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CLEARSIGHT

Darkstalker had been silent for the majority of the next day. His head was burrowed deep within his own thoughts, as if he'd been vexed by a challenging math problem that he desperately wanted to understand. When she talked to him, his responses were short and bereft of any matter, and often came with a delay. Clearsight knew this attitude: it was the one he wore when he was plotting something. She was respectful enough to avoid using her powers to try and decipher what he was up to, in case it was a surprise meant for her. But she did feel inclined to look ahead, just to make sure that he wasn't up to anything sinister or dangerous.

The future still looked safe. As far as she could tell, whatever Darkstalker was planning on doing, it had no noticeable impact. She'd been foreseeing a pleasant series of forthcoming weeks these past two days. Those weeks were still filled with starry nights, good grades, romance, and amusing gossip with Listener.

Darkstalker made up for his quiet confidentiality the day afterwards, though. Whenever they got the opportunity to meet up between classes, he was talkative and smiling and very interested in her. Clearsight knew this attitude as well: it was the one he wore when he had something to show her. He'd acted the exact same way on the day he showed her his scroll. She figured that it must have been another clever enchantment keeping him this antsy. Maybe he was planning to spoil her with a gift. That had to be it. In most of her classes, she daydreamed, trying to figure out what it was, using all of her self-control to keep herself from using her powers. There were so many possibilities. She'd had a dozen ideas by lunchtime, and more flooded in every hour.

Once classes ended, she tried to distract herself by meeting up with Listener, who was lauding endlessly over the big dragon with dark green scales under his wings that she'd hooked up with the other day. "Isn't he handsome?" she said for the third time. "And athletic too. He's on the track team, did you know that? He hunts down little rabbits and gives them to me as snacks. You should see him: he's so fast!"

Clearsight shrugged, and swallowed a bitter thought that she definitely didn't want Listener to hear. She toned herself down and said, "He doesn't seem that special."

"Oh, give me a break." Listener rolled her eyes. "Why do I even bother talking to you about him? You've got an animus boyfriend: of course all the other guys are mediocre compared to him."

"Believe me," Clearsight said to her friend, "I have my reasons not to like him, and Darkstalker isn't one of them."

"You haven't even met him, though!" Listener growled, and her tail thumped to the ground in anger. "Why can't you at least have a little bit of faith? You think you know everything because you're a seer. Well, guess what? Not all of your visions come true. I'm going to prove to you that he's even more perfect than your precious Darkstalker."

She stormed off, fuming. Clearsight felt a little guilty as she let her friend march away. She wanted to give her an apology, but she had to stay principled with her this time. Not all of her visions came true, but this one certainly would. That boyfriend of hers was going to break her heart. Listener would eventually learn that she was wrong and Clearsight was right. She'd be more supportive then.

"Maybe it's good that she doesn't know what'll happen."

Clearsight turned around. Darkstalker was standing behind her with an amused smile on his face. "She has to learn her lesson the hard way, it seems," he said.

"I should probably apologize anyway," she said to him. "I don't want her believing that I think I'm better than everyone because of you."

"You don't need me to be better than everyone," Darkstalker said, brushing his wing up against hers. "Hey, can you get up early tomorrow? I want to talk to you before school starts."

Tomorrow? I have to wait until tomorrow? "Why?" Clearsight asked, smiling up at him. "Is your little surprise for me not ready yet?"

"Surprise?" Darkstalker echoed, his eyes shifting from side to side. "Who said anything about a surprise?"

"No one. But I can tell you've been itching to show me something all day."

Darkstalker growled harshly to himself. "I guess I'm not very good at hiding my excitement, am I?"

"Just get it over with and tell me what it is," Clearsight insisted. Her impatience was starting to turn into urgency. She didn't think she'd be able to sleep if she had this on her mind for the rest of the day.

"No, no, it can't be now. Everything has to be just right. Meet me on the beach at sunset. I've already looked ahead: nobody else is going to be there. It will just be the two of us." He flicked his tail and brushed his cheek against hers.

When Clearsight looked back at Darkstalker, she saw a glimmer in his eyes. He was just as eager as she was. There was a childlike joy welling up inside him that he was struggling so hard to contain.

"I know you'll be there," he said conclusively. "I need to go home and make some more preparations. See you in the evening."

He took to the sky and flew off. Clearsight sighed and accepted her fate. She kept her future seeing abilities toned down for the rest of the night and flew back to her own house.

The daytime came, Clearsight slept, and the daytime went. She'd managed to keep herself busy with homework and talk about classroom matters with her parents. They had been delighted to see that she had something on her mind other than the future for a change. Clearsight had to admit herself that it was a nice change of pace as well. Maybe there was a bit of merit to Listener's philosophy after all: she couldn't remember the last time she'd been this excited for this long.

But once she woke up the next day, she could hardly wait a second longer. She got out of bed, told her parents that she'd be meeting up with Listener to finish up a school project, and shot out of her house without a nibble of breakfast. She flew towards the beach as fast as her wings could take her.

