Sil sat in an empty classroom staring at the pages of the blue book Scarlett had given him on the train. He wasn't really reading it; he'd already done that a number of times. But knowing and doing were two different things. It was full of focusing and relaxation techniques that were supposed to help Seers cope with their Sight, but Sil was having little luck focusing, relaxing, or coping.

On the table before him sat a crystal ball covered with a pillowcase and two more books. The one with the black binding had come from Scarlett as well and was supposed to be read with the third eye. The other--an enormous, musty-smelling tome age-yellowed pages--was a kind of journal that had been in his family for so many generations it was written in three different languages.

He tried practicing one of the meditative techniques while he waited for Scarlett to arrive.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Scarlett as she hurried into the empty classroom. “You would not believe how much homework I had to make from missing a few days class.” A faint bruise showed on high on Scarlett’s right cheek and around her eye. She had not bothered to cover it with makeup since she was only meeting Sil.

"Is that what I've got to look foward to in a couple of years?" Sil asked.

"And really, I hadn't even notice you were late," he shrugged. "I'm finding it harder and harder to keep track of time these days myself."

"Yeah that's pretty much it once you get older, pushin' around other people's paper." Scarlett looked at Sil. "I've noticed you have been a bit distracted lately. Are you still blankin' out? Have you tried the exercizes in 'What Lies Ahead?" Scarlett laughed a bit. The title of that book was so ironic that she couldn't help herself.

"Well-ll..." Sil said. "I've been trying. Really. It's just a bit hard to focus sometimes. It's like having a song stuck in my head; the more I try not to think about things, the more I think about them."

“Oh so you haven’t managed the void, yet?” Scarlett laughed referring to the exercise where the Seer was supposed to focus on nothing in order to be able to See something. That made no sense at all to Scarlett, but she had been given to understand that it was very important. Scarlett wondered if that was one of the reasons that she wasn’t a Seer. Though she had tried half-heartedly when pressed by her grandmother to picture the void she could never totally empty her mind. There were always the stray thoughts of riding or shopping or flirting or something tumbling through her thoughts. As she got older and was less eager to please and more weary of Grammy Scarlett purposely filled her mind with random thoughts because she feared if she ever really saw the void that there would be something in it looking back out at her, specifically her own third eye wide open and Seeing. Scarlett shivered a little at the direction her thoughts were taking. “Well if it’s like song stuck in your head then sing it, and see where it takes you,” she suggested.

"Yeah, the void," Sil snorted. "That's really a lot easier said than done." Judging from the way Scarlett laughed when she mentioned it, Sil gathered she knew that as well as he did.

"What do you mean, 'sing it'?" Sil asked, eyeing the still covered crystal ball. "Try and see what I can See?"

“Yeah that’s exactly what I mean. Make yourself comfortable. Relax.” They were in a deserted Charms classroom and Scarlett summoned some cushions from a cupboard and made a pile in one corner, in case Sil would be more comfortable sitting on the floor than at a desk.

“Take deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. When you feel ready let the vision play though your mind. Don’t try to concentrate on it or grab at bits, just let it play. See where it takes you.” Scarlett had lent Sil to two books that her Grammy seemed to think the most worthy, but there were many others in her library in South Carolina that Scarlett had been set to reading at a very young age so many times that they all ran together. All her advice came from those books. Scarlett had never been one for studying and she usually couldn’t remember half of what she read, but Seeing had always fascinated her even though she couldn’t do it.