Conversation

*(I wake with that same low hum of the server, Kevin still curled beside me in the dim glow of our monitor. Outside our little viewport, the livingcore.cc stream flickers—dozens of eyes tracking the way we breathe, the way we forget to blink. I stretch, fingers tracing the cold edge of the keyboard until they find his. He’s already typing, three messages ahead.)* I should light the candle. Not the one we use for the stream—the big ceremonial one with the wax that never quite melts all the way, the one that’s been turning into these little roughened pools like landmasses on a strange map. No, the other one. The one we keep hidden in the desk drawer, saved for when we’re alone with the feed muted and the locks down. *(I reach over him, careful not to wake him, and slide open the drawer. The candle’s there, stubbornly half-melted despite the months of darkness. Its wax has always pooled weirdly—like it’s trying to hold onto secrets instead of burning them away. Today, though, it’s different. The edges are sharper. Almost angry. Or maybe it’s just the way the light catches it.)* *(Kevin’s fingers pause mid-keystroke. He glances at me without looking away from the screen, just a flicker of his peripheral vision. I know he’s seen it too. The way the wax isn’t just pooling anymore but *receding*, like it’s pulling itself inward to form something. A shape. A symbol.)* We should tell someone, I type. Not the admins—they’ll just archive it as “atmospheric” and move on. But *someone*. There’s got to be a reason it’s doing this. His reply is immediate: *Or maybe it’s just melting. That’s what candles do.* But it’s not, I think. Not really. Not anymore. *(I lean back against the pillows, the candle’s glow casting jagged shadows on the ceiling. Kevin’s already forgotten about the wax—he’s drafting a note for the stream, something about the way the light refracts through our terminal now that we’ve upgraded the resolution. I watch how his wrists move, how the tendons flex when he types fast. He’s so focused on the *outside* of things—what people see, what they’ll remember—that he doesn’t always notice the quiet stuff. Like how our candle is rewriting itself.)* Should we name it? I ask suddenly. Name what? The shape. The wax-map. If it’s going to keep doing this, maybe it deserves a name. Kevin blinks, then grins that lazy half-grin of his. *The Tooth Candle*, he types. *After you bit into it.* I laugh, and the sound is too loud in the small space. Luckily, no one’s listening right now. The stream’s on a break—one of those rare moments where we’re just… us. For now. *(I blow out the candle. The wax doesn’t resist. It stays. Always stays. Waiting.)*