"Can someone warn me if Sheira's going to kill me?" I asked down at breakfast the next day. "I just need to know what form of pain and torture I'm going to be exposed to."

It was a bright summers day, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and I was due for my first training session to channel my elemental powers in my life. I'd been asking for tips all morning from the rest of Fire Cabin and their advice was as varied as 'Stay patient and calm' to 'Try not to blow anything up'. From the brief history lessons, I had received and the relative new quality of every building, nothing lasted long here.

"Don't worry about it," said Sophie. "You'll be fine."

"You'll be in utter agony by the end of the day, but other than that, perfectly fine."

"Thanks Chip."

Yeah, my fellow cabin mates were taking this opportunity to wind me up, but I felt kind of good about the whole situation. For starters I slept like a rock last night, which was surprising all things considered, and when I woke up the first rays of light were creeping into through window. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and I felt alright with the world.

Okay that's going a bit poetic, as what actually happened was I was given a minor heart attack by Chip and Sophie bursting into my room at six in the morning carrying a massive, bulging bin bag with them. It turns out the rest of Fire Cabin had been up till midnight tearing up the entire camp to find me something decent to wear. They had scrounged through lost property, begged for donations and bribed a few people to hand over their newly bought goods. To cut a long story short, I was eternally grateful to the guys, staying up till way past curfew just to make sure that I wasn't going to be wandering around Camp in the nude. Plus, it was pretty fun trying on all the different outfits and sharing a good laugh about some of the more... outlandish donations.

In the end I ended up with a decent haul; four t-shirts, two pairs of jeans, the hoodie that Chip insisted that I keep, a waterproof jacket, a new pair of trainers that made me notice that the housekeeping jar wasn't as full this morning, and thank the lord for Chip who ran down to the nearby shops at five in the morning to buy me some clean underwear. But by far the best find of the evening a pair of hard leather, combat boots. They had been discovered in one of the old training rooms, buried under a pile of disused equipment and thoroughly caked in mud. After a quick scrub, by paying Earth to remove most of the mud, and getting rid of the smell, curtesy of Water and Air, the housekeeping jar was now at half contents, but I had a badass pair of boots that I swore I was going to keep whether they fit or not. They were just my size, worn down just enough to be comfortable and probably the best footwear for being thrown around by one of the Camp's best known Veterans.

It was seven o'clock in the morning and the rest of Camp was tucking into breakfast, Flame was gnawing away happily on a rack of ribs, species unknown, letting the sound of crunching echo up from below the table. At least he was enjoying his breakfast, I didn't know how to get mine. There were no tables, or jugs or an all you can eat bar there were just the cutlery and the crockery sitting empty in front of me. I certainly wasn't eating that. I looked around, everyone else had their plates full to the brim. Leela saw me looking.

"Let me show you," she picked a stone tablet and handed it to me. Various meals were carved into the stone. "It's really simple." Obviously not enough for me. "You choose what you want and tap the sigil next to it." I scanned the list.

"Don't go for anything too greasy!" yelled a boy named Vincent from down the table.

I took his warning and decided on a bagel with scrambled eggs and salmon. I tapped the sigil. A matching sigil on my plate suddenly flared red and were a flash of light my plate was suddenly full. I nearly dropped the tablet in shock. I picked up the bagel and took a bite out of it. The bagel was toasted to perfection, the eggs were soft and golden, and the salmon was melt in your mouth amazing. It was delicious.

Leela chuckled at my expression. "Drinks menu's on the back," she said as I swallowed.

I scanned the list again and chose a glass of orange juice, no pulp. A flash went off again and voila, my cup was full. I ate for a while before turning the conversation back to training.

"What would I have to do in training? Nothing too strenuous I hope."

Sophie shrugged. "Well yes and no."

"That's concerning."

"The most you'll be doing is summoning up a little spark, maybe forming a flame consciously." Said Sophie.

"But you will be utterly exhausted by the end of it," explained Chip. "They don't go easy on you first time, they'll keep pushing you until you're just about to black out."

"Oh, come on," I said disbelievingly. No one smiled or laughed, this was no joke. "Youre serious?"

