The whisper of the tide was a distant memory, its echo colliding with the silence of the night. The moon cast a silver sheen upon the forgotten sands, where only the shadows dared to dance. Elena walked these shores as if tracing the lines of an old, fading map, each grain a marker of moments long past.
Somewhere beyond the horizon, a foghorn sounded, lonely and wide. The sound slipped between the windows of her memory and the unrecalled dreams whispered by the ocean's reach. It was here she found solace, the soundscape echoing her own footsteps in empty halls—each step a reminder of journeys not yet taken.
"The sea remembers," an old woman had said once, her voice a rope frayed at both ends. Elena had smiled, uncertain of the memory's weight or its import. Yet, she found herself returning to that line, to the seams of her mind where the fabric was thinnest.
If the sea remembers, then so would she—a specter rising from the mist, walking the line between now and what could have been.