Out of the Depths (PRP Liam)

[Eveleen MacGrath]

A small round head popped out of the water, two human like eyes peering out into the warm night air. The harbor seal snorts, spraying the water that lingers too close to her nostrils outward as she squints, trying to peer over the rocky ledges that line the mass of land in hopes of getting a glimpse of the city that lies beyond the jagged rock. She finds no success, the lights of the city the only things that are willing to make themselves visible, and so she slips back under the water’s surface. Her adrenaline surges, fins pushing and propelling her through the dark waters towards land. Schools of fish dart by her, hiding away in their coral homes, frightened by the sudden presence of a predator. Momentarily, she considers stopping for a quick snack, even though she really isn’t all that hungry. But the anticipation that tingles her body stops her, urging her to continue her swim to land, where she will do what she has been wanting to do since she left Ireland. Change.

Spotting what looked to be a more secluded part of the beach, she covered the distance quickly, weaving her way around tall seaweed tree like structures and through the vast forests of coral until she reached the shallows. Popping her head out of the water once again, blinking as waves splashed water into her eyes, she peered around the beach. No one seemed to be around, and so, determining it was safe, she bounced forward, hopping and scooting until she was completely out of the water.

Continuing her trek across the beach, she stopped once she had found a nice spot close to a rocky ledge on the right side. Unconcerned with the full moon that illuminated at least half of her body, she closed her eyes and concentrated.

The change came on quickly despite her inexperience. At first it was just a tingling sensation, but it grew rapidly, spreading throughout her body until it was painful, until blubber melted away and fur separated from flesh. Her bones bent and shifted, her body stretched and pulled as limbs began to grow and separate. She shut her eyes against the pain, trying not cry out, but then , her eyes rolling back and suddenly all was silent.

She opened her eyes, blinking in confusion as she felt something large and soft pressing against her body in the sand. She sat up, the motion causing the thing to slide off of her and when she looked down, her eyes widened as she realized it was her seal coat. She gasped, unable to keep the joyous expression off her face as she eagerly looked at her body. She held out her hands, looking at the soft ivory flesh, and then flung them up to her face. She had a face! And ears, and a real nose and lips, and, and hair, long brown hair! She even had legs and toes!

The fear of capture long gone, she squealed in delight as she continued to examine all the new human things she had. Eager to try and to something human, other than making human noises, she sat on her knees, bracing her hands on the ground and tried to stand up. She managed to get half way on her feet, but her legs didn’t seem to want to cooperate with her, apparently too use to being flippers, and she flopped back down on the sand. She tried again, but found the same results.

Undeterred by her lack of progress, she would keep flipping trying until she flipping could do it even if it took her all bloody night because she would be darned if she went to all of this trouble and then had to sit in the sand (which now found its way into places she never knew she had until now) for the rest of her human existence.

[Liam]

Liam was not a man who lost sleep over many things. He went to bed late, and when able to, woke up late, but tonight sleep had eluded him. There were too many ghosts trailing at his heels and his mind ran in tireless circles that not even whiskey could slow. A roll in the hay had the potential to solve a great deal of his problems, but being married guaranteed nothing. However, a decade spent apart guaranteed bitterness, long stretches of silence, and the unbearable feeling that it was all your fault.

Which, granted, was more or less true. Immortality carried a high price.

There were advantages to living only a few miles from the beach. It wasn't much of a walk, even as a fox carrying a pair of swim trunks hanging from his teeth. His claws click on the pavement and in the shield of darkness he makes it to the boardwalk and onto the sand dunes with only a few odd looks and the bare minimum amount of dogs raising hell in their apartments above.

As the waves lap against the dark shore, he shifts and shakes all his freckles back into place, wiggling into the plaid trunks. It feels good to slink away and dare he say it--to be alone. Shifting his toes into the cold sand he strides to the shore, leaving foot prints trailing behind him. Before long, Liam strikes into song.

