He pointed out the forts from the Second world war, abandoned satellite stations and a windmill out at sea. We stood there in the lighthouse looking through lenses and watching the rainbows form. We stood there together, surveying the island from the highest point, and watching the weather change. As he spoke I imagined the shy German general on his white horse patrolling the east side with his watercolors in hand. The lighthouse keepers stories kept taking me further and further back in time, while I listened the landscape played it all out in front of me. We watched the rain come in blanketing the ocean, I felt protected there behind the glass. He told me how he used to watch the children use the beam from the lighthouse to navigate the darkness only moving in light and freezing when it left. In our silences I pictured the island this way during that time, when the light was extinguished and the land disappeared into the ocean at night.
