Chapter Text
"Ready to see if it held?" Tyreen questioned the next morning after they arrived at the Center. They weren't ready to go into the psionic plane yet, but they would be going there soon enough once they were settled into the Suite. There was tea to be made and a quick scan to be done before they went anywhere.
Daniel pulled the zipper on his jacket down as he tried to calm his nerves. He took the minute it required to take off his jacket and hang it up on the hangers near the door to think about how he wanted to answer Tyreen's question. Hands clasped around the edges of the zipper of his jacket, Daniel took a deep breath in before he admitted the truth, "I'm afraid it didn't work. I'm afraid that it worked a little but not enough to be worth all the effort we put into it. I'm afraid that it's because it was so small that it seemed to work and that it won't work all that well with the deeper or larger holes in other places in my mind."
Tyreen made a rough rumbling sound from the other side of the room as he tugged his own jacket off. "Daniel," he said soothingly, "no matter how much progress we made, some progress is better than no progress at all. And if we do them in order by depth and width with generalized healings in between, then it will all go faster. Healing the holes will help the general healing work more efficiently which will in turn make the other healing sessions easier. So today, we're going to see how the healing of yesterday's hole went. If it went okay, we'll do a generalized healing now, then we'll go through your exercises for the day and watch some TV. After lunch, we'll try healing another hole. And we'll rinse and repeat until everything is healed and you're ready to move onto the next steps." His footsteps sounded on the hardwood floor behind Daniel, and he hung up his jacket before gently directing the boy away from his jacket. He tugged Daniel into a quick hug, swaying them gently before he spoke, "Now, go sit down while I make you some tea, then we'll get started." He gave Daniel a soft push towards the nest even as he moved towards the kitchenette to boil water for tea.
Daniel grabbed his bag from the wall near the door and moved to the nest, laying his backpack down next to his usual spot before climbing down into the pile of pillows and blankets rather than using the steps. He sat down amongst his support pillows, tugging his favourite blanket over his lap before turning around to grab his book out of his backpack. He was finally reading The Lord of the Rings; it had taken him a couple of weeks to get through The Hobbit the first time, but then he'd found an illustrated edition at a used book sale Max took him to for another minor test of his shields, and he hadn't been able to help himself; he'd had to read that one too. The library's copy of The Lord of the Rings had been signed out the past few times he'd taken a look for it, but he had found an animated version of The Hobbit in the movie section that he'd watched while his Aunt took Evander to the doctor for an appointment. Then the week before, he'd woken up to a package from his grandparents only to find a collective copy of all three books of The Lord of the Rings, so he finally got to read it. He was only a couple of chapters in, but he was liking it just as much as he'd liked The Hobbit.
He set his book to the side, laying it flat on one of the pillows to his right where it wouldn't get squished or otherwise ruined. He pulled out his latest crochet project, tugging the half-finished hat out of his backpack and setting it on the other side of himself, tucking the crochet hook back into the skein out of the way.
Humming, Tyreen poured the hot water into each mug over the tea bags inside, listening as the water bubbled and boiled as he poured it. He tapped his fingers against the countertop as he watched the tea infuse through the water like ink initially before it finally filled the mug with bright red in one and dark, nearly black, brown in the other. It didn't take long for the scents of the teas to start filling the room. Daniel's red tea was a fruity berry tea that smelled like summer and was good to drink, both hot and cold, which was especially necessary for Daniel when he got distracted by his book or a project or even a movie or a program on TV. Tyreen's tea was a vanilla rooibos with some hints of cinnamon and a little bit of bergamot that filled Tyreen with warmth just from smelling it; he preferred drinking it warm, but it was also possible to drink it cold if he forgot about it—which was good if they were doing any major healing sessions at any point during the day.
"Alright," Tyreen hummed, using a spoon to carefully fish the teabags out of the cups and set them aside on the little tray they kept on the counter for them to use again later. He added two teaspoons of sugar to his own tea before grasping the cups carefully in each hand, carrying them over to the pit to join Daniel. He handed Daniel's cup down to him, waiting for the teen to set it aside in the little cupholder behind his head before moving around the other side of the nest to set his own down. Setting it down, he carefully dropped down into his usual spot, pulling a thinner, more lacy crochet blanket over his lap. Focusing on Daniel, he reached for his satchel to pull out his notebook and pens. "Are you ready, Daniel?" he asked as he set his satchel out of the way again, turning to spread the notebook out in his lap.
Daniel took a deep breath before nodding. "As ready as I can be," he muttered, plucking at the fabric of his blanket, "for something that could change the next few months of healing that we have to go through." He relaxed as he felt Tyreen's Gifts reaching out for his own, the tendrils of the older man's power gently prodding at his shields. He kept as calm as possible as Tyreen examined how his healing had held up, investigating the differences from the scan he'd taken the day before pre-foray into the Spirit Plane.
