I do not understand why they always think I am prey.

I am not.

Perhaps it is that I am one and they are many. Maybe it is they think I do not see them, although I do. Kirlian tendrils waver in the darkness, creeping closer to the light. Sometimes I think they do not see me at all, at least not as I see them. Not that it matters. Perhaps they only believe that I am stupid.

I am not that either.

It seems I am always cold, especially when night crawls up from the sea and swallows the streets. It is hard sometimes to find a place where I can be both warm and safe. So many corners are so jealously guarded; by men, by dogs, by wire fences that don't care anything for what I need. A shelter that does not mean stupid men who think they can take whatever they can find.

Sometimes I remember that it was not always this way. Sometimes there is a voice and a face and, I think, wallpaper that I helped to choose. I remember that it was pink and that it had unicorns with pretty horns. It makes me upset though and sometimes only fire chases it away.

What do I care about unicorns, pink or otherwise? There is only warmth and heat and flame here, to hold back the cold.

I have told myself that I am nothing close to stupid but tonight I realise that I have made a mistake. Were they here before this, dim under trash, covered by sickness? I do not know. I did not see them, that is all, in this yawning warehouse that is so much like an abandoned temple with its box altars and jetsam sacrifices.

Perhaps they were too far away for me to see. Perhaps they saw my light and crawled to it, looking for a way to survive to another day. They do that sometimes.

Not one of them is whole; I can see it in the darkness, smell it in the air. There is one that will die in hours, his aura blackshot and grim. I wonder if he knows or cares.

One chooses to stand just outside the circle of light as the rest shuffle behind my back, thinking me stupid and prey. I have made only a small fire, of rags and broken slats and discarded papers, taken from the god of this place. I am not stupid and I do not wish to attract a dog's attention, a guard's notice. Curl my hands inside the warmth and wonder how long this one will wait for courage.

"Excuse me. May I join you?"

I laugh, soundlessly.

Because there is power yet in this voice. It rolls in the words, in the command, and I am who I was asked to be.

"As you wish."

He steps forward then, grey and gaunt but still surprisingly... handsome. It is in the tilt of his head, I decide. This one used to be Somebody. He still thinks somewhere that he is and that is the frisson that holds me. He hunkers down across my small warmth, watching without expression as my fingers weave through the fire. Perhaps he does not notice.

"Do you have any food to share?"

"No." And I do not. The little that I have is not for sharing. Tomorrow I must find more as will this man; before the sickness eats him in retaliation. All things wish to survive even to the smallest part.

"Are you sure? I'm pretty hungry."

"I am sure." Watch him out of the corner of my eye, curious if he will attack now. Sometimes it is food they are after, sometimes it is pain. Sometimes it is other things.

"Okay," he says. Not food then. "What's your name?"

Now that is new. They have never asked my name before.

"Agni. I am Agni."

"Agni." He stretches his hands towards the light. "That's a nice name."

"Yes." Then, because he has asked me a new thing and because he has a power in his words, I offer him a little more. "What is yours?"

He smiles then and behind the exhaustion and the desperation, he is handsome. "Wilson Coates, at your service."

"Wilson Coates, I am pleased to meet you. Be warm here."

Silence descends then, a short prickle of time. Why does he wait? There is rising impatience glaring between my shoulderblades, the urge to do harm. Why? I do not know. It has never made sense but then again, I suppose it does not need to. I have no food that will save them. I have no desire to make them well. I have nothing to give them save refusal.

I have wondered sometimes if that is what they are looking for, more than anything. That they want me to say no so that they can make me say yes.

"You know," he says finally, before the tide can break upon us. "I used to be a university professor." Nod my head as if it matters. He laughs, short and pained. "Yeah, that was me. I had a wife, a house up on the hill above this wreckage, two cars, vacations every year. Now?" He spreads those hands then, warm from my fire. "Now I don't have anything except this damned fucking jones that won't let me sleep. Are you sure you don't have any food, Agni?"

There is a shadow of thunder in his voice, a remnant of a storm he used to be. It commands reply even as it holds back the pressure inching closer behind me.

"I have no food that I can share."

"But you have food."

"Yes."

He blinks and his adam's apple bobs. "What?"

"Yes, I have food, Wilson Coates."

Anger and hope are such an odd mix. "Then hand it over. I'm fucking starving."

Sigh and reach for what I have gathered today. It is not much; barely enough for me and wasted on him. I hate men that are stupid. He is going to be dead soon enough with the things clawing in his veins. Why does he insist on eating my food?

He devours the bread in three wolf bites, destroys the remnant of cheese with its scraping of sharp mold. Offer him the two small apples which are all that remain from what I took from trees near the city walls. There are more there but it is a long walk.

He takes a bite and juice runs down his stubbled chin. "Do you have more?"

"No." Fold my arms, upset. "That is all I had."

"You're not holding out on me, are you?"

"No." He laughs, I have no idea why. He throws the last apple over my head and there is the sound of scrabbling behind me. The smile on his face is not handsome at all.

"Agni, Agni," he says. He reaches out one hand as if to touch my face. I flinch. I do not think I should like him to be any closer than he is. "If you don't have any more food, what are you going to feed us with?"

There is a heartbeat, no more. Silence at my back. Then the wave breaks.

There was a time, when I was raw and new, when I did not understand what I was to do.

I cried because there was a woman, only she had blood streaming from eyes, nose, ears and that made me upset. I did not like it at all, it was not right. There are times when I think that I knew her. There are times when I am sure I do not.

There was a voice that told me to be, named me, bid me rise and follow. Triumph, I think. Exultation. There was only green fire and red haze and the broken woman on the ground caught in a mess of lighted lines.

The terrible voice that I could not ignore.

There was time when I do not think I thought at all. It is all jigsawed inside me, like glass that no longer fits its frame. If he had a name, I do not know it. He was only the Mage that held me and bid me destroy that which displeased him. I sat at his feet while he told me of all the things he would have me be, whispered to me to remember all that I was. Earth and fire and flame, green for life, red for death, incarnate.

I learned well and fast, because I discovered that I hated cages. I forgot that which I could not understand, pink and broken and pretty. And I grew strong enough then to suit, and I followed as I was told. I did all that I was told.

And nothing more.

When did I learn this, my best lesson? I do not know. I should like to think I always knew but it is not for me to say. With the first small defiance, unnoticed perhaps. The first acknowledgement that the chains of geas were not as tight as he would have had them be. I wonder sometimes if he made a mistake, or if perhaps I am just stronger with each day I grow.

Yet if I had to choose a place and a time, it would have it be when I cracked the pillars, brought the roof down on his head and he broke, broke like the woman on the ground that sometimes I think I know and there was blood on his face, in his eyes as he died.

He bid me destroy. It is not my fault that he could not get out of the way fast enough.

I hate having to run in darkness. There as so many things that one cannot see until one is scrambling over them, hurting flesh. Only life is alive to be seen.

The fire roars halfway to the sky and that makes me angry; that I must leave the sweet, vindictive warmth behind. It is always so difficult to find a new place to be left alone when the world is angry and shouting and there are flashing lights that are impossible to avoid.

I run and walk and run again until the sun has chased all the animals away. I have found that if the light is high enough, one can sleep on grass, that there is enough warmth for it. The city guards mind the parks and walkways but there are spaces near the city where there is only grass and sunshine. It is not comfortable but it suffices.

I do not like it though, to sleep so near the wood. Mages live there.