fiction piece: the selkie
a short story about being on the other side
hi everyone! today i wanted to share a story i wrote as an anthology submission a few weeks ago. the theme of the anthology was being the other, on the outside looking in, with a fantasy element. when i saw this submission listed, i already had a couple drafts of a selkie-themed story sitting around that i’d never been able to make work, so i tried a different approach for this prompt. i zoomed in, worked on the characters, and wrote with the theme of the anthology in mind. while it didn’t get accepted, i was still fairly happy with the final product, and thought i would share it here instead!
please enjoy the selkie.
Lydia cranked the car window down as her hometown came into view, and breathed the salt air in deep. Was it her imagination, or could she already hear the ocean waves crashing against the shore? It had been five years since she had been here. Five years since she had heard the ocean at all.
“Remind me which street to turn on again, babe,” Harper said from the driver’s seat. Lydia looked up ahead.
“Next left,” she said, “then a right on the stop sign. My parents will be a few houses down. But we still have time to turn around.”
Her girlfriend laughed. “No, I’m excited.” She fiddled with the radio, trying to find a station that wasn’t static. “Not much out here though, huh?”
“Welcome to the first eighteen years of my life,” Lydia said.
Before she knew it, they were ringing the doorbell of her childhood home and her mother was opening the door.
“You’re here!” she cried, throwing her arms open for a hug. “We have so much to tell you, and to show you, and—oh! It’s going to be a wonderful weekend.”
Lydia accepted the hug. “Just a weekend,” she reminded her mother. “Harper and I couldn’t get much time off. We’ve got to head back Sunday morning.”
“Yes, but it’s still Thursday!” her mother said. “And there’s so much to catch you up on. Come in, come in!” She ushered them inside, showing them first to the guest room, where Lydia and Harper unpacked for a few moments before making their way to the kitchen, where Lydia’s mother was standing at the stove stirring a large pot.
“A little clam risotto recipe I’ve been enjoying recently,” she said as Lydia and Harper sat down. “You’ll have to let me know what you think. Your father likes it, but he likes anything with clams.”
“Where is he?” Lydia asked.
“Down at the docks,” her mother said. “He should be back any moment.”
And indeed he was. Just as her mother finished up the risotto, the front door opened, and Lydia’s father strode in, wrapping her up in an even larger hug.
“You moved too far,” he said gruffly. Lydia’s mother swatted his arm.
“We said we wouldn’t bother her about that,” she reminded him. “And we’re very proud of you, dear. A job in the city. So sophisticated!”
Everyone dug into their meal moments later. Harper complimented it two bites in, earning her a glowing smile from Lydia’s mother.
Lydia was quiet for nearly the entire meal, just listening as her parents effortlessly chatted about this and that, every little piece of local news and gossip they felt like sharing, and in turn, Harper answered questions about her job and living in the city. It wasn’t until everyone had finished eating that the conversation turned Lydia’s way again.
“And, of course,” her father was saying, “there was that boy last week, who, well—”
“Oh, don’t,” her mother said. “You’ll get Lydia excited again, and right after we finally put her conspiracy theories to rest.”
“Conspiracy theories?” Harper asked, looking over her glass at Lydia, who rolled her eyes.
“I had just taken an interest in local legend, that’s all,” she said. “And I was fifteen.”
“Oh, it was the funniest thing,” her mother said to Harper. “When she was in high school, one of her friends got injured down at the beach. Strangest bite, none of the marine biologists in town could identify what shark it came from. And a week later, a tourist drowned, and no one knew how. But our Lydia insists she saw someone else out there in the water. A mermaid, was it?”
“A selkie,” Lydia corrected. “I’m well aware now that there is no such thing.”
“And she was so taken with the idea, too,” her mother continued. “Brought home books from the library about it. Used the family computer to pull up forum pages. Wrote to a few experts on the subject, even. And, of course, she was always out in the water, as much as possible. Desperate to find the elusive creature herself.”
“I was fifteen,” Lydia repeated, “and bored.”
“Ooh, she’s thinking about taking out that rowboat again,” her father teased. He smiled. “Better keep an eye on her, Harper. Don’t let her go chasing stories.”
“Aye-aye,” Harper said, and from across the table, Lydia caught her gaze and shook her head. Harper merely winked in response.
After dinner, Lydia found Harper standing in the living room, holding a framed picture of tween Lydia, with braces and a neon camp shirt.
