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Two nights pass, and each night Rey dreams. The dreams have changed. Now she dips between the waves as sea foam tickles her nose, crushes tide-smoothed pebbles between her toes and enjoys the chill of night air on her skin when she surfaces. She feels him with her in all of it, invisible but constant as a shadow.
The third night is cloudless, and she doesn't dream, because she doesn't sleep. Instead she throws on a sweater and a jacket, her thick socks and tall boots. She waits for the moon to reach its zenith and leaves her cottage behind as she makes for the beach. After nearly twenty minutes, she begins to think he isn't there. Perhaps their last encounter was only another dream and she is being an idiot. The possibility is disappointing.
But something shifts in the inky shallows, and she sees his dark hair and the pale oblong of his face poking out above the water. Just like last time, Rey perceives what he's thinking: He knew she would be waiting, and wasn't sure until this moment that he wanted to be found. He begins to wade out, and again she defers inexplicably to modesty and heads back toward the cottage.
Once inside, she leaves the door open. It's a risk, but dammit, she’s done questioning this. It isn’t long until she hears heavy steps on the gravel outside. He waits within the doorway, dressed much the same as last time, his eyebrows rising slightly, mouth just parted. She notices how full and pink his lips are.
And then she notices his feet and frowns. “You really don't have any shoes?”
“I left them on the beach. I didn’t think I would need them indoors.” He looks skeptical. “You're surprised?”
“No,” she admits. “You never had any in the dreams.”
He nods and mulls this over, his understanding uncanny as he is while he stands there at the threshold. Water drips from his hair and stipples the wooden floor. “Are you inviting me in?”
She chuckles. It sounds like the sort of thing a vampire would ask, but Rey knows enough to be certain he isn't that. When she dreams of him his skin is warm and his heart is beating, he tastes of salt and smells of brine and smoke. So yes, she’s had some time to think about what he isn’t, and what he may be.
“Yes. But you try anything"—she brandishes the heavy wooden oar she's been holding since she returned—“I am fully capable of defending myself. And I will.”
She’s spry and strong, and a quick clock over the head would down even a man his size. She keeps a pistol beneath a loose flagstone near the hearth too, but there's no need to be rash.
“I believe it.” His mouth curves in a faint smile and he shuts the door behind him. “And I’m not going to try anything.”
He has a seat on the couch as she shoulders her oar and heads to the kitchen to make tea. When she emerges a few minutes later, oarless and with two chipped, steaming cups, she finds him stretched out with his eyes half closed, basking in the heat of the fire. She waits for him to sit up before handing him one of the cups and joining him, though she sits at the other end.
She sips her tea, still scalding the way she likes it, then looks at him with interest. He’s gazing around the room, taking in her meager possessions. “Do you have a name?”
The question startles him, but he blinks a few times and recovers. “Yes. Do you?”
Why did she expect a straightforward answer? But he’s already in her home, drinking her tea, enjoying her fire, and she’s already threatened him with bodily harm. An exchange of names is downright benign. “Rey.”
“Ben.” It’s not what she expected—aggressively ordinary and somewhat comforting for it. “So tell me, Rey. Because my observations from when we last met still stand. What sort of woman invites a strange man into her isolated home late at night?”
She remembers his thinly veiled intrigue then, and how he seemed to identify her as something both other and known. “The sort of woman who thinks she knows what you are.”
“And what might that be?” He still hasn’t tried his tea, but he sniffs it now and makes a face before braving a taste. She can see that he regrets it.
“You’re selkie.” Rey watches his reaction, but all she sees is the tiniest twitch of his eyebrow. Not a denial, then. “The geography’s right. And your habits are . . . obvious.”
She omits her attraction to him, and her curiosity about where he keeps his true skin. And none of what she knows explains why she sees him nearly every time she sleeps. It warrants investigation.
“You’re very sure.” The firewood pops, and when he looks at her the orange light throws deep shadows on his face. “What about you, then? What are you?”
“I’m a mythologist.”
An itinerant existence in the fringes—following lore, seeking legends, quantifying them—but she likes it. Yet it’s a tiny field regarded with suspicion by both outsiders and the subjects of her study. It's difficult to talk to people about. And she’s never experienced anything quite like what she has since she came to this island.
“Ah.”
That’s all he has to say about it; it has settled something for him. They pass the next hour chatting, and it’s nice to hear another voice than her own. When silences settle, they are of the comfortable kind that don’t demand to be filled. Rey begins to wonder if she isn’t the only one who has been dreaming of the other. It’s the only way she can think to explain this near instant kinship she feels with him. Does Ben dream of her, or at all?
The lateness of the hour catches up with her. Her cup is empty; his is mostly full, the tea inside it long gone cold. The fire is low, and she has no plans to rebuild it. She rises without ceremony to take their cups but pauses halfway to the kitchen. “Is it true that—”
She changes her mind mid-question. Perhaps this sense a familiarity she feels is one-sided, a symptom of loneliness.
“Is what true?”
Or perhaps he feels it too. “That your people take human lovers when they come to land?”
“You’re the expert, aren’t you, mythologist?” His response met with a frown, he shrugs. “Some do.”
“Hm.” She retreats into the kitchen to leave the cups at the side of the sink. When she returns to the living room, he’s standing beside the hearth, extinguishing what remains of the embers. “I’m going to bed. Will you stay with me tonight, Ben?”
Even in the near dark, she can make out the way he inclines his head, and she thinks he must be looking to the front door. “Yes.”
The cottage gets cold most nights, but she thinks for once it won’t be a problem. Rey extends a hand and waits for him to take it, then leads him down the short hall to her bedroom.