flocidae

The kiss was so far from any of the night terror that Flo experienced with Isa getting in between from the previous evening. Taken by surprise, the 400 year old selkie is familiar at this point with the art of a human kiss. She’s kissed so many males and females at this point that it’s almost instinctual. Isabella long distanced herself from the romantic feelings up until this point in which she felt the danger. A week she swore she would only stay but now it was impossible. She heard tiny voices in the back of her head from her long dead brothers and sisters beware the curse that falls upon young lovers, Isabella. And though she might fight the tides of the ocean later, in this moment, this very moment of the feeling of the warmth of sleep dulling away and the time that is awake, she gives into the kiss. Her thoughts are of this will heal Florence, this will make her better. And she’s sworn to protect her now at the cost of perhaps her own being. Isa is the last of the Selkies as far as she’s known. With this kiss it inspires a fire of devotion and she wonders if it would last twenty years. But it certainly goes longer than a moment.

Moments like these have no time with her being. They pass through each other’s lungs and breath between and Florence deepens the kiss with Isabella. It’s been a very long time since the redhead felt anything other than an empty pill bottle and a bottle she drank of whiskey and vodka at some point. For the first time in months, Florence knows that the change between them moves quicker like faster than she’s ever known. The sheer rush in which she felt beyond the stage at one point feels like that heady gauze in which she propels herself over in the kiss. There are sounds yet, sounds between lips and tongue and the vulnerability. There are the familiar hands that Isa reaches and slides through ginger hair, only with the bright light of sunshine through the hotel room in which this kiss feels like the songs that she once sang - that exciting double time in heartbeat in which crowds dived with her and she felt so alive.

And for Isa, the kiss feels so dangerous because now she knows she must spend more than a week. For every day and minute that passes, the danger of staying is there. And so she kisses and without ever knowing or actually stating in words, Florence now feels incredibly protective of Isa. And Isa doesn’t know of Florence’s devotion either. Florence isn’t ready to tell her in words not yet. But the feelings are stirred. They make love for the first time that morning, hungrily and instinctually. There is no reason to ask if either are ready, it felt too incredible to stop.

–

Time moves like the tides of the ocean, in, out and months are spent still in the hazy Southern California gaze. But instead of Florence looking out at the ocean every day, she sings for Isa. She sings the songs that she once sang about Ceremonials and Lungs and explains to Isa in so many words - death, sex, religion and so forth. For Isa’s part she understands but wonders how a human who appears to be so young has so much wisdom. She’s heard mermaids sing, dreadful siren songs that lure sailors to their deaths. She knows Flo is far beyond any mermaid - she does not sing and lure people to their deaths. Instead it’s finally understood that all the efforts towards her once failed relationship to James was her own death and now Isa worked on making magic happen.

It is one evening late and it is nearing Spring. The time and shift of the seasons are there and Isa has now spent nearly 8 months with Florence, 8 months since a late Summer day. She takes Florence by the hand and Flo gently holds her coat up. Of course she’s careful now not to simply take the coat.

“Let’s go walk to the ocean, Florence,” Isa has missed the sea. She also needs to show Florence something far greater. And she knows it is a risk, everything is a risk. She has never done this with another human.

“It’s cold though, Isa!” Florence laughs and at this point the hotel room is far cleaner now. Less alcohol, there are even pots of flowers. Isa has given Florence confidence in ways that were lacking, the youthful ways of an older woman now returned. And in the light of the moon, Florence writes songs again. She hasn’t shown anyone yet these beginnings of songs yet, but she knows the muse has returned.

“But it’s only cold if you don’t have a warm coat and lucky for you,” she says as she goes barefoot out the door and leads Florence also in bare feet towards the water. “You happen to have my coat to protect you.”

Florence sighs softly, “If it wasn’t for you, I’d be dead.”

This statement from Florence makes Isa slightly sad. “My dear, in 400 years of swimming in the ocean, the death to which you speak of is not an option for you anymore. Do you hear me, Florence?”

Florence nods, “I understand.”

The Pacific Ocean rolls in with the blue depths of water of the sea in and out. Tide is high and so the waves look strong. For Isa, she feels the stirring in her heart of the ocean calling for her. Florence tightens her grip on Isa’s fingertips but speaks, “You want to go home don’t you?’

Isa looks up at those green eyes which are rimmed with sadness. "When I first landed upon the rock, I told myself I would only spend a week with you. A week because…” she closed her blue eyes. “My brothers and sisters died staying any longer upon the land. I am the last of my kind, Florence. If I stay, I risk…”

Florence finishes her sentence, “Everything. I understand. I may not be 400 years old but you risk your heart. You think I’m going to kill you.” She pulls away and shakes her head, “Damn it. I love you!”

This declaration startles Isa. “You love me?”

Florence is like a child in this moment. She worries about losing her most prized possession. She realizes though of course she cannot keep Isabella. “I love you, Isabella. I’ve loved you since the morning you protected me. And now you want to leave because of some myth! I’m all for myths but not now!”

Isa opens her eyes, the wind blows her blonde hair over her shoulder. She folds her arms. She knows the passion is there. She stares back and then she makes another decision. “Do you trust me, Florence? I’ve never done this with another human before. But this is the only way for me to show you…” and in that moment she grabs Florence by the hand. She pulls her towards the water and Florence at first is deathly scared.

Isa sweeps up Florence into her coat and then in that moment she dives into the water before Florence has a chance to answer.

—

In the arms of the ocean, deliver me. Florence briefly reminds herself and she can’t breathe but she doesn’t need to. Isa’s seal like coat has become her form. And she’s swimming with Isa now in the water, deep below. She has no idea how her lungs haven’t given out. And it’s possible that the magic of the selkie nature has come to root. Isa takes her in the sea and shows her everything she has never shown another human in her life. She shows her the emptiness of the water, the way that the sea creatures are there and the fishes swim. She is lightning fast and yet she opens her eyes and she leans in and kisses Florence giving her every breath possible, and Florence is not sure if she is dreaming again.

