selkiesaoirse | (no subject)

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Saoirse’s shriek echoes through the house.

Her hair. Her hair is ruined. This is all their fault. Cat, Cate, and Catee: they’d told her that she wouldn’t look good with blonde hair. She’s the wrong complexion, they’d said, and Saoirse had thought no way. So after school, she’d grabbed a box of bleach and a box of blonde dye and locked herself in the bathroom with them.

She’d never done it before, but she’d figured it would be easy enough, right? The box comes with instructions, and gloves, and she’d thought, it’ll be fine. She popped a plastic showercap on once the bleach was in and listened to music and painted her toenails while she waited.

Twenty minutes later, she’d rinsed it off, toweled it with a white towel — so she didn’t bleach the towel, see? — and looked in the mirror.

And screamed.

It isn’t that the bleach has burned her hair off like she’s seen on some suddengram videos. But it didn’t turn it the color the box said it should turn, either. No no. It’s gone and turned her hair green. Her beautiful, sleek black hair… Practically Grinch-green, and Saoirse’s going to be the laughingstock of Brynmor if she goes back looking like this!

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Greta doesn't consider it particularly suspicious when Saoirse spends an unusually long time in the bathroom. She might find the increasingly lengthy routines that the lass has fallen into a bit needless, when all is said and done, but it's not worth a row with an increasingly tetchy teenager. And if she can give Saoirse a measure of trust and privacy, she'd prefer to.

So it's a rather unpleasant jolt when the peaceful quiet of the cottage is rent asunder by a scream. Greta lets out a startled squawk of her own, which is complimented by low barks of alarm from both Sadie and Cú, and all three of them go charging for the bathroom door.

The locked bathroom door.

"Saoirse?!" Greta jiggles the knob. "Saoirse, are you all right?"

"Green!" she shrieks back. And it's all the more bloody obvious with how her face is turning shades of pink as she sobs at her reflection. The doorknob jiggles and she throws herself against the door.

"Stay out, don't look at me like this!" she wails. Her words are muffled against the palms of her hands as she continues, "I'm ruined!"

Oh, God, she really is. She can't ever go back to school again, not looking like this. She can't ever leave the bathroom again! She's going to be trapped in here, a horrible, horrid green bathroom goblin. A toilet troll.

"What?!" What on earth is that supposed to mean? 'Green'? What's green? Greta leans in closer to the door, brow knit in bewilderment as Saoirse has what sounds like a top-tier tantrum on the other side of the wood; Cú lets out an uneasy whine and snuffles at the jamb.

She understands 'stay out' clearly enough, but while she refrains from jiggling the knob again, she's certainly not about to leave Saoirse in a state like this. "What's happened? Will you please open the door?"

The idea of Greta seeing her like this fills Saoirse with a dread unlike any she's known.

Probably that's not true — she's been kidnapped twice, and gone through two Purges, and all sorts of other nonsense — but in that moment it feels truer than anything. Something inside of her swells, and the bathroom is filled with a familiar pale light.

In the next moment, she's a seal, and she flails and rolls around to get out of the awkward slump against the door she's managed to find herself in. She can hear Cú whining and sniffing along the bottom of the door now and she lets out a loud groan as her tail slaps the door and knob in her ungainly push to get deeper into the bathroom.

There's a heavy thud that makes the door shake in its frame, and then a horrible groan that sends a chill racing down Greta's spine. Whatever's happening in there has, as far as her imagination is concerned, abruptly graduated from 'temper tantrum' to 'medical emergency.' Greta twists the doorknob so vigorously that she almost sends herself sprawling into the wall when it surprises her by turning without any resistence, then wrenches the door open with a gasped, "Saoirse!"

And then she recoils as the sharp scent of bleach and the sight of an entire bloody seal sprawled across the bathroom floor strike her in one shockingly discordant blow. "Saoirse?!" A frantic visual once-over manages to reassure her that 'bloody' was more of a colorful word choice than an accurate one; there's no immediate sign of any injuries. But she's never seen Saoirse turn into a seal indoors before. She didn't even know the girl could, though she supposes 'a lack of trying' may have played a starring role in that assumption.

