Journal Entry, Dated 01/02

Jasmine

Metadata

Reference Number: BICI/SSP/CRJ0102/001

Title: Journal Entry, Dated 01/02

Author: Jasmine

Date: Written 01/02, approx. year 5607 A.o.W.

Extent: One journal entry, four pages long

Transcript

01/02

I usually dread the night of the new moon, and many of the nights leading up to it.

I don’t mind that the fishers expect me to work longer nights. Not entirely. In a way, we suffer these nights together: they freeze in their tiny boats drifting within the dark sea, trying to catch fish they can’t guarantee will bite; I melt in the lantern room, ensuring that the lighthouse burns brightly enough to lead them back to shore. Satisfaction feels too strong a word to describe what I feel after they’re done for the night and I can return home, but it’s close.

Or maybe… perhaps relief is the better word. There’s a relief to be found in keeping everyone safe. Relief in knowing that everything in the lighthouse is working the way it should. That there’s enough wood to keep the flame burning for hours, that the floors are swept and mopped clean of soot, that the paint outside is fresh. I never like doing the work in the moment. It’s exhausting and endless. I never get ahead of additional tasks. I’m only ever behind on my work, or slightly less behind on my work.

But this is my duty to Seabreeze Shoal. It’s in my blood. Maybe it’ll be Blossom’s duty too one day, provided she’s still obsessed with the lighthouse by the time she finishes school. As long as a lighthouse keeper mans the lighthouse, the fishers feel safe braving Nothingness’s grip to go out to sea. The more fish they catch out there, the more they sell to the merchants when they come to trade their wares. And the more they sell to the merchants, the better off we all are.

It’s not enjoyable, but it’s not meaningless. At least I take solace in that.

The isolation used to itch at me, but I’ve grown used to it. I don’t speak to the fishers before they go out to sea most nights; I just count their lanterns laid out on the shoreline, one for every boat, then retreat into the lighthouse. And when the rest of the village is awake, I’m usually asleep.

I used to love seeing the merchants come to town. As kids, Spica and I would run through the village square, looking at what they had brought to barter with our fellow villagers. She’d admire the black and gold armor of the Undying Embers who stood guard over their merchant’s stalls, and I’d drag her along until we found Malva and Cinna so they could tell us stories about the world outside our walls.

These days, I just send Blossom to check the square after she finishes with school. Sometimes Spica will come knocking with something I’ve forgotten, or some useful thing she picked up, knowing I could use it. I rarely see her these days, except for when she’s doing something for me. And I won’t be her taskmaster. She has her father to take care of, her spearwork to tend to — and she still has the freedom to admire the seaglass jewelry in the stalls, or to pick the freshest fish at the marketplace. She still has her dream. She has better things to do with her time than worry about me.

But I’m used to all of that. The work. The long nights. The empty rooms with only my thoughts to keep me company. It’s all part of my duty. I don’t know how Dad handled this work for years alone, let alone with the smile he always wore. Blossom inherited all of his optimism. Not me.

What makes me dread the new moon, and the nights leading up to it, is the change in the air. I can’t describe it, but I can feel it. I feel it in the lighthouse’s cloying magic, like it’s somehow become more… hollow. The animals can feel it too. I see it when crabs litter the beach, fighting each other to the death for bits of kelp that wash up on the shore. I see it when screeching gulls circle the shore and pick off the crabs too caught up in their kelp to run.

I hear it in Blossom.

It’s her songs. She’s always singing, and the songs she sings leading up to the new moon are always her most unsettling. I go to bed to her lullabies and wake up to her humming. Every time I ask her what her newest strange song is about, her answer is always the same: she doesn’t know. I don’t understand why she has to lie. Obviously she made them up in her head; who else could she possibly learn them from?

Sometimes the wind whistling around the lighthouse sounds like the parts she doesn’t know the words for.

Earlier tonight, when I was working and Blossom was supposed to be asleep, I heard her voice echo through the lighthouse. And I knew it wasn’t just the wind. The wind doesn’t know the words.

I found her silhouette at the top of the lighthouse, backlit from the light sweeping the sea. The lantern in my hand illuminated the space right in front of me, but it wasn’t powerful enough to reach her.

She was leaning over the railing, her hand outstretched, feeding seeds to a seagull. I recognized the song she sang to the bird; it was her favorite. At that moment, I didn’t know which one made me angrier: the fact that she was out here past bedtime, or that she was feeding those damn birds again.

Those birds have harassed me for a week straight. They keep trying to make nests in the lantern room. I have to tear them down before they lay any eggs. Once they laid eggs before I could get to them, and I spent the next three months dealing with their new family shrieking in my ears. They make nests where they shouldn’t, they try to steal my ropes, and recently, they’ve gotten bold enough to try to take my food while I’m eating it.