It took a few minutes before Tyreen opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on Daniel, slowly pulling his power back from touching Daniel. He waited for Daniel to take a drink from his tea before he laid out everything he'd found in his search, even as he reached for a pen to write it all down in the notebook. "Good news first or bad news?"
"Bad news?"
"Well, the hole we filled in yesterday has stayed mostly filled. There was a bit of back sliding in healing in that nothing has grown over the spot yet, even with the regrowth that has happened in some of the trees on the edge of your mindscape, but it will happen eventually. Something will decide to occupy that space, even if it takes a while before it grows."
"And the good news?"
"The good news," Tyreen paused to take a sip from his cup, setting it aside again before he continued, "is that with healing that hole, I've noticed a bit of healing in other holes close by." He held up a finger to pause Daniel before he could speak, adding, "It's not a whole lot of healing. At most it's an inch or so in either depth or width, so not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it's better than it had been in months. That little bit of progress that closing that hole has allowed you to go through is a good indicator of how the rest of this is going to go."
"So, it's going to get easier?" Daniel frowned as he tilted his head.
Tyreen nodded, assuring him with a grin, "It's going to get much easier. With every hole we close, and every bit that closes more or strengthens, everything is going to get easier."
"Yes!" Daniel cheered, rocking side to side and waving his fists in front of him in sharp circles. "Thank you everything!"
Tyreen laughed in amusement at Daniel's excitement. "So, are you ready to try doing a general healing and seeing how that goes with this?"
"Yes, please!" Daniel stretched before getting comfortable again. "Let's do this."
Tyreen hummed quietly. "We're going to try a guided session today, so I can keep an eye on how this is going for you." He shifted the notebook in his lap, flipping to a new page and starting with the usual headings. "Alright," he said softly when he was finished with the opening of his notes, "I want you to focus on the sound of my voice."
Daniel nodded and tipped his head back against the pillow behind him. He settled in with Tyreen's voice in his ear, falling into an easy meditative haze as Tyreen gave him instructions on what to do. The view that his quasi-meditation brought him was like a smoky afterimage of the psionic plane; it was fuzzy and wispy like it wasn't all there, but it let him spread out like he wasn't all there either, which let him reach for large portions of his mental landscape all at once rather than small, focused parts that he managed when he was actually on the psionic plane. It made it so much easier to go through the holes and pull them closed, healing bits of his mental landscape in large swaths rather than bit by bit.
Daniel wasn't sure how long he was in there; he never was entirely sure, but something about this felt a lot quicker and easier than it had been over the months before this. He felt a lot better after this healing session; he wasn't as exhausted or achy afterwards, and it didn't feel like he was getting stabbed behind the eye or breathing through a cotton sheet as he had after previous sessions.
"I feel better," Daniel mused out loud, reaching up to rub his chest in a smooth circle. "I don't feel like I'm being stabbed in the brain or breathing through fabric."
"That's good," Tyreen agreed, nodding decisively as he wrote some more notes into his notebook. "You were in there for nearly half an hour since you looked like you were having a good run with it. I only pulled you out because you were drifting a bit too much through the fabric of the psionic plane."
Daniel nodded. He had felt himself drifting deeper into the psionic plane, finding it both easier to touch everything around him and harder to hear Tyreen's voice as anything other than a whisper on the non-existent wind. He'd never had the problem as badly before now, but it wasn't hard to imagine that it was because he hadn't delved as deeply into the psionic plane before now.
Tyreen raised his arm to look at his watch. "Hmm, it's still early enough that you could get a nap in before lunch if you want after you do your exercises for today." When Daniel wrinkled his nose, Tyreen couldn't help but huff a laugh, "I know you hate how much you need and should sleep right now, but it will get better. I've noticed that you sleep lighter and for shorter amounts of time unless you have Evander, so it's better, but you are healing, and your body needs the sleep. As you get better, you won't need as much sleep."
Daniel sighed, "I know. I just hate that I can't do things like other kids my age. I want to be able to go out and be outside or at sporting events or even just walk up all the stairs at home without having to stop at the landing and take a breath." He tilted his head back and stared up at the ceiling in contemplation. "I can't wait to be able to go back to school or to go to the park and actually be able to play with Evander instead of just sitting on a bench and watching him play."
"Soon enough, little wolf," Tyreen assured him as he pushed himself up from the pit and climbed out to grab Daniel's weighted cuffs from the cabinet in the kitchen. "Now, let's get this done so you can relax again."
Daniel grumbled but got up, carefully climbing out of the nest to get it all done. "I'll be happy to be able to do real exercise again," he muttered as he sat on the dining chair to let Tyreen wrap the cuffs around his ankles. At the same time, Daniel reached for the wrist cuffs and strapped them on, lifting his arms up and down to get used to the weight before he got up off the chair. It was the most exercise his doctors were allowing him to do right now—six laps around the Suite with the 1lb weights on his wrists and ankles (it was only two laps around the house at home and only with supervision).
