Someone forgot to turn around and pick up their footprints.

The beach stretched endlessly before me, its silence broken only by the rhythmic crash of waves and the occasional cry of a distant gull. The footprints in the sand caught my eye—solitary and unhurried, they seemed to tell a story of someone who had walked with purpose but without urgency. I followed them for a while, imagining their maker’s thoughts as they gazed at the same restless horizon. A piece of driftwood lay half-buried nearby, its gnarled form resembling some forgotten artifact. The sky above mirrored the ocean’s mood, heavy with clouds yet streaked with faint hints of light that refused to be subdued. I paused to take it all in—the simplicity of sand meeting sea under a vast expanse of sky—and felt both insignificant and infinite in the same breath.