The lighthouse had taught Jonah precision but not possibility. Every dusk he lit the wick, checked the prism, and logged the weather in the same careful hand.
Then one pale morning a green bottle clinked against the rocks below the tower. Inside was a letter, folded three times, sealed with wax the color of bruised plums.
He read it once for the words, once for the tremor in them, and once for the line he could not set down:
That evening, with the storm lamp buzzing at his shoulder, he wrote back. By dawn, the light he had kept for passing ships had turned inward and mapped a path out for himself.