He has an alright voice, a little throaty, and he had to work for the high notes, but it was enough to carry a tune. "One evening for pleasure I ramble, on the banks of some cold purling stream. I sat down on a bed of primroses and--" Liam pauses, searching for the right words. There were many things he had forgotten in his near century of life, but music would always remain within reach. "And swiftly fell into a dream. It was there I saw a fair female, her equal I never saw before! And I sighed for the loss of my country," Drawing in a swell of ocean air into his lungs, he brings the verse to a crescendo, palm unfurling in a dramatic gesture, outwards to the great roiling mass of the sea, black as the waters off the cost of his ancestor's home.

"As I strayed there on Ireland's green shore."

Cold, frozen toes bump into something soft and wet, dark against the pale sand. He blinks, broken from his own private concert and bends at the waist to pick it up, expecting to find sodden clothing, but what he turns over in his hands is like silk--no raggedy shirt. "What do we have here?" He unravels it carefully and the pelt is nearly as tall as he is, dripping cool water down his bare chest. A faint energy ripples along the whole thing, pricking at his fingertips.

Magic.

While having little of his own, Liam had been at the receiving end of it enough times to recognize that electricity like current for what it was. A grin blooms on his face and he folds it with a gentle sort of reverence, patting the black fur. "A long way from the Atlantic, aren't you?" He calls out in the night, unmistakeable satisfaction in his voice. It was only a hunch, but Liam knew his fairy tales. "Agus shíl mé go raibh siad ach scéalta..."

There were many nights Liam could remember falling asleep in his mother's lap to stories of the wee folk and the blessed isle of Tír na nÓg. His favorite story had always been about the selkies, the beautiful maidens stolen from the seas by mortal men and forced to become their wives.

He wasn't quite mortal, and he already had a wife, but Liam would never pass up such a golden opportunity. It simply went against his nature.

[Eveleen MacGrath]

After what seemed like an eternity, but in reality was only around twenty minutes or so, Eveleen managed to right herself enough to grab on to the large rock structure that was stationed nearby. Using it to her advantage, she used the rough stone to support herself, moving in slow baby steps, concealed in the shadows. Her pelt and the possible dangers completely out of mind, she focused her time and energy on learning how to walk, fascinated by the sensation of sand between her toes. She was completely content, perfectly happy to hobble around and stare at her new found bare body. That is until she heard the singing.

She was so surprised by the human voice that she gasped and fell over, landing on her butt in the sand. Her eyes darted to the man who made his way down the beach, and then to the pelt that she had so foolishly left lying out in the open, and she felt sick. How, how could she have gotten so caught up in herself that she could be so careless? She had done the one thing that a selkie was not supposed to do, a thing that had gotten her mother into trouble.

She hoped that by some miracle he wouldn’t notice, or at the very least leave the discarded seal pelt alone. But it didn’t seem like she would have that kind of luck today as she watched helplessly as the man bumped into the thing and actually stooped to pick it up.

"What do we have here?" He asked himself as he unraveled it. She bit her lip fearfully, crawling behind a rock in the hope of concealing herself. She held her breath, still hoping he would discard the thing and leave so she could right her stupid actions and hide the darn thing where no one would ever find it. But then, much to her horror, the man calls out, obviously recognizing what it is, "A long way from the Atlantic, aren't you? Agus shíl mé go raibh siad ach scéalta…" Though surprised to hear him speak in her native tongue, she receives no comfort in it, the pleasure in his voice unmistakable. She wants to pretend that she isn’t there, as if she still has a way out of this, but of course this is impossible as she feels herself uncontrollably wobble to her feet and step out from behind the rock.

“Cad é gur mian leat?” She asks, despite the fact that she already knows the answer. Her voice is small, timid as she looks up at him, and then to her pelt, “Feicfidh mé ... agam go mbainfidh scream nó ... rud éigin. Mura bhfuil tú a thabhairt go bhfuil ar ais.” The threat, though it sounded good in her head, was probably decreased a great deal because it was at that very moment, after the words had left her mouth, that her legs decided to wobble again, caving from beneath her and causing her flopped back down into the sand with a small “oof”. She blinked, looking up helplessly at the man, somewhat embarrassed that her attempt to seem “in control” had ended with her on her butt again. But at least she couldn’t say she didn’t try.

