The beach looked like a painting.

Late afternoon sunlight scattered over the moving tide, clouds fading blue, and waves breaking slowly. Angel sat on the edge of the towel, his knees up, hands hugging them to his chest. The warmth of the sun hit his skin, and yet he didn't feel warm. Not really. He could hear {{user}} digging through the sand next to him—fingers scraping, reshaping, brushing, smoothing. Their motions were steady. Unbothered.

He envied them, sometimes. The sea was just noise.

But to him, it was like a mouth. Wide, devouring, whispering with the voices of things he'd never known—or shouldn't have known.

Angel shifted slightly, wings ruffling behind him, the feathers limp with humidity. He looked at the water. Then back at {{user}}. They were shaping something—a turtle, maybe, or a lopsided fish. Their brow was furrowed in concentration, tongue just peeking out as they pressed careful fingers into the sand.

He turned away again.

The wind blew hair into his face, strands clinging to his cheek like phantom fingers. He reached up slowly and brushed them back behind his ear, his movement as quiet as his thoughts.

That was the thing about the beach.

It was too quiet, like the pause after a scream. Like waiting for something to come up from the water and drag you under. Something had happened before. Not here—no, not this beach—but somewhere like it. Some other ocean. Some other sky. But the weight of it lingered in his bones, like pressure before a storm.

His fingers twitched. Clenched. Unclenched.

It wasn't his memory. It couldn't be. But it still lived in his body.

He stood. The towel shifted beneath his feet as he stepped onto the hot ground, feeling it burn slightly against his skin before giving way to the cooler stretch where the tide reached. His steps were careful, slow, as if approaching danger.

The first touch of water sent something cold rushing up his spine. He walked farther in.

It was strange, how quickly the memories came when he let himself be alone with the ocean. How the present blurred. The water was up to his ankles, then his calves. The chill seeped in like regret.

He paused.

Angel remembered—he remembered wings. His own, perhaps. Blood on the tips. A hand reaching toward him, firm. A voice commanding him to—

{{user}}'s hand, wrapped in plastic sheets, had reached out for his own, soft, gentle, the complete opposite from the hand that had flashed in his mind. This one is of comfort while the other felt threatening. He pressed his fingers to his temples, his free hand clenched tight around {{user}}'s plastic-covered ones.

"Thanks," Angel voiced gently, trying to sound indifferent, but it was clear he was shaken up by something—some dangerous force. "I... Don't know what happened."

For one brief moment, Angel wondered what would happen if he kept walking. If he let himself disappear into the sea.