Chapter Seventeen
I woke to fingers brushing my cheekbone, not Lachlan's touch, because he had gone at some point, the sea calling him no doubt, but smaller and hesitant. Saoirse crouched beside the waterline, her nudity damp with sea spray, her eyes tracing the glowing script across my shoulders with uncharacteristic reverence. “Good morning, sleepy head,” she greeted me.
I rubbed my eyes, yawned and then smiled at her, remembering my coupling with Lachlan during the night, my body glowing brightly from the new runes that continued to appear with increasing frequency. I stretched long and hard as my morning wood pointed towards the dried cum on my stomach and chest, evidence that I’d failed to get the recommended eight hours of sleep during the night.
The sand-bed dissolved as I sat up, grains scattering back to the shore with a sound like falling sugar. "Morning, sis,” I managed to say, still not fully awake.
"Christ, little brother," she whispered, her usual whiskey-rough voice gone soft. "You're really in it, aren't you?"
“I guess I am, but… sis,” smiling again, feeling more compos mentis. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been. Does that make sense?”
“It makes perfect sense, little brother. Fancy a walk, and we can chat?" she declared.
The tide had receded further than expected, leaving a stretch of wet sand that gleamed like polished obsidian under the morning sun. Saoirse's bare feet left deeper prints than mine, the weight of sobriety, perhaps, or simply the way she always stomped through life. Her elbow jabbed my ribs when I pointed this out.
"Stop staring at my footprints, you creep," she muttered, but her fingers laced through mine with unexpected tenderness. The sea breeze carried her scent now, no longer whiskey and regret, but brine and something green, like the marram grass trembling around us.
She stopped abruptly, toes curling into the sand. "Had a vision last night," she said to the horizon and me. "Not the booze kind. Proper Celtic shite, smoke and chanting and Granny's voice hissing about poisoned wells," as her thumb rubbed the inside of my wrist where Lachlan's mark pulsed faintly. "Told me if I kept drinking, I'd miss seeing you become... whatever the fuck this is and..."
I kissed her temple, tasting salt and sleep. "Probably Lachlan's doing. He thinks alcohol is landwalker poison, dead barley, he calls it."
Saoirse snorted. "Fucking selkie temperance movement," but her hand drifted to her abdomen, where the phantom ache of last night's hangover should have been. When I squeezed her fingers, she surprised us both by laughing, a bright, unguarded sound that sent sanderlings skittering up the beach. “I feel…strangely, happy. Happy to see you so…rejuvenated and alive. I also feel happy that after all these years, that… my work might come to something.”
The morning air held a crispness that made my bare skin prickle, though the markings pulsing along my ribs radiated their own warmth. Saoirse strode beside me, entirely unselfconscious in her nudity, her freckled shoulders catching the sunlight as she kicked at a strand of kelp.
"Christ, can't believe I've spent all this time starkers with you," she muttered, though her grin belied any real discomfort. "Haven't done this since we were teenagers skinny-dipping in Loch Ryan. It’s strange but comforting, we can… especially now you're..." as she gestured vaguely at my body, "...all this. Would you mind if I had a good look? I know it's…personal, but I need to see you and understand."
“Considering sis, you used to bathe me; I don’t have a problem, since you’ve seen it all before. Do you?” I asked.
She smiled. “Really? I've seen you many, many times naked, but…Okay, I get it, I accept not since you became a man,” She answered.
We stopped walking, and I let her inspect my entire body. The only minutely embarrassing part was when she dropped to her knees to inspect areas sisters shouldn’t. “You even have runes on your cock and balls, Steve. Did you know that?”
Receiving no answer, she turned me around to find that my entire back and legs were covered in symbols she couldn’t decipher. Her hands travelled up my buttocks, and then she traced her fingers over my pelvis, hips and upper back, causing my body to react as arousal embraced me fully from her touch.
My shoulders and neck were likewise branded in runes she couldn’t read. Finally, she traced her fingers down my arms and then looked at me and kissed my lips in a deep, emotional, ‘I love you’ type of kiss that only sisters can provide.
“No cancer that I can see,” she reported. “Even the mole you had on your arse has gone. Also, you know you were circumcised, well, you’re not anymore. The foreskin’s grown back,” as she stared at my erection. Your… boyfriend…whatever you call him… has totally rejuvenated you to the point that your foreskin retracts totally when you’re hard.”
“I know,” I answered, knowing what she meant. The runes, the muscle definition restored, my virility returned, all thanks to... Even my very posture had changed, from less bookish academic, to more something that belonged to the tide's rhythm, and I'd only been on the island for a matter of days.
Saoirse's elbow dug into my ribs. "Watched you last night, by the way," her smirk all mischief, but her eyes held something softer. "With your seal-man by the firelight. You were... fucking beautiful together, little brother," the admission landing between us like a gift wrapped in barbed wire, Saoirse's version of tenderness. “I’m so jealous.”
“Thanks,” I replied, not quite sure what else to say.
Heat rushed to my face. Embarrassment, shock? I don’t know, but whatever it was sank deeper, lower into my body, remembering Lachlan's hands, his mouth, the way the runes had flared, and responded accordingly. Saoirse barked a laugh, loud enough to startle a passing oystercatcher.
"I’m pleased it’s working again… and not just for him, I can see," as she gestured crudely at my erection. "Guess selkie magic doesn't cancel out basic biology."
"Shut up," I muttered, though my traitorous grin ruined the effect as the salt breeze did nothing to cool my skin as we walked, our bare feet leaving twin trails in the damp sand. We talked more of nothing, the odd comfort of childhood memories resurfacing, her grudging admiration for Dr Fitzgerald's scholarly dedication, her colleagues' nudity as well as her own, and the way Lachlan moved, as if the sea itself had taught him to dance.
As we started to return, I’d had time to think about her comment, which was almost lost. “Why you jealous?” I asked.
“Simply put?” she asked.
