By Mark Miner

I don't know where this came from, but it is late and I am tired.

    Franco gazed laconically down the dirt track, wishing that someday he, too, could follow Lorenzo's footsteps down it and arrive at fame and fortune.  He hadn't heard from Lorenzo in some time, now, and he wondered how his big brother was doing.  He sighed wistfully, detached himself from the split-rail fence, and went back to feeding the chickens.  They clucked ambivalently as he scattered the corn to them.  
    Leather boots crunched on the gravel behind him, and he turned.  His father stood with an injured ewe across his shoulders, and in a gruff rumble asked for Franco to come and "work his magic" on the wounded sheep.  Franco sighed again.  He got tired of exercising his gift at the beck and call of others, but he was a good boy who respected his parents, and he would not begrudge them this.  
    In the barn, the ewe was laid on a pile of straw, and Franco began his work.  Soon, the sheep began to quiver, then to steam lightly, and, as it always happened, it burst into flames in an instant.  The sheep did not stay lit long, but was very quickly quenched, as by an unseen bucket of water, and it stood up, shook itself odd, and trotted back to the pasture.  Franco's father stood by, always a little awestruck at his son, but grateful.
    Both Lorenzo and Franco had been born with this gift, but it remained undiscovered until Lorenzo, whispering arcane nothings to his sweetheart, had caused her to self-immolate, but when she emerged, her (and Lorenzo's) cold sores were gone.  The two of them had promptly set off to the big city to dazzle audiences and patients in a magic show and quack clinic, respectively, but here Franco remained, just feeding chickens and burning sheep.

 

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