The Match Who Remembered the Sun

“It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark.”

I know that sentence the way a tree knows its rings. It lives inside me, carved into my grain, into the sulphur at my head, into the little splintering bones of my body.

I am a match.

Not the sort of thing people write about, unless it is to say I flared, I failed, I went out. You hold us between finger and thumb, you ask for a miracle, and then you blame us when winter eats it.

But I have a story too, and I will tell it, because once upon a time is not only for princesses.

Once upon a time, I lived in a box.

It was a small kingdom made of thin wood and paper, painted with bright flowers that promised warmth even when the world refused to provide it. My brothers and sisters were lined up like soldiers, all of us identical to an impatient eye: pale shafts, dark tips, heads of greyed sulphur waiting for friction, for purpose.

We whispered to one another in the dark.

Not words, exactly. More like the creak of dry timber and the hush of powder settling. A shared understanding. A simple faith.

We were made to become light.

That is a sweet destiny, until you are old enough to understand what it costs.

We didn’t belong to a lord or a lady. We belonged to a man with cracked hands, blackened nails, and a cough that lived in his chest like a permanent tenant. He made us in the back room of a shop that smelled of glue and damp wool, scraping sticks from split timber, dipping our heads in chemicals that stung even before we ever touched flame.

He called us blessings.

He called us coin.

He called us necessity.

Sometimes he sang while he worked, a rough tune, as though music could soften hunger. Sometimes he didn’t sing, and the silence was worse than the coughing.

He made thousands of us.

And then he put us in boxes and sent us out into the world, where people struck our heads and forgot our names.

That was the usual way of things.

Until the night the girl took the box.

Her fingers were small and chapped, red at the knuckles. When she lifted us, the whole box shivered, not from fear, but from recognition. She carried winter in her sleeves. The cold clung to her like a second skin.

I couldn’t see her face from inside the box, but I could feel her breathing, quick and shallow, and I could feel the hollow ache in her stomach because hunger has its own gravity.

The box was tucked into her apron pocket. Each step jarred us. The city around her was a muffled drum: boots on snow, a carriage wheel sloshing through slush, laughter spilling from a tavern door, then snapping shut again as though warmth were a thing you could own and guard.

I learned the taste of the world through her.

Bitter smoke. Stale ale. Roasted chestnuts that she couldn’t afford. The sharp tang of coal dust. The sweet cruelty of baked bread drifting past her like a rich person’s perfume.

She stopped often, pressing her hands to her belly as if she could convince it to be quiet.

“Please,” she whispered once, not to anyone in particular. “Just one.”

I thought she meant a coin.

I didn’t understand at the time that she meant one kindness.

The man, her father, had put her out with a basket of matches and a voice like a whip. Sell or don’t come back. That was the rule, carved deep in his own fear, passed down like a family heirloom.

She’d sold some early in the day. A few to a woman who’d needed to light her stove. A few to a gentleman who’d wanted a cigar. Each time the girl’s fingers had brushed the box, the number of us inside changed. My siblings vanished one by one, going off into the world to do what we were made to do.

I listened for their return.

Matches don’t return.

The girl kept walking as the snow thickened. She grew slower. Her breath steamed. Her eyelashes gathered tiny crystals like lace.

When she finally stopped, it was between two tall houses, a narrow gap where the wind couldn’t decide which direction to hate her from. The snow drifted in that alley, piling soft and treacherous. The walls were brick and indifferent.

She sank down onto the ground as if her bones had been quietly unhooked.

For a moment she just sat there, head bowed, hands cupped over the box in her pocket as if she could keep it warm by will alone.

I wanted, fiercely, to help her.

That is a strange thing for a match to want, because helping is what we do, isn’t it? We become fire. We become light. We become a moment of relief.

But wanting is different from doing.

Doing requires friction.

Doing requires choice.

Outside the box, the world darkened. The alley filled with blue-grey shadow, the kind that makes your skin feel thinner. Somewhere, a church bell rang, distant and solemn. Somewhere else, a door slammed, and laughter burst, then faded.

The girl shifted, curling her knees to her chest. Her teeth chattered, a frantic little percussion.

Her fingers slipped into her pocket.

They closed around me.

Not randomly.

Me.

In a box of dozens, her thumb found my shaft, my grain, my specific smallness, and pulled me free.

