Whether it was through sheer determination or some mystical power held within the lighthouse key in her pocket, Sally marched through the flooded village without breaking down under the storm's strikes. At first, she thought it was blind luck that no cluster of rubble or fragmenting wall tumbled into her path. Her mind flipped as a white-hot bolt of lightning tore through the trunk of a tree behind her, riving it apart with smoking charred scars. Magical or not, Sally knew she was living a charmed life, and hurried herself across the crumbling streets before the charm wore off.
Rushing was difficult in such poor light, yet Sally preferred not seeing the extent of the damage done to her home. The snatched glimpses that threw themselves at her feet revealed more than enough in their fallen walls, detached rooves, and drifting vehicles for her to fill in the intervals between the scenes. Her own feet sank too far beneath the murky waters for her to see, and the frigid cold that gripped her socks reminded her how poor her slip-on shoes were for fording streams. She made a note to ask for some boots next time she borrowed clothes from anybody.
As the light lingering over her head drew ever closer, a tinny rattle bled through the brief breaks between the wind's cries. Suddenly, the clang of metal against metal shocked the air. "Wasting my time! I've had enough!" a man bellowed, and Sally did not need to see him to know it was Damien, his clothes sealed to his body by rain. He ran a hand through his messy hair and looked through the porthole of the lighthouse's gate, body leaning towards the stairway into the tower.
Sally kept her distance from the man. "Folk aren't allowed in there," she said, one arm raised against the rain. "Especially not strangers."
"You again? I told you to stay out of this," Damien snapped, cooling as soon as she refused to flinch at his rage. "I know I'm not supposed to get in, but that didn't stop her. She's in there, I saw the keeper let her in!"
"Her name is Flick." One breath straightened Sally's posture, another carried her to the space between Damien and the gate, and a final puff of air gave her the words she needed to meet his eye. "If Flick gave you the camera, would you leave her alone?"
Damien's eye twitched as she spoke, yet if her words stoked his anger again, he tried hard to contain it. "After all this? No way. I want the camera and I want her to leave my sister's memory in peace. I never want to hear from her again!"
The cold key bit into Sally's thigh, yet she continued to leave it in her pocket. "What if you found out she and your sister really were friends?" she asked, tensing her muscles on the spot. "What if Flick's grief is real after all?"
A hiss sharp enough to slice through the storm left Damien's tongue. "That's ridiculous, it's all lies."
"But what if it's not?" Sally pushed off the gate and towards Damien, her face turned up to his. "If she was Miranda's friend like she says, she should be allowed to miss her too, don't you think?"
After a long, pained sigh, Damien shrugged. "Fine. If, somehow, she was so close to my sister without me or anybody else in our family knowing about it, then...yes, I guess she would deserve that." He ran a hand over his stubble, his eyes narrowing as if in discomfort. "Doesn't matter, though. She's locked herself up in this stupid lighthouse, and I doubt she's coming out soon."
Sally stared up at the light overhead, hovering alone over little more than frothing waves and impassable sea rocks. "End of the road," she muttered to herself as she held out the key in front of her. Turning to catch Damien's eye, she tried to keep a soft smile on against the rough winds. "Maybe this is just the place you both needed."
As Damien caught sight of the key, Sally unlocked the gate and stepped onto the lighthouse path, holding the passage open. He followed her through without a word, and together they mounted the steps into the lighthouse.
A treacle-like gloom persisted through the cramped spiralling staircase. All the way around, a thin layer of moss crept along the gaps between the bricks to snag at Sally's fingertips as she squeezed up the tower. The stone steps bore a thin layer of slick moisture that loosened her footing as she climbed, and overhearing Damien's frustrated muttering behind her offered little reassurance. Relief eased the weight on her shoulders at the sight of the door to the tower's interior ahead of her.
"Flick?" Sally called out as she pushed past the door onto the dry oakwood flooring. Like her home's living room, the space contained more furnishings than it was able to comfortably hold. A soot-smudged wood burning stove still smouldered with recently extinguished heat, the meticulous lines of its ornate cast-iron body undermined by the coiled flue pipe worming its way into the wall behind it. Beside it, a leather armchair sat alone by a brass-trimmed chest of drawers, the compact wireless radio on its topside skewed away from a seated listener. Across the room, a single bed protruded from the wall into the room's centre, the chest at its foot rattling as Sally stepped over it. A small shaving mirror by the bed exposed how much dirt marked her face and arms from the storm, yet the washbasin it partnered had no faucet to pour any relief from.
Damien glared at the tartan rug that covered much of the oak flooring. "She's not in here," he said, turning his attention to the cabinets at the top of the walls. Taking hold of one handle, he suddenly shook his head and looked over his shoulder at Sally. "Do you think she's hiding upstairs?"
He received no answer, however, as Sally stood transfixed by the console by the far door. It was common knowledge that Old Norton's radio transceiver was antiquated at best, yet the device that greeted her eye was not only older than herself, but her parents as well. Across the front plate of its steel casing, dot lights flashed like tiny traffic lights in response to the shuddering of the needles along their colour-coded meters. The right-hand side held more dials than she could dream up explanations for, and the microphone rose high enough from its broad pedestal for her to grasp without stooping.
Sally brushed the top of the large cube-shaped speaker as her eyes glazed over. Not long ago, the box at her fingertips had shared what could be her father and Ronan's last words, and she had not heard them. Their parting at the cottage's doorstep had occurred without a sound, even as the urge to wish them well had raged like a wildfire in her gut. She had not spoken up then, and now they likely lay unconscious in a wrecked fishing boat beyond her voice's reach. She would not make the same mistake twice.
