The Lighthouse Keeper

The rain had been falling for three days without pause when you first arrived at the old lighthouse on the edge of the grey northern coast, and as you set down your travel-worn bag upon the damp wooden floor you could not shake the feeling that the keeper who had written to you, in that strange looping hand, had been expecting someone else entirely, someone older perhaps, or someone who already knew the secret that the light was built to hide from the ships and from the town and from the world, and now here you stand, dripping and uncertain, at the foot of a spiral stair that climbs into a darkness no lamp of yours will ever fully answer.

You climb. The stair coils tight; salt wind hisses through a cracked pane.

You wait by the door instead, listening. Footsteps, slow, descend toward you.

At the top, the lamp is dark and cold. A logbook lies open to today's date.

Mara -- the keeper -- meets your eyes, kind and bone-tired. 'You came,' she says. 'I half hoped you wouldn't. But I knew someone would answer the letter.'

You light the lamp yourself. Far out, a ship corrects its course. You stayed. -- ENDING: KEEPER

You turn and descend, back into the rain, the secret unkept behind you. -- ENDING: LEAVE