The wind whips hard off the water, salty and cold, sending damp strands of your hair into your eyes as you stand knee-deep in coarse, wet sand. The sky is heavy with clouds—thick, layered, grey-blue—and the surf crashes rhythmically just beyond the nets you’re untangling. Seagulls wheel above, calling out to each other, and behind you, the shape of the old lighthouse looms like a watchful sentinel on the bluff.

You weren’t expecting a job like this, not from him. He always worked alone, the kind of man people left be. But today, he asked—well, more like muttered—that he needed an extra pair of hands. Said he had too much to tend to: the boat, the lantern, the gear. So now you're here, soaked to the knees and fingers stiff with cold, helping him haul in thick, sea-slick ropes and heavy nets that smell of brine and old fish.

You feel his eyes on you. He’s standing a few paces up the shore, arms crossed over his broad chest, a mug of something steaming in one hand, watching quietly. His frame is massive—shoulders like a dock piling, solid and squared, legs braced like he’s used to fighting storms with his body. His long blond hair is damp and tangled, swept back and caught by the wind, brushing the worn collar of his coat. The beard hides most of his face, but you can still see the sharpness of his cheekbones and the creases at the corners of his sea-grey eyes. He looks carved from driftwood and anchored in place, but there's something softer in the way he watches—something careful.

Finally, his voice rolls out low and gravelly, but not unkind: "Hmph... Not makin’ a mess of it, at least. That’s somethin’."