Dances with Bears limped down the side of Interstate 15, marveling at the accuracy with which his nose could separate and distinguish the scents of burnt gasoline fumes; the soft, musty scent of wet cornfield soil drifting along on the dry desert night winds, the scent of stale alcohol drifting up from his shirt, and the harsher, higher scents of cacti and tumbleweed territory from beyond the green oasis of the Sage River valley farming fields.


    His arm, half dangling out from the left side of his body, kept a jaunty thumb propped up in proposition the passing minivan and truck drivers.


    He had passed a depressing little pitstop town called Dell some ten minutes ago, and seen the signposts declaring ‘Lima, Id, 8 mi.’


    He prayed agonizingly for Lima to have a diner or cafe open past 10. Every bone in his body ached with need for caffeine. It was one of the few needs his body felt, these days, but he had never shaken the need for a semi-constant injection of coffee just to keep going, especially after days of constant walking with little time for unnecessary sleep.


    He needed to reach the origin of the signal.


    He had felt it three weeks ago, a pulse breaking out from somewhere to the south, a low, dull wave creeping slowly out through the atmosphere as it disturbed the normally-stable surface of the strings of the world.


    The rough rings he had drawn on his worn and weathered topo-graphic to mark the disruption pointed to a center somewhere down around Flagstaff. Or maybe a little more south.


    He hoped that it wasn’t another Disaster brewing; a repeat of the devastating explosions that had utterly destroyed Tokyo and Dhaka some ten and twenty-five years ago. A small part of him would be happy, - the chance to study the first stages of one of the unnatural Disasters would be foundational to further advancements in his research, - but the possible and probable death tolls a Disaster would cause were too terrifying for Dances with Bears to actually hope for. It was unlikely, given how he predicted the Disasters that were shattering the Fairy Magic were choosing where they happened, (he expected it had mostly to do with population density,) but he, and the whole world actually, knew almost nothing about the science that the New World’s magics operated off of. Maybe the next Disaster would be a complete surprise, just to spite his prediction models.


    If this was a new Disaster nucleus, it spelled terrible things for a potential rapid decrease in the interval between Disasters. Two data points had not been enough to determine a standard equation to calculate the progression of the events, but He Who Dances with Bears still held out high hopes for a linear, or even constant interval pattern.


    No, he actually expected the signal to have originated from the formation of another of what he was starting to call ‘natural treasures,’ or maybe another human or animal who had accidentally broken through into ascension.


    He wanted a second chance at training an apprentice.


    The last one had rather quickly gone mad and killed himself, but Dances with Bears was fairly sure he had worked out a formula for future success.


    He considered himself the world’s foremost expert on the magical energies that had become so easy to harvest and access after the first of the Disasters - maybe the world’s only expert. He wasn’t too sure of what exactly the governments of the world knew, but they at least realized that something unnatural was happening. The fact that the various presidents and dictators and such weren’t nuking each other implied some amount of real knowledge, but he had yet to see any evidence of governmental access to Fairy Magics. He imagined that that might make the headlines. Unless they were all hiding it.


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    That was what he feared, above all else.


    A world where leaders and the wealthy and the powerful hid and restricted the knowledge of the magic that hid beneath the surface of their world.


    A world where the magic was restricted from the masses.


    The way he saw it, the only way to stop or even slow the steady advance of the Disasters was to spread the knowledge far and wide. To bring the whole world in on the secret. Then, hopefully, someone, or everyone together, might stumble onto some way to stabilize the waves of destruction he had set off.


    He knew it wasn’t his fault, or at least wasn’t all his fault, but the self-recriminations and regret still ate at him.


    The only problem was he had no clue how to disseminate what little he did know. He still struggled to get individual people to believe him, even when he was there, right before them, showing them to their own eyes the magic he wielded.


    The fact that the only other sentient, sane, and human User he had seen so far was the accidentally dead apprentice, only further enticed his hope of a new user Awakening.


    Another chance, another opportunity to practice teaching and to study the strangely personalized effects the Fairy Magics could have.


    He had worked out a semi-chanted elevator-pitch in his head, and kept repeating it over and over again nervously as he scuffed through the early evening winds, kicking up the gravel below his boots.


    ‘First, you have to believe me.


    I know I sound insane.


    You have to try to trust me.


    Reach inward, silence your mind.


    Reach outwards, hear the world.


    Reach inward…


    Reach outward…’


    On and on, his internal voice ran.


    Onward he limped, his thumb kept cocked out to the passing motorists.


    A flash of grey-white fur and a dart of motion ghosted through the dried out weeds and underbrush that clogged the gutter beside where he trudged, betraying his companion, the forest fox he had taken to calling Ash.


    He watched the playful little beast fondly for a while as he walked, reaching back to adjust the satchel and guitar that hung against his back.


    He had to get South. His whole being seemed to depend on it.


    On through the night he walked, and into the morning, trudging along through the growing light and on into day''s blazing heat.


    He stopped now and then, climbing up into an air conditioned or heated cab for a few miles, or stopping at a cafe for another coffee refill, or fell, exhausted, to just sit for a while on a park bench or bus stop.


    The strange energies, the vibrations he was always slowly gathered up from the surface of the world strings around him, what he called the Fairy Magic, could serve to keep him from growing tired or hungry, kept him moving and energetic, healed and empowered his muscles, and even allow esoteric, strange, and awesome feats; but it could only do so much at a time to get rid of the growing strains and pains plaguing his body.


    Still, he kept on; rising again to walk, or jumping down from a passenger seat, back to the gravel roadsides, dropping Ash’s warm body from his lap and swinging his bag and case up onto his back.


    He had to get South. Quickly.


    His Identity demanded it.