Daughter of the Witcher Ch. 03

And I can't even tell ye how it feels when he's at yer tits when he's like that, them little whiskers and all."

Louhi and Annikki laughed then and Moppy laughed with them a little shyly, but she said that it was very nice to spend a day that way.

"But there's another side tae it all and that's why I stopped.

See, Silla, we was at her place one day in the fall and it started out wi' us just joking and sayin' as how we'd miss it as it got colder fer the winter comin' on and all, and just outta nowhere, Silla began tae cry and I didna know what tae think.

She took me tae her room and she showed me that she was just startin' but she was wi' child and she'd not fucked with any man since the early spring. Her family was some upset as it went on, wi' her having tae lie about doing it wi' a sailor what come on a trader boht and all.

I stayed wi' her when I could and in the spring she birthed a beautiful girl. But everyone knew what she'd done. Ye can tell a Selkie's babe by the skin what lies between their fingers a lot more than it does on a normal babe because they've got little flippers when they're like seals. They look like human babes and act the same way, but that webbing between their little fingers ...

Silla took her babe to the sea and just sat there crying. But it all turned out fer her in the end. A Selkie man came tae her and he saw the way that she wept and he told her that he'd take her to wife if she wanted him. Well she did, and we said our goodbyes not long after. Silla's little girl couldna walk yet then, but she could swim like any fish and her man took them away down below. She told me that he said that she could be a Selkie wife and she'd be fine in the water.

I saw them go and I never went back. There were nights when I heard a quiet knock on the door, but I never opened it. I left the next spring and now I'm here.

Annikki held up her hand from the table for a moment, "Moppy, how do you know if he's a Selkie if he has his skin still on? How do you know that you weren't, ... ah, ..."

Moppy laughed and waved her finger, "Don't ye worry, Annikki. First you have to know that ye've got the right kind te begin with. If he's the kind what can fold his back flippers forward and hop his bottom on the land, well that's not a Selkie. That's a different kind of seal, and a real one – them what makes all the barking noises.

If he's in the water, you look for his ears. If he's got little ears that ye can see, wrong again. Sometimes ye see them what has tusks and again, no.

Ye look fer one that's like the kind they call Gray seals. They're a bit larger, and the males are just too big fer a girl te make that sort of mistake with and they'll not lie there fer ye anyway.

The ones you want are the same kind, or look te be, but they're smaller males, closer to the size of a man. The girl ones have nipples and the boys have their things, but they're hidden away, leaving only a little hole in their bellies. And they're friendly where the true Gray seal males are not because a Seikie will be happy te see ye coming if they have an interest."

She sipped her mead and set it down, "And then, well, no real seal will talk te ye, will they? They might not know the right speech, but they'll often try and then, just like any other man with looks what can stir ye or just eyes what can, then ye'll be in your own bit of peril, won't ye?

The ones that Ah'm speakin' of, the real seals, they don't make noise at all but fer plitterin' and splashin' the water wi' their flippers. They have no voices.

But the Selkies what hide in amongst them sometimes, ah, well they do, you see."

She drained the last of her mead and set her cog down then, "I'm happy that ye're all here safe and ye can help yerself te the mead if you still have a want of it. I've got te go see te Leif. That one gives a good gush every time and we've been together for a few years now, but I love it all the same. It's another gift that he gave me, but until we're ready for little ones, he can fill his moppy all that he likes, since we love te do it every chance we get."

She wished them a good night and then she turned to go, saying that the same room was ready, the one with the large bed and a second one if need be. Cuilén glanced at her round bottom since the bulge of her tail under her dress had attracted his eye. Moppy saw it and she laughed a little and wiggled her backside as she walked out.

When they got to their room, they saw their bags there from the horses. Annikki lit the candle and turned as the others removed their clothes. They looked at her quizzically then and she smiled and said that she wanted to have a look around in the darkness for a little while.

