Page 7 of Selkie AU: Beyond the Storm

“Thanks.” He took them from me.

“Just… come back out to the living room. I want to talk to you.”

“You are talking to me. What’s a living room?”

“The room we were in before. And I mean…talktalk. About last night.”

“Oh. Alright.”

He grabbed the alarm clock and a pillow, along with the clothing I’d handed him, and walked back out of the bedroom in front of me, carrying them instead of putting them on.

Lord help me.

4

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 thecolony, 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.