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soulcs · 7 years ago

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The Selkie Wife

Bella grew up with the sounds of the ocean outside her window and sea salt in the air. She raced down sandy beaches, leaving footprints that the tide washed away behind her. She collected shells and walked barefoot and dived beneath the ocean water, and in the waves she found a home.

She lived with her mother, growing up. Nina was always tired, and always working, but she loved her daughter despite everything. Once upon a time Bella had had two parents and a brother as well, but her father had left them both and taken his and Nina’s son with him. She didn’t even have a chance to fight for him. Bella’s father didn’t even think to take her, too.

But that was okay. It didn’t really matter to Bella, because she had everything she wanted growing up. Her neighbors (her only neighbors, there were precious few houses this far out) might as well have been family. She grew up playing with the two boys from down the lane. She called their mother Mama Bliss.

Luke was just her age, with hair so fair it was almost white, and a smattering of freckles across his high cheekbones. Bella loved him, in the way children love one another. They caught crabs together and dared each other to climb the cliff faces even though they knew neither of their mothers would approve.

Chris was a year older than both of them, and wouldn’t let them forget it. He took more after Mama Bliss than Luke did, with his wild ginger hair and warm brown eyes. He teased them both but they made up for it, ganging up on him and tossing him into the ocean when he got to be too unbearable.

Bella’s mother was very busy, and very sad more often than not. So, Bella spent a lot of time at Bliss’s house with the boys. Bliss loved to cook, and she would always hoist Bella onto the counter where she would swing her feet back and forth, thunk thunking into the cabinets. Bliss never scolded her for it, only smiled.

When she was probably too old to be jumping up on the counters anymore, but doing it anyway, she asked Bliss what had happened to Luke and Chris’s father. Bella hadn’t questioned it when she was young, because she herself had only ever had Nina.

Bliss was chopping vegetables at the time, her back to the table where Chris and Luke had frozen. Chris was halfway through shoving Luke off of his chair, but now both of their eyes were trained on their mother’s back.

But she didn’t yell. She didn’t raise her voice, just her eyebrows. “Oh?” She asked, “You want to know about my husband?”

Bella nodded yes. That was one fact already - she hadn’t known for sure that Bliss had ever married, nor if Luke and Chris indeed even had the same father.

Bliss sighed, a wistful thing. She continued chopping the vegetables, the steady thud the only noise in the kitchen until she broke it. “You know, I assume, that I was a sailor for most of my life?” Bliss asked. Bella nodded. She had seen pictures of a young Bliss at the bow of a ship, hair wild and tangled and smile so bright. “I met my husband on the ocean. It certainly wasn’t a planned thing.”

It was a quiet night, the waves were small and the skies clear and bright with stars. It had been a long day, but even so she couldn’t sleep. Her hair was messily tied atop her head, curls every which way and tied with twine since she had lost her last hair ties to the ocean. She sat on the side of the ship, shoes beside her, clinging to the rails as she dangled bare feet over the sea.

She thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, at first. The white flashes beneath the water were probably fish, or just moonlight on the water. But then, clear as day, a head popped above the water.

It was a seal.

Bliss blinked, several times, but the seal did not vanish. So she did what any sensible sailor would do when faced with something improbable staring at them from the waters. She waved. The seal bobbed for a few heartbeats longer before diving back down into the depths.

Well, Bliss thought to herself, puzzled, I guess that’s that.

“He followed me, to the next port.” Bliss said, hands still steady as they had ever been, “And he gave me back a hair tie I’d lost. He seemed a little lost too, so I figured I might as well keep him.”

“My mother says I’m not allowed to keep people,” Bella sighed, shoving her fist under her chin, “Not after the last time we went to the market.”

“Your mother is a wise woman.” Bliss said, suppressed laughter in her voice, “A very wise woman indeed.”

The ship was docked and they were all on land - for the night at least. She had tried to put the strange encounter with the seal out of her mind. Her crewmates would have likely laughed at her if she told them.

She was not a great drinker, so instead of going to the nearest bar she was sitting instead at the docks, bare footed again and swishing her feet gently through the seawater.

