Ember Burst

a wick on a dark stage. tap it to strike, tap again to snuff it, hold it to blaze and drag it to draw.

key insight: an ember's colour is its age. the ramp runs near-white through yellow and orange into a deep red the ground swallows, so a spark is gone before its alpha has finished and what the eye reads is the heat leaving rather than an opacity being taken away.

dragging draws because the sparks leave carrying the wick's own velocity, at 62% of it, and nothing about the launch changes. the six things separating a spark from a particle are all knobs: run spray, drag, lift, pops and trail to their floors and what comes back is the wheel of equals the first build was.