Planetfurry BBS

[Thane]

I'm not sure exactly where this story is trying to go... but it's an idea I've had rattling around for a bit. Lemme know what you all think, so far.


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The old lighthouse keeper sighed wistfully. It was raining again. The soft pitter-patter of raindrops ran off the windows in tiny streams of liquid crystal. A gentle breeze rattled the shutters of his little room, slowly flapping them back and forth, left open upon his desk. He made no move to close them.
The fire crackled in its meager hearth. Occasionally a raindrop would make it past the flue, spattering in the coals. A pile of driftwood lay close by, to supply the blaze. The warm scent of burning hickory filled the room.
At his little desk, the old man paused, pen in hand, caught by the gentle nudge of a long forgotten memory upon his mind. The letter to his granddaughter could wait a moment. He leaned back in his chair, deep in thought.
She always came and left in the rain…
Thunder rumbled in the distance, notifying him of an eventual increase in the intensity of the storm. Judging by the sound, he had about fifteen minutes before he would be forced to close the shutters.
The scent of fresh seaweed and emerald eyes filled his senses, though the room was empty, save for him. Almost as if in a dream, his pen went back to the letter. “Dearest granddaughter, the sparkle in this old man’s eye, my little Victoria. I have a story to tell you that is most strange. Though it is the absolute truth, you may find it too fantastic to believe. No matter. Keep this tale, as a fond memory of me when I am gone, and pass it on to those children of yours which I know are not far distant in the future.”


Fifty Years Ago……

Tobias Weatherby hated his name, much as he hated his family’s occupation, and for similar reasons. The two were related, after all. For generations, the Weatherbys had owned the small spit of land upon which the lighthouse rested, and thus were charged with the oversight of that lighthouse. The name was given to his great-great grandfather, in much the same way that “Smith” was commonly used as a surname among blacksmiths in the middle ages. An immigrant, Nathanial Weatherby had abandoned his old last name in favor of that given to him by his new homeland. What that original name had been was lost to time.
The lighthouse itself was old, older even than Nathanial's legacy. No one remembered who exactly had built it, but what scant records remained from two hundred and fifty years ago mentioned its presence. Older records had been lost, due to fire.
Built of stone, the workmanship shown in that small tower was nothing short of incredible. Double-walled, with crawl-spaces between the walls, it was thickly insulated against the vagaries of the ocean's storms. When it was wired for electricity seventy-three years ago, not many modifications were needed, as the crawl-spaces served adequately for running conduit. Indoor plumbing was a similar affair, with the pipes simply tacked to the walls in the crawlspaces. The small passages served as storerooms to boot.
Sixty-eight feet tall and inches, “Old Glimmer,” as it was known, was an ugly thing. Not like the red-and-white painted lighthouses of postcard fame, this structure was composed externally of bare stone. Worn, the stone still showed the care of skilled craftsmen – even after centuries of abuse heaped on it by the seawater, not even a slip of paper could be inserted between the stones. Nowhere was there a single speck of mortar or concrete; the stones had been cut that precisely. But it had obviously been designed with utility foremost in mind, rather than aesthetics.
Tobias' mother was attempting to bring some color to the gray heap of rock with a flower garden, but was meeting with limited success. The shore simply did not contain the proper soil for pansies, and her multiple attempts at fertilizing the garden were invariably followed within a week by a sudden storm, washing away her efforts.
The lenses of the light had been replaced only twice in the known history of the lighthouse. The first replacement came with the upgrade to an electric beam. The second replacement occurred within a year, when the first was found lacking in durability and required near-weekly repair.
All this mattered little to Tobias. The ten-year-old boy knew all of this, and found it singularly boring. To him, it was just an old building, gray and, like Dorothy's Kansas, totally devoid of anything interesting.


--To be continued?