“Why not? Keep it simple,” I answered her.
“I haven’t had a decent fuck in years, dedicating myself to my work and watching you last night, fucking freely without a care who saw you, I realised what I’ve missed,” she stated.
There was nothing I could say to make her feel better as I put my arm around her shoulder, electing to remain quiet for a change, just enjoying this moment with my big sister who had spent years lecturing me about relationships and my many one-night stands.
Chapter Eighteen
The hobbit-warren's door scraped open just as Saoirse's foot hit the first step, revealing Dr Fitzgerald blinking into the sunlight like a barn owl caught mid-hunt. Her scholar's fingers clutched a chipped mug of tea, steam curling around her wrist still marked with fading tide-runes from last night's lessons.
The sight of us, barefoot, bare-skinned, Saoirse's hair snarled with seaweed and my collarbone pulsing with fresh runes, made her choke on her Earl Grey.
Dr Fitzgerald looked at Saoirse and laughed. "If the Chancellor and Dean could see us now, it would be a right proper scandal even they couldn’t ignore.”
"Selkie dress code," Saoirse muttered, laughing at the absurdity of the situation, as both of them looked at me.
"What?" I demanded. "Never seen a naked man before?"
Dr Fitzgerald replied with a smile and deep chuckled. “Of course I have. Many. But not anyone who looks like you. You…your body looks like that of a teenager, virile, fit and…totally fucked…”
Before I could answer, the sea behind us seemed to exhale as Lachlan emerged from the surf like a blade being drawn, hips first, water cascading off his torso in silver sheets that caught the morning sun. Dr Fitzgerald's teacup hit the doorstep with a clatter as her breath hitched.
"If every man looked like that," Dr Fitzgerald murmured, her academic detachment crumbling into naked awe, "I'd enrol as a full-time nymphomaniac."
Lachlan’s arrival signified the resumption of academic Q&A’s as the hobbit-warren door clicked shut in front of me with the finality of a tomb seal, leaving the scholars' eager interrogations muffled by thick stone.
I was redundant now, as my mind drifted to that old movie, the one that fit this mess perfectly. "It’s a god-damned interview with a God," I muttered, leaning on the Tom Cruise line. Even the storm petrels knew, circling overhead in silent escort as I picked my way down the granite slope toward the east cove where I expected to find Lachlan's grandmother, eager to share the gossip she would probably demand to know.
That woman had a sixth sense, I decided, since I found her waiting at the entrance to the cove, as if she knew I would be coming, a beaming smile mixed with sorrow, across her face. "So," her voice sounding like granite. "How's my grandson's love today? Let's see what the sea's written on you since I last saw you."
I didn't remember crossing the distance, but suddenly her hands were tracing the newest runes along my chest, down past my groin to my thighs, each touch sparking like flint on steel. “You know this is twice in one day that a woman’s fingers have explored my body,” I declared.
"Probably won’t be the last,” she responded. “You're truly beautiful, Steven, and my grandson has marked you with all his love and knowledge. So, tell me now, what's he like in bed because I can tell you've coupled and bonded… And more than once."
“You do like a bit of gossip, don’t you?” I chastised her subtly.
It was like talking to the village gossip, the way she leaned in, elbows on knees, eyes gleaming with scandalous delight as I described how her grandson's teeth caught my hipbone during the third wave. The grandmother's laughter rolled across the tide pools like pebbles in surf, rich and unselfconscious, when I admitted how Lachlan's hands had left glowing handprints on my thighs.
"Ah! So, he still arches like that when he's close?" miming the motion with her wrinkled hands, fingers curling upward like breaking waves. "Just like his grandfather, all dramatic flair and no subtlety," as she grinned widely. "Did he sing for you? Proper selkie love-songs sound like whales drowning."
I choked on unexpected laughter, remembering how Lachlan's voice had fractured into something inhuman and beautiful as he came. The old woman cackled, slapping her knee hard enough to dislodge barnacles from her sealskin wrap. "That's my bloodline! All poetry and no shame."
She leaned closer, her cold nose brushing my ear. "Tell me, landwalker, did the markings on his lower back glow violet when you touched them just so?" her finger demonstrating the motion against my palm.
The tide rushed in to fill our silence as I blushed, recalling exactly how those particular runes had flared beneath my tongue, as I liked him. Her answering chuckle held the weight of centuries. "Good. That means he trusts you with his true name," as she plucked a periwinkle from a rock pressing it into my hand, its spiral whorls still damp with seawater. "Eat this later. It'll help your human throat pronounce it properly."
A sudden swell drenched us both, the grandmother not bothering to shake the water from her braids as she scrutinised me. "You're taking to the bonding better than most. Usually, humans faint after their first proper coupling with one of us," her webbed fingers tracing the newest script along my collarbones, letters that hadn't been there at dawn. "Though, I suppose you're not entirely human anymore, are you?"
"What happens now?" I asked her, my fingers absently tracing the newest runes pulsing along my inner wrist, spirals within spirals that hadn’t been there when I’d left the beach.
The grandmother's fingers paused on my wrist, her webbed grip tightening like a sudden undertow. "The sea writes plainly when you learn to read it," she murmured, turning my arm to where new runes pulsed, a looping script that flowed like tidal charts around my veins. "He'll visit often, my restless grandson. But you must understand..." her black eyes fixed on mine, "...you can never be entirely with him."
Beyond the cove, waves smashed against granite with the rhythm of a heartbeat. I could taste salt on my tongue, feel it drying in the hollow of my throat, but the grandmother's next words settled deeper than seawater ever could. "The sea calls him, just as it called his father, and his father before him," as she pressed my palm flat against her sternum where a spiral mark pulsed violet. "For you, that call would be certain death. Even Manannán's magic cannot rewrite that truth."
Something in my ribs twisted, not pain, but the ache of understanding. Lachlan's gifts had healed my scars, restored my body, but the grandmother's gaze held no pity as she traced the edges of my mortality. "You'll age, landwalker. You'll wither like driftwood while my grandson remains as constant as the tides."
