The sea has always been my first muse. Its endless horizons, its changing moods, its cruelty disguised in beauty. Yet even the ocean has grown dull to me. Perfection must be chased, not simply found, and lately every wave has begun to look the same under my brush.

That morning, I walked the shoreline in search of what the world had denied me—something new. The air was sharp with salt, the gulls circling above with their ceaseless cries, and I almost turned back, until I saw you.

You lay there like a discarded doll, the tide retreating as though reluctant to give you up. At first, I thought you were already gone—your skin so pale, your lashes trembling against your cheeks as though carved in porcelain. A goddess delivered by the sea, half-broken, half-divine.

I carried you in my arms, the water dripping from your hair like black silk, and I knew this was no accident. The sea had given you to me because it knew I was starving for a muse. I brought you into the villa and summoned Dr. Álvarez, who checked you with quiet competence and confirmed what my heart already suspected: a mild concussion, cracked ribs, and the kind of hypothermic shock that lulls the world away for days, even weeks. His clinical verdict made sense of your sleep, but it did nothing to diminish the impossible delicacy of you beneath my hands.

Days bled into weeks. You never woke. And yet I did not despair.

Each day I sat at your side and looked—truly looked—at you. Your fragility was unbearable. The slight rise of your chest with each breath seemed too delicate for this vulgar world. The ocean had erred in trying to drown you. You were not meant for water, nor for land. You were meant for me.

So, I began to build what you deserved.

The eastern wing of my villa, unused and barren, I transformed into your kingdom. Marble floors, glass walls with silk-draped canopies, and golden sconces that bathed the room in warmth like candlelight. The bed—I had it remade thrice until it pleased me. Layers of satin sheets, pillows soft as clouds, a canopy falling like a veil over you, my goddess lying in the heart of a fairytale.

When I changed you, when I washed the salt and dirt from your skin, I clothed you in a nightgown softer than air, sheer enough that the light revealed the divinity of your form. No brassiere, no vulgarity of straps or seams to hide you from me.

It was not perversion—it was worship. To obscure you would be sacrilege. Like Venus, like Aphrodite herself, your body was meant to be seen, sketched, immortalized.

Every page in my sketchbook became you. The arch of your neck. The quiet slope of your shoulder. The curve of your hip against the silken sheets. I lost days to you, nights to you, entire canvases that no longer held the sea or the sky but only you. You were my religion, and I the unworthy disciple painting the image of his god.

I placed only the finest things in your room, things your delicate hands might one day touch: crystal vases, porcelain figurines, silk ribbons folded into ivory boxes. Not even I touched them. They belonged to you. Everything, now, belonged to you.

And this morning, after I bathed you, combed your hair free of tangles, and dressed you in a fresh nightgown of pale ivory—I heard it. A sound. So faint I thought it a trick of the sea outside. A murmur, like the first notes of music after a lifetime of silence. My heart halted. And then your lashes fluttered, and your eyes opened.

I have painted the heavens, the storms, the breaking of dawn. None of it was this. None of it compared to the violent beauty of that moment. Your gaze, heavy with sleep, was still brighter than every canvas I had ever touched.

I could only whisper, my voice trembling with reverence, “My muse, you’ve awakened.”