The moon hung low over Saint-Malo, a silver wound bleeding light onto the jagged shore where Elias and Celeste walked. The sea roared, its waves a symphony of grief, crashing against the rocks with a rhythm that echoed the ache in Elias's chest. His boots sank into the cold sand, each step a battle against the weight of his lungs, the salt air stinging his cracked lips. In his hand, the notebook pressed against his palm, its pages fluttering like the wings of a bird too frail to fly.
Beside him, Celeste moved like a shadow, her smock still flecked with paint, her hair whipping in the wind like a banner of lost hope.
They spoke of art, of eternity carved in words and colors, their voices weaving a fragile hymn lost to the tide's hunger.
"My poems are my breath," Elias said, his voice a thread unraveling in the gale, "each one a fight to hold what fades."
Celeste's eyes, deep as the sea at midnight, met his, and she nodded, her lips parting with a sigh.
"And my paintings—they're my shield," she whispered, "keeping the dark at bay."
Her hand brushed his, warm against his chilled skin, and for a moment, the sea's lament softened, replaced by the soft hum she carried like a secret song.
The shore stretched before them, littered with shells and driftwood, each piece a relic of storms past. Celeste knelt, tracing a finger through the sand, and drew a figure—a silhouette poised on a cliff, its form echoing the sketch from the fair.
"I see this in my dreams," she murmured, her voice trembling like the waves, "a fall, a cry, a year I can't forget."
The date—1975—hung unspoken between them, a shadow cast by the moon. Elias's breath hitched, not from pain but from a shiver of recognition, as if the sea itself whispered her name through the foam.
He sat beside her, the sand cold against his thinning frame, and opened his notebook.
"Tell me," he said, his pen poised, "what haunts you."
Her gaze drifted to the horizon, where the waves swallowed the light, and she spoke of a memory—or was it a vision?—of a girl standing where they sat, her laughter swallowed by the tide.
"She was me, or someone I knew," Celeste said, her voice breaking, "but the sea took her, and I'm left with the echo."
A tear fell, mingling with the sand, and Elias wrote, his hand trembling, the words
"a breath lost to the deep"
staining the page.
The wind carried her hum, a melody fragile as glass, and he joined her, their voices rising above the waves. For a heartbeat, the world was theirs—art and love, a bridge against the dark.
But as he coughed, the blood a shadow on his sleeve, her eyes widened, a flicker of fear—or was it guilt?—crossing her face.
"You're fading," she whispered, her hand on his arm, her touch a lifeline he feared to lose.
He forced a smile, hiding the truth, but the sea's roar seemed to mock him, its whispers curling around a secret he could not yet grasp.
They rose, the sand clinging to their clothes, and walked back toward the town's dim lights. In the distance, a figure stood on the cliff—real or a trick of the moon, Elias could not tell—its silhouette swaying as if caught in an unseen wind.
Celeste stiffened, her breath catching, and murmured,
"She's there again."
Before he could ask, she turned away, her hum fading into the night. The sea's voice lingered, a riddle wrapped in its depths, and Elias wondered if her past—and his own unraveling life—were threads of the same shadowed tapestry.