Far to the north of the marshes, off the rocky coast of a storm-swept land, the isle of Ynys y Ywen lay on the edge of an endless sea. Wild winds howled across the rocks, raising a great salt spray that joined with flying rain to lash alike sea and skerry and stoney strand. Gray were the rocks, gray the heaving waves, and gray the whirling dark clouds of the lowering sky, where lightning flashed and the loud thunder roared without pause.
Far from the shore and yet within the circling cliffs of the bay there was a small skerry which at the turning of the tide yet stood above the crashing waves. And upon that skerry a maiden sat, with long golden locks of hair that curled about her shoulders and fell in wild waves over her young breasts. Her pale white hips blended into the long, curving silvery sheen of a scale covered tail, the fins in which it ended dipping into the churning gray sea. A mor-forwyn was Hiraeth, a seamaiden of the lineage of Llyr . . . |
