He had read about it once, those theories of the soul, of what it could be, of where, of when, and of why.
Just only that once. Words could never feign understanding sufficient enough to pin his errant thoughts into place, and such was the final time he considered the subject. Jack had worked to forever convince himself to live in the present here and now. "Live in the moment." "Carpe diem." Contemplation of a future, one ever just beyond the reach of his hands, brushing against his fingertips before vanishing into the ether once more, failed to appeal to him.
(Some dusty, distant shoreline of his mind's ocean draws itself back, laying bare those fragments of something worn smooth with time, with age, with merciless battering against the rocks, against the locks, against that which permits no admission... but to what or whom does it bar entrance? With every single piece of tangible void indistinguishable from those before it, he can make no sense of it before the sea of glass vanishes beneath the water once again.)
A silhouette slips from his periphery. Their playful gait carries them away and out of view, as though this person held no substance but all things light, of air, of stardust, and of snow.
What would he do if not pursue them between the booths lest they be lost to him?
(How quickly the sea recedes from his feet, revealing those pieces glistening beneath salt and bitter froth. Never before has a path opened to him, for him, him! Whatever whisper in his ear tells him that his vast expanse is a road in the first place he can no longer remember, swept out to the Deep and Dark just as quickly as he perceived it.)
Jack has not moved in all his life, and that same croaking gasp murmurs that it is the same but the same as what what was he thinking at all there it goes again-- People do not part so obligingly as the sea, and they exchange low comments concerning his sobriety as he staggers past, desperate for something his mind has dismissed, has drowned in a fathomless pool.
"Wait!" he cries, ducking in between two booths with a reckless, wild fervor.
