"Inventing the Future"

Author's Note: This next bit might be a little confusing. Lin gets to be a fly on the wall, so to speak, but she can't interact directly with the things she sees and hears. Much of this will be in italics to signal when this is taking place.

"Chapter 36: Insight, Pt1"

Even though the Lighthouse was the place where Master Crest had met his death, Lin still had a sense of peace and tranquility when she studied there. Sad things had happened there, and yet it was not a place of sadness. The light of the Moon Crystal shone as brightly and as constantly as ever, and somehow Lin always felt close to Master Crest when she read by its light. Sometimes she spoke to him as if he were sitting beside her, and although she received no reply, she felt that he could hear her.

Today, though, she could not focus on her studies. She sat cross-legged on the stone floor, resting her forehead in her hands as she tried to force her mind to remain on the pages before her. She simply could not get the memory of last night out of her head! Why had that murderer saved her, and what was he doing in Balance Valley?

"I'll bet you would be able to figure it out...wouldn't you, Master?" she whispered, looking up at the Moon Crystal as if he resided in its depths. "He would have let me fall, unless he wanted something from me. Maybe he's waiting until I can actually use the Crystal. Maybe he wants to get me on their side. But if that's not what it is...I know you would probably tell me to forgive him now. But how can I forgive a man I detest?"

Lin did not expect an answer. She never expected one when she talked to him, though she had no doubt that his spirit could hear her. So, it was a great surprise to her when the Moon Crystal's light began to pulse and an audible hum reached her ears. It almost reminded her of the hum of electricity, but there was no smell of ozone. She got quickly to her feet, and as she gaped up at the Crystal, she began to see something forming at the center.

"Master?"

But no, it wasn't Crest. The image of a small boy, no older than five, began to take shape before her eyes. She felt as if she was being pulled into the Crystal, and, curious, she did not try to fight it. A casual observer would simply see her standing underneath the Moon Crystal in some sort of trance, and the Crystal would not have appeared any different to them either. This message, from the Moon Crystal itself, was for Lin alone.

The little boy had blue spiky hair, though not as long as the hair his adult counterpart possessed, and not quite as wild. His skin was an odd shade indeed. It was blue. His baby teeth were unremarkable, surprisingly, though they did stick out a bit. He was actually able to properly close his mouth as a child!

Lin stared down at the figure, unable to believe that he was ever so small and harmless-looking. He sat on a low sofa, idly kicking his legs as he waited for his mother to walk him to his first day of school.

"Mother, why do I have to go?"

A woman, still rather young-looking but clearly middle-aged, handed him a brown paper bag with the name 'Jaming' written on the side of it. Lin wondered if he was a late in life baby, then wondered why she was wondering.

"You have to go to school so that you can learn about things," Jaming's mother took his hand, and he reluctantly slid off the couch. "We talked about this last night, remember?"

"Can't I just learn at home, though?" he asked, bringing up the hand that held his lunch and wiping his nose with a forefinger. "I don't want to go. They'll all treat me different."

Jaming's mother stopped walking, and looked sadly down at her son before getting on one knee to look him in the eye. "Jaming...you're a good boy. You're a very good boy. And some people aren't very nice. But there are many nice people, too. You just have to look for them. But you can't find them if you stay home all the time, can you?"

"But I don't want to find them!" He was beginning to tear up, clearly frightened about his first day of school. "I want to go home!"

Lin hardened her heart, and resolved to feel no pity. He might have been innocent as a child, but he certainly wasn't anymore!

Jaming's mother put her arms around him, and whispered in his ear, "Sometimes we have to do things that we don't want to do. It'll be okay, I promise."

Little Jaming shook his head vigorously, gearing up for a tantrum. "No, no, no!"

"Father works there, remember? He teaches some of the older students, but remember he promised to check on you at lunchtime? You won't be alone. One of us will always be there." She wiped his cheeks as he began to grow calmer, and forced a smile. "Okay?"

"Okay. But I still don't like it!"

There was a flurry of movement, and Lin realized that they had just jumped through time. Jaming and his mother were still walking to school, though, so it was more of a hop than a jump.

"Mother, I just thought of somethin'!" His little face lit up.

"What?"

