Candlemas [New Year's Extravaganza 2021]

Here's an Extravaganza fic, for ZigguratZag! I'm a simple person; I see a prompt about ghost-types, I know I need to fill it. No warnings apply, so let's crack on!

"Candles?"

"Candles."

Nothing about this guy inspires confidence. He looks like the man who shows up with a yellowish cigarette behind his ear and both hands full of sinister machinery when you tell your landlord you have roaches. Honestly, Rukmani is not totally sure why she hasn't closed the door on him yet.

"They're really good candles," he says, lifting one from his case. "Here, have a whiff."

"I mean," she begins, but it's too late, he's already thrust it in her face. It smells – well, actually, it smells really good; sort of beachy, sort of foresty. Sort of delicious, even. Literally the last thing you'd expect from the creepy door-to-door candle salesman.

The creepy door-to-door candle salesman grins. Behind him, his shiinotic grins too, which is arguably even creepier. Rukmani's never liked those things. Freaky little faces and all those weird pulsing lights under the skin of their caps.

"It's good, right?" says the salesman.

"Well," says Rukmani reluctantly. "Yeah …"

"They're very reasonably priced, too." He waggles the candle back and forth a little. Thick white stem, banded with a badly-designed cardboard sleeve that reads CANDLEMAS, LTD. "Can I tempt you? Just two fifty."

Rukmani would not call herself an expert on candles – has, in truth, never bought one before – but this seems like a really big candle for under three quid. And it does smell amazing. Shona would probably like it.

"Yeah, all right," she says, reaching for her bag on the table by the door. "I think I got some change somewhere."

"Ahh, that's what we like to hear." His grin widens. The shiinotic rustles softly to itself, tapping its boneless fingers together in excitement. "Just one?"

"Just one."

She rummages through her bag and comes up with a handful of shrapnel.

"Two, ten, thirty … okay, here."

"Ta very much," he says, thumbing the coins across his palm and apparently adding them all up in just a couple of seconds. "Enjoy your candle, madam!"

Madam. Eeuch. Something creepy about that, too.

"Yeah," she says, taking the proffered candle. "Uh, thanks."

He waves briefly and heads off down the road to the next house, shiinotic skipping after him with a pattering of mushy little feet. Rukmani watches them go with narrowed eyes.

"Weirdos," she mutters, and shuts the door on their retreating backs.

The candle sits there on the table for the rest of the day, forgotten as Rukmani busies herself with the weekly deep clean; her housemate offers, constantly, but she just doesn't trust anyone else to get the grime out. Definitely not anyone partnered with a rolycoly, anyway. Someone who can put up with that much soot is not someone to be entrusted with the scouring pad.

Besides, she's following the Millon Rose case on the BBC live feed; he and his cartoonishly monopolistic megacorporation have been tied up in the courts since his second Darkest Day, and it's all meant to come to a head this afternoon. So the candle slips from her mind until Shona gets back from work, keys dangling from her hand and 8 Ball chugging along at her heels. She comes in, dumps her bag, and squints.

"Candle?" she asks.

"Candle," says Rukmani, looking up from her phone. "Some guy came round selling 'em."

"A door-to-door candle salesman?"

"Yeah. Hey, hey, hey – you, off the rug. I just cleaned it."

8 Ball rumbles, vents a little puff of smoke from a port in his back, and trundles back towards his partner.

"Since when do you buy candles?"

"I dunno," says Rukmani. "It was cheap and it smells nice and I figured, Shona likes candles."

"Aw. Sweet of you." She picks up the candle, gives it a sniff. "Hey, this is really good!"

"Right?"

"8 Ball, smell." Shona shoves the candle in his face. He fixes his little orange eye on it, puffs out some smoke, and looks up at her blankly. "That's right," she says, somehow reading something into this. "Rooks got us a nice candle."

8 Ball does not react in any recognisable way, but Shona smiles at him anyway. Rukmani has never understood this; she herself is firmly in the minority who suffered through a trainer journey for the absolute minimum amount of time possible before happily releasing her one partner and running back to school as fast as she could. That anyone could actually feel affectionate for a semi-sentient steam engine is still kind of beyond her.

