Week 7, Title: If you immediately know the water is cold, the tale has died too violent
IV
Pellie hums in delight as Alec massages her too wrought shoulders. It’s been far too long. For this moment she’s content to lie on her stomach, boneless, to be taken care of for once.
Between spending all hours of the day at work or taking care of their kids, time left over is mainly spent sleeping.
But now the kids are at their grandfathers for the weekend.
(And that in itself is an oddity. Alec had been reluctant to let their girls form a relationship with his father after all the pain the man had put him through. The tenuous peace had broken anew and Alec had asked the questions he never had…
Why did he leave?
And why did he say he was coming to see him, raising his hopes and excitement, only to cancel every time?
Why did he leave him feeling like it was all his fault?
And the answer was simple really, his father had been young, and feckless, and not at all ready to parent a child.
The wounds were fresh again and seemed like they might last forever.
But they hadn’t.)
“I have an idea,” Alec says.
And she groans at the loss of contact as he moves away, while languidly turning to her side to watch him.
He opens their closet, pulling out a familiar slither of grey, his eyes sparkling.
“I can’t,” she says, her gaze sliding to the left, to the window, to the dark-pebbled beach and the beckoning sea beyond it, “What if something happens and one of the kids need me?”
“I will be right here.”
“Okay,” she says as he brings it to her, she wraps it around herself, remembering a time when they were without the responsibilities of having small children who depended on them.
III
They lounge in deck chairs on their balcony, kissing and laughing and running their hands over each other. Their bellies empty except for the cheap wine they had taken from the corner store. They had no money for food, but would probably steal some later. Pellie knew that stealing was wrong, but they were alone; his father for years gone and her parents in the ocean and though they weren’t children, they were still too young.
And the world had hurt them too much already.
At night they would wade into the dirt-addled lake and she would dream of living on a stretch of the palest sand reaching out into the clearest water.
II
Pellie knows many stories of women like her, who run away to never be seen again. She should probably do the same. But the thought sits ill-fitting inside her. After everything, he shouldn’t be left to carry on like everything is normal.
He’s a kidnapper and a rapist.
So she takes a knife to him while he’s sleeping. And has no qualms.
She’s not going to hide in the shadows. She has a world to explore.
I
“You need to be more careful,” Pellie’s mother says.
She pays no heed, all the tales seem like scary children’s stories.
Daily, she casts aside her seal-skin and transforms, into an otherworldly creature, into a human.
She runs along the shore. It’s exhilarating and wondrous and new.
One night she can’t find her skin to return home, she searches and searches and searches. It must just be lost. That’s all. It can’t have been taken.
And then she sees him, a large man with a feral smile, tucking a patch of grey under his coat. He walks towards her and says, “Never thought I’d find myself an honest to God Selkie.”