After months at sea, we were grateful to sail into the bay and find the lighthouse glowing with a welcome beacon and our families gathered on the shore in the growing dusk.
As the lighthouse's lamp began to flicker and fail, we strained to make out the faces of the loved ones we had not seen in so long. Their eyes looked strangely vacant, their limbs crookedly joined, their mouths twisted in the parody of smiles.
And then we noticed the pattern of the lighthouse's unsteady beam. Repeating dots and dashes. Morse code.
Go back,
it said.
They are not your family anymore.