A lighthouse keeper finds himself pulled between the safety of his duty of watching the ocean vs. helping a voice from the dark.

The Solstice Owl Writing Battle is a 100-word, professionally judged writing contest that I signed up for months ago but secretly dreaded. How can I tell a story in only one hundred words?

On July 17th, after returning home from an out-of-state work trip (and watching Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey), I received the prompts, and my heart sank. The genre: firewatch (?); character: lighthouse keeper; object: belt. What was the firewatch genre, and how was I going to get a belt in this story in a meaningful way? Of course, in my stubbornness to “expand my horizons”, I forbid myself to swap out any cards.

Over the course of the next two days, I beat my head on my desk and my fingers on the keyboard. Early on, the notion of two towers came to mind. There was already a lighthouse, but firewatch instantly reminded me of the firewatch towers I saw (and climbed) in the state forests. Slowly, the story began to come together, but it wasn’t until it took a more introspective turn that it really started to shine.