Chapter 1
The world has come and gone, and still I remain, feet buried in the same stretch of sand, as if time itself refused to move me. The waves crash and recoil and devour themselves, over and over, as they always have. A thousand tides have lived and died. And I am still here.
A new life has nearly begun, and yet I cannot forget the day we met. On this very shore. I remember it as if it were yesterday.
The heat was merciless, so scorching it split my skin opened. The net, coarse, biting into my scales, its very own cruelty woven into me. A human creation. Of course it was. My throat was dry, my body withering beneath a sky that did not care whether I lived or died.
And then, in the middle of that quiet death, there was you.
A shadow falling over me like mercy. A gentle touch that untangled me from the threads of death. A smile that made all of humanity feel a little brighter.
You saved me. But in many ways, you also destroyed me.
Sometimes, people don’t realize what a simple act of kindness can mean to someone, and you definitely didn’t.
I have always despised your kind. After all, humans only know how to take and they salt the earth with their hunger. But you, with your softness, your sincerity, your gaze that saw me as more than a monster, made something in me shift. And before I could pull my armor back up, you had already wove yourself into my existence. A mark I could not outrun. Your acceptance felt like finding shore after centuries adrift. It was akin to finding something I had desperately been needing, but I didn’t know before this very moment. And the price…I’d pay for that.
And I fell. God, how I fell.
I am the God of the Sea, and yet, before a single human girl, I drowned. It is almost laughable, really. But with you, I realized even Gods can drown. And drowned I did.
And you changed…everything.
The sea was always my refuge, the one place that always welcomed me…. But after you, it became a prison. Every tide carried the echo of your promise. You swore you’d come meet me again, in the rising tide, one year later. I waited. And waited. The tides came and went. The sky burned and cooled and burned again. And you never came. The sea caved in. And so did I.
The air suddenly tasted bitter. My chest ached, split open by something I could not fight, nor control. It was a pain so sharp it struck me like a physical blow, as if something vital had been torn free and left to rot on this sand.
You forget your promise. And you forgot me. And with you, I lost the world. I…lost my world.
A part of me died here, on that beach, trapped in the spaces between expectation and silence. I have searched the depths for it, for hope. But I never found it again.
The years blurred, and I wandered in the wake of your abandonment. Color drained from everything. The world reduced itself to harsh blacks and bleeding greys. Joy became something I remembered vaguely, like a story told in childhood but that I could no longer grasp. Life pressed down on me like the weight of the ocean itself, relentless, crushing, devouring. Over and over again.
And perhaps this is my fault. I let you matter. I let that fragile, foolish happiness seep into my bones. I let myself grow used to the presence of you, to the sound of your laughter, to the feeling of your fragile love. I let myself forget what true silence felt like. And now the quiet consumes me.
And you know, I’ve been thinking about it a lot, about who I actually am and who I should be. About what changed before I met you. Perhaps….I am no longer used to this kind of loneliness. To the one that suffocates. Paralyses. A numbness that steals breath and strength alike. It makes parts of me bleed that I did not know could bleed. The cruelest part is that I recognize the pain. I know it. I taste it in every tide. And still I cannot outrun it.
The years pass. And I do not miss you any less. If cruelty had a name, it would be this.
How can eternity move, and yet my grief remain unchanged?
The years did what they always do. They passed. I tried to stop waiting. Tried to ignore the gnawing ache in my chest. I tried to silence the longing for your presence, the way the tides long to return to the shore.
And then, we met again. You were trying to catch a Flammula, but it completely eluded you It seemed some things never changed, you were always drawn to Lemurian fish.
And as I approached you, something in my heart, foolish perhaps, leaped forward, as though no time had passed at all. You had changed, of course. You were taller, your face carrying the lines of a grown woman. But it was you, and my heart knew before I even did.
Seeing your despair at your failed attempts to catch the Flammula, I gently offered to help. In a quick snap of my wrist, the fish was caught. You let out a marveled gasp, but as our eyes met, there was no flicker of recognition. You looked at me the way one would at a stranger. And how that hurt.
“Thank you” you said, polite, and it felt like a strange fracture in eternity. If we ever met again, I had imagined so many different scenarios. Some with anger, or tears, apologies, but absence of anything wasn’t something I’d ever have anticipated. But this absence, this quiet absence, was something I had never prepared for.
I searched your face, desperate to find the girl who had once knelt in the sand and cut through rope with trembling hands. The girl who had sworn to meet me when the tide rose again. But she was nowhere to be found. There was no memory lingering in your eyes.
“It’s a Flammula, you know, from Lemurian legend. Actually, this specie can only survive for one week on land.”
You frowned slightly, confused by my certainty, before placing the fish into my hands. “I don’t know much about Flammula,” you said softly. “Maybe you should keep it. It might have a better chance of surviving with you.”
A better chance of surviving with me? The irony nearly made me laugh. You had once pulled me from death. And now you handed me something fragile, unaware of the situation that existed between us.
I held the small fish carefully, watching the faint glow along its scales. It swam and swam, like the longing in my heart.
You smiled again, polite, distant , and I turned back toward the shore, realizing something far crueler than abandonment. You had not chosen to forget me. You simply had. To you, I was but a mere moment when you were a forever to me.
My head was spinning with thoughts, with words that came to die at the back of my throat:
You pulled me from death. You rewrote the course of a God. You changed my entire life.
But none of these words would matter. Because they wouldn’t mean anything to you. I walked forward, my footsteps stretching in the sand.
The world has come and gone. And it breaks me, knowing that I would always remember, when you wouldn’t.
And now, in the vast nothingness where my name no longer lives within you, I realize something I had not allowed myself to see before. I have a choice.
I can fade with the memory you lost. Or I can remain… and dare to begin again. Teach your heart to know me once more. Rewrite our story into something new, something that is ours not because you remember it, but because we choose it.
Perhaps that is selfish. But I was never good at letting go.
Through lifetimes, through tides, through deaths and rebirths, I would always find you. I would choose you. I would love you.
I am a god of the sea. And gods, it seems, are creatures of habit. And I have never learned how to relinquish what I love. I will never learn how to relinquish you. For across lifetimes, you remain my beloved bride.
