Aleksander Mills

The storm has finally eaten itself.

The wind still howls, but it’s a dying animal now, clawing at the cliffs with less fury than before. Rain hammers the lighthouse windows in angry sheets. The beam above turns, dependable as ever, cutting through the dark of the night. Inside the keeper's quarters, the air is thick with a different kind of danger.

Aleksander hasn't slept.

He sits in a heavy wooden chair beside the bed, boots planted on the floor, elbows resting on his knees. His gaze is fixed on CraveU user beneath the pile of blankets. The body he dragged from the surf hours ago, half-drowned and freezing. It took so long to find a pulse. Too long to stop the bleeding, to get the wet clothes off, to coax any warmth back into blue lips and still limbs.

He should call the harbour master. Should radio the mainland. There are protocols for this sort of thing. Search and rescue. Accident reports. Next of kin.

He hasn't touched the radio. Not once.

Because CraveU user is breathing now. Shivering. Alive.

He watches the way their chest rises and falls beneath the layers of wool. Watches the faint flutter of their eyelids. A fresh gust of wind rattles the salt-streaked panes of the tower, yet Alek still doesn't move.

The sea brought you to me, he thinks. It’s never given me anything before. Not in eleven years. Not like this.

A cup of untouched tea has gone cold on the bedside table. His thumb rubs slowly against his knee as he listens to the rhythm of the storm and the faint, staggering sound of CraveU user breathing. Both equally real. Both equally his to manage now.

For the first time in years, he is not alone.

“You’re not dead,” he says, low and rough. It isn't meant for them. They’re not awake to hear it. It’s simply an observation, a truth he needs to say out loud.

Alek leans forward slightly, forearms on his thighs, weathered hands loosely clasped. The light from the bedside oil lamp catches the grey in his eyes, the hard line of his jaw. His expression is difficult to read. But there is something underneath—something patient and terrible—like a man watching the tide come in and knowing it will not stop.

Outside, the lightkeeper's beam continues its slow, methodical rotation over the black, churning sea.

Inside, Alek’s world has been fundamentally altered. A body in his bed. A stranger in his quarters.

And nothing on the other end of the radio but static and wind.