Bridget Barid

Bridget Barid




The Basics
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Appearance
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You know that brown-eyed friend you have who can make you melt with their puppy-dog face? Well, Bridget sort of has resting puppy-dog face. Only it's more like a baby-seal face. Which is even cuter and more manipulative. Not to say that Bridget is manipulative, goodness no! It's not her fault you can't say no to those big brown eyes.

Of course, Bridget would have to know you before you could ever attempt to say no to her for something, and that would require meeting her. Meeting new people hasn't ever been her strong suit. Bridget has a way of blending into the crowd. It's a combination of being uncomfortably shy and a tiny, unassuming individual. She never wears anything that stands out. Her wardrobe mostly consists of plain browns and pastel colors. Preferably dresses as those are the easiest to slip in and out of for shifting into seal form. Flip-flops are another favorite, as again, they're easy to ditch. She usually buys the cheapest, most comfortable pair she can get her hands on and wears them down to shreds before bothering to replace them. She's never seen without a bag of some sort, something to carry her seal skin in, of course. The bag is never anything fancy. Usually just a shoulder bag or a small backpack. Her hair is a rich brown, falling just past shoulder length. She usually leaves it down, in a ponytail, or braided. Nails are never painted. Never bothers with make-up. No jewelry, no fancy hair clips. Just brown or black hairties, if even. She has a sweet, girlish voice, and speaks with a very thick Scottish accent.

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Personality
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Bridget is very quiet and withdrawn, and it takes her a while to warm up to people. Once she does, she can be a lot of fun. A caring and playful person who looks after her friends and never takes their company for granted. She can be protective of those she cares about, but never to the point of actual aggression. Once things heated beyond nagging or harping, she'd probably back off.

But this is not to say that Bridget doesn't have an aggressive side. There's just a single, specific way to bring it out. Her seal skin. If anyone touches it, she'll snap at them and take it away, and probably avoid that person for the next few days. Will she apologize? Probably not. And that probably is simply accounting for those few who have the energy and persistence to lay on some real thick guilt-tripping for VERY extended amounts of time. Even knowing full and well that an unwitting person has no desire to enslave her, Bridget is painfully sensitive about her seal skin. For someone other than her to touch it would mean that they hold her entire being, her will, her freedom, her very existence, right in their hands. And they can do whatever they want with it. Her worst fear is her skin falling into the wrong hands, and she has no shame in overreacting to that possibility. This is not to say that she won't reveal the skin to a select few, only that they must people she trusts with her life. In the rare instance that she lets someone touch it, they can be certain that she really, really trusts them.

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History
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Many years ago, a young and cocky fisherman living in a small town on a Scottish cost took his chances in a storm and paid dearly for it. The waves chewed up and spat out his small boat, and he was left to drown a hopeless distance from the shore. But as fate would have it, he survived to see the next morning. Somehow he had washed up on a small patch of rocks protruding from the sea. He made his way around the teeny little oasis, struggling to understand how he could possibly end up there in once piece.

But when he came to the other side and saw a seal sunbathing on the rocks, all his questions were answered. Right before his eyes, the breathtaking vision of a woman peeled out from under the skin of what had been a living creature not ten seconds ago and set the pelt aside while she lounged on the rocks. She was pale as though her skin had never seen sunlight, and her black hair was so long it pooled on the ground around her. He watched her for what felt like hours, captivated by her beauty before she finally acknowledged him.

"And at what point do you plan on thanking me for saving your life?" She asked, sparing him a lazy glance from one half-opened eye.

Jameson Barid had fallen in love with a selkie. A full-blooded selkie, a creature he could never truly be with. The sea would always call her away from him. Her pod would always demand her priority. But he didn't care what the legends had to say. He loved her. Every evening for a year after their first meeting, he returned to that same rock and waited for her. Every evening that wasn't ravaged by storms, of course, because he had promised her. She had made him promise.

"Don't be reckless with your life now that I've gone out of my way to save it," she had told him at the end of that first, wonderful meeting. They had spent the day and night with each other, but Jameson's loved ones had sent search parties after him, and their lamps and searchlights gleamed in the dark behind them. Their voices echoed over the water. And the woman had stood, her seal skin draped over her body. She was leaving him. She wouldn't be seen there by those other men, those fishermen with their nets and their tall tales. They were chasing his selkie away. "You'll promise me that?"

"I promise," he'd told her. "And I'll see you here again? That, you can promise me?"

She'd looked at him for a few moments, then grinned and took to the sea. It wasn't a yes, but then it wasn't quite a no either. So every day that didn't storm, he returned to that place. Every day for a year. Until finally, almost on the very anniversary of their meeting, he found her there. This time they shared two wonderful days, but then she left again. And for two years more she taunted him like this, dragging his heart out with her migrant pod, returning right on schedule and leaving just as quickly as she came.

On their fifth meeting, Jameson offered her a proposal. If she would let her pod migrate on without her for just one year, she could stay with him. If she didn't come to love him by the time that year was up, she could join her pod again when they returned. She told him she wanted to, and that exploring life as a human had always intrigued her. But leaving the pod was not an option for her. The longing would overcome whatever desire she had before it. Whether she wanted to or not, she was a pod animal, and she'd go with her kind.

