seashells woven in your hair

She smooths her palms over the satin skirt, her head cocked to the side. Her mother joins her in front of the mirror, holding out the earrings they’d decided she should wear. Eleanor puts them in while her mother circles around her back, checking for creases in the fabric or loose threads from the many alterations. 

“How is going to prom with Rhett Abbott helping daddy’s campaign?”

It’s the question that’s been gnawing at her in the weeks since she agreed to the scheme. Somehow being seen on a date with Rhett Abbott would help her father get elected mayor, though she didn’t understand how that could be. The Abbotts don’t exactly have stellar reputations, and their longstanding dispute with the Tillersons has caused more friction in the community than anyone cares to admit.

“I’m not sure, honey.” It’s a lie, of course. Eleanor knows that, and her mother knows it too. She just won’t share it with her even though she’s the pawn in their political game. “I’ll run down and see if he’s here.”

She paces the room, stopping in front of the mirror again. She knows it’s futile, but she tries to take a deep breath. She can’t, and it’s her mother’s doing. When her mother insisted on taking in the waist an extra inch, the tailor had given her a pitying look.

She’s so lost in thought that she startles when her mother pokes her head in to let her know he’s here.

In the foyer, at the bottom of the stairs, stands Rhett Abbott. Lanky, wearing an ill-fitting grey suit and scuffed cowboy boots. His hair needs a trim, but it’s combed back and curls slightly at his nape. He’s clean-shaven and—

“You’re wearing pink,” she blurts out, stepping onto the floor from the last step of the stairs.

He pulls out of his own thoughts, offering her a wry smile. “Yeah,” he mutters and looks down at it. “Yeah, Ma said you were wearing pink. We match.” She nods, suddenly feeling shy.

They don’t really know each other. Rhett has a reputation for skipping class and taking the rules as a suggestion, not something to be followed. Wabang sees Rhett as a good-for-nothing, wannabe bull rider, and his reputation all but confirms that.

On the surface, they have nothing in common, and yet here they are going to prom together to appease their families.

“That for me?” she asks, pointing to the container he’s holding.

He looks down. “Um, yeah,” he mutters and fumbles with getting it open. Finally, the plastic gives, revealing a small pink peony corsage with a bit of greenery and a blush pink ribbon for her wrist.

She looks at it, a little impressed that his mother convinced him to even get a corsage. “It’s beautiful.”

“Can I—“ he clears his throat. “You don’t have to wear it.” He looks on edge, his shoulders tight with tension.

She offers him what she hopes is a reassuring smile. “I want to.” She holds out her wrist, and the look in his eyes changes. He almost looks relieved.

Slipping the corsage over her wrist, she fights a shudder as his fingers graze her skin. She looks up at him, wondering if he feels it too. If he’s as affected by this moment as she is.

Harrison knew the shoreline of Sowell Bay better than he knew the back of his hand, which, after just a few months on land, wasn’t saying much. The waxing crescent moon taunted him through the ashen-grey clouds for the sixth time since he lost his precious sealskin. In Hawaii, he had counted his days by the phases of the moon and the changes in the ocean currents. Now, he knew it by the sound of Mrs Davies’s voice as she ranted about the 49ers’ secondary during her weekly cigarette shop, or when Tanner dragged his sorry self through the front door, lamenting the existence of ‘Mondays’ and its somehow even crueller cousin, the Saturday-morning hangover. He wasn’t sure if he longed for the simplicity of the lunar cycle or not, but what he did know was that, if - no, when he saw his family again, he would see about keeping the Friday night tradition of ‘just one’.

Harrison supposed it was some weird human custom that even his normally reliable Google hadn’t yet figured out - where humans would signal their favourite activities by pretending to be embarrassed by them. As peculiar as it was, Harrison was pleased to find he had cottoned on quickly. All he had to do was round his eyes, give them enough attention and (in Cam’s case) kisses, to meet the undefined quota and for them to begrudgingly concede with a congratulatory ‘fine then’. 

Of course, he always enjoyed it when he won their game, but it reached its zenith on the legendary Friday date night. Whether it was dancing at the bar, singing along the beach or downing those neon green shots that tasted of those incredibly disappointing gummy fish. On a Friday, the fabled line lengthened into its grandest form: ‘Fine then, but just one’. Harrison had been so proud of himself when he deduced the code - that ‘one’ meant ‘as many as possible’. Their dates would then go on into the night, until their feet hurt, their throats were sore, or they stumbled each other home. He wasn’t sure how he was going to do any of those things as a seal, but he loved it too much to let it go now.

Harrison was going to do a lot of things when he got back. Old, incredible things he missed, and the new, ridiculous stuff he had learnt. Hell, maybe he would keep up paddle boarding or try that surfing that was so popular back home. His sister would probably enjoy it, or at least enjoy laughing at him fail. He knew it was childish, but increasingly, those childish hopes were the ones that stuck with him the most. He held onto them as he caught Tova’s eyes following his line of sight towards the moon. She smiled sweetly at him, her customary knowing glint made his heart race and soothed his mind all at once.

However, the silence between the two men was uneasy. The pain of Harrison trying to leave without an explanation was still fresh for Cameron. Over and over again, he reminded himself that he had done the same thing to Tova and Ethan, with only a bottle of lemon and vinegar being enough to break him out of his furious stupor. But that didn’t make looking at Harrison easy, nor did it suppress his natural urge to shut down and give up whenever things got too close or difficult. 

