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

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

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She looked around frantically
for her sealskin,

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couldn't see it anywhere 
for an age,

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

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before it went under 
and disappeared.

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

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

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She started to cry loud 
pitiful wails for her mother,

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hitting her new legs and stamping 
her new feet

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and waving her long, 
terrible human arms

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and then she saw her mother 
skim across the waves

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with four salmon between her teeth.

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"Mummy!"

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

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It was as her mother had told her.

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Now, she was a seal maiden.

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

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Even her voice 
didn't sound like her own.

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She watched her mother disappear 
around the edge of the cliff

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and wondered, would 
she ever see her again?

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It was dark when the fisherman 
found the sealmaiden.

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She lay on the sand asleep 
with seaweed in her hair

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and the sea in her dreams.

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

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

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The seal maiden wept and sang 
and slept through days

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and nights that seemed to go on forever.

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The fisherman watched and waited.

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He had heard of creatures 
like her before,

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creatures that come up out of the sea

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and are stranded here among us, 
lost and miserable.

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

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At night, he could hear waves crash 
and roll in her heart,

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louder than the waves 
down at the shore.

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The sound of the tide
in her made him sad

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for he knew that this little seal maiden
ached to be among her own kind.

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But he was powerless to help her,

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not knowing where her sealskin was
or how he might find it.

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He noticed the only thing that brought 
her out of herself was music

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so he played his fiddle for her

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and sometimes she would sing for him 
all the songs she had learned under the waves.