He's infuriating. How dare he pretend that he knows his purpose? If I, a seadweller of more noble birth than he, don't know my purpose here than how can he? It's ridiculous. And his talk of miracles, oh. My vexation knows no bounds. Miracles don't exist, no matter what the Messiahs may preach.

He notices my irritation. Goads me. Talks to me of how I need to realise that magic happens, that it's everywhere. That I need to accept my gift. He forces me to hate him, hate his facepaint and his cruel taunting words hidden so cleverly in an ambivalent tone. He makes me loathe him, with all of my being. I had not thought it possible.

I force him up against a wall on a cool evening, as he walks past me to fetch something from a cupboard. He grins at me, lazy and languorous, and I growl at him. He says something then - something about fate - I tune it out. My body is focused on going for his neck, biting at the flesh there and drawing out that sickening indigo blood. How dare he feign knowledge that I have not? How dare he think that he is better than me?

When I awake the next evening covered in scratches and bites, and turn over to see him virtually unmarked, I feel sick in the knowledge that I may have been wrong in my assumptions that I was ever better than anyone.

Least of all him.