"Dema, that was amazing. How did you know that I'm a selkie too?"

"I cheated. I sort of tuned in when you went out last night and felt you change. I'm not really a selkie, though, not the way you are. I'm just a quick study, more of a general-purpose shape-shifter with some shaman training."

"A shaman. Okay. But a quick study, I'll say! How do you do the trick of coming out of it with your clothes on? And dry to boot?"

"When I want to change, I go into what I call my shaman dream. In the dream state, whatever I can dream I am, I can become. If I dream my clothing as part of the shift, then that's what happens. It's a matter of uncompromised intent."

"Uncompromised intent. That makes sense. But it never occurred to me there were other possibilities beyond my selkie shift. Maybe there aren't for me."

"You'll never know unless you try. If it hadn't been for my mother Naga and my grandma Sedna, it might never have occurred to me either."

"Naga, the serpent of the abyss. And Sedna, the old woman of the seals. Are you sure you're not a natural selkie?"

Dema looked at him. "Do you know the legend of the Lamia? You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

Ryan howled with laughter. "Okay, okay. I don't want to pry. But if you're not a selkie, how did you do it?"

"The shaman dream opens up my awareness so that I can sense other realities than just my own. I was doing it in a general way yesterday, when you walked up beside me on the ferry. Today in the kayak I was more focused, I picked one sea lion and absorbed her sense of self. I call it having a familiar. Once I'm sufficiently familiar with a form in that way, I can dream myself into it."

"Hmmm. Gives a whole new meaning to the word 'familiar.' But it does sound like what I do with the seals. I just never tried it on anything else."

"Grandma Sedna says I'm a natural. She's never shifted at all. My mother and sister have only shifted in desperate emergencies. So I guess it varies. But like I said, you'll never know unless you try."

Ryan went quiet for a while. He seemed to be mulling over what she'd told him. He was no longer blocking her as intensely as he had when they first met, but it was a thing he did automatically so he was still not easy to read, and Dema didn't want to push it. So she just waited for him. Finally, he looked up at her and said, 

"Okay, you told me how you found me. Now tell me why you found me. I mean, you're this high-powered shaman and I'm just a run-of-the-mill selkie. What brought you to me?"