Trying to distract himself, Cameron immersed himself in the nature that surrounded them as they walked further and further away from town, something he never thought to do before Sowell Bay. Gulls followed them overhead like their own personal procession, while the sea lions kept a dutiful watch like bumbling spies whose shiny coats stopped them from blending into the shadows of the overarching cliffs. For one uneasy moment, they reminded Cameron of the bewitched, enamoured fish at the aquarium, or hell, even the suddenly friendly barflies at their local dive or the besotted old ladies of Tova’s knitting group who all turned their heads whenever Harrison entered a room. Even though he preferred to keep a low profile, Cameron wasn’t sure if he had been jealous of Harrison’s innate magnetism or not. It was endearing (if sometimes exhausting) when they were together, but apart, it made him feel untethered. As though he existed outside of gravity, desperately trying to remain in his orbit for as long as he could glance over at him unseen. Their eyes met over his grandmother’s head every time before hastily retreating.

Keeping his arm around Tova, Cameron quickened his pace so that at least he could avoid the indignity of Harrison catching the petulant pout on his face. However, the cleaning lady absorbed the tension like a sponge with her gentle confidence and resting smile. If Cameron didn’t know better, he would have thought she was excited. 

The ground rose under their feet as they diverged off the sandy beach and onto tiny jagged scales of ancient black basalt. Cameron gravely muttered that they weren’t in Kansas anymore. Harrison simply confirmed that no, this was still Washington. 

The selkie kept them away from the edge and the crashing waves as best he could. But the rocks proved trickier for Tova’s space boot than she let on. Eventually, the two silently found their shared stride once again and walked together, with Tova wedged between them. A fragile, unspoken truce formed to keep her safe.

“Nearly there now,” Harrison announced. “Need a break, Ms Sullivan?” 

They both knew the answer, and more importantly, not to argue. She shook her head, so they continued until the rocks overhung the outstretched crooked finger of headland to create a small, covered grove like the patio canopies of the rich houses Cameron would dream of living in as a child.

Cameron had no idea what to expect - not even meeting Simon Brinks had made his palms sweat like this. Yet, as they got closer, he couldn’t ignore the feeling of déjà vu any longer. He knew this place. His mom had so perfectly described these very spits and bays in her bedtime stories about selkies, entwined with sparse recollections of her childhood. Upon every retelling, she had transformed from the cold, distant woman who haunted his home to someone he thought only existed in his friend Elizabeth’s Disney movies. 

He knew if he just closed his eyes, he would once again hear the hard edge of her voice slowly erode with each lovingly told description of the gentle evening tide. It looked, felt, and even smelled exactly like the picture she had painted in the corner of his mind, which still refused to let her go, even all these years later. Something about it made his blood boil. But the breeze carried her voice anyway, leading him by her tales across the entire width of the coast and out to the edge of the water, where she would always stop dead in her tracks and quietly wish him goodnight. Now, he stopped too, standing at the end of the headland. He saw it, just under the web of shadows and stone was the mouth of a small cavern, blocked haphazardly by driftwood and clumps of dragged-up moss that looked like sleeping guards from an Arthurian tale.

“This is it”, Harrison sighed, pulling some of the debris away. He hovered by the entrance and beckoned them in with a small shrug of his hand. So ominous and all-compassing was the darkness that Cameron was half-expecting to find a satanic sacrifice in progress, but that wasn’t enough to stop Tova. She all but pushed him inside like he was the next victim up, while offering a gentle, motherly brush of her fingers against the nervous selkie. With the sun now barely touching the horizon, Cameron tapped ‌his phone, and the torch turned on. Feeling underwater, Harrison held his breath.

What looked like the opening to a giant system of caves and tunnels was quickly dispelled when the light touched every corner of the grotto with just a quick sweep of his phone. At ‌half the length of the camper, yet twice the depth, there was barely enough room to fit the dishevelled sleeping bag and cassette player that lay at its centre. Encircling them was a garish, chaotic assortment of what Cameron could only call, trash. Piles and piles of it.

“The hell is this, Harri?” Cameron whipped around to face him, but Harrison stubbornly refused to look up from the floor. 

Resting his head against the side of the entrance, Harrison hugged his arms as tightly to his chest as he did his childish hope that Cameron would intuitively understand the impossible and save him like one of those comics he’d browse on his lunch break. Cameron used to joke that the Bay didn’t need a lighthouse; all they needed to do was dangle Harrison from the edge of the cliffs, tell him a dumb joke, and his goofy-ass grin would do the rest. But now, against the backdrop of the encroaching night sky, he looked lost amongst the darkness that melted into his skin and swallowed his smile with it.

Against the backdrop of the roaring waves, Cameron strained to hear him. “This is where I used to live… Now I just come here when I need to be alone or drop off some stuff from time to time.”

“Couldn’t have left it at my place?” he retorted.

In his surprise, it sounded harsher than Cameron intended, but Harrison didn’t wince like at the aquarium. “Didn’t want to intrude”, he said simply.

Of course, his ‘explanation’ didn’t answer any of Cam’s questions, least of all why he had dragged them out to the middle of nowhere just to show them some rocks and a landfill. However, seeing this hidden side of Harrison, the one that actually showed he wasn’t some Buddhist monk, sparked a reluctant curiosity in Cameron, and a much less reluctant one in Tova, who was already rummaging through his treasure trove of knick-knacks.

It reminded him of his Aunt Jeanie’s trailer that burst at the seams after decades of hoarding. But where she collected everything, he slowly but surely began to parse out the patterns in the brightly coloured layers of both natural and man-made sediment. The recycling provided the cave with its oldest foundations until it climbed up the walls like an intrusive mould. Eventually, the trash grew generic trinkets whose cheap paint peeled off like a sunburn amongst the cobwebs. Then those cheap toys bloomed into vines, with bunches of handmade, precious goods nestling in the natural grooves like shelves on a feature wall.

