Selkie Wisdom V
You mull over your choices for a moment, and while they all sound like good ideas, you decide on doing them all… but in good time, as you feel no rush. For the moment, you have one more question you want to ask the ancient selkie, if she’s able to answer you. But before you go into that, you realize that there’s something she didn’t give a complete answer to previously: you still want to know about the history of the selkie.
‘I’d like to ask another question, if I may,’ you reply. ‘But, before I do that, there’s something else on my mind, Miss Seamother.’
Voadia nods her giant head. ‘Of course, pup. Speak your mind.’
‘When you talked about the history of selkie, you didn’t really, erm, expand on it,’ you say. You don’t want to come off rude to the giant selkie that’s given you her time to tell you all this in the first place, but, you can’t help wanting to know. ‘So I wanted to…’
‘Ah, yes, yes, you are quite correct there.’ Voadia gives a deep, rumbling laugh that shakes the ground beneath her massive form, then she smiles at you, a bright and sincerely friendly smile. ‘My sincere apologies, pup; I don’t mean to be akin to those… what is it you humans call those terms? Tropes? Yes, I believe that’s the right word.’
You blink a few times, shrugging in response since you aren’t sure.
‘But, yes.’ Voadia snorts humorously, bubbles expelling from her snout. ‘I don’t mean to be like the stereotypical trope you humans have, of an elderly or sagely figure that rambles on incessantly. I just happen to ramble on in general. Incessantly, in truth.’
‘She’s not wrong there,’ Moirine adds, giving her own internal snicker.
You feel relieved that you haven’t offended or upset the Seamother, since you’ve had quite enough of accidentally upsetting a mystical being with powers unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before this day (you learned your lesson with the genie).
‘Now then, to answer the actual question itself,’ Voadia says, ‘I imagine you’re wondering more “how did selkie form” and perhaps “why seals,” rather than just how it is we exist in this world without humans knowing.’ She nods her head. ‘Many, many ages ago, long before humanity evolved to what it is today, we took on a different form than the one you see before you. Bear in mind, humans didn’t yet have an identity to what you know as seals, sea lions, and so on, yet even then, our appearance was different.’
‘Wait, really?’ you say. ‘What did selkie look like, then? A different kind of animal, or…?’
‘The form a selkie in ancient times took is… Hmm.’ Voadia pauses for a moment. Her brows furrow, giving off the face of someone deep in thought. ‘It is similar to this shape,’ she uses one fin to gesture to herself, ‘what you as a human would define as a seal, but, with longer, slimmer bodies and tails, and darker colors overall. You could almost say it was more like an extraterrestrial version of a seal, if that makes sense.’
You stare at her as you hear this, and you try to visualize the selkie form in your head.
‘It’s perhaps difficult to describe without being able to SHOW you,’ Moirine says. ‘But it isn’t something any of us can do any longer – to my knowledge, only a small few selkie remain from that era, and they are… not around these parts to speak with or see, pup.’
‘Why is that?’ you ask. You’re confused and fascinated all the same. ‘And, wait…’ You blink and look to Voadia. ‘I thought you were the oldest living selkie, Seamother?’
The Seamother takes a long breath before she answers. ‘Nay, pup. I am not THE oldest, truthfully. I am merely the one that has lived above what we selkie call the Beneath for the longest, for I have sought to help guide my kin into the newer eras.’
‘The Beneath,’ Moirine says as she looks at you, ‘is the deepest parts of the oceans of the world – it is a realm of crushing waves and pure blackness, where no sunlight shines through. The sources of light down there are creatures which can illuminate their own bodies, and, rare cases where unnatural light can be found.’ She shakes her head. ‘It’s not a place many of us like to be, pup. It’s a frightening, solitary realm of bleakness.’
‘And… and that’s where selkie first came from?’ you ask, staring once more.
‘Indeed,’ Voadia replies. ‘You see, it has long been believed that we originated from the core of the Beneath – the center of the furthest depths, at a point where the earth emanated with magics. The selkie of old sprouted from that core, and for many ages, they possessed these long, serpentine bodies, which I forgot to mention could glow, like an anglerfish, but from their entire bodies. They lived down there for many an age, in relative peace due to not having contact with any other sentient beings.’
She shifts her massive head slightly, raising it. ‘That is, until, a great tremor rippled through the Beneath – one so powerful, it shook the very foundation of the blackened realm the ancient selkie called home. Imagine a… I’ll call it a ‘shell,’ that separated the Beneath from the greater part of the world’s oceans. That massive tremor broke through the shell, enough for our elder kin to realize there was far, far more to the world.’
You soak in her words. ‘Whoa…’ It takes a good minute for you to absorb this new information, and you’re astonished as you visualize it all. ‘So there’s… a deeper part of the ocean, then, that the selkie first came to exist in, and they lived there for a long time without knowing there was an even bigger ocean world above them? Is that right?’
‘Precisely,’ Moirine says.
‘Damn,’ you say. ‘And some of these ancient selkie still live there?’
‘Indeed, pup,’ Voadia replies. Her eyes seem to glimmer with what you can only define as ‘wisdom’ as she holds your gaze. ‘Those of our kin that choose to remain down there in the Beneath do so because they have no desire to leave. Whether it be that they prefer the darkness or the solitude, that perhaps they don’t understand what leaving would mean for them, that they fear the thought of leaving, or, that they have no desire to deal with anyone or anything else… I cannot say for certain why it is they linger.’
‘It must be lonely down there, though,’ you say. ‘I mean, the way you describe it makes it seem like this… Beneath is this… nightmarish place, if it’s so dark and scary.’
Voadia offers a quiet ‘hmm’ in response to your words.
‘I have never been down there myself,’ Moirine says after a beat of silence. She shakes her head, a look of genuine disdain in her humanlike eyes. ‘The closest I ever ventured to seeing the Beneath, which was almost to the edge between this upper realm and that deep realm, was more than enough for me to know in my very heart that it was not a place I would wish to be in. It’s far too cold and spacious and… eerie, even for a selkie.’
‘I don’t wish to sound petty toward my kin,’ Voadia says. ‘Yet I must also add that those who stay in the Beneath are… they do not possess the same level of mental comprehension that you do, pup, as a human, or that Moirine does, or that I do myself.’
‘How so?’ you ask.
‘They exist in a primordial realm detached from the greater oceans,’ Voadia says. ‘Thus, they live with a primordial mindset – they comprehend certain things, I am sure, but, as they have never left to explore and to see, their minds are more alien. You would not be able to communicate with them properly, pup; they do not grasp the human language with words and tones and emotions.’ She sighs in her mind. ‘In a way, it is… sad.’
She falls silent here and looks down to the ground, and you can tell there is likely more to this than she’s told you. While you do want to hear more about the selkie history, at the same time, you don’t want to pry too much right now, especially since all of the new information she’s given you has proven to be a lot for you to really take in.
‘Now then,’ Voadia says suddenly. ‘Since I’ve managed to give you what I hope is a decent response, rather than prattling on about nothing of importance…’ She cracks a small grin at this. ‘What was it you wanted to ask beyond that?’ Her eyes meet yours after another beat. ‘Or have you changed your mind for the time being, pup?’
You blink, and recall that, yes, you DID have one other question. But you’ve asked a lot, and heard a lot, so, you take a brief inner moment to ponder: do you ask? Or hold off?
Written by Hollowpages on 04 March 2021
