The yellow flames died for a moment and then struggled to life. They danced their success inside their red glass chambers and bled white wax as they burned. Isabel watched the pair of candles that she had lit. They reminded her of butterflies. She watched them young amongst the sea of dead and unborn candles, and she knew that they were life.

The day outside was still grey with sleep. Inside, the paintings and the icons had not yet risen from their beds of shadows and it would be a while before they came out to stand watch at their marble posts. The statues had just begun to sing their silent matins, and the wind whispered the sorrowful mysteries as it worked the beads that hung from Isabel's clasped hands. Isabel knelt alone in the darkness of corners.

As she always did, she lit the candles for her two children who lie in their polished-mahogany cribs beneath the churchyard. For the past years they had been tickled and cradled by the roots of the acacia that grows near the wooden fence. And now, when the sun is warm or when it rains, the children still take shade beneath the mossy stones that bear their names.

Isabel lit a third candle, this time for herself. She made the sign of the cross and began to pray with the wind. Her candle burned on steadily. In the darkness it looked like a flaming moth, writhing and falling for nothing at all.

She watched the flame as her candle became shorter.