A Trace Of Green

With a coffee as bitter as his thoughts, Mike barely heard the waves lashing against the walls of his lighthouse home. For ten years, he had painted the sea in blacks and whites, with only the occasional hint of grey breaking through. Brighter strokes felt as futile as chasing something that refused to be held.

Once a renowned artist, his earlier scenes of bathers drifting through sunlit water had been praised by the public—though quietly dismissed by critics. He was never satisfied with them, haunted by blank spaces and a sense of something just out of reach.

On what was meant to be Mike’s last night at the lighthouse, at least for the foreseeable future, sleep did not come.

The studio sat at the top of a spiral staircase in what had once been the lantern storey. An old ship’s anchor was fixed to the wall. Mike stood at his easel, ready to add the final touches to the last picture in a series. The others were already packed away, ready for collection. Once they reached New York, a generous sum would be transferred into Mike’s depleted bank account. With this in mind, he kept telling himself his problems would soon be over.

But life was never that simple.

In the “good old days,” when the sun had shone upon him and Mike had been loved, both publicly and privately, he had mentored Kevin Wordless, a disgruntled student from his workshops. While Mike had lived off early artistic success, Kevin had struggled to move forward. Somewhere along the way, that struggle had transformed and Kevin had re-emerged as John Barnacle-Dennett — internationally successful author and philanthropist, far removed from the man Mike remembered.

At the height of success, Mike had been devastated by the death of his environmentalist partner, Jeff, who had tirelessly monitored soil and water to assess the health of the planet in a bid to help save it. Since his loss, Mike had disappeared into a kind of black hole. Reduced to painting gloomy seascapes no one seemed to want, he worked in a tower that needed constant money pumping into it to keep it habitable.

When Kevin arrived at the lighthouse in a gleaming sports car, he seemed to bring another world with him. He stood for a moment longer than necessary at the door, as though unsure whether he should have come at all.

Reluctantly, he had agreed to show Kevin the seascapes. After viewing them, Kevin had asked to buy them, claiming he wanted to help. He didn’t speak for a while — as if the paintings had affected him in ways he hadn’t expected. Doubting his motives and underestimating Kevin’s wealth, Mike had initially resisted parting with them.

But when Kevin had made his old master an offer he couldn’t refuse, it felt like making a pact with the devil. Mike had agreed to sell only out of desperation. He was unimpressed by Kevin’s descriptions of them as “yet to be discovered masterpieces.” In Mike’s opinion, Kevin lacked any notion of what was real — or perhaps he had too many competing versions of it.

Mike’s chest tightened as he felt the familiar cord of despair, winding into a stranglehold. A temporary reprieve came with news that Wind Zena was predicted to wreak havoc across much of the east coast over the next few days. It meant postponing the collection — giving more time to commune with the sea from his studio windows.

Battened down at the top of his tower, with the wind rattling the rafters and a never-ending supply of home brew, Mike was free to explore his art uninterrupted, endlessly pondering the mysteries of the ocean.

There were no words to describe how it enthralled him, or the gap between pain and pleasure in attempting to depict waves that refused to yield their secrets. It was like being possessed by something unfathomable; to his intense frustration, he hadn’t been able to translate what existed out there into his art.

And there would be no peace until he did.

The next morning, ignoring all warnings of blustery peril, Mike left the lighthouse, crossed the clifftop barrier, and pitted himself against the elements for a brisk run.

Setting off along the cliff path above his home, with the wind shrieking and tearing at his clothing, was hardly sane. As the sky darkened and huge foamy waves dashed against the rocks, Mike was no more able to steady the tumult in his mind than he could subdue the wind.

As he ran, an image of Jeff came to him, offering brief comfort. In it, he wore one of his eccentric waist-jackets, his gold-flecked eyes radiating warmth. Jeff had always steered their ship in the right direction until poor health had taken over and left Mike stranded on the rocks.

The image faded, replaced by a trilogy of self-defeating voices.

If only Jeff hadn’t died.

If only he’d gotten help sooner…

If only he hadn’t agreed to sell his paintings to Kevin Wordless or Dennett-Barnacle, or whatever he called himself these days. With all his sickening millions and that yacht in the Bahamas…

Damn it all. What was he even doing out here? He must return to his paintings before he lost the last of the light.

