When we tumbled out into the spring, free at last from our winter entrapment, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. All winter they’d concocted strange notions about the candle, in desperate hopes of making it warmer. Huddling about the ember hand in hand, a religion was born. And it was a miracle, yes, that it had lasted the whole winter, but...

“We didn’t survive because of a pithy candle,” the words burst out dry and impatient, “we survived because we huddled together. Who was I, then, to start an argument? It would have been the death of us all! Better to be alive than to be right, I reckon.”