Snowed In With A Selkie
By Valentina Llano

On the stony ridges of Norway, where waves of ice and gusts of gray would crash and end their seafaring adventures, sat the house of Lord O’vielson. Of royal descent, he held his pride and self with high regards never failing to bestow upon the small fishing town of Tromso which in these now gilded ages has been blessed with the presence of many a New York gangster or Londoner swing dancer, with the most luxurious parties. Fine wine, crystal girls and the occasional royal guest.

Devon O’vielson, the lord’s eldest son, was always the prize of the night displayed to all the guests.

One night, it so happened that Devon laid his eyes upon a group of heavy-set, but crystal-decorated, women. He’d never seen them before and wondered from whence they came, who they were, whether they were royals, who they were to the city. The women were large of breast, with pearls around their necks, their luxurious curls in thick buns with pearls astrewn. One particularly caught his eye, her pale skin, thick bodice, her white, gray-patterned fur coat cascaded down from her shoulders and on the pristine marble floor of his father’s mansion.

They crossed paths and spent the whole night away talking, pouring into each other’s lives, as the icy winds ripped past them, they paid no mind to the busy party below, as she, Berit, followed him to the third’s floor balcony, rarely visited but with an odd yet intriguing view of the sea.

There he asked for a kiss which she allowed. They kissed and touched and ended up in a neighboring tea room. Sleep eventually caught up to them.

They welcomed dawn

Dawn yawned into what is day and the two had to separate.

She joined her sleepy woman of a group, headed to the shoreline, and with silent goodbyes they parted.

As the servants cleaned the remains of a boisterous night, Devon nostalgically relinquished himself to the quarters where he spoke with Eva, pleading the winds, the sea, anything to see her again.

Oh but her coat, the fur coat she wore the night before was laid on the floor, he knew she’d be back to see him.

And she did.

Every Friday, she would come back and retrieve her coat, speaking with urgency of having to rejoin her sisters and mothers, only to stay the night, talking away fantasies of love and romance with her new love, Devon, and as the morning would come peeking from the cliffs, she would leave her coat with him, promising to return again in the curtain of night the following week.

They would spend Friday nights together.

His father began to notice his son’s absence at dinners, the weekly parties, occasionally even during supper.

Her family as well, warning and reminding her to never trust a human with her coat, for it allowed her to return to the sea, and to never tell any human what she was, a selkie.

All her life, Berit heard tales of selkies never able to return to their families, separated from the sea, when their drunkard husbands would keep their coats hidden from them.

But Berit trusted her Devon; she knew in her heart he was different, that she loved him.

So one night she told him what she was, a selkie, and that she loved him and this every time she would leave her coat with him it was proposing marriage to him, showing him how much she loved and trusted him. When he realized that the act of safeguarding a selkie’s coat was their act of marriage, he immediately got on one knee in the moonlight and asked for her hand in marriage, to which she lovingly replied, caressing his cheek with her crests of fingers, yes.

That night they wed and learned and explored each other. A storm occurs where she does not return for a while and Devon goes in search of her, to the seaside cabin-mansion where her family resides, where he finds her, injured from the previous storm. There he proves to the her family that he does love her and cares for her, he stays help nursing her back to health and brings back her coat, she didn’t have it with the night of the storm and still attempted to fair the storm at sea but without her coat she wasn’t able to transform and got severely injured. The family thought Devon kept her coat on purpose to harm her but he never did such thing, she didn’t return for it, but with him bringing it back to her, and laying her coat on top of her bed, she slowly began to better from there. Devon spent weeks at the house, getting to know her family, the ways of the selkie, help nurse her back to health and proving his love for her.

By the time he returned to the father’s estate, his father was enraged at him, for not being present and irresonpible and threatened to take away the son’s inheritance but Devon was one step ahead, he renounced his hertiance (he never had a good relationship with his father, always pressured to be the golden son) and said goodday to his father and then left to spend his life with his selkie wife.

They wed, they traveled, returned to the town, – his father moving the family business more inland Norway, and while she was pregnant with their children, he alongside a few hired help, built a beautiful seaside cabin near her family’s home, where they would live together for the rest of their lives, with their love and children. Her coat displayed in the home they shared.