The Tides Leave Us

Chapter 1 "The Silent Shore"- Part 2

As someone who could no longer go into the poisonous water, a human could wonder why she wouldn’t leave the area, head inwards towards the big cities. Food was still scarce, prices impossibly inflated, skyscrapers crammed with people, but she couldn’t leave. The stripped forests had been the lungs of the planet, but the ocean? It had been the beating heart, and she was a part of its life blood. She couldn’t imagine being away from the sighing of the tides, dead though the breath may be. If anything, she wondered why the other humans stayed- the ones who could afford to leave. Was it stubbornness, familiarity, or a need to be free of the roving eye of a watchful government? She did not know. It wasn’t any of her business anyway. As she and Calder stood there, listening to the sea, a scuff of a boot and a clearing of a throat pulled her attention. The man from the truck, the newcomer, approached them, smiling.

His black brown hair was long, hanging to the base of his neck, and tufts of it drifted around his eyes. He was broad, a laborer maybe, but not tall. He only had maybe five inches on Aisling’s short frame. She took a tiny step back as he reached out to Calder for a handshake.

“Excuse me, my name is Rowan.”

Calder stared at the outstretched hand as though it had personally offended him until it dropped to Rowan’s side. Aisling snorted, looking away. The silence stretched awkwardly between the three of them. He cleared his throat.

“I’m looking for food that preferably doesn’t come out of a can?” Rowan jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the fishing shop behind him. The windows had previously been boarded up when tourism closed down (too many fish pulled from the waters gasping, sickly, covered in sores). Now she could see the grimy glass windows again, partly cracked and uncovered to let in the sunlight.
“I’ve been cleaning out that old shop. Hoping to use it as a sort of base for some of the conservation work I’m doing along the coast. It’s got space, but no power yet. Do either of ya’ll know if anyone’s renting out rooms?”

Aisling felt his eyes on the side of her face, and she finally turned, giving him a full once over, letting Calder answer his questions.

Calder shifted, tapping the end of his cigarette against the crate. “Not many do anymore. Most folks who had spare rooms rented ‘em to the tourists or sold out when the water line crept up.”

Rowan nodded like he’d expected that. “I can rough it if I have to—sleeping bag, thermos coffee—but it’d be nice not to.”
He was in a worn button down shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a pair of beaten work pants. He wiped his hands on his jeans as he talked, a nervous tic. She didn’t know why she minded him standing in their space, but something was niggling at the back of her mind.

“As for food, Rhea runs an old food truck down the road. She may not have anything hot now though. The food is only hot so long as the propane tank doesn’t run low,” Calder continued. “I’m Calder- this here is Aisling.”

Rowan’s eyes snapped to hers, dark brown and steady over heavy brows. Her stomach flipped. She licked her salt dried lips.

“Folks call me Ash,” she said, keeping her hands close to her thighs. She didn’t want to touch him or feel the warmth of his palm in hers. His eyes flickered up and down, catching for a moment on her hands.

“Aisling,” he said slowly, taking care to pronounce it correctly, like Ash and Ling thrown together. “That’s pretty.”

Aisling smirked. “It’s old. What can I say?” Her eyes drifted to the old fishing store. “There isn’t much work to be found here.”

Rowan rocked back on his heels. “I’m not looking for work. I’m looking to help. I’m a doctor, field ecologist, mostly. Trying to track what’s left before it’s all gone.”

That gave her pause.

“Good luck with that,” she said. “Most of what’s left doesn’t want to be found.”

She could see him assessing her in the same way she judged him. His voice was steady—too steady, maybe. That smooth sort of calm that people used when they wanted something. Aisling narrowed her eyes, tote still tucked in the crook of her arm, and let her gaze drift from his face to his hands.

Calloused. Scored with fine white lines across the knuckles and pads. The faint pink of healed rope burns curled like seaweed around his wrists.
Fisherman’s hands.

Her stomach gave a twist she didn’t let reach her face. Ecologist, he said—but those were trawler scars. The kind left behind from hauling nets over and over again, until your body memorized the pull. No clipboard ever gave you those. And his voice, it was gravelly and deep, like the rumbling ice floes underneath the surface.

“There’s a couple of places that rent lofts above the shops,” Calder broke in. “I’d ask around, but don’t get your hopes up.”

“I won’t,” he said, still staring at Aisling. At that moment, she wondered what he saw when he looked at her. He didn’t bother reaching out for another attempt at a handshake. Instead, he inclined his head towards the pair of them and turned towards Rhea’s faded purple food truck rumbling at the end of the street. “Thanks for your help.”

Her eyes followed the silhouette of his faded red shirt, but her mind was already drifting—slipping backward, like the pull of a slow tide.
She remembered.
Not in sharp images, but in sensations—salt-thick air, the sting of brine in her throat, the press of kelp against her fur as she watched from beneath the waves.
The first hunts had been brutal, but honest. Spears thrown from seal-skin canoes, men singing their grief into the wind before they dragged their dead across the ice. There had been reverence, then. Balance, even in blood.
But then came the noise. The crack of gunpowder. The stink of smoke. Iron-tipped gaffs and clubs slick with fat and sinew. The screams of pups echoed across the floes, and she had watched with wide eyes and a silent mouth as her kin were butchered for coats and coins.
Later, the nets came.
Not the woven cords of coastal fishers, but great, gaping maws of steel and monofilament, dragging across the seafloor like razors. They didn’t just take. They scraped. They tore. Coral shattered, seagrass ripped in tangles, nursery beds and spawning grounds crushed to sand and silt.
Aisling had swum through the aftermath once, centuries ago now. The water had been cloudy with the slurry of destruction, fish scales swirling like snow in the deep. She had surfaced gasping, clutching the wreckage of a turtle’s shell.
The sea had wept with her that day. The ocean remembered, and so did she.
So when she looked at Rowan’s hands—those capable, hardened hands—she didn’t see just a man. She saw centuries of grief. Her fingers clenched around the damp fabric of her waders.

