The Spiral Stair
You climb. You count the steps, because Edith would have.
At step sixty you pass a slit window: the town below, lamplit, fog-wrapped. At step one hundred you pass another window: the town below, exactly the same height below you as before. At step one hundred and eighty you stop counting, because the lighthouse is perhaps ninety feet tall and you have climbed it twice already and the stair continues upward, unhurried, unbothered, the cat's tail always just disappearing around the turn above.
The walls change as you climb. Stone gives way to older stone. Someone has scratched tallies into the wall in long-forgotten handwriting โ clusters of seven with the fourth stroke of each struck through, thousands upon thousands, spiraling up into the dark like a ledger.
Light spills from above. Warm light. Firelight.