Archive of Our Own

Stephen

Maybe there had been more humans at the rock concert. Maybe the beach was simply larger. Stephen adjusted his feet on the rock beneath him, and the wave curled up to his shoulderblade and passed by leaving a swirl around his stomach on its way to the shore.

This was a strange day, but Connie had assured him that he would be fine, and he knew that the ocean would protect him. Up the road, Greg Universe's van was locked and secured with his skin inside of it—and Garnet's as well. Amelia and Jasper had both chosen to keep theirs closer. From the water, he waved to Mr. Universe.

The man waved back from their umbrella-shaded wooden table; Stephen knew he had been watching the whole time. Jasper sat on the other side, but Stephen could see his eyes were on the crowd even when he was hunched over. Amelia and Connie were somewhere in the crowd. Stephen scanned, but he didn't see them, or Garnet.

He allowed the sea air to calm his lungs. After all, this was more like the days before Connie, when he had swam with or without his allmothers near the shore to learn about humans in all their strange and dangerous ways. Just like then, there were young adults with speakers and electronics playing loud music in their own little circle. Golden lights and metallic twangs roared from the towers of Funland Arcade—which Connie had been excited about taking him to see later. Salt from the various food sellers competed with the salt from the ocean, mixed as it was with herbs and oils, dough and cheese, meats and fishes. Some faces Stephen had seen before, but dozens more were completely new to him, strangers as they should be. So strange—to think that in Connie's life, she met so many other people at her school, and she could stay in contact with generations of her family, and on top of that she could be introduced to more friends through other humans. How many lives sang in Connie's head? The thought of more humans in his life made Stephen's feet slip on the rock for a moment. He watched parents and children running down the beach, the strings that connected little hands to massive kites, boys and girls his age swimming and splashing in the shallower waters, and the hushed private conversations between friends and family, eyes and books. There was the waitress from the restaurant who had been worried about his head. There was the boy from the pit, with the spikes on his jacket. Did humans feel this current somehow, of every secret song, without knowing it was song at all? How could they stand it all?

Two hands suddenly wrapped around his torso and hefted him into the sky. Stephen felt an involuntary shriek leave his mouth, but he knew this grip from as far back as he could remember. He kicked his legs in the sea foam as Garnet tutted and hugged him to her chest.

"Gotcha."

Garnet grunted as she let him back down into the water. Stephen giggled as he fell back and floated, letting his allmother's body block out the sun. She pushed the entanglement of her wet hair out of her face and sighed down at him.

"You're growing up, little minnow," Garnet said. "Too big to throw around like we used to. Soon you'll be hunting on your own."

"I can hunt on my own."

"Mm, just like me?"

The gold in her eyes twinkled as she knelt down in the water and drummed her fingers on Stephen's chest. He growled, but didn't push the point.

"Like Jasper," he said.

Garnet's mock-exasperated sigh was enough to tell him that he wasn't going to get another lesson about danger out here. Both of them knew that Jasper was by and far the most experienced hunter. At this point, Connie and Greg knew that fact just as well. Even though they had seen how Jasper had tracked Stephen's song, they hadn't seen him bring home halibut, dolphins, and even a shark once. Jasper had herded Stephen away from dangerous currents more times than Stephen could count. But all of them protected each other in the open waters and sang the right currents.

As Stephen momentarily closed his eyes, he tried not to think about swimming alone to see Greg before the concert trip. Things could have ended up much worse than just the fever.

"I would still be hunting if I was human," Stephen mused. "Don't want to...do a shopping."

"How horrible."

"I heard Connie's ma 'n da. Didn't want to."

"Well, there aren't as many sharks on land, but you have to get a human job and play by human rules, and the last time you tried that..."

Stephen righted himself and frowned at Garnet as he bobbed in the water, but she met his grumpiness with a stern brow. She was mostly right, even though Connie didn't have to worry about some of the things her parents did. Connie got to go to school and learn. From what Stephen understood, that learning would let her get jobs, but he didn't grasp how or why, and Connie hadn't yet explained it to him. It wasn't too relevant, because when he had asked Mr. Universe about it, Mr. Universe had told him not to worry and that he dropped out of his school when he was playing music. If he could still get pizza, then there were no worries indeed.

"I'll learn with Mr. Universe. An' wash the cars."

"Just don't let Perry near them. He'll try to take them apart."

"That's...mechanics! A mechanic does that."

Garnet tutted and sank down in the water until she was at Stephen's height. "You shouldn't worry yourself with human machines. Even other humans don't understand them."

Humans didn't seem to understand a lot of human things, Stephen thought. How could they, when there was so much in the world? Even in something like a book, Stephen could flip through the pages and feel all the parts of its creation. How did the pages end up so square? A machine had to shape them with a giant blade. How did the paper get made? Another machine pressed dried plants together, apparently, shredded and reformed until it was the right kind to put the words on it. And, of course, how did the words get there? A more complicated machine took the words from a human's mind and imposed them in black ink, letter by letter, and set them in the right order. Machines upon machines had brought this marvel into his hands.

"Don't have to be taking them apart. Just washing, and living."

Stephen dipped backwards and engulfed his head underwater, a brief respite before he broke the surface and shook it off. Garnet stood up again and paced until she was behind him. Her hands slid under his shoulderblades, and Stephen obediently let his feet up to float along. He looked up at Garnet's face as she began to walk backwards, towing Stephen's body along the waves out to where the crests were less choppy.

"When you get older, you might not want to leave for shore," Garnet said. "And you have so many seasons ahead of you. You're learning so fast, Stephen. We just want you to be safe."

"I know. I won't go."

"You already did."

"But—I was not knowing—" Stephen tried to shake a stray lock of hair from his forehead. "Why not tell me about the fever? The burning?"

Garnet stopped walking out and started to pace in a circle. Stephen closed his eyes and let the gentle bobbing take away the dizziness that would come from staring at the swirling sky.

"You were told that you could never abandon your skin. Yes?"

"Mm..."

"And we told you that not all humans were safe?"

"But—"

"And you know the song of the sea, and what she gives you. Your home."

Stephen grumbled. It still didn't feel fair that he hadn't been told directly, even if all the things he had been told came together sensibly. Sense didn't matter when there was a whole world waiting for him, another world. In that world, he could have Mr. Universe with him as well as Connie and his colony. Everyone could be together.

But he had been reckless. Listening to Mr. Universe talk about risks and rulebreaking had swayed him, and even now Stephen couldn't say why. It hurt to admit how much his desires had endangered him—almost as much as it hurt to admit that he would've done it again. He would have taken his skin somehow and hidden it in a backpack. They could have stopped by more rivers and lakes so that Stephen could replenish himself in secret. Keeping secrets wasn't the right thing to do, though. Could he have told Mr. Universe then? Would that have made things better? It didn't matter now that everyone knew. The selkies were together again and Connie and Mr. Universe were sworn to their own secrecy.

Garnet pulled her hand up and brushed a thumb over Stephen's forehead. Drops of saltwater cooled his furrows.

"Do you know why it hurts?" she murmured.

"The fever?"

"Not just the fever. Wanting to be with Connie. School, and Mr. Universe, and then hunting, the call of the sea," said Garnet. "Everything that makes you Stephen."

"But...it doesn't hurt. I like to be with Connie. I like when I am singing her songs."

"Would you give up the water for her? Even if it was possible, would you?"

Stephen felt the tiny hairs on the back of his arms and back prickle, as if the water was listening intently. The boy tried not to grimace. Some things just weren't proper.

