#after five fucking years

The idea for this one actually came from a bunch joking around in the Clara’s Diner Discord server and the fact that some of us are still absolutely enamored with the image of Ian having a row with a bunch of sheep.

2382 words; I guess this is a reminder that this is a fantasy version of North Ronaldsay, where there’s more than a few dozen people who live there year-round (so, more like a few hundred at the least, possibly going over the historical highs of ~500) so there’s, like, some modern flats in town and enough kids to keep the school open; this is all just Ian the Island Weirdo as seen by the normal mortal residents; Time Lord thinking/shenanigans are sort of a perfect soft-scifi analogy for fae mercurialism and I really don’t know how I should take that

You can find more of the Whouffaldi selkie AU in the Seal Man of North Ronaldsay tag, as well as in this AO3 series.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

The thing about Ian Morlo was that he was never entirely what the other island residents expected when they learned that there was someone new living in Orson’s place. Well… an additional new person—it already passed though Orson’s nephew to the lass who owned it currently—but who was really counting? They watched him curiously from afar, which had been the only way to do so at first, as not long after he arrived, a nasty series of storms had passed through the area, but once the sea and sky were in their summer calm, he seemed to be anything but.

“Why aren’t you in the pund?!” he shouted at a sheep as it walked across his path. He had a list in-hand and a reusable shopping tote hooked on his arm; he was on errands.

“You know, if you wanted to, you could help out,” one of the villagers said as he watched the sheep meander through the road. Ian huffed, shoving his hands in his trouser pockets.

“The sheep and I don’t get on,” he claimed. The sheep bleated from afar, seemingly incensing him. “Yeah! Don’t think I’ve forgiven you for what you did to my hair!”

“What, exactly, did that specific sheep do to your hair?” the villager asked.

“It tried to eat it,” Ian claimed, with all the seriousness of a man used to saying much sillier.

“These sheep don’t eat hair—they eat brown kelp.”

“I know what they eat, and it’s frankly an insult.” The sheep came plodding back, gently headbutting Ian’s thigh. “Don’t think you can catch me off-guard, yeh soda-shitter.”

“Ian… it’s a sheep.”

“Like I said: we don’t get on. My hair is not that salty.”

At that, Ian maneuvered his way around the sheep and kept on walking towards the town, leaving the villager shaking his head. The man lifted the wayward sheep upon his shoulders and brought it back to the pund, placing it in the low stone-walled enclosure with all the other sheep of its grouping.

“What’s with that look?” wondered the other villager who was manning the pund. She watched as he shrugged.

“I don’t know if the academic over at Oswald’s is joking or if he’s just trying to get out of doing manual labor. Could be both.”

“Ignore him—the man’s probably going to leave soon anyhow,” she replied. “With how grouchy he is and how little guff she takes, there’s no way it’s going to last much more than after those visitors she’s got coming next week.”

“Maybe… maybe not… we’ll just have to see…” He glanced down at the sheep that he had placed back in the pund and raised his eyebrow.

Now why would a sheep want to eat human hair of all things?

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It was nearly summer, which meant that he was shouting.

Well, it wasn’t as though he refrained from shouting during the winter months. Actually, he seemed to be rather good at shouting in all sorts of weather. It was simply put that, Ian Morlo, the man who inexplicably showed up one day and made a disturbingly-quick turnaround of stuffing, then marrying, the English lass on the northern end of the island, wandered more in the summer months, and that meant that others had to hear him shout.

“I will not be sassed back to like that!” he scolded. An elderly couple heard him from inside their house, causing the wife to cringe.

“You left the window open, again,” she scowled at her husband.

“It’s such a calm day,” he justified, remaining in his armchair. When he did not move, his wife huffed and went to close the window, except, she was trapped, as she made eye contact.

“Hello,” Ian said awkwardly. The toddler on the baby leash in his hand jumped up and down and waved, babbling importantly before returning to butterfly chasing.

“Hello there, Ian,” the elderly woman replied. “Could you please keep it down? I don’t know why you insist on talking to your daughter like that.”

“Oh, it wasn’t Terra, it was the wood nymph,” he stated, pointing at the tree next to him. A moment passed and he grunted sourly at the plant. “You try doing this sort of thing day after day and see how pleasant you are.”

