#or at least be able to go to a bookshop and flick through the mass market and see if the illustrations are small and tucked into the spine

[mzcain27]

It’s 5 in the morning I should be asleep but I’m trying to decide which editions of stormlight archive to get

[writing-away-in-ingo]

Second Draft

Alterations made to ending in order to make it flow more naturally and be more satisfying for the reader, grammar and spelling checked and adjusted when necessary. 

To work on for next draft:

- Ensure timing throughout the story is accurate and even (maybe delete some of opening section to allow for a longer ending)

- Continue work on ending - still doesn’t fit right

- Add more references to the selkie mythology throughout 

- Add more dialogue between the sisters to show their relationship more clearly 

My alarm goes off at five fifteen.

The house is always freezing in the morning because we can’t seem to get the stupid timed heater to work, so I normally end up pulling on about five layers before I eventually get up the courage to stagger out of bed. Our My bedroom is up in the attic, so I also have to climb down a ladder before I’ve gained any sort of co-ordination in the morning, which has led to me falling on my face more times than I’d like to remember. It isn’t a problem though; I’ve yet to break a bone. I wouldn’t trade sleeping in that attic room for every bruise I’ve got falling down the ladder. It feels like a little secret nest, hidden above the rest of the house, and you can climb out of the front window and onto the flat stretch of roof at the front. The sea looks beautiful from up there.

When I finally manage to make it downstairs, I make coffee (black, I’m not American, I don’t need fifteen sugars) and let Minnie out of the kitchen. She’s so old and so loyal that I’m certain we don’t need to keep her cooped up like that at night, but dad insists that we do. He double checks the back door for foxes every night, triple locks the front. We’ve never had a dog run away before now, I don’t see why it would be the ancient precious collie that finally made a break for it. Minnie loves us all in that wonderful unconditional dog way, but its more than that. She’s a part of the family and she’s very aware of it.

Its possible dad may have some remaining trust issues from you-know-who. I do my best not to think about it.

Minnie and I tend to eat breakfast together, because dad won’t be up for a little while, and its nice to have companionship. I don’t really like eating breakfast, especially this early, but it’s a necessary evil if I’m going to have any sort of luck at surfing when I finally get down to the beach. I’ve tried surfing on an empty stomach and you just end up feeling defeated, which is not the sort of thing I need before a day of manning the shop and café. When it reaches six fifteen, I scoop Minnie into my arms, give her a quick kiss on the top of her forehead and send her in to wake dad. He’s always delighted to see her, no matter what kind of shitty night he’s had, and he yells a greeting through the door for me.

Next, I grab my board and my bag, tossing the dishes from breakfast into the sink as I go, then make my way out of the door. The world is so quiet at this time, especially in the winter months when there are no groups of tourists. It feels like I’m the only person here, like

There’s this huge painting of a selkie woman on one of the crumbling down walls near the cove. The colours are faded and chipped away, but she’s still recognisable, rising from the sea like some sort of ancient spirit. It’s definitely one of the more well-intentioned ones; she has nice brown eyes and a sort of melancholy expression, and there’s no innocently falling-down sealskin to make her seem “sexy” for some reason. Everyone always seems to draw selkies with their tits out somehow, as if you can sexualise a seal. They’re just big round blobs of cute. I never turn into a half seal, half stereotypically attractive woman with one boob peeking out around the skin. It’s unrealistic and sexist. Frankly, it’s a little disturbing.

I probably should have mentioned the selkie thing before now.

It’s a weird sort of thing to put into words. It’s always been a part of my life, but not a part that I’m allowed to share, so I don’t have any practise in putting it into words. When I was a kid, I assumed that everyone had clandestine sealskins that they weren’t allowed to show anybody, and that we were all just really good at keeping secrets. I only learned the truth when I was eleven, and I slipped up and made a joke to Brannok. She didn’t laugh, just looked at me curiously, her big brown eyes all serious. I never talked about it again, and Brannok never mentioned it, but I can still remember how it felt, to feel like I wasn’t alone and then to be reminded so suddenly and completely that that wasn’t the case.

