Daytime
From Writer's Block:
What time of day is best? Why?
Daytime.
Introduction to Uleille "Lei" inion a Riona
She stares longingly at the small window across the room, and fears what will happen to her now. She cannot age, like the mortals who have captured her, eventually someone other than her keeper will realize her secret.
She is bid back to her bed, and days pass before she is allowed back, to stare at the sky again. He doesn't let her see the windows of the ocean. Not anymore. The last time he did, she would not move again. Not for a fortnight. He had to carry her away, and still, Uleille stayed still as a stone.
And so, she is left to stare at her religion, the sun, moon and stars that dictate the tides and swells, but never will she set eye upon her home again. Never will she feel the spray, the salt.
She cannot say whether keeping her blind or letting her see is more cruel.
And so, she goes through her rote of duties, cleaning the home, bathing the child, cooking the food, and she never touches the fresh, stinging water. She cuts a finger, and must let it be cleaned in the feeble, burnless sweetwater of her home.
Years go, and he never lets her out, to run among the waves. At first, she heard the mourning yelps and angered growls of her kin, but they do not try to call her any more. Unlike others who have shared her fate, they must believe her to be dead, for no one could resist the water as long as she had been forced to.
Her son notices, sometimes, how tired she looks, the exhaustion of captivity. Her keeper, the mortals call him a Husband, sees how, although she is still as young and beautiful as the day he took her life away, she is paler, slower, less vibrant.
And then, one day, when he has grown ancient and his bones brittle, and she sits by his side, the image of a loving daughter, for no one believe she is his long ago wife, he dies.
And her son, who looks older than she does, helps her empty the home. She will go to live with him and his flock of young ones.
Her Husband is taken to the water that she can never see again, and launched into the depths, to be feed for the creatures there.
As she walks in the light of the sun, her first day in a man's lifetime, her eyes catch on a fence. Fences. She'd never actually seen one, but she'd imagined them well enough.
And there, nailed onto the posts, was a taut, bleached leather skin. Her son does not stop her when she breaks into a run. He knows better than anyone how long his mother has been denied the right to bask in the light. He assumes grief compels her when she yelps and rubs the skin lovingly, tears flowing down her too-pale, hollowed cheeks.
Carefully she pries the leather down, her darling child helps. It is stiff, but the clinging rubber is still there, within it, and the magic buzzes beneath her fingers, unfelt and unknowable to her mortal kin.
"I go to the sea, child, that I may bid true farewell to your father." she says, softly. Her voice hoarse. She has not spoken in all the days since her husband was set to sea, taking secret of her skin with him.
"I will take you there, mother."
"No. You will not. I go alone, you have family to care for." He consents, and when she had broken from the pathway, he follows her anyway, a loyal son. He worries for her, perhaps the sorrow has killed her mind, stolen it away.
Her awkward, earthbound feet cannot carry her fast enough, and it is none too soon that she reaches the shoreline.
And that night, when the single child of Uleille returns to his home, and his children wonder where their auntie is and why didn't she come back after Grandfather died, he can only tell them an amazing tale. The story of a woman who waited decades, maybe longer, for who could say how many had kept her in that home, more, perhaps, than just his own father. And one day, had been freed, and found an ancient Sealskin.
And she ran to the water, and cast it about herself, and there, where she had stood, a seal lay instead, and the seal had launched into the water and disappeared.
His wife laughed, and his children did not believe the tale, though they giggled at it, the eldest was sure it his the story of a grieving woman who cast herself into the water to drown.
How long had it been, after all, since Selkie-folk had lived in thought or tongue on their little isle?