"What do you want to do first?" Tyreen asked him as a distraction as Daniel tapped the wall next to the windows and started his first lap around the main part of the Suite.
"I want to be able to ride my bike again," Daniel started, briefly pausing as a thought occurred to him. "I'll need a new bike," he mused, continuing on his way around the room. "Evander could use my old bike soon enough; Grandad will need to check it first, but it should be okay."
"You can teach Evander to use it," Tyreen hummed from the table, sitting on the edge of his seat in case Daniel needed some help. "I bet he'd love that. Did your grandparents finally decide on whether they were going to get him that little toddler bike?"
"They did," Daniel told him, "They ordered a bright purple thing that came last week. Killian came while you were out with the Guardian Pair to put it together with Aunt Max. They spent a good portion of the afternoon cursing the instructions and Aunt Max had to pour them both some stiff drinks afterwards to make up for it."
Tyreen both flushed at the mention of Killian—which Daniel thought was hilarious even as he didn't say anything about it—and laughed at the idea that the instructions had been so bad that they'd need the pick me up afterwards. "That much fun, was it?"
Daniel snickered quietly. "They were so loud that Evander heard them upstairs in his room. It woke him up from his nap and he was very confused at the muffled shouting."
Tyreen laughed again, throwing his head back. It was an amusing mental image: the idea of Max and Killian sitting around in the garage, parts strewn all over the place with a set of those godawful instructions in one of their hands that they were both looking at in confusion. He could see them arguing about whether those screws went in that spot or another and whether they had the pieces in the right order, getting progressively louder as they struggled to make sure it would come together so that Evander could use it.
"Did they finally get it put together?" Tyreen questioned, one eyebrow raised as he watched Daniel start another lap around the room.
"It took them about two hours to get it all together," Daniel told him, tapping the wall near the window again as he made his second lap around the room. He shrugged and kept moving, adding, "They put Evander on it, and he had a fun time getting pushed around the living room by Aunt Max."
"I bet he did," Tyreen agreed with a grin. He had seen Evander requesting to ride his new bike several times since the bike arrived. He was easily excited by anyone pushing him around the house on it, but he was just as eager to push himself across the floor on it. It was very cute to watch him scoot around the house, following everyone around as they moved through the rooms. "Soon enough, you'll be able to take him out for bike rides or visits to the park or even walks through the woods surrounding your grandparents' home without a chaperone."
"I can't wait," Daniel muttered.
It didn't take Daniel much longer to make it through his necessary exercises. Tyreen rattled off the time it had taken him quickly, grinning at the few minutes it had taken Daniel to do it. It made Daniel exceedingly happy to hear that he was making better time on getting through his laps since it meant that he would be able to add more laps to his itinerary. After all, when they first started changing his medications, he had only been allowed to do one lap around the house and two around the suite, but now he was up significantly from that at three around the house and seven around the suite. He had another doctor's appointment at the end of the week, and hopefully, by that time, they'd be upping his exercises again.
"Alright," Tyreen hummed, waiting for Daniel to sit before moving to crouch down in front of his chair so he could take the ankle cuffs off for Daniel. "Take a break while I get lunch settled, then we can watch some TV until later this afternoon. We'll go through another healing session before we head back to the house for the night. Tomorrow, I think we'll try doing a healing session outside, as long as the weather keeps to the forecast. It's supposed to be nice outside, so we'll see how it goes."
"That sounds good," Daniel agreed with a pleased sigh as he set the weights aside on the table for Tyreen to put away. He stretched from head to toe before getting up from the chair, moving back to the nest and dropping down into his spot. He dug his current project out of the blankets, throwing his blanket over his lap. Humming quietly, Daniel carefully tugged the stitch marker holding his working stitch open out of the fabric. He tucked it into the pocket of his sweatshirt out of the way before winding the working yarn around his fingers like his grandma had shown him and starting to work. Around and around he went on the hat, putting in a few inches more of the stitch pattern for the body of it before he started the first round of the cuff as the scent of Tyreen's amazing mac-and-cheese started filling the room.
"Lunch will be ready in about ten minutes," Tyreen warned from the kitchenette, shuffling around on the tile floor as he crossed from one spot to the next. He moved to the right to start the kettle again, filling it with more water and setting it to boil.
Daniel made a noise of acknowledgement, focused on his cuff pattern. He added another row around, going slow since he was using a new stitch pattern he'd never done before. He did another row around before he dug into his pocket for the stitch marker to hold his working loops open. He ran his fingers over the rows he already had, wiggling his nose at the texture. "Gross," he murmured, not liking it but also not wanting to frog it out and start the cuff over. He dug through his backpack for the notebook he kept his crochet and knitting notes in, setting it in his lap before flipping through the pages for the page with the notes on the pattern he was using for the cuff. He tugged the en out of the coil where he'd tucked it, clicking the pen open to write a quick note into the empty space at the bottom of the page: I hate this stitch for hat cuffs, might be good for scarves or blankets—something flat at least. He clicked the pen closed again and put it back in the coils, closing the notebook and tucking it back into his backpack out of the way.
