Seer

Gabe

“Good morning, ten year old!” I roll over in bed and find Mom sitting there, her hand on my shoulder. “Happy Birthday!” she says.

Oh yeah! Today’s my birthday! “Thanks,” I say, smiling and rubbing my eyes.

“Ok, get up kiddo, we have to get going soon. We want to be there when Legoland opens.”

That’s all it takes for any sleepiness to be over. I jump out of bed and rush into the bathroom, hearing her laughing behind me.

When I come out of the bathroom, Natalie is standing there in the hallway, smiling at me, and holding a present in her hands. “Happy Birthday, Gabe,” she says and gives me a little one-armed hug, while holding the present in her other hand.

“Thanks, Nat.”

She hands it to me, and says “Open it!” It isn’t heavy, and doesn’t make any noise when I shake it.

I tear open the paper, and lift open the lid of the box. Inside are a bunch of different banners that she’s drawn, obviously to add to our Lego castle. It looks like she’s used markers for these, not crayons. They’re very detailed. She’s watching me eagerly. “That’s cool, Nat, thanks,” I tell her.

“Look,” she says, “they’re the banners from Knight’s Tale.”

Oh, wow. I wouldn’t have known that. “Thanks! We’ll put them on later, with Jonathan, ok?”

She smiles and nods. She’s not bad for a little sister.

Jonathan

My Dad walks over with me, and watches while we all climb in the car. Natalie is the littlest one so she has to sit in the middle seat. She’s still super tiny, like the size of a kindergartner. “Have a great time!” Dad says.

Gabe and I are so excited. I’ve never been to Legoland either. Some of our friends at school have, though, so we’ve both heard a lot about what you can do there. I’m excited for the dragon roller coaster. Gabe wants to do the thing where you build little cars out of Legos and race them down ramps. We are talking about everything on the car ride up there. Natalie is just sitting there listening, looking back and forth between us while we’re talking.

While Gabe is talking about what we should do when we first get there, I am only half listening. Part of me is also thinking about Natalie. I used to think she was just annoying, but not so much lately. Like, she has been really nice to me, nicer than she used to be, especially since I got my new dog. We had a fun time playing with him last night again, after they got back to their Dad’s house.

Then, I suddenly remember the time that I pushed her over into the bushes in my yard a couple of months ago. That was hilarious. I haven’t done anything lately to pick on her. I’m always thinking of ways to do that to people since it’s so fun, and she’s so tiny that she’s an easy target. But she normally just avoids me, and I hardly ever get the chance to do anything to her. It’s always kind of thrilling to do stuff like that, and it’s funny how she never tells on me. She’s sitting right next to me, and our legs are touching. I think I could probably do something right now, like pinch her, when Gabe isn’t looking. I know that she wouldn’t say anything.

But as soon as I start thinking about it, she lifts her head up, and silently looks straight into my eyes, and puts her hand right on top of my hand.

Ok, that’s weird. Why do I get the feeling she knows exactly what I was thinking about?

I look down into her eyes, and she gives me a strange little smile and nods her head at me.

Ok, she is annoying after all. I think I’ll just ignore her for now.

I tell Gabe that we can do whatever he wants when we get there, since he’s the birthday boy.

Jonathan’s

“Yes, my dear, the girl is so peculiar, you will do well to have nothing to do with her. How annoying that she preempted the clever trick you were devising! Focus on your friend, my amazing boy, you will have a lovely time together at the new amusement park. There will be other opportunities for fun pranks.”

The Seer is beginning to demonstrate her eerie abilities to others, including to my own beloved. Even her brother has started to notice that she has an unusual way of anticipating events. It won’t be long before others see it as well.

I anticipate the time when her bizarre behavior begins to make others uneasy, as she has made my dearest Jonathan. Once the people around her begin to sense that she is unnatural, she will experience rejection. Hopefully, when that occurs, she will not feel so haughty. Merely because she is a Seer, does not give her the right to try to control the actions of others. My darling boy enjoys his little mischiefs. Who is she to try to change one iota of his marvelous existence?

I yearn for the failure of her offensive experiment. I will continue to encourage my beloved to ignore her efforts. I was pleased that with an increased use of energy, my stronger whispers seemed to penetrate his subconscious mind. I was able to redirect his thoughts away from considering how friendly she is, to whether he would have an enjoyable opportunity to inflict some petty harm upon her.

He should not change for her. He should not change at all. He and his soul should only grow in power and might.

Natalie

When Angel tells me that Jonathan is thinking about pinching me, I am able to stop him by looking at him and touching his hand. He didn’t do it, but I’m still really disappointed. I was hoping that he was over it, and just wouldn’t want to hurt people any more.

Angel whispers, “My darling, although Jonathan has shown some improvement, I believe that to truly change him will be a much more substantial undertaking. If you wish the experiment to continue, and eventually lead to success, I fear that you must have a great deal of patience.”

Fine. I know that this sort of thing takes time. I’ll just keep trying.

Natalie’s

I do not tell her what is truly troubling me. The intervention of Jonathan’s Guardian, in bringing to his mind a memory of how he enjoyed inflicting harm upon Natalie, changed the direction of Jonathan’s thoughts. His newfound regard for Natalie shifted back to his former view of her as a potential victim. Natalie might be disappointed, but I am genuinely alarmed.

