For thirty years the lighthouse keeper had logged the same observation each dawn: the gulls departed the headland an hour before any storm the instruments later confirmed. The young meteorologist assigned to decommission his station arrived prepared to dismiss such talk as the sentiment of a man unwilling to be replaced by his machines. Yet she found herself, on her third morning, standing at the rail well before the barometer stirred, counting the birds. She told herself she was merely cataloguing his methods for the report. She did not write down what she was actually watching for.