wc: 1701

It’s to speak with the spirits, Alastor had told her. You carve their name into the side, so the message can reach them, and when the smoke starts burning gold, you can speak to them.

The words had stuck with Daphne, even in their exact phrasing. She had repeated them to herself several times over the weeks since she’d received the candles, but so far, there had not been a moment where it felt right to try to use them. They had remained in her subspace pocket, where she often thought about them.

Even when Retzian had brought her out to the grave for the first time, they’d remained tucked away. The Captain had given her a lot to think about, all at once. In that whirlwind of an evening, she hadn’t been able to settle her mind enough to meditate on her family.

So, she’d come back the next night instead. There was nobody to teleport her to the memorial, this time, so she’d walked across town to the plot, instead. The steadiness of her walking pace put her in a contemplative mindset as she made her way across the city. She glanced into lit-up windows and she saw a large family eating dinner, and her lips pressed into a thin line. She thought she glimpsed a father curled up in front of the tv with his young daughter in another apartment. When she saw that, she took an unsteady breath and pulled one of the candles from her subspace for the first time since it had been gifted to her. As she walked, she explored the flower carvings along the base of it with her fingertips.

The skeptical part of her wanted to say that it just felt like wax. Candles had been popular enough on Daphne, for people who didn’t like the harsher lighting options, and the wax of this one felt the same as any of the ones that she’d seen in her house, or in the government building. The part of her that threw temper tantrums and kicked strangers and scoffed at the concept of hope wanted to say that this was just another stupid way to try to make her feel better.

The part of her that thought her family deserved to be mourned felt differently.

It might not have been magic. It might just have been symbolic, something from a ritual, but that didn’t change the fact that it was something. Her family deserved a stone to celebrate them, a living stone that was a sanctuary for cats, not a soulless grave like the resting places of so many of Earth’s people. Her family deserved for someone to light a candle for them.

And, maybe there was something more to it. Alastor’s planet had been a place of war, which meant it had been a place of death. Its people must have known something about grief, and about the dead.

She caught sight of a cat scampering off into the distance as she finally approached the stone. It brought a hint of a smile to her face before she sobered again and sat cross-legged in front of the memorial, and took the candle into her lap. Her hands were starting to shake from emotion as she reached back into her subspace pocket and drew out the other things she needed. There was a small knife, and a match.

Lars was the name that she carved into the wax, slowly enough so that she could manage it even with her trembling fingers. There were many people who she’d been crying for over the past months, but her father was the one who had been on her mind most of all.

Carefully, she balanced the candle on top of the stone and lit it with the match. Then she sat, hands on her knees, and she watched the orange flame as it flickered and danced. She breathed. All of her attention was on that tiny point of light.

She didn’t know how much time passed, as she watched for the golden smoke. She’d never been one for meditation. That had been one of the things that she’d been most likely to run away from, when her teachers back home had tried to get her to do it. Maybe it was the calming herbs burning from within the candle that helped, or maybe it was just that it made a difference when there was something that she wanted to focus on.

Eventually, she did see the smoke start to rise. Tears pricked at her eyes as she let them drift shut. That seemed best. It was easier to pretend that way.

“Father,” she whispered to the candlelight. The tears ran silently down her cheeks. For a while, she didn’t know what else to say.

“It’s been a long time,” she said, eventually. “Too long. An eternity, for you, and then, something’s happened with me. I’m still here. I just wanted to tell you-” she took a deep breath, which started out shaky and then steadied, under the golden glow. “I just wanted to tell you that I still love you. It doesn’t matter that it’s been a thousand years. It doesn’t matter that I can’t really see you in the same way anymore.

“I love you.”

In that moment, she could feel something. She didn’t hear a voice. She didn’t feel a presence, exactly, but there was a warmth in her chest, and around her, too, a warmth that was stronger than it should have been on an Earth night, in March.

“Can you tell the others?” she asked him. “Can you tell them that I love them, too? I don’t have too many of these candles. My friend told him that he could make more, but he needs them, too. He’s got his own whole world of people that he might need to reach out to, and remember.”

Carefully, so as not to knock over the candle, Daphne moved closer to the light of it, until she was curled up against the stone.

“Which, yes, I have friends here,” she said. From this position, it was even easier to imagine that her father was curled up to, just a few feet away from me. “It’s a lot different here than I’m used to, but I have people looking out for me. I have a roommate, and some Mauvians, and a team. There was even this woman who was supposed to be my enemy, but she built me this stone when I told her about how much I missed you. They’re taking care of me.”

He would worry, she knew, if he thought that she was facing all this alone. He didn’t need to know that she was lonely, even with all those people around. If he was resting now, he shouldn’t have to worry about if she was taken care of.

She should try to live up to that, she thought. She should try to let herself be supported by the people who were with her on this world, in this generation.

“I miss you,” she told him. “I miss all of you. I miss everything. That’s the hard part.”

A little candlelight couldn’t hold back the grief, then. The sobs escaped, the ugly crying. She rested her head against the stone, warmth or no warmth, and she let it out. She cried and she cried, even as precious minutes of her golden smoke ticked away. This was something else she had done with her father, though. When it all got to be too much, she would go to find her father, and he would listen to her tears, and to the words that she could manage in between them.

She didn’t try to hold back, not now.

“I’m going to try to keep going, though,” she said, between shaky breaths, when she could. She looked up at what was left of the candle, tried to go back to that focus as she watched the flame flicker back and forth, back and forth. She wanted to get a few more words in, while she could.

“You deserve better than this,” she said, and she looked at the stone from Earth, at the candle from Alastor. It was a start, and she would be forever grateful for getting to have this moment, but this place with nothing Daphnean about it was not where her family was truly meant to be remembered.

“What happened to you wasn’t okay. I don’t know if I want to find out the rest of your story, but I’m going to try to do that, too.” It seemed only respectful, responsible, to know the whole picture. It was a slow process, coming to terms with things, but the more Daphne did it, the less she wanted ghosts and illusions, the less she wanted denial and lies. She wasn’t tempted by Chaos, not in this moment. She didn’t want to forget anymore. “And I’m going to make sure everyone is returned to the savanna. I want to do that much for you. I know it’s going to be a long road, but I’m going to walk it.”

She might have to rid her entire world of Chaos in order to manage it, but if that was what it took, so be it. The next time she talked to him, it was going to be on Daphne. The other candle was still safely in her subspace. It could wait, until she was ready for it.

“I know you’d be there for me if I chose to go to the Cauldron, instead, but I don’t think this is one of those times when I can run away from my problems.”

There was more she could have said, but she saw the candle flicker. The wax was nearly all the way melted now, dripping down over the stone and into the words that were carved into its face.

“I love you, Lars,” she said quickly, because that was the most important thing. She’d told him once, but she’d tell him again and again. “I love you, father. I love you. I love you.”

The flame went out in a final puff of golden smoke.

“I love you.”