"Lunch is ready," Tyreen announced, pulling the pot off the hot burner and onto the other one after turning the stove off. He reached into the cabinets for bowls, bringing them down as he heard Daniel shuffling around in the nest to put his things out of the way so he could get up from the couch. He filled both bowls just as the kettle finished boiling, clicking off as the water roiled inside. "Do you need more tea, Daniel?"
"No, thank you," Daniel answered before draining the rest of his first cup of tea. "I want some juice instead, please."
"Alright. Well," Tyreen pushed the fridge door open with his foot as he poured himself another glass of tea, peeking inside briefly before turning his attention back to the water pouring. "Looks like the fridge was refilled with apple and cranberry juice—oh, and some orange-peach cocktail."
"I'll have some of the orange-peach, please," Daniel replied. He walked over to the dining table, set his teacup in front of his spot, and pulled out his chair to sit down. He squirmed into place, leaning back against the cushion on the chair, humming happily at the puffiness of the cushion against his back.
Tyreen reached into the fridge for the juice, setting it on the counter briefly as he reached up for a glass. He quickly poured a full glass of juice, capping the jug before putting it back. He brought the glass over, setting it in front of Daniel before returning to the kitchenette to grab their food. The kettle clicked again as it was wont to do, and Tyreen stopped before grabbing the bowls to grab the teaspoon to scoop the teabag out of his mug, opening the lower cabinet door hiding the garbage and dropping the bag into the bin. He left the tea alone and went to grab their food, bringing the bowl to the table before going back for his cup.
Daniel eagerly waited for Tyreen to come back, the older man bringing his tea with him back to the table to sit down in the seat across from Daniel. Tyreen motioned for Daniel to eat as he sipped from his cup, picked up his fork with the other and scooped up some food before setting the cup down. As they ate, Daniel and Tyreen talked about the schoolwork that Daniel had been doing: how much he hated the content of the history coursebooks he was reading, how much he preferred to read novels over the plays he'd been assigned for his English courses, and how much he actually enjoyed the advanced Algebra that his Aunt was teaching him on the side.
Daniel had been thinking, however, so he couldn't help but ask, "Do you speak any other languages?"
Tyreen swallowed and waggled his hand back and forth. "I speak English, of course, which is actually my third language. I was taught French and Maori first since those are the first languages of my parents, then I learned English when I started going to daycare and preschool. In middle school, I decided to start learning Spanish, and then when I started college, I picked up Italian because of my roommate." He shrugged, "I also started a course on American Sign Language about six months ago, but I put it on hold when I took up being your Healer and Conservator." He peered at Daniel curiously, tilting his head to the side. "Why do you ask?"
"I wanted to ask Aunt Max if she or Grandad or Grandma could help me find a language class of some kind," Daniel started, and Tyreen nodded, continuing for him, "But you can't decide what kind of class you want to take."
"No," Daniel sighed, turning his attention to the window. "I don't know. There are so many options; I know some languages run in our family, and others are interesting that I might want to learn."
"Max would be a good resource to decide what you might want to learn," Tyreen agreed, tapping his fingers on the table. "She knows a lot of languages, even if it's just passingly, so even if all you wanted was to hear how much she had trouble learning the bits she knows, she will be good to tell you that." Daniel nodded, and Tyreen continued, "And your grandparents know a lot of languages too, not to mention what languages their Seconds know."
"And Killian knows a couple they don't," Daniel hummed, ignoring the flushing from Tyreen as he delved into his thoughts. He had a lot of options to consider when he finally came to a decision. There were plenty of people to ask and several dozen shelves in the library with different books for him to look at. He turned his attention back to his food with a sharp nod. He had nearly finished eating when he looked up at Tyreen and asked, "Can I take a nap after lunch before we try another healing session?"
Tyreen nodded, his mouth full of food. He finished chewing and swallowed the mouthful, "If you want; you know nothing is set in stone, so if you want to take a nap for a bit before we start on the next healing, go ahead and do it."
"Thank you," Daniel murmured. He finished his food and his juice before pushing himself away from the table, taking his dishes to the sink and putting them inside. With a yawn, he crossed the Suite back to the nest to grab his T-Rex before heading for the bedroom, pushing the door open and slipping inside to take a nap. He crawled into the big bed, burying himself in blankets and pillows before closing his eyes and trying to fall asleep. It didn't take long for him to fall asleep once he was relaxed, and he easily slipped into sleep.
-
When he woke up, it couldn't have been long that he had been asleep since the lighting hadn't changed too much, but he'd been asleep for long enough to get the light spilling across the headboard of the bed rather than the wall above it. He stretched his arms above his head with a yawn, pointing his toes beneath the blanket and wincing at the pull of the tendons in the bottom of his foot. He needed a moment to breathe through the pain before he tossed the blankets off, sitting up and sliding his legs across and off the bed. He slipped himself off the bed after another moment of just basking in the sunlight, slipping through the crack in the curtains, humming as his socked feet hit the ground directly in the middle of the streak of light.
