Courage
"The lighthouse does not argue with the storm"
The Wound
The storm hits, and the sea throws itself against your foundation like it wants you to justify your existence. You have no argument. The storm was here before you and will outlast you. It does not care if you are brave. You climb anyway. The iron railing burns cold. Salt crusts your lashes. The door at the top has swollen in its frame – you put your shoulder into it, and the wind nearly takes you when it gives. You trim the wick while your hand shakes. Kerosene sharp in your nose, salt on your lips. You strike the match anyway.
The Path
The sulfur flares. The flame catches – for one breath you are what you came to be. In your first storm, your hands shake so hard you can barely strike the match. You grip the railing, mistaking panic for resolve. But storms pass. By the hundredth, your hands move without asking permission. Your hands move: wick, glass, oil. The order stopped mattering years ago. What matters is that your fingers have forgotten how to shake. Then comes the night the shaking returns. You have outlived the storm. This tremor rises from inside the hand itself. Why am I still here? The light will fail eventually. No one is coming to relieve your watch. The sea has swallowed every ship you might have saved – or so it seems. You are no longer certain any of them were real. You stand on the stairs and feel the full weight of it: a life spent tending a flame on a rock that does not know your name. The wind screams. Your legs do not move. No answer comes. Only the stairs, and the choice to climb them. Only this: you have been the light so long you no longer know how to be anything else. The self you have become – the one who does not let the light die – still argues for ascent. And you cannot unbecome that person without dying first. You climb. Your hands find the wick. The flame rises. The dark retreats. The night passes in salt and wind. You do not remember most of it. Dawn comes. You do not know if anyone saw. You know only that there was light where there might have been darkness.
The Shadow
But the light can fail – by drowning in the storm, or by walking away from it. He knows only one response to storms: force. He has the hands to prove it – scars from the rigging, a shoulder that never healed. He hears this storm and meets it the only way he knows. He abandons the lantern to hurl himself against the waves – fists raised, voice swallowed by wind. For a moment, chest-deep in the surge, his strength answers – the wave parts around him. The sea does not fight back. It simply closes over him – indifferent, unhurried, unimpressed by his fury. His last thought is triumph: I did not hide. He never understood that the light he abandoned was the fight. The lighthouse goes dark behind him. Three ships break on rocks they might have seen. The Unlit Keeper was twelve when he learnt what the sea takes. The water closing over his head. The hand he was holding that suddenly wasn't. He calculates the odds. The light will fail eventually, that no one will know whether he stayed or fled. Why should I go down with it? He descends the stairs, crosses the rocks at low tide, finds safety on the mainland. He lives a long life. He does everything right. Not one day passes without hearing the wind. He escaped the lighthouse. He never escaped the storm.
The Cut
What flame died while you rested?
COURAGE
The lighthouse does not argue with the storm
Courage
"The lighthouse does not argue with the storm"
The Wound
The storm hits, and the sea throws itself against your foundation like it wants you to justify your existence. You have no argument. The storm was here before you and will outlast you. It does not care if you are brave. You climb anyway. The iron railing burns cold. Salt crusts your lashes. The door at the top has swollen in its frame – you put your shoulder into it, and the wind nearly takes you when it gives. You trim the wick while your hand shakes. Kerosene sharp in your nose, salt on your lips. You strike the match anyway.
The Path
The sulfur flares. The flame catches – for one breath you are what you came to be. In your first storm, your hands shake so hard you can barely strike the match. You grip the railing, mistaking panic for resolve. But storms pass. By the hundredth, your hands move without asking permission. Your hands move: wick, glass, oil. The order stopped mattering years ago. What matters is that your fingers have forgotten how to shake. Then comes the night the shaking returns. You have outlived the storm. This tremor rises from inside the hand itself. Why am I still here? The light will fail eventually. No one is coming to relieve your watch. The sea has swallowed every ship you might have saved – or so it seems. You are no longer certain any of them were real. You stand on the stairs and feel the full weight of it: a life spent tending a flame on a rock that does not know your name. The wind screams. Your legs do not move. No answer comes. Only the stairs, and the choice to climb them. Only this: you have been the light so long you no longer know how to be anything else. The self you have become – the one who does not let the light die – still argues for ascent. And you cannot unbecome that person without dying first. You climb. Your hands find the wick. The flame rises. The dark retreats. The night passes in salt and wind. You do not remember most of it. Dawn comes. You do not know if anyone saw. You know only that there was light where there might have been darkness.
The Shadow
But the light can fail – by drowning in the storm, or by walking away from it. He knows only one response to storms: force. He has the hands to prove it – scars from the rigging, a shoulder that never healed. He hears this storm and meets it the only way he knows. He abandons the lantern to hurl himself against the waves – fists raised, voice swallowed by wind. For a moment, chest-deep in the surge, his strength answers – the wave parts around him. The sea does not fight back. It simply closes over him – indifferent, unhurried, unimpressed by his fury. His last thought is triumph: I did not hide. He never understood that the light he abandoned was the fight. The lighthouse goes dark behind him. Three ships break on rocks they might have seen. The Unlit Keeper was twelve when he learnt what the sea takes. The water closing over his head. The hand he was holding that suddenly wasn't. He calculates the odds. The light will fail eventually, that no one will know whether he stayed or fled. Why should I go down with it? He descends the stairs, crosses the rocks at low tide, finds safety on the mainland. He lives a long life. He does everything right. Not one day passes without hearing the wind. He escaped the lighthouse. He never escaped the storm.
The Cut
What flame died while you rested?