Undaine-on-the-Sea

Prefer to read? Find the text version here.

Subscribe to access bonus content and a peek behind the scenes.

CREDITS

Cover art by Cecile Pearson

Sounds:

Music by Luxaeterna2026 from Pixabay

Music by https://pixabay.com/users/luxaeterna2026-55887556/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=558010“>Luxaeterna2026 from https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=558010“>Pixabay

Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay

Sound Effect by https://pixabay.com/users/freesound_community-46691455/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=50546“>freesound_community from https://pixabay.com/sound-effects//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=50546“>Pixabay

Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay

Sound Effect by https://pixabay.com/users/freesound_community-46691455/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=80573“>freesound_community from https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=80573“>Pixabay

Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay

Sound Effect by https://pixabay.com/users/freesound_community-46691455/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=85335“>freesound_community from https://pixabay.com/sound-effects//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=85335“>Pixabay

Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay

Sound Effect by https://pixabay.com/users/freesound_community-46691455/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=26084“>freesound_community from https://pixabay.com/sound-effects//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=26084“>Pixabay

Sound Effect by PineFrameStudios from Pixabay

Sound Effect by https://pixabay.com/users/pineframestudios-55217639/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=546387“>PineFrameStudios from https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=546387“>Pixabay

Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay

Sound Effect by https://pixabay.com/users/freesound_community-46691455/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=24587“>freesound_community from https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=24587“>Pixabay

Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay

Sound Effect by https://pixabay.com/users/freesound_community-46691455/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=30119“>freesound_community from https://pixabay.com/sound-effects//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=30119“>Pixabay

Sound Effect by Joel Fazhari from Pixabay

Sound Effect by https://pixabay.com/users/joelfazhari-16466931/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=361505“>Joel Fazhari from https://pixabay.com/sound-effects//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=361505“>Pixabay

Do not go to the caves in the North.

They are full of hungry things- long-fingered and sharp-boned. Their faces are nothing but mouth, wet and wanting and wretchedly ravenous. The way is long and winding, and if you go in, you will come out changed… if you come out at all.

Do not go to the caves in the North.

-Excerpt from Find Me At The Sea Wall; a collection of poems by Tadhg Carroll, published in 1955

“Tadgh Carroll is a buffoon, and frankly, I’ve had it up to here with his nonsense. No one comes outta the caves in the first place. And tryin’ to dress it up with flowery language only makes folk more curious. More folk get curious, more folk get eaten. Also, he hasn’t paid his bar tab.”

-Maureen Lofts in a letter to her sister, 1956

-CREDITS-

Music and SoundFX

Fabulous Slow Mysterious Piano Music by https://pixabay.com/users/ashot_danielyan-27049680/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=231622“>Ashot Danielyan from https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=231622“>Pixabay

Sound Effect by https://pixabay.com/users/juliush-3921568/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=8050“>Julius H. from https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=8050“>Pixabay

The beekeepers kept to themselves when they first arrived, but there were signs.

First, it was just bees- bees, everywhere- but soon, it was the sweet scent of honey overtaking the once-pervasive smell of fish guts. Even the most wizened, nose-blind old fisherfolk tipped their noses up to catch a whiff.

One frigid midwinter morning, when it was too cold even for the snow to fall, the village folk rose to find the ice on their front stoops melted.

In its place, at every door, was a bundle of three beeswax candles and a sprig of Unseasonably fresh lavender, all tied together with twine.

How wonderfully comforting it was, in those long, dark winter months, to see a candle burn in every window!

Unfortunately, the pleasant aroma caused everyone in the village to inhale so deeply and collectively that they shifted the wind patterns and drew in a fresh winter storm.

That was alright. They’d weathered many a storm before. Now, they had a curiously potent candle to light their way through it.

CREDITS

Music:

Hand Print by tcabstudio from Pixabay

[Ragtime Music]

Good evenin’ folks, welcome back to Scuttlebutt Radio. The time is 6:18 pm. The tide is on its way out, but a winter storm is on its way in. Residents are encouraged to bring a cat or three indoors for the duration of the storm. If ye cannae find a cat, please report to the Village Library where a cat’ll be assigned to ye.

The beekeepers have kindly offered a jar o’ candle reed honey te anyone that takes in a cat, free o charge.

This storm is goin’ ta be a doozy and if reports from the North Lighthouse are correct, there will be a few large jellyfish comin’ down from the mountains to complicate things.

Dermot Nubbin is celebratin’ his 160th birthday this week, so if ye see him give him a gentle pat on the back. His grandchildren will be throwin a party fer him after the storms clear, so keep an ear to the radio- we’ll have yer invites here first, folks.