"Here," she says, digging out Shona's candle lighter from the shelf under the coffee table and tossing it at her. "Light it if you like. I could use a nice relaxing candle. Spent all day cleaning."

"You know, I could―"

"You could," agrees Rukmani. "But let's be real, it would be hideously unsatisfying."

Shona rolls her eyes.

"I think at some point being fastidious tips over into something clinical," she mutters, slipping the cardboard sleeve off the candle. "Okay, here we go."

She sets it in her glass candle holder and flicks on the lighter; the wick catches, flares bright purple, and sends 8 Ball zooming out of the room in a panic. Odd. He's normally fond of fire, just like his partner, but maybe the weird colour is throwing him off.

"Huh?" Shona looks around, then shakes it off and resumes her staring at the candle. "Ah, he's got no taste, I swear. Look at this thing! Amazing smell and a novelty purple flame."

"Yeah." Rukmani can't stop looking at it, at the little teardrop of light wavering gently atop its alabaster column. Some voice at the back of her head is insistent that she's seen something like this before, but she can't put her finger on where, exactly. It's been a long day. And she's inhaled a lot of fumes off the cleaning fluid. "Pretty good for two pound fifty."

"Two fifty?" Shona gives her the approving nod of a self-confessed cheapskate. "Sweet. This'll last for ages, too. It's huge." She takes a deep breath in through her nose – holds it – exhales and lets her shoulders fall. "Ahh. That's so good. Right. Gonna get changed, then I'll be right back to enjoy more of this candle."

"That's got to be a candidate for the saddest thing I've ever heard."

Shona fires a finger gun at her.

"I'm a simple girl," she says. "I have simple pleasures."

"'Simple' is one word for it."

"See, I know only someone who actually likes me can be that annoying. And," she adds, "you rolling your eyes just confirms it. Back in a sec, Rooks." She swings round the door jamb and heads out, calling out as she goes: "8 Ball? 8 Ball, not the kitchen, please …"

Normally, the thought of a coal-fired steam engine in her kitchen is enough to make Rukmani's skin crawl, but today it barely even registers. Maybe there's something to this scented candle stuff after all. She gives the candle one last look, decides that whatever it reminds her of couldn't have been important anyway, and returns to the live feed she has up on her phone. Looks like Macro Cosmos is going to be broken up. All these years of failed antitrust suits and what finally did it in was its chairman plunging Galar into a nightmare of darkness and rampaging giants.

"You couldn't make this stuff up," she murmurs, and flicks avidly for updates.

The candle is still glowing purple late that night, after they're done toasting Rose's downfall and the end of Galar's all-encompassing megacorp. Shona points out that it really doesn't seem to have melted much, given how long it's been burning, but Rukmani offers the counter-argument that she's not sober enough to make that judgement, and Shona is forced to agree.

"Fire safety," she announces, licking her fingers and pinching out the candle like a character from an old movie. "Going to bed."

"Take 8 Ball," says Rukmani, looking at the glasses on the table and fighting a brief battle with herself over whether to clear them away or leave them till morning. "I don't wanna come downstairs and see him asleep on the rug again."

"But he's a sleepy boy," says Shona, aghast. "He needs a comfy rug to rest on."

"He has one. In your room, covered in coal dust. You know breathing that in is worse than smoking?"

"It is? Aw man, and I was just about to go snort it off the floor." Shona clicks her tongue, gives her a dismissive toss of her head. "Night, Rooks."

"Night, Shona."

She leaves, 8 Ball trundling along after her. A few minutes later – she compromised: the glasses are in the sink, but unwashed – Rukmani goes up too. Or she starts to, anyway. As she sets foot on the stairs, she catches a faint purple glow out of the corner of her eye and stops dead, wondering if the candle somehow didn't go out.

She turns. The living room is dark and fragrant; the candle, tall and lifeless. The only light is the pallid green glimmer of the digits on Shona's stereo.

"Right," she says, annoyed at herself for worrying and yet somehow still unconvinced, and heads upstairs to bed.

Sometime very late, Rukmani rouses herself to a leaden coldness thickening around her limbs like ice on an unattended car.

"Whuh …?"