“Ian… son… you’re talking to a tree…”

“I’m talking to the wood nymph inside of the tree. Now if you excuse me, Terra and I were going to meet Clara at the school, and I don’t think,” he glared at the tree, “I shall endure this abuse for much longer.”

“Are you alright, lad?” the woman asked. “You seem a bit stressed.”

“Been worse,” he shrugged. Ian then gently tugged on the leash, letting his daughter know they were about to start walking again. “Come on, pup; let’s go meet Mam at work so we can walk her home.”

“Mamma! Mamma!” the toddler shrieked happily, clapping her hands as she followed her father. The old woman shook her head and returned to her chair, not even bothering to close the window.

“It was the tree this time,” she said.

“I thought he said it was the nymph inside the tree.”

“There’s no pulpy tart inside that tree; be careful, or you’ll get just as mad as he is.”

“Seadh, a ghràidh,” he replied. There was no use arguing it. Now he just needed to learn to keep the damn window shut.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

If Charlotte had not seen him do something this level of strange before, she almost would have not believed her eyes.

She was returning to the pund after lunch, getting ready to continue shearing the small remaining portion of the flock she was in charge of that day, when she saw him: Ian Morlo. He was comely, that part was not to be mistaken, but the woman was not too keen on the fact that island’s resident nutter was standing atop the stone wall of the enclosure, dangling a lamb by its hind legs. The other sheep were bleating at him, possibly in an effort to have him put down the lamb.

“Ian!” she scolded. “What are you doing?!”

“I need to keep track of this one,” he claimed. He gestured with the lamb, as though that explained everything. “It’s the only one without a brine-soaked brain.”

“Put that lamb down right now!” she insisted. He didn’t, so she forcibly pulled it from his hands and let the creature go within the grassy pund. “You could have just looked at the eartag and remembered that.”

“That is inefficient—they can break and come off, and then what?”

“Then we just put another tag on it—simple,” she replied. “What the hell has gotten into you?!”

“I didn’t think there was anything—oh! Clara!” Ian waved as he saw his wife begin to walk towards the pund, their two-year-old daughter running along behind her. He walked along the top of the pund’s walls and walked right off the edge to land on the grass before them, seemingly not missing a step. “I think you need to explain to Charlotte how rare it is for me to find one of these kelp-munchers that actually is pleasant to be around.”

“What did he do this time, Char?” Clara asked.

“Looked like he was ready to drop a lamb from twelve feet up,” was the reply. Clara frowned at her husband as he picked up their daughter and allowed her to cling tightly to him.

“You’ve taken to threatening lambs now?”

“No! The very specific lamb I had was one of the good ones…!” He was cut off by his wife raising her hand, which he took as his cue to listen to her (and only her).

“If you’re going to threaten the livestock, then at least do it when they’re not captive in the punds, and stick to the adults,” she said.

“I told you,” he insisted, “I was keeping track of it…”

“Ian, be an adult about this.”

“Fine…” he muttered. His shoulders sank, which his daughter took as permission to climb onto them. Once there, she began to pet his fluff of hair, which he was allowing to grow a bit on the longer side as of late.

“Fwuffy!” the little girl cooed. “Daddy! You fwuffy like sheeps!”

“I am not ‘fluffy like the sheep’, young lady,” he groused. The flock bleated at him and he shot them a glare. “I’m watching you! Now don’t ruin that lamb’s chances at becoming something actually worth maintaining this pund for, you kelp-hoovers!” More bleating and Ian’s face went red. “You watch your mouths!”

“Ian come on, let’s go,” Clara insisted. She began to pull her husband along by his elbow, giving Charlotte an embarrassed grin. “I’ll see you when you come to pick Lorens up tomorrow!”

“Tìoriadh!” Charlotte said, giving her friend a half-hearted wave. She then readied to begin shearing again, trying to keep her mind off of why Clara kept Ian around; even with those looks, she was surprised that the other woman’s patience hadn’t run out long ago.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

To Lorens, there was nothing really like being at home.