Suddenly, the creak of the door by Sally's side pierced her ear. "Let me go up first," she stuttered, rain droplets flinging from her body as she threw herself into the doorway to block Damien's path. "She came in here to get away from you, remember? Seeing you first will just spook her."
The chill air that fanned through the doorway peppered Sally's back with icy needles, ushering Damien towards the comfort of the stove's warm dregs. "Whatever," he spat, rubbing his pale hands together. "I know she's up there. If she's not down here quickly, I'm coming up anyway, however much it freaks her out."
His words loomed over Sally as she walked up the second staircase, grating against her thoughts like the rough brick pricked along her fingers. The journey was longer than the entrance to the lighthouse, and waves of dizziness pulsed at her vision's periphery no matter how much she stopped and shook her head to dispel them. She muttered her relief that it was Old Norton who had to navigate these steps every day and not her, then carried on climbing.
At the top of the spiral, a small steel door pinned itself to the wall as a stream of bright light bolted into the stairway. Dazzled by the glare, Sally dragged herself along the wall, the clatter of metal scaffolding under her feet barely warning her in time to dodge the handrail that grazed her gut. Sally's eyes adjusted in time to step over the raised step of the metal doorway and into the glowing heart of the lighthouse.
Dark spots melted away from Sally's sights to reveal the unpainted, unmoving steel flooring of the lantern room. Rust-flecked holes in the floor revealed the tangled cables strewn across the length and breadth of the room, as well as the shadowed twists of the staircase that descended so far below her. Black metal beams spanned along the outer windows, criss-crossing them into a glass web too thick and rain-smeared to see clearly through. At the core of it all, a beacon the size of Sally's head emitted a clean white light that, even after letting her eyes adjust, she could not face directly.
"Sal? No way!" Flick's voice came from the far side of the beacon, yet by the time Sally reacted, the girl had slid along the handrail to her side. "How'd you get here? Did you hop the fence to get in? How'd you even know where I was?"
The tepid damp that coated the front of Flick's clothing was no deterrent as Sal threw her arms around her, burying her face in Flick's shoulder. "You're okay!" she cried, breathing in the thin scent of wild berries that persisted beneath the damp stench. "Even after I found Mr Norton, I was so worried something had happened to you in the storm. But you're okay, thank goodness!"
Flick kept hold of Sally's shoulders as she looked over her friend's soaked clothes. "Looks like you should've worried a little more about yourself," she said as she brushed Sally's hair out of her face to unveil the cut to her forehead. "For my very own personal superhero, you can be super dumb sometimes, you know?"
"It runs in the family, I think," Sally answered, losing herself in the warmth that Flick's gaze, Flick's hold, Flick's company never failed to stoke within her. The feeling had been another element of Flick's many-layered mystery until now, when the girl had appeared in the lantern room's soulless metal cage and solved that puzzle in a single move. Whether huddled together into the tightest space or divided by an impassable wall, Flick noticed every shred of Sally that she discovered. Her wild impulses, far from plain irresponsible fun, were Flick's way of finding one-on-one time to get to know Sally further, deeper, fuller than anybody had before.
Smiling in the heat of the girl's eyes, Sally ran a hand along Flick's back, drawing lines between her shoulders. Suddenly, her nails stumbled over a thin bump, and she looked down to see the camera bag at Flick's waist. The blood drained from Sally's face. No matter where they had gone or what they had done together, she and Flick had never been truly alone. Every minute Sally had spent with Flick, she had been standing partly in someone's unseen shadow. "Listen, Flick, I need to tell you something," Sally said, taking a tone several levels lower than the one she had intended to use when she arrived.
Letting her hands slip loose of Sally's shoulders, Flick clutched the bag close to her side. "Fire away, bud. I'm listening."
"Damien's downstairs."
"You brought Damien?" Flick stumbled back along the rail, her free hand clenched around the steel as it fought to keep her upright. "What the heck, Sal? You've heard him, he hates my guts! Heck, he hates my guts' guts!"
The frown on Flick's face cut Sally deep enough to rack her chest, sending her heart racing. "I don't think he hates you," she said, flinching as Flick's incredulous eyes pierced her. "He just doesn't understand why you're doing any of this. He told me that, in all the time you and Miranda knew each other, she never once told him that you were even friends, let alone more."
Flick raised an eyebrow. "He's just trying to pull a fast one on you." Despite her confident dismissal, she started to pace between the rail and the beacon, her free hand running through her hair. "I don't get it, why would he tell you something like that and not me? He always just told me Miranda would never want to hang out with someone like me."
"Have you two ever actually talked about it?" Stepping closer to Flick, Sally gestured to the locket at the girl's chest. "If we showed him your locket, I'm sure he'd understand. The fact she gave it to you, the inscription on the back, if there's anything inside it –"
"No way." With one hand clasped around her pendant, Flick stopped dead in the centre of the walkway. "I'm not letting him open it. I'd rather go skinny-dipping with Auntie Pol than let Damien even touch my gal's gift to me."
Sally furrowed her brow. "He wouldn't have to touch it at all, you could open it yourself."
"No! Nobody's opening it, alright? Just drop it already!" Flick's turn was too quick to stop, and she watched the girl disappear around to the far side of the lantern room, her back to Sally. She did not flinch as Sally crept around, the lighthouse's beams washing out most of her sight.
Blinded by the beacon, Sally heard the footsteps in front of her before she saw their source. She stopped and rubbed her eyes to see Flick frozen in place across the walkway, her eyes fixed on the tall, heaving form of Damien in the steel doorway. "I got bored of waiting," he said, switching the target of his glare from Sally to Flick. "I want you to give back my sister's belongings now, Scott."