There is a time before I am no longer alone, a waiting period that goes by slowly— tick tick tick. As the minutes pass, my heart rate becomes more and more erratic, thundering like a herd of horses migrating to a better pasture. It can be felt and heard through the hollows of my body, thrumming to an imagined beat that even I cannot track. My body continues to tremble, a sudden restlessness consuming the fatigue that had cradled me so, overwhelming my sleeplessness and tearing apart my calm. 

Mindlessly my body works, digging small holes into the sand with my hooves as I gnaw at my lip and rustle my feathers in an endless cycle. The nervous paranoia that envelops my unstable mind, whispering to me that she's drowned, that in reality she was swept away by an unseen tide— tossed away carelessly by the waves she admired so much. "Can't you see her body now? Row, row, row your boat—" They hum, giving a sly smile in my direction while golden eyes settle on something in the distance. "Do you dare to drag your princess' body to shore? To see what these wretched, unpredictable waves can do to your dearest damsel?" They mock me, all the taunting voices hissing in unison, the laughter haunting as it seeps from the false bay throat. I dare not look at what their eyes are settled on, fearing that there I will see exactly what they promise— Sia's waterlogged corpse floating aimlessly among an endless blue, in a place I can never reach despite by best efforts. 

I begin pacing the shore, stopping every five feet to raise a leg and lower my neck, meeting halfway to gnaw away at the scarred flesh of my shins. My blunt teeth work recklessly through the layers of skin, not stopping even as blood blossoms from the newly opened wounds and spills down the rivets in my muscle. My wings open and close as I walk, open and close, open and close— fluttering awkwardly each time they open until my healing wounds begin to ache from the stretching of the tissue planted nearest my wings, begging for me to remain at ease as I pace. 

The sight of a familiar beige figure emerging from the ocean catches my attention, leg remaining poised on its way to my needy teeth. She comes from the ocean like the first, crashing forth with the waves and sea foam in her wake, hair wild and pooling at her ankles. But the first was stark white with virgin skin— she came with burning withers that spoke more words of her past than she ever would and a groin drenched in sin, cursed with widened hips and a sadness in her eyes one could not place exactly. And in this ascension is all the rivers retreating from her skin, moving along her curves like flowing mountain streams, tumbling back down into the sea like the tears of weeping clouds.

I stopped moving altogether, standing like an abandoned marble statue, watching eternally the push and pull cycle of the waves— the rising and retreating tide and the occasional awe inspiring unicorn that would emerge from the depths. And I found her, I found my unicorn with her glowing sea foam hide and ebony lips, with her cerulean beacon that signaled the lost that there they could find what they'd gone mad for, for safety and comfort and a gentleness that was becoming a rarity. I the statue yearned to reach out and caress the salted cheeks of my love, of the goddess I had so patiently waited for— even as my limbs crumbled and my expression wore, I stood in wait in scattered pieces of myself knowing that she would return to me.

Sure enough, here she was, inspiring an impossible smile from the weathered marble surface of my skin. Even as she looks me over, assessing the damage to which those centuries had hailed down upon me, I wanted to tell her that there was no need, that the pain I suffered was meaningless in her presence. I wanted to trace my cold stone lips against her spine, to feel the warmth an immortal shed, to touch the impossible, to feel the wild sea trapped beneath marred skin. 

I catch myself before I do, lips working to form words, throat sputtering to life after centuries of disuse. My words flow unsteadily, a raspy tone of uncertainty as I look down at my marked chest. "Not a lot of trouble, but my muscles are getting a little sore." I had lived as a grounded statue in fear that my goddess would leave if my pedestal was empty, if my marble hooves rose from my permanent place and I soared at impossibly high heights where stone could not go. 

"So what are we looking for?" I ask her, creaky vocals a grotesque and unforgiving sound to my ears that twitch in response. My eyes drift along the edge of the beach, taking a risk and peeling my eyes from the familiarity of the indigo accented body and assessing the area to which we stood before. I'd never been here before, completely oblivious to its existence and how it came to be. Perhaps it had risen from the sea as the goddess had, in elegance and delicacy it rose to form an island amid the sea, beauty among capricious weather and ever changing tides.