The Candlemaker Beneath the Root World

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Beneath the oldest tree in the land, so deep that even the earthworms have to whisper, lives a woman who never sleeps. They call her the Candlemaker. Not because she gives light – but because she preserves it. Her home lies among twisted roots, crisscrossed by the glowing fungal growth and the crackling of ancient times. The entrance is a hollow trunk, decorated with bark inscriptions, through which only those who have lost something without realizing it can pass. The Candlemaker wears a skirt of moss threads and a cloak of shadows. Her eyes are gray like old smoke, her hair a tangled nest of tangled memories. In her workshop are hundreds of candles – each one a time almost forgotten.
There, feelings drip into small molds:
– a laugh from a snowy night
– a look no one returned
– the fluttering of the heart before the first word
They pour themselves. The candles never burn the same. Some flicker like a hesitant yes. Others only glow when someone thinks of them. One day, a hiker came to her, exhausted, with an empty gaze. In his heart, there was a silence that didn't speak, but ached. The candlemaker said nothing. She handed him a simple candle, gray as twilight, with a slight golden shimmer in the wax. "This one isn't finished yet," she said. The hiker nodded. "Me neither." He sat down next to the root stove and waited. Hours. Days, perhaps. At some point, a new memory dripped into the wax: the feeling of wanting something for the first time in a long time—even if it was just a warm light. As the candle burned, it smelled of hope and bitter chocolate. The wanderer left the next day. The candlemaker stayed, as always. New drops, new shapes. Some candles she wept into the mold herself, others she gathered from the sleep of animals or the humming of the earth. And sometimes—very rarely—she places a small flame on a mushroom postman and sends him off. To a child. To an old man. To someone who no longer seeks the light, but needs it. So it stays bright. Down below, where no one can see. And up above, where you sometimes feel that something is quietly shining for you.