Day Tremayne is the only other person outside my family who knows about my sealskin. I don’t trust a lot of people with a secret like that, but Day is different. He’s lying on the edge of the surf when I jog down – he’s so bold with it at this time of morning. Not many people know about this cove, but I do worry that someone will wander down in the early morning or stay overnight and get a sudden glimpse of Day and his tail. He doesn’t have the luxury of hiding it sometimes like me, but I don’t think he’d like being able to shed it. He’s much happier than most people I meet in this village, able to swim off at a moment’s notice, spending his days chasing the tide or hunting for pearls. He doesn’t like the term “Merman” because he thinks it’s too gendered. We eventually settled on “Mer” as a sort of compromise, but he still doesn’t love it. Day’s one of those people who doesn’t place a lot of stock in language or words, and he has no patience for those who do. I like to joke that it’s a fish thing.

“Caja!”

I wave my arms over my head as I run towards him, the wind tugging at my hair.

“You’re out early! What if someone had seen you?”

He grins up at me, water dripping from his hair.

“You’ve got to learn to live a little, Angove. We wouldn’t be given gifts like these if they weren’t meant to be enjoyed.”

He gives my bag a pointed look.

“Will you be joining me, or will my company be more… aquatic?”

I take a quick scan of the beach. The sand is clear, I can see all the way across to the town, and there’s no sign of anyone coming down the path.

The sea is so wide and inviting. I haven’t had a proper swim in months. Being human means you just dabble along the surface.

Day’s already smiling when I turn back to him. He knows. I scoop up a handful of seawater and throw it at him.

“Stop being smug!”

He laughs as I unzip my bag, rummaging in the bottom to find the hidden compartment that I hide my sealskin in. It’s like warm velvet against my fingertips.

I wrap myself in sealskin, and the world shifts and grows and shrinks until I’m-

The ocean swallows me and I am whole. Water. Shifting around me; push and pull. Swoop down and brush the seabed. Flip up and taste the air. Let yourself fly, let yourself weave in and out of the weeds and the fish and the sunlight.

Crest the wave.

Breathe.

I surface out of the sea in a mass of limbs that are suddenly too long for my body, in a body that doesn’t quite feel like my own, the sealskin gently unspooling from me. Quickly I gather it in my hand, pulling it out of the waves and away from the sand. Day appears next to me in a burst of seawater, flicking his hair out of his eyes.

“That was great! I feel like we haven’t done this in ages.”

It’s a beautiful feeling; I’m not tired per se, but my body has the distant ache of a good morning of exercise, and the buzz of adrenaline that comes from open swimming in deep water. My watch says its been about an hour and a half since I changed, but this morning already feels like its drifting away, growing a little fuzzy around the edges. Whenever I wear the sealskin it makes me feel like nothing else matters, like the time I spend as a seal is all-consuming compared to the dull hours I put in at work. Human eyes don’t see the same kind of beauty that seal eyes do.

My phone buzzes, and I look over at it without thinking, without remembering.

abt an hour out! c u soon! Exx

Elowen’s back today. How could I have forgotten that? It’s not like I have anything more important to be doing today. Every day’s the same in the village; I wake up, I meet Day for surfing, I work at the bookshop in the morning and the café in the afternoon. It’s not like I don’t want to remember her coming back. It isn’t like I haven’t missed her. I suppose I didn’t really believe that she would. When people leave my life they tend to stay gone.

“Having a twin is the best. It’s like having a best friend already built in.”

Elowen and I were so close when we were kids. I used to feel like she was my other half, like she was filling in the gaps of the person that I was and making me better

“I don’t understand why you have to go so far. It isn’t like there aren’t science jobs out here.”

She was always cleverer than me, at least in an academic sense. People like to talk about the different types of intelligence like being attuned to people’s emotions is an actual skill you’ll be able to use in the world beyond making people like you. Sure, I’m emotionally intelligent. It isn’t going to give me a job beyond working at my father’s old bookshop. I didn’t stick around for much of school. It didn’t seem to have much of a point beyond making me miserable for a piece of paper which would only confirm how unsuited I am to the corporate world of work. Elowen loved school though. She was great at it, so of course she wanted to keep going. And there isn’t a lot of scientific research work available in a small place like Zennor.  

