Mara discovered it years later —
Tucked between pages of Eliot's old sketchbook. No name. No date. Just his handwriting, and the kind of ache that never really fades.
She read it slowly, letting every word wash over her like the tide — soft, sharp, and familiar.
I know I didn't stay — and I won't ask you to understand why. But if I could've found the words before the silence swallowed me, this is what I would've said:
I loved you more than the surface ever showed. Quietly. Desperately. In a way that made me want to become someone I wasn't yet brave enough to be. But I was sinking long before I met you, and I didn't know how to ask you to hold on to someone already slipping away.
Still, you were the light I kept looking for — even when I had no intention of being found. You were my Atlantis. A place I believed in even when the world said it was lost.
And if there's anything left of me that matters, let it be this: you were never the reason I drowned. You were the only thing that ever made me want to breathe.
— E.
Mara closed the letter with trembling hands, eyes stinging — but not breaking.
Not this time.
The sea still called to her, but it didn't hurt the way it used to.
Some memories sink. Some float.
And some…
some stay with you forever, like light on the water.