Her coat hoisted around her as tight as it could go, Eilidh cursed as she stepped outside, the sunlight doing little to combat the temperature which had dipped lower than normal, forcing her teeth to chatter. Her breath hanging in the air in front of her face proving a weary omen of the day to come, she frowned, hoping even that motion might warm her to some extent, though it was wishful thinking.

“Fuckin’ hells,” she grumbled to herself, shaking her body in a foolhardy attempt at generating warmth, turning toward Córu as she stepped outside after her, seemingly unbothered beneath her pelt, “How warm is that thing?!”

Noting her growling, Córu’s face turned worried, examining her pelt before returning to Eilidh’s coat, as though confused by the anger, given both offered the same sort of protection, though, Eilidh surmised that there was either something about that pelt, or even Córu’s physiology, that made her rather comfortable in colder environment. All the better for her to survive in the depths of the ocean, or sea- or even the Lochs, for all she knew.

“Normally-” Eilidh managed a heated breath as she trampled through the snow, “I make it into town once a month, but not only is my solitude kind of ruined as it is, I think it’s safe to say we’re a bit ill-equipped for this particular winter.” She stopped, turning around. “Is that why you’re out here? Some innate selkie thing? You could feel the colder winter, so you instinctually came looking for warmer shelter?”

Córu was too busy watching her steps through the snow to pay much heed to her words. Instead, Eilidh turned to glance out across the highland landscape, to the east Loch Lomond which sat nestled between the rolling foothills. It was a breathtaking sight any other time of year, but with the snow, it all just seemed plain and white, leaving it absent much character at all, in stark contrast to Córustrea’s skin, which shone rather brilliant tan against the ground compared to Eilidh’s own niveous complexion. She wondered how easily she might get lost, if not for her coat, and how difficult it would be for the selkie.

“Fortunately, we’re not above foraging for what we can, right?” Eilidh spoke up in a triumphant voice, throwing her hand in the air wielding her hatchet, catching Córu’s wide-eyed amazement at such energy, “Forward!”

Córu began to chuckle, causing Eilidh to whip her head over her shoulder, “You can laugh?! What in the- When have you been able to do that?!” She shook her head. “Now I’ve seen it all.”

Grabbing the large bucket from the other day, Eilidh handed it to Córu, immediately ending her good humor upon recalling its implication, “It’s fine; you’re just carrying it. I’m going to collect water, not you.” Eilidh pointed at the bucket before switching to herself, apparently alleviating Coru’s anxiety to some extent.

“Now, firewood,” she began, marching off, “We’re also going to keep an eye out for rosehips – they’re little red berries – that we can make into jams and such; it’s pretty good. Hopefully the Loch hasn’t frozen too terribly and I can just find a spot to pry out some water with the hatchet and we’ll be good for another few days.” Without looking back toward Córu, she feigned complaint. “And don’t give me that look; I know I could stop drinking so much coffee. I know the consequences.”

They trudged along the foothills, parallel the Loch, where the somewhat dense forests began to grow more sprawling. Growing out from Glasgow, most Dumbarton residents went southeast for their goods, including firewood, meaning much of the lands around Eilidh’s home were largely unadulterated, to her pleasure oftentimes, except for the occasional hunter or otherwise hobbyist hiker or explorer. While she detested the hunters for what they were doing, she at least could appreciate their ability to not bother her; the hikers who were more like tourists than anything would more get on her nerves, particularly on the nice autumn days, particularly when they would set out without proper equipment, leaving them to knock on her door for aid, food, or water, much as she had thought of Córustrea when she first caught sight of her.

Little did she know, back then…

Having come to a suitable copse of trees, Eilidh set about dropping her tarpaulin and approaching the tree she found easiest to fell. Córu watched curiously as she stepped toward it, reaching out to place a hand atop its trunk, waiting there for some time, unable to see her face to make out whatever emotions might be playing out there.

“It’s never something I enjoy,” Eilidh noted aloud, “It’s also something I never thought much about until I had an audience. I suppose the best I can say is that we can do our best to show it respect. We need it, it needs us-” she shrugged. “I’m sure there’s a lesson in there, somewhere, were it not so cold for me to figure out.”

