I seem to be physically incapable of writing happy stories.
So, enjoy…?
Ginny scrubs her rug idly over the plate for what must be the 20th time at least as she watches the sun set over sand and dry coral. The small cottage by the sea is quiet, and so is everything around it. Her husband went away like the tide, slowly, imperceptibly fading until you notice very suddenly it's gone.
Only the tide will return, and he will not, that is as certain as the sun shines down on them and the rain beats on the water's surface. Harry told her once, his hair still dark and his eyes still bright, that these things would one day be gone, too. Ginny hadn't quite believed him.
There should be animals other than the fish laying dead on the sand. There aren't. She thinks she saw a bird, a while ago, but she might have imagined it. They went inland, and she should have followed them. She couldn't. The sea has too tight a grip on her to let her flee its rage.
And it is raging, Ginny can tell from the electric hum in the air and the foreboding sense of danger that seems to have settled in the clouds around the shore in the absence of any living being able to leave.
The dog tied up behind the house had chewed through his leash long ago.
There, she can see it now. The water is returning. Soon she can hear the rumble of it, shaking the window pane. The ocean is coming to take back her child.
Ginny puts down the plate and feels the urge to run. Her hands braced against the window sill, she focusses defiantly on straightening out her arms and legs. She stares the storm down. She won't survive it.
The familiar buzzing that drowns out the world around her makes her grin like a shark. Come at me! Says Harry's voice in her head.
The wave has reached the beach now and the setting sun behind it gives it a supernatural glow.
She watches, impassive, as it rages through the front garden. Watches as it swallows the shabby stone path to the house and the old garden elements, small seals and fish with shimmering marbles strung up in between the plots.
Just as the first droplets splatter against the glass she tears from the kitchen to rip open the front door, greeting the flood with an exuberant shout.
The force of it hits her before she can even close her mouth. She tastes salt. Her back is pressed against the wall before she can think to shut her eyes and she rejoices as she's enveloped, the house filled up completely with the ocean, almost like it came just for her. Just to take her back.
The sea settles in her lungs and burns like heaven and hell, familiar hostility. She coughs a little and swallows more water. She's drowning, but she feels alive, so, so alive. Ginny manages, in the chaos of it, to wrench open her eyes. Her gaze is greeted by the saline swirl that used to be her home. It's dark, too dark, and empty, so, so empty.
The reality of the situation hits her then, and she struggles against the sea's cold fingers around her neck. It blooms like blood in her mouth and like crystal shards in her lungs. There is no escaping the approaching darkness licking at the periphery of Ginny's mind. Trying to kick and thrash in panic she is horrified to find her strength sucked out of her and replaced with a numbing, creeping cold.
She is powerless to stop the dark swallowing her. Her last thoughts are of her first life, of her skin, hidden away out of reach, and with it, all she is.
The ocean settles, slowly. It rumbles as if alive, cradling a lonely, cold body. This was only the first wave. There will be more, unerringly they will come, until the tide doesn't return anymore, until the sun dies, until the rain stops falling on the water's surface.
She's a selkie, in case that's not clear. Harry stole and hid her skin and failed to return it to her before he died. Which is not very nice and you shouldn't do it :(