The morning I left, the world did not shift. The city exhaled its morning breath, cool and indifferent. The trams screeched along their tracks, shopkeepers unlatched their shutters like restless birds, and the sea, endless and tireless, uncoiled against the pier as it always had. There was no pause, no acknowledgement; Nothing waited for me, and for the first time, I understood liberation in the absence of witness.

I walked. Past the cafes where men in linen suits sipped thick coffee, past the fishermen whose nets dripped silver onto the docks like priests scattering blessings, past the long front where the wind tangles itself in my collar with familiarity. The sea stretched beside me, unburdened by meaning, by memory, by anything but its own perpetual motion. I envied it.

At the edge of the pier, a boy sat with his feet swinging above the water, eating an orange with slow, deliberate pleasure. He did not look up when he spoke. 

“You look like you’re leaving.”

I studied the water, the way it folded and unfolded upon itself, endlessly becoming.

“Maybe I am.”

The boy nodded as if this confirmed something he already knew. “It’s good to go. People stay too long sometimes.”

I did not answer. He split the orange in his hands and offered me half. I took it, surprised by its warmth, by the sudden burst of sweetness on my tongue. The kind of taste that insists on being noticed.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Away.” 

His lips curled into a quiet smile. “That’s a good place.”

We sat there in silence, salt drying on our skin, the expanding sky yawning above us. The sea lapped at the wooden beams of the pier as if it knew something old. Perhaps it did. The world did not mind our presence, and somehow, that made it easier to stay. 

I left the boy and wandered through the streets, where clotheslines sagged between buildings, heavy with sun-bleached linen. The scent of bread wound its way through the alleyways, wrapping around my ribs. A dog, its body languid with the kind of ease only animals possess, stretched in a bath of sunlight. The sun pressed against my skin, and for the first time in years, I did not flinch from its touch; I let it.

By the evening, I found a small inn near the ridges. A woman with grey-streaked hair handed me a key without asking my name. “The sea is loud at night,” she said. “You’ll get used to it.”

I did not tell her that I wanted the sound to fill me. That I wanted the waves to scrape me clean, to strip me of everything that was not necessary.

In my room, I left the window open. The air smelled of salt and citrus, of something anciently young. I lay on the small bed, my hands resting on my stomach, listening to the tide gnaw against the shore. There was no rush. The sea had all the time in the world. And for the first time, so did I.

Dawn arrived on quiet feet. I walked to the water’s edg, let the tide kiss my ankles, did I feel heavy to the ground? For I wasn’t. I was simply here. And for once, that was enough. 

I stayed. Not because I found a reason, but because I no longer needed one. The town absorbed me without question. I learned the pull of finishing nets in my hands, the grace of carrying bread at dawn; the pleasure of thick coffee sipped while the sky melted from indigo to gold. My days continued; free from urgency. 

Time softened. I stopped looking at the clocks. The sky, the tide, and the slow rise and fall of my own breath were measurement enough. One afternoon, I found the boy from the pier again. He sat on the rocks, skipping stones across the water’s surface. When he saw me, he grinned.

“You’re still here.”

I nodded. “I think I like it here.”

He didn’t seem surprised. “It’s a good place.” 

We shared another orange, its juice slick and golden over our fingers; staining. The sea stretched before us, vast and beaming. There was nothing to chase, nothing to solve— Only this.

Later, I walked the shore, where the tide left being its fleeting footprints in the sand. A fisherman hummed as he untangled his nets. Light pooled like honey in the crevices of the harbor, turning every surface to gold. The wind wove its fingers through my hair, saying things I did not need to understand. 

I met a man who painted boats, his hands perpetually stained with blue and ochre. He did not ask where I had come from, nor did I tell him. We worked in silence, dipping brushes into color, letting the wooden hulls drink deep. When he was finished, he stood back and smiled– not at me, but at the boats themselves, at their bright, reborn skins. I understood then, I think; his happiness was in the doing, not in the finishing. 

Another day I found an abandoned rowboat on the shore, half-buried in the sand. I spent an afternoon mending it, my fingers working the rope and wood as if I had done it a hundred times before. When I pushed it into the water, it did not resist; it accepted the tide’s pull with hesitation, as if it had never forgotten. I think I heard them say, though I never understood: water could never be owned, only borrowed. 

The boy from the pier found me again. one last time. He sat beside me on the shore, his bare feet buried in the cooling sand.

“Are you staying forever?” he asked.

I thought about it. About the mornings steeped in salt air, the afternoons lapped together by wave, the way time had become something fluid and light. I did not know if forever existed, I still don’t. But today felt like enough.

“I don’t know,” I said.

He nodded as if he understood. “That’s a good answer.” 

The sky bled into the horizon, a slow exhale of color. The sea caressed the shore, and the wind combed through my hair with the tenderness of a mother.

 I watched the dog again, still curled in its patch of sunlight, content and oblivious to the shifting tide. It had no questions, no ambitions beyond the warmth of the present moment. 

And perhaps, so had I.

There was no grand revelation, no sudden clarity. Only the slow, golden realization that there was nothing to seek, nothing to prove. That the sky, the salt, the warm press of the sun were enough. That the sea would continue, perfect in its indifference. And at last, I understood.

The world did not notice my leaving, nor my return—perhaps that was freedom after all.