"I see at last what I wanted to see between you for some time," she smiled, "Get into the bed and begin the talk that you need. I will not be too long."

Louhi was in the bed first and she snickered, "Nikki wishes to look for a seal this night."

Annikki rolled her eyes and walked out, but she didn't say that it wasn't correct.

She really couldn't have said just why she wanted to go. She certainly didn't buy Moppy's grand talk about there being a Selkie down in the cove. She just felt like stretching her legs a little before turning in.

"So," Louhi began as she slid her arms around Cuilén, "Are we to begin, you and me? I want a little love tonight, but it would go better for me if I knew that I hold my man now."

Cuilén chuckled and nodded, "It is not as hard to say as I thought that it would be, Louhi. I love you."

She chuckled again, "You do? Which part of me has your love then?"

Her chuckling gave way to her quiet laughter as he began to kiss her throat.

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There was a moon.

Annikki saw it and was a little thankful. The wind was still up and it felt cool just bordering on cold as she walked back from the stables after looking in on their horses. She came to the front of the place and stopped.

Looking up for a moment, she saw no clouds and thought about the cove. She shrugged to herself as she began to walk around the building. She might as well see the place, she thought. She liked Moppy and all, but even though it was clear that she could change herself thanks to Leif's gift, she rather doubted at least some of what she'd heard, knowing that the best sort of innkeepers or their wives often kept a ready supply of little tales to amuse the guests.

When she came around to the rear and could see the start of the path down, Annikki was surprised at how the wind back there now came from the sea and it was a lot colder.

Still, ...

She crept carefully, not being concerned over making noise so much, but she didn't want a misstep here or the broken neck which might easily come of it. She made her way down slowly and stood at the place where the path emptied out on to the stones back a good way from the shore.

She looked out at the water and though she'd been on a couple of boats now in their travels, she couldn't see the way that seafarers often spoke kindly about that sort of life as though it was some sort of romantic thing. To her mind, if that was what it was, then it as more than a little one-sided as far as she was concerned. She still remembered the last storm and the walls of gray water that rose to toss them around.

She'd had those thoughts and memories in her mind and all the while, she'd been moving onto the beach. When she realized it, she stopped and looked around.

The cove wasn't a very large one and it was walled on two sides by sheer cliffs, though they only rose perhaps thirty to forty feet over the beach itself. And it wasn't all that much of a beach either, Annilkki thought, looking at what her boots now stood on. She looked ahead, seeing the large rocks there which lay strewn as though by some gigantic hand tossing what to it had been merely pebbles.

The place was deserted as far as she could tell by the light of the half-moon above. All that she could see in the darkness were the dark swells of the water and the silvery tops of the waves. The wind didn't seem to gust at all and it never let up, being just a constant cold force against the front of her cloak – which had often seemed a little warm a lot of the time, but now showed her its inadequacy.

Annikki kept on, needing a little somehow to get to the edge of the water if nothing else and wondering why, but she went.

She didn't see him at first, the dark shape near to cliff wall on the left side. He didn't see her either, being lost in his thoughts and cares. Annikki was a little lost in her own. They'd always said that they'd go on, her and Louhi and she didn't have any real doubts over it either. But things had changed and she realized it. She was just wondering what all of this portended for her.

She doubted if they'd come apart over the deeper relationship which she saw as inevitable and important to both Louhi and Cuilén and from perhaps her more pragmatic side, she'd easily allow it. She just wondered when there would be time for the two girls again, that was all.

Annikki stopped then, about thirty feet from the water's edge. She didn't know whether the tide was coming in or going out and she supposed that it didn't matter to her very much. If it was coming in, all that she had to watch for was the creep of the waves a little nearer each time and she had to be sure that there was nothing behind her to block her way back. It was a stupid thought, perhaps, but she looked back to see.

The sound in the little cove was only the almost constant cycle of waves washing in, driven a little by the wind as it were, only to hiss back out again in preparation for the next wave. There was no roaring of the waves, it not being a storm or anything. The wind was the only roaring and that was fairly quiet and only if one was facing that wind directly at all so that the air was moving past one's ears. You could hear it then.

