A/N: So, so, so much has been going on... I am so sorry. I am actually trying to stockpile some chapters, as I usually try to do, so I can give you something besides a long dry period of time. Apologies! I do know how hard it is to pick up a story when there hasn't been a new chapter for so long. Thanks so much to those that are still dedicated!

Enjoy!

Chapter 19: Seeing or Believing?

It was like an extra sense. It was different from the Gift or Sight in that any conscious effort to control or direct it was futile. It wasn't just magic that ran through his veins giving him a peek into what it might be, it truly was more like a sense.

Seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling were all things that, really, one cannot control. If your hand meets a hot pot, you can't simply tell your hand not to feel the heat. If something is put on your tongue you cannot tell your taste buds not to register it. If someone shrieks, you cannot order your ears to exclude the sound. If a scent comes across your nostrils you cannot not smell it. And seeing...with open eyes you cannot simply see nothing.

And just like any other sense it could be overwhelming. Except in this particular case it was overwhelming like a great tidal wave, simultaneously taking over all the senses and shutting them off from everything else.

Zain couldn't ignore what had him musing all this but he had been trying. If the "attack" that Lana and her brothers had witnessed was a tidal wave then he was constantly standing with the water around his ankles, all ways in touch with what this extra sense brought him.

He closed his blind eyes and put his face to the sky.

Today it was like static filled air when a thunder storm is on its way. There was a menacing edge, however, that nature tended to lack. Admittedly, nature could be dangerous but it was never mean or spiteful the way human affairs could be. Nature was what it was.

Zain took a deep breath.

It had to be something big to affect the air like this. There were always the small buzzing here and there, minor annoyances that he could push to the back of his mind. Something was always going on, possibilities swam through the air at any time, always.

This had been something excluded in his visions.

Which was odd. His brows furrowed.

The wind blew but it couldn't move the worry in the air. By the "thickness" he could tell it was a little more than a simple idea. All of the future was only possibility but this had the distinct feel of something planned.

Why hadn't he foreseen it?

Perhaps he shouldn't have been so surprised. He surely never saw everything that happened in any given area but this simply felt too large to be missed especially when he was going to be in the thick of it as it seemed.

A vision spasmed through him. He felt someone in his arms, pressed against his chest. His nose was buried in hair that smelled sweet. Her breath was fast. His heart was fast. There was the frantic feel of fear in the air.

The feeling of it lingered behind like a lover's hand.

What--

"Zain!" Lana's exciting voice jolted him. Immediately she was upon him, her hands on his shoulders. The scent she wore wafted onto him as the breeze she created caught up with her. It was sweet.

"What are you doing out here all alone?"

"Listening to the stars," He said softly.

She sat next to him, closer than he thought he deserved and not satisfyingly close enough. "What do they say?"

"Secrets, secrets," He whispered.

"I supposed I'll have to wait till they want me to know then?"

"Or you could ask."

A memory of his vision brought her smile to his inner eye. He heard her shift and felt the movement of her leg against his before she said, "Damien says we should leave in the next day or two."

"Why not tomorrow morning?" His chest tightened. Was this crossing the line? Had he now, more directly than ever before, tampered with time. His mother's warnings and rules flooded him. It is done! Too late to take it back! He told himself. Maybe he could change things though...just a little.

Lana gave him a curious look. He usually wasn't one to add his own opinion, not in the time she'd known him anyways. She was about to open answer when another voice stopped her.

Nooo...

It came so softly and subtlety to her that she found herself agreeing. Perhaps it was her own thought? Perhaps. "I...will see." She stood. "Do you want me to help you to your room?"

"No," There was a mix of emotions in the one word, both sorrow and relief.

She left with a touch to his head.

With the touch, came a fragment of the future. This was hers...and it came to him in a wash of empathy. Tears sprang to his eyes, his throat closed tight until the only a sob could escape. He covered his mouth with one hand so that the retreating young woman would not hear anymore. He whispered into his hand, "Is her pain worth my selfishness?

A/N: I know its short! I apologize yet again!