“I think my parents are determined to humiliate me,” she said. “First the selkie story, and now putting out the worst pictures of me imaginable?”
“Oh, your parents could be much worse,” Harper said, her voice strained. She put down the frame as Lydia’s parents walked in, with a card game for them all to play. As usual, Lydia’s father was the most competitive and Lydia managed to get out in the first round, spending the rest of the game watching everyone else play. Once the cards had been exhausted, they flipped through news channels, until they came upon a local story of that young boy who drowned just off the coast. The room was quieter after that. Lydia and Harper excused themselves, and went to bed.
As Lydia changed into her pajamas, she thought about the news story, and her father’s comment about the rowboat. It was a silly thought, but she picked up the digital clock on the nightstand all the same, setting an early alarm. Then she kissed Harper goodnight, slid under the covers, and fell asleep.
Her alarm went off when the sun rose. Lydia silenced it before Harper could wake and dressed as quietly as she could before slipping out of the room. She snatched an orange from the refrigerator and ate it while grabbing her wallet and putting her shoes on. She scribbled a quick note to her parents and Harper detailing her whereabouts, in case any of them should wake before she returned, and left, headed towards the sea.
The ocean air felt fresh in her lungs, warm but clinging to that mid-spring chill. The sound of waves crashing in the distance was musical.
She stopped at the rowboat rental, and gave her deposit to an old man with a toothy smile. She hurried along the deck to the boat, and rowed it out to sea.
The water was perfectly blue, matching the clear sky. The waves were gentle. Lydia smiled against the breeze, allowing herself to be lost in the moment. She had so few opportunities in the city to stop and connect with nature, always blocked by concrete and pavement. Returning to this was near-bliss.
She would get through this weekend at home, she decided, even if she had to bring a rowboat out to sea every morning at six to do it.
She remembered, from her youth, a small cove only a half-hour row away, and turned the boat in that direction. It was a small thing, just a hidden spot of sand amidst large rocks, but it had once been a safe haven for her. She’d had her first drink there, her first kiss with a girl, and even her first sighting of the selkie that had consumed her teenage thoughts.
Lydia knew now that the selkie had been nothing more than a hallucination brought on by the stress of living closeted while trying to get the grades she needed to go to college. There had been no one she could talk to about her situation in its entirety, so she clung to a local legend and invented a story around it for her to experience, to escape reality.
She reached the cove, dragged the rowboat up onto the sand, and hopped out. She tossed her shoes aside, letting the waves wash over her bare feet. The water was cold, and Lydia shivered, but the sun shone brilliantly, warming her cheeks. It was a beautiful equilibrium.
She enjoyed the cove for another hour or so, just sitting and listening to the ocean echoing around her. Lydia could not believe this had been her normal for eighteen years. Sometimes she wondered why she gave it all up. Sometimes, she remembered.
She pushed the rowboat back out into the water and hopped in. Behind her, something splashed, and she turned, but found nothing. Odd, but not entirely out of the ordinary. You were never truly alone out at sea.
Something thumped against the bottom of the rowboat, and against Lydia’s better judgment, she flinched. It was likely just a large fish swimming too close to the surface. A piece of driftwood. Something along those lines, she told herself.
Something hit the bottom of the boat again, and this time it rocked. Lydia grabbed the sides, trying to even it out. “What the hell?” she whispered. She leaned over the water as far as she dared, but the water was not still, and it was difficult to see much of anything at all.
When the thing came back for a third time, it tipped the rowboat over, and Lydia fell into the sea.
The cold was the worst part. Despite the weather growing warm in recent weeks, the ocean had yet to follow, and the freezing water shocked Lydia in utter stillness for a second, before instinct returned and she began to kick desperately up.
There was a movement in front of her, and Lydia looked away from the surface for only a moment, spotting the hazy outline of a figure in the water in front of her. It seemed to look at her for a moment, before swimming away. Lydia kicked again, reaching the surface. She flipped the boat over, arms aching, and rowed back to the docks.
“Fell in, did ya?” the old man at the docks asked, as Lydia tied the rowboat back to its post. “Bit chilly for that.”
Lydia mumbled something under her breath and went on her way.
“Oh, what happened?” her mother asked the second Lydia opened the front door. “I thought you were taking a rowboat out, not going for a swim!”
“The sea was a little rougher than I expected,” Lydia said. “That’s all.” She left her worrying mother behind to go take a warm shower, washing all the bits of sand from her body. When she stepped out into the guest room, Harper was sitting on the bed.