But it was the short lull of not-silence in between waves at the moment that she turned around, her boots rotating on the mostly round stones of the strand.

And in that instant, her boot caused one rock to be dislodged and clack quietly against its neighbor. There was a double-sound to it as the stone moved and then stopped. After that, there was nothing again and the next wave slid in, causing much louder sounds as it moved some of those very same stones, only farther out enough to be moved by the waves.

Like anyone else in a place like that after nightfall, Annikki's night vision was monochromatic and she saw only shades of gray. But at times when one is in a strange place alone, there is always an increased sensitivity to detecting motion.

The slight motion that she saw off to her left caused her head to snap in that direction and then she saw, ... something.

A dark rock wall with a darker flat-topped boulder in front of it, standing six or maybe seven feet tall, but with the water near to the top of it so that it looked low.

On top of that, ... well there was an even darker shape.

That shape looked so incongruous to Annikki that she stared, trying a little desperately to get more information from her eyes. The attempt was a failure, her eyes not receiving one bit more data than they already had to work with. But her other senses, particularly the ones which she hadn't known about until Louhi's patient teachings had shown to her, ... well those ones returned more information.

She felt alarm from that direction, and maybe a little fear, which turned to more uncertainty a moment later. She felt sadness as well, but it was overwritten with more urgent things at the moment, such as the uncertainty.

Annikki had frozen at the sound of the rocks, and hadn't moved in the seconds since. She only stood there still, feeling and trying to see what she could.

What she saw was the shape of a man, not large and not tiny. If she was right, she thought, then he was fairly slender, sitting on the rock leaning back on his hands. He was frozen in what must be a slightly uncomfortable position to maintain for too long, Annikki thought to herself. He sat with his head turned toward her, leaning forward just a little uncertainly and having to stay that way until he could perceive if there was a threat to him from that direction or not.

Annikki almost didn't dare to draw a breath as she looked. She couldn't see his face at all, only the blackness of the shadow, the moon and what little if its light illuminated him being at his back. He had long dark hair, and it looked to her to be a little thick and full, not stringy or even wet, so he couldn't have come here to go swimming – or he'd been out of the water for a long time.

The thought almost caused her to shiver. How could anyone with warm blood swim in that, other than having landed in it by accident of a fall?

The moment stretched on for a long time, with one not daring to move and the other straining to see what might be approaching.

But it was broken in the next instant as she watched the figure move forward suddenly and fall from the rock, still in a sitting position. Then the figure was gone with a splash and Annikki almost cried out in alarm and concern for the person who was now in danger of succumbing to the cold of the water at the least or the more likely probability of being dashed against the side of the rock by the next wave.

She stepped forward uncertain of her footing and wanting to curse over her slight worry that she'd sprain an ankle before she could get to the rock. As she went a few steps, she saw an arm reach out over the edge of the stone to grab at something which she hadn't seen there until now. Grasping something there, the arm retreated, looking as though the person had remembered a blanket folded there on the rock.

Then it was gone.

Annikki kept on, still walking as carefully as she could manage until she came to the rear of the stone and stepped onto it with a little care to look out over the water, a little afraid to see a battered body there. She saw no such thing.

But after a moment, she saw something else as her eyes drifted outwards.

There at the outer reaches of the space between the two rock walls which defined the cove, almost in the middle of that two hundred yard gap, Annikki saw the dark shape of a head in the moonlight, darker than the dull gray of the swells and bobbing there in them slightly.

She saw no hair and she still saw no face, as the next thought came to her.

She saw no ears as well.

She watched for a little time and the head didn't move much, other than what might be expected of a semi-buoyant object which one couldn't see most of, being below the surface. She felt silly, not knowing what to do, if anything. She smirked to herself as she felt the beginnings of her arm motion. What good would a wave do now?

