moch diluain ghabh i 'n cuan (shetland | rhona, cassie, jimmy)

[fiachairecht]

moch diluain ghabh i 'n cuan. shetland, rhona & cassie + rhona & jimmy. selkies, heartbreak, and the midsummer sea. 2.3k words, rated t. for theuncertainhour in fairytaleinspired 2021.

Three days before Midsummer, Rhona comes home to find Cassie Perez sat on her front stoop with her purse balanced on top of a precarious tower of three biscuit tins. With her pelt draped haphazardly over her shoulders and her hands shoved in the sleeves of her jumper to keep warm, she looks for all the world like a child playing runaway.

"Angel girl," Rhona says, locking the car and shoving her sunglasses up her head. "What are you doing here?" She's delighted to see her, always is, but this is definitely not usual.

Cassie makes a face. "Hiding from my dad." She pauses, staring out at the ocean, and for a moment Rhona can see the seal glimmering in her eyes. "Both of them actually. Do you — can I stay the night?"

"Well," Rhona says, already half-wondering how she's going to explain this to Jimmy tomorrow, for Cassie doesn't look like a girl who's left a note and half the island's still on edge despite Malone's death. "I'll put the kettle on then, yeah? You're welcome in, of course, we can have some of your biscuits for tea."

"You," Cassie says, clambering to her feet and wrapping Rhona in a hug like the tide, "Are the best."

Privately Rhona thinks she's nothing of the sort, but she does know from cures for heartbreak, and perhaps it's the sort of night where, for Cassie, that counts more than anything.

"If you say," she allows, hugging the girl back, and Cassie laughs as Rhona pats her shoulder — and then quiets as she stills her hand with a frown. "Your hair's dry."

Cassie sighs, but doesn't pull away, probably because it gives her an excuse to not meet Rhona's eyes as she says, "Haven't felt like swimming since I've been back. It was too warm in Brazil."

"Ach, well." Rhona straightens up and holds Cassie at arms length. She's thin and pale, and even her pelt is a dull echo of its usual rich greys and browns. If she ran her fingers through it, Rhona thinks, it would be dry as heather ready to burn, and she's certain she knows why. "Your heart won't mend on land, Cass."

"Is that what you told yourself?" Cassie asks with a raised eyebrow, and though Rhona thinks she doesn't truly mean to be cruel, the words sting anyway. Phyllis had seen her in the water, first, and it was true the water still had to hold that memory — but at least, then, Rhona wasn't the only one who had to.

"Aye," she says, when the silence has gone on too long. It might not be what the girl wants to hear, but lying wouldn't help make Cassie feel any better either. "Because it's the truth. Why don't you go for a swim while I get dinner together?"

Cassie studies her for a long moment, doubtless trying to work out if she could get away with refusing, wondering, perhaps, if she'd really be welcome back after — or if she'd be welcome still if she refused.

"I promise you'll feel better after," Rhona says. "Physically, if nothing else. Would you have brought your pelt if you were really going to avoid the water?"

She wants to say yes, Rhona can tell — but she can also feel the sea salt still trapped in Cassie's skin urging her forward. Can feel her own skin from where it's carefully tucked away inside, her awareness sharpening to match the sea rising in Cassie's blood.

Perhaps Cassie feels it too, or perhaps she's simply tired from having similar conversations with her dads, because she relaxes at last with a soft sigh as the wind picks up. "Fine," she says, shoulders slumping, and Rhona smiles, pulling Cassie's pelt more firmly over her shoulders.

"Good," she says. "Come on, let's put your things inside. I'll fetch you a towel and get dinner ready."

**

It's nice, cooking for two again, and nicer still to be cooking for someone like Cassie who doesn't much mind what's set in front of her. The pasta, salmon, and salad keeps her busy enough while Cassie swims, but her thoughts keep straying to her own pelt upstairs. She swims every morning now, even the weekends that used to be reserved for staying in Glasgow, and she can't deny that she feels — well. She had thought she had known what she would be giving up, but now she's not so sure.

