What the Fire Keeps

They wrote until the candles were stubs. Aster made a list of everything she was willing to give the lantern, and she made it generously: the smell of rain on hot stone; her first friend's face, round as an apple; the afternoon her father taught her to whistle. Beside each she wrote it down again in the notebook, more carefully than she had ever written anything, as though the paper could hold what the flame would take. At the appointed hour she carried the notebook to the wick and spoke the wor…