"Stephen, we are all made to change—not like humans are," Garnet said. "Like Connie. She will grow and find her way in the human world, but that's all she can be. One way forward through time, one language of mind, one kind of song. One skin. Your form and your skin need you to shift and swim. If we do not, we die."

The young selkie opened his eyes uncertainly, but Garnet's voice was as low and serious as she had always been. She sighed deeply and let go of Stephen's body. He righted himself in the water, treading with slow strokes of his feet.

"Nobody told me, I...I didn't..."

"Nobody taught you how to swim. Or that you need to blink, or breathe, or that your skin goes on the outside. Because it's sung from within, Stephen. Instinct."

Stephen stretched a foot down, but he couldn't quite touch the bottom here. His arms moved in slow circles, and it was only now that he realized: it wasn't just that he'd never been told how to tread water, but he had also never been aware of what his body was doing—or no, maybe he'd been aware, but he had never questioned it. A creeping swell of unfairness rolled through Stephen's chest, a weight that threatened to drag him down.

Of course he changed. On warmer evenings, he could rest on his spread-out skin, or slip into the water and explore the cooler depths. Cold nights meant snuggling body-to-body, but he had never thought about whether he wanted to press pelts together with his allmothers or let his hands wriggle out to grasp and hold their warmth to him. Some days he swam and some he wandered. There was constant pattern that he could only see in his memory. It shouldn't have felt so strange, but Stephen shook his head; there weren't words for this kind of discomfort.

"I-I don't understand. What do I do? I am—I love the world, and the sea, a-and Mr. Universe and Connie and her mum 'n da and I don't want to hurt. I don't!"

"Oh, Stephen."

Garnet pulled Stephen to her and stepped back until only her head and neck were above water. Stephen closed his eyes and let his words burn out. His allmother held him gently, and he didn't think about what Connie was doing without him, or if Mr. Universe was watching from the beach and trying to spot him swimming around. He was weightless. There was no urge for his skin, no fire in his bones. All the uneasy prickling came from his heart.

"You don't have to make the choices that humans do," Garnet said, "but you're not free to join them. Selkies must always return to the sea, and when the sea is satisfied, she brings out the tide to let you run. Do you understand?"

"I guess so."

"Connie will have to choose. She knows she is human, and that there are songs of loneliness and fear that will destroy her. Either you two will find a song together, or as you grow you will drift apart. There are so many wills, so many forces knotting us together. Where those tides break, nobody can know."

"Will they break between us, too? You, and Rosa, and everyone, and me?"

"You'll grow into your own bonds. Perhaps you'll stay like Jasper and hunt for us when we grow too weak to fight the tides. Or, you'll travel far and away, raise your own colony and your own pups."

Stephen giggled at that thought, but he didn't know why. He tightened his grip around Garnet into an actual hug as he imagined what other selkies were in the world. Or, if he somehow grew up with Connie, what would their colony look like? Where would they be? He could never ask her, but the thought lingered just for a little in his mind and mouth. It tasted like wild rosehip on his tongue.

Selkies could find each other through song, but if some humans heard, then maybe one of them would become a hunter, like the man with the knife. Maybe one of them would become a person like Mr. Universe. But where would one selkie find another outside of the colony? Stephen looked out towards the horizon, craning his neck over Garnet's shoulder. Once, he thought he had heard a distant song in the middle of the night, a couple seasons before he had approached Connie on the pier. He had awoken, but he had never told another, nor had he thought about what was being sung. If there was another who'd been calling, did they know they were heard? Should he have sung back? Maybe that would be him one day, and he would drift through the warm waves, waiting in blue silence.

"I want to stay with Connie for as long as I am—for—" Stephen paused, growling at the grammar before leaning back in Garnet's arms. "For as long as I can ."

"Connie's teaching you well."

"She's good to be teaching. Song is..."

"Humans make do without song," Garnet whispered as she let go of him. "Sometimes, they have too many words. Sometimes they need them."

Stephen settled back in the water and met Garnet's eyes. Both selkies stopped. Stephen's ears felt full of noise once more, all the voices and all the words that came with them. If he wanted to, he could pick up the little pieces of language that Connie had taught him, the things she had said that he didn't understand but could use for their meaning. But the humans were silent compared to the overwhelm of the sea beneath them. All the language turned to noise, indistinguishable from the shrill cry of the gulls and the grunting machinery. Stephen could see Garnet read his thoughts as carefully as Connie read through her books. Reading , that was the best word, the study of another through language but also something more, something for which Stephen knew there would be no word. Stephen let his legs kick for just a moment before he nodded.

Instantly, both of them took a breath and slid underneath the surface. Stephen twisted in a gentle spiral and rubbed himself in the invisible salt. He could see so clearly through the waters of the bay, and he could see how much farther he and Garnet had waded than most of the humans. Some legs and rings bobbed near the surface, but most of them were standing closer to the shore. There were no motorboats allowed near this part of the beach, or at least Connie had told him that. The fishermen docked on the other side of town, or they drove to where their boats could be held away from where everyone lived.

Beach City—that's what Connie said they'd named it. What made a city different than a town or a state, Stephen had asked once, but he had forgotten the answer. He kicked down to the sand and ran his hands along the softness of the bar. Garnet drifted above him and touched his back lightly. She cast a shadow that shivered in strange light patterns in front of Stephen's path, like twisting questions felt when Stephen pushed them into his stomach.

Garnet probably knew what Stephen would've chosen at one point. She always seemed to solve his problems before he did, but not after Connie had appeared. She had allowed Connie in, and that had started him down this current. Stephen turned towards the shore.

After a certain point, he could kick and kick and there just wouldn't be enough room between the sand and the surface to allow for swimming. Stephen wriggled through the water with Garnet pursuing him. The depth diminished, one narrowing at a time, and a hurtling wave sent Stephen's head up past the barrier and into the air. He gasped involuntarily and scrambled to get upright, compelled by his body's own righting, trying his best not to scrape his soft skin against the coarseness of the impending beach.

Over time he had learned how to shed his skin and climb to his feet fluidly; without his skin, Stephen feld oddly exposed as his bare back rose from the water. He shoved his hands into the grit and stumbled in the shallows. Little waves buffeted his ankles to and fro as he shook saltwater from his hair. He didn't have to wonder when the sea would call him back. Stephen let out a happy bark as he tugged at his sopping trunks. The world of the beach prickled his ears with newfound sounds. Who would think that he was anything but a normal human boy, and who wouldn't understand the joy of being in the summer sun?

Stephen turned towards the ocean and watched Garnet stride out towards him. She had opted not to crawl like him, but she wasn't a pup anymore. She pushed her hair back and rolled her shoulders, content with her presence and guardianship. Stephen knew that neither one of them would be in danger today. Her eyes studied Stephen as she got her bearings and took a deep breath.

"Stephen! Garnet!"

Both selkies turned at Connie's call. Amelia trailed behind, smirking at Stephen as Connie broke into a jog. Stephen recognized the flowers that covered the light blue of Connie's top—they were sunflowers , and he could also recall that they turned towards the sun during its journey across the sky. Didn't all plants do that? But he didn't want to ask now. Stephen squeezed the water from his shorts' drawstring and pushed his toes into the sand.

He hadn't asked Garnet about Connie coming to the island yet. A sleepover with the colony would have less pizza and television, but Connie might be just as happy to be with him and the rest of the selkies. Stephen could show her how he fished, where the deepest parts of the sea were, how to navigate the currents. They could watch the stars without the lights of the city blurring them out. They could be warm together. They could sing. Stephen wished he knew how to sing to Connie without hurting her, or at least without fearing what that hurt could be. Sometimes he would hear her questions repeating in his dreams. He would hear words that were not Connie's words as they turned from questions into fingers, physically reaching into him for all the answers that he couldn't say or didn't know. That wasn't his Connie. It couldn't ever be.

