The rain had been falling since morning—steady, coastal rain that didn’t quite drop so much as drift, like the sky had decided everything below it needed to be softened.

Eamon noticed the pattern before anyone else did.

He always did.

By midday, he had already pulled the shutters tight on the work shed, stacked the spare rope higher, and moved anything that shouldn’t get damp further from the walls. Not because he expected visitors.

Because he expected you.

When you arrived, it was the way you always arrived during your young selkie’s moon: not loudly, not announced, but as if the world had simply shifted and made space for you.

You stood in the doorway with rain in your hair and salt on your lips, cardigan too big, eyes brighter than they should have been. Hungry in a way that had nothing to do with food alone.

Eamon didn’t ask where you’d been.

He just looked at you once, long enough to understand.

Then he said, “You’ve been in the water too long.”

It wasn’t a question.

You blinked, like you were about to deny it out of habit—then stopped. Your shoulders loosened a fraction, as if the lie had slipped out of you before you could catch it.

“…Maybe.”

Eamon nodded once and turned away. “Come inside.”

The cottage smelled like cedar smoke and old saltwood. Warm. Dry. Contained. The kind of place that made the outside world feel distant, even when it pressed against the windows.

You followed him in slowly, watching his movements more than the room itself.

He didn’t hover. Didn’t crowd. Just moved with purpose, already thinking ahead of you in a way that felt unsettlingly gentle.

“You’re doing it again,” you said quietly.

“Doing what?”

“Like you knew I was coming.”

He paused by the hearth, glancing back over his shoulder. Those gray-blue eyes caught on you—steady, unreadable in a way that wasn’t cold.

“I did know,” he said simply. “You always get like this when the tide turns warm too fast.”

That made something in your chest tighten. Not fear exactly. Something more complicated. Recognition that didn’t belong to land or sea.

Eamon set to work without further explanation.

You watched him carry wood from the stack, then oilcloth, then copper fittings that you hadn’t noticed he had at all. He didn’t ask permission. He didn’t announce intent.

He just built.

By the time you realized what he was doing, the corner of the cottage had already changed.

A wide wooden basin was being assembled near the hearth—not a barrel, not a tub, but something deeper. Reinforced. Smoothed. Sealed with pitch and resin that smelled like pine and storms held in glass.

You stepped closer.

“What is that?” you asked, though you already knew.

Eamon didn’t look up. “A bath.”

“That’s not—” You gestured vaguely at the structure. “That’s a boat that forgot it was a boat.”

A faint huff of amusement left him. “It’s a bath that won’t crack when you don’t want to come out of it.”

Your words stalled.

The fire popped softly beside him. Rain tapped the windows in patient rhythm.

You watched as he tested the depth with his hand, adjusted a support beam, then checked the angle again like the entire thing mattered in a way most people would never understand.

“You didn’t ask,” you said.

Eamon finally straightened. His sleeves were rolled up, forearms marked with sawdust and old rope scars. He looked at you properly now.

“I didn’t need to,” he said.

That was worse.

Not in a sharp way. In a quiet one.

Because it meant he wasn’t guessing.

He was observing.

You swallowed. “I could have just—gone to the shore.”

“And stayed in the wind until you fell asleep on wet stones again?” he asked, mild.

You opened your mouth.

Closed it.

He turned back to the basin, continuing his work as if the conversation had already been accounted for in his design. “You get like this during your young moon,” he said again, softer now. “You forget where your body wants to rest.”

That sentence landed strangely in you.

Not as accusation.

As understanding.

The bath took shape under his hands like it had been waiting for him to decide it existed.