[Liam]

The selkie finally appears, a fairy tale made flesh and blood before his very eyes. She couldn't have been any older than her mid-twenties, all youthful elegance, in the curve of her hip and the curve of her jaw. In the darkness of the beach, her pale skin shines like the moon itself. Liam smiles gently, flexing the fingers of his left hand, the golden wedding ring suddenly heavy. Look, not touch. He had never been unfaithful to Jethro, not while they lived under the same roof and he had no intentions of breaking that now.

Distant she may be, but Liam had no doubts she would break his bones if she suspected any case of infidelity. Magical selkie or not.

"Roinnt ádh mór." Some much needed luck. There's irony there. Irishmen and foxes, didn't they have all the luck in the world? It had saved his ass before, the blind luck awarded only to fools and drunks, and it must have counted double, since he had been both of those things at one point or another in his life.

And just like that, the seal shifter's feet go out from under her. She might be graceful in the seas, but on land it seemed like she had the relative balance of a toddler. Liam almost goes over to help her, but he hadn't lived so long by being fooled by every pair of big eyes that fluttered at him. The moment he lent a hand, she might snatch the pelt from his arms and make off into the ocean from whence she came. "Agus ansin cad é? Cheapann tú go dtuigeann siad Gaeilge?" And what then? You think they understand Irish? For all Liam knew, the only people in Portugal who could speak Gaelic were his wife and himself. It was an old tongue and it had been dying for centuries, kept alive by its natives and few others.

He beckons to the girl, stepping away from the water to find himself a seat on dry sand, draping the hide over his lap with the preamble of a man who expects things to go his way. "Níl mé ag iarraidh eile bhean chéile, ach beidh mé ag coinneáil do pelt." I don't want another wife, but I will be keeping your pelt. Finders keeper's. Gifted with the knowledge he had, there were others who may not have been so kind if they'd stumbled upon the selkie and her valuable hide.

People much less generous than him and who taught lessons with a heavier hand. Liam smiles, gaze directly respectfully above her collarbone. "Is é mo ainm Liam. Cad is ainm duit? " My name is Liam, what's your's? There was rarely an excuse not to be civil about things, and judging by the overall impression the girl gave of a new born foal just finding its legs, he considered himself to be doing her a world of good.

Someone would have found her pelt eventually and it really was a lucky thing that someone was Liam Fitzpatrick, compassionate, kind, and above all, happy to help a damsel in distress.

[Eveleen MacGrath]

"Agus ansin cad é? Cheapann tú go dtuigeann siad Gaeilge?" The man replies, and the realization that she hadn’t thought about that causes her to frown softly. She had forgotten that the human race was one of many languages and dialects, something she had little experience with coming from the sea. She had managed to pick up one other human language from her time watching them from the waves, a language she believed was called English, but that did not mean that everyone on the shore spoke in this tongue.

When he beckons her she has no choice but to obey, and so she picks herself up clumsily and plops herself down beside the man, a small pout pricking her lips as it becomes increasingly apparent that she has been bested. Her eyes wonder to her coat that now lays protectively in the males lap and the thought crosses her mind that maybe she could grab it and make a run for it, but then he speaks again and the thought diminishes, bringing her back to the reality of things.

"Níl mé ag iarraidh eile bhean chéile, ach beidh mé ag coinneáil do pelt." The relief she feels in not having to be the guys wife is lessoned by his intent in making her his captive and she crosses her arms stubbornly, as if it would possibly make a difference. This certainly was not what she had in mind for her first visit to the human world. Then again, she supposed she only had herself to blame. Letting herself get caught up in the moment had been a mistake and now she would have to live with that. Perhaps the only thing to do now was to figure out what sort of man she would be serving from now on and hope he wasn’t totally flipping crazy.

"Is é mo ainm Liam. Cad is ainm duit? " The civil turn of the conversation was welcomed and so she replied her demeanor calm, if not just the slightest bit timid. “Is é mo ainm Eveleen ...” My name is Eveleen. She paused, blinking in curiosity before continuing, “Conas is féidir liom a iarraidh, an bhfuil a fhios agat mo chineál? Níl amhras go bhfuil tú na fola na hÉireann, ach go leor a ghlacadh ach amháin ar an selkie mar Myth seachas rud.” How, may I ask, do you know of my kind? No doubt you are of Irish blood, but many only take the selkie as a myth rather than a fact.