Selkie

We’ll start with the female part of the race. If you’ve been reading about selkies, you would know that selkies are seal-like creatures that take on a human form when they shed their hide. The female selkie is more well-known (which is not really any help to me since my story has male selkies. Not female). Oh well, about the female selkie… Usually human males would get enamored by the female selkie’s human form and would steal her pelt and hide it somewhere (as for why they didn’t just destroy it… beats me) because the ways to force a selkie to stay on land are to hide her pelt, keeping it away from her, or to destroy it (most popular method is burning). However, when the selkie gets her pelt back, she will go back to the sea, not to be seen again… unless she’s the motherly kind. Then, she’ll come back to take care of her children (while they are by the seaside).

Male selkies… they are known to be… well… really, really handsome. Unnaturally and unworldly so. They are very alluring and, unlike their female counterpart who doesn’t exactly wish to stay on land or anything, they have no real qualms about shedding their hide (keeping it in a safe place, of course) and going to land to seduce women (for one-night stands). If a female wishes to summon one, she would have to go out to the sea at high tide and shed seven tears into the sea. Then a male selkie would come up to land and give her the best night of her life before going back to the sea. It is said that they are extremely possessive (which supernatural creature is not?) and get jealous real easily (which is really hypocritical of them since they tend to leave their spouse alone when they go back to their ‘one true love’ – the sea).

Selkies can stay on land for a year and one day before they have to go back to the sea, disappearing for seven years. There are also human males and females that disappear into the ocean, supposedly taken away by selkies as spouses. If some other water creature (i.e. merfolk) didn’t get it at first, that is. As legend says, anyway. Their children (half-selkies) can choose to either stay on land for the rest of their lives or go to sea and become a selkie. Sometimes, they are born with abnormalities (webbed feet, hands, etc).

Not much is known of their world underneath the surface of the sea. However, they do say that the most beautiful (I’d rather read that as awesome) of selkies live at the bottom of the sea. Perhaps they have a hierarchy system, in which the more beautiful you are, the better you are treated (how shallow). Since it is said that humans are taken to be married to selkies, perhaps they have a way to enable to human to breathe under water.

What do you think?