 So, Cameron thought, Harri made a cave his home rather than mine.

Harrison had smiled through Cameron’s not-so-subtle probing and Ethan’s outright interrogation. Offering only vague hints about where he used to live right up until the day he found a brand-new pillow and toothbrush in the camper just for him. After that, barely a night went by without the pair sharing reheated mac n’ cheese for supper before crashing on the very mattress where they’d eaten. Neither of them had much in the way of luxuries. Yet it still hurt deeply that for all the room he took up in Cameron’s life, it had taken Harrison only a few seconds to clear up his things and leave. And hours longer for Cameron to realise they were gone at all. At least when his last ex kicked him to the curb, Cam had contributed just enough to the relationship not to have all his stuff tossed out the window. With Harrison, all he could find to throw in revenge was an empty gum wrapper. He hastily scrunched it up and angrily hurled it out of the camper with all the velocity of a fastballer, only for a gentle breeze to blow it straight back in. And now here it was- all of Harrison’s stuff. It was such a mess, he didn’t think throwing anything would make a difference. 

Cameron tapped his foot as he waited for the punchline. 

Tova either didn’t sense the growing disquiet or, more likely, chose to simply ignore it as she bent awkwardly in the far-left corner, appraising a worn-down crab pot and taking out each item one at a time with the reverence normally granted for long-lost treasures. A slice of luscious coral, an antique harpoon rusted to a dull, mottled copper, and a display of shells, flora and rocks to rival the finest museum jangled in her hands- All of them belonging to the bottom of the ocean.

She turned, holding up a fossilised sea urchin to the torchlight. “Oh, Harrison. So they were all from you?”

Cameron was trying his best to give Harrison the benefit of the doubt, but his patience was growing thin with whatever secret they were keeping from him. However, before he could call them out, he caught a small, reluctant tug gracing Harrison’s lips for the first time since they left the aquarium. 

“Without fail, Ms Sullivan,” Harrison said with a speck of pride before shyness overtook him again. “Although I should have gotten you all something better. I thought they were worth more than they actually were.”

“They were worth a lot to us.”

With just one solemnly spoken sentence, Cameron saw a full smile creep up on the other man and push out a tiny laugh. “Good. That’s… That’s good. Guess I don’t have to buy you that coffee machine instead, then.”

Tova chuckled, “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

While his grandmother worked her magic and helped Harrison relax, Cameron searched for a small handhold to rest his phone on, letting it illuminate the entire cavern. Fuck it. If this could be the last thing he could do for Harrison, he would give it a shot.

The cave was altogether alien, yet too familiar to be comforting. If owners looked like their homes, this was the uncanny valley made manifest. Where Harrison’s personality was bubbly, the cave popped with colour. For the times he could keep still, a small nook provided a puddle of tranquillity in an ocean of chaos. And for all the multitudes Harrison sublimated under the guise of Sowell’s friendly, neighbourhood grocer, Cameron suspected this cave mirrored them all. To know Harrison’s great shameful secret was merely himself made him want to scoop him up in his arms and snark those silly thoughts away. But not even his most childish, long-lost fantasies allowed him to believe that. 

Near his feet lay a small heap of refuse thrown into the bin that Ethan had thrown out a few weeks earlier. At first, he assumed Harrison was secretly just as messy as he himself used to be, but on closer inspection, he saw the seaweed and sand clinging to the bottles, cans, and plastic bags like a parasitic growth. Cameron knew of his and Avery’s two-person clean-up crew along the beach; it was the closest thing to ranting that Harrison ever got. But he always assumed they threw the trash away afterwards. Now he beheld a sea lion, glued together from the same materials they found, a chewed-up piece of gum lolling out of its cut-out mouth like a tongue. 

Tova spotted him lingering, “Oh, is that the sea lion who follows you around, Harrison?”

“You can tell?”

“He always sticks his tongue out when you're there, like an excitable little puppy. Not to mention that god-awful racket he makes when Ethan dares to take up your time!” she mused.

Cameron jumped in, “Wait, that’s the seal-”

“Sea lion”, they corrected in unison.

“Whatever - that's the one who jumped me?”

Harrison’s eyes went wider than the ones he had drawn on the model. “What? No! No! Kev- He just wanted some of my food, and you were just… in the way.”

Cam side-eyed the model like a man scorned. “So I nearly got crushed to death, and you immortalised my would-be murderer in some Coke cans and plastic?” 

“He snuggled you,” Harrison corrected. “He likes you really. It’s just that he likes tuna more.”

“That does not make me feel better.”

“I like you better than tuna, if that helps”, he promised with an earnestness that from anyone else would have sounded sarcastic. Cameron’s heart thumped hollowly in his chest, skipping a beat as he skipped over the other models and onto the next wall.

To the side of the recycling lay stacks of secondhand books. He scanned the spines: ‘Astonishing Art with Recycled Rubbish’, ‘A Bear Called Paddington’, ‘101 Quick and Easy Seafood Recipes’, ‘10,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ and ‘Jurassic Park’, coupled next to an illustrative encyclopedia of dinosaurs for reference. A not insignificant amount of cheesy rom-com books made their own section of the makeshift library, every other page dog-eared and shining from highlighter pens like a devoted student’s textbook. So was that where Harrison got some of his corny lines from? A cosy smile thinned out Cameron’s lips. He couldn’t judge. He’d gotten his from everything from Shakespeare to Tom Cruise. 

