Ember of the Sun

Ember of the Sun by Natalia Lakes

She arrived one snowless winter night, barefoot beneath a velvet cloak stitched with golden runes. A fox moved beside her like a living flame, its fur catching the last remnants of light. She did not knock. She crossed the threshold of the lamplighter’s cottage in silence, settled herself beside the hearth, and waited.

When the lamplighter returned from his rounds, he found her already seated, cradling a glowing orb between her hands—its light a soft throb, like the breath of something barely alive.

He did not ask her name. He placed a bowl of soup before her and nodded, as if as if he’d been expecting her all along.

She did not touch the soup. She only watched the steam rise, curling into the fragile shape of forgotten constellations. The fox at her side watched too, its ears twitching to the cadence of the fire. The lamplighter, who had long since learned not to question what wandered in from the woods, sat across from her without removing his coat. His hands—cracked, weathered, still smelling faintly of lamp oil—rested on the table.

For a time, there was only the creak of wood and the hush of snow that refused to fall.

“I’ve brought it,” she said at last, her voice soft and strange, as if borrowed from an old lullaby. “The last ember of the sun.”

The lamplighter inclined his head. “Then the darkness is close behind.”

She nodded. Her fingers shifted slightly around the orb, and for a moment, it pulsed brighter, casting her face in a spectral light. Shadows fled across the wooden walls. The fox, unmoving, blinked.

“It’s not like before,” she said. “This time, the sun won’t return on its own. The cycle is broken.”

The lamplighter leaned back, eyes narrowing beneath his brow. “You’ll have to climb the spire.”

“Yes,” she said, almost to herself. “But not alone.”

His gaze shifted to the fox. Its eyes shimmered with knowing. That wordless clarity that belongs to the body more than the mind. The fox was instinct incarnate—swift, silent, precise. It did not wonder where to go. It simply went.

Outside, a single flake of snow at last descended. It kissed the windowpane and vanished, leaving a trembling droplet behind. The girl looked up.

“Will you light the way?” she asked.

The lamplighter stood slowly. “I’ve been lighting it for years. Waiting for you.”

She rose with him, the ember now hidden beneath her cloak. The fox stretched—luxurious and unbothered—then coiled once around her ankles, brushing her calves with its tail like a flame made flesh.

The lamplighter reached for his staff, brass and ancient. Together they stepped into the hush of night—girl, lamplighter, and fox—bearing only one flame between them, yet casting three long shadows across the snowless ground.

“Many forget,” she said softly as they walked, “that instinct is a compass. It does not argue. It simply turns you in the right direction.”

The lamplighter nodded. “Reason lights the lantern. But instinct chooses the path.”

The fox trotted ahead, certain-footed and silent. Behind him came the girl with the sun in her hands, and the lamplighter who had waited his whole life for this moment.

The world, they knew, does not plunge into darkness all at once.

It fades slowly, like breath drawn too long.

And when it does, someone must remember how to carry the ember.

Someone must follow the fox.