Chapter Text
Every fishing village has its stories and legends, particularly those that concern the sea from which their livelihood stems. There are those who call the sea a fickle woman, who knows no master and is capricious. Some say that she is being unto herself, whereas others say she is part of something larger. And then there are the tales of things that live in the sea. From beguiling sirens that lure men to their deaths and mermaids who drown unwitting sailors, stories of giant sea monsters capable of wrecking a ship and tales of faces under the sea, there were many of them told to the children. There are those who also say that the sea is for the passage of the dead, who sail across the waters to a paradise far beyond. And there are tales of sea creatures who can take the form a human and live amongst them, which they call selkies.
These were the stories that Makoto was told as a child, nurturing a sense of awe and wonder in him where the sea was concerned. They were fascinating to him, particularly the tale of the selkie that his grandfather loved to recite. It always began with a fisherman finding the pelt of a seal on the shore. He takes it and finds out it belongs to a beautiful woman who is from the sea, and that without her pelt she cannot to return the her home. The fisherman refuses despite her entreaties, and she would become his wife and bear him children. Some variations of the tale speak of other sea creatures besides a seal, but all agree on the fact that a selkie made a good wife. One thread running through every version of the story was that the selkie must never find her pelt, no matter how desperately she searches or she will return to the sea, abandoning her husband and her children. Sometimes the children will see their mother again, but more often the selkie is never seen again. There were rumours that some of the people in the village were the children of selkies, though there was no way to confirm it.
These stories of tragedy and fantasy took Makoto's breath away, filling his head with all sorts of whimsical thoughts. Even when he grew old enough to have logic ruin these imaginings, he never quite buried them, instead pushing them to the back of his mind where they waited to be found again. Though his peers scoffed at him for harbouring such silly notions and dismissed them as old wives' tales, he never let them go. Perhaps he was too much a romantic at heart, but he had always hoped to meet one. And then maybe - just maybe - he could rewrite the tragic end to that story with his own. That maybe the selkie would stay instead of returning to the watery embrace of the sea.
Even as he left those notions in some corner of mind to gather dust, life continued on. It went on in the sane quiet way it always had, like the ebb and flow of the tide. He learned fear of the ocean when his grandfather died in a storm, his body lost in a watery grave. He learned that water was life as well as death, creation and destruction . He learned the ocean had whims, giving and taking as it pleased, and it has cost him someone close to his heart. The true terror lay in realizing how close they had been to the village, how it was a distance he could easily swim. And yet no one had survived. All of them were men, older than Makoto and much stronger, and yet they had all perished.
From then, the fishing trips where he accompanied his father had been full of dread and terror, a sinking whirlpool in his stomach he couldn't explain. They were miserable, a sharp contrast to when they had been an adventure that made him light up with excitement. How could a fisherman be afraid of the sea?
His fears worsened when he fell into the sea during one such fishing trip. It had been an accident, a large wave sending him tumbling from his precarious perch on the edge of the boat. He tried to scream, to struggle but instead he froze, unable to do anything. The water surrounded him and dragged him down, filling his lungs as he tried to scream. He'd survived by some strange miracle, saved by a dolphin who had brought him to shallow water. His mother had cried in relief as she wrapped her arms around him, sobbing even as his father joined her, enfolding him in their embrace.
Later, Makoto would wonder if the dolphin who'd saved him could have been a selkie, having seen the intelligence in its eyes and the way it had stayed close enough to make sure he was safe before it disappeared. But either way, he went to the tiny shrine in the village to offer his thanks to the gods for letting him live. It had been a balm for his soul, soothing the frayed edges of residual terror. The calmness and serenity helped him find a measure of peace within himself, as well as a few conversations with the caretaker who smiled at him with such kindness despite Makoto's failings.
He began to spend more time there, watching as villagers came with offerings for the gods and prayers for the safety of their families, gratitude for plentiful harvests as their tiny community continued to thrive. The old man who took care of the shrine brought Makoto under his wing, letting Makoto help around with errands and chores. It became clearer that Makoto was unlikely to follow in his father's footsteps and become a fisherman, choosing instead to spend his time at the shrine.
The old man sometimes told him stories about the sea, of the people who had died and the great dragons who ruled the oceans, water gods who demanded sacrifices of virgin brides and all manner of fantastic tales. It brought the stories of his childhood to the forefront again, his curiosity regarding selkies causing him to ask about them. The old man had sighed heavily and looked even older, the lines of his face etched deeper by some unknown sorrow.
The old man had only gone on to say he prayed Makoto would never meet one, which only led to further questions from Makoto. A sorrowful look crossed the man's features as he spoke again. "Because their only love is for the sea, and they are incapable of loving anything else." The cryptic answer made Makoto struggle to understand. It was an unfathomable idea, that one was only capable of loving one thing alone.
"I-" Makoto began. "I don't understand." Even as he brooded over the words, their meaning escaped him.
"Some say the greatest thing is to love and be loved in return." The old man seemed to deflate as he sighed again, making Makoto truly aware how old he was, how much he must have seen in his life. "But I'll tell you that the greatest tragedy is in loving something that cannot love you back." The words hung heavily between them, Makoto struggling to understand while the old man was lost in memories.
They never spoke of selkies again thereafter.
It was only much, much later that Makoto understood what the old man had been trying to tell him, the wisdom in the words that had made no sense. But by then, it had been too late for Makoto to avoid the pain that the old man had tried to spare him.