Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to submit this fic to Mage!

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Chandra Gupta was in the habit of doing nice things for people. It was one of the things she was best at. By nature, she was a very caring person, and like most women with this inclination, she devoted herself to the most tragic causes. When not campaigning for additional rights for minority women such as herself, she was all over London, helping at her district’s food bank, caring for an AIDS patient, and grocery shopping for the elderly woman in her building who could no longer do the walking, carrying, and transactions herself. After finishing with those tasks, she would go to help at a local soup kitchen, doling out portions of huge meals made in the local Catholic parish’s immense, industrial-sized kitchens. (Chandra was strictly Hindu, but also belonged to an inter-faith group, which encouraged this sort of activity.)

It was there, among the steam and the dinner rolls, that Chandra met her first amnesiac.

“What’s your name?” she asked affably. It was her habit. She wanted the homeless to feel somewhat at home during their time at the soup kitchen. For many men, women, and children, the regular meal here was one of the few routines upon which they could rely. She looked across the counter and into a pair of deep-set, dark eyes; eyes which looked, like so many of the others she’d seen during her service to humanity, tired and utterly hopeless.

The eyes blinked. The man frowned. He opened his mouth as though to say something, but nothing came. “I don’t know,” he said honestly.

Chandra’s head tilted. “You don’t know, or you don’t remember?”

Again, he blinked. “Both.”

“Sir, how long have you been homeless?” It was a blunt question, and Chandra winced just asking it. She was familiar now with being a bit more forceful than usual when eliciting necessary answers from the mentally ill, but her familiarity with the practice failed to decrease her innate displeasure for it.

He frowned. Chandra took the time to examine him. He was white, thin, and grizzled with a salt-and-pepper beard. His lips and hands were chapped. The teeth were bad. His skin and eyes were free of jaundice, for which she was thankful. There were no shakes or tics. He seemed to favor his left arm. It seemed he had a tattoo there which he wished to hide. He moved stiffly, as though feeling his age. The weather was getting on toward fall, and the first chilly winds were blowing through the city. It often aggravated arthritic complaints—Chandra was no exception. After leaving India, bearing three children, and seeing them off to university, her body wasn’t what it used to be.

“Is that a tattoo I see, there, on your left arm?” she asked.

“My left…” He brought up the arm. What she had registered as a tattoo was covered in livid, blistering boils. “It itches, sometimes,” he said, scratching it absently. Blood welled up instantly under his fingernails—a shred of skin peeled away.

“Oh, dear,” Chandra said, already moving to help. “That looks infected-”

His eyes rose to look at her. “I don’t feel-” Then the eyes rolled backward, and he hit the floor, still clutching his left arm.