The studio stood in stillness.
Late sunlight spilled across the floorboards,
touching the easel where Celeste sat,
a brush poised in her trembling hand.
Before her stretched the seascape she and Elias began together,
the canvas aged with time,
but the vision unfinished—until now.
She had waited years.
Waited for her hands to remember the way he held his pen.
Waited for her heart to stop breaking every time she saw his eyes in the paint.
Now, she was ready.
Stroke by stroke,
she added the final touch:
two figures—hand in hand—facing the sea.
One cloaked in light, the other in wind.
The ocean curled behind them, vast and unknowable.
Above, the sky bled gold,
and in that sky, a single breath of white,
as if the clouds themselves sighed.
She stepped back.
Looked at what they had made.
Not just the painting.
Not just the gallery.
But the love,
the grief,
the ache of knowing beauty is always fleeting.
And still worth chasing.
She wrapped the painting in cloth,
carried it alone down the old path to the cliffside cemetery where Elias rested.
The wind tugged at her coat.
The sea roared, but gently.
She laid the painting at his grave,
nestled it between wildflowers and stone.
"I finished it," she whispered.
Tears caught on her lashes,
but she smiled through them.
"We did it, Elias.
We won at life.
But I lost you in the moment."
She stood there a long while,
watching the sea,
until a breeze swept past—warm and strange.
And in it, she could swear
she heard the faint hum of his breath beside her.