Salt and Skin: Text

At the back of your fishing boat, you check off today's preparations, ensuring everything you need for the day is in place. Your boat may not be the most elegant, but it is modest and reliable. You've been using it once or twice a month for a few years now.

The outboard motor roars to life as you push off from the sand, gliding further into the ocean. Escaping your daily routine isn't always easy, but today promises to be a pleasant day. The weather is warm, with a slight breeze that cools your exposed skin—the perfect conditions for relaxing with a few beers on the water.

Steering the tiller, you navigate to a quiet spot that has proven lucky in the past. As you approach the location, you turn off the motor; the engine sputters to a stop, leaving only the soothing sound of waves lapping against the hull. You take a deep breath of the salt-tinged air as you crack open your first beer of the morning. The water glistens beneath the sun, calm and wide, stretching endlessly in every direction. With your rod propped and line cast, you settle into your seat, letting your shoulders relax as your gaze drifts across the horizon.

Minutes pass in the soft, slow rhythm of the sea. Suddenly, you feel a tug. A sluggish, steady pull stirs your curiosity more than your instincts. You set down the can and lean forward, reeling carefully. The line feels heavy with something that resists but doesn’t fight. When it finally breaks the surface, it clinks against the boat’s side, wrapped in seaweed and time. You stare at it, blinking. Not a fish. Not anything you’d expect to find floating in this quiet spot where you come to be left alone.

Dripping saltwater, the object feels heavy in your hands. Its surface is rough, riddled with pockmarks and corrosion. Still, something remains—faint carvings, spirals, runes; symbols that don’t belong to anything you recognize. The metal hums faintly, pulsing ever so slightly through your grip. It’s colder than it should be, as if it hasn’t seen the sun in a thousand years.

A seam along one side catches your eye, just wide enough to suggest it can open. Before you can shift your grip, a sudden warmth pulses from within. It jumps like a second heartbeat in your palm, sending a shockwave through you and radiating toward the beach behind you. Then, without warning, the world bends sideways.

Blinking against the light, you find yourself on the beach. Not just there—someone else on the beach. Your hands are not your own. They are smaller. Softer. You're wearing clothing that hugs your unfamiliar curves. You stagger back in surprise, catching your reflection in a phone screen lying on the towel beside you. A young woman stares back, her sun-streaked hair tied up tightly behind her head. Confusion erupts all around—from the lifeguard tower, the shoreline, even the snack stand—as strangers look at each other with wide, disbelieving eyes.

The object that was in your hands moments ago lies half-buried in the sand nearby, just a few feet from a toppled beach umbrella. It hums again, quieter this time. Like it's waiting.

Sitting there, stunned, your heart racing in someone else’s chest. The weight on your torso is unfamiliar, strange, and real. Fingers drift up almost involuntarily, brushing along smooth, sun-warmed skin. The grey top stretches tight as you lift it over your breasts, cupping them slightly and causing them to bounce free into the warm air. A shiver runs through you—part curiosity, part disbelief. You exhale slowly, adjusting to the strange rhythm of a body that moves differently with every breath and twitch of muscle.

Legs stretch out in the sand, long and smooth, covered by tight black leggings. You run your hands down your sides, feeling the gentle curve of your waist and the taut flatness of your stomach, then pause. This is happening. The chaos around you has dulled into background noise, like waves against the shore. It’s just you and this new body, and that thing.

Rising slowly, sand clinging to your legs, each step feels new. A subtle sway in the hips. A bounce in your step. The relic rests in the sand, waiting. Dull now. Dormant.

Reaching down, you lift the strange object from the sand. It’s cool again, silent, as if it’s spent—for now. Around you, the beach is alive with confusion: children crying, couples blinking at each other in swapped forms, strangers grappling with bodies that aren’t their own. But no one seems to know where it started. No one saw you pull it from the sea.

Somewhere in the distance, your boat drifts—empty. The ocean carries on, unaware.

Looking down at your borrowed form, the breeze curling around your waist and arms, you feel something shift. It’s strange. But not entirely unwelcome.

With the relic wrapped in a towel and tucked under your arm, you begin walking. Not toward help. Not toward answers. Just forward—into the rhythm of someone else’s life, already wondering where it might lead.