Hi! So, this is just a little drabble. I read this story called Dimestore Teapot, by Lewis Nordan, and I got an idea to do essentially the same thing he did, but with my stuffed seal. Please, please, give me some advice. I think the ending needs some work, so if you have any ideas... Yeah. Just, give me a shout out.
~Adios!
Settled limply in a dusty ray of sun, matted fur flank resting against my cherry-wood bedpost, is my stuffed seal Selky. She lays sprawled atop a tan, floral pillowcase, which exists at a tilt, as the pillows are sucked into the empty space between bed-frame and mattress. Her black eyes, which are much like the buttons on my favorite pair of pants, shine with the memories of days spent sitting in the same place, listening to me sing off-key songs or cry as once again, memories of lost friends and opportunities surface. On most days, when that warm beam of sun finds it’s way to my pillow, my cat will be beside her, along with the book I read the night before in the warm light of my bedside lamp. So worn and wary is my seal that only I could ever appreciate her company, or notice the gleam of a wise old companion in her plastic eyes.
Although my seal is never confined to a box or a particularly cluttered dresser drawer, not many notice her presence. She is plain, not an unusual item to find in a young girl’s bedroom, and her fur is not lustrous nor does it whisper sweet promises of silken pleasure. Instead, they glance over her, allowing her image to register for a mere moment before turning their backs, quick to disregard the memory. Long days when I return from school, or nights where I awake in a terror-induced sweat are the only times that even I will acknowledge her. On days or nights such as those, I allow myself to find her in her post on my floral-printed pillowcase, and indulge in the fantasies of my five-year-old self. Pressing my nose into her disheveled fur, a ticklish nostalgia spreads through me, and in times of bubbling emotion I am relieved to find her beside me.
My seal, rather than maintaining her sensitive beauty or childish appeal, has grown old and weathered. Her fur, which once shone like the abundance of full moons in my favorite horror stories, is now a polluted off-white color. Her flank is matted, the once smooth material clumped closely together, most notably in the fur of her left flipper. Running my hand over the tresses, and hearing the wispy sighs of rough calluses rushing over coarse fur, I imagine the cold winter night when I pressed her against the heated glass separating myself and the twitching fireplace. Still, she is warm, pelt heated by the beams of sun plunging over and around her body. Her eyes are black, the plastic scratched and beaten, and she smells slightly of urine and cat fur. She is no longer beautiful, as she was in her adolescence, but she still holds a sense of serenity that washes over me like a calming sea.
On rare occasions, I find a grain of sand or a smooth pebble hidden behind a white-haired dreadlock, and imagine how it might have gotten there. Was it from the time years ago when I forgot her in the flourishing garden of my best friend’s home, lying in the gravel beside the chicken coup? Or from the golden beaches of Singapore, or the Maldives, or Indonesia, where she was slowly suffocated in the stifling heat of the tropics, forgotten at the bottom of a half-empty suitcase? Or maybe even the water park, where I went with Zoe not two days before a long-awaited goodbye? It does not matter, for every discovery I make, be it sand or gravel, is a reminder of the events I endured, and the friends I have gained.
My seal was given to me as a gift, her expenses unknown to me no matter the way I ask. She is from my mother, given to me as a device to shut me up or congratulate me on some bygone victory I do not recall. I know the store she bought her from, but not it’s name, and never it’s outer appearances. All I recall is the land of majesty inside the glass doors, the rows of stuffed toys and plastic figurines, and the board games just visible on the floor above. The store was always receiving new things, and every entrance was a gateway to the screech of children and the clatter of wooden knights falling to their enemies. I remember entering the store often, holding a flower from the kind chinese lady’s stall down the street, one foot stuck to the sole of my shoes by a single grain of mexican rice. Behind her gleaming plastic eyes, Selky reflects the wonders of that childish paradise, and the bright light cast by the overhead lamps.
Years prior to now, as a young child holding her new stuffed toy between her tiny hands, I imagined a life spent as a pair, just me and my friend the seal. I imagined formal events, sleepovers, schools, everything there was to participate in together. I taught my seal the proper etiquette when amongst royalty, pouring servings of lukewarm water mixed with watermelon toothpaste into the pink plastic of my teacups. I lay in bed, my seal resting on my stomach, and taught her the letters of the alphabet, and the wonderous words that they created. I put a pencil in her flipper, and offered up my sketchbook to her, watching her from the corner of my eyes just in case she moved.
As it happened, these thoughts were vague and childish, and were not to be enforced. My seal, no matter the times I taught her to always say please and raise her pinky above the plastic of her cup, was never to be invited to a royalty's ball. She would never read stories to me as I held a flashlight above our heads, hidden beneath the canopy of my duvet, and she certainly would never amount to be a famed artist. Her skills resided in the simplistic pleasures of lazy afternoons spent napping, and would not be forcibly changed, even for her owner.
Selky is not alive, nor is she one for extravagant events. No fortune would ever be made through her stuffed flippers, no beautiful stories told from her forever-closed mouth, no artistic masterpeices ever envisioned from behind her plastic eyes. She does not embrace majesty. She shuns it.
Selky is a thing designed for the most simplistic of pleasures. She does not have a future of fame before her. She does not need to be accustomed to any fancy rituals. She is calm, peaceful, and yet not invisible or unimportant. She has a purpose. She has a meaning. Someone who recquires a quiet comfort, a reassurance without words, might find her before them, watching with her knowing black eyes. She might rise to comfort that person, or that person might rise to seek comfort from her. With arms wrapped tightly around her, you might recall lost memories of old hugs, the whiff of your grandfather's polo shirts, the soft hand of a loved one on your cheek. Selky does not betray you for whispers of superiority, or defiance. She simply holds you until your tears are spent.
The mother of a young child, the same as my mother in the early years of my life, might have caught a flash of white in the corner of her eyes. She might have made her way to the seal, seen it glisten under the light as if a beacon in the dark. She might have plucked it from it's spot amongst the other toys.
"You are an interesting seal, you know that," she might have inquireed.
Maybe she knew that her daughter would grow to need a friend that would not judge her tears, who would be her beacon amongst the darkness. Maybe she knew that her daughter would be ambitious, and that it would, occasionally, hurt her. Maybe she knew that her daughter would need the seal before her eyes.
"Yes, you are just right," maybe my mom said.
