The storm had been crawling toward the coast all day—slow, steady, patient. Eleanor knew it would reach them by nightfall, and when it came, it came in full voice. Rain lashed the windows in jagged rhythms, wind clawed at the chimney like some ancient thing trying to get in, and lightning fractured the sky in sudden, blinding moments of truth.
She sat by the window in the old cottage, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, fingers curled around a chipped mug that steamed faintly in the flickering glow of the lantern. Outside, beyond the old glass pane, a figure stood alone. Motionless. Facing the sea.
He’d come every year on this day. Just as the storm broke.
She never spoke to him. No one in the village did. They whispered, of course. Said he was cursed. Or mad. Or mourning. The stories changed with the wind.
Eleanor didn’t care much for stories.
What she knew was this: he always arrived with the first rumble of thunder. He always stood in that same spot by the edge of the bluff. And he always left something behind—once a ribbon tied to a branch, once a stone etched with a name, once… a locket. She’d found it the morning after, years ago, half-buried in the wet grass. Inside: a faded photograph of a woman who looked exactly like her.
That had been the year her mother died.
Eleanor rose slowly, set the mug down, and lifted the lantern. The wind howled as she opened the door, nearly snatching it from its hinges. Rain kissed her cheeks like tears from a sky that remembered too much.
She didn’t speak. Just stood beside him.
He didn’t turn to look, but he knew she was there. And for the first time, he reached out—silent, rain-soaked fingers brushing the edge of her lantern’s light.
“I never meant to leave her,” he whispered, voice like gravel and ghosts.
“She waited anyway, Dad,” Eleanor replied.
And they stood together—two shadows at the edge of the world—while the storm raged, and the sea carried away everything that dared remain unspoken.
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