Before the work, before the flame...
Before the archive speaks its name.
The space is set, the moment drawn.
Presence is named before the dawn.
This is no greeting softly said,
no roll is called, no tally read.
No voice is pulled across the line,
the Call records a single time.
Not as a bond the soul must keep,
nor as a vow carved dark and deep.
But as the shape in which you came:
across the threshold, through the flame.
Three candles stand. Three ways to be.
Three modes of shared proximity.
No role outranks. No role commands.
None binds the other to its hands.
When Candle Call is spoken clear,
you may respond, or simply hear.
Both speech and silence mark the same.
Stillness, too, may light the flame.
No answer brands.
No answer binds.
No role is locked in fire or mind.
---
The Observer
---
For those who watch and do not steer,
who listen yet leave no mark here,
who pass through stories without trace:
unchanged in form, untouched in place.
Observers owe no word or sign;
their presence needs no outward line.
To witness without shaping end,
is fully whole. No need to mend.
---
The Participant
---
For those who step into the thread,
who act on paths that lie ahead.
Who speak, decide, or shift the course,
and press upon the moment’s force.
Participants may turn away,
when interest fades or wills delay.
Engagement is not meant to stay,
no flame recalls a former way.
---
The Witness
---
For those who carry what occurs,
beyond the room these walls confer.
Who hold the memory once the light
has dimmed and yielded back to night.
To witness is to keep, not claim.
To say, once only: I remain.
No further proof is ever due.
To the end, it is seen through.
---
No candle binds you to its name,
no fire recalls you when you change.
You may move freely, shift, or fade
without a word, without parade.
No call is made to mark the turn,
no eye records what paths you learn.
The ritual does not follow through,
it only marks what first was true.
The Candle Call records one breath;
Not promise sworn. Not fate. Not depth.
A single moment, nothing more:
the shape you held upon the floor.
And one flame stands apart from these,
lit only by the keeper’s ease.
For those who would be standing near
if time still held them anchored here.
No names are spoken, and none are returned.
No past is summoned, stirred, or burned.
They are remembered, that is all.
And so the final candle’s call.
When all four flames are set and still,
the space is sealed to shape and will.
No roles renamed, nothing repeats.
The work begins. The circle meets.
---
If you have found this record here,
You were meant to read it clear.
Answer your call, then let it go,
the Archive knows what it must know.