"What if the school isn't there when we get there? Do I still have to go?"

Jaming's mother covered her mouth to hide a smile. "No such luck, Jaming. It'll be there."

"Aww, that stinks..."

Lin shook her head as the scene changed once more. Jaming was sitting in the back of his classroom, looking very sullen and cross. As she watched, one of the other students took advantage of the teacher's turned back and lobbed a crayon at his head.

"Hey! Poop-head!" Jaming scowled at the other boy.

The teacher turned and frowned at the direction the shout had come from. "Who said that?"

Jaming's nine classmates turned and pointed at him, and he was told to go stand in the corner. "But he threw a crayon at me!"

"I did not!" The other boy protested, "I don't want his cooties on my crayons!"

The teacher pointed at the other boy. "And you go stand in the other corner. No one in this class has 'cooties', and we don't throw things."

This was ordinary child behavior, as far as Lin could tell. She was about to question the importance of this when the scenery changed again, and she saw Jaming sitting by himself during recess. Seemingly out of nowhere, a rock sailed through the air and bounced off the back of his head. Lin whipped around to see who had thrown it, and it turned out that the culprit was the boy who had thrown the crayon before. She looked back at Jaming, and saw that he had begun to cry. And she gasped when she saw blood seeping between his blue fingers as he held his head.

"Ha ha! Cry-baby!" The boy threw another rock, which Jaming successfully dodged. Then he got the surprise of his life when Jaming, still bleeding and sniffling, let out a bellow of rage and hurt before charging him and tackling him to the ground.

The teacher, who had her hands full with the other eight students, finally noticed what was going on and hurried over to break it up. It was unfortunate that all she saw was Jaming knocking down his classmate and hitting him as much as he could before he was pulled off.

That wasn't fair! He was just minding his own business, and this other kid had decided to stir the pot! Lin caught herself thinking that, and frowned. "It's not going to work. I can't forgive him."

Lin found herself standing before an irate middle-aged man, and for a moment she thought his anger was directed at her. Then, realizing that he couldn't see, hear, or touch her, she relaxed. He was pacing agitatedly in his study, and he actually walked through her once, but she quickly moved off so that this wouldn't happen again. Too weird!

As she took in his features, she thought that he seemed familiar, and when the phone rang and he answered it, she realized who this was. The voice sounded very similar to Jaming's adult voice, but it was rougher somehow.

"Hello? Yes, I've been expecting your call, and...what? Wait, you want me to what? Apologize!" He blustered, his cheeks darkening with fury. "I will do no such thing! Jaming has already been expelled; what more do you want? I tell you, that other boy threw a rock at my son, and-no! No, he wasn't lying. That wound needed stitching, and he's been in bed with a headache all afternoon!"

Lin grew pale as she witnessed the man's anger, and though she could understand it, it frightened her a little. She could hear the voice on the other line, but since the other person wasn't yelling, she couldn't make out what was said.

"Yes, I have the medical report to prove that my son was injured. Yes...yes, I'm aware that he gave the other boy a bloody nose, but this was in response to...No! No, I'm not saying that hitting is right, but my son has the right to defend himself. Well, I don't care what school policy says! If my son had thrown the rock, and the other boy had knocked him down for it, it would still be my son taking all the blame for it, only in that case it would be justified, and-I'm not finished! Do you think I haven't heard the rumors? Do you honestly think that this is the first time my son has been the scapegoat?"

Lin made out the words 'thin ice' from the other end of the line, and she gulped.

"I'm on thin ice, am I?" Jaming's father said with an almost eerie sort of calm. "Unless I apologize? Well...if it's a choice between my job or my son...I say that you, the school board, and the 'angry parents' can all go fuck yourselves. Good day, sir."

The phone slammed into its cradle so hard that it made the ringing mechanism give a short, angry 'ding', and Lin let out the breath she had been holding. She watched as Jaming's father ran both hands through his graying hair, and she heard him let out a similar breath before he turned on his heel and punched the wall.

This was a mistake. "Ngh! Ow...son of a...ahhh..." Jaming's father kissed his knuckles, shook his hand, flexed it, then leaned against his desk. "What a jackass."

Lin wasn't sure if he was talking about himself, or about the person he had just hung up on.