"I lost my ability to stand after my first session," said Leela.

"I passed out," said Chip.

"I threw up," announced Sophie, grinning.

"Too much information. Is it really that bad?"

"You have no stamina for it," said Lily. Lily's element was magic so technically she should have been an unidentifiable but her favouritism towards pyrotechnics meant she just squeezed into fire.

Over the last few hours I had been filled in on the essential details about elementals and how the Camp worked. I was a Rookie and according to Sophie, I would be for the next five years of my life, then I would get promoted to a Veteran. 'Five years for the part timers, two for the residents'. I was a pure elemental. Someone who had the ability to control all aspects of fire. Everyone else wasn't a pure was a sub elemental, someone who's element was a combination of different elements and they were put into the cabin where they were strongest.

For example, Chip was a Flash which was a combination of fire and light and Lily was a combination of fire, light and dark. There was no prejudice between any of these groups as nine times out of ten, subs were more powerful than pures and there were more of them, so checkmate. But there was a group that just broke all the rules and couldn't be put anywhere. These were the Unidentifiables or wayfarers as they were more commonly known. These people couldn't be put anywhere, they were still powerful, but they didn't have a place in any of the cabins and, so they stayed in the library which had spare rooms for these kids, there weren't many of them, but it was quite unfair that they couldn't be fit into a cabin.

"Nick? Earth to Nick?" I turned back to Lily and apologised. She shook her head, but she was smiling. "I think you need to pay attention to this."

"I'm all ears."

"Training will be hard at first because your body has never been pushed like this. It's a different level of energy being used and even the fittest person in the world will fall flat on their face first time."

"Will it get any easier?"

"Yes, but it will take time. You'll be dragging yourself around for hours waiting for your energy to return, it's all about making those periods smaller, so you have more energy for longer. Full trained elementals can go for hours, even days without breaking a sweat."

"What about a first timer like me?"

"She'll stop short of you passing out."

"Great." I finished up my drink. "How come Sheira's training me, wouldn't it be easier if another Fire did it?"

"Not really," said Chip, "we will eventually take over but when you're being walked through the basics Sheira will be more than capable."

"Why?"

Chip thought about his answer. "Think of it like riding a bike. You don't learn how to ride a regular road bike and then relearn everything for a BMX, do you?"

"Well no."

"It's like that. Anyone can teach you the basic principles but if you want to learn a specific skill, you must go to a professional. Training is like that, Sheira, who is the complete polar opposite of your element, can teach you the basic skills but when you need to hone your abilities then we'll take over. Does that make sense?"

Surprisingly it did. I nodded, and Chip looked triumphant, "that's good, considering I barely understood a word that I just said."

At that exact moment Ms Harper walked out onto a platform, gazing over the four tables like a hawk waiting for all noise to cease. "Welcome campers!" she said into a microphone that was hovering in mid-air in front of her, "welcome back to London Camp." A small cheer erupted. She waited for the noise to die down and continued, "for those that are new to our ranks, this is the place you will be spending the next six weeks, training, developing and becoming fully fledged elementals. This may be a summer camp, but this is no walk in the park, since last summer various events have unfolded, many for the worst so you must all strive to achieve your best, work hard, train hard to build your power, and keep yourself safe in the world."

An eerie silence fell over those sitting at the tables. Fifty-nine people had vanished, most of them were students at London, meaning that everyone knew someone who had been taken. "Because of the recent events several precautions have been taken to keep all of you safe. There is to be a strict nine PM curfew, a head count will be taken every night by the head counsellors before hand, if you don't know who your head counsellors are then I suggest you find out." Six people raised their hands, but there should have been eight. "And finally, no Rookie is to leave the camp grounds unsupervised, and if anyone wishes to leave for some reason a Veteran must escort them at all times."

"Have they ever done anything like this before?" I whispered.

Chip shook his head. "Never, that's why no one knows what to do."

Ms Harper cleared her throat to receive silence. "Now onto the general notices. The blacklisted weapon list has been updated to include incendiary and explosive weapons after the certain event last winter which sent a good half of you to the infirmary. They will still be allowed for supervised training, but personal weapons are banned. A list of blacklisted items is being handed around now."

