I LOVE THIS SONG! And I love the story you put behind it. Cute ending! _

I think the thing that I like about this story the most is Muriel's point of view. Although I've read stories about Selkies and heard the basic legend, I've never considered what the draw must be from the seal side of the equation.

I await the completion of this story. It almost seems to be following the basic pattern of the selkie myth, which means that Girvan will end up stealing the Muriel's seal skin and trapping her on land. In the interests of originality, leaving Girvan an innocent boy content with a friendly seal might be interesting.

Conversely, although Muriel's point of view is definitely desirable, how about emphasizing the otherworldliness of the selkies? The myths tend to emphasize that they always return to the sea. I would be interesting to see, as the story develops, if Muriel could succeed in being not only fantastic in body, but alien in thought. Regardless of whether that fits into the storyline, I feel that it would be an opportunity lost to treat Muriel simply as a human girl who happens to live in water and live most her life as a seal. As a reference for a book that successfully told a story from another viewpoint without humanizing the animals, consider Watership Down.

Finally, as a creative writing teacher once told me, you could use some work writing 'in scene'. By this, I mean extending the periods of action and decreasing the number of times you switch view points. For example, rather breaking up Girvan's viewpoint in the last three paragraphs, you could rearrange it to be one continuous block from Girvan's point of view from the point at which he notices the Selkie is there until she begins to sing again. This would be an excellent time to emphasize the otherworldliness I mentioned already. Then, Muriel could tell her point of view as a flashback or via ponderings on her decision by way of conclusion to the chapter. Writing longer scenes isn't always desireable, but in this case, I think that putting more than two paragraphs together would be good.

Overall, I have to say that this is a good story and an enjoyable read.