"There's a sand castle contest happening up by the visitor's center," Connie said, pointing over Stephen's shoulder. "It's an all-ages thing, so I guess they want family photo-ops for the tourism board, but they'll take anyone. The winners get free t-shirts! Or maybe a coupon booklet. We only heard part of the mayor's announcement since his mic's glitching out..."

Her face softened as she trailed off, less excited and more of an emotion that Stephen couldn't find a word for. He had tried to disguise the fact that half of what she said was lost on him. Amelia came up past Connie and leaned on the girl's shoulder.

"You two versus us two?" she said. "Not that we're winning anything. Maybe Jasper can judge."

Even if Jasper wanted to, Stephen secretly wondered if Jasper knew what a castle was. Garnet sighed and laid both hands on Stephen's shoulders.

"I think that I'll leave playing in the sand to you three. Unless perhaps Mr. Universe wants to join the fun."

"Yeah! Why don't you go ask him, Stephen? We'll meet you down there," Connie said.

"Yeah?"

Stephen looked up at Garnet in all her patience. Her fingers trailed lines in the salt that was drying on his shoulders. She said nothing, but the trails let up, the briefest distance between the two of them. There was always distance now. They were among the humans again. Did that even matter when they were all safe? Where nobody knew who they were except for Connie and Mr. Universe? Stephen wished she would give him an answer, but she only smiled. It was an answer in its own way: he was free, because he was safe.

The boy fixed his best smirk as he turned back to Connie and Amelia.

"Us two versus you two. You're on!"

He and Connie grinned at each other as Amelia snorted. Both of them knew the line from one of Connie's dramas and the rivalry that followed. In a flash, he broke from Garnet's grasp and began to sprint across the sand towards Mr. Universe.

Stephen's feet felt heavy as they sunk into the dry sand, but he pushed on as fast as his legs could carry him. In the ocean, he could propel himself with and against the water, floating in nothingness. There was no such nothingness on the beach. Every step had presence and weight, his body against the ground, and Stephen felt joyful force as he came closer to Greg Universe one footfall at a time. His heavy breaths flew over the points of his teeth; he felt their sharpness, his own smile, the wind across his body. Stephen was flying. Mr. Universe had already spotted him and was leaning off the bench with open arms. Stephen allowed himself to fly right into the man's torso. He squealed in the engulfing hug as he was lifted off the ground.

"Rrf! C'mere, scamp, can't take me down that easy—!"

"We...gotta versus!"

"Eh?"

Stephen swung his legs around until one was on either side of Mr. Universe's lap. Just like that, the man adjusted himself so that Stephen could plop himself into a seat. Jasper let out a subtle snort; if Stephen were to try and climb on Jasper like this, he'd be dumped onto the sand before getting a hug in.

"Sand castle contest!" Stephen chirped. "Connie 'n Amelia wanna get us."

"Oh yeah, the mayor drove by earlier. I thought we had to evacuate for a second—he's gotta get that speaker fixed."

Stephen raised his best expectant eyebrow. Mr. Universe smiled and patted his ribcage with heavy hands. Stephen giggled as he felt the echoes through his gut.

"As long as we can borrow a bucket and some shovels, we'll be right as rain. I've learned a few secrets from my beach years that'll have 'em slack-jawed."

Mr. Universe turned around to Jasper. "You, uh, you coming along?"

Jasper's eyes flared in the umbrella's shadow. Nothing else moved. Mr. Universe tried to hide a swallow as he turned back to Stephen and shrugged.

"Looks like it's you and me, kid. Whenever you're ready?"

Stephen could see it now, or at least he thought he could. Rosa had had to sing to him the day after coming back to the island, and Amelia had sung to him as well. It was a long and horrible song, but the image of Mr. Universe's eyes as he had first seen them came back to Stephen then. Their depth now was strange and fragmented, an imperfect blue, one that only humans could have as far as Stephen could tell. It was a blue that only Stephen could have made with this song and yet it did not belong to him. As much as any color belonged to any living thing, Mr. Universe's eyes were his alone. The man smiled so warmly as he tilted his head in the direction of the contest. Stephen stared for just a moment longer.

"Ready."

—Connie

Structural integrity was for when Connie had grades at stake. As she sculpted the sand into a pseudo-column, it felt even more relaxing to know that they didn't need a plan to make their castle; Amelia certainly didn't have one. It didn't matter to Connie because this was the first time she could recall when Amelia was somewhat relaxed—or at least, she seemed less on edge than the last few times they'd been together.

The selkie was hauling a couple buckets of wet sand up from the beach, and she grunted as she set them next to Connie. Her black hair was wind-strewn and unkempt, and granules and patches covered her ancient t-shirt. She grinned and flopped next to Connie, tracing a pattern in their contest-designated "castle zone."

"Thanks!" Connie said as she reached into the bucket. "And thanks for doing this with me."

"Hey, if I have to watch the pup, might as well try to have fun," said Amelia.

"You don't have to—I think Mr. Universe has a pretty good eye on him."

"That's why I have to."

Briefly, the weight of frustrated memories flashed between them. Connie and Amelia both turned to look down a couple blocks at Stephen and Greg Universe attempting to build their own structure.

Mr. Universe was leaning back, covered in sand from the waist down. Stephen was asking small questions, impossible to hear over the sound of the crowd, as he shaped the mud into a kind of mermaid tail. Connie could tell it was a mermaid because he was holding up a plastic mermaid mold, pink and brittle. She could see the awkwardness on Mr. Universe's face as he glanced around, hoping nobody was overhearing their conversation. Maybe he was doing Connie's job of explaining human myths and legends now—without historical references, probably. But it was just as likely that the concept itself was puzzling to Stephen. Progress seemed to be going slowly, but they were still trying to smile in the desecrated sand-kingdom of abandoned buckets and shovels.

"He's trying to get better," Connie murmured. "I just wish that that meant something."

"Yeah. Me too."

Connie began the outline of a square in the sand. She shaped the edges of a rampart without the final version in her mind's eye.

"Do you trust me at all?" she asked.

Amelia looked up sharply, but with that specific sharpness that, despite her internal misgivings, reminded Connie of a particularly alert dog. Stephen would perk his head up like that too, some animal instinct driving the muscles. Amelia let her hand rest in the cool mud as she seemed to ponder what Connie was really asking.

"Should I not trust you?" she said finally.

"You can feel however you want to feel. I'm just saying, I'm just as human as he is. Right?"

"But you're just a pup too. And if we don't like you, we'll eat you right up—"

"Perry already warned me and he said I was too scrawny," Connie chided calmly. "So don't think these threats will work on me."

To Connie's surprise, Amelia snorted and shook her head, as if she had expected this kind of level-headed response—or as if she didn't care. Connie knew that she was trying too hard to appreciate Amelia's presence here. In any other context, the aloof distance would've driven Connie to frustration. But maybe this was Amelia's natural relaxed state. As much as Connie hated to admit it, she and Perry were fairly alike in their mannerisms.

"He's hard to talk to sometimes, though," she said.

"Who, Stephen?"

"No—Perry. We haven't talked much, but..."

"But he growls and sings and sounds weird to humans," Amelia finished.

Connie nodded and tried to hide her grimace. Amelia rolled her eyes as she crunched sand in her fists. She got onto her knees and started to match Connie's columns, but without the geometric smoothing.

"He's never cared about being around 'em. For talking and stuff," Amelia said. "We're all like that to start, I think, but sometimes you learn from trying to fit in and sometimes—"

"Jasper too?"