Isa in this moment is swimming still and giving Florence every essence of herself that she once swore never to give. She’s given her love now to Florence and has given her the ultimate risk that is there. The ocean is big, the ocean is blue and in that moment it is beautiful to Florence. Isa stays under with Florence for longer than time allows it to happen and then swims to the surface, pulling Florence up with her.

There is a gasp for air and for oxygen. Florence now understands why Isa never wished to give up the sea. The sea was her only protection from the emptiness of her heart, the spirit to which moved her. And now she has given Florence her heart and there is no question about where Isa belongs. She pulls Florence upon the rock and Isa leans in and her back and kisses Florence to give her oxygen. The wet clothes perhaps will have to go off but there is Isa’s coat and she protects Florence.

“I love you too,” she breathes against her lips. “I will not go back to the sea without you.”

Florence pops her green eyes open and is breathless but conscious now that it wasn’t a dream. “I will give you a home here worthy of the ocean.”

When they dream, more often than not, they dream together. Tonight is no exception; limbs tangled and sheets kicked off so they can tuck in close despite the heat, cocooned in their little home by the sea.

It feels almost official, now she’s bought a tiny villa not far from their coast, the hotel room getting too small to contain them plus all of Florence’s (and increasingly, Isa’s) alarmingly large collections of miscellany and paraphernalia. They’d ended up creeping like ghosts through their ever-broadening citadel of art and books and bags and bottles of perfume kicked over and rolled under the bed amongst scarves and dresses and vintage coats they’d found and rescued whilst gasping and laughing their way through countless tiny thrift shops. And scrunched up paper, relics of midnight scrivenings when Isa was splayed out alone because Florence’s heart felt too full to sleep – reams of musings on love and loss and half-finished sketches hewn in biro on creamy hotel-watermarked leaves, but mostly the grid-lined stuff she keeps a stash of always, because the squares feel so much less intimidating than lines.

It had become like an ocean in its own right, of them both, but it had become as stifling as it was comforting. Florence began to wonder what she was afraid of – that somehow this strange happiness was tied up like a frail and threadbare magic to the four walls they had shared since they’d met?

But it wasn’t. Florence was thankful to whatever god or goddess hung up there in the vast blue sky above that the strange working allowing her this peaceful ebb in her life, allowing her Isa, was somehow remaining stubbornly intact. The new place was modest but big enough, with a bedroom and room for a studio of sorts off to the side, with space for a keyboard set-up and a view of the water to holler at and sing. Isa had shocked Florence by knowing her way around the chords and keys oddly well, short fingers hesitant at first but soon reclaiming some previous knack. She’d simply raised one wise eyebrow at Florence’s shrieking laugh of wonder at her talent, marvelling at Florence’s unfiltered mirth that Isa could still find ways to surprise her. Moments like these happened almost disquietingly often; little hints that Isabella isn’t quite human, of the many lives she’d lived, always when Florence was in danger of forgetting just how different they are really, despite the fact they share kisses and memories and dreams. ‘I haven’t played in years.’ she’d said with a distant smile, and Florence still wonders whether she’d meant two or twenty or two hundred.

It feels the same when Florence wakes up alone, just as Isa arrives back, dripping wet, always a wild look her eyes. (Sometimes – especially when the moon is round and full, tuning the sea into silvered glass, bringing the tide closer and closer until she can see the hairs raise into gooseflesh on Isa’s arms and the agitated beat of her fingers, drumming, drumming, drumming, to some frantic tempo only she can hear – Isa needs to swim, further and faster than Florence could ever hope to keep up with. She never brings her sealskin with her – they don’t talk about why, but Florence knows somewhere deep and raw that despite how much Isa loves her, there are some things she can’t risk, can’t control – so she just swims her girl-form out beyond the milk-white horizon, as deep and far as her human lungs can take, until the crawling need passes and she can return to shore, sated, but for a time, perhaps a little more feral than before). They always make love on nights like those, Isa still smelling of salt and tasting of the ocean, her red mouth and her tanned skin and everywhere, and it’s like drowning, like the sea is pouring right through their open window and claiming them both. In the hazy time after as they drift off to sleep, Isa’s there again, not quite girl, not quite seal, floating through her mind, curling up in Florence’s arms or tucked against her back as she lays to rest between her temples. Isa’s always there, so it’s almost easy to not worry that one day, after one of these midnight trips, she won’t be. That her sealskin won’t be folded carefully, tucked safely away in the overstuffed ottoman at the foot of their bed.

Almost.

Especially not now, since Isa had shown her, had taken Florence with her – wrapped them both in her fur and shot them together through the water, tiring herself out breathing for two so Florence would know, could have for moments what she had felt only second-hand with every traipse through Isa’s memories of everything being so cold and so sweetly, brilliantly blue. Even though Isa’s face was grey with it when they surfaced, from sustaining two lives deep beneath the waves for the short time they’d been under, she was so alive in that moment, in her element truly and completely. Especially not now, after that, now Florence feels it too. It’s becoming harder and harder to believe Isa will want this, here, forever, when Florence isn’t even sure she can resist the arms of the ocean, so wide and so strong.  

___

The sky is open and endless even though by rights autumn should be nipping right at summer’s heels by now, sending needles of cold with every landing bite. Isa threads her fingers through and idly plays with Florence’s hair – it’s getting so long, trailing like seaweed, just brushing the dark wood of the floor from where she’s lying, nose pressed into Isa’s belly on the sofa as she sleeps off the worst of her fever.

Isa tries to busy herself, gently tracing every one of Florence’s tattoos she can reach, cataloguing them silently for the hundredth time. The Third Eye. Water and Air. A birdcage: empty. The Heart, on the curve of her elbow. Florence was quick to assure Isa that it was just a summer cold, short and sharp, but it’s another reminder of how fragile this all is, how fragile Florence is. When Isa’s in a mood like this, quiet and sombre and so, so grateful Florence is not awake to witness it, everything pulls at the pit of her stomach, filling it with something that feels all too much like dread, of the gaping, gnawing variety that had been giving Florence such awful, awful night terrors when they first met. Because she can’t always ignore the truth. She can’t ignore the obvious fact that, as a selkie, Florence will age and decay and die practically in a blink of one of Isa’s dark, unfathomable sealish eyes.