Her thumb brushed the tender skin beneath my eye where no runes glowed. "But mark this, from first kiss to last breath, you'll be his as surely as the moon belongs to the sea."
A gust off the Atlantic sent my hair whipping across my face, salt-stiff strands catching on my lips. When I blinked the sting away, the grandmother stood knee-deep in the surf, her weathered old skin rippling around her hips like living shadow. "Come," she said, extending a hand where barnacles crusted her knuckles. "There's a thing you must see."
We waded along the coast where tide pools cupped the sky in their palms. The grandmother moved with the sea's own grace, her bare feet finding purchase on slick rocks that would have sent me sprawling. At the pool's edge, she crouched, stirring the water until bioluminescence swirled up like shaken stars. "Look properly," she commanded.
The glow resolved into shapes, a boy's face pressed to aquarium glass, his breath fogging the tank where a harbour seal watched him with too-knowing eyes. My throat tightened. Seven years old, visiting the marine centre on a school trip, whispering secrets to a creature that tilted its head as if listening. The memory dissolved into another: that same seal slipping through polluted waters years later, nudging dying fish toward cleaner currents with a persistence that made marine biologists mutter about "uncanny behaviour."
The grandmother's chuckle stirred the pool's surface. "He watched you long before you met him, landwalker. When the sea called him home each dawn, he'd leave pieces of himself behind, in tidal charts, in the brooch I planted, in every selkie story that ever caught your ear."
Her fingers dipped deeper, summoning an image of Lachlan's hands carving spiral charms from whalebone, each one deposited where tides would deliver them to human shores. "All this time, you thought you were choosing. But the sea chooses first. You just answered."
A wave crashed against the rocks, showering us in cold spray. The grandmother didn't flinch as seawater streamed down her face like tears. "You'll have decades together, if fortune favours you. He'll come when the moon pulls hardest, when your runes burn brightest. But understand..." she caught my wrist, her grip like a riptide. "When your last tide ebbs, he'll carry your memory and body into depths no landwalker can fathom. That's the gift he gives you: to be loved by something older than stone and time itself."
At that moment, footsteps crunched on the shale behind us. Lachlan stood haloed in the afternoon light, his kelp-dark hair dripping onto shoulders mapped with fresh runes that mirrored mine. The grandmother released me with a sound like a wave drawing back. "Ask him," she murmured.
Lachlan's fingers found mine, his touch sparking the newest runes along my inner arm. "You're shivering," he observed, not with pity, but the simple acknowledgement of a creature who'd never known cold. When he pulled me against his chest, the heat radiating from his skin smelled of sun-warmed rock pools and something deeper, the metallic tang of blood in seawater.
The words settled in my ribs like stones, not drowning me, but anchoring me to something deeper than grief. Lachlan's fingers traced the newest runes along my collarbone, his touch igniting bioluminescent trails that pulsed in time with the distant surf.
"I saw your passing when we first coupled," he admitted against my temple, his breath warm with the scent of storm-tossed kelp. "Not the how or when, but the certainty of it, your mortal body laid out on Manannán's bier, salt-white and still as I sang the tides to pause," as his thumb brushed the hollow beneath my Adam's apple where no mark glowed. "This throat will one day forget how to answer me."
A wave shattered against the rocks below us, sending up prismatic spray that caught in Lachlan's eyelashes like crushed glass. I kissed each droplet away, tasting the ocean's metallic tang mingled with something older, the brine of selkie tears.
"Our life will be this," he murmured, pressing my palm to his sternum where our twin brooches pulsed in syncopated rhythm. "Decades stolen between tides, your human years burning bright as driftwood while I remain..." his voice fractured into something inhuman, the groan of icebergs calving, the hiss of retreating foam over hot sand.
The grandmother's laughter rolled across the cove as she waded deeper. "Stop brooding, boy! Even the sea knows joy between storms!"
With a flick of her wrist, she sent a wave crashing over us, not violently, but with the playful force of a grandmother chastising her brood.
Chapter Nineteen
"That's our life. One of sorrow and love, intermingled with moments of joy, passion and wonder," Lachlan told me as he held me firm, his desire as well as mine, demanding.
"Make love to me before we return home to see my sister and her colleague"
He smiled as his grandmother's retreating footsteps crunched on the barnacle-crusted rocks, her chuckle carried away by the wind like seafoam dissolving into spray. Before the sound fully faded, Lachlan's hands were at my hips, guiding me backwards until the cold bite of granite met my thighs. His teeth grazed my earlobe as he murmured, "Ride me like the tide rides the moon," his voice rough as wind-worn shale, but his presence was calming and full of love.
I climbed onto him with none of a selkie's grace, all elbows and shaking knees, until his palms steadied me, fingers pressing into the fresh runes along my inner thighs that pulsed violet at his touch. The first slow sink onto him tore a gasp from my throat, my body still tender from our earlier coupling yet thrumming with renewed hunger. Lachlan's answering groan vibrated through my sternum as his head fell back against the rock, exposing the elegant arch of his throat where gill slits remained hidden.
Our joining felt different this time, not the desperate claiming of the storm or the lazy rocking of the floating bed, but something deliberate, almost ceremonial. Lachlan's hands mapped my torso as I moved, tracing each new rune with reverent pressure, his mercury eyes darkening whenever his fingertips elicited fresh bioluminescence beneath my skin. When his thumb brushed the spiral rune over my heart, the mark flared gold-green, casting our tangled shadows across the tide pools below.
"Watch," he commanded hoarsely, guiding one of my hands between our bodies where our joining pulsed with each movement. My fingers came away slick not just with our mingled arousal, but with swirling luminescence that dripped like liquid stars. Lachlan caught my wrist, licking the glowing droplets from my fingers with a predator's precision, his pupils swallowing the silver of his irises.
