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           I met him twice before, and the second time the change in him saddened me. There was sweetness there the first time, and gentleness. He could look at a person and slip inside his mind, feel her emotions, suffer with him, offer her comfort just by the look in his eyes that said, I know. I’m you. He encountered people with a great tenderness, allowing his own pain to help him comprehend theirs. It was why people loved him immediately, trusted him immediately. It was why some people feared him.

            The second time, three years later, the sweetness was gone, drowned in anger and pain. He still comprehended others as thoroughly as before; he still felt their pain; still was obsessed with helping, healing. People still loved and trusted him. But it took longer. The first expression of his eyes wasn’t, I love you but What’s wrong here? He could inspire fear as well as love in the people he was trying to help. He judged people more quickly now, spoke to them in ways he would never have done three years before. I wanted to ask him, “Jarod, what have you let them do to your spirit?”

            And now, the third time? Well, it’s all over now. The Centre…gone. The chase…over. No more fear, no more hiding, no more running. He has his family—what’s left of it. Father, mother, sister, half-brother, and his strange clone/twin, who sometimes calls himself Gem and sometimes Thomas. Of all things in the world this is the one that has been hardest for Jarod to get used to. Love. Comfort. Security. He still has nightmares. He still cries when his mother hugs him. He and Gem are still getting used to each other. But it’s coming back, the sweetness, the gentleness. And someday, when he has children of his own, the joy and the old sweetness will drown the anger and the pain.










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