Selkies II
Jan. 5th, 2024 02:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marjoricaIn his great grandfather’s time, a pair of brothers more venturesome than most had taken their boat further out than was generally deemed wise, for they had declared that the better shoals swam there. A storm had blown up and they did not return that night or the next or the one after that. Their mother and sisters spent many days searching the shore for anything that the sea might have given back of them - a board, a bone, a piece of net - but all to no avail. They were given up as lost, a warning to the other fishermen, until one Summer’s day when they arrived back in harbour, their boat patched and outfitted with strange sails.
They had been blown very far out of their way and by the grace of God been taken in by a strange folk. By way of riches they had each brought back a wife, sisters with hair the colour of primroses and eyes of a forgetmenot blue. The people of our shore tended towards dark hair and eyes. They did not know our speech to begin with, but soon enough were able to work with the other women. They produced a flock of golden haired children apiece and told them tales from their homeland that they were resigned to never seeing again.
If you went back further, there were other men rescued from small boats adrift on the sea who had in turn begotten children upon the women of the coast, whether they stayed or not. Men with dead black hair and hooded black eyes, with clothing and vessels made of ivory and skins.
If you went back further still there were rumours of families where not everyone had been entirely human, as Godless as that might sound.
They had been blown very far out of their way and by the grace of God been taken in by a strange folk. By way of riches they had each brought back a wife, sisters with hair the colour of primroses and eyes of a forgetmenot blue. The people of our shore tended towards dark hair and eyes. They did not know our speech to begin with, but soon enough were able to work with the other women. They produced a flock of golden haired children apiece and told them tales from their homeland that they were resigned to never seeing again.
If you went back further, there were other men rescued from small boats adrift on the sea who had in turn begotten children upon the women of the coast, whether they stayed or not. Men with dead black hair and hooded black eyes, with clothing and vessels made of ivory and skins.
If you went back further still there were rumours of families where not everyone had been entirely human, as Godless as that might sound.
