Dark now and the lighthouse is lit. Every nine seconds it sends a spill of white across the fidgeting black waters of Start Bay, almost to my feet. There’s no moon yet: it’s the only light. The whole coast pulses with it as it wheels around.
I’m in Hallsands after a year away. I’ve been watching this eroding coast with the same eye that assesses a sick relative, looking closely for deterioration, hoping to see none. If changes are there, they are subtle. And Hallsands is still here, despite a winter of storms much like the one that took most of this village from the cliffs in 1917 – the natural shale bank that protected it having been dredged to death.
The sun comes out of the sickle-shaped bay at dawn and sets into golden hills behind. Just a strip of houses remain, happily trapped between the two. A strange sort of peace exists, despite the drama of the village’s past, and the inevitability of its future.
As I start back up the path in the dark I spot something in the grass. A little green light, like a child’s keyring. I peer. It moves.
A glow-worm! I’ve never seen one before. Fireflies, once, abroad – and I’d been misled by my imagination; they never flashed like that in my head, I’d expected sweeping, phantom-like radiance. But this glow-worm was enthralling. So bright, its segmented body electric-like with bioluminescence, discordant with the lifelike way it flexed. They’re not worms but beetles. The females glow for a few weeks in the summer to attract a mate, then they fade, and die.
I get close. She’s mainly body, no wings, grasping the grass with a knot of legs and head. She’s the only one here. Or the only one still lit.
Eventually I turn for the cottage up on the cliffs, its pale walls catching that soft, beat-like glint of the lighthouse’s sweeping lamp. A human light, techno-luminescence. But as I watch its gentle cadence is almost organic. A slow rhythm, here, there, in, out, like waves lapping a shore.
A look at that glow again. It won’t be long before it’s gone. A little beacon in the dark, vividly, but only fleetingly, here, now. I’m glad I saw it while it was.
