When the world got too loud, I walked.
Not far. Just across the tidal causeway that linked the Orkney mainland to the Brough of Birsay. A narrow strip of stone, slick with seaweed and salt, hidden by the sea at high tide and revealed only when the water sighed back into the bay. As a bairn, I’d raced over it with sandy knees and a pocket full of shells. As an adult, I returned with heavier steps, and a heart too full of things I couldn’t say.
After the funeral, after the months of stillness that followed like fog—clinging to everything—I found myself drawn to the sea again. Not in daylight, when the wind tugged tourists’ jackets and the village buzzed with chatter. I went when the village curled into sleep and chimneys breathed peat smoke into the dark.
And the seals were singing.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard seals at night. It’s not quite a song, not quite a cry. It’s something in between—a sound that drifts over the tide like a secret. They gathered in the bay, just off the skerry, their smooth heads bobbing like dark buoys in the swell. They watched with black eyes that held the weight of old stories. They blinked, vanished, and sometimes—sang.
The first time I really listened, I cried.
The wind was sharp that night, full of salt and seaweed and the clean, cold scent of the Atlantic. I stood in the middle of the causeway, boots braced against the slick stones, and felt very small beneath the moon. The island of Birsay rose ahead, its outline softened by mist. Behind me, the village lights had all gone out.
Then the sound came—soft, low, otherworldly. A chorus of echoes, distant but clear. As if the sea itself was mourning. Or remembering. It wound around me, through me, settling into the cracks I’d tried to hide.
It felt like someone knew I was there. Not in a grand, cosmic way. Just… noticed. Like the seals had seen something in me and didn’t flinch. They didn’t need to understand. They simply stayed.
Some folk say seals are selkies. Gran used to tell stories by the fire, her voice low and eyes glittering: women who slipped off their skins and fell in love with lonely men. I’d never thought much of those tales. But now, I began to wonder. Not about magic, exactly, but about connection. About how something wild and silent could still offer a kind of friendship.
So I kept walking.
Night after night, when the ache pressed in too close, I pulled on my coat and crossed the causeway. The path glistened under moonlight or stars, or sometimes nothing at all. When the mist rolled in thick, I followed the shape of the stones beneath my feet, the splash of water curling in from the edge. I knew the tide times by heart. I knew how long I had before the sea reclaimed the way.
And the seals were always there.
Not every night, not always singing. But often enough. A glint of eyes. A shift in the water. A hum that rose from the depths and made the hair on my arms lift. They kept me company in the dark. They became my secret chorus. My quiet friends.
One night, a young seal—a pale pup with mottled fur—hauled itself onto the stones not far from me. It didn’t flinch when I stopped. Just blinked, head tilted, whiskers twitching in the breeze.
'You alright?' I whispered.
It didn’t answer. Just snorted, a puff of air like laughter, and slipped back into the sea.
And I laughed too. For the first time in months. A short, surprised sound that felt like it didn’t quite belong to me anymore. But it came. And it stayed.
Friendship doesn’t always look like you expect. It’s not always warm hugs and shared tea and long conversations. Sometimes it’s just presence. A seal in the night. A song that asks nothing of you but to listen. A landscape that holds your sorrow without question.
I began to speak to them, quietly, like prayers. I told them things I couldn’t say aloud anywhere else. I whispered grief into the sea air. They didn’t need to understand. They just stayed.
I don’t know if they were real friends—not in the way people mean it.
But they saved me, in the quiet.
And maybe that’s friendship too.
Now, I still walk the path. Not every night. Not with the same ache. But when the sky is clear and the tide is right, I go. And I bring others sometimes—visitors, cousins, a friend who’s hurting. I lead them across the stones and say, listen.
Sometimes they laugh it off. Sometimes they squint into the dark and shrug.
But once, someone stopped, eyes wide, and said, 'Do you hear that?'
And I smiled.
Because yes. I did.
Because in my loneliest hours, when everything else fell away, I had the sea, and the night, and the seals.
And they sang me home in friendship.