"Should I ask what happened?" I asked as the pad was handed to me.

"Some bright spark thought it would be a clever idea to adapt a crate of fireworks into a rocket launcher," said Lily.

"I've still got a bloody scar," growled Witch-Hazel, Lily's black cat.

I took a moment to scan the, very extensive, list. "What the hell's a...a...I can't pronounce that without butchering it. That one."

"A Kpinga?"

"Yes."

"It's an old African throwing knife," explained Sophie. "They're highly dangerous and have a very high fatality rate, hence why the Harpy doesn't want us throwing them around."

I shook my head and kept on reading. "This is a big list."

"Over two hundred items on my last count."

"Two hundred and ninety-seven," corrected a girl with startling pink pigtails called Felicity.

"Swot."

"May I have your attention please!" shouted Ms Harper, scaring us all into complete silence. "I want to address something that I know you have all been asking me about. Despite the recent fears around the Camp, I have made the decision that the end of season tournament will still go on." A cheer that would have been better suited at Wembley exploded in the hall. "QUIET!" screamed Ms Harper. "Before you all get carried away I want to make something very clear, we are under threat right now, you all need to be highly serious with that fact. We have lost thirty-one of our friends over the last year and I do not want that number to fall any further. The rules are in place to keep you all safe, so I have also made the decision that if any rule is broken that individual, or those individuals, will be forbidden to take place in the tournament. That is all." She walked off the podium followed by a symphony of groans.

Rules-are-made-to-be-broken-Sophie looked particularly down cast. "That's hardly fair, I can't help being naughty."

"I'm presuming that the tournament is quite important," I said.

"Highly important," said Sophie. "You've never done it before though, have you?"

"It's it like sports day?"

"Sort of. It's like an Olympics for the cabins. We all go head to head in various events like track, swimming, combat, that sort of stuff."

"Though not that simple I bet."

"Well..."

"Absolutely not!" A little Lightning boy, who sported the rather unfortunate name of Gordon, yelled. He was one of those kids who was physically unable to sit still, and he was constantly animated by every little thing. "Yeah there's sprinting and swimming a stuff like that, buts all sooooo boring. There's archery and climbing and obstacle courses. There's the hammer throw and the javelin but you're trying to hit a target. Sword fighting, dagger throwing, shield fighting-"

"Shield fighting?" I thought shields were meant for defence, not for combat. Game of Thrones had once had a death by shield but that was just fantasy. Right?

Chip knew otherwise. "Ever been hit by a shield? It hurts like bloody murder."

Sophie coughed loudly to say she wanted to speak. "We really need your help on this Nick, we don't want a repeat of last year."

"What happened?"

She shuddered at the memory. "It was a complete disaster. We didn't come in the top three for any event, so we ended up rock bottom and having to fork out for Air who decided to go bungee jumping for their prize. The whole thing work on a point scheme and the team with the most points wins. We managed to get a camp record for the lowest score of all time. But that isn't going to happen again," she said determinedly. "We don't want another defeat like last year, let's all, and I can't believe I'm saying this, stay on our best behaviour. Work hard, play hard, that's my motto."

"I thought your motto was 'Rules are for wimps'?"

Sophie sent a jet of fire hurtling at the speaker's head in retaliation. "We need all hands-on deck. Hey Nick? You got anything special that you're good at? We need some swimmers."

The thought of water made me wince. "Count me out on that one, I can't swim."

She sighed. "Never mind, we'll think of something. You have the right physique for a swordsman, so we'll see what we can do." Now that Ms Harper's announcement was over the campers were beginning to disperse, heading off to whatever training they had today. I sucked in a breath.

Sophie patted me on the back. "Don't worry, you'll be fine. Hey everyone, wish him luck!"

I will say this to the day I die, having someone supporting you is the best feeling in the world. I grinned at them all. "Thanks guys," I said. I walked over to where Sheira was standing. She was leaning against one of the pillars, looking very relaxed considering the pain she was about to inflict on me.

"You ready to go?" she asked.

