Before she knew it, the tide had turned 
and Solanna had lost her sealskin.

And not only that, now she had 
arms and legs and feet like a girl.

She looked around frantically
for her sealskin,

couldn't see it anywhere 
for an age,

and then, looking out to sea, 
she saw it, bobbing on a big breaker

before it went under 
and disappeared.

She tried to swim after it, 
but not being a seal anymore,

she couldn't get past the waves
and was thrown back on the sand.

She started to cry loud 
pitiful wails for her mother,

hitting her new legs and stamping 
her new feet

and waving her long, 
terrible human arms

and then she saw her mother 
skim across the waves

with four salmon between her teeth.

"Mummy!"

Solanna roared into the wind 
and tide, but it was useless.

It was as her mother had told her.

Now, she was a seal maiden.

Alone and naked in a terrible body 
that her mother would never recognise.

Even her voice 
didn't sound like her own.

She watched her mother disappear 
around the edge of the cliff

and wondered, would 
she ever see her again?

It was dark when the fisherman 
found the sealmaiden.

She lay on the sand asleep 
with seaweed in her hair

and the sea in her dreams.

He gathered her up and carried her
to his house along the shore

and dressed her and fed her 
and tried to make her talk.

The seal maiden wept and sang 
and slept through days

and nights that seemed to go on forever.

The fisherman watched and waited.

He had heard of creatures 
like her before,

creatures that come up out of the sea

and are stranded here among us, 
lost and miserable.

He was kind to the creature and 
taught her all he could about the earth.

At night, he could hear waves crash 
and roll in her heart, louder than the waves down at the shore. The sound of the tide in her made him sad for he knew that this little seal maiden ached to be among her own kind.

But he was powerless to help her, not knowing where her sealskin was or how he might find it.

He noticed the only thing that brought her out of herself was music so he played his fiddle for her and sometimes she would sing for him all the songs she had learned under the waves.