She took a last look and turned to go. Walking with the same amount of care, she made her way back to the path into the thin woods at the far edge of the beach and finding it, she thought to go, but turned back for one last hopeful look.

The head was a lot closer in now and it seemed to her that whoever this was, they were watching.

She turned then and began her walk back to the top.

She found her way fairly easily and reaching the buildings, she walked around to the front and entered.

When she got to their room, she found Louhi lying on her back with one leg up and Cuilén kissing her while they fucked slowly like that. Annikki said a quiet hello so that they'd know that she'd come back and then she walked to the next room and undressed quickly out of her sense of night chill. She got into the bed and closed her eyes then, but sleep wouldn't come for a long time as she tried to piece together what she'd seen and witnessed.

Out in the cove, the head remained bobbing gently in the waves. The eyes looked at the spot where the strange apparition had disappeared for a long time afterward.

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The next day, Cuilén was a little embarrassed over the things that were being done for him. Moppy had found some of Leif's old things which were still in good condition and she fussed and fitted them to him and decided how to take them in, saying apologetically that she had no new things in his size. When he found himself dismissed by the seamstress for the moment, he had to submit to almost the same thing, but from Leif's side, out of wanting to fit something to him which might protect him in their travels.

The next thing that he knew, it was "time te eat somethin'", and he was swept off to the kitchen where he at least got there early enough to have a little time so that he could plead to Moppy to let him help or do something. Louhi thought it was a little funny, most of the time, when it wasn't hilarious. At least after the meal, Cuilén found a little peace when Leif began to shoe his horse, but he said that he wanted to see Cuilén afterward about something.

That was when they noticed that Annikki was gone. She'd been there at breakfast, but she'd been largely silent and thoughtful, wishing everyone a good morning and then falling still.

"She went te the cove," Moppy said, making sure that Leif was out of earshot, "I asked her if she'd seen anything and she said that she wasna sure, but that it was a lovely spot te sit and think. I never thought it was, the times when I went. Anyway, I sent her on her way wi' a small basket of things te nibble if she wanted. Well, thinkin' can be hungry work – at least fer me it is." She laughed.

In response to their questions, Moppy said that Annikki didn't look sad or anything at all. She'd only been a little quiet, but she'd smiled to Moppy when she'd gone.

Leif had always been good at visualizing his ideas and then bringing them to fruition in terms of the things that he's made for himself and his woman. He heated water down below in his cavern and the things that he could do with it ...

Cuilén stood in a room in front of a pieced of glass which had been painted on one side. There was a flat piece of metal hanging next to it and they were both over a basin. His eye went from one to an other and he was shaving.

Behind him there was a pool which was perhaps a dozen feet square. The water was kept warm by the same means that the rest of it was somehow, the same way that the water in the basin in front of Cuilén was kept hot.

In that pool, Louhi bathed.

To Cuilén, it was the sweetest distraction.

But after a little while, he noticed that she only sat in a corner and looked at him.

"What is wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said, "I only wait in a little worry.

My man shaves because I asked him to," she said, holding up her hand toward his back, "Now I worry that I have asked something which I should not have asked of you. What if I do not like you without your beard? What if YOU do not like to be without a beard? It will take a time to grow back."

She couldn't see the reflection of his face from where she sat; only his eyes and above them.

He began again, being mostly done but wanting no stubble.

"Then I grow it back again for you," he said.

She nodded and looked down.

When he was finished, he walked around the pool and knelt for her inspection, though it was a moment before she looked up.

Louhi smiled then, liking him so much this way. She stood up so that she could look at him at eye level.

"I have the finest-looking man," she smiled and the sight took his heart once more.

She put her arms around his neck and sighed as she felt his bare cheek against hers, "It does not change what I hold in my heart for you, Cuilén. But I like you this way even more to see it."

She smirked to herself, "And it stirs me so. Do you wish to love me here, Cuilén? I have had you to myself the whole night and now I want you again."