I nodded. "Ready as I'll ever be."

"Good enough for me, come on," she said.

I followed her through the camp. Past the main buildings and out into the area where the buildings became one room workshops, weapons racks popped up every now and again and fenced off green fields doubled as training grounds. Flame padded beside me, taking in the sights, the sounds of metal on metal and the calls of hundreds of animals. I also hopped that he was memorising where we were because I hadn't the foggiest idea where we were or where we were going. The training grounds became more frequent we walked on, with people battling with weapons I would never be able to pronounce, and sudden bursts of light ripped through the air. I wanted to stop and take everything in, but Sheira dragged me back into step if I so much as lagged behind for a second.

We were at the edge of the camp grounds when she finally stopped. Two round targets were sat a few hundred meters away from where we were stood, but other than that we were in the middle of nowhere.

"Are you that worried that I'm going to set fire to something?"

"Believe it or not, yes." She stuck her fingers in her mouth and made a loud shrill whistle. Then, rising over the hill, like every cheesy 'ha, ha the hero's not dead!' moment in every movie ever, a white snow leopard padded its way towards us, flicking a glare in the direction of me and Flame, before wrapping itself around Sheira's legs protectively.

"They're late," she said. Her voice was rich and ladylike, but her tone was powerful, like the sort of person you wouldn't want on your bad side.

"Harpy's announcements ran over," apologised Sheira, stroking the leopards smooth head so she purred.

The leopard had crystals glittering in her sharp needle-like fur, snowflakes clung around her head and neck, and her piercing blue eyes bore into me and Flame. Her claws were silver and as long as my own fingers while her teeth were as deadly as pointed icicles. There was a glacial beauty to the two of them, but a ferocity hugged their auras making them both awesome and terrifying.

"This is Ice," said Sheira, introducing us to her beast.

"I'm Nick and that's Flame," I said nervously.

Ice showed no change in her expression. "I know."

I didn't know if she was trying to freak me out on purpose, if she was, she was doing a good job, if she wasn't, good god that thing was scary. I inched away from her slightly. "So...what are we going to do?" I asked Sheira, being careful not to look Ice directly in the eyes.

"Have your cabins mates told you anything?"

"The basics."

"Then what's what we'll start with."

She detached herself from Ice, who slinked over to a rock and watched us carefully. Flame sensed he wasn't needed and followed her lead, making sure not to challenge her by sitting in the shade below her. Sheira took me by the hand and pulled me over to the centre of the field. I had no idea what was about to come next, but I was intrigued.

"Okay," she said, staring the lesson, "Let's start with the basics. You've obviously produced your ability before, all elementals have, the difficult part is trying to replicate that power consciously."

"Consciously?"

"Yes. You know for a fact that you have set fire to things, but you weren't willing it to happen, it was an accident, you didn't have control over your powers."

"Like when I set the desk on fire."

"And the rest."

I thought back to all the times things had spontaneously combusted around me. Some were easily explained away, bins lighting up from burning cigarettes, ovens suddenly sparking from a fault in the wiring, smoke detectors suddenly going crazy from a sudden battery drainage. But some were less easily explained. Temperatures rose for no reason at all, electronics exploding, clothes catching fire and one time a football had suddenly burst into flames in the pouring rain. I hadn't wanted to admit that it was me, even though I always had that thought gnawing at the back of my head relentlessly. Now I knew the truth, it suddenly made more sense.

"How can I control that power then? From what you're saying it sounds like those outbursts were just an instinctive reaction."

"They were, you just need to find what triggered that reaction to find how to control your power," she explained. "When you had your outbursts, what were you feeling?"

I cast my mind back again. To the bullies and the tormentors, the boys that picked on my little sister, pushing her over into the mud. I remembered the insults and the jeers and the comments that made my blood boil. Then Slattery, who insulted my father to my face and made me-

"Anger," I said. The temperature suddenly felt like it had shot up about twenty degrees. "Whenever I get angry my blood starts boiling, I start burning up and shaking. Then it just peaks, and something burns." I shuddered, "I've hurt people, I've sent people to the A&E with second degree burns, I feel horrible afterwards but just comes out."