To Cameron’s relief, the book entitled ‘So You Want to Be a Doctor?’ appeared pristine and, most importantly, unread. Instead, a collection of mixtapes sat upon the weighty tome like a pedestal. They were all ones they had made together, Harrison taking the A side, and Cameron the B, embellished with their track list and a homemade cover. Others he didn’t recognise, blank tapes with just dates and places scrawled on them, but he knew those names. How could he not? They were the bars he sang ‌at. 

Turning to Harrison, his voice caught on an octave too high, “Wait. Y-you recorded my gigs?”

He looked shocked. “Course I did. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because they sucked”, he said indignantly, like it was self-evident. Like, there was no way Harrison could think differently. 

“Because…” that would mean you really cared, he wanted to say. Instead, he just pleaded with wide eyes that shimmered like the stars outside. It wasn’t fair. None of his partners had ever even been to a Moth Sausage show, let alone enjoyed any of their stuff. They all presumed it was something he would grow out of, while they grew out of him. In the end, his life’s passion was reduced to just another bullet point in a long list of reasons they were breaking up with him- not that he could argue with any of them. But for Harrison, he had tried to face his past mistakes and become a better person. And yet here he was, embracing his dumb music anyway. Real, fuckin’ fair.

“I loved them,” came the only response Harrison had, rescuing Cameron from spiralling further. He willed a grin into existence. “Even if you tried to ruin Japanese Breakfast for a generation of impressionably drunk hipsters.”

He huffed, “They don’t need me to do that.”

“So mean and so wrong,” Harrison tutted in his well-practised invitation to join in their jokey back and forth.

Cam fell for it every time. “And yet so incredibly brave and sexy of me”. 

His ‘dude bro’ voice never failed to steal a giggle from Harrison (and only Harrison) with a whip back of his hair. Shit, it was too easy, too comfortable, to fall into their natural rhythm, but he had already committed to his old bit and reclined back against the wall. A soft whoosh turned into a cacophony of bangs as he knocked over a painted paper plate from on top of its rocky shelf, and in his attempt to rescue it, knocked over four more and nearly himself. The fact that even his own flesh and blood sat there pitying him (and when later interrogated, definitely not sniggering) hurt more than the jewellery box that fell on his foot.

Accompanied by a series of hastily muttered apologies, Cam put them back into their exact place, ignoring Harrison’s assurances to leave them be. Tova piped up from the other side of the room, barely containing her sadistic glee at Cameron’s pain. “Japanese Dinner or whatever you call that noise-”

“Breakfast”, they corrected.

She rolled her eyes with a weary exasperation that belied her few short hours as a grandmother. “Them. I thought that was the band you said you didn’t like, Harrison? The one on the shirt Ethan gave you?”

“Wait-”, Cameron’s brow shot up, slowly taking the rest of his face with it as the realisation sank in. “Don’t tell me- You don’t like Japanese Breakfast after all? I fuckin-”

“Ah!” Tova scolded.

“I freakin’ knew it!”

“Didn’t like,” Harrison smirked to hide the blush. “Very, very much past tense.” 

“Oh, no way. Here, I thought you were hiding Kennedy’s body. This is way more serious, Harrison.”

“It’s a long story.” One Harrison very much didn’t want to tell, although why, he wasn’t sure. There was something in it that always drew him back, circling the memories like water down the drain until all he could do to drag himself out again was make stupid paper plates. But the pair were patiently waiting, with Cameron still securely holding the jewellery box. He shifted its weight between his hands as though he hadn’t quite realised it was still there- until he ran his finger over the lid. A faint, angelic glow escaped the thin slit.

It came out of him like a shot and just as abrupt: “It was the last time I saw my sister”. The box snapped shut, suddenly stilled, but Harrison’s hands didn’t as he raked them through his hair. As Avery was fond of telling him, he’d really put his foot in it now. However, to his surprise, he looked at the plates over Cameron’s shoulder and found his mouth moving by itself as though it knew better.

“C-Chloe loved- loves‌ music, ya know? The whole family does, but my folks prefer the classics. Like, real classics - choral music, Gregorian chant kind of stuff. But my sister always had to be different. It was obvious from the first moment I saw her.”

Tova secretly glanced at her grandson, mirroring Harrison’s dreamy, gratified smile. “We didn’t really have the means to buy records or listen to new music, so she’d drag me to the beach under the guise of babysitting, and we’d hang out near this local record store that would just blast out all this obscure stuff at full volume. Swear the owner must have been half-deaf to put up with it, but it was everything to us…” A fond laugh caught in his mouth, ballooning his round cheeks, “God, I remember the restaurant next door used to bring us leftovers when they closed up shop- it was incredible. And if they didn’t have any, the cook would whip something up just for us.”

As he talked, Cameron could hear the knot in his voice begin to unfurl. He spoke as though he were experiencing it all for the first time, even though it had haunted him for years. Putting it into words made it feel lighter. Seeing the looks on their faces made it feel monumental. Somehow, he had forgotten all about the kind apprentice with their lomi-lomi salmon and the off-cuts of ahi tuna, but the cosy, affectionate warmth that returned to his chest had not. 

“Just before I had to leave, their debut single came out. She loved it, so obviously I had to mess with her and hate it, but there was never any beating her.” Harrison glowed with awe, a tender wonder reserved only for older brothers when their siblings weren’t there to hear it. “I only called them overrated once, but boy, she was angrier than when I called Ethan, English.”

Cameron innocently shrugged away Harrison’s pointed rendition of a grumpy pufferfish, otherwise known as his hard stare. 

He shook his head and continued. “The next day, she harassed the owner to play it on a constant loop over and over until I couldn’t take it anymore, and honestly, neither could the poor coastguard. Fair to say Chloe won that one. I didn't hear it again for ages, but a few months back, just before you came into town… There was this girl-”

“That's normally how it goes,” Cam countered, a note too high to pass for nonchalance. 