She sits up, blinking her way into wakefulness. It seems to take far too long, far too much effort, like the sticky underwater movements of a nightmare. More than can be accounted for by the fuzzy remnants of the wine clouding her head. The room itself looks just as it did when she went to bed, dark and neat and spotless. Wardrobe closed, dresser tidied, guitar propped up on its stand in the corner. And yet something isn't―

"Candle," she mumbles, spotting the line of purple light below the door. "Fire?"

If the house burns down because she enabled Shona's candle habit, Rukmani will actually explode with rage. But right now these feelings seem so far away, locked up on the other side of the frost limning her body, and though she's damn well going to get up and investigate, she can't seem to put the proper fury into it.

"Ugh," she grunts, pulling on a shirt and stumbling out onto the landing. It's worse out here, if anything. Purple light bursting up in shafts between the banisters of the stairs, striping the wall with shadows like a bag of licorice allsorts. How much can one candle put out? Rukmani hears no fire, sees no smoke. Just the fitful light of dancing flame. And that delicious scent.

She makes her way downstairs – and, somehow, the light moves with her; she looks back up the stairs and no longer sees the shadows, the glow having retreated into the living room. Is this a dream? Surely she'd know if it was. Even when you don't know you're dreaming, you kind of know that it isn't real. But this … this feels like it's happening. Like she's chasing a light through a darkened house on legs gone stiff and clumsy with cold.

"Huh," she says, and keeps going. In the living room – but it's not the living room; the dark is absolute, and the candle is so much further away than her house has space for, its flame burning out there in the night like the first lighter to be raised at a concert.

God, it smells good. And that colour's so pretty. And something is wrong, Rukmani can kind of tell that now, but maybe that something is that she's not right there with the candle, not wrapping her hands around that ivory column and feeling the heat wash through her palms.

Yes. That's it. She has to find the candle, wherever it's gone. Everything will be fine, as long as she reaches the candle – and now she's shambling as fast as she can with the strange numbness in her legs, through a deep, formless dark free of all the furniture that should be in her way. Shona's here too, running through the same void, and why shouldn't she be? Everyone should be. Everyone needs to find the candle, retreating into the abyss with every step forward they take; everyone needs to plunge their face into the flame and drink down its searing perfection with blistered lips―

An orange light whirrs in from somewhere, slicing apart the dark in one bright flash – and slams straight into her knee. Rukmani goes down hard and fast, tumbling head over heels through the place where she thought the floor was, down and down and down again until―

"Aaah!"

She sits bolt upright in bed, clutching at a knee that no longer seems to hurt at all. Light's on. Shona's there – Shona? And – oh God, so is 8 Ball, who's actually on her bed. Peering up at her with a familiar orange eye.

"What the hell?" gasps Rukmani, yanking the covers up. "What are you – get him off my bed!"

"Sorry!" Shona snatches him up, heedless of the black marks he leaves on her pyjama shirt. "I just – he woke me up from this dream, except it wasn't a dream? And then he seemed so sure that we had to get you too, and I agreed because like I saw you, and―"

"Wait." Rukmani narrows her eyes. "You … I saw you too."

"Yes!" Shona cries. In her arms, 8 Ball gives Rukmani what she can only assume is some rolycoly version of an earnest look, wheel spinning uselessly in midair. "Like, uh, I'm not totally sure that was a dream?"

Rukmani twists her mouth into a thoughtful sort of knot.

"8 Ball was scared of that candle," she says. Feeling out the thought.

"Yeah."

They look at each other for a long moment. The penny hasn't dropped, not quite, but it's hanging off the edge.

"I'm gonna go outside so you can put a shirt on," says Shona. "Then, uh … I think we should deal with that candle."

"Yeah," says Rukmani, nodding. "Okay."

04.22am. Rukmani stands there in her dressing gown, glaring magisterially at the candle on the coffee table. It looks exactly like a normal candle. As if everything that happened really was just a dream.

"Litwick," she says. She knew she'd seen a candle like that before. Some battle ten years ago in Stow-on-Side, in which her koffing got his arse handed to him.

"Litwick," Shona confirms, scrolling through her phone. "According to Spookipedia―"

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. According to Spookipedia, they lure you along while sucking out your life force to use as fuel. And, uh, they might be trying to lead people to something called the spirit world? Though they've put 'citation needed' next to that."