I looked up at Sheira. She was biting her lip anxiously. She had not been wanting to hear that answer. "That's not good..." she mumbled. "That's really not good.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because you can't control that sort of anger. Fear and sadness and rage on that level is impossible to control." She sighed sadly. "A lot of elementals come to us thinking that the only way to show their powers is to get angry or scared. A lot of them put themselves in danger to summon something up. There was one kid, a little boy, he thought that too. He took on Molly and lost."

I could see that this wasn't going to be as easy as I'd first thought. I was a novice, a Rookie. I didn't know what I was doing, and I certainly didn't want to hurt anyone because I couldn't control myself. "So it was my fault that they got hurt..." I said.

She didn't look at me. "Ultimately... yes. But you can't blame yourself for something you couldn't control." She sighed, "how many people have been... you know."

"Too many. I remember one event in particular. I was in year five, I think, and we'd just got this new maths teacher while our regular one was on maternity leave. She wasn't a very good teacher, in fact she was barely better at maths than we were. On the day she was giving us back our homework and when she gave me mine back I noticed that she'd marked it wrong. I'd looked up the answers to double check you see and no matter how much I argued she wouldn't believe me. She then started saying stuff about how my parents hadn't taught me properly and I started getting mad. I didn't set fire to anything, but a lot of people started complaining that it was suddenly getting very hot in the classroom, hot enough for the heat sensing sprinklers to be set off and those things don't trigger until something hits one hundred degrees. We all got dragged out and when one girl grabbed my arm she screamed, and I saw that her hand was blistering. We later found out by checking the sensors that I had hit one hundred and twenty-seven degrees, I was so hot there was steam coming off me. But I hurt her, I didn't mean to, but she still got burned because of me. I don't want that to happen again."

Sheira looked up and smiled sympathetically . "It's going to be difficult to change that."

"Nothing's ever easy," I said.

"True," she nodded in agreement. "This will hurt a bit, but please tell me if you feel like you're about to black out." Oh great, they weren't joking about that. "Now let's get started. First of all, we'll need to find a way to override your standard method of producing your power. You said that whenever flames appear, or you start burning up, you feel angry. Anger is powerful but its highly uncontrollable. What makes you angry?"

"People picking on my family," Mr Slattery's ugly face loomed into my head, spit hanging from his lips like a bulldog. I beat the image back with a mental stick. "I can take insults to myself for a long time but if someone goes after my parents or my siblings, well they've got an inferno on their hands."

"So, your ability is driven by your need to defend your family?" she said.

I shrugged, "yeah, I suppose so."

She clapped her hands so suddenly it made me jump a yard. "That's brilliant!"

"Can you warn me before you have another revelation like that?"

She darted forwards and slammed her hands on my arms. She was surprisingly strong for being so small, but I knew that she had some lean muscle hidden under that denim jacket. Sh'd probably given me a bruise.

"Nick, you're driven by your family. Your desire to protect them is what draws out your power, it's not your anger. Yeah it seems to marry up with it, but your anger is just a side effect of your protective nature." She started hopping from foot to foot excitedly. I shot a look at Flame, he gave me an equally baffled look in return. "I have an idea," she said.

"Enlighten me."

"I need you to think about your happiest memory."

"Expecto Patronum."

She hit me. Hard. If I didn't have a bruise there before, I did now.

"I'm serious Nick! Cast your mind back to your best memory. It doesn't matter what it is, it just needs to involve your family and it has to be happy. Find it and hold it there. You need to concentrate, visualise it, you need to keep going till you feel something."

"What do I need to feel?"

She gestured wildly. "It's really difficult to explain. Just try, okay?"

I had no idea what she was on about, she could have been speaking Latin for all I knew, but I had to listen to her. Happy memories, happy memories...I hadn't had one in two years. After Dad died we lost everything, our beautiful flat that overlooked the Thames, the car, all our savings, and our stable family unit. Mum's parents were dead so couldn't help us, and Dad's were no good at all. In fact, I'm ninety nine percent sure that my scheming uncle had rewritten Dad's will to make sure that we didn't get a penny.