Don’t turn that dial, we’ll have storm updates fer ye every hour. Until then, may your hearth burn bright, yer roof never leak and yer cat never bite.

[Ragtime Music]

CREDITS

Music:

Ragtime by Fae Spencer from Pixabay

Jazzy Rag by Giga Chad from Pixabay

Two lighthouses on opposite shores. Two rival families. Two doomed lovers.

You know this story.

A bustling town square at dusk, alive with the sights and sounds of a vibrant festival. A band plays in front of the tiled fountain, underscored by the ever-present shush of the sea. The sun slips below the horizon as bonfires burst into life.

It is across these flames that our lovers meet for the first time.

Othelia: bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, hands calloused from years of tending the lighthouse lamp.

Tiernan: quiet, introspective, hair always a little too long, eyes always a little too sad.

They walk the cobblestone streets hand in hand- talking, laughing, falling in love- until they find themselves sitting atop the sea wall gazing at the stars. Tiny bioluminescent air fish flit around them, dancing on the salty summer breeze.

Their first kiss is sticky and sweet with cotton candy. The moment is so tender and true that even the ocean releases a wistful sigh, remembering the first time it kissed the shore.

Alas, the very stars our lovers gaze upon are gazing back, weeping at the tragedy they know will unfold.

An old woman hobbles her way around the village square, a jar of yellowish green powder tucked in the crook of her arm. She pauses before each bonfire, dipping her gnarled hands into the powder and sprinkling it over the flames. One by one, the fires are extinguished.

Othelia gazes into Tiernan’s eyes, and he into hers, with a soft desperation. Neither wants this night to end.

“Othelia!” A gruff male voice slices through the night.

Othelia whips around to face her father.

The final bonfire is snuffed out.

There he is, a dashing silhouette tending his own bright flame.

Othelia’s parents are livid. Horrified. They say a lot of things, but these words they repeat over and over. Her little sister, Adelaide, is sent to bed with ice cream still smeared over her face. She stomps each step all the way up… before creeping back down the stairs to press her ear against the door and listen.

Their parents settle around the old wooden family table. Lighting a lamp, they tell Othelia a tale.

Adelaide’s ears are keenly pricked, but the words are still muffled.

Othelia, for her part, is only half listening. Her head is congested with love.

Something about an ancestral feud; secrets stolen, or stolen back: the details do not matter. All that matters is that she will never be allowed to see her true love again.

But she does see him. Every night, she tends the flame in the lamp room and gazes across the waves to the lighthouse on the opposite shore. There he is, a dashing silhouette tending his own bright flame.

Does he yearn for her as she does for him?

Her answer comes in a parcel tied to the foot of a seagull. Seagulls are surprisingly romantic creatures, and this particular seagull was honored to be chosen as a courier.

Othelia’s hands tremble with anticipation. She fumbles with the knots until, at last, the paper falls away to reveal a silver hand mirror. It is simple, but elegant. The handle fits neatly in the palm of her hand, as if it were made just for her.

Gull and girl peer at their own reflections in the mirror, then at one another, puzzled. In unison, they look up to the other tower.

There he is on the balcony of the lamp room, holding a mirror of his own. He flashes it back and forth, transmitting a pattern of light.

They develop a code. It takes time, but soon they are fluent. They converse in rapid, bright flashes late into the night and early hours of the morning. Some nights, they use their silhouettes to play games or tell stories. They bring props, each tableau becoming more intricate than the last. They send little gifts back and forth with the aid of their winged coconspirator, always mindful that a seagull may have more important things to do than convey lovesick missives.

Truthfully, this seagull would not have minded carrying letters and gifts every night.

After all, the seagull thinks, what cause is more worthy than true love?

Some nights, our lovers do not converse or jest. They simply sit in their separate lamp rooms, each enjoying the company of the other’s shadow.

Othelia does not realize it at first, but she is being watched by someone else.

Adelaide is a precocious eight-year-old who has spent her entire life in awe of her older sister. Othelia is more than a girl to her, more than mere flesh and blood. She is an ethereal creature, a fairy princess from bedtime stories, only better because she is real. She watches Othelia’s glowing love story unfold, transfixed.

On nights when Othelia sneaks out to meet her lover, Adelaide takes her place in the lamp room with a timid reverence. She watches until her sister appears on the shore below. She is only a speck at this distance, but Adelaide would know her anywhere.

And there, that other speck, that must be Tiernan. She watches as they disappear among the rocks and do not emerge for a long, long time.

Some nights Adelaide takes herself off to bed, but most nights she falls asleep right there on the weathered floor of the lamp room. She wakes only when Othelia picks her up and carries her to bed, singing soft lullabies and stroking her hair.