As he came out of the bedroom, Tyreen looked up from the puzzle he was doing and smiled at him. "How was your nap, Daniel?" he asked.
"Good," Daniel murmured sleepily, reaching up to rub his eyes with a hand as he wandered over to the fridge to pour himself some more juice. "I feel better."
"When you're awake," Tyreen teased with a grin, getting a narrow-eyed look over the top of Daniel's glass as the teen drank from it. "We'll get started on another proper visit to the spirit plane to do some more healing. I have a feeling that you'll find somewhere easy to start so we can get another hole sealed."
"I hope so," Daniel mumbled into his juice, the words a bit garbled by the liquid before he focused on draining the glass. A shiver went down his spine as he practically chugged the glass of juice, wincing quickly at the sensation of ice-cold juice going down his throat before relaxing as he finished the cup. He set the empty glass on the counter, returning to the fridge to pour himself another glass to take over to the nest with him when they moved onto the healing.
Tyreen tried putting another few pieces into the puzzle as he listened to Daniel moving around the Suite before he covered the puzzle with the board again, stretching his arms over his head. He twisted to crack his lower back before turning in his chair to look at Daniel. "Are you ready to try another hole?" he questioned as he pushed himself up from the table, picked up his teacup and moved to the nest to sit down in his spot across from Daniel.
"As ready as I can be," Daniel agreed with a sigh, bending down to put his glass down before he made his way into the nest via the stairs rather than climbing down like usual. He sat down in his usual spot, folding himself into a comfortable tailor pose before tugging his blankets up over his legs. Elbowing his pillows into a better position, he relaxed back and waited for Tyreen to settle himself and get everything ready before allowing his eyes to slip closed as he started the drift into the psionic plane.
Elpis was waiting for him when he got there, the pup sitting at the edge of the hole they'd filled in the day before. Her fluffy tail was brushing back and forth across the grass that was already starting to encroach into the open soil, a single blue dandelion-type flower waving in the airflow created by her movement. She was sniffing at a tiny sprout in the middle of the hole that he didn't recognize. She huffed at him, standing to push her head against his legs before she flopped herself down on his feet like a huffy dog.
Daniel breathed a sigh of relief as he looked down at that little sprout which was growing in what had once been a hole in his mental landscape. "What do you think it is, El?" he murmured and knelt down to ruffle her fur. "I hope it's a nice tree. I'd love to see a nice tree here at some point. Maybe something with fruit or flowers."
Elpis made a grumbling noise as she pushed herself up to her feet, stretching full-bodied before looking up at him. The white spot on the back of her shoulders caught the light a bit as she moved, stretching her front paws out in front of her in a big stretch.
"Alright, El," Daniel murmured, straightening back up to full height and stretching himself. "Let's see what we can see before Tyreen and Sarabi get here." He hummed quietly and stepped away from the old hole, moving through the maze of open holes and studying the others intently for one that might be usable.
Daniel was still searching when Tyreen appeared on the edge of his portion of the psionic landscape with Sarabi next to him. The dark-furred lioness started leading the way through the potholes until they could reach Daniel's side, where he was studying a hole about the same size as the previous one, if maybe a little bit smaller. The hole was only about 14 inches across and 5 inches deep, with the dirt piled nearly nearby like a small hill with a single blue daisy flower directly on the top, like the oak tree on the top of Bag End.
"What do you think about this one?" Tyreen asked him, raising an eyebrow at him.
"I think it would be a good one to try," Daniel told him. "It's about the size of the other one, maybe a little bit smaller, even if it is maybe a little deeper." He moved to the pile of dirt, digging his fingers into the soil to work the soil free. It took all of a moment for him to get the flower cupped between his hands, and with a quick look at Tyreen, a small planter pot appeared at Daniel's feet. He crouched down to loosely tuck the flower into the pot, setting it between his feet out of the way as he turned his attention to the hole. "Let's start?"
"Whenever you're ready," Tyreen agreed and smiled at him. He and Sarabi moved around the other side of the hole as they had with the previous hole, but Tyreen's hands stayed down at his side instead of raising. Tyreen reached over to pet his fingers across the top of Sarabi's head, dragging his nails over her scalp as she liked and getting a happy low rumble from her as she leaned against his side.
Daniel studied the hole with interest, trying to decide the best course of action for filling in this hole. It may be similarly sized to the one they'd filled in the day before, but this one was different—it wasn't a matter of pushing a rise of dirt on the edge of the hole back into it; it was moving an entirely separate pile of soil into the hole. He looked between the hole and the pile and back again before coming to a decision; using a cupped hand, Daniel made a scooping motion, watching as a section of the pile separated from the rest, rising into the air and floating over. He made a dumping motion, and it spilled into the hole in a sprinkle. He flattened his hand out, spreading out the soil at the bottom of the hole.
