Relics of a Mother's Grief

The small pebble in girl’s hands glowed brightly in the sunlight. It was sleek and white but sparkled iridescent, casting colors with every angle in the light. The girl sat at the rocky shore on a small cliff. In the distance there was a the sound of water plopping. A pair of eyes belonging to a marine animal were staring at her. The girl gave a shy wave, small smile wavering, she had seen the seal there before hanging around, somewhat observing her before sauntering off in the water. The seal raised it’s head a bit more out of the water and let out a sad cry before turning around and swimming away.

“Po' thing.” A raspy voice filled her ears. A fisherman was suddenly standing at her side. “She missin' her baby.”

“How do you know that?” The girl asked.

The fisherman lifted his sun-bleached trucker hat and scratched at his salt and peppered head. His skin was dark and wrinkly like leather, weathered from his trade, and clothes stained with salt from the sea. He squinted before answering, revealing a few crooked teeth in his mouth.

“She come here every few days leavin' a gift.” He reached in the pocket of his worn denim jeans and revealed a few more smoothed stones and shells. He gave them to the girl who fumbled with them in her hands.

They were relics of a mother's grief.

“What happened to her baby? Did it die?”

The fisherman shook his head before turning attention to his cast line nearby that was taut.

“Naw,” He said as he picked up his rod and fought a little bit with the fish attached on the end in the water. “She just can’t be with it no more.”

–

The next week there was a shard of sea glass. The following week a couple of white cowries were left behind. The girl added the gifts to her collection, even adding the cowries to her braided hair. Though she wondered if taking the gifts was wrong for the mother was leaving them in some sort of memorial for her child. But under the eye of the fisherman he coaxed her to take them as he had done so before also.

But then one week the fisherman wasn’t fishing. He sat on the bench as if waiting for someone.

“Not fishing today?” The girl asked as she took a seat beside the old man.

“Takin' a small break. Little friend tol’ me the fish will be more plentiful tomorrow.” He held up a sand dollar for the girl to take. It was as big as the palm of her hand. “The water seem troubled today. Storm a brewin' out there.”

Overhead the sky was cloudy. Way out in the distance there was a deeper gray signaling oncoming rain. The girl suddenly felt morose.

“I’m scared of the water,” she said suddenly.

There once was a time she had been comfortable swimming in the salted beach waves or chlorinated still pools with her mother who moved with ease like a mermaid gliding through water. Watching her mother flow through the water as if was second nature inspired her to become a strong swimmer as well, but then that had suddenly changed. Instead her feelings of admiration and inspiration had changed into fear.

“Why so?”

“It took my mother,” she whispered.

When she was nine her mother left one night after saying goodbye. She still faintly remembered the kiss atop her forehead before her mother left. She hadn’t realized it had been past midnight when her mother had come to her room in her lucid state. That morning her father woke her with tears in his eyes. Deep down through the panic she knew that something awful had happened to her mother.

Her mother had left.

Growing up she had always remembered her mother being a little sad, but being around water energized her. When swimming it seemed as if she wanted to swim farther than shore and be engulfed in the vast depth of the ocean. That night the ocean had taken mother in what was deemed some sort of rip current. In her mind she had always imagined her mother walking at night by the shore and then taking a swim before the waves dragged her in.

There had been no body found.

“Probably a selkie.”

“Those aren’t real.” The girl scoffed, offended that her mother’s death was even compared to such a trivial thing.

“Oh they are though. I seen one with my own two eyes.” Aged brown eyes were wide as a wrinkled hand pointed at the beach. “They used to come here before all the construction and tourist. That was before you was born.”

The fisherman remembered it all through his years of fishing at that same exact beach. That it had once been a playground for the creatures to shed their skin and play and frolic against the beach.

“They’re beautiful in their human forms. Funny thing is that they filthy when seals, and stink.”

The girl didn’t quite believe the fisherman. She had seen the man take a swig from a carefully hidden bottle from his tackle box. He was old, and senile, or perhaps he took her for a fool. She wasn’t a little girl anymore; she didn’t believe in fairy tales and mythological creatures.

“I don’t believe you.”

The man turned his body to look at her closely. Up close she could see the array of deep brown freckles and age spots against his skin. “Well, let me tell you a story then.”

–

Forty years before, the beach was a bountiful and a secluded spot for seals to wash ashore and sun bathe. Except those seals would shed their skins upon their descent from water and stretch into their human forms. They lauded in their freedom with their lengthened limbs and beautiful human forms. Anyone looking from afar would think some sort of nudist beach was ablaze, but then without a warning the area would be deserted leaving watchers baffled with the sudden silence. It wasn’t until those who would watch carefully would notice that the creatures would take their discarded seal skins with them before slinking back into the water that they would turn back into sea beasts.

One particular day a man came across a strewn pelt and stashed it in his knapsack thinking that it would be worth a lot to sell. He didn’t think anything about oddly the clean pelt, instead counted it as a blessing he had come across. After returning to the beach later that day he came across a beautiful woman weeping at the shore. He helped her, giving the second set of clothes in his pack before hearing out her story.

She had lost something important and couldn’t find it. When he asked, she revealed it was her skin, the man was confused. But upon realization of the tales told to him by the fisherman of the beach he had realized he had come across a selkie.

“For him it was love at first sight.” A smile came across the man’s face as he stared out at the ocean. “She was beautiful. Her skin was deep brown like cocoa and smooth as the water. Her long curly hair big, and her wide eyes… they held innocence and sadness in 'em.”

The man was smitten and his selfish desires got the best of him as he didn’t want to let her go. He sold the pelt to the local historian in town and instead promised to help the woman find her skin. As time passed the woman grew fond of him and they married, and had children though there was always a sad look in her eyes.

“She wanted to go home…” Roughed hands rubbed together noisily, and the old man’s raspy voice grew light.

There were tears in the corner of his eyes.

The woman grew aloof over the years as their children grew older, until the point when they left the house, she never stepped foot outside. She only sat in their room staring at the sea in the distance outside their window. She could no longer hide her displeasure at her stagnant state in life.

“The water was callin’ out to her.”

And so the man gathered all his money to retrieve the pelt back from the historian and gave it back to his wife who wept in relief at the fulfillment of what was promised to her. They parted ways that night. Her return to her seal form was awaited by a group of seals. She had never talked about her life in the water, but the man had never asked. He hadn’t realized maybe she had her own family out there mourning the loss of a daughter, sister, wife and maybe mother.

“That’s what he got for being so selfish,” the girl responded bitterly. Though the look in her eyes were sad despite the biting tone in her voice. She wondered even though she was still skeptical as she flipped the thin sand dollar around in her hand. “Do you really think my mother was one?”

Remembering back it seemed like it could be. Her mother had never talked about her family and there had strangely been no photos of her growing up. Her father too had never questioned how odd it was and for her, while growing up, it was just normalcy.

“Perhaps, so.” The fisherman rubbed his hands against the worn knees of his pants before standing up. In the distance the darker clouds were moving in, the waves hit against the rocks with more force. “The woman I told you about was my wife. She stopped coming by this beach ten years ago.”

“Do you think she…” the girl trailed off. A somber smile only met her hesitance. She felt bad for the man as he only shrugged.

“All I know is that they real, and they out there… somewhere. Don’t matter if we believe in ‘em or not.”

In the distance, a seal watched the two talk for a few moments. It gave out a sad cry before it disappeared underwater and swam away.

*

Inspiration