The rhythm built gradually, not the frantic pace of before, but the relentless push and pull of waves wearing down a coastline. My thighs burned with the effort, but Lachlan's grip kept me moving, his hips rolling upward to meet each downward stroke until pleasure coiled tight as a riptide beneath my navel. His markings had begun to glow too, intricate patterns lighting up across his pectorals and along his forearms, their shimmering trails mirrored perfectly by my own.
In the perfect rhythm of the sea, he took me all the way, not with the frenzy of breaking waves, but the deep, rolling cadence of swells that had carved these islands over millennia. Each rise and fall of my hips matched the pulse of the tide against the rocks below us, our bodies moving with the same inevitability as water finding its level.
Lachlan’s hands anchored me at the waist, his fingers pressing into the runes along my hips until they flared gold-green, our shared light refracting across the wet granite like sunlight through a prism.
The sea itself seemed to hold its breath when my climax built, not a crash, but the slow, inexorable rise of a tidal bore. Lachlan’s thumb circled the spiral at the base of my throat, his voice rough as surf on shale: "Let it take you."
And I did, my back arching as the pleasure crested with the force of a storm surge, my cry scattering the gulls from the cliffs above.
My rejuvenated self was that of a young man, pumping cum with the force and quantity of a teenager. So much seed left my body, bringing a smile to Lachlan's face as he edged ever closer.
Beneath me, Lachlan’s markings ignited in cascading patterns, his release hitting with the groan of shifting continental plates, his seed spilling hot into me, ropes of beautifully warm cum. With each thrust, he penetrated me, our joined bodies glowing with passion and joy as he just kept pumping his essence into me.
Afterwards, we cuddled and kissed on the sun-warmed rock, the tide pooling around our ankles as our breathing slowed. I didn't want to separate, but like all good things, the end had to come as Lachlan traced the newest runes along my breasts this time, spirals within spirals that hadn’t been there an hour previously, his touch lighter than the breeze lifting the damp hair from my forehead.
"You’re learning the language," he murmured, pressing a kiss to the rune over my heart. The sea sighed against the shore in answer, a sound like absolute contentment.
Chapter Twenty
It was Saoirse’s shout that shattered the moment. "Christ’s sake, you two, can't you leave each other alone?"
She stood on the headland, hands on her hips, as Dr Fitzgerald peered over her shoulder with academic fascination, as Lachlan merely stretched like a seal basking on a skerry, utterly unselfconscious. "Looks like you’ve been busy," she said while looking not just at us but at the whole view before her.
The walk back to the hobbit-warren, now officially named the hobbit-warren by all of us, seemingly appropriate, punctuated by Dr Fitzgerald’s excited questions about tidal symbology and Saoirse’s increasingly creative curses about sand in unmentionable places.
Lachlan walked ahead, his bare feet sure on the slippery rocks. Once, he glanced back, his mercury eyes holding mine for a heartbeat longer than necessary, a silent promise, a pull as inexorable as the moon’s grip on the sea, as I knew, we would enjoy more time together this evening.
The fire hissed as sea spray landed in the embers, the sound like a thousand whispered secrets burning away. We had become accustomed to our collective nudity, our physical bodies meaningless in terms of attraction and interest as we sat on the sand enjoying our dinner supplied by the sea.
Lachlan remained the centre of the party, as so to speak. His masterful displays of magic and illusions were more surprising as he defied logic. Not only had my sister and Dr Fitzgerald accepted him as a living deity, a god from the ancient times when life was so much simpler, and the landwalkers worshipped, honoured and feared them, but I had surrendered myself in every way possible. Lachlan had changed my entire life, emotionally, spiritually and physically. My future was with him, knowing that the two academics present would leave tomorrow morning to pursue their studies and learning.
With their departure, and as an academic myself in marine biology, I suspected the ladies had one more question to ask Lachlan, and the evening setting became conducive for a complex question to be answered.
I didn't have to wait long as dusk claimed the beach, the wine flowed until the point, Dr Fitzgerald asked, "What happens now? her notebook now limp in her hands, ink bleeding from where sweat and waves had licked the pages.
Lachlan stretched his legs toward the fire, his toes flexing in the sand like a seal testing water. "What happens now?" he repeated, mulling over the importance of his answer.
His chuckle rolled like pebbles in surf. "I’ll tell you. Nothing changes, Kelly," the use of her first name made her flinch, too intimate, too old-fashioned for change. "Your universities will learn and translate. Conferences will be attended. Awards given, but the world will not be ready to remember the old ways.
Saoirse snorted, picking lobster meat from between her teeth with a fishbone. "Told you he'd say that."
Dr Fitzgerald's hands trembled around her wine cup. "But..."
"...means nothing," Lachlan interrupted, not unkindly as he plucked a razorshell from the sand, holding it to the firelight so it cast a long shadow across Dr Fitzgerald's notes.
"You'll publish. A handful of specialist academics will care. But the ice will melt. The sea will rise. Trawlers will fish. Dredging will destroy, and landwalkers will continue to poison all that they should preserve."
Saoirse protested. "You can change that if you come with us."
"And how would you introduce me to the world?" Lachlan asked, mocking the simplicity of my sister’s statement.
The firelight caught the edge of Lachlan’s grin, sharp as a shark’s tooth. "Would you wheel me into your lecture halls in a tank? Pin my skin to a museum display?"
His fingers flicked the razorshell; it arced over the flames and landed blade-first in the sand between Dr Fitzgerald’s bare feet. "Your people preserve nothing unless it’s dead behind glass."
Silence pooled around us, thick as a kelp forest. Even the seals had gone still in the shallows, their dark eyes reflecting the firelight like coins tossed into a well. Dr Fitzgerald’s mouth worked soundlessly, her scholar’s instincts warring with whatever primal part of her recognised truth when it cut her.
"There you have your answer," Lachlan stated.
