Evening was starting at Lantern Quay, and Tobin was already busy making it right.
He stood by the leaning wooden piers with his striped cap pulled low, his patched trousers dusty at the knees, and his rope-marked hands full of work. One by one, he set the quay’s things where they belonged: the painted signs facing the lane, the hats hung neatly on pegs, and the umbrellas lined up by the tea room door in case the fog thickened fast.
The harbor air smelled like seaweed, warm tar, and bread cooling on windowsills. Lanterns were not lit yet, but their round glass faces waited above the sheds. Fishermen were coming soon. Children would hop between the painted mooring posts. The ferryman would need his rope ready. Everything had a place, and Tobin liked it that way.
Then a playful wind came sliding in from the bay.
It gave the first sign a cheeky tug. It nudged a hat onto a crate. It flipped two umbrellas so their handles pointed at the sky. Tobin reached for the nearest sign, but before his hands could close around it, the wind whisked it sideways again.
He pinched his mouth tight and reached for the next thing. That one moved too.
And then he noticed something worse: the fishmonger’s stall setup had shifted crooked, the ferryman’s rope was no longer looped where it should be, and the little stone steps by the lighthouse were sitting wrong for anyone who needed them at dusk.
Tobin looked from one muddled corner of the quay to the next. This wasn’t just a few loose things now. The whole evening setup had been scrambled, and the wind was still there, puffing and flicking at everything like it meant to keep playing.
What happens next?
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