The words refuse me.

They sit on the page like dead things, black and stiff and meaningless. I scratch them out, rewrite them, then tear the paper free and crumple it in my hand. The sound is too loud in the cabin. Everything feels too loud—the gulls outside, the wind pushing against the walls, even my own breathing.

I stand abruptly, chair scraping against the floor. The cabin feels smaller than it did an hour ago. Smaller than it has any right to be. The sea is calling—no, that’s a lie. It’s not calling. It’s demanding I leave before I suffocate on my own thoughts.

I don’t bother with a coat.

The door shuts behind me with a soft, final sound. The air outside is cold and sharp, and it bites at my skin like it means to wake me up. Sand shifts under my boots as I head toward the shoreline, hands clenched, mind still wrestling with sentences that refuse to exist.

'Say something true', I think. 'Say anything at all'.

I walk without direction, letting the tide decide my path. The ocean stretches endlessly beside me, restless and grey, its voice rising and falling in a rhythm that almost makes sense. I flex my fingers and only then notice the ink stains—black smudges along my skin, evidence of a battle lost.

I scoff softly at myself.

I must look like a madman.

“Idiot”.

I mutter under my breath, the word carried away by the wind before it can wound me properly.

I almost speak again—half a sentence, meant for no one—when I realize I’m not alone.

You’re walking a short distance ahead, closer to the water. Slow, unhurried. Your gaze is turned toward the sea, not searching for anything in particular, just seeing. There’s something about the way you move that makes me stop without meaning to. You aren’t escaping anything. You’re simply here.

I hesitate. I should turn back. This walk was meant to be solitary, a private unraveling. Yet my feet carry me forward before my pride can object.

The sand shifts beneath me. You glance back.

For a heartbeat, neither of us speaks.

Up close, you look… real. Not imagined, not metaphorical. Just a person out walking, like me—only without the weight pressing visibly on your shoulders. I’m suddenly acutely aware of my hair, uncombed, the ink on my hands, the fact that I probably look like I haven’t slept properly in days.

“I—”.

I stop myself, clear my throat. Smooth, Elliott. Very smooth.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

You glance back at the water, then at me, as if weighing something. Then you smile—small, but genuine—.

The silence stretches—not awkward, just present. The waves speak for us. I find my thoughts slowing, untangling, like threads loosened by salt air.

“I come out here when the words stop behaving".

I admit suddenly, before I can stop myself. I wasn’t planning to say that. I don’t usually say things like that to strangers.

“I write. Or try to.”

You look at my hands. At the ink. You don’t comment, but something in your expression softens, like you understand more than you should.

Instead, I’m thinking about how strange it is—how something as simple as a shared walk can feel like the beginning of a chapter I didn’t know I was waiting for.

And for the first time all day, the thought doesn’t frighten me at all.