He walked along the shore, feeling the soft, hot sand slip between his toes and the breeze echoing softly in his ears. He looked at the sea and the bottles that crammed its waters. Hundreds and thousands of bottles of all shapes, sizes, and colours were strewn upon the waves. They gleamed like gems under the blaze of the sun.

The red bottles bled rubies, the blue ones brilliant sapphires, the green ones dark emeralds, and the ones with the clear glass mirrored sunny gold akin to the shining sand of the beach. In each of those bottles was a paper, a parchment containing a message, a message that never got to the recipient, nor was there ever a return to sender. All lost, all abandoned, all gathered, and all marooned on that beach. The air was full of the soft, constant clinking of these bottles against each other amidst the wash of the waves. It was the only thing they could do.

He had sent a bottle a long time ago, too. He got no answer, nor did he believe that the one he had sent it to received it. He had lost her long ago, long before he had even lost his parents, young enough that she was the first true thing he lost, but not old enough to know that he had loved her when he did. Oh, how he still did so very much.

They came to the beach all the time, hunting worms beneath the sand and fishing crabs in the pools. Sometimes, they snuck off early in the morning to see the red sun climb out of the ocean and turn yellow as it flew up into the firmament. Other times, they stayed late until the stars bloomed in the sky, and a wind would blow out over the sea and leave them shivering. Oh, she loved the beach. Moreover, she loved the sea. She told him that one day she would take a boat and chart all the waters and islands of the world. She asked him to come with her on her adventure. He had ‘ayed’ with a sailor’s salute.

But the cruel sea came to them first. It came too quickly. He could not do anything except catch her against him and hold tight. When it went away and when he came to, all that he held was emptiness, and the sea was mute as a corpse. They sent out search parties after search parties. The torches burned upon the boats deep into the night. The sea was ablaze for a whole month. But they never found her. They couldn’t do anything, they said. She was gone, they said.

Of course, he didn’t believe them. No boy believed the lies of adults if he could help it. She was out there somewhere. She was only gone for a time. It was only that she couldn’t get back for the time being. She would be back, sooner or later. And when people can’t get back to each other or see each other, what do they do? Of course, one writes a letter. So he writes one:

Dear Lisa,

It’s me, Andrew. I know you are out there.

Everybody says that you are gone, but I don’t believe them. I know you are out there. I am sorry I couldn’t hold on to you. The wave drowned me. I didn’t even know that you were not there. I wish I never woke up that day. I wish I had gone away with you. Like you wanted to. To go to the sea and chart it all.

I went and looked for you with the others as well. Even when they stopped looking, I still kept looking for you. I'm still looking for you, cause I know you are out there. You asked me to go with you, remember? I know you love the sea, but how could you leave me behind? I promised to be the first mate to your captain.

So please come back so we can go together.

I will be here waiting on the beach for you.

P.S.: I miss you

He poured his heart into it. He put it in a bottle and hurled it into the sea. But he didn’t put all of himself into it. He held himself back. He didn’t write the one thing he truly wanted to write—that he loved her. When she was gone, he understood how much she meant to him, that no one ever could mean that much to him ever again. And yet, he didn’t write the words he really wanted to write. I love you. He deserves to write those words. How could he when he was there, and she was not? He made a promise that when he found her, he would say it. He would shout them to the whole wide world. He still keeps that promise to this day, and maybe will keep it to the end of his life.

He looked at the wretched bottles again as they gently undulated with the waves. Maybe his was somewhere among them—unreceived, unread, and utterly useless. A forgotten thing among other forgotten things, making him remember again and again what he could not forget.

Why did he still come to the beach? As they said, she was gone.

A wind picked up, blowing the loose sand up in the air. He shielded his eyes as it intensified into a gale. The bottles started to clink more and more, faster and faster, louder and louder, sharper and sharper. The piercing din became like the buzzing of a swarm of bees, and it was nothing short of a miracle that they didn’t shatter in the growing tempest.

He peeked at the sea through the slit of his eyelids. Something enormous was rising far away. It was a humongous wave. Primordial and eldritch, it covered the horizon and kept rising as if it would reach heaven and drown the sun itself, and it was fast approaching the beach at a breakneck speed.

He didn’t run but waited. The gigantic wave crashed into the sand and drowned him and the shore underneath it. He found himself surrounded by all the bottles in the water. They were still clinking, but inside there, they sounded more like the chiming of tiny bells. He closed his eyes and waited for the end. But then, as suddenly as the deluge came, it receded. He was left coughing and gasping on the muddy swamp as the sea pulled back, taking every single bottle along with it like a giant net reeling in a score of fish.

However, there was one left behind, buried in the wet sand. It was a dirty, old one with moss sticking all over it. Could it be? He got up, spitting out sand and water, and stumbling towards it to grab before another wave could snatch it away again. As he held it in his hands, it felt familiar. Could it really be after all this time? Was there even anything inside it?

He uncorked it with shaking hands. There was a parchment inside it, wet but not completely soaked. He opened it and read. He read it again and again and again. His shoulders trembled, and he sobbed. Yes, it was the same letter he had sent all those forgotten years ago. His tears fell upon it, but he wasn’t afraid of smudging it. Most of it was already smudged, except for five words. Nothing new was written on it, but it was more than he ever written. His weak heart was returned with an entire soul.

He read again.

Dear Andrew, I love you.