The Guardian seems determined to actively oppose Natalie’s efforts. Although I have often witnessed Guardians, including myself, strive for their humans to be safe from harm by others, I have never seen this. The Guardian has begun to not only approve of Jonathan’s harmful actions, but actually wants to prevent Jonathan from improving his behavior. Jonathan and his Guardian appear to be caught in what might be referred to in modern parlance as a feedback loop. Jonathan enjoys the harm he inflicts, and his Guardian revels in the power it brings to him. Then the Guardian whispers encouragement, bringing Jonathan to desire more of the same. The arrangement is not unheard of, as there have obviously always been humans who wished to cause harm to others.

But this Guardian has taken the process a step further. The unusual situation caused by the presence of a Seer in Jonathan’s life has resulted in knowledge being passed to his Guardian that would not otherwise have been available, which has enhanced the interaction between them. In addition, Natalie’s direct intervention, her specific attempt to change Jonathan, is seen as a threat by his Guardian.

The Guardian covets the intense flare of power in the human soul that is experienced with each misdeed. And rather than cede to Natalie’s efforts to create a more kindly personality in Jonathan, his Guardian intends to oppose her.

The element which concerns me the most, though, is what the Guardian has learned by observing our group’s experiments. All the nearby Guardians were aware when we discovered how to imbue our communications with energy. This Guardian is alone, though, in starting to experiment with it as well. When Jonathan had his sudden memory of pushing Natalie into the bushes, which disrupted his more gentle line of thought, it occurred because his Guardian used additional energy in communicating with him. The Guardian used the energy technique we discovered to deliberately pull the memory from the back to the front of Jonathan’s mind. Jonathan is being manipulated by his Guardian into continuing along his dark path of malfeasance. The Guardian is experiencing remarkable success by deploying this method, overheard as Timothy and Natalie conducted their experiment on Guardian communication. Jonathan’s Guardian now uses what was learned from Natalie, as a weapon against her. The irony is profound. As is the danger.

How can Natalie succeed in her goal to help Jonathan, against the direct opposition of his Guardian?

I have no idea.

And I am truly concerned for Natalie. Not only will her experiment likely fail, but she has unknowingly encountered a hostile opponent standing in the way of her success.

I do not know what to do. I do not know whether I should tell her.

Gratefully, I hear the shared concern of the other Guardians here with us on our excursion. Lady, Knight, and Gabe’s Guardian all observe and share my thoughts.

I will communicate with them, try to find ideas. But perhaps we should do this another time, when Jonathan’s Guardian is not present, and cannot hear our plans. Attempting to hide something from another Guardian is another bizarre development.

What have we come to?

Natalie

Angel is still worried about Jonathan thinking about hurting me in the car. But I was able to stop him, just like I said I would. I think Angel is way too bothered about this whole thing. “Relax,” I tell him in my head, “it’s fine.”

We’re inside Legoland now, and it is pretty fun. I’m trying to stay with Gabe and Jonathan, but I think they keep forgetting about me, they’re having so much fun together. That’s fine. I want Gabe to enjoy his birthday as much as he can. So a lot of the time I’m staying back with Mom and Dad.

They are having fun too. It’s nice to see them holding hands sometimes. I’m so glad that everything is working out for them. It’ll work out for Jonathan too. Everyone will see.

We went on some rides, and now we are in the building with a bunch of tables and Legos, where you can build whatever you want with the Legos. There are ramps to race the cars you build, so Gabe and Jonathan are building cars, racing them down the ramps, then grabbing them at the bottom and rushing back to the table to modify their creations. I’m working on a car of my own. I don’t really care if it wins races, but I do want it to be pretty. So I’m building it as carefully as I can, until I think that I have it just right.

When I’m sure it is perfect, I take it over to the ramp to get ready to race it. Gabe and Jonathan come right up behind me. I guess they are ready to race again too. Just when we are about to start the race, Jonathan suddenly pushes his car over into my car’s lane, so when the gate goes down his car crashes into mine and it breaks into pieces. It happened too fast for Angel to get the chance to warn me so I could stop it.

Jonathan looks at me with glee on his face, like he can’t wait to see me get upset about my car being broken. I sigh, and shake my head sadly at him. I’m upset, but not about the car. I’m sad that my plan isn’t working as well as I had hoped. Jonathan sees that I’m not going to cry or tattle, so he shrugs and grabs his car, going back to the table to build it over again. Gabe picks up the pieces of my car and hands them back to me, saying “Sorry, Nat, but you can build it again. Accidents happen.” He goes to join Jonathan.

I don’t know, maybe Angel is right. Maybe this experiment just won’t work. I guess that sometimes scientists do experiments that fail, even if most of our experiments have led to great discoveries.

Angel smiles sadly along with me, following my thoughts. Oh well. I shrug like Jonathan did, and go sit with Mom and Dad to wait for the boys to be done.

Jonathan’s

“Yes, my darling boy! We have caused the Seer to doubt whether she can succeed in her preposterous mission. We must continue showing her that you are not going to change. You are perfect the way you are.”