Of Selkies and Scars

...Note to self: no where is sacred on the grounds of a public school. Bridget really should have known better. But she was so sure this part of the beach would be left alone all day. She'd scoped it a couple of days before and no one had really come by. It was a secluded area. The perfectly safe, private place to shift back and forth when she saw fit to enjoy the ocean.

Well, so she thought, anyway.

Bridget had given herself a good few days before finally checking out the ocean on campus. Part of her had been anxious that the pull of the ocean would call her away. But surely enough, the ocean's call wasn't strong enough to overpower her without the tug of a pod nearby. She was free to explore the waters and return whenever she saw fit, free of manipulation from both land and sea.

It was a freeing feeling...but knowing that the pull was absent left her with a strange emptiness. Pack animals need a pack, after all, and Bridget didn't really have any companions yet. She had met a couple people, but know one she would consider a friend just yet. It was a strange feeling, having gone from knowing everyone in a small town to knowing everyone in an even smaller pod, and then being dropped in what might as well have been another planet where she didn't know a single person. It was...isolating. Which was weird, because she'd never been in such a populated area in her life.

Perhaps that's why she had been able to put her faith in this seemingly secluded part of the beach, thinking that no one would be around when the dark-eyed brown seal made her way into shore.

Bridget noticed the scarred boy too late. And without realizing how close she was to the shore, she actually paused to look, stunned and even a little horrified at the image of someone who had been brutalized so badly. The only thing she could compare it to was the scars on one member of her pod who had gotten caught in a net.

Realizing she'd been spotted, Bridget acted like any animal would do and just sort of...froze. Waiting for the human(?) to make the first move.

When he tilted his head, Bridget copied the move, though she wasn't entirely sure why.

She stiffened when he asked if she was a shifter, but then relaxed. That was...sort of a perk to going to a school like this. People were used to the abnormal. To them, the abnormal WAS normal. So they didn't immediately assume animals were animals. They considered whether or not there was more to what they were seeing there.

Unfortunately, Bridget had no real way of responding, so she just...nodded. Hoping that he understood that she was agreeing to being a shifter.

This was a complicated and embarrassing situation. Not only did they run into each other during what was supposed to be private relaxation in a secluded area...but Bridget's clothes were in her bag, resting on a large boulder a few yards away from him. So it wasn't like she could "peel out" and start chatting. Nakedness was no first-impression, especially not nakedness peeling out of the skin of a seel.

You wanna talk about a pretty sight? How about a naked girl literally peeling out of the skin of a seal like a shedding tarantula?

Bridget couldn't be thankful enough that the boy had the decency to go behind a rock while she hopped over to the shore and started shifting. That was a real perk of going to a predominantly nonhuman school. People knew how to respect shifters.

"What? No, don't apologize," she called from the shore. She had a girlish voice with a thick Scottish accent. The scars didn't make the boy ugly, they just looked like they had been so painful. Like they carried so much agony and broken history behind them. "I'm sorry if you didn't want them to be seen. I...I didn't mean to intrude. I didn't think anyone was here."

By now she had pulled herself out of the skin, and held the dry hide clutched to her chest. She cleared her throat, blushing, praying no one else came by.

"Say now, could you do me a favor? Up above that rock you're on, I've got my bag up there. Could you maybe toss it to me? D-don't look this way, though."

The shadow might have startled Bridget more a couple days ago, but she was getting used to seeing weird powers thrown around, and it merely made her wonder for a couple seconds before she decided she didn't want to pry into it just yet.

"Just shadow magic, of course," she said as she tugged her clothes on, rolling her eyes at how ignorant she was to all of this.

"Yes...my first time anywhere really. It's an...adjustment." She folded up the seal skin, tucking the head and snout into the creases, and tucked it into her bag. "So many new powers. I don't...oh, you can come out now, James."