Amelia stiffened with both hands cupping a pillar of sand. A certain stillness raised the hair on her arms, or at least Connie knew that even the constant sea breeze couldn't account for the kind of chill that ran through them both. Amelia smoothed out her part of the castle quietly, as if she was about to be snuck up on, before she attempted to shrug nonchalantly again.

"Nobody knows much about Jasper as a pup, that's for sure," Amelia murmured. "He's been with Rosa the longest, I think? I...I don't know. He was there when she found me. And when they'd found Stephen, too. But he hasn't always been with us. He used to go out for a long time, days. Not for hunts."

"How old were you?"

That was a risk. Connie and Amelia looked at each other across the sand, and for a brief moment the beach faded away. All the sounds of the children and parents and surf and seagulls became lost between the two sculptors. Strangely, Connie saw in Amelia the same humanization that she could see in Stephen, as opposed to the frequent animalism in his smile, the pendulum of their states. Jasper and Perry were the wry creatures; Pearl might be as well to some extent, though she'd never admit it. All the selkies had their feral moments, but as she watched the purple light glimmer across Amelia's eyes, Connie knew that she had once been too human. The girl's stomach began to churn with the psychic sand of a boundary crossed too early.

"I remember what Garnet said. About what had happened before," Connie said despite her uncertainty. "There are folk tales about selkies, but I know that's not—"

"No. No, it's fine. But I don't want to talk about it."

As Amelia turned away, some horrible part of Connie's mind told herself that she understood what Amelia had gone through. But that wasn't true at all. Maybe she had been one of the young selkies that had longed for the sea after marriage like in the picture-books, or maybe she had been involuntarily taken by a song-struck human. Amelia brushed a strand of dark hair from her eyes before it fell right back into place.

"I guess I'm kind of the youngest? To our colony, I mean," Amelia said. "Stephen couldn't even walk back then."

"Wait. Rosa had already found him?"

"Yeah. Did anyone tell you about the others?"

"Um, yeah, there was...Bishara?"

Amelia nodded grimly.

"And Lapis. They'd just barely left, I guess, I never knew 'em. But I didn't really expect to find anyone else." Amelia paused. "What's wrong?"

Connie unfurrowed her brow and blinked at the sand. The layers of parapets and little cones were coming into place, but she had formed them in some kind of haze. She attempted a smile before consternation won out.

"I dunno—I guess I imagined that everyone was already together by the time Stephen came around. Like you'd all found each other as grown-ups, and then this child came into your life to teach you life lessons and—"

Amelia snorted. Connie jerked her head up and straightened her back in mock indignation. She opened her mouth to complain, but Amelia just shook her head and gestured to Stephen and Mr. Universe.

"You know, he tries to talk to us about books that you read together," said Amelia, "and I never got into that like he does? But you really thought that this was some kind of story you were living, huh."

"What's so wrong about that? Maybe it could've been like that, I don't know!"

"Too bad—this is it, kid. Just a couple monsters."

Connie opened her mouth, but her words caught in her throat as she watched Amelia idly dumping sand into the middle for a second layer. All the humor had drained from the selkie's half-smile.

"Is that...is that how you see yourself?" she said quietly.

"What's wrong with that?"

"I don't think of you as a monster. I don't think of Stephen as a monster at all. Not even Jasper."

"Connie..."

Amelia grimaced as she smoothed out what she could of their not-quite-a-square. Whatever they had been building before, they weren't building anything like it now. Connie ran her hands over the grit and felt it grip against her palms.

"Being a monster is how we keep folks away. I—I'm not gonna talk about it, I said I wasn't, but...if we start to think we're like you? If we think we can just pretend to be human? That's where all the bad stuff starts," Amelia muttered.

"I know, I know what happened to Stephen was—"

"It's not even about Stephen!" Amelia snapped. "It's about our will to survive. And that means hurting humans who wanna hurt us. Every human wants to hurt us."

"I...I don't want to. Mr. Universe... He doesn't want to hurt Stephen, you know that."

Connie couldn't even look at the pair right now. They were probably burying each other in sand, laughing as Stephen pointed out some strange new design in their building, or maybe Greg was showing Stephen some new techniques for sculpting with petroleum-plastic tools that Stephen had never held before. They had no idea what Amelia was saying as she hid her quiet glower and grabbed the empty bucket.

"If you had gotten in the way, he would've hurt you," the selkie said before stalking back to the shore.

The worst part is that Connie couldn't even cry out a denial. She watched Amelia's black hair shifting in the wind. It was easier just to study their little sculpture—a series of upside-down cups around a square base, some kind of shell collection surrounding it, misplaced and mismatched dimensions...

Would she have been happier working with Stephen? Probably, but Amelia would've been happier not being here at all. Connie clutched her knees and imagined all the things that Amelia wasn't telling her about the past. In the back of her mind, she remembered the warnings from her mother about not bicycling after a certain hour, and about how to use her phone for emergencies and why they were important. She remembered asking her father about why the list of high-school classes were offering a self-defense class for women. She could call to mind the statue of a selkie she had seen online. Its rusted bronze was buffeted by the cold Atlantic every day, a reminder of the vengeance the selkie wife took upon the fisherman. The statue's cold and naked body always lingered in Connie's head, and not just because the darkest parts of its blue were the same shade as Greg Universe's transformed eyes.

He wouldn't have hurt her. He couldn't. Even in the grip of madness, Mr. Universe would've known that Connie was someone's child herself. That would've taken over. Right? The truth was that she had no idea and she didn't want to find out. Connie had only seen the tail end of Mr. Universe's will unraveling, and there had only been three witnesses to that madness in action: himself, Stephen in his fever, and Jasper. Jasper, of course, would have hurt her to save Stephen—even if Stephen would have begged him not to. The path of least resistance was bloody and human. Connie felt her stomach turn just thinking about it.

There was blood on Mr. Universe. The van smelled like blood. Whose blood...

"Hey."

Amelia sloshed two more buckets of liquid sand down with heavy thumps. A tiny gasp left Connie's body, and it turned into a cough as Amelia sat back on the ground. Connie hadn't realized that she'd been holding her breath.

"Sorry," she said after she'd caught her wind. Connie shifted back onto her knees. "Let's just keep making...something."

She reached into the bucket and briefly held a pile of mud in her hand. Connie shifted it from palm to palm, almost meditatively, as if slowing the motion would slow her aching heart. The wind cooled the sand and sunlight gradually warmed it, turning the mess into malleable material, or at least something that resembled it. Connie squeezed it in one hand, held her breath on her own accord, then released her lungs and fist at the same time. Maybe she had just imagined it all coming together, because as soon as she let go, the salty silt slipped down the crevice of her palm and made a dime-sized imprint on the hot beach.

Amelia shoved both hands into the bucket and pulled out a massive fistful of mud in both hands. Connie watched her silently opening the gap between palms. Dribbles of mud landed on the beach, then the thin layers hardened, and the piles on top of it dried into odd columns. Connie had seen something like this before—with one's fist as a conduit for little spiracles—but she couldn't recall from where. It was probably some other beachgoer, another kid who had discovered such a technique.

"It's not you," Amelia said flatly.

"I—" Connie squeezed the mud again. "I know."

"Sucks that you have to deal with it, but you wanted Stephen in the first place."

"I didn't know that he was...whatever he was. I just didn't want to feel alone."

"You get used to it."

Connie pulled some sand from behind her and mixed it into a handful of watery mud. Something structural had to be possible from this mess. She pursed her lips and sighed irritably despite herself.