I felt the air on my head for the first time, sharp and cold. Snowflakes landed on my sulphur tip and melted, leaving tiny, stinging kisses of water.

The girl held me like I was delicate.

Like I mattered.

She lifted me toward the brick wall, searching for a rough edge.

Her lips were blue.

I could smell her fear, faint and metallic.

Then, softer, I could smell something else.

Hope.

Hope is ridiculous. Hope is stubborn. Hope shows up even when nothing has invited it.

The girl pressed my head to the wall.

And hesitated.

I felt her pause not because she feared the flame, but because she feared what came after the flame. Warmth that ended. Light that vanished. A return to cold, worse for having been interrupted.

Still, her fingers tightened.

Friction.

A sharp scrape.

A brief, fierce pain like a tiny sun being born in my skull.

I flared.

It was beautiful.

It always is, at the beginning.

Fire is not polite. Fire does not ease in quietly. It arrives like a bright shout. My flame leapt up, golden and alive, licking the air, pushing back the dark in a small, trembling circle.

The girl’s face lit.

She gasped, and the sound was almost a laugh, cracked at the edges.

She cupped her hands around me, protecting my flame as though it were a baby bird.

The warmth touched her fingers first, then spread to her palms, then climbed her wrists.

Her shoulders dropped a fraction.

And then the magic began.

Not my magic. Not the cheap, common sort you see in party tricks, where sparks dance and people applaud.

This was old magic, the kind that lives in stories and only wakes for the desperate.

Because that is the truth no one tells you about fairy tales: the world does not bend for the comfortable.

The flame brightened, and the brick wall in front of her softened, not melting, but loosening, as if the cold had made it stiff and the heat reminded it how to move.

A room appeared in the place of the wall, as clear as if it had always been there.

A small parlour. A table set for dinner. A chair by a stove.

And inside that room, a woman sat, hands folded in her lap, eyes kind.

The girl’s breath hitched.

“Grandmother?” she whispered.

The woman looked up and smiled, warm as soup. “There you are, little star.”

The girl’s eyes filled. She leaned forward without meaning to, drawn like a moth.

I understood then what I was.

Not only light.

A door.

A bridge.

A match is a tiny yes in a world full of no.

The girl held me out, closer, as if she could step into the vision by proximity. Her face softened, her mouth trembling.

“Are you… real?” she asked.

The woman’s smile did not falter. “Real enough for you. Come closer.”

The girl shifted, knees uncurled, spine straightening as if warmth were teaching her to stand again. Her fingers shook around my shaft, but not from cold now. From longing.

A match can burn for only so long.

That is our curse, and our mercy. If we burned forever, we’d destroy everything we touched. If we never burned at all, we’d never help anyone.

I felt my body shortening, fibre by fibre, feeding the flame. I felt the world tugging at me, demanding an ending.

The girl didn’t notice. She was staring at the table in the vision, where a bowl of stew steamed, thick and fragrant. Bread sat beside it, crusty and golden. A mug of tea waited, the surface trembling with heat.

Her stomach growled loudly, a rude, honest sound.

The woman in the vision laughed softly. “Still hungry, are you?”

The girl swallowed. “Always.”

The woman’s gaze gentled. “Not always. Not forever.”

The girl’s lips parted as if she wanted to answer, but couldn’t find words that didn’t hurt.

My flame faltered.

The vision dimmed at the edges, like a painting left out in rain.

The girl’s breath sharpened with panic. “No, please.”

Her fingers tightened, instinctively trying to hold onto the warmth, as if grip alone could keep flame alive.

It cannot.

That is not how fire works.

The flame shrank. The room faded. The woman’s face became a blur of light.

The girl stared at the empty brick wall, horror returning like a tide.

Her mouth opened.

No sound came out.

She looked down at me.

I was nearly gone, a short blackened stick with a faint ember at my tip.

In that ember, I could feel her decision forming, heavy and inevitable.

She pulled another match from the box.

A sibling. Pale, new, unburnt.

She struck it.

Friction.

Flame.

The vision snapped back to life, brighter this time, as though the story recognised her commitment and rewarded it.

Now the room looked larger. The stove glowed. The table was fuller. There were oranges in a bowl, their skins bright as summer. There was a sugar biscuit on a plate, absurdly perfect.

And the woman reached out her arms.

