Torrential Love

Chapter One

Author's Note: This is a story based on a book by my friend, Mercynarie, called Immortal Stonekeeper. It is a prequel (set before the events of the OG book) and in that book, Maya and Yael are the same person, but I have taken creative liberty with that and made them separate.

~DUNCAN~

The glass rattled in the weakened frames clamorously, as if they wanted to be shaken from their positions. Duncan leafed through the pages of the instruction manual, trying to find an entry for the problem he was in at the moment. The fusebox had suddenly sprayed a shower of sparks as he passed by earlier, and now the entire lighthouse had been plunged into darkness.

He sent another glance out the windows of the lighthouse. It was rare to have such a thunderstorm; he thought as thunder rolled overhead. He had seen nothing like it in all the years he had been working as a lighthouse keeper and he wondered then if he would see any casualties on the shore this morning when the thunderstorm had died down.

He bent over to the scope and looked into it. All he could see was darkness and angry rain falling. The light from the lighthouse was spinning, but he could hardly see anything. And if he couldn't see much, neither could the sailors out at sea.

He went back to his seat and sighed. He had been complaining to the local council several times that the light this place used was much too dim, and to replace it. But it only fell on deaf ears. They nodded and wrote in their books, as if they were listening closely, but after that they told him they would look into it, and months would pass with no updates.

Though to be frank, it wasn't as if he didn't know that they wouldn't be doing anything about his problem. He could hear what they were thinking. Yes, he could. He was not a normal man. He was an immortal, and few were like him. And being an immortal meant that he also had a few perks that came with it, and in his case, that was mind reading.

He could hear what everyone was thinking. At least anyone within a mile radius of him. Further than that, he couldn't hear them. Being able to read minds was closer to a disadvantage to an advantage. It was so loud, all the time. People thought all the time, and because of it, he went out of his way to avoid crowds unless he absolutely had to be in one. He didn't want to hear that kind of noise.

What did people think about? Well, they thought constantly about themselves. And it wasn't about anything interesting. They thought about every single insignificant detail about themselves, and most of them complained like there was no tomorrow. He came across a few that were grateful for their lives, and it was exhausting to be in the minds of most when they were unhappy all the time.

But mind reading had its advantages too. He loved going to the market to haggle for prices, and he would win every time. And that was solely because he knew exactly the lowest prices each merchant was willing to go and he would convince them to sell things to him at that price. Living was cheap for him and it was fast getting to the point where merchants dreaded the sight of him. Ah, that was the man with the golden tongue! He laughed just thinking about it.

But as he was saying, he knew exactly what those people at the council were thinking when they promised him they would look into changing the light for him at his lighthouse.

"Oh, bother, not again. We don't have the budget for this crap. It's just a stupid lighthouse, who cares if those sailors shipwreck? Those lives aren't mine."

He wanted to give them a piece of his mind but he had to keep his ability a secret. It was an unspoken rule for every immortal, keep your abilities and nature a secret. He knew exactly what would happen if he broke that rule, and he didn't want to be there when it happened.

He huffed as he continued to leaf through page after page of dense material on the manual in the dim candlelight. He was getting nowhere with his search - the book was a thousand pages long.

He craned his neck again and looked once more into the scope. The light was still spinning, but doing absolutely nothing, and he tried to look harder to see what was happening in the seas.

A ship.

He squinted, but the ship vanished from sight before he could get a good look. He continued to look harder into the scope, but he could no longer see any ship again.

This wasn't good. What was a ship doing out here in this raging storm? Didn't it hear the forecast from this town, telling the ships everywhere to return to where they came from? He was sure the town had announced to everyone that they had forecasted a terrible storm that night. He gave the scope another look, but when he saw nothing, he gave up and turned in instead.

But he was unwilling to leave the lighthouse for his home. He was still unsure about whether a ship was out there in need of his help, so he opened a sleeping bed on the ground and got onto it. He lay on his side, still worried.

He loved this lighthouse. It was his only solace from the world. He always hated normal jobs because they forced him to deal with so many insufferable people, thinking insufferable thoughts. He would always go home with a headache so when he found a job here, he jumped at the chance. It gave him peace since he did not need to interact with humans, and he took his work seriously.

Closing his eyes, he slept. When he opened his eyes again and freshened up for the day, a sudden sense of dread passed over him. He immediately walked over to the scope, and looked into it. He studied the sea. It was peaceful, and there was no sign of the thunderstorm from the previous night. He settled down for a moment, until he panned the scope to the shore. And there it was.

A shipwreck.