Lighthouse
Dreams.
Her dreams were like honeycomb.
Like those clouds that look like tunnels of honeycomb in the skies.
And her dreams were like clouds. Floating, fleeting, fluffy and torrential.
God is in the rain. The Godds are in the rains. Which was it now? Was it one or many of them?
She could not remember.
She woke, on occasion and took in her surroundings.
She was on a beach.
She was on a beach surrounded by hills and mountains.
If she looked to the right, she could see a lighthouse.
Long deserted.
But it would flash at will.
She would be on the beach in darkness. Moon and stars the only light.
Night after night of relentless darkness.
And then the lamp in the lighthouse would begin to turn and flash.
Slowly. Unevenly. Like someone pushed it around the room.
Some of the windows were broken in the lighthouse.
And some were intact.
One time in a lightening storm, she thought she saw a face at one of the broken windows.
It was looking back down the beach.
It was looking at her.
She had stood, staring back at it.
Transfixed by shock and fear, she had not known what to do.
She had fled the beach and hidden, shivering and muttering to herself until daylight.
Every night noise made her jump and whimper.
When day came she armed herself with a stout branch. Good for clubbing. She walked one hour to the lighthouse.
She stayed in the bush and did not venture out of its cover.
She waited, silent and tense. But she heard nothing, saw nothing.
But on her way back down to the beach she felt eyes watching her.
It took every ounce of her control not to run madly away.
There were two Webs operating on this world.
The result of the botched anchoring attempts of two warring worlds new to such endeavors.
To the same, but completely different beach, the town watchman would come.
It was his town's lighthouse.
The land where the lighthouse stood, stuck far out into the sea, and up high. It had been deserted for a long time now. But still, the town was full of talk of the wizard who had been imprisoned in it all those years ago.
His ghost still pushed the giant lamp around, they said.
Not his ghost, he! Said others, who believed, because he was a wizard, he was immortal and still living.
He waits for his whores, the ones descended from those who had imprisoned him said. His whores who will bring us our destruction.
They did not like whores, and felt women should trade sex for hearth, home, co-dependence and children, instead of cold hard cash. It was how they differentiated between their women and their worthiness.
Women who did not trade sex for anything other than their own enjoyment of it, they feared most of all. Especially those who read and seemed independent. There was a town order that such creatures be shot on sight and burned on suspicion.
The same orders applied to those who preferred the company of cats.
They were distrustful of cats, perhaps sensing at some instinctive neanderthal level that the cats were smarter than they were.
They were descended from people who imprisoned wizards in lighthouses, after all. They had not grown any additional brain cells over the generations, and were not overly bright.
And they were right about the cats, who were indeed, much smarter than they were.
The watchman rather liked cats. He fed the stray ones when he was certain no-one else was looking. Apart from that, he did not talk of it.
The watchman would come to the beach only when it was his turn.
There were several watchmen who did this. And each would often go several days before it was their turn again.
Some forgot all about it. And others would come to have a look even when it was not their go. But this particular watchman remained skittish between his turns, and did not go near the beach during this time.
The journey there would have been too much for him.
It was a magnificent beach, but it was not a beach for pleasure.
It was a beach for watching.
It was the beach where the invaders would come.
And when they came, it would be his turn. The others laughed when he said it, but he knew this to be true in the depths of his bones.
On this particular day, the sun shone, but not in an overly convincing way.
There was a bite to the air, a chill. Clouds formed themselves into whimsical shapes in the sky. And then dispersed. As if suddenly bored by their own creations.
He reached the beach and took his place, sitting down on the grassy embankment, and looked ahead.
The great creator spirit of the area opined happily in its rock creation, a mere mile or so off shore.
The sea meandered lazily in to the white sand, small waves of dancing horses breaking over the sand bars.
He looked to his left.
They were misty mountains today. Blue. Indistinct. Cloaked from view.
He looked to his right.
The lighthouse stood high and out to sea.
Wispy clouds moved steadily across the pale blue sky.
What was that! The watchmen scuttled backwards. He had seen a face at one of the lighthouse broken windows, he was sure of it.
And again!
The watchman jumped to his feet. He wrung his hands and hopped from one foot to the other. He began to shake violently.
It came suddenly into view. It had been hidden around the other side of the lighthouse.
All he could see was wings.
Huge, monstrous wings.
It was alone. It was a scout.
They had come.
He started at it for a moment. This single winged being moving slowing over the sea, towards him.
And for the first time in his adult life, in the sheer terror of the moment, he felt at peace.
On the run back to the town, feelings of elation washed over him.
By the time he fell to his knees in the town square, proclaiming his news, he was smiling fit to burst.
As the town broke into hysterics around him, he stayed in the town square grinning. He sat there for hours, his ankles crossed, his arms around his knees, his hand loosely clasped on his wrist. And he grinned.
He stayed there until nightfall.
And when they had closed and secured the city gates against all comers, he got up and paid his toll, and walked out of them.
He went to the beach.
There were thousands of them.
The wizard's whores had come.
He walked to the lighthouse cliff.
He walked right up to the edge of the cliff and kept walking.
He wanted to feel the sweet rush of air, and the warm beating wings and hot flesh catch him and enfold him.
Everybody thought him a fool.