Well, if she's not injured, then perhaps this is some sort of... magical selkie trouble? Whatever it is, it won't be helped by both of them panicking. Greta swallows, forces herself to take a deep breath, and lowers herself into a crouch. "What happened?" she asks in a gentler tone. "Are you hurt?"

The door flies open and Greta stumbles in, and Saoirse recoils her neck into the thick layer of fat under her fur, the one that keeps her warm and cozy in the water, like she's a turtle that can hide away from her shame. The fur at the top and sides of her head is messy and wet, discolored even now, though she can't see it, and at Greta's question, she wails out a long bwaaaaaaaaaah as if in answer. Cú barks at them from outside the bathroom, prancing in place as though he isn't sure what to do with himself.

It's impossible not to wince as Saoirse bawls out a... well, it would be generous to call that a 'response.' Mostly it's just loud. The general din isn't helped by Cú's barking, or Sadie's loud sneeze (the bleach, she assumes). "All right, all right," she soothes, one hand pushing gently against Cú's chest as he attempts to barge in, the other making a quelling gesture in Saoirse's direction.

With Saoirse unable to speak, Greta resorts to looking around the bathroom for other clues as to what's just occurred... which is when she spots the thin cardboard box up on the counter. She plucks it down to examine it, a line between her brows that slowly fades as the pieces begin to fit themselves together. Greta looks back over at Saoirse, noting the disheveled and rather pale patch of fur along the top of her head, and considers the word 'green' in this new context, and lets out a breath.

"Oh, sweetheart," Greta tsks, holding up the box. "I take it this... didn't go as planned?"

Cú steps back from the door and sits, whining nervously. Saoirse wriggles on the floor, fixing Greta with enormous, liquid brown eyes. Then she tips her head back and releases another long, plaintive sound.

Well, plaintive to her ears. In the small bathroom filled with ceramic fixtures, it's just another loud bellow. She swings her head side to side and recoils again, tail curling up against the side of the tub like she might try to climb into it backwards.

"Saoirse--" Greta grimaces as she sets the box back on the counter. "That really is very loud, darling." Not that there's any reason for a seal to have an 'indoor voice,' but still. It's almost enough to make her miss those early days before her coat had arrived, when the little lass hardly made a peep.

There's a beat where it looks like Saoirse might attempt to retreat into the tub, and Greta sucks a breath between her teeth. As seals go, Saoirse's small enough that Greta has no immediate fear for the sturdier fixtures. But she's never been graceful out of the water, and she's heavy enough that she could either break something less sturdy or harm herself if she tries anything foolish (anything else foolish, that is).

"Here," Greta says, patting her lap, her tone gentle but with a thread of no-nonsense steel running through it. "Stop squirming around like that and let me take a look at you."

Saoirse knows better than to argue against that tone, so she wriggles closer and drops her chin in Greta's lap. She's fairly certain she's too heavy to climb into her lap the way she sort of wants to, but she can put her head there, anyway. She looks up at her with those big brown eyes, absolutely miserable.

There's a moment of uncertainty before Saoirse complies, which forces Greta to wonder what on earth she's going to do if the girl remains stuck in seal shape and uncooperative about it. But then she comes over to lay her head in Greta's lap, her eyes enormous and brimming with pinniped pathos.

"That's better," Greta soothes, grateful for both the cooperation and the relative silence. She lays a hand on either side of Saoirse's head, palms against the soft fur, and examines the odd lighter patch at the top of her head. Assessing the damage in this shape is difficult — beside the point, even — and part of her wonders if Saoirse fled into seal shape for no more profound reason than avoiding her own reflection. She tsks again, smoothing her hand over the discolored blotch, then ventures a gentle, "This might be easier if you changed back."

