Lena found it washed up on the beach after a violent storm—a seal skin, sleek and shimmering, its black-and-silver surface glinting like wet stone under the pale dawn. She hesitated to touch it, an inexplicable weight in the air pressing against her chest, but curiosity overcame her caution.

The moment her fingers brushed the skin, it seemed to ripple, alive. A surge of cold shot through her, like plunging into icy water. Before she could drop it, the world tilted. Her legs buckled, her breath hitched, and when she looked down, her hands were no longer hands but sleek, flippered fins.

She screamed, or tried to, but the sound came out as a high-pitched bark that startled the gulls into flight. Panic clawed at her as the tide swept her up, pulling her into the sea’s embrace.

And then, silence.

Beneath the waves, everything changed. The water was not a murky expanse but a crystalline world teeming with color and life. Lena felt her new body move effortlessly, cutting through the currents. The fear melted away, replaced by an inexplicable rightness.

Days passed, or perhaps weeks. Time in the ocean ebbed and flowed like the tides. She swam with schools of fish that shimmered like liquid light, rested in kelp forests that swayed like underwater cathedrals, and avoided the sharp shadows of prowling sharks. She learned to understand the songs of whales, the clicks of dolphins, and the whispering currents that carried messages across the deep.

But it wasn’t long before she saw the scars. Nets tangled in reefs, ghostly plastic drifting like jellyfish, oil slicks smothering the surface. She heard the cries of animals caught and dying, their songs turning into mournful silence.

One day, she met another selkie—a true one, not a human transformed by accident. The selkie’s dark eyes were ancient, glimmering with both sorrow and wisdom.

“You found a skin that wasn’t yours,” the selkie said, her voice like the swell of waves. “Why haven’t you returned to the land?”

Lena looked down at her flippers, at the ocean stretching endlessly around her. “I don’t think I can,” she admitted. “Even if I could... I don’t want to. The sea needs help.”

The selkie regarded her for a long moment. “Then stay,” she said, her voice softening. “But know this: the longer you remain, the harder it will be to return. The ocean is jealous, and its gifts come with a price.”

Lena nodded. She had already made her choice.

From that day forward, she became a guardian of the sea. She freed creatures from tangled nets, guided lost younglings back to their pods, and taught humans—fishermen and divers—through fleeting encounters, showing them the beauty they had forgotten and the damage they had caused.

Sometimes, she dreamed of her life on land: warm coffee, the sound of rain on her rooftop, the feel of soil between her fingers. But the ocean had claimed her heart, and she had claimed it in return.

Lena was no longer human, no longer fully selkie. She was something new—a creature of both worlds, belonging to neither, and bound to the sea until it no longer needed her.

And she prayed, as she swam beneath the moonlit waves, that day would never come.