Changeable as the Sea

The run was invigorating, the feeling of secrecy exciting, and the feeling of the wind through her hair and her feet on the soft sand heady. If it weren't so important that she stay quiet, Keren would have laughed, or sang, or done something equally expressive and noisy. Her fear was already fading, as the beach was silent but for the ever-increasing sound of the ocean and her own feet spraying sand out behind them. When she finally rounded the point of the beach where the shore curved gracefully away from the sea again and the dunes rose to hide it from view, she forgot her fear entirely, and felt free.

Slowing to a jog, and then a walk, Keren let her toes sink into the damp sand with each step, savoring the sensation. The tide had rolled in a few yards, leaving only a narrow strip of untouched sand before beach gave way to the grassy hills leading to the trees. For a few minutes she walked like this, reaching the end of the "safe zone" where she was invisible from sight and turning around again, following her footprints back, sometimes walking in them, sometimes making backwards duplicates doing the opposite direction. Water flowed back into them as her feet were freed, and the surf rose and fell just beyond them.

Then just walking in the wet sand wasn't enough. Keren paused by a piece of dry, salt-stained driftwood and set her sealskin down, sitting in the grass and rolling up her pant legs to above her knees. She got back to her feet again and walked to the water, letting it lap around her feet, and shivered. Its touch was cold, cooler than the oceans she was been used to at Rome, but not quite as chill as the water of home. So it was not the cold that made her skin pebble up; it was the water's purity. No misguided attempt at improving life had tainted this ocean, there was no stain of man and machine here. It was like nothing Keren, who had grown up on a mistreated planet, had ever felt before. No selkie for over eight hundred years had enjoyed such clean water, and now that Keren had, she wanted-- no, she needed-- more.

Running back to the twisted driftwood, Keren started shedding her clothes as quickly as she could, heedless of the sand sticking to her feet. She left them piled untidily in the grass and darted back towards the water, the wind and spray meeting her before she even got there as if the sea was as impatient as she. The waves were gentle and didn't even hinder her as she waded in, smiling dreamily, bending over just enough to brush the surface of the water with her fingers. The slope downward was as gentle as the water, the slow, tedious earth stealing the power from the waves, but Keren kept walking steadily outward until she was submerged up to her waist, and there she stopped, shutting her eyes for a long moment and just feeling the water rise and fall from her hips to her belly as the waves came in.

Still wanting more, she gathered her legs and arched out of the water, diving back in as smoothly as an otter and shooting out to sea. The minerals in the water didn't bother her eyes-- they were little different from what existed in Earth's oceans, naturally, and far less abrasive than the chemicals that man had added to it-- so she could see moonlit ridges of the ocean floor and the waving strands of ocean weeds peeking out from between the stones that clumped together more often the farther out she went. There were no fish, not yet anyway, but that was all right. Right now she wanted to be alone with the ocean.

Though she swam with the skill and grace of a sea-dweller, back and forth, playing about the currents and riptides, heedless of or perhaps immune to their dangers, it still wasn't enough. Keren had expected what she would end up doing tonight, even looked forward to it, so she swam back to shore and climbed back onto the sand, once again tall and clumsy, towards her sealskin. Dripping and naked, her hair feeling heavy with the water that left its curls for once plastered down against her head and even down to her shoulders, she picked up the silvery pelt and unfolded it lovingly, running wet hands over the velvet fur, pressing her cheek to it even as the call of the ocean brought her drifting back to the waves. Water lapped at her knees before she'd even realized she'd moved.

There she paused, the dream of the sea and night momentarily broken as she remembered where she was and who was sleeping and keeping watch just down the beach from her. She stood still in the water, holding the sealskin to her chest and looking apprehensively around, listening for and sound that she might have been discovered. The thought of someone coming over the hill or down the beach and seeing her, standing naked in the water with the skin of an animal clutched to her, was enough to return her fear of discovery. The insistent tug of the ocean on her spirit deadened what little ability she might have had to search for an approaching mind, but she could still listen, and she strained her ears, eyes darting over the landscape between her and the campsite.

There was only the sea and silence, and darkness and wind-swept grass. Breathing a sigh of relief, Keren gave up resisting and wrapped her sealskin around her, stepping further into the water. It only reached from her shoulders down to just above her knees, but as the water touched it, it hung heavier and longer, pressing tight to her skin. The pelt clung to her hips and tightened across her belly, folding over he breasts and sucking to her shoulders as the water rose to each in part. Then, taking a breath with lungs which seemed much larger and roomier, Keren leapt again, as she had before, diving beneath the waves and letting the change take over.

When Keren had first made the change from human girl to seal pup, she had been afraid, and it had hurt. Now, though, it wasn't even uncomfortable; it was like finding herself after being lost. Thae first taime might pain ye, child, her grandmother's voice came to her across memory, but soon ye'll love it, jest laike thae rest of us. And it was true. Keren didn't think she could live without finding herself sleek and furry at least once in a while.

This time was no different from the last hundreds or even thousands of times. The water opened before her face and closed again as her feet followed, and there was a feeling of comfortable heat and sudden constriction, as if her skin were too small for her and growing smaller. Which was, in essence, what was happening: the sealskin enveloped her, pressing her legs into a much shorter, much more powerful lower half, from which scooping paws and a stubby tail protruded. It drew her arms close to her chest, melding them to her until only her hands remained free, those lengthening into flipper-like paws. Finally, it stretched to cover her head and wrap around her face, turning her frizzy red hair into the soft fuzz of a seal's head and her nose and mouth into a seal's round, kind muzzle and bristly whiskers. It all took the span of a couple heartbeats, and the small pain involved was forgotten in the joy of being free at last in a world all her own, which she was now quite determined to enjoy for as long as she dared.