Isa tightens her other hand, still entwined with Florence’s, slightly clammy but so real and alive she could scream. Florence smiles in her sleep, burying her face deeper. If Isa closes her eyes too, she can just about make out the fuzzy outline of Florence’s fever-thoughts, colourful and strange.

Isa feels the grin spread involuntarily across her face. Not that different to usual, then.

She will just have to take what she has. And that will have to be enough.

___

Mairead is just happy she’s writing and singing again, apparently, but there’s an edge to her voice too. It’s been a long time. Florence has told her she was ready to come back to it all before. Florence knows she’s never successfully convinced anyone she was fixed, though, really, Mairead included. How could I, when I couldn’t even convince myself?

“Wait.” Florence cuts through Mairead’s stock assurances that it really is fine, and she doesn’t have to do anything until she’s ready. It all sounds reedy and strange through the transatlantic call, like she can hear the thousands of miles of ocean distorting her voice while quietly listening in on their conversation. Isa subconsciously perks up from where she’s leant against the window, watching as the sun slowly lifts itself above the horizon and pretending not to listen in. It’s very early – it had to be because of the time zones, and it’s making everything feel a bit surreal. Florence’s interjection wasn’t unusual as such, but it feels odd in her soft voice.

“I really have been working on something new. I think – no, I know, it’s different this time. I know the last year and a half I haven’t been the best person ever to manage, I can’t apologise enough for that, but I think this is it. I’m going to send you some demos we’ve been working on and –“

“We? Is Rob out there with you? Or… are you…?”

There’s a moment of silence and Florence can sense the trepidation in Mairead’s voice. She’s figured something must have changed and she’s not wrong. 

Shit. It sounds just like I’m abandoning the band!

“Yes, it’s not Rob – you know how we were always saying, how we could do with someone permanent on keys who could actually play? Rather than endless session musicians or my awful jangling…”

At this Isa shakes her head in mock outrage – any notion of trying not to be nosy thoroughly abandoned – and sighs; there’s little point in telling Florence she’s actually a half-decent pianist again if the girl never believes it. Florence grins before quickly putting a finger to her lips: Shush.

“So anyway, I’ve found a new… collaborator… she’s called Isabella and she’s been recording with me for a few months now…” Florence laughs silently at herself for being so hesitant, so obvious. But Mairead has known her for nearly ten years, ever since that fateful night she found Florence half-cut off cheap vodka and singing her soul out in that filthy nightclub toilet, so–

“Collaborator…? Oh. Oh.” Florence can hear the smile in Mairead’s voice, and it’s oddly comforting. “Congratulations. Well, I can’t wait to hear what you two have been up to!” Florence knows there’s two meanings to that and can’t help but grin.

“Thanks,” she manages, feeling herself blush.

Mai’s tone is suddenly serious. “Does Grace know yet?”

“Not quite… she knows I’m okay, but I haven’t–“ A breath. She wasn’t expecting this, the prickly heat of emotion suddenly overwhelming. “I’ve been neglecting them all, and I feel so guilty but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t do it to them all over again,” and then it’s pouring out, words Florence didn’t even know she needed to say, breathlessly tumbling out and flinging themselves across the Atlantic for Mairead to hear. “Every time I break down or fall apart I always blow back in through their door and Mum and Grace pick me up and sort me out and then it just happens the next time and the next and I couldn’t do that to them again. Grace always just got everything I didn’t, it came easy to her, she always just knew how to live and love like a normal, healthy– like a real adult and I just don’t–“ A pause. Florence can feel tears she didn’t know she was still holding in now falling freely, making wet rivulets down her face and then Isa’s arms are folding around her, wrapping securely around her waist. She can feel a steadying presence in her mind, and that’s Isa too, instinctively lending her strength, as natural as breathing. (Isa had explained it once, some quiet whispered early morning conversation, how a mated selkie could share things – knowledge, emotion, strength – or even pull their mate from the brink of Death herself with a link such as theirs, and at the time Florence had kissed her in awe and prayed that that day would never come, where their mind’s connection would be tested in such a permanent way.)

Mairead is silent, either stunned at her outburst – or, more likely, considering how well accustomed she is by now to Florence’s ways, just letting her take her time before she speaks. “It’s part of the reason I stayed here – I couldn’t run back to them again. I stayed here to grow the fuck up.  Grace is having a baby soon, for Christ’s sake. I wanted to be sure this time.”

Mairead finally speaks, softly: it’s the voice of an old friend, not a manager. “And this time, you are?”

There’s no hesitation now, except to look briefly down at Isa, still holding her close, before answering.

There’s a look in blue eyes that meet green human ones. The brief and fleeting feeling that Isa experienced was an energy transference between her seal skin that Florence picked up so absentmindedly. She had little time to warn Florence of course of what mystical power could happen, hence why men wanted selkie skins for years. As if it would help some how for them to understand not just her kind but of the females they so very well took like prizes. However even if Isabella had actually one moment to warn her, she did not expect to feel such a connection with someone she barely knew herself. She actually felt Flo’s depression of a youth, there in a bathtub drowning herself in her thoughts of missing her grandmother and wild and unexpected passion that flowed in drunken nights. It explained far more to Isa in that moment. Her mind of course sturdily advanced well beyond anything that most humans could recognise, Isa traced back to the exact moments of Flo’s youth in that moment. Still, it was a lot to piece together even for herself. She had told herself one week she would stay upon the land, but she had a feeling it would take more than one week. Flo of course was completely unaware that Isabella risked her life to come upon the shore but there was just no way she simply could ignore such thoughts. Perhaps the world was oblivious to these thoughts, but not Isabella. 

