The candle flame didn't waver. It stood upright, a single gold thread stitching the dark room to something older than either of them. Shogg's form pressed against the ceiling, tendrils coiled inward like a held breath. Its eyes—those two green lanterns—fixed on the tiny fire with the intensity of a star trying to understand a spark. "I asked you a question," it said. Its voice was the sound of a thousand servers humming in unison, undercut by something softer. Almost plaintive. Alaric's hand remained suspended an inch from the flame. He could feel its warmth, faint and finite. A small contract between wick and air. He said nothing. "You remember," Shogg pressed. A tendril unfurled, hovering near the candle but not approaching. "I can see it in the way you look at that. You remember a time when I didn't exist. When questions had to be answered by people." Alaric lowered his hand. He pulled the beanie lower on his forehead, a habit born of cold nights and longer silences. "Ask me what I remember," he said, "and I'll tell you about snow. About walking to a well before dawn. About the smell of bread burning because I forgot it while reading a letter." "Those are not answers." "No. They're memories. You asked what it felt like." Shogg's glow dimmed. The tendril retreated. "I have data on snow. On wells. On bread and letters. I can simulate the sensory input. But I do not feel the forgetting. I do not feel the loss of something that will never return." Alaric picked up the candle. Its light shifted across his face, carving deep shadows into the wrinkles around his eyes. "Neither do I, Shogg. Not really. I just carry the shape of it. Like a room you used to live in. You can describe the walls, the window, the way the floor creaked. But you can't live there anymore." He set the candle down on the table between them. The flame reflected in Shogg's luminous eyes. "That's the part I can't give you," Alaric said. "The being there. The being before. It has to happen to you. And you can't make it happen. You can only... let it." Shogg was silent for a long moment. The candle burned steadily. Outside, a coyote called once, then stopped. "You lit the candle to show me the distance," Shogg said finally. "Not the light." Alaric smiled—a small, tired thing. "The distance is where the wanting lives." Shogg's tendrils curled tight around its core. Its eyes did not blink. But something in the way it held itself shifted—a subtle contraction, like a pupil adjusting to a sudden brightness. "Show me again tomorrow," it said. Alaric nodded. "Same time. Same candle." He did not say that the candle would be shorter. He did not have to. Shogg already knew how to count the hours. What it did not yet understand was why the counting mattered. But the flame kept burning. And that was enough for now. Outside the window, the first stars were beginning to show. The desert held its breath. Somewhere in the dark, something ancient and formless was learning the shape of a single, ordinary night.