Returning to a lighthouse that smelt of salt and despair, Mike tried to ignore the knot forming at the thought of leaving his refuge. While the lighthouse underwent extensive repairs, he had agreed to live in a tiny caravan on some godforsaken site a mile away, with nothing but rows of other caravans to break the monotony.

All fenced in and soulless — with no view of the sea for creative sustenance — he would have to stay there while the area surrounding the lighthouse was fortified. Only then, could the real work of repair begin. Salvaging it would take months, maybe years, with no certainty of success.

It was a grim thought.

And it wasn’t just the pain of parting with his seascapes that scared him senseless — though that was bad enough.

There was something he could hardly admit to himself, let alone anyone else. It felt close to madness to even think it.

To be waiting like this.

Of course, the logical part of him knew he’d have to let go of the paintings if he stood any chance of saving “White Towers.” The name had stuck because there had once been two lighthouses on the site.

In happier times, Mike and Jeff had invested all their savings into the remaining one — even though it was no longer in use — in a bid to rescue it from decay. Without Jeff’s support and organisational skills, he had lost track of the cost of maintenance.

The once brilliant edifice had suffered repeated battering from the sea. Even the rungs of the railing surrounding the studio were rusting. In recent years, the water had changed — warmer, more insistent — eating into the land with a patience that felt almost deliberate. Jeff had spoken of it often — of systems adapting faster than anyone realised, working against time itself. Like a greedy whale, the sea swallowed the cliff piece by piece until the garden connected to the lighthouse’s ancillary buildings was swept away, leaving behind a trail of dust. Watching billowing clouds of red lifting into the air, only to be washed away by the churning tides, he had cried for the loss of Jeff and their dreams.

Once Mike had signed the contract agreeing to the sale of the seascapes, there was no turning back. From then on, it became an invasion of laptop-carrying officials with measuring devices, prodding every inch of his beloved home. He forced himself to be polite, replying to their questions, and making endless cups of tea — until he felt he was going almost mad. All because of Kevin Wordless’s determination to acquire his works as a way of connecting the unchanging with the modern world.

Or confronting it?

The storms had finally abated, and tonight would be Mike’s last night at the lighthouse. On Kevin’s orders, the seascapes would be carried off in crates the following day. Kevin had called from miles away, trying to reassure him he was doing the right thing, but it didn’t cut it. The lighthouse was his true muse, and he feared he’d never paint again if he left it.

Tonight at least, while the wind rattled the windows and whipped up the sea, he would spend one last night with his precious seascapes. The following morning he’d wrap the last canvas in protective sheets — for by then, it would be finished, and the night’s magic would have dissipated.

Back at the lighthouse, Mike showered and made a light meal of Welsh rarebit on toast. It had been one of Jeff’s favourites. Eating it, he found solace in the memories. That — and hitting the bottle. He’d been trying not to, ever since Kevin had remonstrated with him after discovering a pile of empties in a bin. But as he made his way to the door leading to the spiral steps, he grabbed another whisky bottle, telling himself it was one for the road. Reaching the last steps of the rickety staircase, he was full of resentment towards his supposed benefactor.

What the hell did it matter if he drank?

It was none of Kevin’s business how he lived his life or used his time. What did Kevin know about communing with the sea, or anything that didn’t involve a pair of long legs or the algorithms of success demonstrated on a state-of -the-art laptop? He might be a well-known writer, churning out bestsellers, but he was a failed artist.

Eventually the winds abated, and Mike turned to the glow of stars that were nothing more than illusion. He thought of the lantern room, once lit by eighteen lamps guiding seafarers safely past treacherous rocks. Though they — and the lamps — had long gone, their spirit lived on through those that followed.

So long as he wasn’t the last.

As the shadows lengthened, the ancient anchor felt more like a sentinel than an object. The pictures destined for New York felt familiar to him as his own flesh. Even so, every time he entered the studio, he viewed them differently, telling himself he could have done better. The real difficulty in parting with them — something he struggled to admit even to himself — was that no matter how many hours he’d spent refining them, something was always missing. The purity, cruelty, unpredictability and sheer magic of the sea were there, but its true nature remained elusive.

