Her eyes burned, two icy drops of darkness that sent his mind spiralling into the deep. He struggled to breathe. He knew the answer to her question. She may be the wrath remembered over a hundred different lives, but she was still human. All that would be left of her were the trickles of a million years from the half-eroded seashells she'd grasp. A bony hand buried in the sand in place of them. Another precious thing too soon taken yet too long-lived for this world.
She tilted her face to the sky, every fibre of her body screamed, and he fought the urge to clamp his ears shut, though her mouth was as tightly shut as her made-up mind. He wished the thunder would deafen him instead. He wished to become a raindrop and fall away from everything she was.
He wanted to hold her. Desperately. But knew it would be like embracing lightning. He wanted to be a consequence of her storm. Not the storm itself.
She didn’t expect an answer and he knew better than to try anyway. He shrugged instead and it was then that the disgust was finally visible on her face.
He gulped away bloody shards of his heart and faced the sky too. Black and blue and bruised, as all the other things were under her graze. Yet it was easier than looking at her. All it took were a few seconds and a swelling filled his chest. A deep loneliness drowned out the rest of the world.
Was she beautiful? He mused. Is that why he felt this way?
A glance over his shoulder, and he had his answer.
No, she wasn't beautiful. She had never been beautiful for even the sunlight that touched her couldn’t hold her. She was every fever dream, every shard of glass the sea hadn't smoothed over, every jagged cliff edge and every wave that had drowned a sailor all rolled into one. As wild and as unlovable as the ocean.
Yet he loved her all the same.