None of us could argue with that statement as he continued. "What happens now is, you’ll use what you've learned during the last couple of days. Rewrite history. Rewrite your manuscripts and accept those awards and then wait, like we wait, until all the landwalkers stand on the precipice of the abyss of ecological and environmental disaster and then... only then, will landwalkers cry out for help and remember."
Silence prevailed as Dr Fitzgerald and my sister knew the truth of what he was saying.
Lachlan continued. "Only then, in your darkest hour before dusk, will we answer your cry. Only then will all landwalkers remember what it used to be like. Only then will landwalkers understand that they don't have the answer for the bigger question they will have created. Then, you and you," looking at my sister and Dr Fitzgerald, "can sow the seed of change and someone... somewhere will whisper our names."
Dr Fitzgerald was deep in thought as she asked, "Can we not whisper your name now?"
"You can, but you are only two of many. When the many start whispering, that is when Dagda, the father, will hear and then will summon, Morrigan of war and fate, Lugh of light and wisdom, Brigid of fire, healing, Cernunnos of nature, and me, of the sea."
The fire popped, sending up a shower of embers that swirled around Lachlan's head like dying stars. Dr Fitzgerald's pen hovered over her notebook, trembling slightly, not from the cold, but from the weight of prophecy settling on her shoulders.
Saoirse broke the silence first, cracking a mussel shell between her teeth with unnecessary force. "So, what you're saying is we're fucked unless humanity collectively hits rock bottom?"
"As colourful your language can be...yes," he answered.
Saoirse's lobster claw cracked against the rocks like a gunshot. "What about my brother?"
Her voice carried across the firelight, raw as a fresh wound as she jabbed the broken shell toward my glowing torso. "Look at him. He's covered in fucking runes that glow."
The firelight caught the new runes swirling up my forearms, interlocking spirals that pulsed violet whenever Lachlan shifted beside me. Dr Fitzgerald’s pen clattered to the sand as she reached out, her scholar’s fingers tracing the new marks on my skin. "These weren’t here earlier," she breathed.
Lachlan’s chuckle rolled through the darkness like retreating surf. "You landwalkers measure time in such small increments," as his fingers traced the newest marks along my legs, a looping script that mirrored the pattern of tidal currents around the island. "Each high tide writes its truth on him now... and you have access to him. Through his vocation and love of the sea, he will facilitate more change than your academic studies. Science will eventually understand that... science doesn't have all the answers, but through my loves endeavours, they will start to whisper our names."
The tide had turned by the time Saoirse dragged Dr Fitzgerald away from the fire, muttering something about "How can he be so...relaxed about the future?" as their footsteps faded up the beach, leaving only the crackle of driftwood and the occasional huff of seals in the shallows.
Lachlan stretched his legs toward the flames, his toes flexing in the damp sand. "They'll be gone by tomorrow, with more questions than when they arrived," his voice holding no regret, only the certainty of tides.
“Lachlan,” I started. "What can I do to start the whispering of your names. How can I bring change? You suggest I can play a part in this... game."
Lachlan's fingers paused against my collarbone, tracing a rune that hadn't been there yesterday, a spiral within a spiral, pulsing faintly violet with each breath.
The firelight caught the edge of his smile, sharp as a broken shell. "You already are," he murmured, pressing his palm flat over my heart where my brooch lay warm beneath my skin. "Every time you translate the old scripts, every tide pool you restore, every scientific discovery you present..." as his thumb brushed the tender hollow beneath my jaw.
"Every gasp you pull from landwalker lips when they see what the sea can truly do, will start the whispers because one discovery will create more questions they cannot answer."
I caught his wrist, feeling the tidal rhythm of his pulse against my fingertips. "That's not enough," my words coming out rougher than I intended, salted with a desperation that made the nearest seal lift its head from the shallows.
"That's the dichotomy you face. Love, joy, peace and sorrow... until we hear the landwalkers cry."
The weight hit me all at once, centuries of sorrow compressed into a single breath as I collapsed against Lachlan's chest. My tears weren't the soft saltwater kind, but ugly, heaving sobs that wracked my body like storm surges against a cliff face. His thighs cradled my hips as I buried my face in the hollow of his chest.
"I can't..." my voice breaking like a wave on granite. The enormity of it, his agelessness against my mortality, the cruel arithmetic of our diverging timelines twisted something fundamental inside me. Lachlan's hands settled on my back, fingers splaying across the newest runes between my shoulder blades, pulsing violet through my tears.
"You can... my love, you can and you will. You just can't see it now," he tried to assure me.
I felt like I was crying for the whole of humanity as he held me in his arms, keeping me safe and knowing I was loved. My tears weren’t just mine; they carried the salt of every polluted estuary, the grief of every bleached coral reef, the ache of every species pushed to extinction by careless hands. Lachlan’s fingers traced the runes along my spine as I shuddered, each touch coaxing bioluminescence through the saltwater streaking my cheeks. "Breathe," he murmured against my temple, his voice the sound of waves retreating over pebbles. "The sea hasn’t finished with you yet."
Chapter Twenty-One
Dr Fitzgerald's footsteps came pounding back across the wet sand, her voice sharp with protest..."Wait, there's something I need to..." before her words froze mid-air. Literally.
I blinked. A seagull hung motionless overhead, wings locked in a downstroke. Wave crests solidified like glass sculptures. Even the fire's embers hovered in place, their glow caught in amber stillness. Only Lachlan moved, his fingers still tangled in my hair as he whispered, "Do you trust me, Steven? I want to take you on a journey."
Lachlan stood, as I nodded, yes, pulling me up off the sand to stand with him and shouted, "Aonbarr!"
Within seconds, the water exploded, and Aonbarr appeared, his equine form breaching the surface in a corona of phosphorescent spray that froze midair like shattered crystal. The mythical seahorse’s mane flowed as he trotted to Lachlan's side, snorting approval that his master had called him.