The girls are sleepy-eyed and distracted during the day, and their parents grow concerned. They take their daughters to the doctor, who pokes them and prods them and gives them slimy things to drink. When they do not improve, there is talk of visiting the Haruspex.

The Haruspex is an old woman of great height and stern presence. She is a terrifying figure to a little girl with a head full of fairytales. Adelaide is desperate to save herself and Othelia from a visit to the formidable lady.

Adelaide breaks her silence.

She believes she is helping. She believes it is all a misunderstanding. She believes she can make her parents see reason.

She tells them what she’s seen, what she knows. She tells them it is true love, like in the stories. When they brush her aside, she tells them they are stinkier than fish guts and only half as smart.

She is sent out to clear slimy clumps of seaweed off the pier and, when the sun sets, she is sent to her room without dinner.

Othelia is confined to her room as well while her parents deliberate. They sit at that old family table late into the night, determined to find a way to save their daughter.

By morning, they have made a decision. Othelia will be sent away.

The final carp caravan of the year leaves in one week. It will take her to a village on the other side of the mountains where she will be taught to tend goats and to weave to forget about the young man who has stolen her heart.

Don’t worry, Othelia, she thinks. Adelaide is coming to save the day.

Adelaide has been very, very good. She feigns contrition and is diligent in her chores. She allows herself, once again, to fade into the background while her parents remain preoccupied with Othelia.

This provides Adelaide a certain amount of freedom- freedom she puts to good use on the eve of her sister’s departure.

She tiptoes up to the lamp room, Othelia’s mirror clutched tightly in her little hands. She has made a study of the lover’s code and thinks she understands it well enough to transmit a simple message.

She flashes it, a little shyly, across the waves. Then she waits. She does not blink once for fear of missing the reply.

A few moments later, a message flashes back.

Adelaide sets the mirror gently on the floor. Her heart is pounding with excitement, but also with a quiet sort of pride.

Don’t worry, Othelia, she thinks. Adelaide is coming to save the day.

Othelia drifts out of her room clad only in a nightgown and slippers.

“Othelia,” Adelaide whispers through the door. “It’s time to go.”

The door creaks open… and there she is.

Her big sister.

Othelia’s hair is unbrushed and her eyes are rimmed with red, but she is still as radiantly beautiful as ever.

“It’s time?” Othelia repeats back, her cheeks flushing with hope.

Adelaide nods. She expects her sister to carry a bag of some sort, maybe even a stick and bindle, but she bri…

“The Selkie language is the only language I know of in which silences are not only used to accentuate a point, but hold as much structure and meaning as words. This has made translation attempts difficult, but I will do my best.”

-Excerpt from The Language of Selk by Cabernat Twillis, 1842

“The village of Undaine was built on shipwrecks.

At its origin, Undaine was just one of many rest stops for the indigenous Selkie population. (Note: the closest Selk translation is ‘shedding harbor’.) They cast their skins off on the shore, stretched their legs, and bartered their treasures. They gathered beneath full moons to sing their histories and mark the changing seasons. They erected a few humble structures, but only the necessary bare bones. The sea was their true home and they would always return to it.

Selkies are, rightly, protective of their histories and culture. It is a wonder they have allowed scholars to record any of their oral history at all. Because of this, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the first shipwreck arrived, but educated estimates place it at around 400 A.D. (note: Selkies maintain a different record of time and years. According to a very rough translation of the Selkie records, this time period would be referred to as The Rime.)

The wreck was devastating, leaving few survivors. After only a few days of what must have been a harrowing journey through dark forests, they somehow found themselves many hundreds of miles away.

Despite their miraculous transportation, they remained in dire straits. It seemed they only traded one brutal coastline for another. Many lost consciousness on those shores and surely would have died of starvation or exposure had it not been for the approaching crest of Selkies, who took pity on them. They brought scores of fish ashore with them. They shed their skins and wrapped them around the unfortunate castaways. They sang lullabies and tenderly nursed the feeble strangers from the brink of death. (note: it is believed that one of these first survivors was an early ancestor of the Twillis family. While impossible to confirm, it seems a likely cause for the many strange powers possessed by the Twillis line.)”

