Jumping way ahead: Upheaval
Selkies' Skins Extras Flash Fiction
Upheaval
https://www.deviantart.com/amehanarainstardrago/art/FFM2020-15-Upheaval-848845342
She stood at the shore and undid her braids, shivering as she began sensing more around her in the wind. Her sealskin cloak, once disguised as lambskin before being awakened and bound to her, billowed and fought to cling, flippers firmly gripped around her shoulders. The waves fell back before here where she stood overlooking the sea and revealed to her the seabed as she knew it would be. Rocks, twists, turns, caves, flopping fish and sharks, seaweeds and sea stars, along with innumerable other details beckoned her.
The earth smelled wrong, felt wrong. Behind and below her the water from the underground streams and springs trembled. The Lady’s wails rose from beneath her hill and sacred well.
The docks weren’t going to survive this. They’d have to rebuild.
Kirsty held her ground and stared down the storm that roiled far out at sea. Somewhere out there below the water deities strove and fought. Plates shifted sooner and more violently than they would have.
It was a shame that the drained powers of some of the Old Gods that would have helped lay imprisoned in the Ministry of Mysteries, waiting to be awakened and for some believer to release them.
Suddenly Kirsty realized that she was not alone. A thin, wrinkled, shaky hand with paper skin grasped her own. The taller form stood beside her, holding the lantern that had once belonged to Mrs Kitsch’s father when they’d lived in the lighthouse in her childhood. The other shaking hand held it aloft as it blazed to life. The wind rose and her long white hair lifted on it beneath the old yellow rain cap and over the equally old yellow slicker.
“Are the boys out on the boats then?”
“Yes.” She didn’t know how she knew, but she did.
The priestess-witch and the Cowan guardian solidified their stances. Each knew their job. She sang in the face of danger for those on land and sea while the water rushed back to land. Kirsty’s own energy went into the spellsong and this song was echoed by the strand of her ancestor’s hair in the wand amplifying it. She pulled what she could from the water in the land, the sky, the sea and wove part into a net to be a buffer. The light keeper concentrated her heart on bringing all the boats home to the shore safe. The waters crashed down but parted around the confines of the past and future village, leaving both the human style homes and the currently mostly unoccupied selkie caves unharmed.
The sound of the waves and foam blurred reality. When she woke it was in her own bed. She was parched and starving. Surely that experience had been a dream brought on by not eating enough. Yet, her eye fell on a dried starfish by her bed and a tiny, elegant scrawl.
Kirsten;
I had to go feed your horses. The lads are down rebuilding the docks. If you wake before I get back, Mara asked me to give this to you for your regalia. There’s soup on the stove, make sure your mother eats too.
~Mary Kitsch
With a sigh she gave a prayer of thanks that David was currently with his father, and that his mode of transport was not usually boat related when travelling between the communities. He wasn’t expected home very soon, but maybe this was something she ought to let him know about since he’d definitely be coming back to a significantly changed scene.
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