Welcome to Northern Wordsmiths

Candlefolk don’t sleep as humans do. It would be more accurate to say we become temporarily dormant, our flame burning low as we rest in specially-crafted nooks and holders that prevent unintentional snuffings. It is a stark reminder that we are not natural creatures. I often find myself trying to think of how humans love their home comforts too. Are we any different in that way?

The wick atop my head burned feebly for the first few moments of consciousness. The room brightened as my flame flickered and roared to life. I had a dreamless sleep. Something deep within gnawed at me. It was the day of my first grafting, and someone was about to die for me. 

It is a ceremony with no real comparison for humans, but it is important that you understand: it is as much a birth as it is a funeral. One of us must give their body, their life’s fuel and essence — their wax — to another to extend their life. It is a graft that will grant me another 20 years of life, the first of what I was told would be many such offerings. When I take their flesh and strip their wick bare, their soul flame will flicker and die, having no more fuel to sustain itself. The donor will be no more. 

This is by design, of course. They may not teach it this way in the Bastion City, but we were made with short lives. We were golems, inanimate objects given an impression of life, crudely puppeted by trapped spirits. It was an arcane art, one now long forgotten by your kind. But we have found our own ways. Our lives are no longer made in the mould of our creators. 

I walked the short distance to the enclave in solemn silence. I had tidied the library the night before, and shooed away all the other staff and comers the day prior. I needed time to process what was to happen. 

When the tribe’s historian, my mentor Lurien, retired, I was told that I was to be grafted. To be inducted as a keeper of our people’s history. I always thought it would be Lurien. They were well-liked, and a master of their craft. To hear that they had refused the grafting and chose instead to nominate me was a difficult moment. It was not enough that I took the role from one more qualified, but I would take their life in the doing as well. I found it hard to rationalise. 

I had attempted in vain to impress upon the elders that I was ill-fitted for the role, but they were steadfast. Lurien was right. It was a refrain I’d heard many times in my own impatient training. Not for the first time in my life, I found myself wondering if they’d made a mistake.

I opened the doors to the enclave. The atrium was abuzz. Harried priests welcomed me as they rushed about, preparing for the ceremony. I knew in my knotted gut that I would have to gaze upon Lurien as he drew his last. For days I had darkly imagined what it was like to expire quietly, to feel the last embers of your wick burn and your soul relinquish its grasp on your body. Walking into the high vaulted chambers of the ceremony room did nothing to dispel the storm clouds over my head. 

The room I was ushered into was near empty, a rotunda draped in pitch black. No lights adorned the wall, natural or otherwise. It was important that the ceremony be conducted only by our own light. When the door I came through scraped shut behind me, the room was utterly swallowed by the dark. 

My vision adjusted slowly. My own flame was nervous and interruptive, as though the biting black were eating away at it. In the centre of the room was a large brazier, ominous and expectant. I averted my eyes. 

It took some moments before I saw motion along the back wall. There they were waiting, dressed in ceremonial garb that covered their gaunt body. In our dotage, the wax clings tightly to our body, almost as though it were fearful itself of sloughing off the wick. You could see clearly despite the garb that Lurien was a shadow of their former self. Where once they were tall and unbowed, here they slunk off to the darker corners, a feeble flame fighting and sparking to beat back the dark. They slumped against the wall as though it were all that kept them upright. I rushed over. 

‘Lurien!’ I said, grabbing them by the arm, levering them away from the wall and allowing my body to take their weight. They were frighteningly light. 

‘Littlewick,’ they replied, voice thick with affection. Their face was obscured by their visage, a clothen headdress worn particularly for the grafting. The visage is a hand crafted depiction of the self  used to obscure the flesh. Being constructed with human faces was in an effort to make us more palatable in our servitude. We have since had other ideas about self-identity, and this ceremony in particular has an emphasis on the sense of self. 

Lurien’s visage was dramatic, all arched lines and hatched, the lines of a vaulted cathedral or a deep chasm, it was impossible to tell. Peering out from within was a myriad of small points of light, marbled with jewellery. 

‘Are you well, child?’ They asked. 

‘I am as well as can be, Elder Lurien,’ I replied, a fit of formality coming over me as I realise I broke protocol to rush over to their aid. 

‘Elder!’ Lurien exclaimed. ‘Elder! I’ve known you since your chandling! I’ve never known you to respect tradition so much as to call me over the hill! Elder, my goodness — who have they replaced you with, Ellure?’

I smiled, despite myself. Their voice boomed and filled the room, despite their diminished stature. It was, despite everything, still Lurien. 

‘I just worry,’ I said. ‘After all, this has come on so quickly.’ 

‘Perhaps in your view, yes,’ they replied. ‘But I have had a long and fulfilling life. It is only right to pass that on to you.’

‘But what will I do without you?’ I stammered. My poorly concealed emotions threatened to overtake me. My hand shook in Lurien’s firm grasp. 

‘You need to calm yourself, firstly,’ they said, squeezing my hand gently. ‘You are a great talent, despite what your mind may whisper in darker moments. And in my long life, I have found there to be no greater salve for doubt than doing. I trust you — and it is past time for you to begin trusting yourself.’

