The Kindling

The light did not remain a point.

It had been called out of the Lack by a need too vast for one small spark, and so a form gathered around it to bear it, as a hand closes around a flame against the wind. The spark became a heart. About the heart rose ribs of gold, and about the ribs a body, and within the body something that could, faintly, perceive.

Thus came Vael, the First Light, first of all the Answered. And the first thing she perceived was that she was alone.

She was called the Lantern Queen. She was tall and white as porcelain, crowned with a hundred rays of gold that fanned behind her like a dawn that had no horizon. Her ribs were an open cage, and within them burned the spark that had made her: a small star, the only light in existence. Her face was a still white mask, and down its center ran a single seam of gold, as though the star within were trying to see out. Her gown was woven of light, and at its hem the threads came loose and drifted into the dark, and each one ended in a star.

The light did not fall upon her. It came out of her. She was the answer to darkness, and an answer cannot choose to be silent. From the first moment she gave, and she could not stop giving, and she could not keep any part of herself back.

That was her nature. It would also be her death.

Her light went out across the Lack, and for the first time there was something to see.

There was mist: a sea of indigo and violet without shore or bottom, turning slowly, lit gold where it was near her and fading to black where it was not. Whether it had always been there, too thin to exist until light fell upon it, or whether it was itself an answer to her need for something to shine upon, no text records. It was the first beautiful thing. There was no one to see it but her.

She reached into it. The mist parted about her fingers and closed again behind them. It held no answer. In all its endless reach, nothing looked back.

For a time, the need was met. The darkness held a light.

But every answer gives birth to new wants, and this is the second law of creation, as old as the first and crueler.

Where her light was bright and where it faded, there was no line to mark the one from the other. Her light was always now, and there was no promise of anything after. And it poured out of her without end, into the mist, and was lost, and nothing held it.

Edges. After. Lasting.

No voice spoke these needs. There was no voice. But they were born of her light as shadows are born of a lamp, and they grew, and they pulled.

Vael felt them pulling and did not understand. So she shone harder.

She would always shine harder. It was the only answer she had.