But there was a way around that. If he took her skin, he'd be in control of her, and he could command her to stay. And once the pod moved on out of range, that unyielding longing would cease. The ache for the sea would remain, but with her skin out of her control, she'd have no way to sate it, and thus would grow to ignore it.

They made a deal. One year.

But one year turned into two. And then three. And then Rhona, the woman who was once a proud selkie, pleaded with Jameson to be sure the skin was hidden where she would never, ever find it. She had found happiness living as a human, and the yearning for the sea was just a shadow behind her back. As long as her skin, her power, was out of reach, she could live on and enjoy her life with him. He obliged her, and they were married within the month. She gave him four children. Two boys, Christopher and then Kane, and then two girls, Bridget and Angel.

And it was Bridget who found the skin.

She had been hiding under there while playing hide-and-seek with her siblings, and a loose floorboard had snagged her skirt. When she tugged herself free, the floorboard flipped up and she saw what looked like a box underneath. Curious, Bridget moved another board away and reached into the hole. The box she pulled out was an old fisherman's tackle box. There didn't seem to be anything special about it. Her father had several of them all over the house. But why was this one hidden under the floor? She crawled out from under the bed and opened it, surprised to see that the tackle compartments had been cleared out, and in their place was a neatly folded seal's skin.

Bridget carried the pelt out to the kitchen where her mother was making dinner. Her mother was humming pleasantly, her black hair in a long braid down her back. She smiled when she heard Bridget's footsteps and turned to greet her, but when she saw what her daughter was carrying, she froze.

"Why does daddy keep this under your bed?" Bridget asked.

But her mother didn't answer. Instead, she snatched the pelt out of Bridget's hands and yelled for the other's to come into the kitchen. Bridget's brothers came in, disappointed to have had to pause their game. The older one, Chris, had their year-old little sister, Angel, on his hip.

Her mother clutched the seal skin against her chest and started crying. The children exchanged confused and concerned glances.

"I love you all so dearly," she told them. "And your to tell your father that I love him too." She reached out a shaky hand to turn off the stove, and then she walked out, leaving the dinner half-cooked. "Lock the doors behind me."

Jameson searched endlessly for Rhona, but she was gone, swept away by the call of the sea and her pod, who inconveniently would have been near their area at that time. Through the next years he returned to their place on the rock, but she never met him again. Their days were over. The sea had taken back what was never really given to him, the heart of the only woman he would ever love.

The children learned to cope over time. Their father wouldn't explain why their mother left or what that pelt was for, and eventually, they stopped asking. They left their mourning, widowed father to his own devices, letting him drink himself into a stupor whenever he wasn't out on the fishing boats. It made no difference to them. He wouldn't talk sober, so what was the difference?

Until the evening Christopher turned thirteen, and a strong calling roused him from his bed and drew him to the shore. They followed him out, laughing and poking fun at him, thinking he was sleep walking. But the moment he touched the water, he turned into a seal and swam away.

Jameson searched for three months straight. His son was gone. One year later, Kane turned thirteen and the water took him as well. Only Kane came back, banging on the door in the dark hours of the morning, begging his father to hide his skin so he could please come home. But he always managed to find it somehow, and the sea and his kind always called him back. Until at last, he found satisfaction in his new life, and stopped coming home to his father.

As her thirteenth birthday crept up on her, Angel became especially attached to Bridget, terrified that she would go. And sure enough, though her father tried to lock her in, she found a way out that night and found her way to the water.

She came back, of course. Many times she came back. And oftentimes she'd stay for months, trying to give her sister and her father as much attention as she could bare to spare the pod. Her brothers emerged and spent time on the old shore too, for a short while, but Rhona never did. She couldn't face the husband she'd abandoned, and she couldn't risk being spellbound by the allure of a life with him again.

Over time, Bridget's father became less and less receptive to her visits, until he barely said a word to her the entire time she was there. The damn nanny had more to say than he did, and most of it was complaining about Angel's antics. He resented her for abandoning him, for taunting him now with her sparse appearances, and for the fact that Rhona at least cared enough to *interact* with her.

It wasn't until her father stole her skin and forced her to stay that Bridget came to understand the extent of her father's desperation. It took her two years to finally find it, but it didn't give her the peace of mind she had expected it to. In fact, it just lead to even more confliction. Bridget didn't want to go back to the sea and the pod, because it wasn't really her will. But she wouldn't remain a prisoner to her father either. And she certainly didn't want to leave Angel to the same fate whenever she turned thirteen. She needed an alternative to just her mother's ocean or her father's land. A place where she could be free and live her own life, where she could bring Angel to enjoy a similar freedom.

And that was when the nanny, a grandmother of an alumni of the island school, suggested that Bridget consider applying for Starlight Academy.