“Blossom!” I snapped, the words came spilling out of my mouth before I could help myself. “Quit feeding the fucking bird!” Apparently, feeding the seagull was the graver sin tonight.

I ran towards her, waving my arms to scare off the bird. It worked. The idiot thing flew off with an offended squawk.

Blossom turned towards me with her lips pulled into a mulish frown. I was reminded, yet again, of how different we look. We have the same face shape, and our hair falls the same way, and she likes to tie a blue scarf around her waist to mirror mine. And that’s where our similarities end. I barely see either of our parents in her. Not their eyes — both the color of seafoam, like mine — or their dark hair. They used to say her looks skipped a generation or five.

It took years for the villagers to believe that we’re full-blood sisters. Then Mom went too far out to sea and Dad stupidly chased after her, and they stopped making those jokes. At least, they stopped making them around me.

The lighthouse makes our differences even starker. When I’m up here, I’m a shadow blocking the light. She’s absorbed into its brightness, messy blonde hair falling into her face and the white nightgown illuminating her like a bad dream.

Instinctively, I glanced at her feet. At least she remembered to wear sandals, as useless as they were against the gravelly sand that always wormed its way inside the lighthouse.

“He was hungry!” Blossom protested.

“It’s a bird. It can find its own food,” I snapped. “Go home. You have school tomorrow.”

Her fist curled around the seeds. She’d scatter them while I wasn’t looking. I just knew it. I kept a careful eye on her hand.

“I don’t want to go to school.”

“Don’t care. You’re going.”

She stomped her foot. The sandal’s strap threatened to give out, tearing at the edge. I still have to fix that… I will, tomorrow. “School’s stupid! I should be here, helping you!”

She’d move into the damn lighthouse if she could. She’s pleaded with me before. It wasn’t like we even talked to anyone in the village except for Spica, she reasoned. If we lived in the lighthouse, then I could spend less time making the trek between the cliffside and our cottage and more time relaxing.

It may be sweltering and ghostly now, but we could turn it into a home… at least, that’s what Blossom says. She insists that someone had before. I keep telling her that our family has been lighthouse keepers since His Eternal Warmth raised up the cliff it stands on, and we’ve always lived in the village with everyone else.

“You’ll help me once you’re done with school,” I told her for the fiftieth time. “Now go home. It’s nearly midnight.”

She turned away from me and looked out over the ocean. For a moment, her pale eyes scanned the sea, like she was trying to look past the thick fog at the edge of the world.

After six years, you’d think she would realize that they’re never coming back. There’s a reason why fishers aren’t allowed to sail into the fog. No one can come back from Nothingness. I’ve told her this countless times; so have her teachers. Somehow, the lesson never sticks.

“I had a dream about Mom,” Blossom said. “Her boat came back. You were manning the lighthouse, but the lantern was stuck. You couldn’t pull it towards her by yourself. You asked me to help. We shined the light on her. And when she got closer, we saw Dad with her.”

I hate feeling guilty. It twists in my chest like a rope coiled the wrong way. Blossom’s great at twisting that damn rope.

“It was just a dream, Blossom.”

When Blossom dreamt of our parents, she’d wake up hoping they were still somewhere out there. When I dreamt of our parents, it always felt wrong. Awake or asleep, I can never forget they’re dead. One of us had to remember the truth. It wasn’t going to be her.

“Can I sleep here tonight?” she asked, creeping closer. She blinked up at me as pathetically as she could. “Please, Jasmine?”

I sighed. If I gave in now, she’d never leave. “No. Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

“What about the fishers? Don’t you need to watch out for them?”

“They’ll be fine. No one’s due back for a while, and the lighthouse won’t turn off in half an hour.”

His Eternal Warmth must have blessed Blossom’s dreams or something, because she went to sleep as soon as I got her back to bed. I didn’t want to go back to work, but I had no choice. Somehow, the walk back up the cliffside felt longer than usual.

When I got back, three seagulls pecked at the spot where Blossom had stood. After scaring them off, I examined the ground. The brat had managed to drop her seeds while I wasn’t paying attention.

Artistic Rendition of Jasmine

Jasmine

Metadata

Reference Number: BICI/SSP/CRJ0102/006

Title: Artistic Rendition of Jasmine

Artist: Aimi

Extent: One illustration

Description: An artistic rendition of Jasmine, as we commonly understand her to have looked like at the time of the exhibit.

“And when I first saw you, Jasmine? Oh, you shone. Blinding and bright. You were unlike anyone I had ever seen before.”
-Nico

Introducing Jasmine, the last lighthouse keeper of Seabreeze Shoal, and the focal point of the Berelyse Institute of Cultural Illumination’s exhibition.