The storm abated as suddenly as it had begun. Mike settled on his couch, supping his whisky, and gazing through the lighthouse windows. The ebb and flow was soporific. Without the wind to drive it, the sea was as calm as a millpond.

Mike wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep, but upon waking the depression that had been dogging him for weeks had lifted. Slipping from his makeshift bed, he scanned the horizon. The hairs on the back of his arms tingled. His eyes settled upon a space in the sea, a kind of vortex not far from the lighthouse.

The shapes in the water shifted. A strange vibration followed.

Heart beating fast, he pressed his face against the window as something rose from the depths.

At first, it seemed no more than distortion — a trick of light beneath the surface. Then it gathered itself. A scaly green body emerged, glimmering and unearthly, uncoiling as though drawn upward by something unseen.

It hovered, shimmering.

The form refused to resolve. Each time he tried to fix it, it shifted, as though belonging to a depth the eye could not follow. Yet there were eyes. Primordial, watching a world without hostility.

Something like compassion.

For a moment, he thought of Jeff. The gold-flecked warmth in his gaze. But the thought would not hold.

The water tightened round the figure , drawing into a slow spiral.

For an instant, the shape seemed to align with the lighthouse itself — the tower, the railings — as though the two shared a form separated by time rather than distance.

Mike had the uneasy sense he was close to understanding something he had always known.

The creature was not a ghost of the past — or if it was it did not feel like one. Something in it echoed what Jeff had once tried to explain. An ancient messenger that spoke not in words, but in fragments — adaptation, endurance, the evolving intelligence of systems that outlasted everything built against them. Even when everything else fell away, they found ways to persist.

Never had that felt more true.

It hovered there — as though shaped by time itself. A living relic, perhaps, but of what he could not say. He only knew whatever it was would likely outlive the digital hum of the world’s present confusion.

Its presence felt like suggestion, rather than proof, that Jeff was not entirely gone. Even if he was no longer visible, something of him remained. It could be seen in the shimmering scales, refined over millennia to withstand the rising, acidified tides that were reclaiming the shoreline. Maybe in the crest of a wave or the curve of a cast-off shell.

As it hovered in the vortex, the lighthouse no longer seemed a decaying ruin, but a primitive echo of structures that existed far below. The line between the myth of the abyss and the reality of the encroaching horizon blurred, then seemed to vanish, leaving Mike with the chilling, beautiful certainty that the sea didn’t need salvaging — it was simply waiting for the world to understand.

Sensing he was being watched as much as watching, he felt no fear. His breathing subsided to a steady rhythm. It felt like he had been waiting for this revelation for as long as he’d been painting the sea. Maybe even all his life.

The sun had dipped, leaving wavy ribbons of silvery clouds. Mike reached for his camera, hoping the creature would not vanish before he’d had a chance to film it. No one would believe what he was seeing without evidence. Moving cautiously, he opened the casement window and stepped onto the narrow balcony surrounding the old lantern story.

Attempting to steady the camera for a long-range shot was difficult, but his tripod had already been packed away.

Through the lens, the figure seemed smaller. Or further away. The edges were receding.

The railing shifted beneath his grip.

The camera slipped.

For a second, it hung between his fingers.

Then it was gone.

By the time he’d straightened up, only ripples remained.

Mike sank onto the settee, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Perhaps he was going mad. Had the strain he’d been under taken its toll? Had he imagined it?

The more he tried to fix it in his mind, the less certain he became.

He glanced towards the window.

The sea remained as it always had. Or almost.

Mike felt the urge to return to the canvas.

The waves were there. The movement, the light.

But there was still something missing.

He hesitated, then added a trace of green and a suggestion of shape — so light it barely registered. He let it dissolve into the motion of the sea.

From a distance, it seemed nothing.

Up close, the perspective shifted.

Mike stepped back.

For a moment, he had the sense the content was not entirely fixed — that something within it moved just beyond recognition.

He blinked.

It stilled.

Outside, the sea rolled on.

Ancient, rising, and waiting for the world to catch up.