A hand waved him off. “Not like that. Sure, she was pretty and talented- Tsk, stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“That thing you do. That look,” Harrison kidded. “The one I’m not allowed to talk about.”

Cameron’s eyes twitched towards the gossip in wolf’s clothing. Tactfully, Tova browsed the cave like it was an art gallery, and just as quietly, lest she miss a word.

With a heavy sigh, Cameron confidently announced. “M’not jealous.”

It had taken him a dozen ‌slighted drinks alone at the bar to accept that this was who Harrison was. Jealousy wasn’t a concept Harrison had dealt with much before, although with Cameron’s refusal to address it, he couldn’t say he’d made any progress on the subject other than it made his nose shrivel like discounted dried prunes. 

“Nor should you be! She’s not from around here, just an artist who stopped by for gas and ended up sticking around to paint the ocean. I was just hanging out on the beach watching her work, nothing else, and then, just like that-” He clicked his fingers. “I heard Chloe’s song come on her playlist… And I got it.” He laughed. “God, my sis won again, huh?” 

The mixtape Cameron made for him yesterday weighed heavily in his pocket. It was the same song he put centre stage on the A-side. Had Cameron deduced that this song meant so much to him, despite how rarely he could bring himself to play it?

A lone seagull waddled by his feet, interrupting his reverie as it searched for the seeds he always left out for them. It side-eyed the competition but ignored them in favour of the delectable feast of trail mix that Harrison fished out of his pockets. “Think she must have seen me enjoying it, as she played their entire album on max. It was… nice. Even though it was raining, it felt like I was right back in Hawaii, eating shrimp and listening to Cooper’s records again, while a bunch of far less demanding gulls hung out with us.”

An enigmatic expression crossed Harrison’s face, the one Cameron recognised when he peered out into the water, or glanced at their friends when he thought they weren’t looking. “I never learnt her name or even spoke to her, but man, you guys should have seen it. She was incredible.”

Cameron teasingly quirked a single eyebrow that worked him over better than any medieval torture technique. Even Tova replicated it.

“Her painting was incredible. Like, actually incredible, not just me incredible,” he humphed with a giggle. “She just… got the ocean in the way other people never did. All these tiny details she got in one day, like how the sun always hit Mr Cox’s fishing boat in the morning or how the lagoon had its own current.” 

He mustered a gesture towards a set of paints and discarded paper plates he used as canvases in the corner. “I gave it a go, or rather twenty, but I couldn’t ever capture this place as she did in just one day. Even when I sit out here to paint, I’m still missing something - mine feel so lifeless and just… empty, compared to hers.”

They drew him in until his voice sounded as distant as the scenes. But not fully. No, his never had the power to do that. All Harrison wanted to do was tell them the truth. That to her, he had been nothing more than an overly curious seal, nuzzling at her phone’s screen until a random indie song played on loop. That he had not spoken to her, not because he was shy, but because it was simply a physical impossibility. As impossible as it felt now.

If only he could just tell them. They knew how truly agonising it was to lose everything. The ocean had been Harrison’s first love, his sister the second. Now he could only visit both of them through a single song. These precious humans had always been his best interpreters; they would know what his paintings lacked and precisely how to fix them. He opened his mouth for what felt like the millionth time to confess and closed it again with a brusque kick against the moss.

It took a few beats of raindrops for Cameron to realise Harrison’s story had come to its abrupt end. He’d never heard him speak for so long and so unsure of himself, let alone about anything from before they’d met. When he had first mentioned his sister months ago, Cameron had been sure it was a slip of the tongue. Surer still when he scrambled for the name Chloe after listing five others. 

Now, it was like watching a 2D cartoon character come to life before his eyes. His Harrison, who only existed in the moment, suddenly filled out the page. He grew wrinkles and a dusting of grey with each word he spoke and each utterance of home. Cameron knew there was something still missing, but catching a solid glimpse of the grief that lay behind his radiant smile made it all the more remarkable. It made Harrison more remarkable. 

Fuck everything else that happened today. Hell, fuck this stupid spelunking trip. He had to see it again.

“Wooow,” Cam lowly drawled, feigning sarcasm. “Feel like a real asshole for making fun of that song now. ‘Appreciate that.”

“I may not be able to beat my sis, but I can get one over on you, Cam.”

“Yeah, yeah, lap it up. It was a cheap trick getting all soft like that,” he teased, turning back to the wall with casually dramatic flair. “Here, let’s see what else gets me story time with Harrison.”

Cameron finally put down the jewellery box, but Harrison barely had time to relax as he replaced it in his hands with some paintings that he’d insulted from a heap in the corner. He knew most of them from various spots around the bay, little vignettes stubbornly put to a cheap canvas he recognised from Ethan’s twentieth anniversary party of the shop. That was Harrison, alright, never wasting a thing - Frankly, Cameron couldn’t believe there’d been any plates left. Harrison had been the best mascot a boss could ask for, as he donned a giant lobster costume in the height of summer and brought the crowds in by the dozens with his incessant dancing and unscripted factoids for the kids. The humid air felt like sucking in molasses as Cam struggled to clear his throat. Come on, don’t make this harder than it already is.

Despite its clearly amateurish effort, Cam couldn’t say he noticed anything particularly wrong with the paintings. Then again, once upon a time, he thought the doodles of the resident high-school stoner were good enough to tattoo all down his arms. However, Tova barrelled into his side like it was Black Friday, picking up the plates that had taken pride and place on the wall before Cameron had knocked them over.

