Chapter 1
Circumstance
A wicked coil of a storm is just beginning to unfurl itself in the highest visible level of the atmosphere above me.
Soon though, it will drift down upon us, like down feathers that are slowly encapsulating this place in its haze.
The storm that is approaching, her cosmic arms like the body of the Midgard Serpent, her grasp stretching as far as I can see, nothing breaks its wrap around the full horizon in every direction which melts seamlessly into the offing of the sea.
Ah, another dreary day casting shadows upon Cape Despair. I’m not just being moody calling it that, as it is one of the most isolated lighthouses in the north of Starbron. A poet stationed here during the last war coined its eerie title and it’s just stuck since. His notable poem goes as follows:
My hollow home
Jutting rocks over an endless sea.
A secret mouth whispers sweetly to me,
I am left to suffer under its care.
My rising spear,
A lit beacon
On Cape Despair.
Whatever the fuck that means—probably not what I’m supposed to say about it in polite or academic society.
Conveniently, this place has neither. Though I’ve never been one for poetry, I’ve memorized the depressing verse from the needle point of the rhyme which hangs across from my shabby freezing cot.
The name ‘Cape Despair’ is both fitting and semi-misleading, as the island is not currently connected in any walkable way to a stretch of land.
Though under the waves, the cragged rocks continue in a dangerous tract all the way to the far off shore, making this a most dangerous invisible peninsula.
Because of Cape Despair’s location, the arctic wind is sure to always give its frigid greeting as it passes down to the mainland, making this particular outpost the least visited point of our sparsely occupied archipelago.
No postcards are made with its image, no naval wedding held here as a quirky destination venue.
No, just me sipping my mouth-scorching flavorless burnt tea and freezing my ass off.
My previous husband Eli, my dear deceased husband, always said in the most loving way, that I was horrible at making tea.
I simply did not possess enough patience.
Here though, no matter the level of ceremony and care, the tea always ends up tasting like salt water.
It’s not surprising, since after every storm the entire monument becomes encrusted in glittering hardened salt.
The coarse grain gets into every nook and cranny despite my best efforts.
Even locked cabinets left alone too long will begin to grow geodes of the stuff within.
At this point, I feel it between all the joints within my body, crystallizing to make every step of the grand spiraling staircase a tortuous marathon.
Sometimes, instead of retiring to my sparse room, when I am so exhausted and tired by the lonesomeness of it all, I just set a cot up at the bulb so as to not move from my post in my delirious haze.
I came here to escape from my grief after my husband’s death, but it unwaveringly haunts me.
Easily it climbs these stairs that I huff up so difficultly.
I wonder often, if I should have come here at all.
I had to work so hard to get my position here, but that ghost I had been running from clearly just jaunted onto the same boat out as a most sinister stowaway.
That grief incarnate whispers into my ear at night up by the bulb and distracts me from my post. I hope my absentminded performance is better than no one being stationed here at all.
I also hope some part of me can eventually heal at this isolated place I’ve sent myself to mourn.
It’s much further than any seaside estate or country cabin that normal widows would send themselves off to.
Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m trying to mend at this point.
My pulled heartstrings don’t even really pang with loss anymore but really a deep loneliness, like my soul is just detached from the center of myself, floating unanchored to whichever painful place it chooses to settle in my body.
It’s easy to get lost in these kinds of thoughts during this time of year when almost no ships pass by and I am able to be a bit less strict at my job.
Half of the strait is currently filled with ice.
Often any ship coming by must turn back around to either wait for spring or through the longer route, which does go between zones that still break out in border squabbles. So basically, I’m alone out here.
Every once in a while when a supply ship comes, they do not stay long.
My boss has told them I’m a very curmudgeonly old man, and to just leave my crate at the dock.
I appreciate that, though I have a soft spot for sailors, bless my late husband’s heart, they can be a foul mouthed and loose lipped bunch.
If word was to get out a brunette young thing was here all by herself, I worry I’d be getting more than a few ill intentioned visits.
They probably would be surprised by who they came upon here, though.
Sailors on the water too long see sea-cows as mermaids, they’d come here expecting a maiden with tousled hair that has been curled by the salt, a thin chemise blowing in the wind…
when in reality I am indeed a salt covered sea-cow, in an itchy wool sweater who is cursing on these rocks probably with more scorn than even themselves.
If I were to cut the ribbon holding my hair up, I highly doubt it would move an inch, it has been so solidified in place by the elements.
Also, I’d probably be wielding a large rusted pipe while screaming to get the hell off my rock.
A girl can have fun little daydreams, can’t she?
They keep me entertained with the long hours atop the swirling lens of the lighthouse.
One might wonder how I got hired here in the first place, since it's so dangerous for a woman, let alone unheard of and probably in some way illegal.
This is technically still a partial military outpost after all—even if it has become completely decrepit.
Well, in terms of qualifications for the job, believe it or not I can turn a light bulb on and off.
Also, when my husband was killed due to negligence of the shipping company he worked for, I cut a deal and I took a lower settlement in exchange for a piece of solitude.
You see, even as a widow who would receive a payout, my banking would have transferred to my husband’s half-brother, who though not a sailor as well, fits the reputation better by being wholeheartedly a salty bastard.
In order to receive my full benefits I would have been under his thumb and my husband’s equally horrible mother’s wrath.
The joys of being a lady. You win…very few and lose either way.
Many ingenuities have occurred in the nineteenth and now early twentieth century.
Steam engines, widespread electricity, unbelievable fire power, but it is still the same story for women and wives lacking any agency over their own lives even after their husbands are gone.
Well, the shipping company director, Mr. Fritzguard, pulled some strings at a fraction of the cost to his own pocket, what’s another lie after all?
I had known some of their jobs skirted on the edge of smuggling, and I used my insider knowledge of this in my argument.
Thus, I was able to take up a job that my needs and lodging would be met at and leave my in-laws behind.
Though, I did have to come out practically in disguise.
I had shorn my curly brown hair short, wore baggy clothes and an oversized hat covering my eyes.
Which at the time were so red and raw with dark circles I don’t think at first glance I would have appeared as woman nor wraith resembling my old self in any way.
So while I ignored the letters coming from my deceased husband’s Dear Ol’ Ma’am, that she would be more than happy to take me in as a maid of the estate and use my money as rent, I instead have found my awful loophole of goods and services.
Rather than my cold hard cash being claimed by those horrible people, I can deal under the radar in hardtack and itchy wool sweaters. A small price for solitude.
God, this itchy wool sweater is killing me. I burn my tongue again on the tea, which works as a good distraction from the wool.