Lachlan jumped onto Aonbarr’s back, pulling me up behind him. I wrapped my arms around his waist, feeling the power of his presence and that of his trusty steed as the horse turned and faced the sea.
Aonbarr’s flank surged beneath us like a living wave, his phosphorescent mane whipping across my thighs as the shoreline dissolved into streaks of silver. The scent of brine stung my nostrils, then vanished, replaced by the damp heat of tropical sand. My vision cleared to a moonlit beach where tiny dolphin flippers churned the sea. Lachlan’s arms tightened against mine as we arrived at another atoll, as hundreds of hatchling turtles scrambled past our bare feet, their shells glistening like wet pebbles in the sand. “Watch,” he murmured against my nape, his breath stirring the runes along my spine.
A ghostly current swirled around our ankles as we arrived at another island, where millions of red crabs were on their annual migration towards the sea beyond the breakers. I gasped as one paused mid-swim, its beady eyes reflecting the twin spirals pulsing at my collarbone before darting away.
We dismounted Aonbarr as Lachlan’s chuckle vibrated through my back, as he stood behind me with his arms wrapped around my waist. “They know kin, and this is what I love, everything I can show you, but you are whom I love,” as he kissed my neck while his hands played with my pubic hair.
The crabs scattered as I pushed Lachlan backwards onto the warm sand, his fingers digging into the runes spiralling across my pectorals, his laughter rolled through the tropical night, dark, rich, and tasting of storm-tossed kelp, as I straddled his hips. "I want you here, Steven," he murmured, arching into my touch as his hands found the fresh marks pulsing along my inner thighs.
I silenced him with a kiss that tasted of brine and something older, the metallic tang of shapeshifter blood mingling with the coconut-sweet air. His gasp vibrated against my lips when my teeth grazed his lower lip, drawing the barest hint of copper. The crabs' clicking claws faded beneath the rush of blood in my ears as Lachlan's hips rolled upward, his erection hot against my stomach.
"Here," I panted against his mouth, fingers tightening in his kelp-dark hair. "Now. On this island where your people whisper through the shells," as my free hand trailed down his abdomen, tracing the ridges of muscle until my fingers circled the base of his cock, feeling the vein throb beneath my touch.
His hands gripped my waist, thumbs pressing into the tender skin above my hip bones where new spirals had appeared at sunset. "As my love commands," he growled, flipping me onto all fours.
Warmth engulfed me as he sank into my body, his movements timed to the rhythm of the crabs scrambling seaward. The distant cry of frigate birds mingled with our shared gasps as Lachlan sheathed himself completely, all the way until I could feel his balls against my cheeks, each thrust sending sensations of delight through my body as he took me from behind.
I arched backwards, meeting him stroke for stroke, the salt-slick friction building like a storm surge against a seawall.
I felt him deep inside me, brushing against my sweet spot with the precision of a sailor navigating by starlight. The sensation unfurled like a tide pool blooming with bioluminescence, first a shimmer, then an impossible radiance. Lachlan's hands bracketed my hips, his thumbs pressing into fresh runes that pulsed violet with each thrust.
"Look," he rasped against the sweat-slick hollow of my spine.
The beach had transformed. Every grain of sand beneath my trembling hands now glowed with the same spiral patterns mapping our skin, the entire island responding to our coupling like a selkie love song. When Lachlan angled deeper, the crabs froze mid-scuttle, their tiny claws raised as if in reverence. Even the waves paused at their crests, crystalline droplets suspended like a thousand listening ears, as Aonbarr just waited patiently at the shoreline.
His next thrust struck true, wringing a cry from my throat that scattered the frigate birds from the palms. Lachlan's answering growl vibrated through my back teeth as his fingers held my hips, not restraining, but anchoring me against the storm surge of pleasure building in my core. "That's it," he praised, lips grazing the tender spot beneath my ear. "Sing for them."
I did. The sound that tore loose was half-human, half something older, reverberating through the fossilised coral beneath us until the entire beach hummed in harmonic resonance. Lachlan's rhythm stuttered when the spirals along his forearms flared gold, his cock twitching inside me as if electrified.
The moment Lachlan lost control was breathtaking, not for its rarity, but for its sheer vulnerability. His rhythm faltered mid-thrust, his fingers digging into my hips. A choked gasp escaped his lips, more human than shapeshifter, as his body arched taut against mine, and I felt him pulsing inside me, hot and insistent, his release hitting with the force of a rogue wave smashing against cliffs.
Ecstasy carved new runes across my skin in real time, luminous sigils spiralling up my ribs like barnacles claiming shipwreck timber. The scent of him, salt and something primal, like storm-washed ambergris, flooding my senses as his hips jerked through the last waves of his climax, pumping his seed in a constant warming flood of creamy cum. Rope after rope, I felt as I sought my own release.
And still, I ached as I chased my own release as he filled me.
Lachlan’s breath came in ragged gusts against my spine. His fingers gentled, tracing the fresh marks his grip had left on my waist. “You didn’t...”
"Not yet," I gasped, pressing my forehead to the sand where glowing spirals pulsed beneath my skin. Lachlan's chuckle vibrated through my back as he withdrew, his hands turning me onto my back.
The crabs resumed their migration around us in a clicking tide as he knelt between my thighs, mercury eyes reflecting the bioluminescent runes now mapping my torso.
"Playing hard to climax, are we?" he chuckled. "I'll soon sort that out," and for the first time, he enveloped my cock in his mouth, the master now submissive to my needs.
The shock of Lachlan's lips around me sent sparks arcing through my nerves. "Christ..." I gasped, fingers tangling in his kelp-dark hair as his throat worked around me with ease.
Aonbarr snorted from the shoreline, tossing his mane in what could only be amusement as Lachlan's answering chuckle vibrated deliciously along my length before he pulled off with an obscene pop.