"Yeah, selkies are sad and independent, I know all of that. Nobody told you you had to be with Rosa and the colony," she said. "Or maybe Rosa did tell you that in her own way, that's between you two. But we're not that different. And Stephen and I aren't that different either. I want to be more like him."

Amelia opened her mouth to snark, but Connie sat up straighter and intentionally cooled her voice, like she was icing the burning wounds that her words were threatening to open inside her.

"I did not just want him. He could've jumped back into the water and disappeared forever and I would've had no idea. Why shouldn't I be his friend? He wanted me to be his friend, too—and I like it like that. I want to be friends with all of you. I want to show you guys all the goodness you can find for yourselves. Amelia...I don't always know the right things to do or say. But I'm trying. Stephen's trying. I just want that to mean something."

Some part of Connie was reaching to find her mother's tone, its specificity and its venom, qualities that she could use to leverage her argument with no talking back even from sea monsters. Even if she knew how to do so, Connie felt herself fading back into the same scared girl on the docks. But that was just her voice and posturing. Nobody could deny that the shy grade-schooler had demolished the walls of her old solitude now. The sun was her audience and benefactor. Her neighbor-cum-uncle-figure was hugging her best friend as they played in the sand behind them. Connie got to remind herself every day that magic was real when she woke up and remembered Stephen's silver eyes, how they would stare into her own, and how wonderful it felt to be wonderous to such a creature in return.

"It does. I don't like it, but it means something. To him."

Amelia gestured with her shoulder to where Stephen and Greg were play-arguing about structural integrity. Their sand castle was growing, little by little, into something that was uniquely theirs. Connie didn't even look at the sand she was massaging. Some part of her would put it down when the integrity was right, whatever that felt like. Amelia turned her gesture into a seamless shrug.

"Rosa hasn't told him everything," the selkie continued. "I haven't, either. I don't want to sing that to him. I don't want to sing that to anyone ever again."

"Did you sing it to Rosa?"

Another shrug.

Connie nodded quietly. It wasn't her place to ask. Trust wasn't like a sand castle that could be built over one afternoon, or something that could be decided upon with precision and material choice. The two of them over time would find the right place to be, wherever that was—and right now Connie had to rebuild.

"Well, we're not singing here, are we."

As she poured a little sand into the bucket, Connie could sense Amelia's eyebrow raising, like a little lilt in the wind. She grimaced soundly and gestured to the mismatched tower-rock-outline they had assembled thus far.

"We're not gonna win any contests, but we should finish something before they blow the whistle or however they end these things. Didn't you say you wanted to have fun?"

"Why do humans find any of this stuff fun, anyway?"

"Do you guys not play in the sand sometimes? Never tried to bury Stephen?"

" Tch . Well, a couple times..."

"What we really need to do is get Jasper over here," Connie muttered conspiratorially. "Get him to try and build a tower. Or see if he'd let us bury him."

Amelia paused, then bulked up her shoulders and grumped up her face in a terrible, but recognizable impression. Despite the horrors, Connie found herself stifling a laugh.

" Grr, Stephen, get all the buckets! " Amelia growled. " Or I'll eat your human friend! "

"He would not! He—tolerates me!"

"Yeah, well..."

Connie couldn't envision Jasper saying more than one or two words to her—or at all. Wherever he was right now, he probably had all his senses attuned to Stephen's safety. Connie restrained herself from looking around just to make sure, but she shared a quick affirmative shrug with Amelia. Amelia, after all, shared a den with the beast of a man. She'd seen the hunter in his prime.

And clearly, he knew that nobody was in danger now. Connie shuddered momentarily, a kick from the bluster in her brain trailing chilling questions. Each inconclusive thought and horrible memory was tangible to her when she let them get too deep. Her nerves whispered with no answer. It was the hardest feeling to shake, but Connie knew she had to, however she could, whatever that meant. Amelia was trying the same thing, with her eyes cast to the sand as she hummed and mixed their grit and mud together. What were they building? What did it matter?

The cold seawater made the hairs on Connie's arm prickle as she dug her fingers into the muddy bucket. Sometimes, the physical world was all that could get her head to stop moving. She inhaled the summer heat and paused for just a moment. Cutting through the peace were the sounds of joy—a car distantly honking twice, inoffensively; slaps of bare feet running across the mud of shifting tides; and, above the conversations of humans and cries of gulls, Stephen's laughter in her ears.

—Greg

If someone were to point out the differences between Greg and Stephen and question their connection, Greg could point out at least one distinct similarity: the two of them could sleep in pretty much any position, anywhere. He could easily put himself in the role of a folding chair, and he could put Stephen in the role of his younger self, sat backwards, totally conked out.

Between swimming, building, walking, and a little bit of chess, Stephen had apparently exhausted himself. Greg had consciously avoided checking the time. Perhaps kids had some sort of internal inertia that evened out after a while, one that varied from body to body. The other possibility was that Stephen's animal instincts meant he needed more naptime in general, and he was almost catlike in both his need and ability to sleep wherever there was sun and soft surfaces. In another life, maybe Greg could've been a cat himself. Cats didn't have to worry about credit cards or insurance or legacies. To be fair, neither did selkies.

Selkies .

The wooden table creaked a little as Greg shifted his weight. He had only heard about selkies in passing, or maybe he was misremembering from books and stories. Truth, physical truth, had turned those stories into a hundred-pound creature whose legs were locked around his own. Greg stroked Stephen's back, and let his hands venture to the spot above Stephen's hips where he had seen the boy's skin turn to fur.

There were new rules now—new rules for reality. What else existed in this messed-up magical world? Were there witches and monsters around every corner? Who else knew about beasts of legend, and which legends were actually true? It seemed impossible to Greg that selkies were the only real cryptid out there. If that ended up being the case, Greg at least knew better than to go looking for them. One of them had accidentally turned his brain inside-out, one of them had flirted with him, and another had dismembered and eaten a wannabe cop.

Greg forced himself to take a deep breath. They were at the end of a long day, and stressing Stephen out wasn't how he hoped to end it. Alone time was precious and infrequent. Greg closed his eyes and kissed the salt on top of Stephen's head. He could still pretend, as long as he knew he was pretending. What was the harm.

"Hey, Mr. Universe—"

Connie's greeting was overshadowed by the thump and grumble of Jasper seating himself on Greg's right. Stephen barely snorted in his sleep as Greg inched away, trying to give the massive selkie a bit of wiggle room. Connie gently sat on the other side with what little benchroom there was left. She leaned up closer to Greg's ear nervously.

"I tried to talk to him about the food around here, but he wasn't interested," she whispered. "Sorry."

"That's okay. Today's about everyone."

"Yeah. Amelia and Garnet are checking out the arcade, I think. Amelia likes those old games."

She was fairly young, so that made sense. Something told Greg that Stephen wouldn't take to video games like he did books or drawing, but who could say. Greg rode out his smile until he couldn't ignore the presence drilling into him psychically. All he had to do was glance up to see Jasper's venom. Of course it was merited, but it still chilled Greg to the bone. Maybe Jasper wouldn't attempt to maul him in public. Maybe it was best not to risk a jab anyway.

Connie cleared her throat.

"Hey, do you remember when Stephen and I were kinda talking to each other about another sleepover, a few days ago?"

"Of course—how'd that all go, by the way?"

"It was so much fun! We read a lot, and I got to show Stephen a couple of my favorite movies, and we did a game night with popcorn! Mom and dad really like him too, which is—normal? I guess it's normal, I've never really had anyone over before."

"That's as normal as normal gets! I think. Last sleepover I had was before you were born," Greg chuckled.

"Would you...like to host one, maybe?"