-Excerpt from A History of Undaine, vol. 1 by Isla Fairchild, historian

-SOUND CREDITS-

under water ambiance.OWI. WAV by lenayrossouw -- https://freesound.org/s/707574/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

SFX_UnderWater by Perel -- https://freesound.org/s/173439/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

SFX_Submerge by Perel -- https://freesound.org/s/173438/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

Turning Pages by vartian -- https://freesound.org/s/425467/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

Ms. Twillis is widely regarded by the village as an oddity. She lists slightly to the left at all times, giving her a perennially inquisitive look. Her head-to-toe mismatched florals are adorned with lace and pearls that rattle. One might watch her daintily mincing her way through the bloody, damp fish market and assume she is on her way to attend some posh tea at the house on the hill, but this is unlikely to be the case. A Twillis has not been welcome in that house for generations.

However strange and slight she might appear, Ms. Twillis is a woman of great power.

She is a diviner, a fortune teller, an oracle, a prober of fish guts. It is within their glistening viscera that she finds the truths of the universe… or where you misplaced your left stocking.

She guts the fish, divines the fortune, fries the meat, and serves it to her inquiring client.

Waste not.

CREDITS

Fog Horn and Gulls Sound Effect by Deborah Wong from Pixabay

[Ragtime Music]

Yer listenin’ to Scuttlebutt Radio, the time is 4:02am and the tide is on its way in.

We’ve got a strong wind from the East today, so be careful out there, fisherfolk. Keep your earplugs at the ready and don’t fall prey to that sweet singin’. I promise you it is not your dead husband, it’s a ravenous monster.

Folks, keep an eye to the horizon, any horizon, the Carp Caravan will be back any day now and you know what that means. That’s right, Flavor Fest. Loosen up your belts, cuz you’re about to eat somethin’ other than fish.

Village Council asks parents to remind their children that the Lighthouse is not for climbin’, nor is it for breakin’ into. Village Council is happy to provide you with some truly haunting bedtime stories about the Lighthouse if necessary. I read one just last night and haven’t slept a wink since.

Don’t turn that radio off, we’ll have weather updates for ye every hour. Wishin’ ye smooth seas and a gentle breeze from all us here at Scuttlebutt Radio.

[Ragtime Music]

CREDITS

Music:

Ragtime by Piano_Music

https://pixabay.com/music/vintage-ragtime-115446/

Vintage Comedy by Piano_Music

https://pixabay.com/music/solo-piano-vintage-comedy-115449/

There are only two ways to find Undaine-on-the-Sea, and they are perilous. The first is for either the very brave or the very foolish: become lost. Do not carry a map, do not consult a compass, do not ask for directions. The way is fluid and ever-shifting; if you set out with any of these things, you would be wise to lose them… or risk losing yourself. You might step over a root in a dense forest and careen over a seaside cliff, or perhaps will fall asleep in a meadow only to wake on a cold, jagged rock a cable or more from the shore. You may even go quite mad and forget your purpose, building a new home for yourself in a hollowed-out tree with insects and mice as your only companions.

The second way is the surest, but the wait may be long. You will need to travel on the back of a giant flying carp. No matter how much the path may shift, a carp will always find it. Perhaps it is their whiskers that pick up on the subtle fluctuations in the air, perhaps a carp in the air is always a little lost anyway, or perhaps they hear Undaine-on-the-Sea calling them home.

But how, I hear you ask, are you to find a giant flying carp? First, you must travel to a small mining town nestled in the Copper Basin of a shadowy mountain. Don’t fret, traveler; I have a map for this part of the journey at least.

This is the only town to ever trade with Undaine, a relationship that has been fostered over hundreds of years. A few times a year, a glittering parade of giant flying carp emerges from the foothills. They are weighed down with baskets of flowers, bricks of beeswax, and bundles of fresh ocean fish carefully preserved in inky newspaper. These sojourns have no fixed date, so you may need to stay in town for several weeks or months. I’d recommend staying at an inn called The Copper Goat. Of course, there aren’t many other options- it’s the only inn in town.

You will duck beneath tiny copper bells hanging from red strings in the doorway. Maybe you hit your head, maybe not. If you do, do not act surprised or frightened at their sound; a fear of bells is considered highly suspicious, and you may be made to sleep out in the goat pen.

Agnes will greet you in the Main Room. In her younger years, she roamed the hills with her goats; foraging, exploring, tearing her skirts, and getting into trouble. Tracking her down used to be an all-day affair. These days, however, you are far more likely to find her inside… though still with her goats.

Maybe you arrive on a busy day, and the inn is bursting with life. Children haul wood to the big stove and race back out to play in the snow, parents calling after them to remember their chores. In the kitchen, two women gossip hard over a boiling pot of hearty stew. A young man works on a loom in the corner, eavesdropping on the women’s conversation. He is pleasantly distracted and does not notice that a goat has begun chewing on the trailing threads of his work. A man kneads dough on a long wooden counter, and a group of school-age boys and girls hang fresh charms in the windows. Agnes will be at the center of all of it, checking the ovens, catching dropped stitches, and shooing the goats away from a vegetable basket. Before you can ask for a room, you are handed a carrot and knife and told to chop.