“You fell in?” Harper asked, eyebrows raised. “I thought you were supposed to be, like, really good at this.”
“Shut up,” Lydia said, elbowing her as she opened their suitcase and pulled out her clothes. “Are we still going to lunch?”
“Oh, only if you’re up to it,” Harper said, overly sweet, and Lydia rolled her eyes.
“I’m fine.”
She and Harper left a little before noon to walk around downtown before heading to lunch. Harper grabbed her hand as they left the house, and Lydia smiled, swinging it between them.
“You know, it’s nice here,” Harper said, looking around. “Simple, to be sure, but really nice. And your parents are sweet. Maybe one day we could move out of the city, somewhere quieter.”
They turned a corner, and an older man walked past them. He glanced first at Lydia, then at her and Harper’s joined hands. His frown tilted into an even deeper sneer. Lydia quickly moved her hands to her pockets.
“Not everyone is my parents,” Lydia said. “We should stay in the city.”
Harper didn’t argue. The rest of their walk was quiet, as was their lunch, a little crab place a block away from the ocean. After they finished, they walked out along the crashing waves. Harper looked around to make sure they were alone, and turned to kiss Lydia. Lydia tried to smile into it, but was distracted, head full of ocean noise and thoughts of the selkie. Harper pulled back from the kiss, and something in her eyes shifted as she looked at Lydia. Neither of them said anything on the walk home.
The next morning, Lydia woke up before the sun, and set out once more, renting the same rowboat and returning to the same cove. She dragged the boat up to shore, sat on the sand, and waited. The sun rose, creeping towards the top of the sky, and still Lydia waited. She leaned against the rowboat, eyes heavy, and sleep drifted in.
A splash nearby. Lydia’s eyes flew open. There was a woman kneeling by the rowboat, and Lydia recognized her.
Brown skin, long dark hair, and black eyes with pupils so swollen she could barely see the whites. She was bare-chested, and had a grey leather skirt wrapped around her waist. Her teeth were sharp and pointed.
“You came back,” the selkie said. Her voice was unearthly, gravelly and low, echoing around the cove.
“Oh my god,” Lydia breathed. “You’re real.”
“Of course I am,” the selkie said. “Don’t you remember? It was right here.”
Lydia’s first kiss with a girl. She had been the only lesbian she knew of in her tiny high school, so who had she kissed, in the dead of night, tasting of saltwater?
Lydia stared at her. “It was all real.”
“I’ve missed you,” the selkie said. She drew herself closer to Lydia. “It’s been a long time. You look different.”
“I moved away,” Lydia said absentmindedly. She reached out and placed her hand on the selkie’s cheek. It was solid. It was real. “I forgot… I thought I made this all up.”
“Do you not hear the ocean sing?” the selkie asked. “That is me. Calling to you. Reminding you.”
A wave crashed on the shore, an orchestra of sound, and Lydia remembered. Not all, but some. The memories were tinged with something akin to love, a love stronger than anything she could remember having experienced before, and a sudden sense of loss flooded through her.
“Could you come with me?” she asked. “Leave the ocean, I mean.”
The selkie shifted, clearly uncomfortable. “I can,” she said, “but it is unpleasant for me. I am forever stuck between the land and the sea, unable to truly join the people who live on land. I will always hear the ocean, begging me to return. It is an intolerable existence, a lonely one, looking in on a life I will never have.”
“Oh,” Lydia said. “I understand that.”
“I know,” the selkie said. “I remember.” She paused. “You asked me that before. I said no. I wish that my answer could change. But it hasn’t. I was happy to settle for stolen moments with you, here, but I don’t think you were. You left.”
“I did,” Lydia said. “If you can’t join me on land, could you bring me with you instead?”
The selkie smiled sadly. “And I once asked you that question. But you had to refuse. You’re not like me—you would drown. You’re only built for one life, not two.”
“Oh.”
“I wish I could,” the selkie said. “I wish we could be together for all time. But the feeling of life on land… I have lived it, once, and do not wish to return to it.” She looked back at the sea. “I’m sorry. I must leave. They are calling me back.”
Lydia blinked. “There are others?”
“Yes.” The selkie shifted her weight. “They do not come to shore. They reject humanity in all its forms. I see things a little differently than they do. But we are still a family.”
“Will I ever see you again?” Lydia asked.
