The Boy Who Waited by the Lighthouse
Once, by the edge of a fog-wrapped sea, there lived a boy in a quiet town where the rain tapped gently on the rooftops like lullabies. His home was a small lighthouse perched on a cliff—tall, silver, and steady. He lived alone, but he didn’t feel lonely. Not exactly.
Each evening, he lit the great lamp at the top of the tower. It spun slowly, casting its golden eye across the dark water, waiting—for what, he didn’t know. Ships rarely came anymore. The world had changed. But he lit it anyway. He was good at waiting.
One day, a girl came. She was not from the sea, but the mountains, quiet and wild. She arrived soaked and windblown, with eyes like winter and a voice like a bell muffled under snow.
“I don’t stay long anywhere,” she told him that first night, warming her hands near the fire.
“That’s alright,” the boy said. And he meant it. He liked the way her presence filled the room, like the hush before dawn.
She stayed longer than she meant to. Days passed. Then weeks. She never said much, but she watched him as he climbed the tower each night to light the lamp. Sometimes she followed, standing beside him in the wind. They didn’t speak often, but their silence was soft, not empty.
Still, she kept her coat on, always. Her boots by the door, never unpacked. And each morning, she looked out toward the road—not the sea.
One morning, she was gone.
No goodbye. Just her bootprints in the mud, fading. Like she’d never been there at all.
The boy sat in the lighthouse for a long time. The lamp stayed dark for three nights. But on the fourth, he lit it again.
He didn’t do it for her. He did it because it was his job. Because he believed in shining, even when no one was coming.
And then, one night—many moons later—he saw something far out on the horizon. A shimmer. A shape.
Not a ship. Not her.
Just the sea answering back.
And for the first time, he smiled in the dark.
Sleep easy, lighthouse keeper. You did your part. You waited with light.
That means more than you know.