The Candle

The Candle

“I’m flying.”
There is no longer a need to be cooped up in that dark, dingy cavern. Finally the world will see my glory and be the better for it. Sailing across the heavens, aptly guided by a hulking, smiling giant, there is nothing to be afraid of. See, even with my mere presence, the giant is smiling at the joy I have already brought to her heart and soul.
But Terra Firma is where I am destined to be and the soft, white ground beneath me feels welcoming and desirable. It is almost as though it has been made to be eaten, but then what would become of me.
Looking round me on my new surface, eight of my friends are lined up in military precision, three abreast in three rows.
Without warning there is a glow starting to spread all through and round me. Our lights have been turned on and all of us shiver in anticipation, sending dark smoke twirling up to the sky high above us. I give another shiver, loving the way the flame waves back and forth, its smoke, now white and even, forming circles and squares and wavy designs up to the ceiling.
Around us everything suddenly goes dark and I smile as I realise that it is only my comrades and I that give the whole world its bright glow. How powerful am I and how reliant these giants are on my continuing to provide the light. Now the one giant has been joined by others, smaller and louder, but a horrible hoard of them. Fingers come at me and then are quickly pulled away. Faces come close, faces full of dots, faces bordered with red, others with brown and some with a light, pale shade of colour, causing me to shiver more and shake.
“Please be careful,” I say, joining the chorus of my comrades as we try and keep a hold of our light, knowing it is all that lay between us and the great darkness urging to take us back. There is a unified sigh of relief as the movement stops and I know then we are secure.
Looking round, each space available has now been filled with a face. My light flickers a greeting at them and there is a chorus of laughter from all the faces. One of the faces comes close and it looks different to the others. The face is half framed in brown, but the spot at the top is a new shape. Something rises up into the sky, pointy and dark, the edge covered in shapes of all sorts. There are crescents and circles, long lines with speckles coming from each end. I know, then, that something is not right and I wait. Around me my comrades feel the same and they also freeze. Somehow this was not supposed to happen.
As we wait, staring at this little face, I begin to feel my edges heating more and there is a strange sense of me getting closer to the ground. Looking down, I see the growing circle of silvery white liquid pooling at my feet as my eyes get closer and closer to the ground.
Turning to my comrades I see that they are each of them experiencing the same as I. Although two of my comrades have retained more of their physique, a couple of others had lost slightly more of theirs and the rest were at the same level as I.
Around us there is a burst of noise as the giants begin to shout out in a manner that appears to be a coherent series of sounds, each sound being made the same way and in a similar tone. The giant sitting closest to me is smiling and I notice the gaps in her mouth where the white boards had not quite filled. I wanted to tell her that she needed to have those gaps attended to when the thunder started. It was loud and I tried to clamp my ears closed, but there was nothing to do that as I realised I had sunk even closer to the base, the silvery white puddle at the bottom even larger. It had grown to a level where it was connecting with the other pools from my neighbours.
For a moment, when the sound stopped, I felt a sense of relief and started to rejuvenate my light. But then I caught sight of the cave. It was large and dark, with something sitting there that moved of its own accord. It was part of the giant with the pointed head and it dropped down to where I was languishing in my puddle. I then started to feel my world being drawn into the cavern, into that dark, unknown hole and I tried hard to keep myself back, rooted to the surface that had so welcomed me earlier.
Then it all changed and the atmosphere filled with a rushing noise and wind. Cringing in the onslaught, I waited for a moment, hoping I could last beyond the duration of the sudden storm. But the harder I tried, the longer it continued and I realised that there was no way that I would be able to survive the attack.
The sense of failure curled my stomach. In that moment I wondered why they had brought me out, why they had allowed me to share the one gift I could give. All of this only to then be reduced to a dark, smouldering waif of a person that I had been. For a few moments I had felt alive, I had felt like I could make a difference to this world. Now I was finished, I was out and I had been discarded into the netherworld, banished from existence.
Around me my comrades lay and in our unified bond of failure, we consoled each other till next time.