Tag: selkie

#17 Marina

She could feel the demon approaching her, could feel his intent zeroed in on her just as much as she could feel the interest in him the rest of the room was trying to hide.  He was smooth, it was obvious from the way he slid towards her, and clear in his intent.  So, most likely he’d been sent.  And she could well imagine by whom.  She’d been none too gentle with Jared.

But this demon was in for a few surprises, the first of which being that she wasn’t what Jared had led him to believe.  Not who, but what, because ‘human’ would only describe her in the barest of terms.  She wasn’t even certain if, at this point in the game, it would be appropriate for her to use that term at all.

Certainly she looked the part, even though her long black hair and pale skin gave her an ethereal quality, but she had long lost the important parts, those delicate and sensitive places in a soul that were the corner stones of both the strength and weakness of humanity.  She was cold and maybe even dead inside, she wasn’t sure, she was no necromancer.  She was only lost, trapped on dry land, and cursed to live.  She had no idea for how long.  She only knew that she had not aged, even though by all rights she should be dead and rotted out by now.

And even after all these years, she still craved the company of men enough to play these games, to become the story they wanted to hear.  And she would play her part so well that there was no parting that was kind.  But her kind were never exactly masters at gentle leavetakings.  It was traditionally their role to cut and run, if not the minute they saw fit, then the minute their captors let down their guard.  Because inevitably the longer she stayed, the harder it was for her lover to let go.

She wished she had been so wise when she had been young, and the city had been young, and the coast was still a wilderness.  When she had fallen so hard for a man that she had willingly given him her pelt, so that he could keep her with him, so that the sea no longer had a hold over her.  She had been exceedingly young and exceedingly stupid, and for all she knew the man she had thought she loved had been buried with her pelt beside him.

It would have fit the pattern.  It went along well with the curse he somehow laid upon her when she left him, if not for the sea, then at least for somewhere away from him.  She had thought that maybe time would have loosened his grip, his obsession, his anger.  But he died without giving her the one thing she wished for.  Her freedom to return to her home.  What she had too late come to realize was her true home, far off the shore, in the unforgiving depths that ranged the coastline.

She wondered idly, as the demon sat before her and speared her with his beautiful eyes, if he would like to savor her true agony.  She wondered if he would be another of many, incapable of letting her go, therefore incapable giving her the happiness that only her freedom could provide.  But he was a demon, so her happiness would never be an issue.  And without her pelt, she was but half a creature, her soul lost in the depths far off the shore somewhere.  She doubted she would ever let him deep enough to taste the sorrow that beat within her, as unrelenting and salty as the sea which daily called her down.  She wondered, though, if she did– would it be enough to drown him as it did her?