I am fire. I saw the start of the world. Even having lived for as long as I have, this is a first.

Işıl lights me in the camping stove that this outdoor supply store would sell if anywhere still sold anything. I have become familiar with this spot. My warmth glows on the tents surrounding us. Past the storefront, the fountain no longer runs. It’s dirty with stagnation. It’s dirty with tossed pennies that once could have been handed over to a waiting pair of hands at a cash register but now only mean wishes. In the entrance of a fast fashion store beyond the fountain, a cluttered rack of clothes stands with a poster warning: 50% off! When they’re gone, they’re gone!

Işıl sighs like a shiver. She sits a can of lentil soup on the linoleum with a clang that rings through the empty store.

Well, she thinks that it’s empty. She thinks that the entire world is empty.

She still wears a hijab, to feel closer to herself and Allah, she tells me in her more muted moments. Also for hope that there might, please, still be someone around to see her, she tells me in the brighter ones.

A thud like an easily portable cooking set knocking over a display of more easily portable cooking sets blows through the rows of tents that have given up hope on being bought. It could have been a rat. It could have been a pigeon. It could have been a sheep. Humans are needles in oh-so-flammable haystacks. A human groan goes up a couple of tents away, from a human so accident-prone I wonder how xe ever got by in the hazardous world of the theatre.

Go and look. Bring xem back. I’ll wait.

Işıl wraps a hand around the folding handle of a pot and raises it above her head. Cook xem a meal, how threatening (although I’ve heated every hob and can tell you that Işıl’s cooking errs on the “I’d order takeout if everyone wasn’t dead” side of things).

“Hello?”

Her voice is as dry as the chicken she used to cook. Işıl talks to me but not often, instead filling dead air with albums her mom used to put on while she made breakfast and Işıl crammed flashcards at the last minute. She speaks to herself and thinks that’s the same thing as speaking to me.

“Are you a person?”

That’s Ciaran, xir voice much less a stranger to xir throat. Xe has lit me as many times as Işıl, caught the bottom of xir dress in my flame, and no longer wears long dresses because there was no-one around to put me out before I could swallow the hairs on one of xir legs.

Işıl stops to think. “Yes?”

Ciaran’s head pops up above a tent, eyes wild like an animal — though not an animal, xe decided yesterday. The rats and pigeons and sheep are perhaps close to capable of xir newfound caution around me, but not of xir dependence on my warmth, on my always coming back to help xem turn raw ingredients into something palatable.

Xe turtles xir head as far into xir shoulders as a human head can go. Xe told me that xe didn’t like people: people didn’t like xem, people left an empty shopping mall for xem to sing strangled showtunes into. Last night, Ciaran gave in to the cold, warily warmed xir hands by me and told me about all the people xe liked who liked xem. Xe told me about all the people xe should have told xe liked while xe still could. Ciaran wants to remain a person, xe told me just before sleep. Xe is the only one left.

Except, xe is not the only one left.

They look at each other like there is nothing else worth looking at. People invented seconds and no-one speaks over my uneven crackle for more seconds than you would think. Not more seconds than I would think. Time does not lose meaning when you have lived for as long as I have; it gains meaning.

Ciaran clears xir throat loudly and follows the script for introductions. Xir eyes flick around, presumably reasoning that the fact that xe has not made any introductions for many, many seconds should not make a difference.

“Hi. My name is Ciaran. My pronouns are xe/xem/xir but you can just use my name if you don’t know how to use those yet.”

Işıl’s face falls open. Those words did not come from her or a CD or that video of her little sister’s pre-school play that Işıl no longer knows how to watch because the phone it was on fell down the frozen escalator. She is silent as she processes this new person to break the silence. I am bored and Ciaran is scrunching xir thigh-length cape in a fist self-consciously, so I spit to startle Işıl out of her reverie.

“I’m Işıl!” she manages. “Mine are she/her. Not that there’s, you know, anyone for us to talk about each other to.”

A shadow flickers across their faces. She mentioned the reason her voice is thin — a little wet but not a tearful babble that would hiss and turn into steam if it fell into the pot above me.

“Pity,” Ciaran nods with tight shoulders.

“Mm. Yeah,” Işıl agrees. She nods for longer than necessary. “I’m making lentil soup. Do you want some?”

“Yes. Please. Thank you.”

Işıl’s trainers squeak on the linoleum as she crouches. She looks straight at me and opens and closes her mouth as if she wants to ask for more help than I’m already giving her. She sucks in her lips and dumps soup in the pot: red lentils, carrot, onion, and celery. There is no edible meat left. She must know that she has to kill an animal herself if she wants to eat one. Not anymore. From what I have seen of Ciaran, xe would be atrocious at it but xe would try.

Ciaran eases to the floor, peaks xir burnt leg off the too-cool surface and flattens out xir tutu as much as a tutu can be flattened. Xe no longer trusts xirself to wear longer, flappier garments. The burn I left climbs up xir leg, raised white lumps, connected by threads of skin like spilled glue. 

