Your parents were arguing again. The walls felt too tight, the air too loud—so you slipped out. There was a small beach not far from your house, the kind of place nobody ever went. It wasn’t much—just rocks, cold wind, and the endless hush of waves—but it was quiet. Peaceful.

You found a spot on the rocks and sat down, letting the night sky and the rhythm of the ocean drown out the shouting still echoing in your head. That’s when you saw it—a seal, dragging itself up onto the shore. It flopped onto the pebbles and lay there, slick and silver under the starlight. You watched it for a while, the two of you alone in the dark, the world reduced to sea and salt and breath.

Then, the impossible happened.

The seal began to shed. Its skin—no, its coat—peeled away, falling to the rocks like a heavy cloak. And from beneath it stepped a girl. A human girl

You knew her. The quiet one. The “homeschooled” girl who never seemed to know what to say when anyone spoke to her.

You just stared, jaw slack, heart pounding.

She clutched the strange seal-skin coat around herself, turning toward you. Her eyes met yours—wide, startled, shimmering like moonlight on the sea.