The shape on the rocks is not a person.

It is Brass, hauled out, a comma of seal, insulted by lanterns. Or—if Brass has gone—it is the buoy’s paint catching a town window, a hard bright shoulder that wanted to be a hull.

You wait until the fog pulses thin. Whiskers or paint. Either way: not a crew.

Your lantern makes eyeshine if there are eyes. The shine is a trick of animal night-vision, a mirror behind the retina. Folklore called it lanterns of the drowned. The drowned are not here. The seal might be.

You wait through two pulses of fog because one pulse is a rumor and two is a habit of checking. Whiskers. Or paint. You do not invent a third option that needs rescuing. The ledge is a country with its own citizens. You are a visitor with a lantern and a job not to become a problem for Ruiz.