Presuming she can, that is. Normally, the girl only takes seal shape when she's in the water, or near enough that she may as well be. The specifics of how it works aren't something Greta has considered much, but if pressed, she would have guessed that 'proximity to a body of salt water' was a necessary ingredient. Without that trigger to cause the transformation in the first place, she's no more certain that a lack of salt water should make it easy for her to switch back.

"Can you?" she asks, trying not to sound anxious.

Edited 2024-12-13 20:05 (UTC)

"Awoo?" Saoirse says, looking up at her. She'd held still as Greta had examined the top of her head, but now she has to really think about what she's just been asked. Can she change back? She hadn't meant to change in the first place.

If she really thinks about it, Saoirse can admit that she's always wanted to be able to turn into a seal whenever she wants — but it's also always been a bit of a passing want, something that she's never really tried or thought about beyond occasionally acknowledging that it's there. Besides, she has basically free access to the sea whenever she wants it. It'd be silly to turn into a seal in the middle of the house.

Which is exactly what's happened, after she'd panicked over her hair. With Greta's attentions she's feeling a bit better, but now she realizes, she isn't totally sure how she changed, or if she can change back.

She tries to keep her uncertain whine to a reasonable volume.

"I see," Greta replies, stroking the top of Saoirse's head in a gesture that she hopes might calm both of them. "This is... unusual."

Well. Worst case scenario, they have to haul her down to the beach in the hopes that dunking her in the water and having her come back out will trigger something. But that can wait until they're both certain this is the worst case scenario.

"Can you try? Just..." she hitches her shoulders in a brief, hapless shrug, wishing Daine was still here. This seems like something she could have helped with. "I don't know. Think about being a girl again, maybe?"

Saoirse closes her eyes and thinks about it. She thinks about being a girl — not 'her true self' because arguably a self is her true self, but the shape of the girl she's spent most of her life as. That, she can try to think about. She wriggles in place, a flipper reaching to hold Greta's leg, and she thinks about the way it feels to turn back once she's out of the water, to feel the beach sand against her human belly, to grab the ground with fingers and push herself to feet at the ends of knobby-kneed legs.

She feels the familiar magic sort of swell, and then pale light engulfs her. When it fades, she's a girl again, sprawled ungainly on the bathroom floor with her head on Greta's lap and her arm across Greta's shins.

"... Hi," she mumbles.

It's difficult to remain patient as Saoirse shuts her eyes, but Greta manages it, if only because she's acutely aware of how unhelpful any further fussing would be. One of them has to keep their head. Fortunately, she doesn't have to wait too long before there's a familiar white glow, and the head on her lap abruptly reconfigures itself into a more familiar shape.

Greta blinks her eyes back into focus as the light fades, and then has to press her lips together to forestall a squawk. Oh, dear. Saoirse's hair really is very green, isn't it? She gives the girl's head a tentative pat, lips twisting into a sympathetic wince. No wonder she didn't want to be seen like this, the poor lass.

"Hello, yourself," she replies once she's certain she can maintain a level tone. Now that she knows panic-induced shapeshifting is a thing, she doesn't want to spur a reprise, so she keeps her voice gentle as she asks, "What brought this on?"

Maybe it was just an adolescent whim. But Saoirse has never expressed any displeasure with her hair before, and this is a rather marked departure from her usual interests in cute clothes or nail art. It has more of the flavor of a-a dare or something, though she's never known the lass to be particularly susceptible to those, either.

"Cat, Cate and Catee were talking about dyeing their hair," she says, tone sound very much like she's gearing up for a big rant, "and I said I'd like to, too, but they said I couldn't, because my hair is too dark, and—"

Her voice wobbles and she buries her face in Greta's lap, indulges in kicking her feet against the bathroom floor for a moment, then continues.

"And they said I'd look bad with blonde hair! I said 'no way, my brother has blond hair,' and they said my skin was all wrong for it! Can you believe that? I just wanted to prove them wrong, Mum, I didn't know I'd, I'd—" She whimpers, unable to say turn green out loud.

