Nereid

Taps; empty taps lightly on the surface of the wet sand. Seawater flooding in to fill the divots that pressed into the shore from nowhere. One invisible step after another, forming a wandering path along the sea front.

The sun was less than dazzling, sitting under cozy swaths of grey candyfloss. The heavy steel hue of the sky was welcome to absent minds that roved the rocky beach. Birds small and black with large over-arching wings sailed over the quiet air. The breeze was so soft yet the air so still, it seemed the wind current was carried by the brush of those long black wings of shiny glass.

That salt that carried through the air stuck to the skin and clung to the hair. Damp and full of empty shells and rocky perches, the grey and pale beige sand was taken into the shallows by murky and slick bay waters.

Taps; empty taps continued over the rocks. Divots in the sand washed away to settle over mussels and sea grass. There she walked, seen only as the light barely shimmered. Invisible and real. She stood on the rocks, letting the lapping waves soothe her ever-wandering feet.

There she sat, upon a long black slate jutting into the fading bay sky. As the stars poked out and the water began to stain pale gold, she continued to shimmer. The stars outlined her fading memory; her hole-ridden sundress, her long pale blonde hair that turned to more silver than yellow in her gaining years, her young hands and light lips that curled as she faced the sea, and her face that was wiped away and impossible to recognize.

The oil of night dripped into the blue murky sky, and so she was ever so slightly more visible. The night sky wavered through her like transparent satin. The Lady by the Shoreline was beautiful, but memories of her real self were washed and dulled with the water.

There is no humanity left in what is just legend.
There's no lady left by twilight.

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ok ok so she was a beautiful lady of a small bay fishing town, but something happened and she ended up drowning in the bay. It gets to the point where only her father remembers her, and her ghost leaving footprints in the sand are just legend, but it's really her.
By the time her father dies, she's mainly forgotten except for the legend of her so she can't completely disappear. She has no face and she isn't really her anymore. It's a ghost of a ghost, you know?
She's experienced the pain of being forgotten, and losing herself completely. But she is still just an outline of just her memory.
She can only walk the same path every evening.
When one is that far gone, don't you begin to wonder?
Does she still feel the pain?
Is she even aware of where she is? Who she was?
Or is she really just a recording now.
A record replaying her ghost's footsteps forced by the legend?