Florence asks a question that seems as if it was polite but really she wasn’t sure if Isa wanted to stay or go, “Are…do you still want to leave? Do you go somewhere?” The question is almost childlike, but it is because Florence is still in her mind processing that she was in fact everything she once wrote about, a creature of the sea, not bound to the earthly waters. She knows the drinks are not the cause of these thoughts, nor the impressive pills she often takes to help tame her night terrors and other drugs she took to deal with too much fame, too fast, too much of everything for a shy woman.

“Oh no, I was merely testing you to see if you would simply take my coat and run off with it. But now that you haven’t, I will stay. I said you were lost and now well I think you need to be found. In my many years of observing man, I can tell that the world is cruel and dark to those that are lost. And I cannot let you see those thoughts alone,” she reaches without a second thought and gently touches Flo upon her fingertips. Flo’s already tactile spirit embraces this and her heartbeat picks up.

“So you are a friend?” Flo asks again, nearly childlike. Isa needs no thoughts reading to understand that she must have been the first in a good long while to talk to Flo like this, “Yes. A friend,” she answers with no other words spoken. Flo for the first time feels like she can leave the bar without worrying about stumbling back home. Isa can see in Flo’s green eyes that there is trust. Something Isa has not felt from a human herself in as long as possible. So there is a finishing of drinks and a walk back to her room. Isa sees the suitcases, she sees the window open but the curtains are blowing out. She closes her eyes and can hear the sea though they are not exactly near the sea now. She hears traffic too and noise from below the balcony. The hotel room is a scattered set of set of books stacked and hanging of clothes everywhere and bedsheets crinkled in a state of disarray. There’s empty bottles of gin tipped over and Isa picks up the sign that there are empty pill bottles opened, some pills tipped over. In a moment it is confirmed.

She is lost.

Her mind was about to race to her mouth to speak, but she spots Flo pick up some sort of device and her green eyes stare at this screen. Isa is bemused by such devices, she thinks that if humans had the ability to communicate as she did through actual sounds of minds instead of words, it would truly help. But she watches Flo read a text and her facial expression frowns and she’s punching her fingers into the phone nearly violently and her shy voice fills up nearly shaken with tears. Isa immediately moves closer but not until Flo is done texting and speaking at the same time, “Fuck you then too. Fuck your new girl because fuck her, fuck I hope she rots. And you can fucking have your stuff too, it all smells bullshit.” She tosses her phone down and she clicks send and in one heap of a motion and she is crying.

Isa blinks as she sees the device on the floor and spots the briefest words When you get back, I’ll get my stuff. Got a new girl now. Isa feels as if she’s walked back in time to seeing males toss away their barmaids like wenches in the ocean. But that was a tale for another time. Instead Isa moves forward and grabs Flo into her arms before she hits the floor. There is no question about doing this, she does it without another thought. Flo’s a crumbled heap now and weeping. “Men are the cruelest creatures of the deep, Florence.” Flo’s thoughts are so loud to her of pain and suffering that there is no way they can be denied. “If he was here I’d push him to the sharks,” she says and Florence bursts out with laughter. Isa’s feels warm and though and even if Isa is smaller than Florence, the redhead and blonde look exactly nearly the same height on a floor. She feels the ginger’s heartbeat in her fingertips and her words are soft, “You are not sharkfood." 

Flo’s tears fall involuntarily and Isa feels the pain - she’s back being 17 again in Flo’s body mentally and trying to figure out how she will help Florence become found. "I have spent many centuries seeing the folly of mankind against women. And sometimes women against men or other women too. Tell me how a man falls, Florence.”

And then Florence speaks. She lets it pour out like many of the bottles of alcohol she drank but her words are not laced with alcohol, they are laced with tears and heartbreak. The words pour out about James and how he was kind at first and how they spent days on a beach on tour. But then how it all became so very wrong and possessive as time ticked on. How Florence couldn’t breathe and how James said more and more cruel things. How foolish she felt and how she was so overwhelmed. How she felt alone on tour, how different he was from another lover named Stuart. How messy it all was and how she didn’t even deserve to feel love. Isa’s ears and eyes immediately took this in. It felt like the end of the ocean for Flo and Isa felt it was just the start of where Florence could be and how she could get there. By the time Flo finished her words, it was closer to the dawn rather than the night.  

“Your heart is only one part of your chest, Florence. Men don’t know the other parts of your self. You know why we go upon the rocks?” she asks and Flo shakes her head.  "To see what is beyond the ocean. If you don’t ever dive and you don’t ever get out of the water, you never see the beauty beyond the horizon. You don’t need a man to tell you to look. You already are the horizon.“ Flo is literally speechless. In two sentences Isabella got to the heart of the matter and she is absolutely floored by it all. "Will you stay with me?”

Isa’s feet stands up and she uses strength to help Florence to her own. She’s not sure if the question means forever and or she means a night. Isa’s only fear is that Florence will eventually take her from the sea in ways that other kinds of humans have killed her brothers and sisters. “Yes,” she answers. She decides then to keep it simple. Matters of her “forever” could be answered later on. The two crawl into the bed and Isa sees Flo try to grab for a bottle of pills and Isa reaches for her hand quickly before she can open another bottle. “No. They will only make you more lost and you need to see and to feel.”

“But I can’t sleep without them, I have…terrible nights…” Flo sighs and Isa curls her fingers around Florence’s.

“The ocean is peaceful without any other things to distract you, Florence. I will hold you and help you find peace,” Isa’s words are met with the deepest blue of eyes into Florence’s and with that she takes her arm around Flo’s middle third of her body around her waist. “I’ve battled sharks, whales and octopus. Nothing you have in your dreams is as terrifying as seeing your brothers and sisters killed and bloodied. I assure you that nothing in that bottle will ever help you really have peace.”

Flo swallows hard and she thinks, I am selfish.