Rukmani turns her glare up a notch.

"Who the hell goes around trying to put litwick in people's houses?" she asks mutinously. "If I ever see that salesman again, I'm giving him a fat lip."

"That works out well, 'cause I'd finish the job and kill him."

"We'll toss a coin for it. Right now, though … hey." Rukmani prods the candle with a finger. "The jig's up, mate. We know what you are."

The candle does not react.

"Hey," she repeats, putting a little more force into her next prod. "I'm talking to you, you little―"

Whssssh!

The candle lurches away from her like a snake swaying atop its coils, wick flaring into brilliant purple life and gobbets of wax oozing from its sides into stumpy arms. Moments later, its side ripples open to reveal a limpid yellow eye, which stares up at her soulfully.

"Yeah, you," she snaps. "What are you doing, trying to eat our souls? We're using those. To live."

The litwick crackles its flame quietly, sending another waft of that delicious smoke towards her.

"You're not swaying me that easily," she tells it. "I'm not gonna forget you tried to pull us into the void just because you smell nice."

A little glob of wax sinks down over its eye like a brow, as if glaring back.

"Look," says Rukmani. "I gotta go back to sleep at some point. And I don't wanna have my life force being sucked out again when I do."

"Uh, hi." Shona waves at the litwick, which wiggles its flame back at her. "Same. I don't wanna die. Or … go catatonic, I dunno. Whatever it is that happens when someone Draculas out your life force."

"Which means," says Rukmani, "you need to get the hell out of my house."

"Our house."

"Our house, sure."

The litwick looks from her to Shona and back again, something approaching petulance in its eye. It really isn't acting like an evil spirit out of a horror movie. Does it even know what it's doing when it devours life force? Or is it just … an animal? One that also happens to be a predatory candle?

"You think it's safe to just pick it up?" asks Rukmani. "I could … you know. Like putting a spider outside."

"I dunno." Shona checks her phone. "There's a picture here of one shooting flame out of its wick."

"Hmm."

The two of them stand there for a moment, trying to figure out what to do. Down by their feet, 8 Ball rocks back and forth on his wheel, anxious; on the table, the litwick taps its gooey little wax hands together. Doesn't seem too threatening. And yet – well, and yet what, exactly? It's half past four in the morning, and Rukmani quite honestly doesn't want to be awake any more. If that means getting her eyebrows burnt off by a sentient candle – well, that's just something she'll have to explain at work on Sunday.

"Making an executive decision," she says, snatching up the litwick. "Shona, get the door."

"Aaah! Oh my god, is that okay? Like are you―?"

"Shona! Door!"

"Okay, okay!"

They rush out into the hall, 8 Ball zooming nervously around their feet; the litwick squirms in Rukmani's hands, little blobs of wax flying off its molten top, but it doesn't blast any flames, and they all make it out to the front door without anyone catching fire.

"Get the deadbolt! It's all – uh – warm and squidgy!"

"I got it, I got it!"

Shona pulls the door back – and Rukmani almost falls over the front step into the crisp night air. Before she even knows what she's doing, she's hurled the litwick down the path, its flame trailing through the dark like a shooting star – and then Shona slams the door and it's all over.

Rukmani slumps against the closed door, breathing hard, pushing strands of hair out of her eyes.

"What?" she asks, when she notices how Shona's staring.

"I mean. You just picked up a soul-eating, fire-breathing ghost and threw it out the door."

Rukmani raises her eyebrows, which is about as close as she can get to expressing the realisation that she just did something ridiculously dangerous.

"I guess I did," she admits, closing her fists to hide the tremor. "Jeez. Uh. Yeah, that happened."

They both breathe out. Down on the floor, 8 Ball bumps affectionately against Shona's calf. His eye doesn't really close – the lens is made of crystal – but the light behind it has dimmed, which Rukmani is reliably informed is the rolycoly equivalent of a dog squeezing its eyes shut in pleasure.

"Well," says Shona. "Uh … I know it's not really your thing, but – hug?"

"Um … just this once."

One quick hug, which Rukmani is willing to admit is maybe kind of sort of comforting, a little bit anyway, and she peels away again.