Greg raised an eyebrow, not just as the offer, but at Connie's attempted nonchalance. As far as he could tell there was no particular reason to have the kids crash in the van. The only connection he could think of was their shared secret, and unless Stephen was going to turn into a seal and be the mattress—

Stephen squeaked softly in his sleep, and Greg released his unintentional grip on Stephen's back. He grunted and adjusted himself; Jasper was big enough to be anyone's couch, but Stephen was probably getting a little old for this sort of arrangement.

"Like a camping thing!" Connie blurted out. "With us three and a...chaperone?"

"Chaperone?"

The sound of shifting hair made Greg look at Jasper, who locked eyes and turned his neck until the joints crunched with a sound like crumpled steel.

"Right," Greg muttered, "a chaperone."

"But we don't have to hide anything there. I...really liked having Stephen over. But we can't be as open with my parents about... You know."

"Have you talked to them about it?"

"I mentioned it to my mom, but we didn't bring it up fully yet." Connie looked down at the sand. "What I'd really wanna do is go out to the rest of them. Where Stephen lives. That's another problem."

Where did Stephen live, actually? Greg thought about real-life seals—assuming that the selkies didn't also count, but that was another tangent—and where they usually spent their days. Too many beaches around here were overpopulated with tourists and fishermen. Did seals just live in the water like whales or dolphins? Thinking about Stephen in the open ocean suddenly made Greg's fingers clench that much tighter as he thought about orcas, sharks, the unfathomable deep, and his boy all alone, and then he imagined Connie in the grip of a wave—

"That's more than a problem," Greg murmured.

"What do you mean?..."

"Connie, I did my fair share of youthful adventures, but this is different. Do you actually know where Stephen lives?"

Connie shifted from side to side and lifted her feet to let sand pour from her sandals.

"I know that it's, um, an island? I think?" said the girl. "It's not too far, can't be, 'cause they all come to the beach quick enough. But it's far enough that they're hidden. I mean, I wouldn't swim there. We could, you know, rent a boat? Or those ocean kayaks!"

"I—"

Greg let out a deep, not-quite-defeated breath and reached up to hold Stephen to his chest. He pushed his hands up through the boy's deep black scalp, thick and tangled as kelp. Stephen barely stirred in his peaceful little unconsciousness.

"Would you tell your parents?"

"I couldn't. You know I couldn't! Mom's probably still paranoid about me swimming, and they'd probably want to make a family outing of it to meet everyone, or something. Dad tries to interrogate Stephen about school, and normal kid stuff, and—it's—"

Connie wobbled her hands in front of herself, like she was trying to construct a comparison out of jelly as her words fell apart in front of her. To her credit, this whole ordeal was beyond words, but it had always been like that. Greg followed her motions without a word before she slumped back against the table and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Having a magical friend can be a pain in the neck," she muttered.

Greg chuckled lightly and shifted his foot until he accidentally bumped up against Jasper. The mountain of muscle grunted again, that alien deep-throated warning that made Greg's skin crawl as he remembered the night he first heard its call. Briefly, he lifted his fingers to graze the since-faded bruise where Jasper had choked him. He couldn't quite meet Jasper's yellow eyes, but he side-eyed the brief glint of sharp teeth inches below.

"You want a real pain in the neck, try being his dad."

The two of them attempted to share a nervous, humorless laugh. As that half-second faded, Greg hoped in his heart of hearts that Connie didn't feel any burden for what had happened. If the whole ordeal of the early summer was anyone's fault, it was his. Stephen had only followed his instincts, and Greg had made some monumentally shortsighted decisions, hypnotized or not. Blame in general would be a lot easier if Jasper didn't make it abundantly clear how much he wished he'd used teeth on Greg instead of hands.

"But even with the sleepover stuff and boats and water and all of those problems, I don't know if you'd be safe in general," Greg muttered, shifting Stephen's bulk once again. "What would you do if something happened out there and I couldn't bail you out?"

"I don't know. I trust them, though. I don't think they'd do anything to harm me, at least."

Greg looked at Connie, then at Jasper, and then back down to Connie. He cleared his throat.

"Okay, it's probably...culturally insensitive to say this? But I'm pretty sure that Jasper would eat you if given half a chance."

Connie spluttered and gestured wildly around her for a defense that clearly wasn't coming.

"Why the heck is everyone so convinced I'm going to get eaten?!"

Both of them turned to Jasper. The selkie straightened up and, to Greg's shock, raised his eyebrows pensively. He curled his lip as he sized Connie up and down with his eyes. Then, Connie balked as Jasper let out a little khfff and shrugged affirmingly.

After a second of silence, Greg said, "Ummm, if you're serious, I-I'm having a lot of second thoughts about this whole arrangement."

"No! No, he is not!"

Connie all but jumped to her feet and planted one hand on the table, pointing at a nonplussed Jasper with the straightest finger that she could muster. "If you don't swear that I'm not going to be lunch, I'll—I'll tell Stephen, and he'll never give you another hug again!"

Greg could feel Stephen fidgeting; the power of the nap was wearing off in the face of Connie's protests. He let the boy slowly lean back and stretch his various limbs, squeezing Greg's gut and torso as the warm waking world came back to him. Jasper was taking it in stride, and almost looked amused that Connie would even attempt such a contract. How would she enforce it, anyway. Jasper half-opened his mouth to grunt her away.

In the half-second of absolute stillness that followed, Greg barely had time to register the white disc as it silently flung itself from the corner of his vision.

The blur of a poorly thrown toy immediately preceded the plastic DONK that every beachgoer could recognize as the disc made contact with Jasper's forehead. A once-smooth flightpath turned wobbly and lopsided, and the disc landed awkwardly in the sand as Jasper reeled in momentary frazzlement with a sound like a gargling tiger. As Jasper blinked away the befuddlement and pain, Greg found his hands had held Stephen even tighter with a squeeze that was waking the boy up for sure if he wasn't awake already. His eyes opened in half-conscious wonder as he looked from Connie to Jasper. Connie was covering her mouth with both hands, possibly with the same immediate fear that Greg had: if Connie wasn't going to get eaten today, some poor beachgoer was next in line. Stephen briefly let go to rub at his face.

"Hnuh...?"

"It's okay, Stephen, just—ah, Jasper got—"

Tiny footsteps patted over the sand, and both Stephen and Greg turned as a girl no older than seven or eight stopped in her tracks at the sight of Jasper. Even on a busy beach, the distance between them was so tense that Greg could hear little clacking noises from the dangling beads in the girl's hair.

Then Jasper started to move off the bench.

Even Connie drew in a sharp breath as the selkie picked up the disc. Greg opened his mouth to say something to the girl, anything to keep his face from freezing up. Maybe this was the time for more confusion and less panic, because after the initial snarl, Jasper hadn't said a word or done so much as twitch a lip. He huffed as he eased into the sunlight.

"Yours?" he said.

The girl nodded, her beads clacking timidly. Greg wanted to break the tension and ask Jasper if he was okay, like he would an actual friend or companion, even though he was barely the latter. Stephen yawned silently and pulled himself around to sit next to Connie as he watched the exchange. Even if Greg had needed to say something, the girl was transfixed on the monosyllabic man in front of her.

When Greg had met Jasper for the first time, Greg had more or less taken Stephen for a road trip without his family's permission; here in Beach City, there was no such tension. Greg couldn't help but feel a little foolish as he watched Jasper attempt to extend his hand. The young girl didn't move closer. Jasper paused, then moved into more of a crouch, and when he began to sway he elected to kneel with a grunt. He moved with the strenuous awkwardness of a giant, all the sturdiness of a boulder trying to balance on the head of a pin.

Of course he wouldn't attack anyone. Greg huffed out the breath he'd accidentally held and rubbed Stephen's shoulder.

