I’m getting sick of Thomas’s angry bullshit. Honestly? I’m kind of getting sick of Thomas. I really don’t know what Kit saw in him. He’s not even good looking. He’s just knobbly. And with his big glasses, he looks like a stupid bug. One of those skinny, towering ones. A brown stick bug. Kit is way too good looking for someone like this.

I finish putting my boots on and look back out toward the water. If I close my eyes and listen to my herd’s song, I can pretend he isn’t here.

“What are you going to tell your herd?” he asks, bursting the illusion. “Do you plan to go back to them?”

“Yes,” I answer immediately. “I never planned to stay. I like having my one day on land a year, but I’ve never felt the need to stay past dusk. It’s not worth it, you know?”

Thomas raises a questioning eyebrow. He’s still standing in front of me, and from my seated position I have to look up to answer him, even more than I already do. I don’t like it.

“Once you stay past dusk, that’s it,” I explain. “You’re on land for as long as you decide to be, but if you put your pelt back on, you can’t come back. Your land days are forfeit. You’re in the ocean forever.”

“And you’d do that for Kit?”

“I already did, didn’t I?” I snap. “Anyway, I’m just here as long as it takes to find Kit and make sure he’s safe. Then it won’t matter if I can’t come back. I won’t need to, if he’s okay.”

“That’s incredibly selfless of you,” Thomas says quietly. But not unkindly. “If you go back to the ocean, you’ll never be able to come to land again to find a partner, will you? You’re giving up an entire future. The possibility of a future. Not many would make that kind of sacrifice.”

It’s not a sacrifice, though. Not really. Being on land means nothing to me. I’ve never really cared about whether I find a mate or not. I can’t lose something I never expected to have in the first place.

Most selkies come on land eventually. I watched my mum do it when I was young: find her person, go on land, give up her life in the ocean. I assume that’s what my brother Murray disappeared to do. It’s the basic nature of being a selkie still at sea: the ones you love will one day leave you.

You’re not supposed to get all sentimental about it. You’re not supposed to feel abandoned. When selkies leave, it’s because they met their person, and that’s just… how it goes. I guess.

I don’t really get it, to be honest.