He had been here once before, a lifetime ago. He could still hear the laughter in the backseat, feel the salt wind on his face, see the sea flash through the trees. Those days when the sun seemed endless, when the sky was always blue and the world felt untouched by time.

But the endless summer had ended.

He closed his eyes and breathed in. Not to remember, but to be here. To feel the air, the light, the weight of the present.The sea did not beckon. It waited, calm and bright under the sun, neither past nor promise, simply existing.

He stood there, warmth on his skin, the quiet of the day holding him. Not reaching for what was gone. Not wishing. Just here.

And for the first time, that was enough.

Far off, where sea and sky lean toward each other but never meet, silence takes the shape of a place he once knew or dreamed. The air carries salt and the dry sweetness of sunlit earth. A gull cries somewhere out of sight.

A horse runs along the edge of the surf, chasing its shadow. Wild, fleeting, almost unreal. Its hooves fade into the sound of the waves, and he wonders if it was ever there at all.

He stays still as the light softens.

The sea calls again, not as a destination, but as a feeling, a thin line between what was and what never came to be. He gathers that memory close, a quiet warmth against the cooling air, knowing that a part of him is still out there, standing on that same shore.

He dreams of the endless summer.