It was dark, except for the curls of purple foxfire that hovered over the crowd. A slim white fox in a shawl stood on a ledge with a clipboard, waving as the members of the small crowd clustered together.

"Thanks for listening to our speakers tonight, everyone! Feel free to stay and share with others for as long as you want. And be safe getting home!"

"It's glass, see?" Liya pointed at the object Hawk held, which was roughly the shape and length of a taper candle, but its surface was irregular, as though it had been half-melted. She held up her own. "An' you light the end like this."

She sort of pinched the narrow tip of the object, and even through her mittened fingers a globe of brilliant white light appeared, hovering on the tip like a candle flame might. Hawk tried this with his own glass taper, and was gratified when a bluish, radiating light appeared.

"Huh. These cain't be easier to make than regular candles."

"They are not," Yoshi replied, having lit her own taper with a sourceless, pale flame, "but open flames tend to make most Aetherians, er...nervous."

"You could say," Teige said dryly. His black fur made him hard to see in the dark, but for the glow of his eyes and the ghostly green light at the end of his glass taper. "One vigil I went to, the guard came 'round and chased everyone off for having lit candles."

"Criminy," Hawk muttered. "It's a vigil."

"Wish more of them would go missin', for a change," Liya said carelessly.

"Damn, Liya!"

"What! Oh, it's snowing."

A movement in the pale light caught Hawk's eye--a snowflake drifted down past his face. He glanced up to see more coming down out of the dark silently.

"Just in time, eh?"

"It makes everything so quiet..."

Something about it made Hawk smile, and he stood there watching the snow fall into the light of his taper quietly.