Pulling up her hatchet, Eilidh began stripping away the thin strips of bark where she planned on chopping down the tree. After a few minutes, she took a step back, tensing her lips while winding up before swinging her arms, launching the hatchet into the trunk of the tree. She kept on as Córu stepped around the copse of trees, examining the landscape, curiously enough, as though trying to figure out even the intricacies of a locale so monochrome with the hues of snow.

“Alright,” Eilidh’s words were strewn light with exhaustion, “Help me push.”

Turning at the sound of the woman’s voice, Córu followed the waving of Eilidh’s arm, joining in as the two pressed against the side of the tree; while Eilidh braced herself, Córu more or less simply pressed a hand against it, her other tucked beneath her pelt to keep it from unshrouding past her shoulders.

“Okay, seriously?!” Eilidh complained at the supposed lack of effort, relinquishing her attempt altogether, “Alright, come here. I’m tired of you- Do you not have buttons or buckles?” She stepped toward Córu, who leaned backward, a blush crossing her tawny face as Eilidh reached up to grab her seal pelt with her gloved hands. “What is this thing even made out of? Blubber?!”

She rolled her eyes, examining it for a few moments, needing to secure it without piercing the skin – lest she ruin its integrity – which eliminated sewing something onto it. Eilidh reached up, grabbing the edges of the pelt that Córu had pulled up to her chin and tugged at them until they met overtop one another, allowing her to wrap them rudimentary into something resembling a knot, though, with their thickness, it was due to collapse at any moment.

“That should do at least for now,” she sighed, “Now, do you mind helping for once? I’m gonna be an old lady by the time I’m forty.”

Córu withdrew her hands, amazement shone on her face as her pelt remained along her shoulders without her constant vigilance, allowing her to reach out by Eilidh’s side to the tree and press up against the tree with both hands, the human woman counting, “Alright, one- two- three!”

With their combined effort, the tree soon collapsed, hitting the ground with a small thud as Eilidh threw her hands up into the air, “Badass! Who says we need civilization?!”

Córu’s lips curled into a silent laugh as she watched Eilidh stand over their newest source of warmth, using the hatchet to finish removing the last bit of bark that remained between the tree and its stump before rising back upright. Throwing the hatchet up to her shoulder, she stepped over toward the bucket nearby, grabbing it and heading down toward the Loch.

“Alright, stay up here if you want; I’ll be back,” she instructed, “I want to do this while I’m warmed up, but we might forage for berries, double back for the bucket, and then get back.” She turned to Córu as though for confirmation, noticing the worry on her face, causing her shoulders to slump. “It’s just a lake. Gods damn.”

Returning her attention to the lake’s edge, Eilidh rolled her eyes, “What is wrong with that one?” Of course, she knew; she was a selkie. There could be any number of odd cultural differences between the two of them. Maybe, to her, there were unfavorable Lochs, Lomond being one of them, but all of the water she’d been drinking that week had come from there and she hadn’t a since reservation about it. Eilidh could only shrug as she walked, shaking her head in disbelief.

Coming to the lakebed, she examined what she could of the lake itself, frowning at the fact that it was, indeed, frozen over. Sighing, she conceded that there was actually some danger to be considered, though not whatever Coru was thinking, certainly. Eilidh glanced down the Loch, noting some geese which lay atop the ice, denoting its icy sheet – it was now only a question of thickness and where she could stand and where she could adequately draw water from without falling in.

Such a task wasn’t foreign to her; she’d done this before. Stepping down the riverbank, she kept an eye out from the safety of the soil until she found a spot of ice that appeared more shallow, allowing her to step out onto the lake, carefully, one boot that she only gradually applied pressure onto.

“Well, that’s good,” she noted to herself, verbally, before moving onto the next foot, then another step, and another, until reaching the shallow swath of ice. She sat the bucket down, crouching there with the hatchet before scraping at the ice, not daring to begin slamming at the face of the sheet. Her chiseling took awhile before it began to more much of any fruit as far as progress, but she eventually began to notice the divot in the ice, sighing with relief as she took a moment for a breather.

Turning back toward the copse where Córu remained, her face still worn with worry, Eilidh waved up toward her, “See? It’s fine!”