“Come,” she said. “Come here.”

The girl’s face crumpled. “I’m so cold.”

“I know,” the woman replied. “I know.”

The girl leaned into the vision, into the warmth, into the promise of a hand on her hair, a voice saying you’re safe.

Her shoulders eased again. Her eyelids drooped.

This was the danger of warmth when you’ve been starved of it: you want to sink into it and never move again.

Outside the circle of light, the alley waited, patient and cruel.

Inside, the story held out its hand.

The second match burned down quickly. The third followed. Each time the girl struck one, the room returned, more vivid, more generous, as though it was trying to outbid the world’s harshness.

Each time a match died, she flinched, then struck another, unwilling to be abandoned by warmth again.

She was hungry.

Hungry for heat. Hungry for food. Hungry for a face that looked at her with love instead of calculation.

And under it all, hungry for a world that didn’t treat survival as a moral test.

As the fourth match flared, the vision changed.

The woman was still there, yes, but now the walls behind her shimmered with a thousand tiny lights, like lanterns hung in a forest. Snow fell in the vision too, but it fell gently, harmlessly, like confetti.

The girl’s eyes widened.

The woman smiled. “You’ve walked far, little star.”

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” the girl whispered.

“I know,” the woman said. “So let’s make one.”

My sibling’s flame crackled. The warmth in the girl’s hands deepened.

Then the woman looked, not at the girl, but at me.

At the match, in the girl’s fingers.

Her gaze was kind, and sharp, and full of understanding.

“Little light,” she said, voice quiet and sure, “you’ve done enough.”

My grain hummed with shock.

Nobody ever spoke to the match.

Nobody ever thanked the match.

The woman reached forward, and for the first time, a hand crossed the boundary of the vision.

Her fingers, made of warmth and memory, touched the girl’s hands.

Touched the match.

Touched the flame.

And instead of letting it die, she gathered it, as if flame could be cradled.

The fire did not go out.

It shifted.

It softened.

It became something steadier than a match’s brief blaze.

A small, enduring ember that sat in the girl’s palms like a heartbeat.

The girl stared down, breath catching. “What is that?”

“A beginning,” the woman said.

The alley around them seemed to listen.

The brick walls breathed, just once, like lungs remembering air.

The snow fell slower.

The girl’s shoulders lifted with a gasp as warmth spread through her, not the flash of a match, but the deep, slow warmth of a hearth that does not abandon you after a minute.

The ember in her hands glowed softly, casting a light that did not flicker.

She looked up, eyes shining. “Does that mean… I can go home?”

The woman smiled sadly. “Not that home. But you can go somewhere.”

The girl swallowed. “Somewhere warm?”

“Yes,” the woman said. “And somewhere kind.”

The girl’s breath shuddered. “I don’t know how.”

The woman’s gaze slid to the matchbox in the girl’s lap. The remaining matches huddled inside, waiting.

“You know how,” she said gently. “You’ve been doing it all night. One small light at a time.”

The girl looked at the box.

Looked at the ember in her hands.

And for the first time, she didn’t reach for another match out of panic.

She held the ember steady, as if she believed it might stay.

Outside the vision, the alley’s shadows shifted.

A door appeared where there had never been a door.

Plain timber. Brass handle. A seam of light beneath it, warm and golden.

The girl stared, frozen. “Is that… real?”

The woman smiled. “Real enough for you. Go.”

The girl stood slowly, legs shaking. She clutched the ember close to her chest, and it lit her from within, like she was becoming her own lantern.

She took a step towards the door.

Then another.

As she reached for the handle, she paused and looked down at the matchbox.

At my remaining siblings.

At me, or what remained of me, blackened and spent, lying in the snow near her boot.

Her eyes softened.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

No one had ever thanked me before.

If I could have cried, I would have, but matches don’t have tears. We have ash. We have smoke. We have the memory of flame.

The girl opened the door.

Warm air rushed out, carrying the scent of stew and bread and clean wool. Not an illusion this time. Not a vision. A place.

She stepped through.

The door closed behind her with a soft click.

The alley returned to being just an alley. Cold. Snow. Darkness.

But something in the air had changed, as if winter had lost a small piece of its certainty.

I lay in the snow, spent and content in the only way a match can be content.

I had burned. I had helped. I had become light.

And once upon a time, that was enough to change the ending.