Stavanger Bay [m] the sparrows drag me down

The world rewrote itself in those three syllables, the sound of her name in a voice she had heard only in dreams for too long. Who was he? Perhaps more importantly — who was she, in his eyes?

Oh, she remembered the dreams. She remembered the lodge by the sea, the night he'd wrapped himself around her and spoke of the stars. The days of longing and loneliness, the mornings when she woke and thought not of her lost husband or the children they'd raised together but of him. Or rather, what he'd represented to her; the path not taken, the sweet ache of 'what if' when the reality of what is only hurt.

Time had stretched out long and thin between them, something like a razor's edge now. Still he was no more familiar to her now than he had ever been in her memory; still he was just a man who had not chosen her, a man whose heart she'd never truly held. What could she say to that? That she'd thought of him, cried for him, longed for him? That she didn't anymore? That, for all the waiting and the thinking and the wanting, she still didn't really know him?

Yet she wanted him even now. That part had never changed. And now here he stood, nothing between them but sand and sea and her name on his tongue. They're all gone now, aren't they? She murmured half to herself, drifting a few steps closer. Her voice lifted with her next words to carry across the space between them. I never thought I'd find you alone.

Do you still hear them? Marina wondered, softer now. Another step closer. The stars. Singing. Is it still real? Was it ever?