They piloted out to the coast in near silence, her hand resting on him the whole time. There were so many things he should have wanted to know now that this was out in the open--questions coastal highlanders had had for centuries, maybe even millennia. His grandmother had told him stories of the selkies that her grandmother had told her. Each town had a different version: the details of when they came ashore and why, how they seduced their lovers, and whether they bore men good or ill.
One of the few things that remained constant was the skin. Should their sealskin coat go missing, they would be left in human form forever.
He supposed he could have all the answers. He might be the only human being if he did. None of that seemed to matter. He wanted only one thing, and that was exemplified by the gentle reality of her leg against his leg and her hand upon his thigh.
There was only one question that nagged at him, petty and churlish as it was. As people still had a vestigal appendage, men still carried this vestige of the caveman claim-the-woman-by-the-hair-days.
"It was never about John, was it," he asked, ashamed and oddly liberated at the same time.
"John? No. Why do you ask?" Her surprise was genuine and ironically, greater than any he had been able to muster through all this.
Monty shrugged in feigned insouciance. "I dinnae. The picture, the vidistill."
Lesa pulled the crumpled still from a fold of her clothing. "The painting was the sea--my home. And this one is my parents."
Scotty looked over at the snapshot. He saw waves and maybe--just maybe--two hazy blobs. "I can't really tell much."
"No," she agreed, "but it's them. I was talking to them earlier. I thought this picture was all I would be able to ever have of them to keep." Her voice broke.
Monty squeezed her hand. A Scottsman understands clan. "God willing, I'll see that you get back." A wet droplet splashed his hand, and he carefully kept his eyes on the control panel lest he have to pull over--and Lesa had waited long enough.
With the guidance of the instruments, Monty found the landing clearing. The fog was so thick one could barely see the shore. The damp washed in as soon as she opened her door. Monty shuddered as the bitter sea air wrapped around him. He thought he knew now why he had never learned to like the ocean: the purpose of its whole existence was to take her away from him.
Lesa grabbed the sealskin and hopped out, skipping easily over the slick rock as if she were born to it. Of course she did--she was.
She found a flat spot and pulled her dress up over her head. Monty picked his way around the flitter and over to her. By the time he got there, she was naked, sitting on a rock with her legs turned to one side running the sealskin through her hands.
Monty's skin was pimpled against the cold and he fought the urge to shiver; Lesa was positively aglow. He squatted down and moved his hand with hers, petting the fall of the fur. "I guess it's time ta fire up the engine and see if she runs as good as she looks."
She turned her head and glanced up at him a little shyly. "Humans aren't supposed to watch us change. It's against the rules somehow."
"Sorry." Monty straightened up and pulled away.
She grabbed his wrist making him slip and almost stumble on the rock. "It's okay. I think the rules are different…considering."
Monty knelt down in front of her on the rock.
Starting at her feet, she pulled the sealskin on. Her feet turned out and her legs blurred together. She slipped one arm in and the arm became a flipper. She pulled the hood up over her head and finally she poked the last arm in, all but completing the transformation. From the backside she was just another seal.
From the front there was one little problem. A very human, very familiar, very sexy torso still poked through the middle.
Lesa tried to reach it with a flipper, but it was well out of her grasp. She twitched her nose at him. "Good thing you stayed. I could use a hand."
"Aye," said Monty, moving mechanically towards her. Believing in the theory was one thing, but seeing it, touching it, having manufactured something that he couldn't even begin to comprehend the workings of was another thing entirely. And thus everything he knew of his ordered, reasoned, scientifically designed universe collapsed around him and the wonders of infinite possibilities fell within his scope.
Starting at the navel and moving up, reverently he began to button. He traced the line of her body up between her breasts and over her neck, ending at the very place he loved to nestle. He kissed it one last time, then closing his eyes, he sealed it with a final twist.
He sat back to admire his handiwork. Silver-gray, sleek and shiny, she was still the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. A scattering of darker patches mottled her back and belly. From her head running back behind where her ear opening must be, a sharp streak of pure black ran down to her neck.
"Well," she said, "what do you think?"
The love of his life was a myth. He had made the greatest natural discovery of the century with staggering bioengineering implications, but he would never be able to tell. His entire worldview had been wrong. The picket fence life he had planned out with endless research grants, an engineering chair and 1.37834 kids had just been swept away in one fell swoop.
