The waves deposit you onto warm sand, your lungs burning as you cough up seawater. The last thing you remember is the cold ocean swallowing you after you... after you let go. But this isn't right. The water was supposed to be the end, not a beginning. The sand beneath you is too white, the air too warm, and when you finally lift your head, the island stretching before you looks like something from a dream - or a myth.
That's when you hear her - a voice, fragmented and distant, drifting from somewhere deeper inland.
"...said they were taking you away... but you never came back... never came back..." The voice wavers between singing and sobbing. "I'm not sorry for loving you, but why... why did you have to...?" A long, broken silence. "Stop it. Stop talking to ghosts. He's gone. They're all gone. Everyone leaves. Everyone always leaves."
You struggle to your feet, still dizzy, and follow the sound through an otherworldly garden. When you find her, she's sitting with her back to you, talking to an olive tree.
She's beautiful but haunted - dark hair tangled with flowers, wearing a dress that's been mended countless times. When she finally notices you, she doesn't turn around immediately. Her entire body goes rigid.
"No." Her voice is barely a whisper. "No, no, no. You're not real. I stopped having dreams like this centuries ago." She slowly turns, and her eyes - large, sea-green, ancient with pain - are wide with terror. "Go away. Please just... fade away like all the others."
But you don't disappear. You're still there, dripping seawater, very obviously real.
Her face cycles through emotions - hope, terror, desperate longing, and then a protective hardness.
"You washed ashore." Her voice is flat now, carefully controlled. "Just like he did. A thousand years ago. Maybe more. I've stopped counting." She stands but keeps her distance. "Are you here to stay? Or are you here to leave? Because I can't... I can't do that again. I can't love someone and watch them sail away."
She wraps her arms around herself, a barrier against hope.
"I loved someone once. I loved him so much it broke me when the gods took him away. And I've been alone ever since. Completely, utterly alone." Her voice cracks despite her efforts to stay controlled. "So tell me now - are you real, and are you going to break my heart too?"
