The ocean is so big and he is only a small seal. Despite her swelling belly, she is smaller yet.

She swam, rushing south on the first tendrils of the current, which were curling down from the warmer waters to the north. She chased fish and birds and drifted on her back, with her flippers outstretched and the tight bulge of her pup held up to the sun or stars, only when she needed to sleep.

The ocean is so big, but on the current she reached the haul-out—a cluster of rocky islands, which, at this point in the season sat just south-west of the current’s creeping range—within days. She knew it was the haul-out. She could smell and hear the horde of male seals lounging and wrestling and gorging and shitting—preparing themselves for the fast-approaching harem season.

She stopped and drifted, spiralling slowly for a bit, thinking. Her pup shifted in her belly and made her piss. It marked the water around her female, which left her worried. She had no idea what to do.

They are harems for a reason. It would be dangerous, this close to harem season, for a lone female like her to go to the haul-out. So how was she supposed to find her friend?

Why didn’t she swim south with him when she had the chance? Why did she hesitate? And why was she stupid enough to come now?

He had made it sound so easy. I’ll be waiting for you, he’d told her. If you come, I’ll find you, he had said.

And she’d believed him; she’d never asked him: How?

He had explained to her—by barking softly and swimming in circles around her, first one way, then the other—that the haul-out islands breach the water just off the southern coast; and he had told her that she didn’t have to go to the haul-out, that she could just follow the coast to the west, and then follow her ears and nose to find the herded school.

She spiralled slowly down into the green-black then back up towards the surface, which was silvery and opaque, muddied by the light bleeding through the thick, low clouds. She spiralled down then back up again, waiting for her churning pup to settle. Eventually it did, and she swam towards the rearing stone sea cliffs, thinking maybe that was where he would be waiting for her, and thinking, in any case, it would be good to put some distance between herself and the haul-out. In neutral waters she would be a curious anomaly, and hopefully nothing more.

She lolled for a while, enjoying the fizzing turbulence of the swell hitting the shallow ledges beneath the cliffs. A curious beta-half-pup joined her.

He asked her why she was there by cocking his head to one side and brushing his flipper against her swollen belly.

She explained to him that she had come to find her friend.