The boat shed smells like rope, oil, and wet wood that has opinions.

The barometer’s needle is dropping: air pressure falling, storm stacking. Folklore called this the marsh breathing. The marsh is not lungs. The sky is a stack of moisture and weight, and when the weight shifts, wind and thunder arrive to argue.

The mast-glow fades as you watch, a polite guest leaving. St. Elmo’s fire does that—comes with charge, goes with change. The weather radio crackles a squall warning in a calm voice that does not care about legends. You could photograph what is actually here: the radio’s lit display, the last of the mast-glow, a jar of foxfire if you carried one in. Two kinds of light, or one. Neither a soul.

You say it out loud, because naming helps: electricity, and a warning that wants you indoors. Jonah, if he came along, sits on an overturned bucket and admits he wanted omens. He is trying.

Headlamps will find the landing when Mara does. You can ride out the last of the glow like a scientist in a blind. You can make the picture that Ellison would mount: machine light, and whatever other light you have, a fair exhibit of how a marsh makes ghosts.