“She didn’t have to leave us though, did she?”

“She didn’t have a choice!”

I don’t really remember my mother. She only stuck around long enough to push out two babies and leave my father with a crippled sense of self and emotional issues and the burden of being a single father with a self-owned business.

“You’re leaving dad just like she did!”

Sometimes I think my mouth is too big for me. I say things like that and there’s no taking them back. I don’t really think was Elowen did is comparable to what our mum did. She didn’t want to leave us, she just felt like it was what she needed to do to keep fitting in. Elowen’s had a plan for her life ever since she realised that we weren’t normal, and anything that deviates from the plan is something she isn’t allowed to follow.

I just stand there stupidly as they hug, and then Elowen turns to face me, beaming. Her hair is shorter, neatly trimmed so it hangs just below her shoulders, and she’s wearing eyeliner. I never could figure out how to do the wings, even though she offered to teach me. Elowen always looks freakishly normal, ever since she was small, she’s managed to hit the perfect note between stylish and boring. I remember watching her plan her outfits. Working from pictures of her classmates, different styles cherrypicked from the kids that no one bothered, no one questioned. She tends to take a more serious approach to fitting in than I do.

“Caja, I missed you so much!”

I can’t seem to move my feet.

“I didn’t think you were coming back.”

The words are wooden from my mouth, shrouding months of the pain and worry and grief I felt at being separate from her. I never expected her to leave, but once she did, I pretty much gave up hope on her ever coming back. I risk a look up at her, and I’m startled to see there are tears in her eyes. She reaches forward to take my hand.

“Of course I came back.”

Then she notices the wet sealskin hanging out of the side of my bag where I stuffed it, and I see her eyes go hard. Her grip tightens on my hand.

“I thought we agreed it wasn’t safe to be out anymore.”

I pull my hand away from her and step back.

“I’m not having this conversation again. Welcome home.”

She doesn’t follow me.

When I get up in the morning, for the first time in a long time I’m not alone. Elowen’s dark hair is spread out over the pillow; she doesn’t seem to have been disturbed by the alarm, so I creep down the ladder, trying not to make too much noise. I feel a little strange, like the house is listening in on my footsteps, and if I move too quickly or too loudly, the whole thing will collapse. The squeak of my chair is so loud it makes me jump, and I almost forget to leave the gate open for Minnie, who gives me a confused tilt of her head.

I shouldn’t feel like this, it shouldn’t feel wrong to have my sister in my house. I can remember nights of staring at her empty bed with tears pooling in my eyes, days of trying to shake the feeling that I was suddenly operating without the use of half of my limbs, half of my mind. I knew it was going to be difficult living alone without her, even with dad. He’s lovely, of course he is, but even he can’t replace a twin bond, no matter how hard he tries. I spent so long trying to get used to living without her that it feels like I’ve done it too well and now I don’t know how to function with her back in my life.

We spend a few days in silence, working around each other, trying not to notice the gaping void that’s opened between us. And then the storm comes, and all of that is left behind.

 The rain is still pouring, splashes echoing down the streets as the raindrops fall into the churning seawater, it’s up to my thigh now. Walking is difficult, and my mind keeps straying back to the sealskin in my backpack. It would be so easy to get it out and start swimming. I could make it to dad’s and back with barely any effort. But if someone saw me things could go very bad very fast. Next to me, Elowen’s face is ashen. She doesn’t deal well with situations like this where the possibilities for something to go wrong are so myriad.

Once I would have known exactly what I needed to say to comfort her, but now I’m not sure if I can find the words. I hate this alien feeling between us. It feels so wrong.  

There are still waves pushing their way up the beach, sending billowing swells of water speeding across the town, narrowing down through the streets and growing in power. A wave knocks into me and half sweeps me off my feet; I scrabble out for purchase and Elowen grabs my hand, but I fall anyway, my purchase lost, legs paddling uselessly against the surge of water. For a second I am underwater, but it’s never felt so wrong; this water is flecked with dirt and dust from the road and it bites at my eyes, at my throat. And then I’m on my feet, Elowen still at my side, breathing the air again, my clothes drenched.