"Stray throw bonked him on the noggin," Greg murmured. "Nothing to worry about."

" Tori! "

A panting woman jogged up behind the girl as she took the disc. Her ankles were covered in sand that had stuck to her with the seawater, and her hair jingled with even larger beads the same color as her daughter's. She raised her hand as if to reprimand Tori and apologize to the adults present before actually looking at the gathered foursome. Whatever words she had prepared evaporated as she tried to speak to the golden-eyed behemoth kneeling in front of her daughter.

"Hi! Hi, sorry—" Connie said, practically clambering over both Greg and Stephen to stand behind Jasper. "We're okay! Wild throws happen. It's pretty crowded out here."

"Um..."

The woman cleared her throat and nodded her thanks to Connie before giving Greg a similarly wary nod. In all his wisdom and dissipated panic, Greg managed a thumbs-up. Tori looked back at her mother uncertainly as Jasper let go of the disc.

"Well, still, Tori—you've gotta watch that arm of yours, you could've seriously hurt someone," the woman said. "Do you have something to say to the...nice man?"

Tori turned back to Jasper. "How tall are you?"

" Victoria. "

"Uh..."

Jasper looked vaguely upwards and creaked into a half-crouch, as if he was going to stand but thought better of towering over the smallest human present. He raised his hand to a random height and shrugged.

"Very tall," he grunted.

"Also, I'm sorry that I hit you in the head."

Jasper snorted—laughter? Did Greg see actual laughter?—and tapped his crown before symbolically brushing it off. Tori's mother sighed with relief and put her hand around her daughter's shoulder to lead her away.

"Alright, sorry again folks, have a nice—"

"You got a lotta cool scars," Tori piped up.

"Tori, let's go ," her mother snapped. "I am so sorry about this."

Connie's awkward hand-wavy laugh did nothing to ease the comment's tension and even less to dissuade young Tori from moving. Her mother tugged her back towards the open beach, but the fear of Jasper that had rooted Tori to the sand had turned to fascination, softening her eyes as she studied this gruff new stranger. Greg had to say something, parent to parent. He cleared his throat.

"Kids, you know?" he chuckled, throwing a hand around Stephen's shoulder. "They'll get a filter eventually, trust me."

Tori's mother grimaced humorlessly as Greg ignored the somewhat insulted confusion on Stephen's face. She attempted to bring Tori away one more time, but the girl pulled her arm away.

"My friend Jack from school has scars 'cause of a fire when he was little," Tori said. "Did you have a fire?"

Jasper shook his head. He twisted his hips around and peered down his back, as if he was seeing some of his body for the first time. Tori's mother was staring in fascination along with her daughter, except with a deep furrow in her brow. Greg bit the inside of his cheek as Jasper brushed his thumb against a deep scar on his shoulder.

"Shark," he said matter-of-factly.

"Cool!"

" Thank you very much, sir. Victoria, NOW."

"I like your hair!" Tori called as she finally allowed herself to be pulled away. She waved with the disc as her thoroughly embarrassed mom tugged her towards anywhere on the beach where Jasper was not. Jasper pushed himself back onto the bench and raised a hand in goodbye. Connie was standing in front of Stephen and Greg now, and Greg shared her knowing, worried glance. Could that have gone wrong? What just happened, exactly?

"I don't like sharks," said Stephen.

"Yeah, I...I can't imagine that you would," murmured Connie.

"Where's Amelia 'n Garnet?"

"The arcade—right, Connie?"

A sharp whistle interrupted Connie's response, and all four of them turned to see the other two selkies striding over the boardwalk. Garnet held up a purple stuffed bear and grinned at Stephen. It had a chintzy gold chain and sunglasses, but that's what the kids liked these days, according to the claw machines and dusty walls filled with unearned prizes. Greg and Stephen both turned to face the other side of the table, and Connie leaned on Greg's shoulder as Garnet and Amelia sat down again.

"You guys missed it," Greg said, "Jasper made a new friend."

"Oh no, we saw," Amelia snorted.

"What?"

"We've been done for a little while. We just wanted to see if you two would panic when Jasper had to play nice," Garnet said.

Jasper grunted. All the jokes from earlier felt strangely twisted in light of their serious concerns, but Greg didn't have to look at Connie for confirmation. The fear that Jasper would've growled like a rabid dog and scared the living daylights out of a kid was very real. Of course, Greg could still smell the blood from when Jasper had nuzzled Stephen from his feverish state a couple weeks ago. Had it only been that long? The smiling pair that pushed a teddy across to a grinning Stephen were so far removed from the creatures he had met on the inlet.

"Real funny," Greg murmured.

"Jasper always plays nice," Stephen chirped.

Greg, and everyone else at the wooden table, turned to stare at Stephen. Stephen pulled the bear into both hands and raised his eyebrows as the little gears in his brain turned one by one.

"Well he plays nice with me ."

Connie crossed her arms. "Stephen, Jasper did kinda...you know, when Mr. Universe was..."

"And with you! Hasn't eaten you yet."

Greg turned his laugh into a cough as Connie's lungs squealed with pure, concentrated frustration. Amelia looked just as confused as Stephen, but Garnet covered her mouth with one hand and moved only her eyes as Connie stomped her feet in the sand like a toddler.

" I am not lunch! The next person—or whatever—that says that is gonna get—"

Her rant was temporarily interrupted by guttural bubbling, that familiar sound of someone whose hunger could no longer be disguised, and every head whipped around to the source. Jasper put his hand on his stomach in genuine surprise, itching it gently. Greg could sense Connie's temporary confusion as Jasper straightened up. The selkie's nose twitched once, then twice, and then he slowly raised his yellow eyes to meet Connie's exasperated face.

"Hm."

Stephen was slowly getting to his feet. Connie didn't notice, but Greg raised an eyebrow as Stephen crept up behind his friend as she once more crossed her arms over her chest.

"Um, if you want, there might be a fish market a block away, but it's a little pricier than my allowance gets me. We probably should've planned lunch a little b— OW! "

Connie yelped as Stephen pulled his mouth away from Connie's shoulder, wiping it with the back of his wrist. There was no blood, but everyone knew what had just happened, and Greg felt his stomach flip with the implication. To Stephen, seals biting one another was just as playful as humans would do with dodgeballs or wadded-up paper. To Connie's parents, if they ever heard about it, the scandal would certainly cut off other future sleepover plans.

"What? I'm hungry, too!" Stephen teased.

"Stephen—oh, I'm going to bite you back right in the—"

Any other vague threats from Connie were lost to the crowd as Stephen turned tail and ran away, whooping in laughter as a furious Connie chased him down towards the tide. Greg picked up the bear from where it had fallen onto the bench and put it on the table as the fifth member of the adulthood posse. As he settled in with the selkies, Jasper turned, and Greg finally noticed that they were all staring at him.

"I know, probably should've told him off," he sighed. "But kids will be kids. Connie's a strong girl, she'll bite him back just as well."

"Mhm," Amelia grunted.

There it was. Now that the kids weren't bringing levity to the conversation, the reality of this interspecies relationship was coming back.  Greg nodded his bitter confirmation as a strange silence settled over the table. Jasper's stony hunch was as coldly impenetrable as ever. Why had he indulged the child instead of brushing them off? Why had Amelia and Garnet been so amused by it at first? Of course it was because of him. Of course they knew that Jasper was in public, that he wouldn't do anything so stupid, that they thought Greg was ignorant for even imagining it. Amelia was the first of the selkies to ever meet him, and she was just a girl, probably not even half Greg's age, and what was at first anger had descended into a quiet fear that made Greg sick to think about. He knew where that kind of fear came from. As he met Garnet's eyes, she knew too. She was the wise and quiet one, an allmother through and through. Any forward motion would be best done through her.

