At the edge of the sea stands a tower. It is not a very special tower: not very beautiful, not quite high or slender and there’s no light on the top to guide the ships on their way. The only thought it might bring up is that this is a lonely tower.
It rises up from grey rocks and capricious thorn bushes, so that it is impossible to get near it. Perhaps that’s why nobody ever bothered to place a door in it. I sometimes think that people probably don’t even know about this sea, let alone about my tower.
Whenever I look out from the only window, I can see the beach. That is to say: cliffs that go almost completely straight downwards, some dirty grey sand and washed up shells.
And between the shells: lumps of stone. Somewhat scattered, as if hastily kicked apart. The tide has already washed over it countless of times, but the stone heart still lies there, shattered into pieces.
I sometimes hope that one of the ships, of which now and then I can see the lights in the distance, will stray and wash upon my shore. I dream to hear human voices once again, one day, or footsteps on the steps of my tower. And every night I dream, I still dream, of carving out a second heart.

*

The sea was singing. Her tide was as a slow, ancient beating heart. Rocks cast dark, long shadows. Far beneath the tower, on the small sandy beach, the seals gathered. Their wet skins shone in the moonlight.
As if in a sharply-edged dream, I remember how I carved her human form from a rough piece of stone. Face, breasts, neck, legs. Hands and feet. Sea shells for her eyes, seaweed as her hair. All that time, she only fixedly stared straight ahead, without breath, without life. Yet I polished her lips in shape of a smile and made her cheecks glow soft youthful. In due time, I kept telling myself, in due time she would be happy.
I made her wings. This way she could fly out of the tower window one day, across the sea if she wanted to. If only she would come back again.
Late one night in the rain season, she was finished. I went to stand before her and took her stone hands in my own. ‘All you still lack now, is a name,’ I said.
On that moment, I saw from the window how a star slid along the heaven and fell into the sea. Her scultured smile stirred, she turned her head about and looked outside. ‘Where is it going?’ she asked.
‘Perhaps it’s fallen into the sea,’ said I, ‘or perhaps at the other side of the sea.’
‘Name me like that star,’ said the girl.
I smiled.

*

Dark waves fiercly beat against the rocky shore. Hardly a beach, only high rocks, greyish and shimmering wet of the water. Green algae clinged at the steep stone slopes.
The girl used her wings to fly far away. All the way across the water, heading to unknown worlds. Sometimes, she stayed away very long and then I worried about her. At times it even lasted so lang that I thought that I truly had lost her to the world, that she never again would return to our dwelling in the tower.
Yet always came that day that she would suddenly sit on the windowstill again. I often thought that I could see something else on her face, beside her beautiful smile, that had not been there when I had carved her out. Perhaps it were the salty traces of the sea that dug the fine, thin lines in her cheeks. I never asked about it directly, and she never gave a clear answer.
I noticed how she grew more quiet over time. She left more often and often, and less and less she told what she had been seeing. At first, I didn’t really want to think too much of it. Yes, maybe she was feeling homesick for the places that were more lively, where she would be surrounded in more colour, more scents. Possibly, the tower stood quite dull against all that beauty and splendor from yonder, yet this was where she had been born. Here, she belonged, together with me, and therefore she would always return. Forever.
That was, at least, what I long time believed. Now, with sincere regret, I can say that, although I have made her heart, I did not know it well.

*

There came a grey morning on which she flew out, without saying goodbye. I waited for her with new moon. I waited for her with full moon. I was waiting still when the rain season arrived, and the tower became enveloped by a constant curtain of falling water. When winter came, my thoughts of her had already lessened. When spring came, I often looked out of the tower window to see birds build their nests between the sharp rocks. And when the next rain season eventually announced it’s coming with the first showers full of mud and rolling clouds, it was as if her presence, too, was being washed away and, from the four grey walls of the tower, dripped down.
But truly forgetting her was a thing I never really was able to. Sometimes, suddenly she appeared in a memory, unintentional, but indelible, a part of my existence.
Therefore I decided to call her back on a day. That I that could that, was for sure. I had made her after all. Never before had I done that however - my intention, after all, was to love her and not whistle her back like a dog. Yet this time, there was a restless fire inside of me. Had something happened to her? Could she no longer find her way home, had she perhaps forgetten about me?

She was still beautiful when she finally appeared. Her face was just as young and soft, her smile still on her lips. But the sea had left behind deeper tracks in her cheeks and her eyes were watering from the rain and the wind outside the tower. I spread me arms for her.

‘What’s the matter?’ she only asked.

I lowered my arms again. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine.’

‘I’ve missed you.’

‘Ah.’

I stepped back and suddenly did not dare to look her into the eyes again. ‘You haven’t told me anything about your travels lately,’ said I.

‘What does it matter?’ she replied. ‘You know that things change, don’t you? What I do at the other side of the sea has nothing to do with you.’

‘But you had promised me to take me with you one day! Wouldn’t we go seek that star together?’

‘Is that why you have called me back?’ she asked, a little bit angry this time. ‘Couldn’t you think about my life? In this tower, you want me! The world in which I want to live has nothing to do with you.’

‘How can you say that?’ I asked, bewildered. ‘How can you say that, after everything -’

‘Things change,’ she said again, flatly. ‘Did you really think that forever actually did mean for always?’

‘What is it that you want, then?’ I asked.

She said: ‘It would have been far easier for us both if you had just forgotten me.’

‘Don’t say that!’ I yelled. ‘Surely, that can’t be anything but a lie? Say it is a lie!’ I called her name. Three, four, five times.

She remained silent.

I went on: ‘God, why am I calling you like this? If only I had not given you a name, all those years ago. Then you would still have only been a part of me. It’s my fault. I wanted to seperate you from me, and that I did.’

‘I’m grown up now,’ she replied finally. ‘It’s time that I become that individual that I wanted to be years ago.’

‘And what about all the promises, then? That you would take me with you to the other side of the sea, that we’d search for that star together, that you and I would be together always - can you break all those? Can you deceive me so?’

‘You’re the one that has deceived me!’ cried the girl. She clawed with her fingers to her chest. ‘You have given me nothing but a stone heart, that cannot feel and cannot burn, even if I had wanted it so!’

‘That’s not true,’ I mumbled weakly. ‘I’ve never meant you like that.’

‘Then what can it do?’ she called. ‘What can a stone heart do, if not feel or love?’

I lowered my eyes. My own heart was burning. ‘It can break...’

‘You have made me incomplete. I can only break. So let me go - forget about me. Don’t be so foolish as to keep me here, because I cannot feel and will never bring you joy.’

‘I can’t let you go,’ I mumbled. ‘I have made you.’

‘Aha!’ she answered. ‘No wonder that you have given me wings of stone! For what stone can truly fly?’

‘I’ve wanted you to be able to fly. And to return again.’

‘Well then,’ said the girl of stone. ‘If you can’t set me free, you’ll never hold me imprisoned again, either.’
Like a bird in a free fall, she let herself drop from off the windowstill. Her wings, pressed tightly to her back, caught no wind underneath them.

I held my breath, but could not close my eyes as she fell off the rocks.

At the edge of the sea, I saw the fragments fall apart.

***