-- Lilith POV, Skyview Monastery --

  A candle. A baby fire.

  Superior Martins had given her the candle and a candle holder too. He had given it to her with a warm smile. He hoped it would make her feel a little better, he had said. A small fire, a baby fire. Something he hoped she'd enjoy. She had bowed and thanked him kindly.

  She had set up holder and candle on the wooden table in the corner of her cell and had lit the candle.

  Now she sat on the stool besides the table and watched the little flame. It danced, flickered, stretched and burned calm again.

  She cupped the little flame with her alabaster hands. She could feel the heat in the little flame. It was a small fire, but it was still fire. Radiating, shining. Dancing.

  She held a finger over the flame and watched soot gather on her finger. The soot was black, black like her claws. No, even blacker. It swallowed light. It ate light.

  She kept watching how the little flame blackened her finger.

  Why did she like fire so much? She had no answer.

  There was another thing she had no answer for. Something she noticed in the aftermath of the kitchen accident today. If she cried, she shed no tears. Somehow she knew that humans shed tears when they cried. She didn't.

  Her finger was now almost black from soot. She wiped it on her left sleeve and it was glossy white again. Dirt didn't stick to her easily. Whatever had happened to her so far, she had remained immaculate. She liked that about herself. She remained immaculate.

  She kept looking at her finger a while longer, before she turned her head to look out of the window. It was dark outside. Very dark. She saw no stars, apparently clouds had arrived and hid the stars from her sight. Not even the moon shone right now. It was as dark as night could be. And through her window came a cold breeze. She might have to close the window shutter this night.

  She returned to watching the candle flame. It was warm. Bright. Soft. Pleasant.

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  Why did she cry no tears?

  She placed a claw just at the rim of the candle. A pool of liquid wax had formed under the flame. It was almost clear, at least in the candle light it looked clear to her. The wax froze on her claw.

  She watched the arrangement, just watched, not really thinking for the while.

  Her white hand. Her night black claw. The pool of wax. The happy flame.

  She pulled claw slowly, deliberately downwards and dug a deep groove into the candle. All the way from the pool of liquid wax down to the candle holder, then she left a deep scar in the candle holder's wood as well.

  Now the candle was bleeding. She watched liquid wax run down, coagulate and fresh liquid wax from above running over, slowly forming a cascade of frozen drops along the candle's side.

  After a while the grove had healed and the wax stopped flowing.

  With a now farther exposed wick, the candle burned almost ferociously. Flame twitching, stretching, reaching here and there. Almost as if it was screaming. Ember sparks rising from the wick's glowing end. Fading sparks of candle life.

  She tried to calm the flame, put her hands around it.

  Now it burned tall and steady.

  She smiled a little. There seemed to be so much life in this candle, but it was still all dead. Her smile faded. Was she like the candle? All dead, just seemingly alive? No. No that didn't seem to be right. The candle only reacted to what she did. She was the one doing.

  The hoot of an owl reached her from afar. There was life in the forest, even now in the pitch black moonless night. She turned her head to look at the window with the blackness behind it. There was life in the darkness.

  She suddenly felt sorry that she had made the candle bleed and tried to mend it. With a claw she sliced slivers from the frozen wax cascade, rolled then into a little ball which she warmed in the flame till it was malleable and began to fill the groove that she had cut with wax again.

  But what she tried, a scar remained.

  The candle had not cried.

  She had cried today, but she had shed no tears.

  Or had the candle cried? Had the cascade of frozen wax been the candle's tears? Tears of liquid wax. Frozen in time. To remind of pain, even long after it had passed.

  She took a deep breath. Then she stretched.

  She would find no answers today. Between thumb and index finger she extinguished the flame, waited for a moment till the last bit of ember had vanished from the wick, took her robe off and slid under the blanket on her mattress. She closed her eyes and wrapped the blanket tightly around her to battle the chill of the night.

  Maybe there would be answers tomorrow.