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Ari watched as the slim white column of the Lismore lighthouse receded, gleaming phantom-like against the clouded eastern sky, shrouding the peaks around Ben Cruachan. She stood on the stern deck of MV Columba, fifteen minutes out of Oban, as she rolled and pitched in the fickle tides and currents, where Loch Linnhe met the Sound of Mull and the Firth of Lorne. It was mid-October; already, this far north the afternoon was fading fast, bringing that discomforting frisson of melancholy which marks the turning of the season. Ari Martin, photographer of the strange and terrible, thriving on the dour and drear, was smitten.