In her hands lay five paintings: the bowling alley where they spent Harrison’s ‘birthday’, the aquarium, Ethan’s and Avery’s shop, and the lookout point where Harrison had left his goodbye note. But instead of the incredible view, he had painted the dilapidated picnic tables where they hung out, the empty boxes of chow mein, and the local dogs who would have chased Harrison’s endlessly intriguing scent into the Sahara. The others followed its pattern. Sowell’s aquarium filled with an excited gaggle of children around a proud octopus and a certain staff member who caught his eye, even though he didn’t yet know his name. The shops with their small quirky mementoes that only Harrison ever loved, and their owners, poorly proportioned but with their exact character shining through with just a few minor details that only someone who had truly studied them would notice. Cameron chuckled; they both stood in the same way they did when they told Harrison off, but with giant drawn-on grins that far exceeded their outlines. He always assumed Harrison was oblivious to notice when he annoyed them, but maybe he saw something he didn’t.

“Harrison, these are beautiful. I especially like this one of the bowling alley,” Tova admired. “Although…”

She studied the painting further, specifically the drunken, retching figure by the fire exit, until she saw the necklace dangle from the figure - the very one Harrison had gifted on his own birthday.

If her metaphorical daggers were real, Cameron wouldn't have recoiled so quickly. He pushed his pendant into his shirt as she slapped his bicep. “What? I’m completely innocent. Harrison, tell her-”

But Harrison wasn’t paying attention. A haze had fallen over his eyes as they fell upon one of his most prized collections. Unable to hide it any longer, his face stripped itself of all pretence, down to its most honest canvas. 

“Oh, sweetheart”, Tova cooed, a sound too soft from the normally stoical woman.

The small alcove in the wall housed an almost fanatical shrine to Sowell Bay's aquarium… or just its gift shop. Against the phone’s torch, the scales of cuddly fish reflected sequins of rainbows while a whole ledge draped with a garland of fishing line hung down like an untrimmed trailing plant, flowering with polaroids. Every staff member and resident, across all species, was attached with a clothes peg, offering their cheesy grins, a thumbs-up, and more than a few blank, fishy stares. But what caught their attention most were the ever-softening pictures of Marcellus inserted between them. From blurry cryptid sightings under his rock to a selfie of them together - Cameron didn’t think he’d ever seen the octopus without his scathing, condensing expression before. 

Still, not even in the cosiest photo did Marcellus look as deliriously happy as the box of memorabilia that sat underneath it. 

Cameron bellowed, so shocked and sudden that even his own echo made him jump. “So you’re the one who stole all the magnets of Marcellus!?” Of course, it had to be him. 

Harrison tried to smile, but the residual guilt made him blush. “Oh, uh, yeah. Sorry about that one.”

“Why? You paid for it, didn’t you?” “Kinda. It was…” Harrison went quiet, sucking in his teeth, deliberating before he practically chewed the words out. “... Marcellus’s idea”. 

Cameron waited patiently for the joke, but Tova stood at attention as he continued. “He, um, hated those magnets. Said they made him look like-”. He deepened his voice into a wise, regal tenor, “a feeble-minded ignoramus whose existence even a simple human larva would pity.” 

A soft, dry huff whistled through his nose. Marcellus always insisted it sounded nothing like him. “He didn’t mind the ones where he looked like a terrifying kraken, just these. So he wanted them gone. I didn’t realise it was stealing, so I took them from the shop and brought them back here.” He should have known he’d messed up when Marcellus complimented him for once. “It was only when Terry lost his marbles over it and said he was going to call the cops that I panicked and wrote out a cheque.”

Tova couldn’t help herself. Wait until the knit-wits hear about this. “An apology card with ‘please accept this cheque for however many dollars you need’ didn’t count, I’m afraid. But the fish crackers were very thoughtful of you!”

“Wait,” Cameron interrupted. “Course it was stealing, how could you think it wasn’t?”

Harrison went deathly still. When he worked up the courage to speak, it was to the seagull pecking at his shoe. “Because you were right, I am gullible. Marcellus said if his face was on it, it belonged to him.”

“An octopus… Told you to steal some shitty magnets? Because what? He had the rights to it?”

Voice stripped of all emotion, Harrison meekly rasped, “... You humans have a lot of rules. It gets hard to keep up.” 

It was the closest thing to the truth Harrison could bear to utter, and just as expected, it dropped between them with a heavy, resounding thud. His boss had always insisted that it was better to get things off your chest, but this didn’t feel like the relief he’d promised. No, now the weight of his secret crushed his chest like a vice.

Cameron did all he could to stay in control, but his voice cracked wide open. “Humans? Fuck, Harrison, this isn’t funny, man. If you’re going to leave, then go, but don’t fucking do this to me.”

Tova didn’t shout at him this time. She hovered between them on unsteady legs, but primed with a firm admonishment ready to go at a moment's notice. However, Harrison remained hugging the cave’s mouth, hoping the harsh rock would swallow him whole. What else could he say?

“Sorry.”

He tried again.

There was nothing else to offer.

Cameron was seething. How dare he?

How fucking dare he?

Foolishly, Cam had forgiven him at the aquarium, genuinely believing that Harrison… Well, Cameron just believed in Harrison. But no, here they were, dragging his elderly grandmother out to the middle of nowhere, and for what? To gawk at a trash heap and listen to some bullshit story about a talking octopus. 

Maybe that smile of Harrison’s had only ever been his way of making fun of him. Cameron had been prepared to let Harrison go if that's what he needed to be happy again. After years of arrested development, Cameron had tried. God help him, he had really tried to be someone he could be proud of. Someone who turned up on time, whose boyfriend actually showed up for his gigs, and who was worth more than eighteen years of child support. Turns out, that Cameron was worth a shrug, and another measly apology. At least when his mother left, he meant enough to her not to make a joke about it.