His cousins would tease him for it, which he figured was fine. It didn’t matter that he moved in with his mam’s sister and her family in Lerwick for secondary school, nor did it matter when he visited his dad’s sister and her family in Bathgate, because none of his cousins knew how good it was when he’d step off the ferry and finally be back on the island. It was almost nine years since he had lived regularly on North Ronaldsay, and he was eager to pick that back up again. It was the familiarity of it all: the clusters of buildings, the high-built drystane dyke that kept the sheep in their preferred pastures, the folks with whom he had grown up with and around…

…even if some of them were nuttier than a bag of cashews.

“Hi there, Mr. Morlo,” Lorens said as he ran into one person in particular. He remembered the Spring when Mr. Morlo was wrecked off the coast and taken in by the now-Mrs. Morlo, as he seemed to be fiddling with the lock to the school’s front door. The other man lit up at the sight of him, seemingly taken aback by his presence.

“Lorens, your parents didn’t tell us you were coming in,” he said. “How’s the gap year coming along?”

“I’m honestly surprised that I don’t smell permanently of fish,” Lorens chuckled weakly. “I’ve hauled enough mackerel to feed all of the island for at least two years, and probably a good chunk of Sanday on top of it.”

“Did you hear from uni yet? I can’t be the only hopeless academic on this island.”

“No, but I sent out my paper a while ago, so I expect to hear from someone soon, no matter what the answer might be,” Lorens shrugged. “I did what you said in regards to sourcing the poems—my old instructor in Lerwick loves it.”

“Well now that;s goo—hey! What do you think you’re doing here?!” Lorens looked over his shoulder and saw a fully-grown seal flopping its way across the pavement. “You know not to haul out in town! There’s bicycles and cars up here! I don’t care if the sheep are being dense!” Mr. Morlo ran after the seal as it lumbered around without caring it was being shouted at.

“Oh God, not again.” Lorens looked back towards the door to see Mrs. Morlo stepping over the threshold, staring exasperatedly at her husband. She then caught sight of Lorens himself and smiled kindly. It used to be that she was taller than him and now, well, he had even grown taller than her husband. “Well, this is a much better surprise. How are you doing?”

“Well—thought I’d surprise Mam and Dad with a visit while work’s shut down—a fire, of all things.”

“Yes, I read about that; it’s good to know that you’re alright and no… one… was… hurt…” She seemed distracted, as she was looking up and down the road. “Did you see where the kids went?”

“Were they supposed to be with Mr. Morlo…?”

“Please, you’re old enough—we’re Clara and Ian—now where are those two?”

“Mam! Mam! Mam!” Right on cue, Terra and Douglas came running up to their mother, the former pulling a toy wagon behind her. “Oh! Hi Mr. Lorens!”

“Kids,” Mrs. Morlo groaned, “why is there a seal pup in your wagon?”

“Her name is Bridget and she wants to visit the crofts!” Douglas said excitedly. The fuzzy seal barked and the boy nodded. “Yeah, that’s our mam, and that’s one of our sitters, Mr. Lorens. He doesn’t come by too often.”

“So you named the seal Bridget?” Lorens asked cautiously. Terra shook her head as importantly as any nine-year-old could.

“No—she told us that herself.” The seal pup barked again, seemingly happy. “Bridget Dagmarsdottir of Clan Gannet, yes, we know.”

“Kids!” Mr. Morlo shouted from down the road. “Is that Bridget?!”

“RUN!” Terra shouted, pulling away the toy wagon as fast as she could, her younger brother right behind. Mr. Morlo attempted to chase after them, yet however double-backed a few strides and handed his wife a set of keys.

“Please lock up I have to go before Dagmar eats a small dog in protest bye see you at home,” he said all in one breath before scurrying off, his arms flapping in the air. The hauled seal—the presumed Dagmar—flopped after him.

“So… they all talk to seals now…” Lorens noted. Clara exhaled heavily.

“Yeah.”

“Sheep still too?”

“Everybloodyday.”

“You know… my auntie’s neighbor is a psychiatrist… his office has children’s and genetics specialists.”

“Your mum told me. Several times.”

“Just… erm… putting that out there…”

“I know… I’m not cross,” Mrs. Morlo said as she locked up the school. “Just very tired. These kids just need to slow down… but you know that.” She patted Lorens on the arm before beginning to walk down the road and out of town. “Depending on how long you’re here, ever consider stopping by to babysit?”

“I’ll give a firm maybe,” the young man laughed.