"So Connie brought up another sleepover. But she's been talking with Stephen, I guess, and they've been thinking about doing it wherever you guys live."

Amelia's shoulders and mouth tightened at the same time. Garnet nodded, stone-faced.

"That's not possible. Both of them know that," she said.

"I had a feeling. I mean, where do you guys live, anyway?"

More silence circled the table. Greg made a mental note to ask Stephen later, because nothing was going to come out of this. Selkies were scared. The thought of someone like Jasper being scared of anything was ridiculous, but it wasn't the fear of encountering any random humans that was scary. Greg knew better than that, because if he shared one thing with Jasper, it was the fear of Stephen coming to harm. More than that, Jasper had the responsibility of all the selkies on his shoulders. They all had their sharp teeth and swimming powers; none of them were half as strong, that was for sure. Had they all killed before? Had Stephen killed a human?

"Alright." Greg sighed. "We don't have to be like this."

"Like what?" Amelia muttered.

"We all had a blast with the kids today. I mean, Connie got to build and swim with you, she showed you around the boardwalk, Stephen's running around and smiling again, and we all just get to relax together. I know I'm just another human to you. But I'm more than that to Stephen. And he's more than just Stephen to me."

"You're more than just a human to us too," Garnet said. "But don't take that the wrong way."

Greg tsked and threw up his hands. "Right! I forgot. I'm a threat, I'm a crazy song-blitzed man with no brains left. Come on . Maybe there's no cure for this, but I'm not... I know I need to be better. For Stephen. For myself, too. I don't care how long it takes! Just because you eat everyone that's stepped out of line doesn't mean that's the only solution!"

He all but slammed his hands down on the table and met Jasper's glare with a glare of his own. It always came back to this: power versus practicality. Everyone at this table knew how easily humans could be disposed of, and Greg stared into the deep yellow until Jasper snorted and rolled his shoulders, turning away in disgust. The silence from Garnet and Amelia was nothing compared to the aching absence of any solution. Greg folded his hands together and stared at the wood grain. Once more, no progress had been made.

This was supposed to be a good end to the day. The day wasn't quite over yet, but Greg could feel it wrapping up. He'd give Connie her ride home, and when he returned, there'd be no trace of any selkies on any beach. Stephen would be warm as he swam across the ocean. Greg would be lonely as he listened to the moonlight. Everyone should've come away from the day with more trust for one another. Hadn't that been the plan? Greg had imagined all of them seeing each other less as paranoid savages and more as comrades protecting a secret for the sake of love.

Greg forced himself to release the mottled edge of his cheek from his teeth. He needed to get out of that habit, really. Across the table, Amelia had all but shut down. Garnet straightened up to her full height and studied Jasper for a moment before turning her cool gaze onto Greg.

"What would you do to survive?" she said quietly.

"I..."

He had always had four walls, even if those walls belonged to a van. He had always had food, even if the food was from a dumpster. He had only truly feared for his life at the hands of the man sitting to his left. Greg straightened his back as well. There was no solution that would compare to the life of these beings.

Stephen had told him some details about his life at sea. He had seen the boy swimming, and he could see from the other selkies—Pearl's protection, Jasper and Perry's scraggliness, Amelia's paranoia—how much like animals they really were. It astounded him to see them making eye contact and sitting quietly like this. Greg sometimes could only imagine Stephen losing all the curiosity and joy that had made him Connie's friend in the first place, tearing at the flesh of a mackerel without pleasure or even desire. Greg couldn't see that in Stephen's eyes, not now and not ever.

"I don't know," he replied at last.

"Well, we do. And we'd do anything to help each other survive."

"Surviving ain't living, is it."

"It comes first," Garnet said flatly. "It has to."

"It's not just about me anymore. It's about Stephen. Heck, it's about Connie too. I know I got in over my head, but she's got a lot to worry about too. Doesn't she?"

"She's trying," Amelia said.

Even Garnet raised her eyebrows. Amelia mirrored her older companion, squaring her shoulders in an attempt to be nonchalant. She half-sneered at Greg, but her animosity from that first meeting was muted, like scalding tea left out to cool.

"She's just a kid. Stephen doesn't have anyone his age to play with. And she's teaching him how to survive with other humans," she said, "'cause none of us are going back. Never."

There it was. But it had always been somewhat dicey—threading the needle between selkies and humans, what had changed over the years, what was legend and what was real. Looking around the table, Greg couldn't have imagined what a selkie might look like from stories alone, but he wouldn't have guessed anything like this. Nobody would've mistaken these three as being related by blood. But where had selkies come from? Had they always been around since the beginning of evolution? No, this wasn't just a trick of nature—Greg had seen the precise molding of skin and fur. He had watched his adoptive son morph his body by force of will. The overwhelming mystery made Greg sick to his stomach; trying to comprehend one's existence was a strenuous exercise for minds much healthier than his. Instead, he tried to imagine Jasper living among the people, perhaps as a bouncer, or the world's worst physical therapist.

What could Stephen do when he grew up? Greg looked over his shoulder, but Stephen and Connie had disappeared down the beach. He sighed and picked up the stuffed bear again, thumbing the bling. Stephen would do whatever he wanted to. Greg would make sure of that.

"I want to be that for him, too. Guess I have a long way to go before I'm a good human, eh?"

Jasper chuffed under his breath. Well, it was a start. As he looked at Garnet and Amelia, though, Greg wished that they'd be angrier, or at least more incredulous. This half-in half-out behavior, the knowing looks, taught him nothing.

"One thing at a time then," he said. "We'll do it. I can get a beach permit for fire and camping, and we'll have a nice little chill and grill. We don't even have to do it up here, right? Maybe there's a place like where we all met. Real private, where everyone can swim around. Nobody has to hide anything. Think we can do it?"

Between the awkward string of seconds, Garnet and Amelia offered murmurs of noncommitment together, glancing to each other as if to ask: who would be responsible for bringing it up together to the others? Rosa, Pearl and Perry were the only ones not in the know, but they'd get a chaperone of some kind. It had to work. Connie needed this to be a good summer, and Greg needed this to be a good test case. His heart thumped in his chest.

This was how things were going to be for the rest of his life. The selkies all seemed younger than him, and they had no idea how exciting it was to feel this adventure. Greg didn't need stages or records for that same sensation. Already he could feel his fingers itching as he thought about songs he could write to and about Stephen. If he recorded and released them, well, nobody would know how real the lines about wild eyes and sharp teeth were. Greg felt an anxious smile twitching at his lips. Giddiness and panic were almost too close for comfort. Connie could've kept this secret for the rest of her life as well, but now that it wasn't a secret, wasn't that better? Greg would never tell, of course, and until the end of his days he could be the father that he was destined to be.

Greg lifted a hand and almost clapped it on Jasper's shoulder. The selkie didn't flinch at the raised hand, nor the motion of Greg lowering it to the table. He nodded to Jasper and let his hands fold peacefully.

"You'll think about it," he said.

Jasper's lips twitched. That was as good a response as any. Greg wished he could shake the unease, but at a certain point, unease was always going to be there. It wasn't an omen and it wasn't a promise—so why bother? Greg sat with the three selkies, the half-magic creatures that had brought him this part of life, and sighed contentedly. They could work out the details after Connie and Stephen came back, after everyone had had a chance to regroup. Summer felt young again where the sun had warmed Greg's hair. He looked past the table and through the crowd and down the blinding beach. The kids would be back whenever they needed to be. He could wait.