Splitting the difference between a whim and a dare, then. Greta allows herself a quiet sigh as Saoirse explains herself, privately wishing she'd talked to her about this before just going for it. Granted, she doubts she would have approved of the idea — Saoirse's natural hair color is lovely, and if she really did want to dye it, she could have started with something less drastic than attempting to go blonde right out of the gate — but she at least could have advised speaking to a hairdresser instead of buying a box of goodness-knows-what from a shop.

She takes a lock of Saoirse's hair between her fingers, trying to assess whether it's horribly damaged or just unfortunately hued. Sort of hard to tell while it's still damp, but she's hesitant to suggest drying it — as if, like setting a stain, it might just make things worse. God. What if they have to chop it all off? Maybe Regan knows more about this sort of thing.

"... Turn green?" she wryly says, unable to resist completing the sentence Saoirse couldn't bear to finish.

"Don't say it!" she wails, and even as she does, the light swells around her and her voice changes into that bellow of distress that Greta had heard when she'd first come in. Her tail flops and kicks, skidding the bathroom rug across the floor.

She can't be green! Hearing Greta acknowledge it out loud has panic fresh in her belly, rapidly rekindling the idea that her friends at school — that Cat, Cate, and Catee — will see her and laugh at her bloody green hair, because why wouldn't they? It's laughable to everyone but Saoirse.

Mum! she wants to say, but instead all she does is bellow, "Bwaaahhh!"

There is a perilous moment in which Greta thinks she might laugh in spite of her better judgment. She knows it would only make things worse in the short term (in the long term, she imagines it'll be at least a year or so before Saoirse might tolerate them treating this whole thing any less seriously than a car accident). But there's also no denying that it's all a bit ridiculous — both the predicament and the histrionics — and she's starting to sputter a bit before Saoirse distracts her by turning back into a seal and letting out another bellow of objection.

"All right, all right," Greta says, grimacing at the noise and shifting back into soothing mode. "Look, it's— I'm sure we can fix this." She casts about for inspiration, spotting the box of blonde dye that's also sat on the counter. No help from that quarter, she assumes; the best it might do is turn Saoirse's hair a more yellowy sort of green. And she's certainly not about to suggest bleaching her hair again in the hopes that it takes better the second time. But they must sell dye in other colors. And it's not like the sleek black color Saoirse's hair ought to be is that hard to match.

"What if we just... dyed it black again? That would cover up the green, wouldn't it?" It wouldn't fix any potential physical damage from the bleaching process, but at least it would look the right color.

"Bawww," Saoirse protests, as if to say What's the point in dyeing it black again when I could've just left it black in the first place? The whole point was to prove I looked good with any hair color! But nobody can pull off green hair! without so many words.

Cú whines from outside the door, and when Saoirse lifts a flipper to hide her face, Cú copies her, lifting a paw over his own muzzle.

Greta sighs softly, her hand coming to rest in the general vicinity of Saoirse's shoulder. "Well, let me put it another way," she says with all the calm practicality that she can muster, "we can either send Regan out for some black hair dye, or we can try and find a professional stylist who might be able to do something else. Except we probably won't be able to get you an appointment today because it's short notice, and whenever we do manage to schedule something, you'll have to leave the house like this." She lightly touches the fur on top of Saoirse's head to indicate that she's talking about the green situation and not the seal situation.

"Which of those options sounds better to you?"

Saoirse lowers her flipper from her face to instead curl it around Greta's calf and sighs heavily as she really thinks about it. She nudges her nose under Greta's arm, as much for comfort as to hide for a moment as she gets her thoughts in order. Obviously going out with green hair is out of the question, not least because it might put her at risk of being spotted by Cat, Cate, or Catee — or worse, all three of them — but it feels like it really defeats the whole purpose to just cave and go back to the black hair.

Still, Greta is probably right. And it isn't like they can trust that more bleach will solve the problem. Who's to say it would make the green go away at all, or just make her hair fall out altogether? She's seen that happen on suddengram videos, after all. Hair horror stories.

Maybe black is the right choice.

"Bawww," she decides, looking up at her with big, plaintive eyes.

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