The Shallows

Mark

You don't remember what the fight with your parents was about, but you do remember being so livid that tears had begun to burn your cheeks even before you made it out the door. You heard them calling for you, their cries unmotivated, confident that you would return soon enough with your head hung and your arguments gone. But you would show them, wouldn't you? Defiance made you foolish, bitterness made you rebellious, and so you began marching down from the blindingly green forest, towards the sound of waves.

The nearly black sand was pleasantly warm from the summer sun, your bare feet glad to finally be on soft terrain. Even though you barely managed to hold yourself together, the moment your toes touched the frigid waves of the beach, your careful facade shattered like a porcelain doll against cement. You sobbed, falling to your knees, the water rushing against and around your legs as the high tide began to drown the coast. Tears fell into the ocean, drip, drip, dripping off your chin and returning to the earth. You screamed. You cried. You hated your parents wished you were never born.

A dark shape bobbed towards you in the water, only a bit smaller than you in size, quickly making its way through the shallows. You didn't think it was large enough to be a shark, though the silly childhood fear of being eaten by one crossed your mind. Arms and legs too numb to move, you merely watched it approach, kneeling in the water that lapped just above your waist. It wasn't until the creature was an arm's reach away that you could finally see what it was. A seal, its light brown body speckled with black spots, eyes dark and almost scarily intelligent. It poked its head out of the water and brayed at you, almost indignantly.

Like a dog getting acquainted with a new person, the seal stuck its head forward and sniffed you, whiskers poking and tickling your neck and chin. Feeling no threat, you burst into wild giggles, teeth chattering uncontrollably through your laughter. With blue tinged fingertips, you patted the head of the seal, your hand shaking like a lone leaf in a hurricane. Your new friend honked, poking its snout into your stomach, almost shoving you backward with the amount of force used.

"H-he-ey," you shivered, shaking so badly you may tip over if the seal tried doing that again.

"Blegh," your new friend said.

"Cutie," you giggled again, your vision turning spotty.

None of the WebMD websites list hallucinations as a side effect of hypothermia, though, one of your friends who is going through med school said that under high-stress situations sometimes the body does whatever it must to survive. A psychologist simply suggested that your child's mind twisted the events into something like a fairytale. Though, if your child's mind tried making a fairytale out of your near-death experience, it certainly could have chosen something less... absurd.

The belly of the seal split open, arms clawing out of the fur, a human face with the same dark eyes staring at you with a strange fascination. A boy wriggled out of the seal skin, his shoulder-length hair a deep chestnut, the bottom canine tooth missing from his mouth. You thought he might be your age, too small to have hit puberty, though both your bottom canines were gone so you feel you must be older, and therefore superior. Quickly, before you could loudly introduce yourself and your teeth stats, the boy wrapped his limp sealskin around your shoulders and pulled you towards the shore.

The moment the sealskin hit your shoulders, the cold retreated from your veins. Despite that, however, your teeth continued to chatter, your toes still painfully numb as the boy hauled you up to stand, bracing his arms around your waist. He said something then, in a strange tongue that you still don't understand, helping you stumble out of the freezing water by carrying most of your weight. Your fingers began to tingle, then burn, as the sealskin around your torso somehow prevented any chill from clawing its way into your bones. Your feet couldn't feel the tough twigs and brambles of the forest as you were yanked forward, towards the group of cabins your family was staying at.