Despite her reluctance, Cassie looks revived when she appears at the kitchen door an hour and a half later, wrapped in Rhona's towel with her pelt dripping in her arms, and Rhona's happy for the reason to shake off those grim thoughts and greet her with a smile. "I won't say I told you so."

Cassie makes a face, more out of obligation than anything as her eyes go straight to the baking dish of salmon cooling on the hob. Gratified as she is to see Cassie hungry, Rhona motions her to the hallway. "Put that down, first," she says. "The food will keep."

"Thought we were having biscuits," Cassie says, leaving a trail of wet footprints as she heads for the guest room where she'd dropped her things earlier.

"Who says we can't have biscuits in our pasta?" Rhona calls after her with a grin, and is gratified when Cassie shrieks in disgust.

"I take it back, you're the worst." The words are muffled slightly by the distance, but they lighten Rhona's heart all the same. Even the short time in the water had been enough to bring some life back into Cassie.

It didn't do for ones like them to be away from the water too long, Rhona thinks as she serves dinner, biscuits on their own plate well removed from the pasta. Maybe they'd been daft to think they could survive too long in Glasgow or Brazil, because all seas might be connected, but home was something special.

When Cassie comes back in in a tanktop and jeans with her damp hair up in a messy ponytail that drips no less than her pelt, no longer hiding in her jumper even though the air coming in through the open windows was cool, Rhona wonders if they, unlike the selkies before them, had to try anyway.

**

Cassie sleeps late the next morning, though Rhona had thought they might swim together, and she's still sleeping by the time Rhona is ready to leave for Lerwick. Rhona hesitates in the guestroom doorway, wondering if she should wake her and offer her a lift into town. Best not, she decides, after some consideration. She knows from Jimmy that both he and Duncan have been trying to get her to go out more, and while Bressay might not have what they were thinking, in Rhona's mind it counts.

She does leaves Cassie a note reminding her to swim, and adds that she's welcome to anything she finds in the kitchen. It's not babying her, she thinks, any more than anyone with a broken heart needs some extra consideration. Jimmy had certainly done similar enough for her, after Phyllis, and though she'd never doubt he wanted the best for her, the sìth's own ways could never be all Cassie needed.

It's slow at the station, one of those days where the paperwork is the worst thing they have to face. Rhona takes advantage of the quiet to corner Jimmy in her office, perches on her desk and kicks her shoes off to remind him it's an informal conversation. "Had a visitor last night," she says.

Jimmy rubs a tired hand over his face, and with her seal's sight Rhona sees the moss under his nails, the faint beginnings of the ghillie dubh's bark at his wrist this close to the solstice. "Aye," he says. "She texted me, round eleven. Said it was nice tae be in a house where someone knew how to cook."

Rhona snorts. "Put two and two together then, did you?"

He nods, sinks into a chair with the resignation of a man who knows this conversation is overdue. "It hasn't been easy for her," he says. "What with being gone, and then Alan, and Duncan staying over — it's a lot to get used to."

"I know," Rhona says, "And I was thinking—" and then she catches up to the last part of his sentence. "What's this about Duncan staying over?" No wonder Cassie had been avoiding them both last night then.

Jimmy sighs, eyes fixed on the window. "We're thinking," he says, and Rhona suppresses the urge to say, dangerous. "About seeing each other. Properly seeing each other, I mean, and it's just one more thing to work out."

Rhona can't say she wasn't expecting it to happen at some point, but when she finally pulls words together, all she can come up with is, "Well, your timing's a bit shit, eh?"

Jimmy leans back, the chair creaking ominously. "I know," he says. "Gods, believe me, I know, we've all said it, but—"

"It's no bad thing," Rhona says quickly, and his shoulders relax just slightly. "Actually, this makes what I was going to say easier. I want Cassie to stay with me through Midsummer, if she'll have it." Truthfully, she hadn't known for sure she was going to ask that until just now, but the rightness of it sits in her heart.