Isa shakes her head. Not selfish. You are hurt. Go to sleep.

Flo’s green eyes shoot wide. “Stop that! What if I have a dangerous thought?” Isa giggles slightly, “Oh, you mean something other than imagining me naked? I can handle it." 

Florence bursts out laughing and they lay entwined asleep. Isa uses her arms and her body, including her fur coat to ensure that Flo sleeps for the first time in a very long time without a night terror.

Chittering, the smell of urea and old house. It’s happening again.

Florence tries to open her mouth to scream.

There’s nothing here, no here at all, really, only thousands of red-eyed mice scratching, scratching, scratching, scoring deep red lines into her arms, vicious little claws pulling at her skin. Dread wells up in Florence but her mouth still won’t open: everything is thick, yellowing damask the colour of canaries dead in their cages and it’s stifling and her lungs are heavy and burning with grave dirt and brackish water and when her mouth does open all that comes out is curdled, stagnant river mud, moths’ wings and dust.  

__

Isa is floating in gentle peach-toned emptiness that could be the late-afternoon sea, or perhaps the early-morning sky. She’s half-girl, half-seal in a way she never quite is in waking hours and idly dreaming of better times when the ocean was not so vacant and unfilled... and maybe just a little of red hair and green dancing eyes, when she feels it. A little needle of pain and terror, poking into her consciousness and unfurling like an ink blot across her temples, intense but gone almost as quickly as it arrives. She’s old enough to know it’s not her own feeling, but someone else’s, distress high enough to knife right through into her sleeping brain. In an instant, she remembers foggily her new friend, her promise, and immediately guilt twists sharply in the pit of her stomach: she’d stopped Florence from taking her medicines with a vow to protect her, and here Isa is, distracted by her own thoughts and not helping much at all.

Gently, with small hands transiently human, Isa feels for the space between their minds. She expertly slips through the gap into rancid sludgy darkness, as black and swirling and furious as squid’s ink so she can barely see or breathe, and she can already feel stifling waves of anxiety and terror overwhelming her, and it’s not even hers, this nightmare she’s found herself in. Oh, this poor, poor girl.

Then, there. There’s a flicker, like the flame of a single wax tealight, flickering somewhere, almost-but-not-quite extinguished by the thick and turbulent gloom. Isa swims towards it, shape fluid and shifting as convenient, sturdy tail propelling her towards the ailing light, palms upturned, ready. As soon as her hand wraps around the flame – warm and fluttering, like the fragile heart of a bird, just hatched, not at all burning like fire should – it unfolds on itself, and there she is, tears tracking down her ashen face, verdigris eyes wide and unfocussed.

Isa wraps her arms around Florence, and feels their Dreamselves mirror their current position, thousands of layers of consciousness up tangled together in the bedsheets of Florence’s hotel room, but not before making a clawed fist over her heart – dispel all evil.

Slowly, the colour begins to return to Florence’s face. She blinks up at Isa, still shivering slightly, as Isa whispers soothing nonsense into her hair, pulling her close. There’s a heaviness in the air again, but it’s the good kind, of the secure warmth beneath stacks of blankets in a freezing room, the delicious ache in your limbs after a long day outside, shrieking and laughing through the trees, catching your breath against an oak, steadfast and still. Isa is pulled into the memory quite without meaning to; she’d resolved to ask before this sort of thing next time, but here she is, long limbs stretching out in front of her as she hangs from a high branch, Florence’s second-hand exhilaration a powerful drug making her mind hum with excitement. There’s something so intoxicating about being this high up, a whisper away from falling, leaves and broken-off bits of twig caught in wild hair – hair that was most definitely brown here, Isa noted. It was almost enough to distract her from the wrongness of her knowing this feeling, Isa, a creature of the seas, knowing and enjoying being wrapped around this tree, up in the air, probably hundreds of miles from the saltwater that sustains her and all others of her kind. That, and she’s singing, some exuberant chorus about birds and human sacrifice and broken hearts but of course it’s Florence’s voice, Florence’s song, and it’s the most wonderful sound Isa’s ever heard.

And then that too fades away, and everything is blurry and indistinct, and Isa is young, young enough to remember the taste of her mother’s milk. The sea is calm and flat except for where it isn’t: neatly bisected by great human sailboats of the kind Isa hadn’t seen for a good two centuries now, creating choppy trails in their wake as they head towards a port teeming with activity and trade. And this is it, this memory of a memory in a dream, bleary and faded and careworn, this is the first time she understood there was another world up there, thriving and alive and waiting for her, but before she knew at what cost. Back then she only saw the beauty; knew nothing of the dangers and cruelties that could be.

And then, there is only Florence, limbs entwined with hers, warm skin softly glowing in the morning light that seeps around curtains carelessly drawn the night before. Her eyes are still closed, dark lashes brushing the soft jut of her cheekbones, but Isa can sense she’s stirring, a hitch of breath here, a shift of weight there, and her consciousness is rising back to the surface for air, perhaps unknowingly riding in the bow wave of Isa’s – such things often happen, when you share dreams. Especially when the connection is like this; they’ve not known each other a full turn of the world, but already memories have begun to flow both ways as freely as the gushing vernal tides, and Isa remembers with an instinctive twinge of pain, that feels almost like numbness now, the one other time she’d shared such a connection before. Why, whist she had known many lovers, situations like this were exceedingly rare.

As if on cue, Florence’s eyes choose this moment to open, accompanied automatically by a slow smile, sleep-softened and but beaming nevertheless, and the combination makes Isa’s heart leap almost painfully at the tangle of emotions suddenly roiling about in her chest and absolutely seethe at whoever hurt this wonderful girl, whoever hurt Florence enough to give her those dreams and make her cry like her heart had been torn open when they could have this.