His fist clenched in his pocket. “Fuck. You,” he spat.

He swiped his phone off the ledge and propped it up in his pocket. A hard blow to his shoulder as he stormed past hurt him more than it did Harrison, yet he’d do it again in a heartbeat if he could. 

“Tova,” he bit. “Come on. Let’s get out of this shithole.”

The howling winds picked up speed, swallowing the calls of his name as Cameron bounded towards the edge of the headland to catch some air. When no footsteps followed, he reluctantly spun around with a spiteful, practised grimace prepped and loaded. However, to his surprise, Tova was too busy arguing with Harrison to notice. 

Boy, did he love it when his grandmother got pissed. Harrison barely seemed to fight back, looking just as defeated as Cameron felt. Good… That… This was supposed to feel good, wasn’t it?

What Ms Sullivan lacked in youth, she more than made up for with her oft-cited ‘spunk’. As small as she held herself, Harrison deflated before her flailing arms. Suddenly, even a bit reluctantly, he pointed. Her demeanour flipped on a dime. She vanished into the cave and emerged clutching the jewellery box Cam had knocked over, her face alight with a pride so intense he half expected her to bundle it under her arm and, space boot be damned, steal it away into the night. Instead, she embraced it in both hands and offered it up to Harrison with a warm, reassuring smile. Cameron wondered if his father had ever managed to refuse it.

“Tova,” he called. “Leave him. He’s made his choice.”

But the duo either didn’t hear or ignored him. Sensing his lingering anguish, Tova held Harrison within her loving gaze. Looking at him. Really looking. She must have found what she was searching for, as she graced him with a simple touch. Lightly, she smoothed down the mop of sandy brown hair and then caressed her fingers over his clammy skin. Past the rise of his plump cheek. Then, further still, until she gently scratched under his ear in the shape of a crescent moon. Even all these months later, that one tender action made him want to slap his tummy and curve his back to greet it. It was the same way she had petted him on the long evenings by the pier when she was a lost widow, and he was just another lost seal. No… He was never ‘just’ anything, not with her.

So she really remembered him.

Wiping an errant tear away, she whispered, Cam didn’t know what. But Harrison nodded along, hard and fast. Pressing a kiss to her cheek, he accepted the box and raced towards Cameron.

Neither of them said anything, not until Cameron realised Harrison was holding the box out for him. He felt so tired. He didn’t want to play this game anymore; he just wanted to go home with his grandma and wallow in self-pity until he forgot the last five months ever happened, but Harrison nudged the box forward again. For once, insistent.

The selkie’s face was pale as he spoke, his mouth almost limp, as though his muscles had given up their control of it. Yet his voice sounded more confident than it had done since they arrived. “I know you don’t owe me anything, Cameron, not after what I’ve done. But you don’t deserve to be left angry.”

Wearily, Cam sized him up. Eyes larger and wetter than even his kinfolk before he snatched the box from him, lingering for a moment to see if Harrison’s demeanour changed. The splintered wood creaked under his hard grip, then, with a defeated sigh, he turned away and pulled open the lid to get this over with.

What the hell?

Within the box lay a single discarded spice jar from the shop, surrounded by a selection of emerald green, wine-soaked red, and tawny orange coral that twisted around each other like a bouquet of exotic wildflowers. But they weren’t what caught Cameron’s attention. Within the spice jar, there were only flakes of coral and seawater. And yet it lit up brighter than the night sky on the Fourth of July. The water swirled to its own impossible current, a million stars of iridescent blue and precious silver schooled together like racing neon tetras until it hummed a soft, pulsating glow.

Every shimmering light reflected on Cameron’s face like a disco ball. “What… the fuck.”

“It’s an old family recipe,” Harrison said calmly, hearing Cameron’s bubbling unease.

“T-This is a trick, right?”

“Promise, no trick. Here, let me show you.” Harrison held out his hand.

Automatically, Cam passed the jar over before he could think better of it. He felt like a hapless audience member dragged onto the stage for the improv actors to embarrass in front of a crowd of restless seagulls. But his body still worked on its old order to give Harrison anything he wanted. Of course, it was just some cheap curiosity Harrison had bought online. Cameron didn’t believe in childish fantasies anymore. Didn’t believe much in anything since his mother left. Come morning, he would find the box in Ethan’s trash, and that would be that. And yet.. that didn’t explain why his hands still glowed.

The jar pulsed faster under Harrison’s firm grasp. The humans had promised him back at the aquarium that they would do whatever it took to help. He could do this; he knew he could do this. Long ago, his parents had admonished him for being so trusting of their kind, but neither they nor thousands of years of selkie wisdom had known Tova Sullivan or Cameron Cassmore. But he and his childish hopes did.

Before he could doubt himself again, he held onto that promise and marched straight over to Tova.

“No- Hey, what are you doin’?” Cameron protested.

She didn’t seem surprised when Harrison returned with Cameron in tow, although she was curious. The last few hours took their toll on her leg as she sought the support of the driftwood Harrison had used to barricade the cavern. Kneeling at her feet, he tilted his head to the side like a curious puppy, waiting for her to give the all clear. 

“Your family will be so proud of you, dear,” she said before nodding.

He put his head down and squeezed her calf. “If I ever see them again.”

“Oh, I think you will,” she hummed. “Stranger things happen these days.”

Her grandson sat next to Tova on the driftwood, silently putting his jacket over the shivering woman so she couldn’t protest. 