Then, right by her foot, a pale head popped out of the water. For a split second she almost thought it was the seal - but no. It was very much human. For almost a minute there was no sound but for the whispers of the ocean when the boy stuck out a hand. The suddenness made her jerk backwards, but what was in his hand made her go still again.

It was the hair tie. The one she’d lost in the ocean the day before.

Without even thinking she took it from him, a “Thank you” already falling from her lips. He hovered there in the water awkwardly, so Bliss decided she might as well take this into her own hands.

She shuffled over, leaving an obvious piece of dock for the boy to haul himself up on. She even patted it for good measure - she didn’t know if he would understand her after all. But, she wouldn’t know until she tried. “My name’s Bliss.” She told the unblinking boy, hands already going up to her hair to tug the twine from the rats nest of curls, “What’s yours?”

Hesitantly, the boy braced himself on the dock and hauled himself out of the water. He was soaking, and quickly the puddle forming beneath him reached her. She didn’t move away though, not when she could see the cloak upon his back as white as starlight. As white as the seal that she had seen before.

“My name is - Haem.” He told her haltingly

“Well Haem, I think we’re going to be good friends.” Bliss told him simply, finishing putting up her hair in a slightly less messy bun.

Bliss shook her head, calloused hands gathering the vegetables to dump them into the pot she had already prepared. “I knew it was not forever, I could have never made him stay. Not when I knew it would cost me. He told me from the beginning that our time was limited, and I did not care. I thought the happiness he would give me would outweigh the bad.”

“Did it?” Bella asked, frowning.

“Maybe.” Bliss told her, she had always been honest with Bella. “Maybe not.”

”Please.” Haem said, “You’re supposed to be the keeper of this.” He had his moon white pelt in his hands, and he was offering it to her. “The call of the sea - it will get too strong. I will leave you if you do not.”

Bliss mulled this over, she couldn’t help but think of the stories of selkie wives whose husbands imprisoned them on land. Of women who looked out to the sea with too-dark eyes and died a little more every day.

She didn’t want to be the husband in those stories.

“Would it hurt you? To stay?” She asked him slowly, rolling the words around in her mouth, “The call of the sea. Would you start to hate me, for denying you it?”

Haem faltered, “I could never hate you - I love you! I love you, so you have to make me stay.”

“I love you,” Bliss told him, “So I could never make you stay.” She took note of the fact that he never told her if it would hurt him. She never wanted to hurt him, she wanted the whole world to see him for how miraculous he was. She wanted to treasure him, forever.

He looked frustrated with her response. She never liked to see him sad, so she extended an arm and wrapped her hand over his where he still gripped his pelt. “How long do we have, do you think? If I refuse to be your chains?”

“I’m not sure.” Haem admitted, fist curling in the soft fur, “Maybe three years? Maybe less. I love you Bliss, I do but - “

“But you loved the sea first.” Bliss told him, gentleness in her voice. They had always worked so well together because they understood once another. “Haem, I don’t want you to give up the sea. I don’t want you to give up who you are - I love who you are right now. So three years? That will have to be enough. We will make it enough.”

She extended a hand to him, playfulness in every inch of her body and eyes sparkling, “Hey Haem - wanna go on an adventure?”

“He had to leave soon after Luke was born. He tried to stay longer, and we both wished he could, but we had always known it wouldn’t be forever.” Bliss sighed again, she turned from the stew on the stove and instead walked over to an old set of drawers.

“I could never deny him anything, I could never have been the one to hold him back and chain him down. I could have never served as his warden. I’d like to think that’s why he fell in love with me, of all people.”

She pulled something out of the drawers, carefully as if they were something precious, “At least he said goodbye.”

They called her the selkie wife. It was because she was so often out on the water, even when pregnant. It was because her eyes were always trained on the ocean. People in town joked that Haem had met her while sailing and stolen her pelt. Bliss would have laughed it she didn’t find it so hard to breathe.

They’d known it would be soon. He’d started vanishing into the ocean for longer and longer periods. It started with hours, but recently it had been weeks. He’d only offered her his pelt again once, after the birth of their first child.