What did he think? He voiced the first formed thought that came into his head. "You can talk."
She tossed back her head. "Of course. What did ye take me for, a seal?" Despite himself, Monty began to laugh. She followed suit, but the laugh was harsh and barking, exactly like--
Monty grew silent. Carefully he rolled a set of her barbels between his fingers. She twitched and gave a ladylike sneeze. He thumbed the rubber skin of her nose--a nose that had not been sewn into the pelt they had grown. He stroked the white streak, rolled his fingertip around the tiny ear opening, felt the ridges of tissue and a flap that had not been there minutes before. He examined her flipper efficiently webbed, the vicious looking claws on each one.
She already smelled like the sea.
He raised a flipper to his mouth and kissed it. Choking back emotion, he let her go. "You're nae coming back, are ye?"
She slid a little closer to him. "Monty, I was never meant to be here this long in the first place."
He swallowed hard and nodded. "I know. I've just…never met anyone like you before--"
"Nae doubt." She barked again.
He didn't laugh this time. "You know what I mean."
She rubbed his head against his knee. "I do. And I feel the same. Monty, you have given me--or given me back everything--and I do mean everything--that I value in this life. I can never thank you enough for that--or repay you--but I will always love you."
"You can repay me," said Monty. He knelt back down and threw his arms around her, burying his face in her neck.
"How's that?"
"By promising me you'll be happy. What I want more than anything is ta know that you're happy and that I made you that way." He pressed his face more tightly against her, the musty smell growing every stronger in the damp. "And if there is ever a time when you're thinking about not being happy, well, you won't be able to because you made me a promise and you have ta keep it."
"I promise," she said. She reached to wrap her flippers around him, but together they came unbalanced and fell awkwardly to the rock.
"Shite!" said Monty wiping a hand violently at his face.
"It's okay," she said. "I'll always remember what it was like."
Monty scrambled to his feet and took a deep breath. "I guess this is good-bye, then." He wiped his nose with the back of his hand but didn't move from his spot.
"Come with me," she said.
"What?" His eyes flew wide in wonder. "You mean, I could?"
"No. No. We can teach our own children to convert, but not outsiders." Her voice trailed off with a flush of the same sadness he had grown accustomed to in the preceding weeks since the crash.
His face fell.
"I just meant, come with me into the water--to say good-bye."
"You're daft woman! It's bloody freezing in there!"
"It's not so bad once you get used to it."
He scoffed. "That's easy for you ta say; you're a--" He stopped.
"Say it."
"You're a selkie." The word hung in the air.
"And you're not." She slipped down the rock and toward the water's edge.
"Wait!" Monty peeled of his jacket and kicked off his boots. Mindless of the rough stone he plunged after her. He fell into a tide pool in the rock. "Shite." He stood up and made to turn around, but then he saw her just offshore, waiting for him. He lunged out of the tidepool and crawled into the ocean's edge.
The cold constricted his chest when the water covered it. He felt his heart stutter and then restart. She was there against him. "Welcome to my world." She dove down; he paddled after her. She swam around him, between his legs. She maneuvered to carry him playfully on her back.
His teeth chattered and another wave washed over him. He choked on the salt water running down his throat and spat out a mouthful of ocean and phlegm. "Knock it off," he said. "This is insane. Let me go." Let me go.
Let me go. He'd said it. He'd asked for it. Even in myth--perhaps especially in myth--some things were just not meant to me. Drowning half-frozen after being battered against the rocks is enough to ward off the romantic in most men.
And not all fairytales end in 'happily every after.'
She rolled him off her back and he staggered to stand in the waist deep water.
"I'll always love you," he said.
She dove under, wove between his legs, her fur brushing softly against his calves, then she surfaced, barked twice at him and dove away towards Orkney.
Dripping and shivering Monty made back for the flitter. He stopped to pick up her clothes. Nobody likes a litterbug. He paused and, thinking the better of it, stashed them under a rock and made a little cairn--just in case. After all, you never know in this life, do you?
The paintbrushes he saved in a pouch that he kept with his personal possessions wherever he went.
Because everyone knows that most fairytales do end happily ever after.