Calder whistled, low, pulling her from her memories. Aisling sucked in her breath. Anger swirled, dark and bitter in her gut.

“Don’t get your hopes up. He’s just like the others.” She said. The certainty in her face was steely. Calder looked surprised, at her dark furrowed brows and downturned mouth. “He’s here for himself, and he’ll be gone before we know it.”

Calder shrugged. “I wouldn’t be so sure. He doesn’t dress like all the others.”
Aisling rolled her eyes. Just because the man dressed like a local didn’t mean anything to her. She reached out, clapping Calder gently on the shoulder.

“I need to get this stuff home before dark,” she said, turning away to head northward out of town. “I’m sure you’ll do your best to keep an eye on him, you nosy old goat.” The selkie was walking away before he could respond- listening to an old man’s cackles.

The path home was narrow and winding, carved by salt and time. The asphalt eroded away, and no town construction would be out to fix it anytime soon. The town shrunk behind her as she climbed the cliff, her legs a welcome burn of exertion.
The sea stretched out on her left, a vast, glinting corpse under a cold sky. Sometimes it moaned as the tide shifted, like a body remembering breath.
She’d been blessed to find this place, especially with all the flooding. Atop the highest point of the town was an old lighthouse, not a traditional one, but squat and stone. It wasn’t tall—had never needed to be, not with the vantage offered by the cliffs—but that had probably made maintenance easier in the old days.
Now, the light was dark, the funding long since dried up. No ships came this way anymore. The ports were gone, swallowed by poisoned tides and bureaucracy.
But the lighthouse remained, and it was hers now.

The door creaked as she shouldered her way in, setting down the canvas bag beside the door. She sat down beside the door pulling off her wellies and stripping out of her waders. If there was one thing humans got right, it was sweatpants and sustainable electricity, she thought pulling on her own pair of soft, stretchy fabric. It had taken some doing for her to manage to get solar panels for the roof. She reached up, flicking the metal switch. The lights flickered dimly once before blooming on, illuminating the entryway in a soft warm light. She hung the waders on two brass hooks by the door to dry.
Aisling stepped out of the foyer to the central room of the house. In the middle a wrought iron stair spiralled upwards into the lighthouse above. Hardwood floors shined dully, and the wood shelved on the white plaster walls were filled with shells, driftwood, dried starfish, and even a few weathered books. Immediately to the right, a brick fireplace dominated the wall, hung beside with rope nets and metal tools. With the room now lit, Aisling crossed back to the foyer for her groceries. Past the staircase was the kitchen, a small room with butcher block counters and an iron woodfire stove squatting in the corner. She opened the white painted cupboards and filled it with her meager purchases. The shelves were bare, but at least they were clean and free of dust. A screen door to the outside of the house opened from beside the sink. And she briefly stepped out to snag some firewood from under the tarp she kept nailed down.
The lighthouse had been decommissioned long before she’d left the sea, and it’d taken some work, scavenging, bartering, to get the old structure back up to shape, but now it was home.

That night, she ate a couple of cans of baked beans she’d heated up on the stove, then cleaned the dishes with water the cistern collected from each rain under the house. As she cleaned, her gaze strayed out to the dark expanse of the sea, murmuring in the black. She hesitated before stepping out, one last time. The wind whipped against her face, and she pulled her scarf up over her mouth and nose before walking closer to the edge of the cliff.

Then, for the first time in what felt an age, as she stood staring at the winking stars in a cold sky, a stirring hummed behind her breastbone. Breath hardened in her throat, and her eyes widened. She angled her palm out towards the horizon. Rather than a chorus of song, she heard for a brief moment, the single melody of the faintest lullaby. Selkies did not usually cry, but that night, tears tracked down from her eyes, the cleanest rainfall this coast had seen in a decade.
The moon drifted across the sky like a cloud, like a single eye unblinking. Aisling did not move, just letting the lullaby melodize in her heart. If she broke the connection, she feared she’d never find it again. Hours passed until, finally weary beyond thought, she sank to the ground, palms touching rock, and fell asleep.
That was the first night Aisling dreamed.

Sand ground into her palms as she pushed herself up onto all fours.. She blinked. A white beach stretched before her, endless as a desert beneath a sky so wide it hurt to look at. But it wasn’t empty. Beyond the shore, the sea thundered — waves cresting, weeping, collapsing in slow, relentless rhythm.
Then she saw it.
Not waves crashing- bodies. A flood of them. Some spotted silver or scaled green. Slick flesh glinting with rot. Some bloated, others skeletal, their eyes pale and glassy, mouths forever open in silent scream. A sickly stench rose with the wind — the reek of decay and old salt, like a fish left too long in the sun. The lullaby that had cradled her into sleep twisted, discordant, becoming a wail clawing at her eardrums.
She choked, her scream swallowed by the stench and sound. The waves roared louder — and now she could hear them clearly: bones rattling against bones, fins slapping against bellies, a slosh of the unclean. A low chant began to hum beneath it all, voices calling from deep water.
She turned to run.
Her feet wouldn’t lift. The sand sucked at her ankles, grinding between her toes, dragging her down inch by inch. Her breath came in gasps, sharp with the taste of salt and fear. She looked over her shoulder.
A wall of death towered over her — fifty feet high. A surge of memory, of grief, of everything she had lost, swept up with it.
The song became a dirge.
Aisling dropped to her knees. Curled forward. Covered her head with her arms as the weight of it all — the sea, the dead, the mourning song — came crashing down.