“We need to shift. Dad could be hurt and it’s too dangerous out here.”

Not expecting that. I pull the sealskin from my bag and give Elowen a thoughtful look. She grabs her own out of her handbag, seeming unsure. Gently, I reach out and drape it around her shoulders, tucking it under her hair. She looks up at me, and then suddenly bursts out:

“I’m sorry! I know I shouldn’t have left. I hated it. I can’t stand not being close to the sea, but you know how important it is that no-one finds out, and I missed you so much, but I couldn’t just come home and now I feel like I’ve spoiled everything!”

“You haven’t spoiled anything. We’re just different now. I just… I felt like you were leaving me, I feel like everyone-”

She takes my hand again, and there are tears in her eyes.

We make the shift together for the first time in years, and I feel a glow of something satisfied, whole.

Elowen insists that we shift back before we get close to the house, hiding in an alleyway as we shrug off the sealskins. We struggle down the rest of the street, one foot after the other, forcing our way through the water. Our progress is too slow, its maddening. By the time we reach the door, the moon is fully overhead, reflecting on the water.

Together, we make our way up into the attic, climbing the ladder. Dad grabs my hand as we come over the lip of the trapdoor, helping to pull me to safety. I register a little late that he’s safe, and when I regain my footing, I fling myself into his arms.

[writing-away-in-ingo]

First Draft

Selkie Story - First Draft

My alarm goes off at five fifteen.

The house is always freezing in the morning because we can’t seem to get the stupid timed heater to work, so I normally end up pulling on about five layers before I eventually get up the courage to stagger out of bed. Our My bedroom is up in the attic, so I also have to climb down a ladder before I’ve gained any sort of co-ordination in the morning, which has led to me falling on my face more times than I’d like to remember. It isn’t a problem though; I’ve yet to break a bone. I wouldn’t trade sleeping in that attic room for every bruise I’ve got falling down the ladder. It feels like a little secret nest, hidden above the rest of the house, and you can climb out of the front window and onto the flat stretch of roof at the front. The sea looks beautiful from up there.

When I finally manage to make it downstairs, I make coffee (black, I’m not American, I don’t need fifteen sugars) and let Minnie out of the kitchen. She’s so old and so loyal that I’m certain we don’t need to keep her cooped up like that at night, but dad insists that we do. He double checks the back door for foxes every night, triple locks the front. We’ve never had a dog run away before now, I don’t see why it would be the ancient precious collie that finally made a break for it. Minnie loves us all in that wonderful unconditional dog way, but its more than that. She’s a part of the family and she’s very aware of it.

Its possible dad may have some remaining trust issues from you-know-who. I do my best not to think about it.

Minnie and I tend to eat breakfast together, because dad won’t be up for a little while, and its nice to have companionship. I don’t really like eating breakfast, especially this early, but it’s a necessary evil if I’m going to have any sort of luck at surfing when I finally get down to the beach. I’ve tried surfing on an empty stomach and you just end up feeling defeated, which is not the sort of thing I need before a day of manning the shop and café. When it reaches six fifteen, I scoop Minnie into my arms, give her a quick kiss on the top of her forehead and send her in to wake dad. He’s always delighted to see her, no matter what kind of shitty night he’s had, and he yells a greeting through the door for me.

Next, I grab my board and my bag, tossing the dishes from breakfast into the sink as I go, then make my way out of the door. The world is so quiet at this time, especially in the winter months when there are no groups of tourists. It feels like I’m the only person here, like

There’s this huge painting of a selkie woman on one of the crumbling down walls near the cove. The colours are faded and chipped away, but she’s still recognisable, rising from the sea like some sort of ancient spirit. It’s definitely one of the more well-intentioned ones; she has nice brown eyes and a sort of melancholy expression, and there’s no innocently falling-down sealskin to make her seem “sexy” for some reason. Everyone always seems to draw selkies with their tits out somehow, as if you can sexualise a seal. They’re just big round blobs of cute. I never turn into a half seal, half stereotypically attractive woman with one boob peeking out around the skin. It’s unrealistic and sexist. Frankly, it’s a little disturbing.

