Mercury
pull it together. mind the hot ones.
A bead of liquid chrome. Drag it into every droplet and keep it off the embers.
Every bead here adds to one invisible field, and the chrome surface is drawn wherever that field crosses a line. So nothing is animated as a merge: two beads that come close are simply one shape. The shine is a studio that exists only as four soft lights, mirrored in the slope of that surface.
Concepts: tension, reflection, liquid-metal.
An interactive you play with one thumb, on Wundr.