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You don’t survive the belly of the beast without a few scars. An eternal ache would still remain. It was always, even if it wasn’t forever. Scars rarely ever faded in time.
He had plenty enough to share.
Yet every time he arrived at that decrepit beach, long since abandoned by most since that submarine washed ashore. Everytime he stepped through the sands, all thoughts went back to her. Every breath was a reminder of the cold she told him she felt on that day. Every effort light made to break through the clouds of an impending storm like the cloudy haze she had when Poe came to tell her the news.
That was never his story, but she told him anyway. In all the brief time they spent together, he learned of her past, and he only thought of a future with her in it. Even screaming her name when the cold brush of betrayal struck, and when that curious beast swallowed him and his siblings whole. But how did they get out? Thrusted into the open waters, swallowing waters as they struggled below the surface to try and swim back up. Only to be found by a mycologist and her brother. Only to wash ashore the very beach that once meant nothing more than the start of the girl he loved woes.
He’s kept coming back. As if he hoped she’d make her way back someday. As if he hoped she’d find him again if he did. He’s older now, and she would be, too. Years since they spent such a short time together, yet he still pined. Still wanted nothing more than to see her again.
He knelt on the ground, remains of a basket long since suffering the elements still buried deep in the sand. A small bit of wood all that hangs above what time has wrought. Dark eyes stare out at the expansive waters, a trance of which he would never be free.
From his bag, a lidded rod, which when unscrewed reveals a map he’d made of the city. The still abandoned remains of the Baudelaire fire which he’d visited again recently, noting the lack of burnt bones left behind. He only found one set. The long winded way towards the burnt remains of Dr. Montgomery Montgomery’s home, now as ashen as the Baudelaire’s was, and even his own. The third Quagmire often wandered back, traversing familiar roads to draw down new information. His father once joked that he was the only one lacking talent in writing, but drawing was just as grand.
His fingers brush over the Baudelaire name, eyes shining with a yearning he couldn’t explain. As he once again looked to the empty expanse, a fear creeping through his spine.
He was shipwrecked here, but she wouldn’t be. Not again. Not now.
Would she not have found him by now if she were alive?
Tears threaten him, but he brushes them away, rolling his map back up to return to its rod. He stands, adjusting his hat to keep warm, and pulling his purple commonplace book from his pocket. He jots down the date, adds the additional details; Nothing yet. But there was still hope. He’d return to Damocles Dock next, traverse those wretched caves. Maybe he could find another clue there if he did.
His commonplace book returns to his bag, and he moves his right hand to his left wrist, rubbing the red ribbon he’d found among a shipwreck with a title-plate bearing the name Beatrice in Curdled Cave. He recognized it. He knew who it belonged to the instant he saw it.
She wasn’t there.
No body to find.
She had to be somewhere. He’d just have to keep looking. If for no other reason than to return her ribbon, but it was all so much more than that.
The yearning never budged. It was there. Always. And if it couldn’t be now, he still wanted to try and find that forever.