I probably should have mentioned the selkie thing before now.

It’s a weird sort of thing to put into words. It’s always been a part of my life, but not a part that I’m allowed to share, so I don’t have any practise in putting it into words. When I was a kid, I assumed that everyone had clandestine sealskins that they weren’t allowed to show anybody, and that we were all just really good at keeping secrets. I only learned the truth when I was eleven, and I slipped up and made a joke to Brannok. She didn’t laugh, just looked at me curiously, her big brown eyes all serious. I never talked about it again, and Brannok never mentioned it, but I can still remember how it felt, to feel like I wasn’t alone and then to be reminded so suddenly and completely that that wasn’t the case.

Day Tremayne is the only other person outside my family who knows about my sealskin. I don’t trust a lot of people with a secret like that, but Day is different. He’s lying on the edge of the surf when I jog down – he’s so bold with it at this time of morning. Not many people know about this cove, but I do worry that someone will wander down in the early morning or stay overnight and get a sudden glimpse of Day and his tail. He doesn’t have the luxury of hiding it sometimes like me, but I don’t think he’d like being able to shed it. He’s much happier than most people I meet in this village, able to swim off at a moment’s notice, spending his days chasing the tide or hunting for pearls. He doesn’t like the term “Merman” because he thinks it’s too gendered. We eventually settled on “Mer” as a sort of compromise, but he still doesn’t love it. Day’s one of those people who doesn’t place a lot of stock in language or words, and he has no patience for those who do. I like to joke that it’s a fish thing.

“Caja!”

I wave my arms over my head as I run towards him, the wind tugging at my hair.

“You’re out early! What if someone had seen you?”

He grins up at me, water dripping from his hair.

“You’ve got to learn to live a little, Angove. We wouldn’t be given gifts like these if they weren’t meant to be enjoyed.”

He gives my bag a pointed look.

“Will you be joining me, or will my company be more… aquatic?”

I take a quick scan of the beach. The sand is clear, I can see all the way across to the town, and there’s no sign of anyone coming down the path.

The sea is so wide and inviting. I haven’t had a proper swim in months. Being human means you just dabble along the surface.

Day’s already smiling when I turn back to him. He knows. I scoop up a handful of seawater and throw it at him.

“Stop being smug!”

He laughs as I unzip my bag, rummaging in the bottom to find the hidden compartment that I hide my sealskin in. It’s like warm velvet against my fingertips.

I wrap myself in sealskin, and the world shifts and grows and shrinks until I’m-

The ocean swallows me and I am whole. Water. Shifting around me; push and pull. Swoop down and brush the seabed. Flip up and taste the air. Let yourself fly, let yourself weave in and out of the weeds and the fish and the sunlight.

Crest the wave.

Breathe.

I surface out of the sea in a mass of limbs that are suddenly too long for my body, in a body that doesn’t quite feel like my own, the sealskin gently unspooling from me. Quickly I gather it in my hand, pulling it out of the waves and away from the sand. Day appears next to me in a burst of seawater, flicking his hair out of his eyes.

“That was great! I feel like we haven’t done this in ages.”

It’s a beautiful feeling; I’m not tired per se, but my body has the distant ache of a good morning of exercise, and the buzz of adrenaline that comes from open swimming in deep water. My watch says its been about an hour and a half since I changed, but this morning already feels like its drifting away, growing a little fuzzy around the edges. Whenever I wear the sealskin it makes me feel like nothing else matters, like the time I spend as a seal is all-consuming compared to the dull hours I put in at work. Human eyes don’t see the same kind of beauty that seal eyes do.