“C-Can I take this off?” Harrison motioned to her boot. He didn’t need to look at Cameron to feel his watchful glare burning into him. “Promise, I’ll be gentle.”

She offered it to him without hesitation. A quickening pulse echoed in the tips of his fingers, trembling as he touched her as though it were something sacred. Yet, Harrison got to work with deft hands, undoing the straps as he had studied her doing time and time again in the hope she would one day allow him to help. 

Harrison removed the boot and delicately rolled up her pant leg. Neither of them could honestly say they’d seen her ankle since the accident - she had made sure of that. While the worst had passed, sand washed yellow and decayed goldenrod mottled her ankle like faded leopard spots, accented by ink blots of purple and blue, a testament to her inability to follow a single physio plan. Her sock bulged around the swelling from all the walking, yet she brushed off Harrison’s apologies and told him she trusted him.

It was all a blur after that. He unscrewed the lid. Swirled the luminescent water around in his mouth, and before Cam could really lose his shit, he spat straight onto his hands. He rubbed them together like a cartoon villain before massaging the mixture into every swollen inch of Tova’s leg. Hissing through the tender pain, she clung to ‌Cameron, who shouted at Harrison to stop, despite Tova’s constant stream of shushes. Yet the selkie held firm for a few more vital seconds until he heard the hitch in her voice flatten out into something approaching a soft sigh. With her, the men breathed again. 

When he removed his hands, it was gone. All of it, just… gone. Only a glimmering glow swaddled her unblemished leg. 

They all watched in awe and amazement as Harrison smoothed her clothes back into place, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Jubilant, Tova rolled her foot back and forth - even her father, who knew the legends of selkies inside and out, never told her of this.

For once, not by choice, she was speechless.

So too was Cameron, although not for the same reason. As the aluminium sheen faded into her skin, it caught on Harrison’s features at precisely the same moment the moon came out of retirement from behind the clouds and bathed him in its spotlight. 

Everything shifted. Cameron could have sworn the whole earth did.

He looked around. It wasn’t just from his mother’s stories that he knew this place. 

He had seen it from atop the lookout point when he first entered ‌town and became entranced by a naked, lone figure, swaying to a cassette player, as resplendent under the moonlight as he was tragic. The mysterious stranger had moved, not with the music, but with the waves of the ocean. Back and forth with each crash, the sea foam showering him like confetti, and yet with the restraint of someone used to dancing pressed against a crowd. As though if he extended his arms, he’d accidentally hit someone, while his legs barely moved at all. Cam had always assumed he was just some weirdo off his tits or vibing… But what if it was because he was just naturally unsteady on his feet? His Harrison danced so much freer than the stranger had done. But Cameron still remembered their first time at the bar, when Harrison had stumbled over his feet and held on for dear life. 

Staring into those sea-glass blue eyes, Cameron knew it was him. He didn’t need to check the cassette player in the cave to know that. 

But the realisation didn’t slow down his racing thoughts. In fact, they only sped up like a runaway train. His mother’s voice encouraged them on. Old tales of mystical sea creatures, their untarnished, free spirit, their majestic movements, and their supernatural, ethereal beauty found their proof within the man before him. Every story played in his ears as he saw Harrison as though for the very first time.     

And yet those stories weren’t him, not fully. Harrison felt unmoored from that history. Now his beauty was buttoned up under plaid shirts, his body too gangly, too packed with unnecessary limbs to relearn elegance, and too out of place to be free. But he had tried his best anyway.

A quiet understanding descended upon Cameron. More monumental than before, but the earth didn’t move with it this time. Instead, he moved to meet the earth. Returning to the reality he’d once believed in only as a young kid, back when magic was real and happy endings were inevitable.

Everything slotted into place. First, the trinkets from the bottom of the ocean that Tova found when they first entered the cave. On his way into town, Cameron had overheard the local gossips chatting about the mystery of the shells left outside the aquarium every month. He’d cleaned them up himself, putting them in the trash only to rescue them hours later at Terry’s insistence. But surely, that would mean Harrison had started the tradition before ever setting foot in the place?

It didn’t make any sense, but everything else did. The way the fish responded to him and only him. The gaps in basic knowledge, but the breadth of wisdom about the ocean. His barely contained excitement as he learnt to walk straighter, the shrill bark he made when surprised, or the low bubbly purr when he beached himself upon Cameron’s bed. Every morning walk spent searching for something, the afternoons soaking in the rain, and the long nights quietly watching the shifting moon… It was all there, even down to his reluctance to buy the first beer in case he got ID’d.

Marcellus must have known, too. 

Shit. What an insane thought, that an octopus could know anything at all. But that was nothing compared to the realisation that Harrison really had been conversing with him the whole time. How else could he explain the magnets? The foreign name left in the tank that had shaken Harrison so badly? Or the abandoned ring that led Cameron back to his family?

How else could he explain the love of his life?

Cameron knew then what those paintings of the ocean were missing. The question that was haunting Harrison. They were the side of himself he had slowly lost touch with until they became nothing but a distant fantasy that their creator wouldn’t allow himself to believe in. Half-remembered snapshots, devoid of everything that made him the being he was before Harrison Knott took over. While the paintings of his time in Sowell had burst at the seams with life and love, the ocean was too close to home to comfort. The family and friends who made it, too far away. 

But where Harrison had desperately clung to a fading, childish hope to keep himself going, Cameron’s childhood fantasies had been right all along. 

“You’re….”

Harrison nodded slowly, a crooked, almost puppy-like upturn of his lips.

“You’re a selkie?”

Cameron’s stomach flipped. There it is. 

There was Harrison’s radiant smile again. It really did shine brighter than he could have ever imagined. 

Dividers by @saradika-graphics