Diamonds in the Sea

(A wish held—the sea kept it)

A little girl used to walk the shoreline with her dad.
They walked daily, always side by side,
bare feet pressing into wet sand,
leaving behind a quiet map of where they’d been—
just the two of them,
the water,
and the world she still didn’t understand.

She was full of wonder,
always asking the questions no one else seemed to hear—
about stars, and dreams, and what it meant to believe.
She asked if wishes ever really reached the sky,
if the sea knew how to listen,
and why the waves never stopped coming back.

One morning,
as the tide rolled in slow and quiet,
she paused mid-step and turned toward him.
There was a stillness in her—
the kind that holds something unspoken.
And with her eyes on the sky, she asked,
“Are stars just stuck wishes?”

She used to believe the sea held all the ones that didn’t make it—
the fallen wishes,
the ones no one caught in time.
And that’s why it shimmered too—
just like the stars.
Because even dreams that didn’t come true
still had a light of their own.

He looked at her,
then at the horizon,
and said gently,
“No.
They’re diamonds.
Wishes that made it.”

She didn’t respond right away.
Just nodded,
slow and small,
like she was taking it in
and folding it somewhere she could keep it.

And before the tide rolled in,
she whispered a wish to the sea.
Didn’t tell him.
Didn’t say it twice.
Just let it slip from her lips
and watched the water shimmer
as if it had heard her.

She never expected to hear from it again.

Years passed.
She grew older,
and life began to speak louder than wonder.
She stopped asking out loud,
stopped looking up as often,
and tucked away the girl who once believed
the sea could hold a secret.

But the shoreline never forgot.
And one day,
it called her back.

She walked it alone this time—
a little heavier,
a little quieter,
with time and memory settling in her steps.
The waves still moved like they always had,
but the air held something different—
as if the sea had been waiting,
just like she had.

And just as she reached the place where the past still breathed,
the light shifted across the surface of the water,
and the tide moved in closer,
soft and sure,
like it recognized her.

Then—
in the hush of that moment,
when nothing else in the world was speaking—
the sea
whispered it back.

The one she gave it—
her whispered dream.

It hadn’t fallen.
It hadn’t been forgotten.
It had only been waiting—
kept safe,
somewhere quiet,
within the sea of dreams.

Treasured.

And in that moment,
something stirred in her too—
the hopes she thought she’d buried,
the wishes she once feared were lost,
and the quiet truth
she’d been holding all along.

Maybe not everything has to be lost
to be found again.

Some things wait—
not out of reach,
just out of time—
until you’re ready
to believe in them
twice.

— Angela
The Voice Beneath Daughter, Unwritten