CHAPTER FOURTEEN
lovesickness strikes again

𖦹 ⋆｡˚⋆ฺ ⋆｡˚⋆ฺ˚⋆˚ 𖦹

COVE HAS A BIT OF A PROBLEM.

You see, she has always rejected the L word, especially the idea of it with a human, which is almost a taboo thing to think about in her colony. It doesn't only come down to her natural nervousness either. Her parents are a prime example of all the ways it could go wrong for her personally — after all, stories of skin stealing are told to selkie pups to frighten them into staying close by their parents, trust issues embedded into their minds from a young age. Some selkies are reluctant to leave the sea out of fear for all the dangers on the shore, specifically the humans that inhabit the land. The way that her professor has been slandering her kind has put her on edge recently as well, the kind of mood where she isn't the biggest fan of humans at the moment. Luckily for her, she attends a school full of them. Hooray!

  When it comes down to loving them, she feels like screaming. Stuck in between mortality and eternal life as a seal, settling down to love or marry a human feels like picking one world over another. She's been putting that off for years. She doesn't like to choose. Never has.

Cove sits by the pebbly bank with her sealskin shrugged over her shoulders, cold water washing up to envelop her the tips of her painted toes. She can spot the distant lights of Hogsmeade twinkling far behind the tree line and nostalgia from the day before blossoms in her chest. Her alder wand lies upon the rocks by her side, thrawn and wizened enough to look like a refined splinter of driftwood. There's a pearl in the palm of her hand, one she found at the very bottom of the loch on her swim. She rolls it around to watch how the moonlight bounces off of it in awe, a smile curling her rosy lips. She's glad it was worth all the effort, since her flipper was caught in the rocks when she dove for it and it unfortunately transferred over to her arm when she returned to normal. She'd go to Madam Pomfrey about it in the morning.

Cove edges closer to the lapping water, hindered slightly by her sore arm, quietly reciting chants in Gaelic and drawing those memorised runes over the surface. A miniature whirlpool begins to tear through, the waves parting to show a familiar face glimmering turquoise.

Through the blue light, Cordelia blinks at her in confusion. "A Thighearna! Tide-messaging me again?" she murmurs sleepily. "Send a letter like a normal person for once."

"I need to talk to you, though," Cove says desperately. "I couldn't wait for a letter."

Cordelia waves a dismissing hand. "Ach, I know. I'm only teasing. What's the matter?"

She shifts from side to side. "Okay, well, um... How to I put this? It's boy problems."

That gets her attention. "Boy problems? You better not be saying what I think you're saying."

  "I didn't mean to, honest! I've only ever seen him as a friend before now. I think, anyways. Yesterday we were walking around the village and I sort of realised that I fancy him."

  "Cove, do you know how dangerous that is?"

   "It was an accident! He's so nice to me and he's really pretty and—"

  "You can't accidentally fall in love," Cordelia hisses through her sharp teeth. A few of the selkies around her shift in their sleep agitatedly. She lowers her voice. "Especially not with a human."

   "I think love is a bit strong—"

   "Call it whatever you like. It's still bloody dangerous. Think of your mother, for Poseidon's sake!"

   That makes her go silent. She looks down at the pearl she found, the colours banded over it suddenly feeling dull to her eyes.

   "I know, Cordy," she says quietly. Forlornly.  "I always do."

   Her big black eyes soften. "I'm sorry. That was low of me, but you really have to watch yourself. Humans are unpredictable. They're very untrustworthy when it comes to dealing with our kind."

   "What if he isn't?" Cove asks desperately. "What if he isn't one of the bad ones? What if he's the one for me and I'll never know because I never made the effort to even ask if he likes me back?"

   "He won't be. They never are, some selkies are just delusional to think that they could be different. That they couldn't be the exception."

  "But—"

  "If you want to risk your life, be my guest," Cordelia snaps. "Before you do, name me one human-selkie relationship that hasn't ended in heartache."

   Cove opens her mouth but no words come to mind. She closes it shortly after.

   "You can't," she answers for her. "You can't because there's never been one. Even if they start off sweet, those kind of marriages always go sour with time."

   "How do you know it wouldn't work? How can you already tell that he would do that to me without having seen him before?"

   "Because all men are the same," she says simply. "Selkies have never survived them."

   "That's—"

   "The truth, Cove. We've lost so many in our colony to fishermen on the mainland, or to women from the town. You've seen it happen with your own eyes. You know that I'm only looking out for you."

"Yeah, it really sounds like it," she snaps, shrugging her coat on. "Fair winds and a following fucking sea, Cordelia."

"Cove, don't—"

She turns away from the water before she can finish, trudging back up to the school with hot tears beading on her waterline. The full moon rises behind her, a distant howl piercing the silent night.

  Something makes her pause. She turns to look over her shoulder, eyes narrowing at the landscape as the night vision kicks in. Darkness sprawls over the lush green hills that she knows so well, critters chirping and fidgeting under the invisibility cloak that is the night. There's a palpable shift in the air. She can tell that she isn't alone in being a student out past curfew.

  Then her eye catches on something strange, something that she wasn't expecting to see. Three— no, four figures creeping out from the Forbidden Forest. They're a band of mismatched creatures, making up an unnatural group. First, there's the stag that bounds out into the pale moonlight, what looks like some kind of rodent climbing on his grand antlers. A dog follows in suit, covered in thick black fur that blends into the night. The final animal is what really makes her brows furrow; it looks to be another dog, but when she looks more closely it's much too large to be a regular dog. Her heart pounds in her chest when she realises it's the werewolf she's been hearing these past few months. But, what do all of these animals have in common? Should the werewolf not be attacking them, particularly the stag?

  Cove frowns, puzzled. She starts hurrying towards the castle's entrance with more urgency, cradling her arm close.

author's note!

short filler chapter ‼️‼️ idk why i cant write long ones anymore hopefully it'll get easier to have a higher word count soon 😭

cove rn