He watched the lights dancing on the surface on the water, sparkling and lapping at the sandy shore. Shinji closed his eyes and listened to the waves washing up to his feet and back again, almost willing them to drag him with the current and into the deep abyss.
Almost.
Someone was calling him. He turned around, not smiling, but his expression softer. She stood straight, her arms crossed and her face haggard. The years had given her flaming red hair streaks of silver, like smoke from a chimney. Her body is untouched and will remain that way.
They had both sat at this shore before, as children might have done. For some time, only their voices existed in the void of the world. But they started to hear more of them, voices that were not theirs, voices of the past.
The red of the sea would slowly ebb away like a wound, the taint of blood no longer as pungent in the beginning.
He pats the sand next to him and she walks over, sitting down, her fingers nearly touching his.
She smiled.
He smiled.
Any place could be paradise, as long as one had the will to live.