Town
Jasmine promised, though it meant breaking the one she’d made to her sister. Jamie’s inexperience with humans meant she wouldn’t ever be able to blend in with the humans, but Jasmine had no such weakness. I’ll just visit and see what it’s like. In and out, no problem. Jasmine would wait until the next day after the morning hunt and say she was going to scout the island again for anything she’d missed. Maria volunteered to go with her, but Jasmine dismissed her. “It’s no big deal. I just want to make sure there’s nothing I missed. I might be a while, but I’ll come back safe.”
“You better,” warned Maria.
Jasmine swam from the peninsula in the direction of the island, but only for a few hundred yards before cutting westward like Jamie told her to do. She’d rolled a cot of weed and tied it to herself for the night or two she would spend during her travel. Bundled with it inside a watertight was the dress Jamie had found. It was wet every time Jasmine stopped to rest and required drying for the next leg of the journey. On the first night she knew she was headed in the right direction when she saw the long arm of a lighthouse’s beam sweeping the horizon and blinking at her every few seconds.
Jasmine got a clearer look at it the next day when the human settlement came into view. Massive ships and trawlers pulled in and out. Standing tall among a clot of wooden houses was a white, octagonal lighthouse currently dormant within the seaside light. Jasmine crawled onto land about a mile out to take off her skin and let the dress dry. It wouldn’t lose all its moisture, but she could at least wander into town once it was damp. A road leading down the shore held no traveling humans for as long as she hid in the grasses flanking it. That was good as it meant no one would find her skin while she left it here. Once the dress was finally dry enough, she located a dense clump of grass and placed her folded seal skin inside it. After that she wandered onto the road and began her walk into town, feeling slightly uncomfortable in clothes after being nude for so long.
What discomfort awaited her in the town was much worse, however, and her fears of looking unacceptable in a wet dress were squashed by what she saw what conditions the humans were living in. Through every street was a quagmire of mud and folk struggling but somehow surviving amidst the squalor. Jasmine earned every eye she passed by in her comparatively exquisite attire, that which was as wet as everyone else’s. The way the men seemed to appraise her when she walked past generated no small level of unease. Without the muck and grime the towns poverty had painted each citizen with, she was positively darling.
Written by TheGreatJaceyGee on 21 October 2024
