Sterling brought a cigarette to his mouth, then clicked on his Zippo. It just whirred and chipped, not producing any flame. “Damn it. Ran out of fluid.” He sighed, his cigarette still dangling from his lips, then turned to me. “Got a light?”
I tilted my head. If I could do the honing, then surely I could do something with the fire.
“Maybe I do,” I said.
I raised my finger, then pressed it to the very end of his cigarette. Burn. All I needed was for something to burn, even just one of those little bits of tobacco. Just an ember to light one tiny shred, one tiny piece of dried-up leaf, and then it would burn its brother, and that would burn its neighbor, until everything came alight. That was all I could ask. That was all I could hope for. One little spark.
“The hell are you doing?” Sterling mumbled, looking thoroughly unimpressed.
Burn.
Something warm emanated from the end of my finger, and maybe I had missed it by blinking, but I thought I saw a glimmer of amber light. The tip of Sterling’s cigarette began to smoke.
“Whoa,” he muttered, his eyes reflecting the smoldering orange ember.
Then his cigarette burst into flames.
He spat it out, patting at his jacket to put out stray cinders, cursing as he stomped the errant cigarette to death in the grass. Something like laughter was struggling to make its way out of me, and I let it go, at least a little. Half of it was the joy of accomplishment, the thrill of finally manifesting the first real trace of magic outside what I could innately do. The other half was knowing that I had partially set Sterling on fire.
I looked at my hands, at the tip of the finger that had lit the fire. There was no hint of anything unusual, no telltale black scorch mark, no whitened burn scar on my skin. I had made fire from nothing, stolen it from the gods. I was Prometheus. I was Dustin Graves. I was a real mage.
I laughed again. A step at a time.
END