"Look at you," Tyreen praised with a laugh, watching as Daniel repeated the motion again, a large section separating from the pile to pour into the hole. "Well done, Daniel. You're getting a better handle on your Gifts every time we come in here. You'll be a good Guide when you come of age, and I'm going to recommend that you go for Healing Training."
Daniel's head snapped up at the news, eyes wide in surprise. He'd heard from listening to the others in the Center gardens that it could be difficult to get into a Healer Training Program without a referral, so if Tyreen recommended him to it when it came time... well, Daniel would be very excited for the opportunity to do it. He may never want to have this kind of thing happen to him again, but he did want to help anyone who had this happen to them in return for the help he was getting. He wanted to pass on the healing that Tyreen and his family were giving him to someone else who needed it in their lowest moments.
Tyreen smiled at him, motioning him to continue as he spoke, "I think you'd do well at it. And I can see the passion you have for passing that healing on to someone else that needs it. In a few years, once you've settled into your Gifts and gotten used to being physically healthy again after so much of your life being sick, I'll send in my recommendation, and you can do the Guide Healing courses at the Center. In the meantime, I think you would do well in some of the more advanced Guide Training classes, especially since you have Elpis—Wolf Guides have a lot of powers that other Guides don't or can't come close to using."
Daniel nodded, thinking about some of the stories Max had told him of the times she'd met other Guides who had special Gifts that the average Guide didn't have. The first time had been a Leopard Guide in Tanzania when she was filming Lions in the Serengeti National Park—the Leopard Guide and her Sentinel had been the leaders of the park protection Wardens, using their Gifts to search out poachers and wounded animals alike. The second time had been a Whale Shark Guide in Hawaii when she was writing about the connection between the Native Hawaiians and the surrounding sea life—that woman was one of the calmest people Max had met in her life, even in the face of conflict between Eco-Activitists and Industrialists. And most recently was another Wolf Guide in Cascade, Washington, when she was studying Guides in Public Service; she'd followed the Guide and his Detective-Sentinel around for nearly a year (which had been this last assignment before she found out about him being sick) and much of what she knew about being a Guide had come from what he'd been able to teach her.
"Aunt Max met a Wolf Guide a few months ago," Daniel added with a hum, digging out another scoop of the pile and sprinkling it into the hole. "She said that he was a very disconcerting person. He looked so unassuming but his Power was like being next to a bonfire. He was a controlled power but it was more than most Guides ever put off." Elpis sneezed at his feet, shaking full-bodied to a startled laugh from Daniel before he kept speaking, "She enjoyed seeing the Bond between him and his Sentinel, and the by-play between them; the feelings their Bond leaked were enough to put everyone around them in a matching mood."
"I can imagine," Tyreen murmured. "Most of the Bonds between Alpha-level Pairs—and historically Wolf Guides and their Sentinels are always Alpha-level—are so profound that one usually doesn't outlive the other for long unless they have young children to bolster them. These kinds of Bonds can give off all kinds of feelings to those around them, and they can boost others' abilities if they wish. I've seen the Alpha Pair of Baltimore use their Gifts to boost their Betas during a Hunt for a Serial Killer targeting the children of the Tribe. It let the Betas find the man in six hours thanks to increased Empathy and Senses."
Daniel's eyes widened as he recognized what Tyreen was saying. "I'm going to be an Alpha?!" he squeaked, paling slightly at the thought of that much responsibility put on his shoulders, even if it was far in the future.
Tyreen laughed. "Oh, Daniel, honey," he sighed, "It's something that will happen in the future, when you meet your Sentinel. Even if they're not an Alpha already, the Bond between the two of you will demand you to use your Gifts for the good of the Tribe, and it will demand the same of your Sentinel who will use their physical Gifts to protect the Tribe. That's the Imperative of being a Sentinel or Guide, and it's worse for Sentinels than for Guides."
Daniel squinted a bit. "Why?" He dumped another scoop of dirt into the hole, smoothing it out as he waited for Tyreen to answer.
"A Guide can live their life as normally as a Mundane as long as they have good enough shields," Tyreen started, moving to sit down on the ground next to the hole. "Guides can ignore their Gifts if they have enough willpower, but a Sentinel can't. It's physically impossible. There is no ignoring the heightened senses or the territorial drive of being an Online Sentinel; those things can be diverted, but never ignored. And the more powerful a Sentinel, the worse it is for them, and it's the same with Guides. The more powerful a Guide, the harder it is to ignore your Gifts because of your connections to the Psionic Plane." He made a sweeping motion, pulling a bit of the pile of soil into the hole and spreading it out. "For Guides of our level, it's nearly impossible to do it. Guides with large predators and some larger prey guides have the hardest time ignoring their Gifts because eventually something will drag them onto the Spirit Plane and it will change their entire life. But for Gifted Guides, especially ones who have the option of walking the Path, you will never even contemplate ignoring your Gifts. You know that you will eventually become something more, and you know that you need to use your Gifts for the betterment of the Tribe."