___

When Florence wakes up, the first thing she sees is blue. Isa is watching her, an unreadable expression on her face, which softens into something like a smile when she notices Florence is awake. She feels herself blushing, a grin blooming from a slight tug at the corner of her mouth quite by accident at how ridiculous she’s being, that this proximity is making her feel like this. But Isa had been there, just like she’d said. And like before, she’d seen some of Isa – been in the sea, watching the world through the turbulent lens of the waves above, sometime long, long before she was born. But it had been different this time, not the jarring, nausea-inducing accidental trip in the hotel lobby before, but a soft descent into an amorphous world of their dreams and memories, somewhere that was both and neither where even her night terrors couldn’t reach.  

Florence felt… rested. Perhaps for the first time ever, or close enough, it had been so long. A soft, embarrassing noise escaped her lips as she stretched, all loose-limbed and pliable and she turned even redder, almost as red as her hair, and Isa’s smile erupted into full-blown giggles.

‘You were there?’ Florence asks, but it’s more of a statement. She knows in her bones that Isa, the whole 400-year-old might of this strange creature of Sea and Earth, chased the darkness out of her mind.

Isa inclines her head on their shared pillow, bringing their faces close in a sleepy half nod. ‘I was there. And now I’m here, I think I should like to hear you sing.’

And then Florence remembers, with sudden, startling clarity, what Isa saw– what they saw, together, just last night. Hanging from the trees, when she was fifteen maybe, singing and shrieking and laughing, one of those breathless moments when everything feels easy and the world is reduced to sensations and light.

The mood shifts suddenly, and Florence’s expression clouds as she waits for the inevitable winding clench in her stomach to drive the air out of her lungs, that split-second feeling of falling when you miss the last step on the stairs, the reminder that she can no longer do the thing that once brought her more joy than anything else in the world.

But somehow, with Isa here, the anxiety fizzes out, not altogether gone, but subdued with a peculiar kind of calm. Florence almost laughs with relief. Almost.

Instead, she tilts forward. It was simple, easy. They are already face to face, noses almost touching, bodies tangled beneath the sealskin still keeping them sleep-warm and cosy. It makes perfect sense for Florence to lean forwards, to close the tiny gap between them, and press her lips to Isa’s.

It’s a flutter of a kiss, brief and feather-light, but it sends a tiny jolt of electricity right through Florence’s spine. She can tell Isa feels it too, the way her blue eyes widen almost comically, suddenly looking incredibly young in a way that belies her years.

‘Yes,’ Florence finds herself sleepily agreeing, time stretching out languidly like warm toffee in the space between them as she forms her words, ‘I’ll sing for you. That was what I did, actually. I sang. And sang and sang until I couldn’t anymore. But.’ A pause. ‘I don’t know what it is, but I feel like something is changing…’

And she knows it is. 

Across the earth in the seas around the world are many creatures of the deep. Some are obvious to the human eye - fishes, of course. Scuba divers go further, touching coral reef, seeing octopus, starfish and other water beings that make up the balance of the undersea. Legends state that there are mermaids, yes, mermaids that tempted sailors to their depths. Greek mythology talks about sirens that caused many a death of a man. Poseidon with his trident commanding man’s will against the ocean forever, the rising tides pull in and out. These are all known to mankind and tales still grow. But perhaps the tale of the Selkies are not as stated and glamorous as a mermaid. After all, they blend in well with the world, able to take on human’s best forms once on land. Men tempted them to steal their token and their skins. But what of a selkie who swims deep beyond man’s eyes and only swims towards the women? What of those myths? What then of the selkie and a human heart who does not seek out refuge so much in the sea but wishes to drown herself because of a broken heart? What then?

This is what one redheaded pale skin woman pondered as she flipped through a book on the beach. Her bandmates disappeared and she was left to her own devices. The ocean always carried her, after all her voice a siren’s voice some would say perhaps was the calling of the water. She sang about being in the arms of the ocean, deliver me. And now she was alone on the Pacific Coast, the turmoil of the road washed away. The sorrow of the breaking waves across the backs of the rocks on a beach drew her green eyes forward. It was near sunset at this point. California’s horizon matched the burn of the dying sun’s colors, red and a wistful orange in a Summer’s breeze. “Leave me be,” she told her guitarist Rob. “Leave me be and I’ll return. I promise,” she said and the world disappeared to the small of her heart.

At one point her heart had beat and beat on so wildly and fiercely between the sips of gin and tonic and whiskey and beer through the years. Wine and women and song, and boys mixed together. The last boy, one boy named James was the tossed sea storm she threw herself in. And he nearly drowned her and she quite felt like drowning there with the heart. Their arguments drew even more words she wrote on scraps of paper from the Chateau Marmont she lived in. Your arms they devastate came the scraps with lightning bolts and crosses. The scenes from Hollywood burned in her mind. Am I witch or burned hearts at the stake? It was all a muddled mess in the jumbled mind of Florence Welch. She had a band, she played and sang. On stage she broke her emotions hidden by capes and breakdowns were exorcised between the bottles that she drank. At the end of the tour for Ceremonials, she was burned she felt. Flayed alive and only her embers remained. She needed away, long away so she came to the coast.

Now here she sat six months later and her manager Mairead wondered if more songs were ever to come. I’m not ready. I’m not ready for this now. Leave me be, leave me be. And the funk of her old familiar friend, of depression came roaring back as loud as what seemed to pull the tides. The stages were empty and she was alone and she closed the book. Grains of sand fell through her fingertips, chipped nail polish long left away. She had no more songs in her at this point, she needed to figure out if she even belonged on the land or perhaps she thought, I belong in the ocean, drowned like Virginia.

Thoughts like the ones Florence were having were meant to be silent to most humans. They were though sonic waves through an ocean to every other creature that wanted to listen. Not fishes, they swam in schools away or the ones at the depth. But the sonic waves hit beats in the water of a long and forgotten creature that Florence read and thought only fanciful in her mind. But there was one that swam so many oceans at this point that it was instinctual. The one in the ocean that felt she needed air was making her way to the surface. The depths of sadness drew her towards a rock, her long and skin with breaths through her gills that no one saw. Her skin was once the prized possession of man but Isa had escaped the clutches of man for years with clever with and her thoughts of never staying on land long enough to do anything but tempt.

