Caribbean Selkie

If we assume Slekie are inherently native to Ireland, then I’ve an idea for how this could happen. During the invasion of Ireland by Cromwell, his men had cart blanch to kidnap random people in an effort demoralize the resistance, as many were their family members. One night, a round head soldier spies a beautiful lady walking naked on the beach, and assumes she’s just a local “green papist” out for a swim. He and his friend get the drop on her, and force some shack upon her. While the other looks around For other victims, she manages bite the other to slip away for a few minutes. He catches up, to find her sobbing, wearing what he thinks in the dark moonlight is a leather jacket. It is actually her seal skin, but the iron shackles prevent her from putting it on and becoming a seal again! He beats her cruelly, and forces her along, but thank the Sea he didn’t take her skin! At least she’s not bonded to such a monstrous man.

Soon, however, she finds herself sharing a very different kind of bond as she’s chain ganged to hundreds of other Irish prisoners, and forced upon a slave ship! From there, they are taken to Barbados, to be worked to death as “Red Legs” slaves. They are beaten cruelly and told that they have nowhere to go, no way home, but she has an escape rout: the sea. She still has her skin, she just needs to get out of the shackles! An infection on her ankle gives her the chance. The “Doctor“ removes it, thinking her too weak to run, so he could prepare a hot iron to cauterize it, and when he came back, she had jumped into his nearby bunk under the covers. Bemused, he sets the iron down back on the hearth and decides to play along with her “peekaboo“ game, also, he’s thinking about raping her, as she’s still quite comely. He lifts up the cover only for the last thing he sees to be a snarling seal latch onto his throat and rip it out with her teeth! After, she takes her skin off again. Transforming heals all wounds, and she can run faster as a humanoid, so she makes a break for the sea. Someone sees her but loses track of her in the serf, where she transforms once again, only this time it will be many months before she takes her skin off again.

Soon she must face facts: as a silkie, she is ALONE. There are native fae creatures, but they fear her as much as the English invaders, avoiding her. Over time loneliness starts to get the better of her, but also the infernal tropical summer. She escaped during the Caribbean winter, which made the water tolerable for a while, but As a seal, she’s ultimately built for the North Atlantic, so she increasingly finds herself having to take human form to rest in shade on beaches during the day to prevent overheating,

Thinking she’d found a safe, isolated beach after half a year of wandering the islands, she’s taking a nap in a bush, with her skin laid out nearby, when she FEELS it! The BOND! Some human has found her skin! She sits up suddenly, drawn towards him, praying to the gods that it’s not one of those infernal puritans! Her relief that it isn’t is as great as her surprise at the sight of him. She’s never seen a human like him, skin as black as coal…