"Walking the path?" Daniel asked in confusion. It was the first time he'd ever heard the term before, and he wasn't sure what it could possibly mean.
Tyreen winced but sighed, "It's a complicated part of Gifted Guide history and lore, but it basically boils down to some Gifted Guides can evolve, for lack of a better term, into something more." He shifted a bit, recognizing that as much as this was a topic that should be covered by Daniel's Guide Teachers, it was something that Daniel would need to know, especially since it was entirely possible that his recovery from his Leukemia would be enough to start the boy on the Path. "Every Gifted Guide has a possibility to transform through a process called walking the Path. It starts with a near death experience; if a Gifted Guide comes close to Death, they fall into the Spirit Plane until they either die or are revived. Long enough spent on the Spirit Plane in this liminal state calls to the spirits of those who've come before us; if the spirits approve, it starts the Guide on the process of walking the Path. As a Guide walks the Path, they're taught how to use Gifts that are normally closed away from use, and when they're finished learning, they emerge from the Spirit Plane as something called a Shaman."
"How powerful are Shamans?" His eyebrows pulled together, and Daniel looked up at Tyreen from smoothing out another scoopful of dirt in the hole. "They'd have to be pretty powerful, especially if it's as hard a process as you make it sound like."
Tyreen thought about it for a minute, trying to think of a way to quantify the abilities of such a small population of the entire Protectorate community. "How powerful..." he murmured, picking at Sarabi's fur for a minute, gently playing with her ruff. "It's hard to describe," he admitted after a minute of thought. "I've met one Shaman in my life, a Viper Guide who stopped into the University to give a lecture on symbolism with Spirit Guides in Fiction. The entire Guardian dorm could feel her arrive nearly a mile before she actually stepped foot on Campus, and the higher the level, the further out. It was a bit like staring into the darkness of your room in the middle of the night and wondering what might be hiding in that shadow in the corner; at least it was until she stepped onto Campus and immediately came to find our building to introduce herself to the dorm's Alpha pair." He waved a hand as he tried to find words to explain more, "It's really hard to explain how a Shaman feels when you meet them, especially since Shaman Witherspoone told me that no Shaman feels the same depending on what their Shamanic Calling is. Shaman Witherspoone's Calling is to the history and lore of the Community, so once you're used to her mental touch, you can feel the comfort and warmth of a library, the buttery softness of well-loved paper, and the calm of time lost in a good book.
"Shaman Witherspoone told me that she's almost a complete contrast to Wolf Shaman Sandburg who's Calling is Justice. His initial mental impression is like standing on the edge of a cliff and looking down into a gorge hundred of miles deep, knowing that at any moment the ground could give away under your feet. It's that standing on a precipe that puts the people on the other side of his interrogation table at the most unease, which often gets him more results than his Gifts would."
"How am I going to know what my Gifts are exactly?" Daniel asked curiously, adding another scoop full of dirt into the hole.
"Once you're finished with your healings—both physical and mental—we'll get you to run through the standard tests for newly developed Guides to find out what your Unbonded Guide Levels are," Tyreen started to explain, waving a hand to add some more soil of his own into the hole. "Those tests will tell us how well you score for certain abilities like Empathy, Telepathy, Psionic Control, Psionic Healing, Emotion Manipulation, etcetera, which will tell us what would be the most likely Gifts for you to develop when you're older and more settled into your Gifts. The higher the level you are Unbonded, the higher ranking a Sentinel you're going to require to fall into a fulfilling Bond with, and the higher compatibility is going to be required to make it easy to find that Sentinel."
Daniel wrinkled his nose at the news. "So, the stronger a Guide I am, the stronger a Sentinel I'll need to keep up with me?"
"Yes," Tyreen agreed. "Take me for an example; Unbonded, I am a level seven Guide, which means I need at least a level six Sentinel to be able to match my Gifts once I Bond since most Guides raise their level by at least one point and Sentinels always raise as many levels as it takes to match their Guide. So, my Sentinel will raise to a level eight or so when we Bond, same as I will. Most likely we'll end up as the Beta or Gamma pair for a city depending on where we eventually settle down."
Daniel hummed as he spread the final scoopful of dirt into the hole, leaving a space for the flower between his feet. "So, what is the highest rank possible?" he questioned, picking up the pot and moving to the hole to plant his flower.
"If we want to get technical," Tyreen said with a shrug, "a Shaman is the highest rank that a Guide can get to, since they actually test off the current ranking system. Their Gifts can be so powerful that they are unquantifiable by the ranking system as it currently is, and there are simply not enough Shamans to actually set a system because of how rarely they form since even if a Guide starts the walk, they may never finish it, which means no new Shaman but altered Guides. You can't walk the Path and come out the other side unchanged. It's impossible. And even though there are Altered Guides, the alterations aren't enough to necessitate a new system for them—they're mostly just tested again and redefined with whatever new abilities have come from stepping onto the Path."