“If you return here, of course. I will always be here,” the selkie said. She leaned forward and gently placed her lips against Lydia’s. Lydia breathed her in, the familiar taste of salt. The selkie pulled back, and smiled. She gently caressed Lydia’s face, and then stood and walked to the water. “Will you come back?”
Lydia couldn’t answer, dumbstruck from the kiss, and transfixed by the sight of the selkie’s skirt becoming her tail as she stepped into the waves and disappeared.
Lydia got back in the rowboat, and returned to real life.
“You went out again?” Harper asked. Her arms were crossed. Lydia tried to remember if she had done something else to piss Harper off. She seemed much angrier than the situation warranted. “After what happened yesterday?”
“Yesterday was a fluke,” Lydia said. “I used to do this all the time.”
“Yeah, in high school, but you’re not a reckless teenager anymore,” Harper said, “or are you? Is this why it took you five years to come home, because you turn back into the child you were?”
Lydia reeled back. “That’s not fair,” she said. “You know I had a hard time here.”
“You had a hard time?” Harper laughed humorlessly. “A hard time is getting kicked out at seventeen, because your girlfriend outed you to her parents, who told your parents, and then your dad couldn’t stand the sight of you anymore. A hard time is working tirelessly to put yourself through college, with loans and debts and night shifts at the convenience store with creepy old men trying to hit on you. A hard time is missing your hometown, despite knowing you can never, ever return. But this, Lydia?” Harper gestured around. “Rich parents, free college, a home you can come back to? This is not a hard time. It’s everything I ever wished for.”
“I just meant—”
“I don’t care,” Harper said. “I don’t care if your mom doesn’t get all the terminology right, if you got a little too obsessed with some old story in school, if your guinea pig dying really got to you, or whatever other tiny problems you have. You need to grow up.”
Lydia stared at her. “Harper—”
“I’m going out.” Harper grabbed her bag and walked out. Lydia watched her go, numb.
After dinner, while her father was washing the dishes, her mother called Lydia into the pantry to help her with something.
“What’s up? You need help checking all the expiration dates or something?” Lydia asked.
“I wanted to ask about Harper,” her mother responded. Lydia froze. Harper still had not returned.
“What about her?”
“Do you two have, you know, a plan? To settle down?” her mother asked. “I mean, I know you can’t get married, not traditionally, but what about kids? And, listen. You’re still young. There’s plenty of other fish in the sea, if you change your mind.”
“I’m not marrying a man,” Lydia said bluntly. “You’ve known that since I was eighteen. And I don’t want kids, neither does Harper.”
“I know, but you just seem so distant now,” her mother said. “Ever since… I mean, ever since you got obsessed with that selkie thing in high school.”
“Mom, again with the selkie?” Lydia asked, but her mother steamrolled ahead.
“You’re just so different than how you were,” she said. “I feel like I don’t know you anymore, between you being gay now and moving to the city and the strange obsessions… I try my best, sweetheart, and I love you, but I don’t understand you. Not one bit.”
“I know,” Lydia said, “but I don’t need you to understand. I just need you to accept that it’s not going to change. I’m not going to change.”
Her mother pursed her lips. “I just want you to have a good life.”
“I am,” Lydia said. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been.”
“Is that why you took the rowboat out again this morning?” her mother asked. “Because, to me, Lydia, it seems like you’re still looking for something else.”
Hours later, Harper still hadn’t returned, so Lydia went for a walk as the sun set. She strolled aimlessly, and ended up at the ocean. She had no swimsuit, but walked into the water anyway. It was freezing. It didn’t help stop the broken record of memories in her mind—Harper, her mother, the selkie. Round and round and round again.
“I changed my mind,” she whispered. “You can take me, if you want.” She shivered, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “I don’t fit here, I—I’m incomplete. I’m like you, stuck on the outside. There’s no place for me.” Her mother would never understand her. She would never understand her girlfriend. But the selkie… “I think I might need you.”
She stumbled and fell to her knees. The water came up to her chest, and she struggled to breathe against the pressure. The sun dipped below the horizon, the stars began to pop out in the sky, and the selkie had still not come for her. She sat in the freezing water, unmoving.
Finally, in the distance, a figure emerged, long dark hair spread out in the water around her. It was the selkie. Lydia rushed towards her, and then stopped.
The selkie was shaking her head.
