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ORIGIN – The Quiet at the Edge of the World

Aoife lives where the Highland cliffs fall sharply into deep, cold water
a place of caves, echoing gulls, and ancient wells that taste of iron and stories.

This coastline sits between:

• human villages and selkie coves

• safety and shipwreck

• silence and confession

Here, the sacred wells are not just stone circles.
They are nervous systems, holding centuries of whispered wishes.

Aoife moves between:

• sea and shore

• selkie and human

• spoken word and humming silence

She belongs to both worlds and fully to neither, which is why she understands those who feel out of place.

She walks the rocks in human form, her sealskin folded over her shoulders like a heavy, shimmering cloak.

WHY SHE IS A SELKIE

(Masking, Identity & Return)

Selkies shed their skins to walk among humans.
Aoife’s sealskin is more than fur.

It is:

• her sensory shield

• her emotional boundary

• her true self

In the water, she is silver-grey and speckled like moonlit waves.
On land, her hair holds all the colours of deep sea and sea-glass, and her eyes carry the softness of someone who has cried with gods and children alike.

Her selkie nature means:

• She understands masking and unmasking.

• She moves between “on” and “off”, “social” and "shutdown".

• She feels everything intensely, like the tide pulling on the shore.

• She knows that tenderness is not a weakness but a current.

She is the living metaphor of “coming out of your shell".
Only hers is warm, wet, and lined with salt.

HER PERSONAL STRUGGLE & WHY SHE EARNED HER COMPASSION

Aoife once fell in love with a human.

They were kind at first.
They called her “too good for this world".
and “the only one who really understands".

One night, while she slept,
They found her sealskin.
The soft fur folded carefully on a rock,
the only thing that made it safe for her to return to the sea.

They took it.

Not out of malice, they said.
Out of fear.
Fear that she would leave.
Fear of abandonment, the very wound she’d been born to heal.

Without her skin, Aoife could no longer shift.
The sea became a roaring wall instead of a home.

On land, she tried to be “normal”:

smiling when she was flooded,
shrinking when she needed space,
staying when her whole body screamed to go.

She became the human version of herself full-time.
exhausted, masked, lonely even in company.

Eventually, the weight of silence cracked her.
One night, shaking from overload,
She walked into a tidepool and let herself sink to her knees.

The water rose, gentle and insistent, cradling her like a friend.

Tiny merrows surfaced, gentle sea-folk with mossy hair and careful hands.
They brought her shells, seagrass, and kelp.
whispering:

“Make something new.”

So she did.

Piece by piece, Aoife wove herself a second skin:
stitched from seaweed, moonlight, and every boundary she had ever needed but never named.

When she finally slipped it on,
It fit differently:

less like the old self she lost, more like the self she chose.

Only after she finished did the sea return her original skin, washed up on the rocks.

She held it in her arms, trembling.

It smelt like childhood, safety, and the version of herself
who had never been betrayed.

But her new skin pulsed gently against her.
made from her own work, her own choices, her own healing.

Aoife folded the old one with reverence.
and offered it back to the sea.

“I am not who I was,” she whispered.
“I love her. But I choose me.”

From that day on, she vowed that no one under her care
would ever again be forced to stay where they were not safe.

HER CONNECTIONS – Merrows & Gentle Kelpies

The merrows who helped her are now her kin.
soft, web-fingered guardians who keep watch over souls that feel like they’re drowning.
They carry lost feelings in little glass bottles.
keeping them safe until their owners are ready to feel again.

Aoife is also bound to a clan of gentle kelpies.
water horses who once lured people to their deaths,
now rewritten as guardians of boundaries.

They stand at the edges of lochs and rivers.
snorting when someone tries to cross their own limits.
They will not let a tired soul go further than they can handle.

Aoife listens to them when she, too, forgets her limits.

HER GIFTS – TIDAL CALM & SEAL-SKIN RETURN

(Neuroscience Lore)

Tidal Calm – Panic & Overwhelm Regulation

When someone is drowning in panic,
Aoife steps close enough that her presence brushes their nervous system like a wave.

She doesn’t always speak.
Sometimes she only hums. a low, resonant sound that vibrates in the chest.

Her calm:

• slows racing heartbeats

• deepens shallow breathing

• brings blood flow back from shaking hands and numb faces

• tells the amygdala, “The threat is over now. You can rest.”

To the brain, she is a living vagus-nerve reset.
activating the body’s rest-and-digest system with warmth, sound, and eye softness.

To the soul, she is a tide coming in, saying,
“I’ve got you.”

Seal-Skin Return – Safe Unmasking & Belonging

Aoife helps people who have forgotten how to be themselves.

She can see the invisible “skin” people wear:

• the polite voice hiding hurt

• the jokes covering fear

• the over-explaining born from rejection

• the quietness of someone who has been told they’re “too emotional”

She never forces them to take these skins off.

Instead, she:

• creates conditions of safety

• softens the water around them

• lets them rest until their body believes it is safe to unmask

When they are ready, she shows them how to:

• Say no without apology.

• Ask for reassurance.

• Take space when flooded.

• Choose people who do not steal their metaphorical skins.

Neurologically, she helps integrate self-concept:
bringing scattered identity fragments into a coherent, compassionate whole.

Spiritually, she returns them to themselves.

PERSONALITY

Aoife is:

• quiet, mysterious, observant

• soft, but not fragile

• feminine-presenting, with queer, non-binary cryptid energy

• often overstimulated by noise, crowds, harsh lights

• likely to slip away from parties to stand alone by the sink or out in the rain

• someone who stims with water: fingers trailing in cups, showers, tidepools

Her voice is:

• whispered, minimal

• sometimes non-verbal when flooded

• often replaced with humming, sea-like rhythms

She listens more than she speaks.
When she does speak, people stop moving without quite knowing why.

She laughs rarely.
But when she does, it feels like a tide finally turning in your favour.

WHAT SHE DOES FOR OTHERS

Aoife appears to people who:

• feel desperately lonely even when not alone

• are terrified of being abandoned

• have social anxiety that leaves them exhausted

• feel like they are “too sensitive” or “too much”

• have spent years caring for others but feel emotionally starved

• mask so well they no longer know what they actually like

• They avoid closeness because they’re sure it will end in betrayal.

• shut down, go quiet, or go non-verbal under stress

She does not promise nobody will ever hurt them again.
She knows the world too well for that.

What she offers is:

• a place to feel every feeling without being shamed

• companionship in the moments when others leave

• the strength to set boundaries that keep the self intact

• reconnection, not just to community, but to self

Her presence says:

“You do not have to harden to be safe.
You do not have to disappear to be loved.”

Her favourite thing is watching someone realise:

• They can say, “I need you to stay."

• or “I need you to go,”
  and survive both answers.