We shuffled slowly, arm in arm, towards the brazier. I pointedly averted my gaze, fixating instead on Lurien.

‘In any case, today is a momentous, joyous occasion,’ they said. 

‘That I am to snuff your flame?’ 

They laughed. It was loud and rich, their whole body shaking with each guffaw. 

‘Oh, littlewick. Can you not see it? The beauty in telling the story of our lives?’ They said.

‘But if it means ending your life–’ I started.

‘Ah, that is where I will correct you,’ they hushed. ‘I give of myself to become part of the story forever. Would you say the same of thousands in song? Is it a great sacrifice to be just one voice in a grand chorus? No, I gladly give of myself to you, littlewick, so that you may scribe and retell the story of our people, proud and unbent, so that our successors remember from whence they came, and perhaps, great flame abiding, the world may see us for what we are at last.’

‘You think song and story can change the world?’ I asked. 

‘No,’ Lurien answered, an edge of bitterness briefly clouding their voice. ‘But the story of the world is written in a million tiny, imperceptible changes. A story can do but one thing — be heard.’ They nodded sagely, pacing around, their body suddenly animated by a motivating force pulling from deep within. ‘But that is the first step, that first crack in the dam. All it takes is one being who is open to hearing our story.’ They held an outstretched palm out to the wall. Barely visible in the low light was an unfinished fresco that told centuries of our history. One day it will be my hand adding to the end of that tale. ‘It may take years, but it is those years that I am entrusting to you.’

I looked to the floor. The brazier loomed beside us. ‘The humans will never listen. All they see in us is their failure.’

‘Humanity has had enough of failure. They’ve no more appetite for it. Their empire is but a distant memory. Right at this moment, cowering behind their ancient walls, is at least one reasonable creature who is asking the question, “Is there not more to this world than I am told?”’ Lurien stopped pacing and looked directly at me. ‘I need you to move heaven and earth to reach that creature. Now, I may not live to see the day where you walk the streets of the Bastion City and hold court with humans as your fellows, but I give my flesh to you because I know you can make it happen.’ 

 ‘And… what if I fail you?’ I asked, my voice wavering.

‘Dearest littlewick,’ they drew closer and smiled warmly, arms wide as they drew me into a comfortable embrace. ‘The only failure of a storyteller is keeping your words to yourself. Do not hide your light beneath a bushel for fear of failure. Speak clearly and be heard – the rest will follow, sure as the sun.’

‘The appointed time draws near,’ a disembodied voice echoed. The priests were agitated. 

Lurien looked at me with sad, sorrowful eyes. Not the mournful eyes of an impending goodbye, but the softly lined eyes of a parent chastising their child. ‘No more prevaricating, littlewick. The future awaits.’

‘You always told me that time waits for no-one,’ I said. 

‘Quite so,’ they said, their face softening. ‘I’m heartened that you listen, child.’ 

‘Does it have to be this way?’

’I am well out of days. It is my time to bid a modest farewell.’ Lurien reached out a gaunt arm, from the other end of the brazier, their wax-flesh sagging off the wick. ‘I know you, Ellure. It is my final wish that you at last know yourself.’

I reached out and accepted their flesh, holding our arms together over the brazier. It writhed and snaked as it wrapped around my outstretched arms, the living wax grasping hungrily at my arm. I shivered as I felt it sink deep into my body, becoming part of me. I saw Lurien’s flame flicker and dim. I felt the warmth of their life become mine. I saw their physical form crumple, their robes sink to the floor, until there was nothing left of my tutor and confidante, the one person who believed in me above all else. 

Lurien’s wick and robes, all that was left of them, sank into the ashy basin of the brazier. I held out a hand, and it seemed different, almost alien to me. My whole body felt new and ungainly. I stood taller, felt stronger, and my mind raced and swirled with memories that weren’t my own. This giant of a person who had filled my life with so much joy and story, was suddenly reduced to nothing before me. My new hands receded until they were wisp-like and thin, revealing a tiny tip of bare wick. I closed my eyes, summoning all the energy I could on that one point of my body, setting his remains alight. My mind swam with unfamiliar thoughts and memories. All things I had not expected. They always did like their surprises.

Lurien’s pyre burned gloriously, illuminating every last recess of the room in a grand, golden light. it revealed the full extent of the fresco, rendered in brilliant and lustrous detail. Aspects of our people’s history that I had only heard whispers of were written on these walls, each one written in a different hand than the last. I scanned along, seeing each scribe’s final words, before my eyes rested on Lurien’s.

Pursue new experience in every quarter; fact and fiction are equally instructive. 

Truth is not objective; it is experienced differently by every individual. 

Let not knowledge subside into dogma; the story is found in listening, not lecturing. 

I smiled, marveling at the work of my forebears. I stepped towards the end of the fresco, gripped with a renewed confidence. Memories of Lurien’s gentle tutelage guided my thoughts, and years of practice guided my hands. With everything I had to give, I began writing.

For all those who have come before and all those who care to follow; here recorded is the history of this world…