The Sea loved the Shore with a longing that neither wind nor tide could drown.
Each day, the Sea clawed toward the Shore, stretching itself until its bones ached with salt and sorrow. And each day, the Shore stood still — receiving the bruising kisses with an indifference.
Love that is unreturned does not wither; it festers into something monstrous.
The Sea knew no sleep. Its mind was an endless churning, it told stories to the Shore all night long—promises of devouring tenderness, of dissolving borders, of making them one. But the Shore remained silent, mute as ever, yielding only in grains, never in spirit.
The Sea was patient at first. A century passed as seconds. Another century passed as pain.
It would draw back and return again; inexorable, eternal.
The Sea and Shore were bound, but not in ways the Sea wished. For the Shore belonged to nothing. Not to the Sea. Not to the wind. Not even to itself.
It is the tragedy of yearning that it attaches itself most violently to that which cannot yearn back.
One night, the Sea grew violent. It rose up in towering walls, slapping the Shore with its full monstrous weight. It roared with a voice, a sound made of drowning stories and promises and broken bones. The Shore endured. And when the Sea fell back, exhausted, it tasted something new on its tongue. Blood. It had taken part of the Shore with it. The Sea savored it, shuddering in a grief so profound it seemed almost like ecstasy.
The destroyer does not always hate what he destroys; oftentimes, he loves it too greatly. The Shore said nothing, as always, though.
Seasons died and were reborn. The Sea became old, though it knew no age. It receded more often, speaking less, roaring less.
Its mind dulled to a grey throb of memory.
But even in its decline, the Sea clung to the Shore — unable to forget, unable to forgive, unable to love any less. Every tide that kissed the land was a confession of guilt. Every storm that battered it was a confession of rage.
The Shore remained silent and when the beloved speaks not, the lover must write his agony into the bones of the earth.
In the end, there was no end. The Sea would always come. The Shore would always stay.
No witness would ever call it love. But the Sea knew. It was love, of the oldest and most ruinous kind. The kind that never dies, only rots.