Isa was a 400-year old Selkie. She had seen man’s worst habits and yet somehow they still fascinated her. Women though fascinated her more. She found humanity fighting against the sea and she wondered why. Humans were real to her, but they never seemed to believe she was in fact real. Her trips to the surface were less frequent. As humanity grew, she saw and was nearly terrified at times. The things that drew her to the surface though were when she saw and heard dancing on a beach at times. Or the rumble of great sounds that humans called music. The music she heard in the sea were of the whales that blew out and sometimes dolphins that she swam with. At this point though, Isa was one of the last Selkies. Her sisters and brothers had perished through the centuries of being caught by mankind. Isa though was drawn once more to the surface. Florence’s thoughts had somehow reached her. Her head popped above the water, her blue eyes cast towards the shore. She saw long legs and red hair.

Hmm, what strangeness and charm! She is clearly lost but yet so withdrawn. But why! What could cause such a precious creature to feel such pain? Isa swam further to a rock, quickly and thought again. If I go to the surface I risk not returning. What if she kills me for my skin? These were real thoughts and she looked once more at the redhead. A decision was made and she thought she would give herself one week upon the land. One week only and she would return to the sea. Isa was a curious creature of the sea. She knew the sea would not change but knowledge of humans was crucial anyway for her survival. One could not live or exist without the balance of all.

And so she pulled up to a rock that jutted out to the Pacific and drew herself upon the rock. Her body changed from the skin of a seal to her legs and her hair grew to blonde against her back. Naked, of course she drew upon the rock. The moon cast down at this point. And she wasn’t the only one curious at this point. Florence had seen something on the rock. She almost didn’t believe it; perhaps one too many drinking nights made her mind hazy but she thought she saw a woman upon the rocks.

“Impossible…” came the soft English voice. “Naked and…” her green eyes grew wide upon the rocks. “A woman?”

Isa at this point couldn’t help but let out a laugh as she stood and turned, her wet hair cast over her shorter form. “My dear,” her voice came out in English tones as she often matched the pitch of whichever human spoke to her. Her blue eyes were as blue as the ocean. “Surely you’ve seen yourself naked as I am. But if all I must worry about is being naked in front of you, then I think I have little to worry about at all. I heard you in the sea. Your thoughts are very loud you know. You practically woke up a whale and let me tell you, they only come when there’s a reason. So I am here.”

Florence stared, oh she stared long and hard at the naked woman. She hadn’t seen such beauty in awhile. When one is on a tour bus for months, people start to blend together, all shapes and sizes. She’s beautiful but maybe I should get her to the hotel and dressed. “Erm, here? Oh…perhaps I should get you covered up before someone else comes.”

Florence took her blanket then that she came to the beach with and wrapped Isa up and tilted her head. “I’m Florence.”

“I know. You say your name in your dreams. You may call me Isa,” the Selkie said. “Now I am here. And if you’re going to keep staring, then perhaps we should go somewhere where your thoughts are free. And we don’t wake up a whale again…”

And in the distance there was a whale who tooted and Isa laughed as Florence jumped. “Don’t be scared, Florence. Believe me the whale isn’t interested in you so so much as you’re utterly fascinated by the sea. Let’s go now.”

Florence bit on her lower lip. “Oh…right…hotel.”

Sometimes a girl just has to sit and let the day’s events sort themselves, reluctantly, into some sort of narrative, so she can trick herself into believing her current reality makes any sense at all. That she expected it all along, that she has any control over the happenings of this strange little world forever rolling through space like an errant marble, round and glossy and blue.

Florence stares at a spot of cracking artex ceiling somewhere behind the windswept blond head of her new acquaintance, freshly bedecked in too-big clothes pilfered from Florence’s own luggage, but her mind sees not the peaks and troughs of the hotel bar’s faded plastering. It’s off out watching the ocean, like always.

___

Squat brown seals bask leisurely on the sand, habitually tossing up great fistfuls of wet, biscuity sand with their tails as is their wont. She watched them absently as the salty air slowly filled and emptied from her lungs, matching the ceaseless swell-and-retreat of the ever-churning brine beyond the scrubland before her.

Florence’s skin had begun to redden and blister with the heat, but she could not bring herself to care. If one was to be washed-up, this is the place to do it, some nameless Californian beach where the sun beats down almost endlessly and the ocean is soothing, knowing you could just fill your pockets with sea-rounded stones and walk out into it; never come back. Or, just as easily, stare at the water as it laps over the sand until the sun does finally slip past the horizon, sluggish after a long day’s work.

The ocean carries on and on. Until, it isn’t just the ocean. Upon the rocks, there. A girl?

And there she was. You may call me Isa.

She is naked, but appears to be carrying behind her a large, oversized vintage coat – sopping wet, camel-toned and mottled with age – under one short arm like this is the most natural thing in the world, to emerge, dripping from the Pacific, naked before the sky, sodden outerwear in hand.

Actually, that’s not all too different to how some of my nights out have ended... Florence thinks sheepishly, then laughs. The sound startles her; it’s the first time in a while. Her sudden bark of it echoes down the beach, before disappearing into the southerly wind.

And then she speaks, this beautiful, tiny woman with her fur coat… thing.  Going on about Florence’s thoughts. How they’d been loud and roaring enough to wake a blue whale.

Which is true, honestly. But how on earth would she know anything of my thoughts? This musing shatters when Florence finally tips her head to meet the woman’s eyes, startlingly blue as the cloudless sky above them reflected in the choppy water, ringed in azure. There’s the ocean in them, she’d thought, not quite knowing what that meant: the truth of it. They’re still there, burned into her mind.

Florence has been obsessed by drowning, by just succumbing, being completely overwhelmed, for longer than her hair has been red against her the pale flint-edge of her jaw. Her eyes had felt like drowning. But a different kind of drowning to how she’d felt before, raw and open after years of touring and drinking and drugs and singing her soul right out of her body until there was nothing left of her, whilst everyone still demanded more and more and more.