Daniel hummed and knelt down in the center of the circle of disturbed soil, wiggling the flower out of the pot and carefully planting it in the hole in the middle like he'd seen his aunts and grandmother do numerous times over his childhood during long summers spent at the Buckleys' Virginia house. "What's the highest ranking according to the tests, then?"
"A level ten. It's the culmination of high percentile testings of all the possible Gifts," Tyreen explained, sitting up straighter as he watched Daniel play in the dirt. "Since you're a minor, we're going to have to test you yearly because your Gifts won't truly settle until you've finished puberty. Right now, I expect that you'd test as at least a level five just because your psionic field is so in flux with all of the medications and healings that are going on."
"What do you think I'll eventually test as?"
Wrinkling his nose, Tyreen tilted his head side to side as he thought about the answer. "If at thirteen, you're testing as a level five, I expect that you'd be a level seven or eight by the time you get through puberty, and then you'd be up to level nine at least through Bonding. But this is a version of you that isn't all that healthy—you're getting there, but still there is a bit of a way to go—so it skews the data. I have reason to think you'll end up as a level seven once you're fully healed, so that would put you at a level nine by the time you're finished with puberty, which would make you a level ten after Bonding and a likely candidate for Alpha once you're Bonded with your Sentinel."
Daniel patted the soil around the flower gently, wishing for a watering can and grinning when one appeared next to his foot. He stood up straight and hefted the watering can off the ground, gently pouring some water over the flower and watching the soil soak up the water like it was dying of thirst. He looked up at Tyreen as he wished the watering can away, crossing his arms and tapping his fingers across his biceps in thought.
"Do you think you'll test any higher? Is that even possible?" Daniel asked, reaching for Elpis and running his fingers through her ruff in a self-soothing gesture.
"It's possible," Tyreen murmured as Sarabi flopped over his lap, sprawling across his legs like the overgrown housecat she often acted like rather than the 300lb giant she was. "I've only been Online for four years, and studies have shown that a Guide can occasionally gain or lose points towards the usage of Gifts which will always affect the levels a Guide is tested at for up to a decade after they've come Online, and for up to three years after they've Bonded with a Sentinel. So, I could go up or down at least a level in the next few years, but if I meet my Sentinel before that time is up, well, three years of settling then I'll know for sure what my levels are."
"Would you want to test any higher?" Daniel let Elpis climb into his lap, waiting for the pup to settle before he dropped his hands around her.
Tyreen let out a deep breath, tipping his head back to look up at the cloudless sky. "I don't know," Tyreen told him honestly. "I like my Gifts as they are, but if they did expand, it wouldn't be something I would protest. I mean, there wouldn't be anything I could do about it regardless, so there's no real reason to protest."
"Are you excited about finding your Sentinel?"
"It's hard to be excited about something that has the possibility of never happening," Tyreen admitted. "While you will have difficulty in finding a Sentinel as a high-level Guide, mid-level Guides have a different problem. As a high-level Guide, you'll have a very limited pool of options for compatible Sentinels, which could make it hard for you to find your Sentinel among the hundreds of thousands of us that exist worldwide. For a mid-level Guide, it's a similar but separate problem; there are too many options, making it very hard to find that single most compatible Sentinel among the masses of possible Sentinels. Even as a level seven, which straddles that line between mid- and high-level, I have too many options, and going to the Mixers and Meet-and-Greets can be a bit like a parade of 'no, no, not really, no, not feeling it, and absolutely nots' that can be disheartening at times. I've found several Sentinels that were highly psionically compatible but not physically or emotionally compatible—some had expectations I couldn't or wouldn't meet, and others were just emotionally out of sync with me.
"And unlike high-level Guides, whose Gifts make it so much easier to know whether a Sentinel is right for them, for mid-level Guides, it can take multiple meetings before the Guide knows for sure that the Sentinel is not the right one, or is the right one if they have doubts. I dated one Sentinel for almost six months before we came to a mutual agreement that Bonding wouldn't be in our future because of romantic differences. We're still friends, but we knew that we would make horrible partners. We could have gone ahead with a platonic Bond, but part of our agreement was that we wouldn't be able to handle watching our partner have external partners."
Daniel squinted at the man for a moment before a sly grin passed over his face. "You disagreed about sex, didn't you?" he teased with a giggle, hiding his face in Elpis' shoulder, getting a huffy almost-laugh from the wolf pup in response.
Tyreen's complexion didn't make his blushing all that obvious, especially since it wasn't as dark a blush as Daniel was sure he would be doing if he was being poked at by a child, but the older Guide was blushing as he tipped his head back to laugh. "Yes, Daniel, we disagreed about sex."
Daniel's laughter cloaked the sound of the alarm on Tyreen's watch going off in the outside world, which was intended to draw them out. The sound followed them both back onto the physical plane as their time in the psionic plane ended.