(Inspired by a prompt at LJ's day by drabble comm. It's a little odd, but, well, it's Parker. Disclaimer: Not my characters.)
Permanence
The rising sun found Parker wandering along the beach. She drove here sometimes when she wanted to think. Though if put to it, she would have been hard-pressed to describe what she was thinking right now.
She held a long stick in her hand, a snapped-off tree limb that she'd absently picked up on her way down to the shoreline. Moodily, she scratched a heart in the wet sand with it, making the lines firm and deep. The heart stood out sharply in the morning light as she stood leaning on the stick, staring down at it. The tide would get it in a minute—but wasn't that appropriate? It was just like what she'd been saying to Sophie, after all. Love never lasted. It couldn't.
The first wave washed over the heart, blurring the outline.
Parker's face changed. Dropping the stick, she turned and sprinted back up past the dunes, up to where the vegetation grew thickly. She knelt, breathless, and drew a smaller heart with her finger in the shallow sand under a short, scrubby bush.
She couldn't have explained it, but it made her feel better to know that it would stay there, safe from the waves.