The old lighthouse keeper, Silas, squinted at the churning grey sea.
Fog, thick as pea soup, had
rolled in hours ago, muffling the cries of gulls and swallowing the horizon whole. He’d seen a lot
of fog in his seventy years on this lonely spit of rock, but this felt different, heavier, almost…
expectant.
He checked the lamp, its beam a steadfast yellow eye in the gloom. Routine was his comfort,
the rhythmic sweep a promise against the chaos of the ocean. But tonight, the rhythm felt off-
kilter, a slow, dragging beat against his own quickening pulse.
A faint sound, thin and reedy, cut through the fog’s silence. Not a foghorn, not the wind. It was
almost like… singing? Silas strained his ears, his weathered hand cupping his ear. The sound
grew slightly, a melancholic melody carried on the damp air.
He climbed down the winding stairs, the stone cold beneath his worn boots. He opened the
heavy oak door, the salty air stinging his face. The singing was clearer now, seemingly coming
from the water’s edge.
He raised his lantern, its beam cutting a small circle in the swirling mist. And then he saw it.
A figure sat on the rocks, half-submerged by the restless waves. Its back was to him, long dark
hair flowing over its shoulders, blending with the seaweed clinging to the stones. The singing, a
haunting lament, seemed to rise from the very depths of the sea.
Silas, a man who’d faced down storms and loneliness, felt a prickle of something he hadn’t felt
in decades: fear. He took a hesitant step forward.
“Hello?” His voice sounded small and swallowed by the fog.
The figure stopped singing. Slowly, it turned. In the lantern light, Silas saw a face both beautiful
and sorrowful, with eyes that seemed to hold the vastness and the mystery of the ocean.
“Lost,” the figure whispered, its voice like the sighing of waves. “I am lost.”
Silas, despite the unease that clung to him, felt a surge of pity. He’d rescued shipwrecked
sailors before, but this… this was different.
“Come,” he said, his voice gruff but kind. “Come up to the light. You’ll be safe there.”
The figure hesitated, then with a slow, graceful movement, rose from the rocks. Water streamed
from its form as it stepped onto the shore. Its feet made no sound on the stone.
Silas held out his hand, the lantern light illuminating the path. The figure’s hand, cool and
smooth as sea glass, took his. Together, the old lighthouse keeper and the mysterious stranger
moved towards the steadfast beam of the light, leaving the whispering fog and the restless sea
behind them. The singing had stopped, but the silence that followed felt just as profound,
holding a story yet untold within its depths.
Unexplored depths she yelled.
She was 20 years of age and cunning as a wolf prowling the forests of mankind with a kind of
ferosty none other could repeat.
BANG
BANG
The shots rung out in her head
BANG
And then all but silence.
She ran.
He ran.
BANG.
