The Spark Bearers: A Love Letter to the Ones Who Keep the Fire

I. The Old Story, Still Burning

The Spark Keeper: A Retold Folktale from the Winter Hills

Long ago, when winter swallowed the hills and every chimney coughed its last smoke, the villagers believed all light was gone. The hearths went black. The cold pressed its face against the windows.

But from the forest came a lone figure — small, steady, wrapped in cloaks the color of storm clouds. In their hands, they carried a single glowing coal, wrapped carefully in moss and a scrap of wool.

They crossed the frozen fields barefoot. At each door they paused — sometimes knocking, sometimes simply breathing through the keyhole to feel if warmth still lived within. When doors opened, they knelt to coax flame from ash, their hands practiced in the old ways of kindling. Where the doors stayed barred, they left the ember at the threshold — a small offering for whoever might find courage to strike flint again.

By dawn they disappeared once more, curling up beneath an oak’s roots or beside a cairn of stones older than memory, their palms still warm from carrying the communal flame through the night.

Later generations gave them names — the Coal Bringer, the Hearth Keeper, the Torch Bearer. Folklorists have since connected the story to older winter traditions: the Scottish custom of carrying a live coal between houses at the new year, and the widespread European practice of sharing a “need-fire” to rekindle hearths after festivals. In every version, the figure is a keeper of continuity — neither saint nor witch, but someone who refused to let the last light die.

You could just as easily call them us.

II. The Roots Beneath the Glow

Folklorists trace their kin through many fires:

• Scottish “first-footing” rituals of New Year’s coal gifts — where the first visitor to a home after midnight brings a lump of coal, symbol of warmth and ongoing life. (Folklore Scotland, “A Coal for the Hearth at Hogmanay”)

• Bluecap mine spirits and kobolds in Germanic and British lore, who guard flame and coal seams, keeping the under-earth alive.

• Celtic Beltane fire rituals, where all hearths were extinguished and rekindled from a single sacred blaze — the original spark share.

• And in the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Thompson 2016), kindred stories appear under M-Fire: fire carried, stolen, shared, or rekindled — an act of daring continuity.
  

So our Spark Bearer stands at the crossroads of these lineages: part divine, part house-spirit, part exhausted queer witch trying to keep everyone warm with a single lighter and a lot of heart.

III. The Lesson in the Ember

This is not a story about power in the loud sense. It’s about the holy stubbornness of staying lit when the world howls that you shouldn’t.

Myth Element	Modern Magic
The coal	The small, defiant hope you keep alive — a flicker of purpose, love, protest, healing.
The moss wrapping	Care as armor. Soft doesn’t mean weak. Soft survives.
The journey through cold	The everyday bravery of moving through spaces that weren’t made with you in mind.
Leaving the ember at the door	Acts of community — posts, zines, hugs, spells, memes, meals. Tiny warmths that add up.
Their vanishing at dawn	Rest as resistance. Even miracle-makers need naps.

IV. A Spell for Torch Bearers

What you’ll need: A candle, a soft scrap of cloth (or moss, or scarf), and your own sweet stubborn heart.

1. Light your candle. Whisper: “This flame is mine. It lives because I live. I live because it lives”

2. Cup your hands around it. Feel your pulse, that tiny drumbeat of defiance.

3. Wrap it (or yourself) gently.  Say: “I am allowed to protect what’s soft. I am allowed to survive in whats tender.”

4. Blow the flame out. Watch the smoke curl upward — proof that something burned bright.“ I will rekindle, in future, what's mine”
   

That’s it. You’ve joined a very old coven: witches, poets, queers, neurospicies, survivors — all of us walking through blizzards with one stubborn spark cupped in our palms.

V. Folklore Notes

• The coal gift of first-footing is a Scottish Hogmanay custom symbolizing shared warmth and prosperity (Folk-Lore Society, Folklore, Vol. 36, 1925).
  

• Beltane fires historically involved extinguishing all domestic flames and relighting them from a single communal blaze for renewal (MacNeill, The Festival of Lughnasa, 1962).
  

• Fire-transference motifs occur in Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, category M-Fire (esp. M301–M330), encompassing sacred fire theft and renewal.
  

• Hearth-spirits such as the kobold or brownie maintain domestic order and warmth across Northern European folklore traditions (Briggs, A Dictionary of Fairies, 1976).
  

VI. Closing Incantation

To every Torch Bearer reading this:

You are not “sick” or "confused" or "wrong". You are exactly the right amount of flame for a world that keeps trying to douse difference.

They can write laws, ban books, police pronouns, and pass fear from podiums — but they can’t deny you the light you carry. They can’t legislate away your warmth.

You are the coal they can’t crush (and the diamond beneath) — the ember that survives the storm. You are living proof that gentleness and rebellion share the same heat.

Carry your warmth like a dare. Let it travel. Pass it to the next pair of shaking hands.

When your ember dims, rest. You are not extinguished — only breathing, only gathering yourself for the next blaze.

The world may threaten, but you?

You are not defined by their fear.

You are fireproof where it matters most — in truth, in tenderness, in the audacity to still glow.

Keep burning, beloveds.

The night is not yet won.