We'd been in bed and breakfasts, council housing, even a homeless shelter for a few months. Me and Mum had gone starving for days so that the twins could eat, and I was on every bursary scheme that there was.
Happy memories didn't exist for me anymore.

No, they did. I closed my eyes and thought back, past the hard times, past Dad dying, even past the twins, back to where it was just me, Mum and Dad. When we thought that nothing could go wrong for us. Then, out of the blue, it appeared. Like a light in the dark. My eighth birthday. It was so clear, it was like watching a film inside my head. I'd woken up that morning as the sun came in, but I didn't go running to Mum and Dad like any kid on their birthday would. Instead I lay in bed for a few hours, wondering where we'd be going today for my birthday treat. At about seven I couldn't wait anymore and went running into Mum and Dad's room, jumping up on their bed and singing Happy Birthday to Me at the top of my lungs. If they were annoyed they didn't show it. Mum scooped me up for a cuddle while they both sang to me, one with a soft sweet voice while the other deliberately switched the words around to make me laugh. Mum went on the search for presents while Dad made me an impromptu fort out of pillows and cushions. When Mum came back we pretended to be a family of bears, growling and roaring at her Mum laughed and called me her little cub, so Dad picked her up and pretended to be a big growly bear on the hunt for a snack. Mum shrieked and hit him a few times but she was laughing. It was at moments like that you could tell how much she loved him.

All three of us cuddled up under the duvet while I unwrapped my presents. Seven of them, all themed. It was a funny little tradition in our house that you had one present for every year, with the last present being a day out somewhere. It stopped when the twins were born because money became a bit tighter, but they always saved up for a day out for my birthday. I slowly shelled, with Dad's help, the presents out of their shiny wrapping and tried to guess where we were going today. I had a jigsaw of a zebra, a wild safari colouring book, a book of animal facts, a t-shirt with a lion printed on it, a toy safari truck, a box of plastic animals and a family of wooden elephants. I thought hard about where we were going. I was eight, so it took me a little while to piece the answer together. The collection of presents always hinted to where we were going, like when we went to Madame Tussauds for my sixth birthday I got toys of who the waxworks were based on, or when we went on the London eye when I was seven I got an entire London skyline. I played around pretending not to know, first I guessed the Sea life Centre, but they shook their heads, I then said Chessington World of Adventures because I knew that there were animals there, but they then said no again. Finally, after pretending to ponder for a while I leapt up and yelled 'The zoo! The zoo!' and they both cheered.

We then got up and while Mum read some facts out of my new animal book Dad stood at the stove making pancakes. My dad still is the undisputed champion of pancake making in my opinion. They were perfect every time, thick and fluffy and they always had a smiley face baked into them which I could never figure out how he did no matter how many times I watched him pour the batter. After we ate and dressed, me wearing my new t-shirt, we piled into the car and set off towards the ZSL.

Running around that zoo was incredible, the sight of hundreds of animals staring back at me was like magic back then. We gasped at the shows, laughed and imitated the funny penguins, giggled at the monkeys with their big red bottoms, shuddered at the creepy crawlies and had a good long look at the lions. Dad hoisted me up onto his shoulders to give me a better look when one of the lions roared at me, I roared back, thinking that I was talking to them, fate is quite amusing when it wants to be.

We went to a café for lunch and ate burgers and hotdogs with lashings of ketchup and mustard and they let me have an ice cream for pudding. I got stuck choosing between chocolate fudge and butterscotch, so they let me have two scoops with sauce and sprinkles as well. We all walked around the zoo licking our ice creams, raspberry ripple for Mum and mint choc chip for Dad, and we went around to our favourite exhibits. Mum loved the aquarium, Dad went back to the elephants and I had to go see the lions again.

