The Years the Tide Took

The sun was dipping low over the Adriatic, its last amber rays scattering like brittle shards of glass across the water. In Cavtat, the small Dalmatian town where time often felt like it was folding over itself, Lara stood at the edge of the old stone pier, watching the sea swallow the horizon. The scent of salt and pine was heavy in the air, but inside her, an emptiness echoed louder than the waves crashing against the shore.

Her fingers clutched the thin silver chain around her neck, cold against her skin. It was the only thing she had left from him.

Marko had been gone for five years.

The wind played with her dark hair, and she let out a breath as if trying to push the memories away — but they settled in her mind like a stubborn fog.

Lara had grown up in Dubrovnik, a city famous for its golden walls and tourists, but she had never felt like she belonged to its glittering streets. Her world was quieter, contained within her family's modest apartment overlooking the bay, and more intensely, inside her heart.

Marko was the light in that quiet. They met one late summer evening when the sea was calm and the moon shy behind thin clouds.

He was a painter — a restless spirit who had returned to Croatia after years wandering Europe. His studio was tucked away in an old part of the city, its scent of turpentine and old paper evoking memories of a bygone era. Lara had wandered in by accident one day, following the strange urge to escape the bustle of the tourist throngs.

Marko's paintings were full of melancholia — lonely boats adrift, abandoned ruins, faces half-hidden in shadows. Lara saw something familiar in them, a reflection of the yearning she carried.

Their conversations started as cautious exchanges about art and music, but soon, the walls around them crumbled. Marko spoke of dreams he'd chased and lost, and Lara confessed her fears — fears she was destined to live a life half-empty, waiting for something that might never come.

They found in each other a fragile hope.

But life is often crueller than dreams.

Marko was restless. His soul was pulled by currents Lara couldn't follow. When the opportunity to work in Italy came, he left, promising to return soon.

Months turned into years.

Letters slowed. Calls became rare. Then, silence.

Lara waited, every day folding into the next, until one evening, a small, weathered envelope arrived with a foreign postmark.

Inside was a single note: "I am sorry, Lara. I cannot come back. Some things I lost along the way, and I fear I am no longer the man you thought I was."

That note shattered the fragile dream Lara had built around Marko.

Now, standing on the pier, she traced the outline of the pendant he had given her — a small shell carved from the limestone of the Dalmatian coast. She wondered if he kept it too or if it had been lost somewhere far away, like him.

On the bench nearby, an older man played a melancholic tune on his accordion. The music wrapped around her like a shroud, pulling her deeper into her thoughts.

"Beautiful evening," his voice interrupted.

Lara looked up. It was Marko's father, Ivo, a wiry man with a weathered face and kind eyes. She hadn't seen him since Marko left.

"Ivo," she whispered. "I didn't expect you here."

He smiled faintly. "Came to see the sea. And you, of course."

The mention of her name brought a wave of guilt and sorrow.

"Ivo," she started, "Did Marko ever say anything to you? About me? About when he left?"

He sighed, looking toward the fading light. "He did. More than you know."

"I never stopped waiting," Lara said softly. "But maybe... maybe I was just waiting for a ghost."

Ivo's eyes glistened. "He was a ghost to many of us in those years."

That night, Lara returned home, the walls of her apartment closing in tighter than ever. She pulled out a box hidden beneath her bed — full of Marko's letters, sketches, and photographs.

One photograph caught her eye — Marko standing on the cliffs of Mljet, wind tearing at his coat, eyes fierce and sad. The words beneath it, in Marko's handwriting, read:

"Somewhere between the sea and the sky, I lose myself every day. But in losing, I find a part of me that is free."

Lara's tears fell onto the paper.

Days passed. The Adriatic remained unchanged, indifferent to human sorrow. Lara walked the same paths they had once walked together, feeling both the weight of absence and the flicker of what might have been.

One evening, as the sun set in a blaze of red and gold, she visited the old chapel overlooking the sea — their secret place.

There, waiting beneath the ancient olive tree, was a figure she hadn't expected.

Marko.

His hair was longer, streaked with silver, and his eyes held the same sadness she remembered, but now deeper, heavier.

"Lara," he said, voice rough like gravel.

She wanted to say everything — the years of pain, the nights of silence, the endless yearning — but all she managed was a breathless, "Why?"

He looked away, pain flickering across his face.

"I thought leaving was the only way to save us both," he said. "But I lost myself instead."

They sat in silence, the sea whispering between them.

"I never stopped loving you," Marko finally said.

Lara reached out, her fingers brushing his. "Neither did I."

The days that followed were fragile — a delicate dance of rediscovery. They spoke of everything and nothing, the past and the future, the dreams that had been shattered and the tentative hope that maybe, just maybe, they could build something new.

But the scars were deep. Both had changed. Both had lost pieces of themselves.

One evening, as the moon rose pale over the bay, Lara and Marko stood on the pier once more.

"I can't promise forever," Marko said, voice trembling.

"And I don't want forever," Lara whispered. "I want now. Just this moment."

They held each other close, two souls adrift but momentarily anchored by a fragile, beautiful connection.

Years later, Lara would look back on that time — a bittersweet chapter between loss and hope, between silence and the music of the Adriatic.

She never stopped yearning, but she learned that some yearnings don't have endings. They become a part of us, like the sea becoming part of the shore.

And sometimes, that is enough.