Time went odd as Lydia and the selkie stared at each other. Lydia stopped begging. She understood. She hated it, but for once, she understood. The selkie knew what it meant to take her, and she refused. Lydia couldn’t argue with that, any more than she could ask the selkie to join her again, on land. It was a sacrifice too big.
The next thing Lydia knew, there were hands pulling her out of the water. She looked up to see Harper, and when she turned back, the selkie was gone.
Harper pulled a towel around Lydia’s shoulders, and she was speaking, apologizing, maybe, but Lydia could not understand, the ocean shouting over her words. Harper brought Lydia home. Helped her get into her pajamas. Tucked them both under the duvet, and then wrapped her arms around Lydia’s waist.
Lydia stared at the blank guest room wall. The ocean roared in her ears.
The next morning, Harper packed while Lydia sat on the corner of the mattress. She loaded the suitcases into the car, said their goodbyes to Lydia’s parents, and steered Lydia into the passenger seat.
The ride back was silent. Lydia watched as the countryside sped by and faded, houses coming closer together, the city returning to view.
The sound of the ocean faded, melancholic, to a mere whisper in her ears.
hi again! i hope you all enjoyed the story.
in my early drafts, this story was going to follow lydia’s entire life, from spotting the selkie in the waves as a kid on the beach, to getting her boat flipped over as a teen, to eventually finding the selkie again after college and feeling the connection spark. however, submissions like these often have tight word count restrictions, and i could never make that story work with only a few thousand words. so, for this iteration, i zoomed in to the post-college version of lydia, coming home to visit with her girlfriend, and crafted the story around that.
for the theme of the anthology, i tried to make it present in two different ways: in lydia, and in the selkie. for the selkie, it is much more obvious: she is a being from the sea, and though she has the ability to join those on land, she will always know it is not where she belongs. for lydia, i really focused on her identity as a lesbian (one reason why this story is shifted a couple decades back in time), and how she struggles to reconnect with her hometown and her parents, eventually leading her back to the selkie over and over.
if i could change anything about this story, i would probably add about a thousand more words or so. while editing this (my first draft was 4.4k, my first “final” draft 3.7k) i did find a lot of superfluous words and phrases that were easily removable, with no detriment to the story, and which allowed me to add in a few more key phrases, as i was working with a limit of 3.5k words (my final final draft was 3,497). however, had the limit been 4.5k or 5k, i would have liked to have added to the selkie’s character a lot more. perhaps build up more of the village lore around her, and expand on her character where i could. i also wish i’d had room for the running joke from my first draft, in which harper and lydia commented on just how themed everything in town is (ocean-themed street names. ocean-themed guest bedroom, complete with seashell wallpaper and a dolphin-patterned duvet. and so on).
that said, i did add a few lines here and there to this version that you’ve just read, since i was no longer constrained by the 3.5k word limit. it’s possible one day i might return to this story again to fully revamp it, but for now, i’ve spent enough time staring at it. i would much rather just release it and let it exist and breathe.
as an extra look behind the scenes into the inspiration for this story: i’ve always really liked selkie mythology, and about ten years ago, just before starting high school, i read a book about a clan of selkies living off the coast of new england. though i don’t remember much else of the plot, there was a small flashback, where one of the selkies had a short romance with the the main (human) character’s grandmother. it was the first time i had ever seen a lesbian relationship depicted in fiction, in writing or on screen. i knew of gay people, at the time, but primarily of gay men. i had not given the concept of girls in love with girls much thought. i vividly remember sitting in bed, late at night, re-reading the scene where the selkie and the girl kissed in front of the lighthouse, over and over.
and it still took me an entire year after that to realize i was gay! but anyway. consider this short story an ode to that first spark of my gay awakening. thank you random selkie book i read at fourteen years old for all your help in that department.
so at the end of the day, i do still really like this story! it took me about twenty days in all to write, edit, and submit this, which is a pretty fast process for me (especially since, for the first week or so of that, i was still working on the second draft of my novel!) and i’m just glad for the experience of writing a short story quickly, and getting it edited & submitted for a deadline. although it would have been nice to be accepted to the anthology, i was definitely not expecting that to happen on my very first attempt. in the meantime, i’m looking forward to continuing to write short stories, and to try and get published where i can. right now, i’m working a fun little story about vampires that i’m rather excited by.
in other news, tomorrow i move into my dorm for grad school! i’m excited to start this next chapter of my life (even if i will have a LOT less time for fiction writing), and i’m sure i’ll have lots to talk about in my next letter.
see you soon!
becca 🌊
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