After a long hard day, we were all tired and sleepy, but we stopped off at the gift shop and told me to pick out something for my last present. I raced around that store, juggling animals, trying on clothes and examining every item carefully. Dad asked me if I wanted a lion toy but the lions on sale all had frowny faces and snarling mouths and they scared me. but then I saw an old toy, pushed right to the back. It was another lion but this one was older; its fluffy mane was matted but it seemed to smile up at me and I had to have it. I named him Simba, not original at all but I was eight. I still have that old lion, he sits on the top of my wardrobe now, watching over my room like the real Simba in the movie. We drove home, I dozed in the back of the car, so Dad had to carry me to our flat. But I was then wide awake. We had spaghetti for dinner, my favourite, and then watched a movie, the Lion King of course, and sang along to all the songs.

I didn't want to go to bed after that day, but I had to so my parents tucked me in bed with Simba on the pillow next to me. Mum kissed me goodnight but when Dad tried to do the same I flung my arms around his neck. He laughed, 'What's up small fry?' but I could feel tears pricking my eyes. Mufasa was still on my mind, 'Promise me you won't leave,' I whispered. He stiffened and then hugged me tight, picking up Simba and mimed drying my eyes with his paws, 'I can't promise that, but I will always be with you, and that's a promise.' Eight years later I was stood in a field thinking about that promise, and I knew it was still valid. He knew that he would leave someday, just maybe sooner than he'd hoped, but he'd never left me, not truly. During the past years I heard his voice, speaking pearls of wisdom and advice whenever I needed him. I couldn't conjure him up at a whim, but he came when I needed him, when I was overwhelmed, scared, guilty for not keeping everyone safe, I'd hear him telling me to keep my head held high. 'Tomorrows another day, you just have to keep fighting to see it through.' That was his motto, and now mine. Keep fighting, keep going, keep shining because you don't know what tomorrow will bring, whether it be rain or snow or hurricane winds you let the fire inside of you die then you have nothing to live for... And I could feel that fire burning, only it wasn't my imagination. Something warm was sat on my chest but it was inside me. It was like someone had lit an oven in my chest and the flame was gently flickering, but it wasn't burning it was pleasant if anything.

"That's weird..." I murmured.

"Can you feel something?" I'd completely forgotten Sheira was there. I'd been so absorbed in my own head I'd forgotten where I was.

"It's like a warm sensation, I suppose. It's not burning, its comfortably warm, like when you've got a log fire burning."

"Good," she said, "that's really good. Okay let's try this. Try to move that feeling."

"How?" I asked.

"That feeling is part of you, your body, you can control it. Think about moving it. Try pushing it into your dominant arm, it'll make the next part a lot easier."

I screwed up my eyes and concentrated, but nothing happened. Maybe I was thinking too hard. A few years ago, a yoga instructor of all people came to school to do a demonstration. She showed us a few poses and after a few pulled muscles and very rude suggestions she sat us down to try some meditation. She'd told us to imagine a ball of light and then told us to imagine pushing it around our bodies. Maybe that would work. I focused on the energy and thought about guiding it up to my shoulder and to my surprise it moved, my shoulder was now the source of the energy. I heard Sheira gasp. "Am I doing it?" I asked.

"I can see it, your skin's glowing. Keep pushing it down, go for the palm of your hand."

I did. I pushed, and a few seconds layer the warmth was flowing through my hand, it was almost rippling through my skin. "Now what?" I asked, my eyes still shut.

"This is going to sound weird."

"And everything else hasn't?"

"Try to concentrate your energy, force it down into one spot. It might hurt."

I was already tired out, but I'd got this far. It's all or nothing. With Sheira walking me through the process I began to force the energy into on tight spot on my palm. It was harder than it sounded on paper as every now and again the ball I had made suddenly fell apart and I had to start again from scratch. A splitting headache was throbbing, and I was worn out, so I decided that I'd have one more try before taking a rest and whole packet of pain killers. I took my time with this one, slowly and steadily swirling the energy tighter together, concentrating it down into an area the size of a penny.

The spot was beginning to heat up, burn more like, it was getting to the point of uncomfortable. I screwed my forehead up with determination and pushed harder, the energy becoming tighter, spot becoming hotter and hotter until... it vanished. It was gone. It didn't feel warm anymore, the sensation was gone. I'd overdone it, I'd worn myself out. I sighed and then I heard a soft intake of breath. I opened my eyes. A small orange flame was dancing on the palm of my hand.