My phone buzzes, and I look over at it without thinking, without remembering.

abt an hour out! c u soon! Exx

Elowen’s back today. How could I have forgotten that? It’s not like I have anything more important to be doing today. Every day’s the same in the village; I wake up, I meet Day for surfing, I work at the bookshop in the morning and the café in the afternoon. It’s not like I don’t want to remember her coming back. It isn’t like I haven’t missed her. I suppose I didn’t really believe that she would. When people leave my life they tend to stay gone.

“Having a twin is the best. It’s like having a best friend already built in.”

Elowen and I were so close when we were kids. I used to feel like she was my other half, like she was filling in the gaps of the person that I was and making me better

“I don’t understand why you have to go so far. It isn’t like there aren’t science jobs out here.”

She was always cleverer than me, at least in an academic sense. People like to talk about the different types of intelligence like being attuned to people’s emotions is an actual skill you’ll be able to use in the world beyond making people like you. Sure, I’m emotionally intelligent. It isn’t going to give me a job beyond working at my father’s old bookshop. I didn’t stick around for much of school. It didn’t seem to have much of a point beyond making me miserable for a piece of paper which would only confirm how unsuited I am to the corporate world of work. Elowen loved school though. She was great at it, so of course she wanted to keep going. And there isn’t a lot of scientific research work available in a small place like Zennor.  

“She didn’t have to leave us though, did she?”

“She didn’t have a choice!”

I don’t really remember my mother. She only stuck around long enough to push out two babies and leave my father with a crippled sense of self and emotional issues and the burden of being a single father with a self-owned business.

“You’re leaving dad just like she did!”

Sometimes I think my mouth is too big for me. I say things like that and there’s no taking them back. I don’t really think was Elowen did is comparable to what our mum did. She didn’t want to leave us, she just felt like it was what she needed to do to keep fitting in. Elowen’s had a plan for her life ever since she realised that we weren’t normal, and anything that deviates from the plan is something she isn’t allowed to follow.

I just stand there stupidly as they hug, and then Elowen turns to face me, beaming. Her hair is shorter, neatly trimmed so it hangs just below her shoulders, and she’s wearing eyeliner. I never could figure out how to do the wings, even though she offered to teach me. Elowen always looks freakishly normal, ever since she was small, she’s managed to hit the perfect note between stylish and boring. I remember watching her plan her outfits. Working from pictures of her classmates, different styles cherrypicked from the kids that no one bothered, no one questioned. She tends to take a more serious approach to fitting in than I do.

“Caja, I missed you so much!”

I can’t seem to move my feet.

“I didn’t think you were coming back.”

The words are wooden from my mouth, shrouding months of the pain and worry and grief I felt at being separate from her. I never expected her to leave, but once she did, I pretty much gave up hope on her ever coming back. I risk a look up at her, and I’m startled to see there are tears in her eyes. She reaches forward to take my hand.

“Of course I came back.”

Then she notices the wet sealskin hanging out of the side of my bag where I stuffed it, and I see her eyes go hard. Her grip tightens on my hand.

“I thought we agreed it wasn’t safe to be out anymore.”

I pull my hand away from her and step back.

“I’m not having this conversation again. Welcome home.”

She doesn’t follow me.

When I get up in the morning, for the first time in a long time I’m not alone. Elowen’s dark hair is spread out over the pillow; she doesn’t seem to have been disturbed by the alarm, so I creep down the ladder, trying not to make too much noise. I feel a little strange, like the house is listening in on my footsteps, and if I move too quickly or too loudly, the whole thing will collapse. The squeak of my chair is so loud it makes me jump, and I almost forget to leave the gate open for Minnie, who gives me a confused tilt of her head.

I shouldn’t feel like this, it shouldn’t feel wrong to have my sister in my house. I can remember nights of staring at her empty bed with tears pooling in my eyes, days of trying to shake the feeling that I was suddenly operating without the use of half of my limbs, half of my mind. I knew it was going to be difficult living alone without her, even with dad. He’s lovely, of course he is, but even he can’t replace a twin bond, no matter how hard he tries. I spent so long trying to get used to living without her that it feels like I’ve done it too well and now I don’t know how to function with her back in my life.

 Day is still waiting at the beach when I come down that morning. We don’t speak. He doesn’t try to ask me what’s wrong.