The Lighthouse at Elgin Bay
Every evening, just before the sun folded itself into the sea, old Marek climbed the ninety-two steps to the top of the lighthouse. He had counted them so many times that his feet knew the number better than his head did. The lamp needed lighting, the glass needed wiping, and the little town below needed to know that someone, somewhere, was still awake and watching over them.
Marek had kept the light for forty-one years. In that time he had seen storms that bent the horizon, mornings so calm the water looked like poured glass, and one strange winter when the whole bay froze and the fishing boats sat trapped like toys in a cake. Through all of it, the light turned. Round and round, patient and sure, drawing a slow circle of gold across the dark.
People in the town liked to say the lighthouse was lonely, but Marek never felt that way. He had the gulls, who argued with him about the weather. He had the wind, which carried voices from far-off ships. And he had his notebook, where each night he wrote a single sentence about the day — nothing grand, just a small true thing, so that no evening would ever be entirely forgotten.
On the last night of autumn, a small boat lost its way in the fog. Marek could not see it, but he could hear the faint knock of an oar against the hull, somewhere out in the grey. So he did the only thing a keeper can do: he trimmed the wick a little higher, leaned close to the great warm lens, and whispered, "This way. Come on now. This way home."
The boat found the shore just after midnight, and a shivering fisherman climbed onto the rocks, alive and astonished. He never learned the keeper's name, and Marek never asked for thanks. He simply climbed back down his ninety-two steps, opened his notebook, and wrote the sentence for that day: Tonight the light was enough.
— written & drawn by Teodor