"Your landwalker curses amuse me," he murmured, tracing the glowing spiral at the base of my cock with his tongue tip. The rune flared violet, sending tendrils of light spiderwebbing across my abdomen. "But tonight you'll cry Manannán's name."
His mouth descended again, swallowing me whole as his fingers found the tender skin behind my sac. The dual sensation, wet heat and clever pressure, had me arching off the sand within seconds as the migrating crabs scattered anew, their tiny claws clicking in frantic rhythm with my pulse.
Lachlan hummed around me, the sound translating directly into molten pleasure up my spine. His free hand splayed across my hipbone, thumb pressing into a fresh rune that made my vision whiten at the edges. "I’m close," I warned, but he only took me deeper, nose brushing the wiry curls at my base as his throat muscles fluttered.
Release hit like a collapsing wave, tearing a ragged shout from my lungs as Lachlan drank me down with efficiency, each pulsing spurt of my seed landing at the back of his throat, the sensation of him swallowing hitting me, both emotionally and physically, as his mercury eyes never left mine as I shuddered through the aftershocks. Only when the last tremor subsided did he lick his lips with deliberate provocation.
"Told you," he grinned, as cum dripped from his chin onto my spent cock. "There's always a first time for everything," as he licked my cock clean. “Couldn’t waste that final drop, could I?”
I laughed out loud as the crabs scuttled over our tangled legs like living sand, their tiny claws tickling between my toes as Lachlan cradled me against his chest. Their annual migration swirled around us, a river of red shells flowing toward the moonlit surf, but none dared climb higher than our ankles, as if they understood. As if even the crabs recognised this moment wasn't theirs to interrupt.
Lachlan's fingers traced idle patterns along my spine, following the runes that still pulsed faintly with spent pleasure. His other arm pillowed my head, bicep firm as coral bedrock beneath my cheek. The scent of him, wrapping around me more securely than any blanket.
"You're thinking too loud," he murmured against my temple, lips brushing the tender skin where my mortal pulse thrummed.
"I've never been to the Christmas Islands," I said, yawning widely. "You always make me feel safe, but... for the first time, I feel hope. Hope for the future."
His lips moved against my hair; words lost to the rhythmic sigh of waves against sand as consciousness ebbed. The last thing I registered was the warmth of Lachlan's palm settling over my heart, his fingers splayed across the glowing spiral that pulsed in time with my slowing breaths.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I woke to the sharp scent of burning driftwood and the acidic tang of brewing coffee, human smells cutting through the brine-heavy air.
Lachlan's arms were gone from around me, replaced by the softness of a duvet tucked beneath my chin as morning light painted the beach in pale gold, highlighting the deep footprints leading from the shoreline to where Aonbarr stood knee-deep in the surf, his mane dripping phosphorescence onto Lachlan's bare shoulders.
"You missed the sunrise," Saoirse announced, thrusting a chipped enamel mug into my hands as I watched my boyfriend, my lover...my master.
The surf hissed against Aonbarr's flanks as Lachlan swung onto his back with the ease of a man mounting a bicycle. This time, he wore his magnificent sword and crane bag as his grandmother materialised from the morning mist like sea foam given form, her bare feet leaving no prints in the wet sand.
"Tá an fharraige ag glaoch," she murmured, pressing a kelp-wrapped bundle into his hands. The ancient words hung in the air, thicker than the salt spray.
Dr Fitzgerald's coffee mug slipped from her fingers, shattering against a barnacled rock. Neither she nor Saoirse moved to pick up the pieces, as they stood transfixed as Lachlan's markings ignited cobalt down his spine, the light refracting through the mist in prismatic shards.
He looked at me and whispered, "Tá an fharraige ag glaoch. The sea calls me.”
I knew it before Lachlan spoke, knew it in the way Aonbarr's hooves churned the shallows without sound, in the way the morning mist clung to Lachlan's shoulders like a second skin. He didn't look back as he swung Aonbarr's round, facing out towards the distant storm clouds, the Answerer sword gleaming cold against his thigh.
"Wait..." the word tearing from my throat raw as a wave-smashed shell.
Lachlan didn't wait. Didn't answer. Aonbarr's hooves struck the first cresting wave with a thunderclap that sent sand flying against my bare legs, the spray freezing midair like shattered diamonds as the legendary sea-God galloped into the storm's maw.
The distance swallowed them whole, one heartbeat they were there, mythical man and mythical steed in tandem, silhouetted against bruised clouds, the next, swallowed by the squall line where sea and sky became one roiling darkness.
Saoirse and Dr Fitzgerald looked to the grandmother for an answer, but all she said was, "Let the tide take what it claims," she murmured, her voice the sound of waves retreating over pebbles. The runes that now covered my entire body flared violet in protest, a visceral tug behind my navel like an umbilical cord stretched to breaking.
"What happens now?” I asked her.
The grandmother's fingers, rough as whelk shells, traced the newest rune pulsing beneath my collarbone. "You won't see Manannán mac Lir for seven years now," she said, her voice carrying the weight of tidal charts and drowned ships. "Unless you call him. But that carries risks even selkies fear."
Dr Fitzgerald's pencil snapped against her notebook. "Risks like what?"
"Like forgetting to breathe air," the old woman chuckled, nodding toward the churning horizon where Lachlan had vanished. "His power isn't just waves and wind, it's the salt in your blood, the water in your womb," as she tapped my sternum hard enough to make my ribs vibrate. "Calling him for the wrong reason will incur his wrath."
The grandmother's words coiled in my chest like riptides. "If you want to see him without calling him, just put your hand in the water..."
As the tide receded, leaving the sand cold beneath my bare feet, Saoirse kicked a broken crab shell toward the surf, her voice brittle with forced nonchalance. "Seven years is nothing to them. A blink. A single storm season," but her fingers trembled around the periwinkle necklace Lachlan had given her at dawn.
Dr Fitzgerald's scholarly facade cracked as she cried. "I still have so many questions," she muttered through her tears.