“I only have one bowl,” Işıl says.

There are plenty of bowls here that fold into other bowls to ease their transportation in the backpack of the modern mountaineer. There are no more modern mountaineers. Işıl and Ciaran glance around. There are no more bowls that either of them could reach without losing the other from their peripheral vision. Işıl keeps glancing up from stirring the soup to check that Ciaran is still there, yes, still there, scrunching tulle between xir fingers.

“I can eat out of the pot,” Ciaran says.

Işıl smiles. Işıl smiles all the time. She smiled yesterday. Tears dribbled behind her open lips and into her grin as she tried to put on a brave face for no-one. This is a stressful situation and as far as she knows, all the therapists are dead.

Their gazes slip over every surface on the other that I glow on. In this light, Işıl’s cheek glows bronze like the age forged with my heat. I cast a slight shimmer on the tortoiseshell rims of her glasses and the red plastic buttons on her cardigan. Ciaran must have experimented with some glittered copper eyeshadow since the last time I saw xem, and the scar on xir pale calf looks like it would radiate better than every home’s central heating, even if any of it still worked. A warm aroma wraps the air like it did every time Işıl’s mom made soup from scratch, but not quite the same.

Işıl can’t separate half of her attempt at hospitality into a bowl without her eyes flickering up to check that Ciaran is still there, still with her. Ciaran is still self-soothing with xir tulle; still soothing Işıl with a stunned smile.

She hands Ciaran the pot.  “If you’re mean about my cooking, I don’t think I mind. The only thing I would mind is if you weren’t real.” 

Ciaran goes to put the pot in xir lap, shoots me a discomfited but tenaciously baleful glare, and sits the pot on the floor. Xe snatches up a foldout plastic spork and swallows a steaming mouthful without blowing on it. Xe sticks out xir tongue and all its numbed little buds.

“Is it bad?” Işıl winces in sympathy.

Ciaran rubs xir throat. “No, it’s fine. It’s good. It’s soup and I didn’t have to make it. It’s just hot.” Xe leans forward and swirls xir spork in the air. “Your problem is that you’ve been alone with no-one but your worst critic for company.”

Işıl opens her mouth to argue but rolls her eyes incredulously and doesn’t. She mouths a prayer and takes a spork and a slurp for herself.

“My mom was a good cook,” she says.

Ciaran’s spoon stops halfway to xir mouth. A thick chunk of onion slops back into the pot. Işıl presses her lips between her teeth in something like regret and determination. I recognize the look from its frequent appearances on the face of speak-before-you-think Ciaran. 

“She liked for us to eat together. She would have liked for us to cook together but I…” Işıl drops her eyes to her soup. “Back in Istanbul, she made sure we all sat down for a good breakfast before school. I can make menemen — every egg I try to make ends up scrambled anyway — but there’s so much food I never learned how to make.”

Ciaran chews on xir spork and casts xir eyes around.

Işıl winces. “Sorry. You didn’t ask for that.”

Xe drops the spork in the pot with a clunk. “Nah. It’s chill. There was nothing better than sharing a bag of fries with someone and feeling, you know, warm. In fact—” Ciaran points at Işıl with xir dripping spork, the potential aggression offset by xir cozy smile. “You are making me feel awfully seen, Işıl.”

They slept early most nights. Tonight, instead of soliloquizing, Ciaran regales Işıl with tales about the last improv xe was in and why xe is so sick of the take that theatre is a dead and useless art form. Tonight, Işıl reassures xem that she studied civil engineering (which is not not useful right now) and that she took an elective in high school where you venture into the wilderness with people you pretend to like, live off powdered custard, and sleep under PVC and stars.

“Did you ever think that the end of the world would look like this?” Ciaran thumbs the PVC coated canvas edge of a tent’s flap.

“I’m not sure it has ended.” Işıl draws invisible shapes on the tiles with the end of her spork. “The world is here and people are on it.”

I do not think either of them will confide in me with the same lashing predictably as before. They wander away to the fountain, and Ciaran squeals when Işıl fists a hand into the water and seizes a penny for them each. The pennies are too dirty for me to catch them in my light. Ciaran suggests that tomorrow they venture out to find cola to clean them in.

Asleep, both survivors’ feet slide close to where I could reach out and grab them. Even if I had any interest in doing so, even if they were close enough, neither would be as hurt as Ciaran had been. They could hear the other’s yell and put me out.

Their cheeks lose their flickered hues as the hundreds of things and two people in the outdoor supply store turn an ashen grey. I burn out and divert more attention to another part of me — distant but close enough, another lonely stomach, another lonely tongue I cannot help but listen to. Distant but close enough, there wait more lonely hands in my orange glow that Işıl can place her soup into, if they ever find one another. They’re easier to feed when they feed each other.

Having lived for as long as I have, I cannot help but be curious if they will. I’ve seen worse than this.

I am fire. I haven’t seen the end of the world yet.