Chapter 1 –The Town of Silent Nights
Naven was the kind of town that seemed to exist outside of time.
No one rushed here. No one needed to. The streets curved lazily toward the sea, lined with salt-stained houses that had been painted the same pastel colors for decades. Pale pink. Weather-worn blue. Faded yellow that had once been cheerful, now softened by years of sun and wind.
The air always smelled faintly of brine and bread. That was because of Mrs. Imani's bakery, which never closed before the gulls started screaming in the morning. She claimed she baked better when the tide was coming in. Some of us believed her; others just believed in her bread.
Nights in Naven were quiet. Too quiet, if you asked me. The kind of quiet that wasn't peaceful so much as heavy — as if the air was holding its breath. You could stand in the middle of the main road after dark and hear the ocean whispering from the pier, the wooden planks creaking as the tide licked at them.
I worked at the lighthouse, though "worked" might be too generous a word. Most nights, I sat in the small round room at the top, surrounded by glass and sea, watching the beam sweep across the waves. The lighthouse wasn't even needed much anymore; ships had better tools now. But the town kept it running, mostly out of tradition, partly because they believed the light kept storms away.
I didn't mind the solitude. It gave me time to think, though thinking too much was dangerous in a place like Naven. It made you wonder why you stayed, why you didn't just pack a bag and leave. But something about the slow pulse of the sea held you there, like an anchor you couldn't see.
The stars were the only things that seemed alive in the sky. At least, that's what I thought. They glittered over the ocean like a spill of coins, winking, shifting ever so slightly through the seasons. I didn't notice they'd stopped moving, not really. To me, the sky was just the sky — beautiful, constant, and above my reach.
Until the night she arrived.
It was the end of summer, the air thick with salt and the faint sound of a festival down by the wharf. Children ran with paper lanterns, their laughter echoing off the water. I was locking the lighthouse door when I saw her walking along the pier.
Barefoot. A suitcase in one hand, a glass jar in the other.
She didn't look like she belonged to Naven. People here carried baskets of fish or loaves of bread, not glowing jars. And she didn't walk the way locals did, with that slow, unbothered pace. She walked like she had somewhere urgent to be, even if she wasn't sure where that was.
I didn't know her name yet. Didn't know her story. All I knew was that the quiet nights in Naven were about to end.