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Species and Abilities
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Selkie​

The Selkie's Skin

Bridget has the power to switch between seal and human forms. To shift from a human to a seal, she has to be naked and in fresh water or salt water. She then wraps her seal skin around herself. In a matter of seconds, her body seems to disappear into the skin as it reanimates itself back into a living seal. I n her seal form, Bridge can still understand human language and retains her human mind and awareness, but she is unable to speak. She can communicate with other seals, of course, but not people. To change back, she has to be completely out of the water. She doesn't necessarily have to be dry, but she must be out of the water. Then her human body essentially "peels off" the seal skin and emerges from underneath. The skin itself looks like any other preserved animal pelt and is clean upon transformation. There is no blood or gore to the change. Bridget can only stay in her seal form for two days before she is forced to shed her skin and spend at least three hours as a human. So long as she doesn't exceed her forty-two-hour limit, she will be able to change in and out of forms freely with a reasonable bit of time to rest in-between shifts.

Though Bridget can remain human for as long as she likes, both Bridget's forms are her "true forms." Bearing that, she is just as much a seal as she is a human, and was simply stuck with a human form as her "default" because she was half-human and born in that form. Had she been born half-selkie/half-seal and born as a seal, she would have been stuck in her seal form until she was old enough to have the power to shed her skin and take a human form, and probably would have been forced to change back into a seal every two days if their skin hadn't been stolen. Only full-blooded selkies could transform freely as children, and only full-blooded selkies could opt not to shed their skin and stay in either form for as long as they pleased.

A selkies' skins are extensions of themselves. And in most cases, as most selkies spend most of their time in seal form, it is the part of themselves they most identify with. Some pods teach that the soul is kept there, while others teach that half of the sould is within it and the other is within the human body, so that a selkie is only whole when the human form melds back into the seal. Whatever the cause, the fact remains. A selkie's connection to its skin is like the brain's connection to a limb. Leaving the skin at home or "somewhere safe" can make them extremely anxious, and they are able to sense the skin wherever it is. And, as pod animals, they can sense the shed skin of another selkie within one hundred miles.

If anyone happens to capture Bridget's skin, they become her master. They can order her to kill a man, make them lunch, walk a mile, whatever. She can speak freely (unless ordered to be quiet) and beg or argue. She could even apologize for her actions as she carries out her orders, but she cannot keep herself from doing so. If her skin is deliberately hidden, she will not be able to sense where it is and will still remain under the rule of whoever hid it. If someone else finds it, they become her new master immediately.

Any orders given to her expire after twenty-four hours. For example, if Bridget is ordered not to look for her skin, she has to be told again after twenty-four hours or she'll be able to look for it. Or if she's ordered to kill someone, she has to do it within twenty-four hours or she'll have to be told to do it again. Bridget does not have to physically hear the orders herself. If she is out of earshot, orders can be given to her by simply speaking to the skin, and she'll know what she has to do and would be helpless to act otherwise.

Bering that, A selkie can be "summoned" with their skin, meaning that if Bridget tries to run away from her master, all he has to do is hold the skin and call her name, and she'll have no choice but to return to wherever he is. This can come in handy if they were to get separated or if she were to get lost. Because as long as she's not physically detained, she will always find her way back to her master if summoned.

If her skin is in possession of someone else or deliberately hidden by them, she can't sense where it is. She can still sense the skins of other selkies, and they can sense hers. But she can't sense her own while it's in her master's possession.

If Bridget were to be separated from her skin and no one else took control of it, she could sense where it happened to be and know how to find it. If someone touches the skin without realizing what they're doing or intending to use it against her, they don't become her master and she can still sense it. Taking over a selkie has to be a deliberate action.

And yes, selkies can take over other selkies. It is very rude. In fact, in their culture, it is considered to be a sin and the highest form of betrayal.

Selkies cannot "share skins." They can only transform using their own skin.

Oh, and if the skin is destroyed, the selkie dies. If the skin is cut or damaged, the human form bears the same injury.


Pod Animal

Selkies, like any other seal, are made to be pack animals. They travel in "pods" and have an inherent longing to be near each other. The "longing for the sea" that Bridget and her family experience is mostly a longing for their pod, for other selkies.

When a selkie is within one hundred miles of another selkie, they are drawn to each other by an intense longing. It is a nearly irresistible feeling. For full-blooded selkies, it is irresistible, just as it would be if someone was controlling them with their skin. For half-selkies, it's more like fighting an addiction.

If Bridget comes within a hundred miles of anyone with even a drop of selkie blood in them, she will be drawn to them. If they shed their skin, she will be able to sense where it is, and visa versa on their end.

Selkies are very rare and mostly found in Scotland and Ireland. So now that Bridget is so far away from her pod, the intense longing for the sea has dulled. She still yearns to swim around in her seal form, but not any more than a normal person who loves the water and grew up around it would yearn to swim when they could. This means that she can freely choose to move in between the land and sea without being held to either by any overpowering force, the exact freedom that she had longed for back home. But it is also an isolating feeling for a pod animal to be so alienated from its own kind, and this leaves her very lonely, seeking companionship in those who grow close to her.


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