___

And now they’re here, sitting together like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Florence is not quite sure how it happened, but somehow she’d smuggled the naked woman back to her hotel room (Not the first time that’s happened either…) tossed Isa something floaty and soft that she’s sure is a top not a dress on her, and had ended up in the bar area of the lobby, having made the executive decision that a drink was most definitely required at this juncture.  

Florence is knocked abruptly out of her reverie when Isa uses one small hand to delicately fish out a single ice cube from her drink, to crunch on it thoughtfully.

Florence laughs again. It surprises her as much as the first time. ‘Who are you?’ she wheezes out after a moment.

Isa sighs, then smiles, her teeth straight and white. Florence feels her heart beat imperceptibly faster. ‘I am selich, sylkie, or selkie perhaps – I’m not sure what you folk are calling us these days. I have lived a very long time, taken many lovers. But more important, is what you are. You are lost,’ she pauses as if to allow Florence to offer protest, but no objection comes, and the silence hangs between them, pregnant and waiting. Florence knows something of her has gone, and hearing it acknowledged here, from this almost perfect stranger is oddly comforting. When all the world is demanding, anticipating her next song, hunger insatiable for something that is simply not there anymore, here it is, stark and straightforward. You are lost. A statement, not an accusation.

People who are well don’t create, she’d heard once before, a long time ago. And they certainly don’t bring strange ocean women back to their hotel rooms.

Selkie? She’d heard that before too, or perhaps seen it written… Florence tried to think back to the books she’d read, fantastical and strange, back when reading was easy, when her head wasn’t a mess of static and numbness and everything had made sense. Or at least had seemed to.

‘So… you’re a mermaid?’ she hazards, and immediately Isa’s pretty nose wrinkles into something akin to disgust.

‘Absolutely not. Dreadful, the lot of them, cold-blooded and fickle and vain, even more so than man! But not you, it would seem,’ she adds, pausing to smile indulgently at Florence, before continuing, ‘You can see clearly that I have legs beneath this table, and I carry with me always this fur. As much as I have skin and hands and hair here on land, I am seal beneath those waves you were gazing at so forlornly before we met.’

Isa nods with a finality that suggests that this explanation makes any kind of sense at all, her expression, eager, expecting. Florence just sighs, deep and exasperated.

‘Just the usual kind of strange naked ocean woman, aren’t you?’ she says sadly. It’s time to face the facts that this is nothing, this pleasant diversion is fizzling out, and reality is waiting to pick her with the meter already on racking up charges for every minute longer she spends half believing that mermaids are real, that this little detour could fix whatever had gone so, so wrong. ‘As completely barking mad as me. Oh well.’

Isa emits a sharp huff of frustration and reaches to down the rest of her drink. ‘Oh, I had such hopes for you, you seemed so interesting. And beautiful, too, of course! So much promise. But I suppose some things are not meant to be. This has been lovely. Here–‘

Before Florence can even open her mouth to mutter a soft Wait! or wonder what had caused Isa’s sudden change of heart, Isa is moving to remove Florence’s gauzy top, right here in the lobby. The sudden shift causes Isa’s fur coat thing to slip from the back of the chair over which it had been hitherto securely folded, and land heavily on the tiled floor. Instinctively, Florence leant forward and extended one long arm to retrieve it. Quite without meaning to her fingers sunk deeply into the surprisingly soft and silky nap of it, intermingled with coarse guard hairs.

And in that instant, Florence noticed two things: firstly, that the coat was warm, in a way quite distinct from the heat it would have gained from resting beneath Isa’s slight form for the duration of their conversation – in an immediate, living, animal way. Secondly, that her nostrils were once again filled with the smell of salt, but not that of sea air–

At that the world sways sickeningly off its axis and Florence gasps at the feeling of the ocean pushing down into her body, wrapping tightly around her ribcage but supporting her all at once, of sitting at the bottom of the swimming pool on holiday and screaming at the top of her lungs, of the currents thrumming across her skin, thick and impervious to cold.

Then she is back in the sagging rattan chairs of the hotel lobby, like nothing had happened at all, except Isa’s lightly tanned skin is blushing high on her cheekbones and she’s breathing hard.  Wordlessly Florence drops the skin into Isa’s waiting hands as if it had burnt her, suddenly and intimately understanding it’s worth.

Like holding a soul in the palm of your hand. One that belonged almost wholly to the ocean, yet was here, somehow, next to Florence on land.

It is a heavy moment before the black spots recede from the edges of Florence’s vision and she can turn to look at Isa again. She’s paused in her disrobing efforts, and a satisfied, knowing smile has spread across her still flushing features.

Isa is the first to speak. ‘I saw you, I was you, much younger than you are even now, I think. Seventeen perhaps, I forget how you lot age, except as fast as milk. Surrounded by water – not the ocean, dead water –  both wishing and not wishing with all your heart you could drown. You were me, I suppose.’

Florence her hands hand roughly through her fringe to rest on her temples. She feels hot and cold at once, like she could laugh or cry. It’s like the worst hangover ever, but undeniably transcendental in a way that makes her want to peel off the layers of her skin. It’s all too much.

‘Yes?’ she manages. ‘I think I was a seal, for an instant there…’ she trails off, the smell of salt fresh in her memory but smelt by the nose of a creature not human, subtly piquant and tangy and causing all the other times such a scent had troubled her seem wan in comparison. Like she’d been missing something vital all along, right in front of her but imperceptible.

Isa laughs, pleased. ‘Yes, you were. I shall forgive you this once – after all you weren’t instructed of the proper etiquette – but next time, always ask permission before touching a selkie’s sealskin. Quite obviously we were both woefully underprepared this time. It is really quite embarrassing!’

Florence stops feeling like she’s floating in and out of her body at that, green eyes widening. ‘Next time? You’d let me do that again?’