Or perhaps you have arrived on a peaceful day. Agnes cards wool in a well-worn chair, feet propped up on an ottoman, while the cast iron potbelly stove chugs out heat. The snow on your boots melts the moment you step inside. Goats of all sizes (and a few sheep) graze on hay that has been stacked in one corner or nap lazily around the room. A goat with a broken horn rests his head on Agnes’s shins, gazing at her lovingly while she works. A few dozen more tiny copper bells hang from the rafters, chiming softly in updrafts from the fire.

Agnes rises to greet you, her old bones creaking. “Oh, you looks likes you’ll be wantin a rooms then,” she says.

Before you know it, you’re swept upstairs to a cozy room with a small window overlooking the lake. More tiny bells hang from the window hinges and rafters. You may toss and turn your first few nights away in this room, kept awake by Agnes snoring from her chair in the Main Room below or the soft chiming of the bells, or the looming shadow of the mountain just across the water. Maybe the strangeness of it all will be enough to make you give up your journey entirely… but you seem the hearty sort. It will take more than the uncanniness of night to scare you off, even if the shadows of the mountain stretch and shift and move in unnatural ways.

Make yourself comfortable, you could be here for weeks or even months.

Does the prospect of such a long wait bore you, adventurer? Worry not- you can pass the time and earn your keep shoveling goat manure or hauling wood. There is never a shortage of chores to be done. They will leave you tired down to your bones and ease your nightly tossings and turnings.

The best nights at the inn are ‘Goat Nights’- the nights Agnes brings the goats indoors. Maybe it is too cold outside, or maybe the dark, eldritch shadows of the mountain have crept a little too close to the borders of the town. You watch from the safety of the bells at your window as they stretch languidly across the crisp snow, shifting and splitting into long, brittle fingers.

Do not linger at the window for too long, it will do you no good. Better to spend these nights in the Main Room with Agnes and her goats, where she will teach you to card wool and spin it. If you’re patient enough and learn to spin without breaks or lumps or throwing a fit, she may teach you to weave.

Your patterns will never be as beautiful or intricate as Agnes’s, but the blanket you make will be butter-soft and warm. Maybe you will even get halfway through making a sweater before the carp arrive. Best of all, if you are very patient and have a willing ear, Agnes may tell you stories from her wild youth.

“Oh he mades me so mad,” she says, shaking her head as she recalls the neighbor’s son and his romantic pursuits of her older sister. “Sos my brother Georgies and I- my younger brother you know, we was always gettins’ into troubles together- we makes this map. Very detaileds, very complicateds, all nonsense of course. Georgie was good at that sorts of thing. We tells him our sister, Rosie, she’s waitins’ for him with a picnics and to just follows the map. So off he goes that way all excited and of we go, this way…”

While you work by the flickering lamp light, fifteen sets of hooves clomp noisily around the wooden floor. But when Agnes begins her stories, they settle in to listen alongside you.

“Now there’s two things yous should knows about cows,” Agnes says, holding up two knobby fingers with yarn wrapped between them. “The first is if you’re nice to em, you can leads em just abouts anywheres. Especially if you has some real nice turnips, which it just so happens Georgie an I did. Thing two about cows is this: you can get cows to go upstairs pretty easy, they don’t minds it a bit, but you’ll have a hards time gettins em to come backs down again.

“So that poor neighbor boy he comes home, all flustereds for not findins’ Rosies and not undersandins’ the maps and abouts to get in troubles for skippins’ out on his chores for the day, and also maybe he fell a few times and gots all scrapeds up, which we didn’t plans on and we did feel a bit bads about that. Alls he wants to do is have a lie-downs in his nice cozy beds except he can’t- cuz we gone and broughts a cow up to his bedrooms. We wanted to brings three of em in but wouldn’t you know it, cows is a lot bigger once you gets em indoors. And here’s the kickers- which we didn’t knows it til later on accounts of we got outta there quick as we could- but that cow made herself rights at home on his mattress- which at the times was on the floor- and she took herself a little naps. Head on the pillow and everythin’.

“So then, and here’s the real kickers of it all, that neighbor boy and I gets a little more grown u…

CREDITS

Soundscape created using Freesound https://freesound.org/

Sounds used:

Urban Herring Gulls by acclivity

Ship's bell by cgeffex

Ship's bell by Arnaud Coutancier

Bells by Justiiiiin

Dormition Cathedral Bells by vortich

Ocean Waves by Lucas Chacht