Filed under: Character Interviews | Fantasy Lore | The Enchanted Heritage Series

Conducted by a wandering chronicler of forgotten magic, recorded on a wind-licked cliff above the North Atlantic.

The first thing you notice about Morwenna Brightwood isn’t her eyes—though they’re remarkable, sea-green and far too knowing for someone her age. It isn’t the faint shimmer of selkie markings beneath her sleeves, either, or the streak of silver in her otherwise dark hair.

It’s how still she is. Like the sea before a storm.

 Wary. Powerful. Waiting to be provoked.

I found her seated on a tide-smooth rock where the cliff drops toward the sea, wind snapping at her cloak, her boots damp with salt. She looked out of place and exactly where she belonged—like someone the ocean hadn’t quite given up.

She didn’t stand to greet me. Just nodded once and said, “Ask your questions before the fog sets in. The tide’s coming fast today.”

On Being Found

“You were found on the beach as a baby,” I began, “after a storm, by Miread and Seamus Brightwood. What do you remember of that story?”

Morwenna snorted—more amused than bitter.

“They said, at first, I was so still they thought I was dead. Then, I was crying loud enough to wake the dead. Wrapped in seaweed like the tide had swaddled me. Miread always believed the ocean sent me back on purpose. Seamus said it was just luck.”

She paused, watching gulls wheel overhead.

“But nothing about me’s ever been just luck.”

The locket she wears—a silver piece etched with Celtic knotwork—dangled from her collar as she shifted. It caught the light like a distant lighthouse flame.

“They found this with me. Tucked into the folds of the seaweed. It says The ocean never forgets its debts inside, written in ogham. I didn’t know what it meant at first. I still don’t, not entirely. But I think someone meant it as a promise. Or a warning.”

On Growing Up in a Lighthouse

The Brightwoods raised her in a non-commissioned lighthouse on the Maine coast. Wind-beaten. Isolated. Haunted by more than foghorns.

“It creaked constantly,” she said, lips twitching. “Like it was breathing. Or sighing at me.”

She described long afternoons reading folklore beside dusty windows, and sneaking into drawers full of runes and preserved herbs Seamus insisted were “for study only.” Her older sister Ava painted sea creatures on the kitchen walls in chalk. Miread pressed flower petals into spellbooks when she thought no one was looking.

“I loved it. I did. But being found isn’t the same as belonging. That tower felt like a waiting room. Like the sea was always going to come back and take me.”

On Magic

“When did you know you were different?” I asked.

Morwenna didn’t answer right away.

“I was five. Some girl at a harvest fair called me fish-blood. Said I wasn’t really from the village.”

She rubbed a faint scar on her wrist, where seawater had once turned to ice.

“I pushed her. And the tide near her ankle froze. Not all of it. Just enough to make her run.”

That was the first time. The beginning of a slow unraveling—one that led to a growing fear of her own magic, of what it meant.

“They told me to hide it. So I did. For years. But magic doesn’t like being buried. It festers. It waits.”

On Dreams, Tea, and the End of the World

Despite her guarded nature, Morwenna opened up—at least a little—when I asked about her present life.

She works as a freelance folklore writer. “Equal parts independence and nerves,” she said, dry as sea salt.

Her home base, when she has one, is a traveling satchel full of pressed herbs and half-finished journals. She drinks herbal tea religiously—mugwort for dreaming, lemon balm for clarity, rosehip for when her heart feels too heavy.

She sketches things she can’t explain. Bones, runes, faces she only sees in dreams.

“I like things that grow,” she told me. “Things I can coax to life with my hands. It’s the only kind of magic I fully trust.”

And music?

“Old sea shanties. Ethereal cello tracks. Indie ballads that sound like either heartbreak or necromancy.”

Then, grinning, “Also cozy murder mysteries. Can’t explain it. I think I like knowing that some mysteries get solved.”

On the Whispers

“Do you still hear them?” I asked. “The whispers on the wind?”

Morwenna looked at me then—really looked. Her sea-glow eyes narrowed like she was deciding whether I’d understand the truth.

“I do. Not always. But often enough that I’ve stopped pretending they’re imaginary.”

The wind, she said, carries more than air. It carries memory. Warning. Sometimes names that haven’t been spoken aloud in generations.

“There’s one I hear more than the others,” she added softly. “It always comes at twilight, right as the tide turns. It says: Daughter of the bound skin, the sea remembers what you’ve forgotten.”

She said she doesn’t know what it means. But she believes it’s true. And that it’s growing louder.

At the end of the interview, Morwenna stood and dusted off her hands. She looked toward the ocean, shoulders rising and falling with a deep breath.

“My ideal day?” she repeated, when I asked.

“It’s quiet. Tea. A garden. A finished book and no omens in the sky.”

Then, with a flicker of amusement: “But I’ll settle for surviving to tomorrow.”

And with that, she was gone—down the path, toward the sea, a silver glint at her throat and wind curling around her like it missed her.

Morwenna Brightwood appears in Whispers of the Selkie (released January 2025) and returns in Song of the Drowned (due late 2025), the next entry in The Enchanted Heritage series.

Want to know more about Morwenna’s curse, her selkie legacy, and what the ocean might remember?

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