Chapter Text
All your life, all you knew was the house. The house in which you grew up in. The house in which you never left without your father right by your side. Your mother was no different. The house was a cage and you and your mother were the birds only allowed out when the master - your father - was watching. It was something you simply got used to. You never questioned your father.
At least, not to his face.
Your mother would tell you stories, stories how the sea and everything beneath it. She told you about the fish, about the coral and about all the other creatures that resided in the vast ocean. It was something you grew to admire. It was the freedom you never had.
It was also the freedom your mother was taken away from.
She told you not just about the sea, but about the seals. She told you how she once was a seal and how she had a happy family, a herd she hung out with and was family with.
She told you about the warnings her herd would give about humans, about how selkies - you and her - were said to be so beautiful on land that many humans simply fell in love at the sight. And they told her not to wander out on land whenever it was day.
She told you about how she did just that one day and met your father.
She told you about how your father wooed her and courted her and how she gradually fell in love.
She told you about how your father soon stole her sealskin so that she was unable to return to the sea.
And she told you about how he also took yours from the very moment you were born, trapping you in your human form.
You would watch as she told you her stories, stories that you did and didn't want to experience, tears slowly starting to form in the corners of her eye and watched as they slowly trickled down her cheeks.
You never liked your father. Not especially after everything your mother told you. He seemed like a kind a gentle man to many. You thought so too when you were younger. Then you realised that it was all a lie, all a ruse just so he wanted you to trust him. You knew he had taken away your sealskin, letting you stay in the human form you soon became accustomed to. He never let you or your mother out of his sight, too afraid to lose you two. You didn't know whether it was love or some other twisted emotion he felt for the two of you.
Every so often, you would wonder about your sealskin. Where had your father hidden it? Could you possibly ever find it? You weren't optimistic. You were ready for a life of simply being human, never tapping into the other side of your heritage.
So when your mother told you one day with a half smile that she knew where your sealskins lay hidden, your emotions were conflicted. It seemed too good to be true, to return where you had came from? Back to the sea? The one place you always wanted to go to? But you listened to her, eager to run away from the cage you had been stuck in for your entire life. And she told you of the secret hiding place she suspected your sealskins were hidden.
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But you didn't expect your mother to disappear. Your mother - the sole person you could confide in - missing. You didn't know what to feel. Guilt and grief tore inside you and for a week or so, you were simply stunned. You locked yourself in your room, too grief-stricken to properly interact with your father. He told you kindly and gently, that she had simply disappeared.
You knew better.
She must have gone.
She must have escaped from the house first, to set an example for you to go join her as well.
And you knew you were definitely going to take that opportunity.
So the very night you made your decision, you broke into the hidden closet you previously believed closed and you saw it.
Your sealskin.
If you hadn't known, you would have believed it to be spare fabric, for any case where something happened.
But now you knew better. The shimmering fur laid in front of you was yours. You were born with it and you were separated from it at a young age. Picking it up, you noticed it felt like leather, yet it was soft and comforting.
Taking the chance, you ran that night and headed towards the sea.