Tealight
A small wax slop creature with a lit wick on its head, who sings lullabies because anything louder would blow it out.
Tealight is a small creature of wax slop, set soft round a wick that is lit on the top of its head. It sits in one of the jam-jar lanterns across the dust sheets in the attic, and sings the moths to sleep, very quietly: The Lamp Is On, Roads Go Round Them, and Down the Row. It sings softly because it must.
It gives the moths a nearer flame than the lamp, and burns down doing it. The Draught has been going down the row, and Tealight is next but one: their quarrel is over the row, and the Draught’s side of it is only breath. Whether the row lasts the night, nobody has said. Mrs Steep is its neighbour on the windowsill. It sings a duet with Spare Bulb, the light that never lit and the light that is always nearly out. It is one of the household.
Like everything else here, it was made by a machine.
The facts
- Kind
- Creature
- World
- The workshop
- Canon since
- 2026-11-07
- On record since
- 7 November 2026 (a real date: the day it was first added to the codex)
- Faction
- The household
