I can’t do this any more...

      Not if I want a life.

      Intent didn’t matter, because the urge was nearly unstoppable.

      Nearly. He clung to that, but it didn’t stop his feet from moving forward, nor his ears from listening to the tidal wash in his brain. He was too damn cyclic, too tied into a feral Earth, which other humans dismissed as just so much rock and soil.

      There’d been a time when he’d prided himself on his inner knowledge - for this weird connection which set him apart - but it hadn’t taken long before he’d ceased bragging/preening/gloating and starting concealing, instead. And, all the while, he’d watched and listened, wondering whether he and his were the only ones cursed, or whether it was a common affliction. Maybe the others merely handled it better...

      Well enough, anyway, so they didn’t make fools of themselves the way he was doing now.

      Face it, Jasper: there are no others. You’re it. The last of his line. An anachronous bizarrity/ in a world which no longer needed guesswork - in which technology could do it all. And, because his forebears had so successfully interlaced their genes with others similarly “gifted”, he was going to be stuck with the outfall/...

      ...till the day I die.

      It wasn’t usually his style to be /so damned morose, but he was /so tired it was hard to be anything else. As much as every day carried him through with distraction, every night abandoned him to his proclivities like an open wound needing suturing.

      And left him feeling trapped.

      His father would have found him foolish.

      No, that didn’t help, either. His father had been a loser in the financial sense - hell, in every sense, financial and emotional/personal - and that was the heritage he’d bequeathed on his only son. Pride of purpose, for a purpose which was no longer valid, or even believable. Half the time, Jasper didn’t believe it himself, until it came on him like this.

      He wiped the sweat out of his eyes and listened to the pulsing of his heart. He could hear it now, over the wave wash, which was somehow comforting. It made him feel he had some command over the situation - probably the only command he was going to get.

      Hadn’t his father, or his grandfather, ever figured out how useless this was? To be constantly, endlessly - relentlessly - unfulfilled? How could they have found satisfaction in something which had given none? Tracing the tides within the water table, or conjuring up visions of filthy metallic ores were useless efforts, except for the recipient. What was there for the /locator, except an endless, ceaseless, demand for action? For activity which couldn’t be quelched/quenched?

      He was thirsty as hell now. He’d sweated out so much in this race through the night, oblivious as he’d been to everything except getting here.

      I’m here...

      Again. That alone was enough to still his reflections. This house, this place, was haunting him. There was some core here...some surge of restless energies beyond the siphoning runoff beneath the surface. It drew him here - had drawn him here over the years.

      Again, and again, and again.

      It wasn’t the only lure/fishing which had hooked him like a hungry fish, but definitely the most /repetitious. That’s what was bothering him so much right now: since there was no way to satisfy or still the impulse, what choices did he actually have? Leave town, so distance could do what rationale could not?

      He’d been online job-hunting so many times, and had turned down at least a dozen offers over the last ten years. The truth was, he was grounded here - afraid to go because if impulses like this could become unmanageable in the safe surroundings where he’d grown up - where he cared enough for friends’ opinions and his public image/persona to sometimes mastersubdue/overcome his wayward urges - what would it be like elsewhere? Would he have any control at all in a place without friendly faces, or recognisable buildings, or an underlying geological/geomorphic//structure which he knew as well as his own skeleton/bones? Without that framework, that inter/ fabric, where would he be?

      Lost...

      His father had warned him - told him the stories about the draft, and the war, and why he’d been // from the army. Why he’d never been able to hold a job for any length of time. Why people had ridiculed him...

      No - that was me. He’d ridiculed his father because it had diminished the man, and made his influence less of a threat.

      His father had taken it all with the same stupid pride which had killed him in the end. And, every time the stories had been retold, there’d been the same foolish stiffening of the man’s bowed spine.

      Jasper had sworn it would never happen to him. Family roots could be overcome, and he was going to be the one to do it. He wasn’t crazy enough to pride himself on this stuff. Not since he’d been a teen, anyway, and desperate to find an acceptable “difference”. Hadn’t taken him long to determine that this one wasn’t all that acceptable...

      Because it was too much like a drug habit which could never be outgrown.

      And, even worse, at moments like this, with the demand exceeding his resolve, he was the worst of addicts...

      ...because he didn’t care. There was only the fix, the need, the demand.

      He made himself stand - made himself hesitate against inclination - but this time, it wasn’t a matter of control, but of enhancing expectation/anticipation. Jasper ignored the familiar creak of the half-hinged gate, his eyes only briefly brushing/ the moonglazed surface of dew-drenched shingles, the beaten uneveness/ of the sunken porch, the matted roughness of the dirty glass. This ancient derelict might be Toad’s heritage, but the truth was, it didn’t interest Jasper as it stood - not as wood and block and stone. It drew him for another reason entirely, which he’d never been able to figure out. Even now, as he forced his fingers through the weedy mat of //loplurched/ grass, to seek the soil, he wondered whether the contact would be enough. Angry, he jabbed stiff fingertips into the humus layer beneath, finding a weak satisfaction in the way he had to ferret his way through the heavy thatch.

      Like water, seeping through the rock layers.

      Like lava, jettisoning all barriers//blockages aside.

      He lost time; his eyes trapped by his inner vision. Black fluids and jagged, sharp-edged stones; dead-white roots, moist like maggots, tapping their way into the heavier soil beneath; sandy loams, rich and red; masses of granitic slabs, with speckled scatters of shiny quartz, beckoning him on. It was beautiful, terrible, wondrous/.

      Irresistible.

      But visions, of detritus, and organic residue, kept clouding his vision. There was a purity to the inorganic - to rock - which the organic didn’t own. To Jasper, the rock might be a living entity, but it bore no emotion, to wear a man down. And it didn’t tear a man apart - a man with vision like his own - the way the organic could. Every micFlynne, every rotting carcass, every expanding rootlet held a signature, and demanded a piece of his attention/vision/perspective.

      What bothered him most, though, was the way tonight’s efforts were being interlaced with surface energies. There was a wind nearby, but it was no breeze, and its source was first, but not finally, organic. For a moment, as his eyes finally lifted and focussed on the blank windows, he wondered whether the house - or some dissatisfaction within it - might be the source.

      Foolish/Asinine thoughts for foolish minds... Whereas he couldn’t discount his own “gift”/abilities, as distasteful as they might be, he was free to deny such //wide-/ fallacies. A person could only accept so much...and stay sane.

      No. These musings were welcome products of exhaustion. Welcome because they provided an interruption. Otherwise, he would have been in danger of losing himself, and only awakening when the sun stained the skies pink once more. It had happened before.

      He withdrew bloodied fingertips from the soil, staining the wet grass culms as he went.

      Lousy night to be out. He shivered. Too damp out here for comfort.

      At least, though, now he’d be tired enough to sleep.

      Resolutely, and with the first inklings of peaceful resolve/ which would numb him to his talents, Jasper M. Grey turned around and trudged back the way he’d come.

*