Before she could even tell which way the world had spun, Eilidh collapsed into the waters, the ice beneath her giving way in an immediate, blistering blink of an eye underneath her weight. She didn’t descend much into the waters themselves, allowing her to surface quickly, just able to peer over the sheet of ice, though the frigid cold was a deathly, instantly stab to every inch of her body; as soon as she had entered the water, besides that which was beneath her coat, her body had immediately felt as thought she’d been stuffed into an iron maiden.

Her eyes wide, she twisted her head back and forth, only just able to make out where Córu stood up at her higher elevation. She was panicking, hopping up and down, making terrified shrieking noises that Eilidh hated to hear – they were sounds of distress, perhaps what she should be making, herself, only the icy cold water prevented her from doing so. Eilidh forced her arms to wave around in the water, both to keep herself moving, to stay warm, but in a desperate bid to grab onto any bit of the ice sheet for purchase, only she couldn’t find any. Her sight was already being overtaken as her body went into shock.

“C- Córu!” she cried out in an excruciating scream, a final bid for rescue, feeling her body’s weight begin to sink. The movement in her arms slowed; in what felt like a split-second, she was underwater, her vision obscured. She took in water, causing her body to instantly fly into a shock, only- it was too cold, to frigid for even the most base instincts of her body to do anything.

Weighed down by her thick clothing, Eildih sunk ever deeper into the lake, arms and hair trailing above her as her eyes stared up toward where the sunlight trickled in after her, the last vestiges of her mind thinking only of her final bid for survival – of Córustrea. Only, she knew she wouldn’t ever come out here. She wouldn’t even come near this lake, much less into it. Eilidh’s dark hair circled her vision like seaweed, only, now, it framed her vision like the encroaching darkness of unconsciousness, her mind – her life – fading from her entirely, as she collapsed ever further.

Red hair. Glimmering eyes. She didn’t know how much time had passed between her last conscious thought and that one, but sure enough, as she snapped back to coherence, her eyes widened finding Córustrea making a bee-line for her, coursing through the lake waters like only a selkie might. The panic in her eyes remained, only- it shared the expression in the woman’s face with something else, something resembling determination, something more- ferocious.

Córu reached her, not wasting a moment to- Eilidh’s eyes shot open wide. The selkie reached out her hands, grasping hold of the skin behind her scalp and neck. Her direction was altogether gentle, pulling Eilidh close until the two met in a kiss, their lips finding each other beneath the Lock’s surface. It was like a lightning shock – which, alone, might have been enough to charge Eilidh back into coherence – but once the initial shock had settled, only then had she noticed Córu had reached over to plug her nose, leaving Eilidh’s only avenue for breath to be through the selkie’s lips; only, she didn’t find the absence of oxygen, but the presence of it. The breath she took there was like a shot of whiskey, causing Eilidh’s entire body to shake like a bolt of lightning, forcing Córu to hold to tighter to keep her in her watchful embrace.

The two locked eyes even as Córu pulled her body downward to be parallel to Eilidh’s. She nodded, flashing her eyes down toward Eilidh’s nose, which the human took to understand, replacing the selkie’s plugging fingers with her own, allowing the selkie to reach down with both hands and wrap her seal pelt around the both of them. It was as if Córu had brought the hearth from her home and somehow transported it unto these depths; Eilidh’s body was instantly awash with warmth, with the gentle heat of radiant flame, with- the closeness of another’s body.

Eilidh’s safety assured, Coru’s eyes flashed upward, still taking care to keep her lips secured atop Eilidh’s, before whipping her legs back and forth, a powerful current akin to a riptide sending the two of them back up toward the surface, hardly taking much time at all before the two of them were back into the sun’s embrace.

“GAH!” Eilidh cried out a gasp of fresh air as she pulled away from Córu, desperately grasping for two armfuls of the ice sheet. The selkie hurried to offer her support as she worked her way out of the waters, Córu able to hop out much easier before shedding her pelt and laying it overtop Eilidh’s body.

The human took quick, deep, wavering breaths as she stared up at the newly mysterious woman, her eyes slits as exhaustion overcame her, “Th- Thank you.”

Of course, she didn’t answer. Rather, she did, just not verbally. Córu knelt down at her side, wrapping her up in the warmth of her pelt, succumbing to the winter chill herself, allowing Eilidh the ability of comfort as she lay there, recovering, all while taking stock of her life and all that it entailed.