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God has given me sweetness with the fire. I sit and drip juice into my beard, spit out pips. It is the first fruit after a fast, and I am always the last to eat. Simon is licking his fingers, slurping a droplet from his wrist, and I remember being a child, running through the trees, biting into the fruit and laughing as it burst in our faces.
We are no longer children. Simon has a wife, heavy with child for the third time, and Simon is still here breaking the fast with me, still here hanging on my words like they might save him.
Simon, the only one of them old enough to marry, to pay the cursed temple tax, old enough that if I let myself I could tell him the thoughts that crowd my mind whenever I close my eyes. God does not let the prophets sleep. Perhaps that is why he has angels, to do his bidding while we pace the deserts screaming at the sky, the visions forcing themselves out of our throats, spat out onto the sand with dark droplets of blood.
It is vanity, the cruelest vanity, to want them to believe that I am less than human, that I can carry messages on my wings, that God's light does not burn my eyes. They look to me, these children, eyes so wide, so certain that God speaks clear to me, spells his name out in stars, whispers in our language.
God speaks nonsense, some days. God shows me only corpses by roadsides, Simon's face distorted in the scream. He shows me the Messiah then shows me his battered bloodied body. God is a snake sliding through my fingers, teeth always bared.
All prophets have a little blasphemy in them. When God takes you by the throat it is impossible not to hate him, not to look at the people on whom he bestowed blessings - wives, sons, a bed in which to sleep the night through - and feel envy grip your spine, bend it out of shape.
Would he still trap me between his hands, if I let myself feast, let myself grow slow and sleepy with wine? Would he let me go? Would I miss his nails digging into my bones?
I let myself sink into their laughter, their warmth. Simon wraps his arm around me, forgetting for the moment that I am not a man, and the others blink, owlish. I let the smile come, sling my own over his shoulders. We toast water.
The young ones will tire easy, and I will wait until the sky is adorned with silver before I speak. He will listen or he will still in fear and leave me to be a beaten battered ark, untouchable and burning.
'The visions the Lord sends,' I say, staring into the fire until the world is nothing but light, 'the reckoning to come - I fear it.'
He swallows and I watch the way his Adam's apple works beneath his beard. It is so long since I have been human. I have forgotten the language, forgotten the way emotions should match the words. There is part of me that wants to tear out his throat. There is part of me that wants worse.
'The Lord will save us,' he says. 'It is promised, after all.' And he looks younger than all of them. My heart clenches in my chest.
'Not all of us,' I say, low. It is a half-truth, a concession, a plea for comfort while letting him hold on to his dreams.
'You are his man,' he says, voice tilting and pitching like a ship in the storm. 'Of course he will -'
'You know what happens to prophets.'
His face twists. 'Then we pray. We pray that at the end, his last prophet will be spared.' His eyes glisten.
I almost hate him and I almost love him. I want to crush his lips to mine, something between brotherhood and violence. I want to know the taste of blood. I have drunk so much divinity that I have become cruel with it, sending tests like God to Job. 'I am tired, Simon,' I say. 'I only want to sleep.'
I turn away from him, lie down and watch the stars. His breathing stutters, and I hear the beginning murmurs of a prayer. Would he pray for me if I shattered his nose, if I pressed him into the sand, crushed his throat with my teeth? Would he pray for me if I found the sweetness of honey in the softness of his flesh? I do not let myself find out the answer, hiss my questions into God's ear like a prayer and wish only for sleep.