Journal Entry — June 19, 2029
Location: Mikonos, Greece – Family Summer House
Writer: Enrique Demetriou
Time: 11:58 p.m.
Entry Title: "The Lights Return"
It's strange being back.
Mikonos hasn't changed much. The same wind-swept hills, the same whitewashed walls, the same gulls crying like children in the morning. My daughters chase each other through the old olive grove behind the house. My wife laughs when they pull her into the sea.
There's peace here now.
Real peace.
The kind I worked hard to build.
And yet…
Every step I take near the seawall feels like trespass.
I told myself it was grief.
I was young, lonely, raw from my mother's passing. Floating between cities, chasing music that didn't want me. I told myself that she—that strange girl from the sea—was just a mirage. My mind's way of making magic out of ache.
I built a whole ghost from salt and moonlight. A wild, beautiful story to hold in the dark.
It made sense.
I married. I moved on. Life filled in the gaps.
And then tonight happened.
Everyone had gone to bed early. The heat was thick, the power had flickered. I walked down to the seawall for old time's sake, barefoot, holding a bottle of warm wine. Just to feel the breeze.
I didn't expect anything.
I laughed at myself, actually. Thought of that old journal entry I wrote in Rome—the window I left open like some lovesick sailor waiting for a siren. God. The foolishness.
And then… the lights came.
Soft. Pale. Blue.
Not fireworks. Not phosphorescent tide. Not illusion.
Her.
Still distant. But unmistakable.
They moved the same way they did in my dreams—slow, spiraling. Like a language I'd forgotten how to read.
The water beneath the lights was still. Deeper than it should've been. Alive.
I stood frozen, wine bottle dangling from my fingers, breathing too hard. Not in fear. Not in awe.
In remembrance.
She never came closer.
Just hovered—out past the reef line, half a body visible, hair floating like seaweed, lights dancing along her spine in quiet rhythm.
Not beckoning.
Not angry.
Just… watching.
Like I was the one who had been gone.
Like she had always been here, waiting in the waves, a single candle held against the dark.
I whispered, "I have a family now."
It felt like a betrayal.
But the truth hung heavier than that:
I never stopped wondering if she was real.
And now I know.
Five years.
A wife.
Two children.
And still, my chest aches with that impossible tenderness.
She didn't disappear.
I did.
I don't know what she wants.
Maybe nothing.
Maybe to remember, just once more, the moment when a boy and something older-than-time raised their hands across the sea.
Maybe that was all it ever was meant to be.
But as I write this, I keep looking at the edge of the window.
Listening for the tide.
Wondering if I'll see the lights again tomorrow.
And if I do—
What the hell will I say this time?
"Forgive me"?
Or just…
"I remember."