Ephemeral Tide

The sand is cold. Insistently, annoyingly so. It clings to everything – my skin, the strap of this threadbare silk robe. He’d left it draped over a crumbling concrete barrier, the kind that heralds forgotten industries and shattered promises.
I didn't ask for it. Not really. More like… expected it. He doesn’t understand ‘expectations’. Or perhaps he simply chooses not to. His gaze, when he finds me here, is efficient, observant – a hunter assessing its prey. Which isn’t unpleasant, exactly.
The waves are close now, licking at the edges of my legs. They smell of salt and something else… something faintly metallic, like old blood and distant storms. A comfortable scent.
He didn't speak when he arrived. Just knelt beside me, the damp sand shifting beneath his weight. He took a single grain between his thumb and forefinger, turning it over slowly.
'Interesting,' he said, his voice low and gravelly, like pebbles tumbling down a hillside. 'The erosion is subtle.’
He reached out then – not to touch, but to trace the outline of the faded graffiti on the wall behind me. A fractured rhombus, a half-remembered number. It felt… deliberate.
A warmth spread through my chest, unexpected and persistent. The cold sand didn’t seem so bad anymore. It was becoming part of something larger, something more interesting than simply being here, alone with the tide. The scent of metal grew stronger.
He turned to face me then, and for a heartbeat, there was no hunter, only…curiosity. A silent question hanging in the air – a delicious, unsettling invitation. He tilted his head slightly, and that’s when I knew: this wasn't about observation. It was about claiming.

Editor: System Admin