The air was still and the tides were low, and as Darkstalker had predicted, nobody else was there. He was sitting beside a campfire made from driftwood, staring out into the sunset. When he heard Clearsight approaching, he looked back at her and beamed. "You made it."

"Yes, I made it," Clearsight said impatiently, and a little out of breath. She approached Darkstalker with a curious stride in her step. "Now hurry up and show me what it is you did."

When she sat down next to him, he didn't say anything. Instead he just looked at her, happy and innocent as ever, and touched his nose to hers. Clearsight smiled, her snout dipping into her chest. Darkstalker's eyes softened so much that it actually made Clearsight a little embarrassed. "You have the most beautiful smile in the world," he said, just loud enough to combat the sound of the waves. He flicked out his forked tongue and licked her cheek.

Clearsight giggled, and Darkstalker leaned forward, continuing to nuzzle and kiss her. "You're in a pretty romantic mood," she observed.

"I love you," he agreed, resting his head over her shoulder.

That was the first time he'd ever spoken those words out loud. She'd heard him say them a hundred times over in the futures she saw, but now was the first time they'd come from Darkstalker as he truly was. Clearsight felt herself flustering up. "Isn't it a bit too soon to say that?" she asked.

"It was never soon enough," Darkstalker answered, drawing his head back and looking right at her once more. "I've known you for years. I've known that my life is going to be so much better because of you. I've known that all I had to do was wait for you to come into my life, and everything was going to get so much brighter. I've always loved you, Clearsight. I always will."

There was a happy flutter in Clearsight's heart. She never realized how good it would feel, knowing that she meant so much to someone — knowing that she made Darkstalker's world one that he could look forward to.

"I love you too," she said to him, that lingering heat of embarrassment still clinging to her ears. "I've seen so many lifetimes I could have with you. I've seen so many directions our relationship could go. But in every single one of them, I love you with all of my heart. Even if you end up trying to destroy the world and I have to stop you — even in the futures where I have to say goodbye — I can never stop loving you."

"You will never have to say goodbye to me," Darkstalker said with confidence. His voice was determined and caring, but Clearsight noticed that the corners of his mouth were rising impishly. "I found a way to make sure of that."

Darkstalker was so sweet and lovable in that moment that Clearsight didn't have the heart to tell him that that wasn't true —that whatever it was that he had done, it wasn't enough to dissolve the darker paths that might lay ahead. They were muted and unlikely, but she could still feel their coldness haunting her mind. Nonetheless, she still wanted to see what this was all about. "Go on," she said to him, beaming brightly as her impatience began to well up again. "I haven't looked ahead to see what you're going to show me, but if you test my patience any further, I just might."

"Okay, okay," Darkstalker said quickly. He turned around and reached into his pack, pulling out a necklace with a solid gold amulet dangling at the end. "This is for you," he said as he placed it in her hands.

Clearsight looked down and studied Darkstalker's gift. The gold chains were so tiny and intricately made that the thread felt more like silk than metal. The amulet had a carving of an hourglass on it, with the illustration of sand in the upper bulb pouring down the neck and into a tiny pile in the lower bulb. When her talons traced along its edge, she realized that this actually wasn't an amulet at all: the etched hourglass design was a shell, hiding something behind it. There was a small hinge at the bottom. Being careful not to carve any scratches into the design, she opened it up and looked inside.

It was a watch. Two little clock hands were pointed at the very top, completely unmoving. The little gears that lay behind the glass covering were all completely still. There was a winding knob at the top, which appeared to be pulled out. She lifted a hand to wind it up and set it to the correct time.

"Don't set it yet!" he said, taking her hand and stopping her from touching the knob. "I need to explain what it does first."

Clearsight nodded, then lowered her hand. "I'm listening."

"You deserve the future that you want," he said. "And you shouldn't have to worry about the possibility of losing it. So if that ever happens — if we ever reach a point where all those good futures are gone forever and there's no hope of getting them back again — just use this watch, and you can start over."

" 'Start over'?" Clearsight echoed. "What do you mean?"

"Pick a special time — " Darkstalker explained, "when the future is bright and you're as happy as you can be. In that moment, that's when you should set this watch. Because that's going to be the time you'll go back to when you use it again. Once you set this watch, the enchantment will activate. Press that knob again, and everything becomes undone — regardless of how many years pass. You'll go back to the time when you were happy again. And once you're there, the future will once again be in your hands."

An electric chill went down Clearsight's back. She looked back down at the watch and touched its rim with the tip of her talon. "It … can send me back in time?"

"Back to one exact moment." Darkstalker sat down next to her, looking at the watch himself. "Choose that moment wisely."

Clearsight blinked slowly, closing the watch and facing Darkstalker once more. "Why did you make it just one moment?"

Darkstalker turned his head to one side. "What do you mean?"

