Dandy Ahuruonye

Mugu travelled from Tallaght to Dalkey for one simple reason: to swim. But when she arrives, the swimming area is closed. Faced with disappointment, she has a choice: turn back or keep searching. She chooses to keep walking. Beyond the signs and familiar paths, beneath the grand seaside houses and opposite the Muglins Lighthouse, she discovers a hidden shoreline and an extraordinary companion. A seal.
Sealmór is a traveller, a philosopher, a collector of languages and, unexpectedly, a friend. As they swim beneath changing skies, their conversations drift across oceans and ideas: home and belonging, freedom and ownership, loneliness and companionship, youth and age, silence and language. What begins as an ordinary day trip becomes a journey neither Mugu nor Sealmór expected. Tender, thoughtful and quietly uplifting, Hide & Seal in Dalkey is a story about curiosity, resilience and the friendships that arrive when we least expect them.
It is about disappointment becoming adventure, about finding what we were never looking for, and about the courage to keep searching when the obvious path disappears. Because some things are found only because we refuse to leave. Because friendship does not ask us to become someone else. It helps us become more fully ourselves. And because some treasures are not meant to be possessed. They are simply meant to be found.
The seal hid. Mugu searched. Friendship appeared. And long after the waves have settled, the story may still be moving somewhere within you.