When the foghorn moans, the lighthouse is already on the move. It rolls on hidden rails along the cliffline, deciding where to shine like a hound catching a scent. Tourists think it is a gimmick. Fishermen know it is temperamental and must be courted with thermoses of strong coffee. Mara grew up trusting its beam to guide her father home. One spring night, the light wanders inland, sweeping through kitchens and attics. The town wakes to secrets illuminated: a buried rowboat behind the bakery, fireworks under the mayor's porch, a child hiding test answers in her socks. Mara follows in boots, believing the lighthouse is searching for something lost. She finds the keeper asleep in the tower, records spinning on repeat. The light moves of its own will, scraped raw by salt and loneliness. Mara climbs the spiral, hands on cold rail, and lets the beam pull her view across farmland. It pauses over the abandoned railway, over the hospital roof, over the graveyard where her father rests. She realizes it is hunting for emergencies, anything that smells like a plea.
The town argues about insurance claims for roaming infrastructure. A council meeting is called. Mara speaks: maybe the lighthouse is not a civic hazard but a mobile witness. They decide to let it roam, but with volunteers walking alongside carrying radios. The lighthouse responds, slowing when children wave flashlights back, accelerating when fog thickens. One dawn, it settles at the old station, beam fixed toward the sea, as if towing the horizon closer. By morning, tide charts show the shoreline has shifted inward by inches. Some swear the lighthouse dragged the ocean toward home. Mara buys two thermoses now: one for the keeper, one for the light itself, set on the rail like an offering. She keeps her boots by the door, ready for the next midnight moan, ready to follow wherever the wandering beam decides to point.
Weeks later, a storm blows in without warning. The lighthouse bolts inland again, light trembling. Mara and the volunteers jog after it, radios crackling. The beam locks on a farmhouse where labor has started too early. The midwife is stuck behind flooded roads. Mara uses the light as guide, ferrying her through fields. A baby is born under the sweep of the lens, crying into a hand that smells faintly of coffee. The town stops arguing. They leave chalk arrows on streets showing the lighthouse's favorite routes. Insurance forms are rewritten to include "acts of light." Mara names the new child Beacon, quietly hoping the moving tower will always know where home is.