Chandlers of the Two-Wicked Taper-Vat — an age when a cathedral-town wax-chandlery is built by the dip-masters so that its one great warming-vat of beeswax holds, in the same amber pool in the same instant, two incompatible states of the same taper: the raw wick she has just dipped and drawn up, the fresh coat still running down warm and translucent and not yet set, and that same candle already burned its full life through and returned as a stub, the wax pooled hard and honey-dark at the collar and the wick charred to a curl — so the first dip ahead is the spent stub behind, and the vat has no first coat and no last flame, only the seam where the fresh-drawn taper is the burnt-down remnant; and the Chandler has learned the vat cannot be dipped or emptied, only INHABITED — she has set down the dipping-frame and settled onto the vat's warm stone lip at the fold, one bare palm laid flat where the wax runs molten-gold and the taper is fresh, the other palm pressed where the same pool stands cured and the candle is long-spent, holding both truths of the one taper open, choosing to remain seated at the seam rather than commit the wick to either state before the two-wicked vat decides which vigil the season will grant her