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Across the little cleared arc, Ray lifted a hand and shaped his fingers the way Master Venn had shown in class, thumb tucked, forefinger and middle finger split like a fork. A shard of flame budded there — it was tight, mean, barely the size of a candle flame at first, then roused by his breath into a sliver of orange glass. He sighted along it, jaw clenched, and then, very deliberately, lowered his wrist. The fire dimmed to an ember and slid back into his palm. He did not waste it.
A big Hisscat that had once hunted barn mice slunk out of the brush as if remembering a simpler biography. Its spine wrote punctuation in the air, each step a comma. Whiskers jittered. Its eyes were two hot pins fixed on the small bright coin of gravity that curved the world a handspan away from John's palm. Hunger and the ugly courage of drugs rode its back. It did not pounce. It drifted, an animal dream sliding toward a drain.