"All right," she says. "Good night's work, gang. I am gonna sleep for a solid fifteen hours now."

"Night. Don't let the murdercandles bite."

"Too soon, Shona."

"Yeah, that's fair."

Morning is in full swing by the time anyone's up and about. Rukmani drags herself downstairs at about eleven, banishes 8 Ball from the kitchen – he keeps rolling in to bump his head against the oven, within which he seems to think some sort of earthly paradise awaits – and settles down with a mug of tea. After about half an hour of desultory poking through the morning news (more about Macro Cosmos, mostly, plus the usual litany of political sins), she's joined by Shona. Who, Rukmani is displeased to notice, has a worried sort of look on her face.

"What?" she asks, as Shona dithers by the doorway.

"Nothing," says Shona. "Except, uh … did you look out the front this morning?"

"No." Rukmani's room is at the back of the house; it overlooks nothing except the postage stamp-sized scrap of garden crammed between their terrace and the alley. "Why?"

"'Cause that litwick's still out there." She shivers. "You think it's waiting to get revenge?"

"I'm not sure candles understand the concept of revenge."

"It understands the concept of vampirism." Shona picks up her can of coffee, passes it from hand to hand without actually opening it. "I mean, I'm down with only ever leaving the house by the back door and climbing over the fence into the alley, but―

"We're not doing that."

"―but I figured you'd say that, yeah. So, uh, if the amazing ghost wrangler is feeling up to a repeat performance …?"

Rukmani groans.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. Well, uh, I'd be right there to back you up. And 8 Ball. Litwick are fire-types, right? He can shoot rocks at it."

"Does he even remember any moves? You haven't trained him in years."

Shona shrugs nonchalantly.

"Like riding a bike, innit. You never forget."

"All right," sighs Rukmani, knocking back the last of her tea and standing up. "Fine, let's go deal with it."

So: back out the front again, where the litwick has – as promised – planted itself by the front step, wiggling gently as it drips and flames purple. It looks up as the door opens, letting loose another coil of fragrant smoke, but Rukmani just glares.

"You can't stay here," she says, folding her arms. "If you don't leave, I'm gonna call the Gym and get them to send one of their trainers to move you. And I'm reporting the guy who sold you to the consumer watchdog."

"That's right," says Shona. "And also we'll Rock Blast you right down the drive."

Dhrrrrrrm, adds 8 Ball, peeping out from behind Rukmani's leg.

The litwick waves one of its wax-blob arms. It is, revoltingly, sort of cute.

"Don't think you can charm your way out of this," Rukmani warns it. "You don't get to do … whatever you did last night and then get to stick around."

The litwick blinks stickily, nonplussed. Like a baby being asked for their opinions on Rodin.

There is a considerable amount of silence.

"Do you think it even knows what it's doing?" asks Shona.

"No, but that doesn't mean it isn't dangerous. Wolves don't know what murder is, but they can still kill you."

"Yeah," she says, a little too slowly. "Yeah, I guess."

They look at the litwick for a while. The litwick looks back.

"Shona," says Rukmani.

"Yeah?"

"I'm not adopting a litwick."

"No, of course not."

The litwick flexes itself and begins to crawl towards them, its base rippling with molten wax like the motion of a snail's foot.

"It tried to eat our life force," says Rukmani.

"It really did."

"We wouldn't be able to trust it."

"Nope. Not at all."

They exchange a look.

"It's just that I―"

"But it really seems―"

They both stop. Shona chuckles ruefully.

"I'm gonna Google how people feed their partnered litwick without getting Dracula'd," she says. "Do you wanna bring it in?"

Rukmani sighs.

"Yeah," she admits, bending down to pick it up. "All right."

"Cool beans."

Off she goes, 8 Ball rolling along behind her. Rukmani looks at the litwick in her hands, warm and soft and staring innocently, and sighs all over again.

"Okay, mate," she says. "You try anything and I'm melting you down and selling you right back to the candle guy."

The litwick doesn't answer. Of course. But Rukmani could swear, as she shuts the door on another chilly autumn morning, that the look in its eye is satisfaction.

God help her. She might actually be starting to understand why people like pokémon.