Teaser – The Lanterns at Low Tide

I’ve been working on a short story called The Lanterns at Low Tide.
I don’t really know how to explain this one without saying too much, so I won’t.
Here’s a small piece of it:

The Lanterns at Low Tide

There was a woman who lived near the sea and lit lanterns along the harbor every evening. The town was used to her by then. They’d see her walking down toward the pier just before dark, coat pulled tight around her, matches tucked in her pocket, hair moving wild in the wind, and nobody thought much of it anymore. To them, she was simply the woman who kept the shore lit, steady as the tide, strange only in the way quiet people sometimes seem strange when they carry more than they say.

What they didn’t know was that every lantern meant something. She never wrote his name on them, and she never told anyone who the lights were for. She just lit them one by one and let the glow speak in a language only her heart understood. Some lanterns were for the life she could imagine without meaning to. Some were for the good days she still believed in. Some were for the waiting, for the unanswered messages sent out like little ships, drifting across dark water and hoping one might return with something warm tied to it.

At the very end of the pier, there was one lantern that always took her longer to light. It burned through the wind, stubborn and soft, carrying the truth she couldn’t say directly. And somewhere beyond the harbor, there was a man who might one day walk close enough to understand that the shore hadn’t been glowing by accident.