The candle wept wax onto the warped table, its flame a frail heart flickering in the gloom of Saint-Malo's midnight.
Elias Moreau, a poet carved from shadow, hunched over his notebook, his pen trembling as it etched words into the silence. Each breath was a thief, weaving thorns through his lungs, the coppery tang of blood blooming on his kerchief like ink spilled in haste.
Beyond the cracked window, the sea roared—a mourner keening for lives yet to fade, its salt-laden breath seeping into the room's chill.
He wrote:
"In the hollow of my chest, I cradle you, a storm I cannot name."
The words were for no one, yet they pulsed with a longing he could not place—a whisper from a dream he'd never known.
The radio next door hummed a soft chanson, its melody a cruel jest against his solitude, threading through the walls like a ghost's lament. His fingers, stiff with cold, traced the page, the paper's rough grain a tether to his unraveling world.
At twenty-eight, Elias was a specter in a body that betrayed him, his lungs crumbling like the cliffs outside, eroded by a tide he could not fight.
The room was a tomb of want—leaking walls, a single chair, no coal for the hearth. Poverty clung to him like damp cloth, yet he wrote, as if each verse could steal a moment from death's grasp.
The sea's dirge swelled, and for a fleeting heartbeat, he imagined a voice within it—a woman's cry, soft and distant, calling his name. He paused, pen hovering, the candle's light dancing on the blood-streaked cloth.
Was it the wind, or a memory stirring from the deep?
He shook his head, dismissing it, but the sensation lingered, a shadow on the edge of his soul.
Outside, the town slept, its cobblestone streets hushed under a sky bruised with clouds.
Elias's mother had called him a ghost once, her voice sharp with disdain before she turned away, leaving him to this life of ink and pain. His family's door was closed, their love a currency he could not afford.
Yet in his poems, he sought immortality—a legacy to outlast the frail cage of his flesh.
The candle sputtered, its wax pooling like tears, and he pressed on, unaware that the sea's whisper held a secret—one that would soon unravel the threads of his quiet despair...