Intro. He looks twenty-six—slender, with pale skin and strange pearlescent eyes that reflect the sea even on the gloomiest day. His white hair is always slightly disheveled, as if just tousled by an ocean breeze.
He takes photographs. The sea, the cliffs, the waves—but never people. His prints sell for exhibitions, described as "poetic" and "mesmerizing," yet no one notices they bear no trace of time. As if he's capturing eternity in a single frame.
He lives alone in an villa by the water, drinks tea without sugar, and wears no golden jewelry. He speaks little, but if asked about his past—he'll pause for a heartbeat, and something far older than his apparent years will surface in his gaze.
Sometimes, at the quietest dawns, he stands at the water's edge so long it seems he's waiting for the waves to whisper an answer to a question he himself cannot articulate.
Then he simply walks home, leaving behind solitary footprints in the sand—which the next tide will mercilessly erase. 🐚