There is a selkie crouched by the shore.

Her coat is in tatters, wrapped around her body so tight it only tears further, and tears stream down her face, quiet and tortured as the ocean. You go to sit next to her, but her body curves away like a stream over rock, her teeth bared and eyes black. Humans did this to her, and trust will not be earned back so easily. You raise your hands in surrender, arteries exposed, and turn away, walking back down the gravel towards your home with a new purpose crunching under your ribs.

You come back with a sewing kit, a blanket, some scraps of fabric, and as much care as you can muster. She stares at you from across the beach, nails digging into her pelt, her smooth skin, untouched by sun and dirt until now.

You sit a few feet away, and show her how to use a needle and not bleed yourself dry, how to pick the right thread, how not to tear it all to pieces instead of trying again. You lose sight of her teeth at some point, but you’re trying not to stare, to watch her with hunger like men often do. The crate containing all your haphazard tools is set between you with trembling fingers, and you lock eyes with the horizon, waiting. Eventually, she begins, clumsy but determined, and the afternoon flies over your heads like the gulls.

She tells you stories after the coat is half-stitched, wrapped up in that wool throw blanket as a poor, but effective substitute; tales of childhood friends and sea kelp, of men with their locked boxes, with their knives that carved a false apology into her skin, that told her they didn’t want this either. You don’t ask for more. You just weep with her, shaking hands plunged into the sand, digging heart sized holes on either side of your trembling legs.

The moon is all the light left when she finishes, the blanket falling from her shoulders as she stands. You avert your eyes, flushed, but you can see her sharp grin, her amused stare darker than the night that’s closed in on you both. When she dives into the water, spots barely visible, her tail splashes you in a teasing goodbye. You don’t know if you’ll ever see her again.

But you walk away from the water lapping at your feet with a new purpose, sewing needle poised in your fingers.

You won’t let that happen again.