No spoilers for this one. It's another "choose your own brother" deal; I kind of became obsessed with those and have a couple more lying around that I'll also post on here at some point. Anyways, enjoy!

Lighthouse

There's this painting I know. This painting that seems like it shouldn't matter so much, except that it does. I saw it for the first time when I was eight years old, propped up on one of the walls in a small community arts center. We were on a school field trip, one of the few I got to go on because we moved around so much. Before this field trip, I really didn't care all that much about art. I still don't, actually. It's just this one. This one painting I could never get out of my head.

I saw it again six years later, a photocopy of this same painting plastered on the wall of a classroom, shining and laminated and peeling off at the corners. First day at another new school and there it was, glistening like a goddamn beacon or something. Like it had been waiting for me.

I don't even know what it is about this picture. There's no deeper meaning really, it's just a landscape. Just this picture of a huge, roiling sea, waves crashing over rocks and spilling onto beaches, foaming white. There's a few generic seagulls flying overhead, wings spread wide as they ride with the wind. But there's just something about it. Like...if you saw this painting, you would probably say that it's alive. I don't know. I mean there's something about those waves that just seem unstoppable. Unrelenting. If you really look at it, you can watch them move. You can see these thick plumes of blue crash over and over again onto this eroding rock, this sharp patchwork of stone that lines an empty beach.

But then, if you look even closer, you see this lighthouse. There's this tiny little lighthouse that sits up on one of those dying rocks with the waves crashing over it. And it just looks so old and worn. The details of this lighthouse are there if you look close enough. The peeling paint, the cracked wood, the rusted railing that wraps all the way around. And if you really lean in, if you literally push your face right up to this tiny little lighthouse that sits on this peeling rock that fights against this enormous ocean, you can see it. This crumbling, dying, poor excuse for a lighthouse isn't completely snuffed out. There's still a tiny flicker of light coming from the top of that tower. Just this tiny little dot of yellow dabbed onto the canvas. For all I know it could've been an accident; a slip of the artist's hand. But that little fleck just gets me for some reason. It just seems like the only part of that whole painting that means anything at all.

I see this painting again. Now. I picture it in my head, pull it out of so many lost memories as I stand in the middle of the ruins of this battlefield. I pull apart the details in my mind- that failing structure, that rumbling tide that won't stop slapping the shore. I think about all the hits we've taken, all the waves we've had to defeat, even as we prepared for the next one. I wonder how many more it'll take before I fall, before my pieces shatter into dust, swept away on the next breeze.

I wonder if my brother sees the same hopeless cycle that I do. I wonder if he too watches his world fall apart over and over and wonders why he even bothers to repair it. After so many years and so much tragedy, I wonder if he still loves the ocean.

I wonder if his light still shines.

And I realize that it does.

I realize that the only reason I'm still standing here is because my brother has not yet given up. He still holds his crumbling walls together somehow; has found a way to push back against these incessant swells that stream through the cracks, flood the floorboards of his bruised heart.

I think he is an idiot for trying so hard to hold onto something that just keeps slipping from his fingers. I think if he were anything but stupid, he would've stopped fighting so damn hard against all of the things that are so obviously beyond his control. I think he is the strongest person I know. I think he is a tattered soul, a shattered shell of blood that somehow still manages to keep his head above the cresting waves that pull apart the sand he stands on. I think he will lose eventually.

And I think I will be right there beside him when that day comes.

I'm still taking requests for story ideas and I will try my hardest to get to them after I've finished writing out my longer fic. Once again, I appreciate your comments and thank you for reading! And a side-note to mb64: I have not forgotten your request for something happy! I will find that inspiration =)