Jimmy lets out a slow breath, considering. "Might be for the best," he says. "If she'll have it, mind. But it's no good for her tae be alone on Midsummer, and if you've gotten her into the water, that's — well, it's more than I've managed."

He looks wistful, sadder than he should be, and Rhona knocks her knee against his. "It's not for lack of trying on your part," she says. "You've done so much for her, Jimmy, she'll just ... always have more saltwater than blood in her veins." And Jimmy's body will always be more birch than bones, she doesn't say.

"Aye," Jimmy says, standing up. "I — thank you, Rhona. I appreciate it."

"Any time," Rhona says.

Jimmy shoves his hands in his pockets, hesitates, and for a moment Rhona thinks he's going to say something else. But he turns and leaves without another word, and the seabird's calls outside once again fill Rhona's office, carrying the memory of the surf with them.

**

Cassie texts around four to say she's in Lerwick — and to promise that she did spend time in the sea before coming to the Mainland — and Rhona takes the opportunity to ask if she wants to get dinner at the pub before heading back to Bressay, where she's welcome to stay. Cassie agrees so quickly Rhona thinks perhaps she's just glad she didn't have to be the one to ask if she could stay.

Back home, Rhona suggests another swim, and is relieved when Cassie agrees with no hesitation or suspicion. In the calm of the ocean as the sun dips towards its nadir, Rhona rolls over onto her back, relaxing into the current as it flows through her fur. Cassie stays close, her pelt brighter than it had been, but her movements are tense, her seal's body clumsier than Rhona's used to seeing her.

Rhona tries not to think too hard about it. Like Cassie's heart, that, too, would mend.

On Midsummer's Eve, they camp on the beach, heads pillowed on their pelts, and Rhona thinks about the first time they did this, when Cassie was twelve. Old enough that the thought of spending one more holiday with the sìth on Fair Isle felt like a chore, not so old that she had realised that spending the solstice with someone who could technically be classified as one of her dad's work friends was the opposite of cool. The tradition had waned in recent years as she'd started new ones with her friends, but it felt right that this would be the year they returned to it.

Rhona wakes first, to the ever-present dawn sun, and can already see the heads bobbing in the Atlantic past the breaking waves. The waves are never truly empty of selkies, between those who never walked on land and those like her who were happy to embrace two worlds, but there was nothing like the Midsummer gathering. From a distance, she couldn't make out individual faces, but she can already see the mix of them — some nearly human, some the furthest from, and all of their eyes sparkling.

All their voices weaving over and under each other to sing many words all meaning one thing: home.

"Cassie," Rhona nudges her awake. "It's time."

Cassie opens her eyes slowly, rolling over to follow Rhona's gaze out over the sea. Their fellow selkie's call is no danger to them, but it pulls them forward all the same, and Cassie's eyes widen as she sits up. "I'd forgotten," she murmurs. "Or not forgotten, just ..."

"They're quite the sight, aren't they?" Rhona says, looking over at her. In the pale pink dawn glinting off the waves, Rhona feels like she's seeing Cassie as she's meant to be for the first time since she had come back from Brazil: full of seawater and life and so very like the girl she used to be. The girl she still is.

Cassie doesn't respond with words, but as she swings her pelt over her shoulders with joy as heads for the waves as quickly as she can without looking like she's running, Rhona knows she's gotten her answer. Rhona wraps her own pelt around herself as she follows slightly more sedately, but she knows that Cassie is starting to feel some of what she had felt last night: that this was right. That no matter what the past year had brought them, they could always come home to this.

And as the fur covers her body once more and she opens her eyes to the underwater world, she sees Cassie's form — more fluid now than just a few days ago — she knows Cassie will be fine.

They all will be.