Re: the lighthouse, inside.
She wasn't frightened of his approach. Nothing could frighten her here. Outside, beyond the monotony of bricks and mortar, there the world was scary. The waves crashed onto the gleaming rocks without warning, and it was the unpredictability that scared her. Here, inside, everything happened with predictable regularity. The light turned at the same interval, and it never changed, and she hated it. But it was safe enough in it's crushing repetitiveness and oppressively intense brightness that didn't really reach her.
"You trapped too?" she asked, not particularly articulate, but interested in the response when he agreed he didn't get out much. Her craggy voice settled into hum of thought when he asked why she was a lightkeeper. She knew the reason, but she'd slipped into the habit of silence. Not explaining things was new, but it was easier and safe as the mortar and brick. Insulating, but the water had managed to get in regardless, and she dripped proof along ornate metal that would soon be worn and corroded from the constant damp. Why was she a lightkeeper? "Might as well be, if I'm stuck here. If I get out, then I won't be," she said with salty simplicity. It was simple to her, even if her words weren't very good at explaining. "Why does being smokey work for you?" she asked, and then she laughed again, entertained on the heels of the question. "We make a pair. Neither of us answering a thing. You weren't going to answer, were you?" A smile in the dark, because she got it, and because she understood that kind of reluctance.
"Do you avoid because it's safer, or don't you want to explain, or don't you want to argue?" All those things, said the salty voice of the woman trapped behind the cinereal tyrant of stone. "Better question," she corrected. "Do you ever not avoid?"
Even with all that, she was surprised to find him so ephemeral beneath her fingers when she took his hand. She didn't comment until the window and the small, small view of the crashing waves. She shivered, cold in the wet sack of brocade. "Not long. I feel like I'm drowning," she said of her imprisonment, and she edged back from the small window and the insignificant light it provided. Her hand drew back, fingers cold and shaken, and she pressed fingertips to his chest. She was very real, and the pressure of her trembling fingertips was as loud as the laughter that banked off the walls in her mirth. "Do you feel? More importantly," and her creaky grin was discernible in the dark. "Is that dry, and does it come off?"
A chuckle. "Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Sounds like me."