? Still, he seemed genuinely bothered by me not following this strange human custom.
With a frown, I placed my seal coat down then carefully pulled the strange fabric over my head again, shifting it around until my arms slipped through the long tunnels.
It felt so wrong. The fabric was soft, but it was still restrictive in ways I really didn’t like. It reminded me of the net. The thought made my chest tighten as I remembered the way it only grew tighter the more I tried to escape it.
My claws returned on instinct as I tore it back off me, sudden panic clawing at my insides until I had it completely off, and my breaths came in short and fast as I glared at the offending item now on the ground.
Rowan exhaled. “Okay. Okay, no clothes.”
No clothes. I hated clothes.