"If you were able to make an enchantment like this, couldn't you also let me control how far I wanted to go back?"

"Ah," Darkstalker said, a little awkwardly. "Yes, I suppose I could have. But I wanted this to be a failsafe, not a crutch." He reached out and grasped Clearsight's hands. "I don't want you to ever have to use this, Clearsight. I just want you to be happy for a change. I want you to enjoy the present without worrying so much about the future all the time. I was afraid that if you were able to go back to whatever time you wanted, you'd use that power so much that you'd never end up actually making it to the future."

Clearsight looked down, embarrassed. That was probably true. If she had that power, she'd cross-examine her choices so much and constantly retry everything in order to make sure that the world stayed as bright as possible. Darkstalker probably made the right call.

Would this gift help, though? She still didn't feel safe moving forward without worrying about the future. She still shivered at the thought of letting Darkstalker's heart fill with chaos. She still saw futures with fire and tyranny and blood — futures that she couldn't allow. "How come this isn't changing what I can see?" she asked, partly to herself. She figured she would have used this long before things got as bad as some of those futures.

"That was my doing," Darkstalker said, understanding what she meant. "I made sure that the watch doesn't impact our visions of the future. For some reason, the enchantment by itself seemed to interfere with our powers, and everything became all warped and blurry. I had to add that amendment in to make sure I could still see the future." Darkstalker rubbed the back of his head. "This took a lot of do-overs to get right — I used up a couple of pages of my scroll in the process."

Clearsight laughed a little. "Can I see them?" she asked. "The enchantments. I want to make sure I know how it works."

"Sure!" Darkstalker said, rising to his feet. "I can show it to you after school. Just hold onto it for now." He started kicking sand at the fire to snuff it out, then looked back at Clearsight, his eyes warm and bright. "Do you like it?"

"Of course I do." Clearsight brought her gift close to her chest and pinned her ears. "I'm sorry, I probably don't sound very enthusiastic, do I?"

"Do you think it will help?" he asked. "Knowing that you have an out — a way to fix things if everything goes wrong. Do you think you'll have an easier time not worrying?"

"Oh, Darkstalker." Clearsight smiled sadly at him. "I need to worry, at least a little bit. You want the dragon who guides you towards the best future to care about her job, right?"

"I also want her to relax a little bit. I'm supposed to make her job as easy as possible, after all." He beamed at her.

"You've been pretty successful, I'll admit," she said. "My vision attacks have been getting worse. But as far as I can tell, the future really is getting better." She hoped that was true. Sometimes she worried that she was just getting better at ignoring the less desirable outcomes.

"And we can keep it that way." He took her hands, and closed his talons around them. "We deserve to be this happy for the rest of our lives, Clearsight. I want to make your life just as much better as you've made mine."

Clearsight took a moment to let herself believe him. Darkstalker had been doing a good job at teaching her to focus on the world around her instead of the world in her head.

Maybe she would let herself live more in the present now that she had this new option.

But maybe she'd still let the future bother her a little bit too. She backed away from Darkstalker and put a hand on her head. "Oh, no," she said, barely more than a whisper in her voice.

"What?" Darkstalker said, his face suddenly awash with worry. "What is it?"

"Something terrible." She put her hand down and looked back at Darkstalker, her face filled with sadness. "I don't know if we can stop it."

"What is it?" he asked, louder this time. "Tell me, Clearsight."

Clearsight looked down. "We're … we're going to be late for school."

She managed to catch a glimpse of his dumbfounded face before he erupted into a fit of laughter. She giggled back, uncontrollably.

"Don't scare me like that," he growled playfully, taking her and pulling her into a hug.

"We really are, though," she said, shoving him away. "You know I'm not a very fast flier."

"We can get there on time." Darkstalker stretched his wings and looked back at Clearsight. "I know — I'll stay behind you and nip you in the tail if you slow down too much."

"You wouldn't!" But Darkstalker was already circling around, stalking the tip of her tail. She shrieked and took to the sky, feeling like a little child as Darkstalker followed close behind her. As she pushed herself to lengthen her distance from him, the visions of tardiness began to fade away.

A/N: Thank you for your patience, everyone! This was a challenging chapter to write: it was hard finding the right way to balance out dialogue and introspection without repeating the same sorts of things I'd already said in the last chapter. To those of you who were following this story before this was uploaded, I apologize for the longer wait.

I forgot to mention this in the last chapter, but I'd like to give a special thanks to my friend ShadowVulpi for beta-reading these chapters for me. She's a very skilled writer, and I'll be communicating with her extensively as I write this story, bouncing plot ideas off of her and discussing directions the story could go.

Let me know what you think! Should Clearsight go on ahead and set the watch as soon as possible? Was Darkstalker's gift really sweet, or a bit of a letdown? Are you starting to get sick of all of the fluffy romance and hoping to see some action? I'm always happy to hear your impressions.