She had told him that she would not become his jailer. Even the prettiest chains chafe eventually, and Bliss would rather have him leave loving her than stay hating her.

He had held on for longer than he should have because she was pregnant again, and she knew that he wanted to see his child when it was born. He thought the child might be a girl - but Bliss knew it was a boy. She was going to call him Luke.

Bliss wondered if Luke would be a selkie, too. If his pelt would be white like his father’s, or if it would be sunset red like his brother’s. She wondered if she would get to keep her boys, or if one day they too would vanish into the ocean like their father before them. She tried very hard not to think about it.

Luke was born just a little more seal than his brother, with dark fathomless eyes and thick white hair that was just a shade too close to fur to be human, his sealskin was just as white as his father’s. Haem has held his newborn son in his arms, wonder on his face as he brushed delicate fingertips across Luke’s crown.

He looked up at her with such pain in his eyes that it stole her breath away. Ignoring her body, she stood on shaky legs and pulled Haem into a searing kiss. He kissed back, just as desperate.

She pulled away, and with astoundingly gentleness pried their son from his hand and took him into her own. She locked her own hazel-green eyes to his predator dark ones and smiled a watery smile.

“Please.” He said, but he wasn’t really asking her to take his pelt again. Not this time.

“I love you.” She told Haem, “But you were never mine to love for forever.”

He laughed a breathless laugh, cupping Bliss’s face and touching their foreheads together. “I would have liked to try forever with you, if I could have. If I were human - you deserve so much better than a seal like me, Bliss.”

“I don’t have any regrets. We had three years together - that’s more than some.”

“Less than others.”

She walked him down to the ocean, Chris on one hip and Luke nestled in the sling that was a hand-me-down from his brother’s own infancy. They stood watching the waves together, the last time their family would be whole. Haem took a few steps into the ocean before being called back by his wife’s voice.

“Haem - “ She reached out a hand as if to stop him, but quickly withdrew it. Instead, she bared her teeth at him just a little, “Hey, punch a shark for me Haem. Never got a chance to do that.”

It made him laugh, little chuffs and wheezes that she never got tired of hearing, a hand that was already more flipper than fingers thrown across his mouth. He smiled at her, eyes glittering. “I love you.” He told her. “I’m sorry.”

With that he dived beneath the waves, and Bliss never saw him again. She didn’t know if he’d heard her last words to him.

“I’m sorry, too.”

“What. The. Shit.” Bella swore, violently twisting to face her two best friends who were still sitting at the kitchen table. She ignored Bliss’s quiet scolding ‘Language’.

“You guys are selkies?” She gestured wildly, almost falling off the counter, “That is the coolest shit I’ve ever heard! And you didn’t even tell me! Holy fuck we have to go swimming right now - ”

“Not so fast.” Bliss smiled, amusement clear on her face. “I really do need to talk to Nina about all these curse words you’re picking up, but any swimming can wait until tomorrow. Dinner is almost done.”

“But - but selkies!” Bella cried, which made Chris automatically pull a face at her. This distracted her well enough that the next few minutes were just the children pulling increasingly grotesque and awful faces at one another trying to outdo the last.

Bliss smoothed her thumb over the photograph in her hand, over the only good picture she had of Haem. He was laughing in it, eyes creased in a smile and hair wet from seaspray. She had loved him, but sometimes love wasn’t enough.

She put the photograph back in the drawer, and went to plate up the stew - pausing to grapple Bella down from her countertop perch and nudge her towards the table.

She’d barely gotten the bowls on the table when Bella leaned forwards with bright eyes, “Wait if selkies are real does that mean everything from the stories are real? Does that mean magic is real?”

“I’d ask your mother - she knows more about magic than I do.” Bliss told Bella simply.

”What does that mean!?”

#bella wolfe #the blisson brothers #this was supposed to be about bella but somehow bliss took over the show #my writing #selkies #bliss and nina #haem the selkie #i love haem but bliss and nina have always been end game #bliss #nina wolfe #monsters and magic

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