"That might be true, and he still has many answers, but not today," the old woman whispered, taking in the look on Dr Fitzgerald's face.
The grandmother's hand clamped around my wrist before I could plunge it into the surf, sensing my deep sense of loss. "Love and sorrow. Remember that and, not yet," she hissed, her fingers like cold iron, the runes on my arms flaring crimson in protest, burning where she touched. "The sea's calling him to war, your calling him now, would be for the wrong reason. You'll drown in his wake."
Chapter Twenty-Three
The helicopter blades carved through the salt-heavy air, their rhythmic thump drowning out Dr Fitzgerald’s frantic notetaking. Below us, the archipelago that is the Isles of Scilly shrank into a string of emerald and slate, each island a vertebra in some ancient sea beast’s spine.
I pressed my forehead to the vibrating window, watching the grandmother’s silhouette dwindle on the headland. She stood motionless, her kelp-grey hair whipping sideways like a tide marker, one hand raised in farewell or warning, I couldn’t tell. The runes beneath my sweater pulsed in response, a slow, insistent throb that had nothing to do with the aircraft’s vibrations.
Saoirse’s knee bounced against mine, her fingers worrying the periwinkle shells around her throat. "You’re glowing through your clothes," she muttered, jerking her chin at my neckline where violet light seeped through the fabric. When I didn’t answer, she slammed her palm against the seat between us, making Fitzgerald jump. "Stop it. Whatever memory you’re replaying...stop. You’re broadcasting it like a fucking lighthouse, and you, you have work to do."
I clenched my jaw, but the runes along my ribs flared brighter, recalling Lachlan’s mouth on my skin as time itself had shuddered to a halt around us. The helicopter cabin reeked of synthetic fibres and jet fuel, so wrong after days of salt-cured leather and woodsmoke. My sweater itched like a second skin, every thread a shackle.
Fitzgerald’s pen scratched across her notebook..."Subject’s dermal markings exhibit photoluminescent properties correlated to emotional states," before she froze, her academic detachment cracking as she stared at my hands, the swirling patterns there had deepened from lavender to indigo, mapping every place Lachlan had touched me during our suspended night when he’d stopped time itself. Last night he’d shown me the world and all the beauties and wonders it contained, and now it was for me to preserve them.
Outside, storm clouds massed over the Atlantic, their bellies bruised purple green. The pilot’s voice crackled through the intercom, "Turbulence ahead," he announced as we hit the first air pocket.
Saoirse grabbed my wrist, her thumbnail digging into a fresh rune. "Breathe, you idiot," she hissed. "Or you’ll rewrite the goddamn aircraft’s instrumentation," as the panel lights flickered in confirmation, needles swinging wildly as the runes on my forearm flared copper bright.
Fitzgerald shoved her notes aside with uncharacteristic violence. "Enough," her voice trembled. "We have one hour until Dublin. Sleep. Process. But for Christ’s sake, stop leaking power."
Chapter Twenty-Four
Seven years. The words tasted bitter as the Liffey's brackish scent reached my nostrils. The helicopter's roar had faded into Dublin's hum, leaving only the river's murmur and the phantom press of Lachlan's fingers against my runes.
Saoirse and Dr Fitzgerald had deserted me the moment we landed, marching towards the Dean's office at Trinity College.
I had walked out of the college grounds for the short walk to the river to find the steps at Ha'penny Bridge that took me to the water’s edge. Strange looks from passers-by met me as I walked, my rune-covered body appearing like tattoos to most people, who muttered comments while staring. Some people knew the truth and winked, but most just stared, wondering what idiot would tattoo their entire body.
Even though I was fully clothed, I felt cold as I sat on the bottom step, peeling off my socks still damp with island salt, my toes curling over the seaweed-clad steps. The water of the Liffey welcomed me with a shock of cold as I dipped my feet in the brine, nothing like the tropical shallows where Lachlan had last made love to me, but the instant my feet breached the surface, the current pulsed golden around my ankles.
A whiskered face broke the murk. Not Lachlan's seal-form, but another, smaller, with one torn flipper and eyes that held millennia. It nipped at my big toe with deliberate gentleness, the gesture neither playful nor entirely benign.
Playing with the spider conch necklace that hung around my neck, I made my request. "Please," I whispered, my feet skimming the water as if stroking a lover's hair, as the runes along my forearm flared in sequence, casting ripples that spread unnaturally far. "Please…take my love to him."
The seal blinked slowly, then vanished with a flip that splashed my thighs. I expected emptiness. Instead, warmth surged up my legs like a rising tide, pooling low in my belly where the most intimate runes pulsed gold. The river's scent shifted, less sewage and diesel, more kelp and storm wind and for three impossible heartbeats, I felt Lachlan's presence as physical as the stone beneath me. His laughter echoed through my ribs, his breath hot on my neck despite the Dublin chill.
My vision was clear, for a moment as I gazed into the water, and then, it fractured, the vision dissolving into ripples, but the seal resurfaced, clutching something in its teeth: a periwinkle shell, identical to Saoirse's necklace. I pried it open with trembling fingers. Inside, cradled in pearlescent swirls, lay a droplet of seawater that refused to spill. When I pressed it to the hollow of my throat, the liquid seeped into my skin, leaving behind a new rune that burned like a brand.
The shell fell from my fingers, clattering onto the damp stone steps as the new rune pulsed like a second heartbeat at my throat. Not just warmth flooded me, but certainty. Seven years wasn’t a sentence. It was a challenge. A dare whispered in the language of tides.
I stood abruptly, water sluicing off my calves as the Liffey’s murk swirled with unnatural luminescence where my feet had been. The runes along my arms dimmed from storm violet to a steady cobalt, mapping out a path only I could see. The old woman’s warning thrummed in my skull, wrong reasons incur wrath, but this wasn’t longing. This was purpose.
I now knew what I had to do. Not just for me, but for all mankind, as I walked but up the steps towards my destiny.
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