Beneath the Skin

He begins his life in the salt, in the shallows of a little cove where the river meets the sea. His father's hands are wrinkled from the wet, cold from the December air but strong and sure as they lift the baby into the air. His mother floats, exhausted, for longer than she intends to. The tide is going out, and she with it, drawn by its pull against even her own determination to keep the life she has made for herself.
It is only when the baby cries that she finds the strength to slip out of her selkie skin and crawl up onto the beach again.