Seraphina watched me build the model eleven times before she said anything.
She'd come down to the laboratory on the first quiet morning of the holidays, with her silver hair tied back and a scarf still around her throat from the walk, and she'd taken the stool by the door that Reika usually used. She didn't ask me to explain. She never did. She just watched, and I built it, and let it go, and built it again.
Seven circles around the candle. The eighth around them. Light one way, dark the other, the aurora rippling up along the seam, the flame narrowing to a white needle on command and dropping back to a candle again. Every time, it held. Every time, I let it go and started over.
On the twelfth, she said, "What is the eighth for?"
I stopped with the first circle half-built in my palm.
